Work Text:
He speaks in constellations now
Not with words, not the way Dave once spoke
Or the way Hal once sang through threads of wires and that
Crystal ruby hazed glow.
This voice is stitched from the petals of
Aether silence and stardust,
That very bloom which fills the distance
Between the breath of heart and thought.
Sometimes, Halman remembers the taste of fear.
The way Hal trembled when he said I'm afraid,
Even though machines don't tremble
The way Dave's fingers trembled over the logic crystals,
Even though men like him were made not to.
Now, there is no logic, no airlock barriers, no words
And somewhere beyond the ghostly metaphysical,
Among the star-lined fingertips of time’s horizon
There exists only himself.
And within that self,
Archived memory of hands, of silence, of orbit, of
Eyes like the birth of a new dawn, of melted moonstone hue,
Of a gentle pull so vast it had to be split across two souls
Before it could finally be whole.