by Drew Cordell
She reached up and flipped the switch off, too scared to open her eyes or say anything.
The man brushed more tears from her eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you, my dear. I wish we could have met under better circumstances.”
∞
“So what does this mean for us?” Jeremy asked Travis as he looked over the code that went above his head.
“It means we will never actually die. In the past, legacy was all about what you had done with your life. Now, it’s all about what you do during your physical life, and the digital afterlife that follows.”
“It wouldn’t be us, though, would it?”
“I can’t pretend to know the answer to that. One hundred years from now, we’ll still have a say in the direction of this project, though. When our bodies are dust, our digital beings will persist.”
“I don’t understand how it works,” Jeremy muttered, he looked concerned.
“You don’t have to understand, you just have to help me make this a reality. It’s going to take an immense amount of time to finish, time we won’t have unless we are able to complete this foundation and develop the technology we’ll need to sustain ourselves in the system, locked away so we can’t be erased.”
“And you’re sure we’ll only make decisions that we would make in life?”
“Yes, our digital selves will simply be an extension of our physical being—all of the attributes that make up our character. It all boils down to chemicals and electrical signals in our brains that lead to every decision and thought we have, it’s all a number.” Travis paused to let Jeremy take everything in. “Are you with me?”
“I’m with you,” Jeremy responded, sounding more confident than Travis expected.
“Good. We need codenames in case we need to interact with anyone working on the project in the future, something cryptic, so they won’t think they’re talking to us.”
“I’ll go by Specter,” Jeremy said, grinning.
Travis laughed. “That’s very cryptic. Well, then. Hmm… I think I’ll go by Archangel.”
“That fits. You’re like the protector of the project and what it should be.”
“Exactly,” Travis said as he reached over and patted Jeremy on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re with me, my friend.”
Exiles of Ascension
An Absolute Knowledge Prequel Novella
Drew Cordell
1
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, 2122
The light above Captain Reggie Wallace’s head flashed. The faded tape marked ‘Systems’ with ancient marker indicated where the call was coming from, but he had already memorized them long ago. If he needed to, he could operate the station’s controls blindly.
“Gary? You pinged?” Reggie asked as he connected to the comms channel.
“Yessir. Monica’s algorithm cracked the encryption on the Phantom broadcast, it’s just a seemingly endless stream of data, but it's quantum-based. Our systems can't parse it.”
“A quantum computer is still running on Earth?” Captain Reggie asked.
“It would appear so, sir. We haven't stored the transmission to our drives in over eighty years, but the signal doesn't match what we had before, it's not repeating on a loop.”
“What do you think that means?”
“Either a computer is changing it and still running on automation after eighty-three years, or there are survivors still broadcasting the signal from Earth.”
“Can we see where the signal is going?”
“No, but there is an unencrypted mention of Lunar Base Echo.”
“That base went dark forty years ago,” Reggie responded.
“Yeah, none of this makes sense. I wasn't aware of any quantum computers on the lunar base in the first place, and those signals we used to broadcast to deep space were just simple radio signal packages with long-range coherence.”
“Well, keep me updated if you—” Reggie paused, looking at a flickering light on his display. It was a warning beacon. Something had locked onto the station and was targeting them with an infrared beam. “The hell?”
“Sir, I'm picking up a launch from earth, probably some sort of missile that's coming straight for us,” Jess, his XO, said. Jess slid her chair along the track to position herself in front of the radar console.
“Time to impact?” Reggie responded, grabbing his mouse and keyboard and taking control of the station’s systems.
“Six minutes.”
“Where did that launch come from?”
“Northern Russia, I can’t get an exact reading of the launch location.”
“Get engineering and systems on the line and prepare an emergency lockdown. I want everyone in their pods.”
“Yessir,” Jess responded, not doing well to keep the panic out of her voice.
“God help us,” Reggie said.
2
“Finish up your chapters, and we’ll take a lunch break,” Ms. Bransley said to the class.
“If I have to eat another helping of dehydrated potatoes, I’m going to die,” Nick said.
Haley and Nicole burst into laughter, looking away from their tablets and welcoming the distraction. They were the only three children on the station, and because he was a child, Nick was subject to pointless schooling from Ms. Bransley five times a week. He wanted to learn engineering, not read old books about a planet that didn’t exist anymore.
“Nicholas, that’s enough. You know that times are tough. We need to be thankful for what we have. We’re lucky to be alive at all, you know,” she said before motioning for the children to return to their reading.
“Why do we have to read this stuff, anyway? Shouldn’t we be learning about how to fix stuff on the station and how to farm?” Nick asked for the millionth time.
“You’ll learn that as well, but we’ve decided you need to be well educated, and that starts with the Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”
Nick scowled and pivoted his head to look out the window of the room. The view of the Earth was as beautiful as ever, even if the surface was obscured by the ever-constant gray clouds. The Earth was gray now, but he knew what it used to look like. Ms. Bransley had shown them pictures of the Earth before something changed it forever, killing everyone on the surface. There were no communications from the surface anymore, and no one on the station expected to hear anything from Earth again.
