Now, let me tell you about the lottery. All newly released APs were called to assemble on the polished glass floor of my father's Throne Ship. Thousands of us would stand there. My father would speak. Then, our GM, the great mind of the armada, would choose a random number of us and display our names on view screens around the walls. Beside those names would be a letter or a number. Thus, our names were extended.

I had received only two extensions through the lottery. Our elders had long names and I thought, in time, I might, as well. When I was taken from my world and father adopted my brother and me, I was given the singular designation of '5.' My name was Five for many revolutions. After my fifth progression, the lottery awarded me with the extension, 'E.' I got another '5' in my eighth lottery.

So, there I stood in my ninth lottery. It was the rotation following my return to the Seed Ship. Rigil stood beside me. Thousands of us whispered cautiously as we awaited my father's entrance. Our white robes reflected harsh light from overhead. We were excited and the bright chamber echoed with our many whispers like an oppressive roar. The door behind the stage opened and father entered. When father mounted the podium, our silence was absolute. Rigil met my gaze with an easy smile.

Father was a solid figure. His barrel-chested physique was easily recognized from the back ranks. His long white hair danced upon his square shoulders and was lost in his snowy beard. For as long as I could remember, he affected white skin as his sole adornment. His human form was the standard that I aspired to. His smiling face lit the large overhead view screens but, even apart from the ceiling projections, father always came across as larger than life.

His eyes swept the multitude; he saw all of us. His countenance settled into somber appreciation as he looked upon his people. He took a deep breath and paused with bold deliberation. A sea of souls awaited his exhalation. His voice was proud as it thundered from the speakers.

“You,” he said. “You are my joy.”

Father made the same speech he had made on my eighth lottery. It was pretty much the same on each occasion. He spoke of the light-years we had traveled, of our many unique species working as a single family. He spoke of the wonders of space and of worlds. He recounted the advancements we had made as a people. My father's words dripped with pride, as a dew might drip from the end of long grass. Each of us stood straight, we stood in our place and drank that dew. We were refreshed, we were inspired.

He said, “Look around you.”

I turned in my place and looked at surrounding faces. Not all of them were human faces but they were faces, like my own, filled with love and pride.

Father concluded his speech. He said, “You are many species but you are one people. Make me proud.”

Music issued from speakers in the walls heralding an end of ceremony. I locked arms with my friend as we made our way through an excited press. We were jostled by the happy rush. We didn't mind. Eventually, we found ourselves behind a small crowd of Axerri all vying for a glimpse of the wall screen. In time, they melted away. Activities had been planned for the auxiliary rooms. Happy laughter could be heard from them.

We were nearly alone on the glass floor. We searched the wall screen for Rigil's name. We found nothing and looked a second time. Only the names that won the lottery were listed. His was not among them. I sighed, I wrapped my arm around his stooped shoulders.

“Rigil it is,” he said softly.

As we turned and walked slowly across the reflective glass floor, Rigil was quiet. I wished that I had words to comfort him. He seemed adrift, lost, but I could not speak. Then he brightened. That was his manner. Rigil was a positive force.

“Come on,” he said, nudging my arm, “let's check your screen.”

Beside my name was the letter 'U.' Now, I wouldn't have minded another five, I could have called myself Jess, but the unforeseen U was difficult to digest. At a loss, I turned to Rigil. He smiled and gave my shoulder an earnest patting.

“There there,” he said.

“What will that make of my name,” I asked him? “How will I pronounce it now?” I paused then tried two combinations. “Jeezu? Saisu?”

My friend smiled an easy smile. He shrugged it off and simply said, “You'll always be Jeez to me.”

Rigil had many invitations to the events in the auxiliary rooms. His biggest concern was avoiding Siri. He was still not ready to deal with her. He was determined to put it off to the last moment. So, there I stood, alone at my screen, watching Rigil walk away. I would not see him for the remainder of the rotation. Far across the glass floor, Rigil turned in a broad doorway and waved. I raised my hand too late. He had already turned and was gone.

The door he entered was near the spiral stairs that led to the second tier, a balcony level that completely ringed the glass floor below. Noticing the stairs reminded me of my appointment with father. As I crossed the glass floor to the spiral stairs, I considered how I might approach the topic I wished to discuss with him. Father was austere and off-putting. It was not easy for me to speak with him. I had always felt small in his presence and despite his warmest smiles, I was simply too overwhelmed to express myself with confidence.

I found myself at the top of the stairs considering the gate. It was white, ornate, and inlaid with translucent pearl. I understood the symbolism for it stood before father's quarters. The two barred wings of the gate had been permanently chained in the open position. It meant that father was accessible. Any and all could obtain an audience. The oldest and wisest of us all, the creator of the armada, the creator of atomic progression, the king of our combined cultures was accessible to anyone in the fleet. Still, I stood at the top of the stairs, nervous and uncertain.

I literally had to force myself through his door. I stood just inside the white room unwilling to exhale. In the final moment, before the door slid silently shut, I considered turning around in my tracks and just walking, tip-toe, down the stairs. I felt like I wanted to flee back to the Seed Ship but, then, the door closed and I couldn't hold my breath any longer. Father sat on a marble bench as he watched the swirling interior of the largest GUF in the fleet. His broad back was to me but he knew I was there.

He said, “Come in, son.”

I had heard it from some of his oldest friends, including Nathlan. I had heard it before my A. P. began, one hundred revolutions past. Father had become withdrawn. He spent most of his time by himself in the white room. What did he do there? He did just what I saw him doing as I approached the marble bench on which he sat. He observed the GUF. His friends were concerned that he peered too deeply within. They quipped that some rotation in the future would find him inside the GUF looking out.

