The machine was one of the very few things older than the lighthouse-keeper, formed of certain elemental substances that were designed less for durability and more for solidity, for an essential ignorance of the power of time.
It went ‘plip.’
That was interesting and new. It had been a long time since anything had been interesting and new for the lighthouse-keeper. They weren’t quite sure how to feel about that.
So they checked the other machines, the ones that would never go ‘plip,’ and they found a little spec with a little light drifting very nearby in the surrounding hundred million cubic miles, practically next-door.
Well now!
Well. Now.
Now it was obvious what to do.
***
It was a shockingly crude little thing, all hasty riveting and curdling metals on top of a fuming, spitting fusion drive. The flare that had drawn the gaze of the lighthouse-keeper’s machine had been caused by a one-in-a-billion chance particle bouncing through its flimsy sides and setting off a near-cataclysmic chain failure of its internal systems.
There was one occupant, who was dead. Luckily this was a very new problem for them and the lighthouse-keeper possessed a very old solution, which they bolted onto the occupant’s chest with some care and no fumbling. They’d never used this device, and certainly never on one so tiny, but there’d been time for practice to drive away any conceivable doubts.
It took a little while. The lighthouse-keeper prepared some hydration, then prepared some nourishment, then simply sat and stared at something they hadn’t stared at before. It was very refreshing.
The occupant’s wheezy breathing took on a harsh edge as muscles took over from machinery. Their heart beat on its own. Their eyelids flickered and flittered. And finally they opened them.
“Hello,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “How are you?”
“Awful. Am I dead?”
“Not anymore. What’s your name?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the lighthouse-keeper. What’s your name?”
“Where am I?”
“The lighthouse. What’s your name?”
“What’s the lighthouse?”
The lighthouse-keeper tried not saying anything, and that did the trick. “Motte. Major Motte.”
“Nice to meet you. The lighthouse is an observation post.”
“For what?”
“You, I think.”
“You think?”
“It’s been a very long time. I’ve forgotten details.”
Major Motte’s body language was somewhat stiff due to their death, but the movement of their facial features was wonderfully expressive. The lighthouse-keeper was sure that if they were more familiar with their species, there would be no end of detail they could glean from it.
“What happened to me?”
“Your vehicle was struck by a small particle. A very low chance of happening, but it wasn’t fit to withstand the force and lost functionality. I retrieved it and repaired you. Why were you in such a garbage heap?”
“A WHAT?”
“You made me ask my last question three times; this time please give me courtesy. Why? It’s not a very good vehicle. It’s dangerous, and slipshod, and fragile, and you were all that was aboard.”
“I was a volunteer,” said Major Motte.
Now it was the lighthouse-keeper’s turn to be surprised. “Why?”
“I was the first. The first out of our solar system, the first human traveller to visit – was going to visit – another star. The first actual intelligence to transmit information home.”
“Why would you want to do that?” asked the lighthouse-keeper incredulously. “There’s nothing out there.”
Major Motte’s face did the most interesting things yet. “Nothing? Nothing!? What do you call this? What do you call yourself? I haven’t even made it to my destination yet and I was contacted by the first proof of extra-terrestrial life we’ve ever documented! This is not NOTHING! YOU are not nothing!”
“I seem to have upset you. My apologies. But I do mean this sincerely: there’s nothing out there. That’s why this lighthouse was built.”
“Your turn to answer my question then,” shot back Major Motte, “what is the lighthouse?”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted. “A post to keep an eye on something. It’s so scarce, you see. Any trace of something should be looked at. Some of the somethings helped us do this after we looked at them long enough. It was a bit of a numbers game.”
“Then…then I’m trying to do the same thing! You’re just me, but ahead of the curve!”
“Agreed,” said the lighthouse-keeper.
“Then why discourage us? Discourage me?”
“There’s nothing out there.”
“If there was nothing but nothing, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted. “Functionally, I might as well have not done so. Would you like some hydration and nutrition?”
“Please.”
***
They ate. It was simpler than it seemed; apparently life on Major Motte’s planet was still basically carbon and some other bits.
“I would like to talk to your leadership,” Major Motte said at last, once they were finished ingesting their frankly absurd amount of hydration.
“That is not possible.”
“Communication delays? Or something else?”
“Both. I haven’t heard from anyone else in seventeen million years.”
“You’re seventeen million years old?”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty million years?”
“No, twenty years. A copy of my consciousness is recorded in the lighthouse and placed into a new body at the end of my natural lifespan.”
“That’s horrible.”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted. “It would seem so.”
“What happened to your people?”
“Who knows? It could have been anything. War between each other, a big rock in the wrong place at the wrong time, biosphere collapse, resource starvation, unilateral suicide. Nobody sends everyone all the news all the time. One little lapse at a wrong moment and everyone was quiet and I don’t know why.”
“There’s nobody left?”
“There might be other lighthouse-keepers.”
“There were many of you? You found multiple other worlds bearing life?”
“Four.”
“How long did your people look for them?”
“One billion years.”
Major Motte’s face didn’t do anything at all this time.
“I told you,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “There is nothing out there.”
“What did the other four lighthouse-keepers find?”
“I’m not sure. It’s been a while. I think three of them suffered stellar collapse. One of them produce ten sapient species. One of those made contact with us. I think they went extinct a hundred million years ago.”
“How? Why?”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted. “I’m not sure. History is like everything else, you know. There’s nothing out there. There is so much nothing out there and the something is so small that in the end – there is no end – nothing wraps around it entirely, no matter what.”
A little bit of Major Motte’s face moved, and once again the lighthouse-keeper felt a little regret that they had no idea what that meant, and likely never would.
“I’ve got to leave,” said Major Motte.
“Where to?”
“Wherever your orders used to come from. I was flying blind before, but now I might as well follow my leads.”
“There’s nothing there.”
“Nonetheless.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Nonetheless.”
“You are extremely pointless,” said the lighthouse-keeper, “but I will help you with this, since you want it.”
“Thank you.”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.
“What is that?” asked Major Motte.
“What is what?”
“That thing you do where you expand laterally and contract.”
“I am filled with overwhelming sorrow.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you were shrugging in ambivalence.”
“No.”
***
Major Motte’s vehicle departed not long thereafter, aimed for a different star.
The lighthouse-keeper watched their trail go cold, and waited.
The machine did not go plip.
But there was still time. Plenty of time. And plenty of nothing to fill it.