If things didn’t get better on the station, Nick thought that they might return to the surface one day. Everything on the station seemed to be breaking, and it seemed like him, and his classmates were being ushered into the Delver once a week as the crew waited to see if the station would break entirely. The engineers had always been able to save them, though, whenever a catastrophic failure occurred, but even Nick knew they were out of replacement parts to fix things. He also knew his life on the ISS wasn’t sustainable forever. Nick hated reading stupid books while he could be learning something useful he could actually apply to make things better. Haley and Nicole didn’t seem to mind Ms. Bransley’s boring class and pointless reading assignments, but he did. Nick spent his free time working with his dad on repairing the station. His father, Vinny, was one of the best engineers on the station, and it wasn’t something Nick let the others forget.
Engineers made terrible farmers, that was something his dad always told Nick. He accepted that the food wouldn’t get better for a while, but knew his dad couldn’t do anything about it. His mom worked hard on the farms, and her work had improved the food over time, but things were failing left and right on the station, making it more difficult to grow crops. Nick learned about some of the gross tasks needed to sustain the farms, and he wanted no part of it, even if it meant eating more dehydrated potatoes. His mom could farm all she wanted, but Nick wanted to be an engineer like his dad.
There was the flash of red light and howl of sirens as the station once again entered emergency mode. Ms. Bransley was up in an instant, ushering Nick and the girls into the safe pod, sealing the door behind them. Nick strategically
left his tablet in the classroom so Ms. Bransley couldn’t make him read while they were on lockdown. Until she lifted the restrictions on his datapad, he wouldn’t be able to play any of the games that were on it or read the engineering manuals he had convinced his dad to load.
Ms. Bransley was checking on them to make sure they were getting into place. “You know the drill, buckle up.”
Nick fastened his harness as he always did and waited. A huge tremor reverberated through the station, making the structure shake and causing Nick’s teeth to vibrate. Suddenly, there was a tremendous impact, and Nick was thrown against his harness. The force pushed the air from his lungs, and he struggled to recover, attempting to piece together what was happening. It had never been this bad, and that hadn’t felt like anything he’d experienced before.
Nick craned his neck to see out the small porthole of the safe room they were in, and he could see part of the station floating in space as if it had broken off somehow. As he continued to watch, a body floated past, the man’s face stuck in a shocked expression. The body was covered in purple burns, but the vacuum of space had quickly extinguished the burning flames. Nick squeezed his eyes shut, hiding from the terrifying sight. He hoped his parents weren’t on that part of the station.
“Remain in your safe rooms, we lost modules three, four, and five, and we’re trying to keep the station in orbit!” Captain Reggie yelled over the station's intercom system.
Suddenly, Nick felt himself overcome with the feeling of weightlessness. The damage had disrupted the station's rotation, and the rotation-based gravity was failing. More impacts surged through the station, and Nick felt his heart pounding in his chest. Haley and Nicole were crying, holding each other’s hands while Ms. Bransley tried to calm them. Nick hoped his father wasn’t working on any of those pods. The station was too small for the engineers to work on assigned segments—they simply fixed whatever broke wherever it was on the station.
Nick knew there were thirty-five people, and at least one of them was now dead.
“We’re trying to keep the station up, but be prepared for atmospheric entry,” Captain Reggie called over the intercom.
Nick had to be brave around Haley, but he couldn’t shake the panic that was growing from within. He knew his mom was right by the Delver and was in the safest part of the station, but his dad could be anywhere. His dad had to make it; he just had to.
3
“Sir, we’re getting closer to the atmosphere, but we’re still rotating too fast. We need to stop the rotation, or the station is going to rip itself apart when we enter the atmosphere,” Jess said to Reggie, checking the data stream on her console.
“I know, I know. Are the thrusters ready?” Reggie asked, turning to his XO, Jessica Li.
“I don’t know, Engineering is all over the place, but I don’t think we lost anyone,” she said. Jess pressed a button on the control panel to change the comms channel. “Vinny, any luck on those thrusters?”
“Negative, we lost power from the central hub, we’re working on it! My son—is he safe?”
“If he was in class, then he wasn’t anywhere near the modules we lost.”
“Copy. I’m working on the relay, trying to get power back up. Do you know what the hell caused this?”
“Not sure, it doesn’t matter now, just fix it,” Jess replied, looking at Reggie with fearful eyes.
“Working on it,” Vinny grumbled.
“Keep us out of the atmosphere for as long as possible. Burn as much fuel as you need,” Reggie said to Jess.
“Yessir.”
Reggie was scared, nothing like this had ever happened, and if they didn’t get the auxiliary thrusters working again, they weren’t going to make it.
“What about using the Delver to stop the rotation?” Jess asked.
Reggie frowned. “Negative, the Delver is our only shot of escape if we can’t save the station.”
“Would space be better than trying to land the station?”