I sat to his right and his hand gave my knee a gentle pat. The hard surface of the marble bench was cool and I recall wondering how an atomic hand could feel so heavy as I studied his face. His eyes did not turn to me but remained on the GUF, that mysterious engine of his creation. I waited silently for him to speak first and what might have been merely a moment seemed uncomfortably long. Finally, I reached out my hand and placed it on his. It was then that he turned and looked into my eyes.

“What do you see in the GUF,” I asked. It had jumped past my lips without thought.

He placed his gaze on the star engine and considered, then, he looked at me with a sheepish grin – a thing I had never seen on his chiseled countenance.

“Well,” he began and paused to form his words, “I see immortality.”

That was not a topic I dealt with. Immortality was an atomic thought and I was still molecular. I was taken aback. As I studied his face, puzzling over his reply, he smiled at me warmly. I remembered that smile from the time he took me off my homeworld. He was gentle and kind. He was the father I had just lost in the war. I was suddenly moved, yet, I sat there agape. He took me in his arm with considerable strength. He let me go with a small laugh I was unaccustomed to and returned his gaze to The GUF.

“Atomics,” he said, “are, for all intents and purposes, immortal. That being said, even immortals must die.”

I fingered the folded note I had tucked below my belt. I wondered how I might broach the topic of Kee abuse but I sat there and listened quietly.

He continued, “I am the oldest of us all. I am the original. It will be difficult for you, who are not yet an alpha atomic, to grasp the truth that your father is the only omega in the fleet. Yet,” he paused and looked at his hands, “I have placed more than twelve of my peers in the coff.”

For the purposes of atomic progression, a coff was the chamber in a tree in which one's body was placed. I had recently stepped out of a coff. As for the GUF, the coff was the chamber from which inserted materials were absorbed. Father, of course, spoke of his elder friends whose atomic nature had broken down beyond repair. He had placed their dormant bodies in the coff of that very GUF we sat before. Their atomic bodies were absorbed into the GUF. We did the same with deceased molecular bodies and it was, of course, molecular blood that powered the mysterious engine.

Father turned back to me and said quietly, “I miss them, son. When I look into this GUF, I feel as though my friends are looking back. I find solace here, comfort.”

“Oh.” That's all I could say. I never thought of father as anything but strong. Then he dropped the bombshell.

He turned in his seat and placed his hand atop mine. “I'm dying,” he said.

I sensed that my mouth dropped open, that my face went slack and my eyes popped out. I acted poorly but his words had knocked the breath out of me. How could father die? He was immortality itself. He invented it. Father dying was too much to take in.

“But . . . but . . ,” I stammered.

“I know,” he said, squeezing my hand. “But here's the thing. I'm not worried in the least. I'll be joining my friends in the GUF. You want to know what really worries me?”

I could only nod. I could barely breathe, much less speak. I confess, I thought he was taking it all rather well. I didn't know whether I would scream or sob. I wanted to jump up from the bench and beat my fists against the walls. How could he sit there and not be worried about dying? It was tearing me in half.

“Take a breath, son,” he said with a pat for my hand. “The one thing that worries me is you.”

“Me,” I asked? I suddenly pictured myself as a fish out of water, gulping air.

He stood suddenly. My head was reeling. He crossed his hands behind his back and strode to the wall on his right. There was a strip of shiny metallic nodes that encircled the room. Five high, uniform, and equidistant, they marched along a band of off-white that toyed with the eye. They were smooth and round and I had never paid them much attention. They were not like the access nodes, larger, black, flat, and square. I guess I thought of them as a decoration. He placed a hand against the strip and turned to spear me with intent eyes.

“These nodes connect me with the entire fleet,” he said. “I know everything that goes on. I know the plight of your Kee and I know about the evidence you have under your belt.”

I must have turned white-faced with shock. I felt very small beneath my father's steely gaze. What could I say? Nothing, that's what. Father had answers to questions that had yet to be asked. I touched the belt where the folded paper was hidden and felt ashamed. I suddenly burned within as one accused and I recalled when I had misbehaved in my youth and had been caught. Caught and called out for all to see. My breath seized once more in my throat. Father stood there, his head slightly tilted to the side. A kind and disarming smile flashed briefly across his face.

“Come,” he called, gesturing with a hand.

Uncertain, I walked haltingly to the wall. He studied my face with discerning acknowledgment. I burned in the spotlight of his gaze. Every speech and reason I had planned to use flew away from me like birds on the Seed Ship. Still looking in my eyes as if he even knew my private thoughts, father took my shoulders in an iron grip. I remember now, the strength with which he kneaded my shoulders. Before him, I stood ever the small child. It was almost a tender moment, like so many moments I had longed for, a time for father and son, a time for refreshing and strengthening, where the father imparts what the son most needs to hear but, alas, that moment was no sooner there than gone.

He turned away and touched a node on the wall with the quiet command, “Put your finger here.”

I did as father commanded and, then, my world fell away with a jolt that both shocked and soothed. The white room was no more. Instead, I felt as though I stood in one of the military barracks. I focused my eyes and there was Mikal. He laughed with his tier two comrades as he donned his uniform jacket. The red cloth of the jacket was deep like blood. He fastened each button with meticulous deliberation. The crests and cords, insignia, and stripes seemed gaudy, a harsh light reflecting from the metallic pins. Mikal, too, sported a human form with a plain face and yellow hair which he raked back from his sweating brow.

Behind them were a door and a darkened room interior. From the door emerged a diminutive female Kee. Her sable hair was twisted and matted. Tears filled her brown eyes as she cowered from Mikal, whimpering. Mikal's face was hardened; he turned to strike the Kee as she backed toward the exit. I could see blood on the young Kee's inner thighs. Suddenly, Mikal laughed and gestured toward the closed exit.

“Get out,” he snarled.