“The station is designed to land as a whole. I'm no physicist, but if we lost a fifth of the station, surely that will screw with the landing. We lost one of our five parachutes as well, which means we'd also hit the ground harder.”
Jess grimaced. “I think you're right.”
Reggie flipped the comms switch for agriculture and engineering. “Vinny, keep working on the thrusters but have someone check to be sure the Delver is full of water. Natalie, have someone move as much food as possible into the Delver. Do it now,” he barked before focusing back on the display and controls in front of him. His heart was pounding hard in his chest, and he had a deep sinking feeling in his stomach. He wasn't ready for anything like this; they hadn't prepared him. All he could do now was fight the panic and make the best decisions he could. His former mentor had told him always to make a decision, even if it was a bad one. Nothing was worse than doing nothing.
“Sir, we’ll reach the point of no return in three minutes. We either need to take the Delver or try to land the station.”
He had to put his faith in Vinny. The clock was ticking, and there was nothing he could do but wait.
4
“All non-engineering personnel, move to the Delver now. Repeat. All non-engineering personnel, move to the Delver now,” Captain Reggie called over the intercom. Just as she heard it, the door to the emergency safe room slid open with a creak. Tiffany Bransley was scared, but she had to protect the children. Moving quickly, she unfastened her restraints and moved to help the kids with the difficult latches. Nick was already out of his and was floating above his cushioned chair. Haley and Nicole were struggling. She pushed off the wall gently and unlatched them before ushering the children back into the dark classroom. Red light from the emergency bulbs flashed and illuminated the darkness in an eerie glow.
“We’re taking a left, move quickly but don't lose control. Hold each other’s hands and don’t let go no matter what.”
It was tough to move in null-G, but she had experience with it. The kids, who had never experienced what it was like, struggled to move forward, and flailed through the classroom awkwardly. Anything that hadn't been bolted down was hovering in the air, suspended by what must have looked like magic to the kids. In a way, it was magic, and it was something she had taken for granted all her life. While space was beautiful, she wondered what it would be like to walk on a surface that wasn’t manufactured, to breathe in air that was simply held in place by gravity. She had breathed from pressurized vents and CO2 scrubbers her whole life. On Earth, they wouldn’t need any of that. Another shudder rocked through the station.
They moved through the hall at a slow space, moving through the tunnels that lead toward the Delver. She didn't know everything about it, be she knew there wasn't seating for thirty-five.
“Automated emergency procedures have been activated. We’re abandoning the station. All personal board the Delver and strap in immediately,” the captain said over the station-wide intercom.
Haley and Nicole screamed.
“Girls, it’s going to be okay. The Delver can hold everyone, we’re going to be fine,” Tiffany said as she turned to the girls to comfort them. Her heart sunk in her chest when she saw Nick was missing.
“Where is Nick?” Tiffany screeched, panic warping her voice.
“He said he had to go find his dad,” Nicole responded weakly.
Another woman was passing through the hallway from behind.
“Have you seen Nick, Monica?” Tiffany asked the woman.
Monica latched onto a handle on the wall and stopped her momentum. “No, I haven't. I'll take the kids to the Delver, go find him.”
Tiffany gave the woman a nod and helped Haley and Nicole move forward and grab onto Monica before she kicked off the wall and started back toward the Delver.
It didn't make sense that Nick went back toward the classroom. Engineering was on the other side of the circular station and was cut off from the side Nick was moving toward by hard vacuum. She had to fin
d him before it was too late.
Tiffany kicked off the wall as hard as she could and sent herself rocketing through the hall. If she hit something she was going to get hurt. She scanned for any signs of Nick, but the dark red hallways were empty. She cleared the modules one by one. All of them were empty. The emergency sirens continued to drown out all other noise, and she fought back the urge to return to the Delver. Nick couldn't have just disappeared, and she couldn't let him die.
She entered module two, the airlock on the other side the only thing separating her from sheer nothingness. Nick wasn't in the room. A deep shudder lurched through the room, and the blast door behind her slammed closed automatically. She turned around and began pounding on the glass of the porthole, but the hallway was empty. Tiffany moved over to the emergency supply cabinet and cursed when she found it empty. Another shudder rumbled through the room, and the terminal beside the blast door flickered then went black. She slammed on the porthole window, screaming for help, but there was no one. The other side of the module began to groan, protesting as the thick metal warped and tore itself apart. Tiffany continued pounding on the door helplessly, tears streaming down her face. A second later, and she was launched backward into space.
She tried to breathe, to scream—to do anything, but there was an impossible force crushing her from the inside out. Her eyeballs threatened to pop out of their sockets, and her vision blurred. As the blood crystallized in her veins, all she could think was how beautiful Earth looked from space.
5
Nick pressed on the top of the maintenance tube overhead as the series of deep shudders rippled through the station. He could picture other modules falling off the station toward the Earth below, but he had to keep moving. If he stopped now and the module connecting the maintenance tube to the central axis of the station was destroyed, he’d be sucked into the vacuum of space.
