Gliese 581

by Christine D. Shuck

  Janine’s voice had sounded fragile and child-like, “And you can leave me too, Daniel? So easily?”

  Better to make a clean break of it. “Yes,” he said coldly and left her alone in the bed. He closed the door behind him, wishing he could not hear her sobs so clearly. That had been in March.

  “Are there animals, Uncle Dan?” Toby asked, nestling closer, his bony little butt digging into Daniel’s inner thigh.

  “Yes, the probes sent us back pictures of creatures that look a lot like deer, and a handful of other strange creatures. Most of them aren’t much bigger than mice.”

  “Any dinosaurs?”

  Daniel chuckled, “Sadly, no.”

  For two months, Luke struggled to come to terms with it. His big brother planned to get on a spaceship and head more than twenty light years away to find out if a planet might be habitable. He would never return, never grow old with Luke and Janine or have a family of his own.

  “Mom and Dad are gone,” Luke stared at his older brother in consternation, “and it’s just been you and me since eighty-five. Daniel, you can’t just leave.”

  Daniel couldn’t look at his brother. He scuffed his shoe on the ground and looked up at the steady blink of the space station as it crossed the sky. It was the Gan De, the largest of the space stations and one of the oldest, named after a famous Chinese astronomer.

  “I can’t explain it, Bro, I can only tell you it has to be like this. You’ve got Janine and you’ve got Toby. You don’t need me anymore. Not like you did then.”

  That awful night when they had lost Dad, somehow they had stuck together, even in the face of well-meaning officials who told Daniel he would be better off letting them put Luke in foster care for a couple of years. Instead, he had applied for emancipation and then secured guardianship of Luke. He had refused to give up on his kid brother.

  They had struggled, not so much financially, thanks to Dad’s savvy investments, but certainly emotionally, for years. But they had made it, together

  Toby sighed, “Will you try and tame the animals, Uncle Dan? And if you do, could you send one back to me?”

  Daniel closed his eyes, imagining a life without this little boy, this piece of him. “Sure Toby, I’ll do my best.”

  They were both silent then. He felt the boy slip into sleep a few minutes later, his breathing even and deep.

  Luke had not understood how Daniel could leave.

  “We could go with you, Daniel. Maybe it’s not too late to apply. They would make an exception for family, right?”

  Daniel smiled at his brother and shook his head, “As if Janine would go. Face it, bro, your place is here, with Janine and Toby. Mine is out there.”

  There would be more questions, arguments even, and eventually, Luke had shut up and grimly accepted that Daniel was leaving.

  Mother Was Right

  “But goodness alone is never enough. A cold hard wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.” – Robert A. Heinlein

  Date: 03.18.2103

  Calypso Colony Ship

  “Mornin’ Deeks.” Evers nodded to his supervisor, logging into his computer on the Cryo Deck.

  “Morning to you, Evers. You owe me by the way.” Deeks grinned at his assistant, “I believe the total was five lagers worth of hooch for Friday’s game.”

  Evers sighed, “Damned card shark. Well, I’ll have to owe you. I’m out of my weekly allotment, Medry cleaned me out in the first round.”

  Deeks laughed, “Damn, and I owe him two lagers. I guess we both know who the real card shark is ‘round here.” His fingers danced over the keyboard at his terminal. “Looks like we just have one revival today.”

  “Yeah, I see him here. Zradce. He’s swapping with Sean Platt.” Evers paused and looked up, “He hasn’t heard yet, has he?”

  Deeks’ smile slipped from his face, “No. I’ll contact Dr. Carter, he will want to be here when Zradce is functional enough to hear the news. Go ahead and start the process, will ya? I’ll tell Carter to be here at 1000. A couple of hours should be enough.”

  Evers nodded and walked away, toward the rows of Cryo pods in the main section. Here they stood, row upon row, over two hundred of their friends and shipmates, each in frost-lined double-reinforced Plasteel containers.

  Evers keyed in the revival sequence.

  BEGIN REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON ZRADCE, NATHAN

  03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL

  Evers watched vapors begin to swirl, keeping a sharp eye on the readout on the unit. Reviving someone from Cryo was a cakewalk for the technician, but not so much for the revived. He remembered how it had felt waking up for the first time – he had felt high, confused, and none of his body parts had seemed to work right.

  And then there was the whole, “Hey man, everybody is dead on Earth” news. That had taken some time to fully digest.

  “I wish I could give you good news, Zradce, I really do.” Evers said conversationally. The pod was still shut and locked, Nathan’s eyes were closed.

  BEGIN REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON ZRADCE, NATHAN

  01:20 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL

  “Here, you will need this.” Deeks wheeled a cot over. “We don’t want a repeat of last week.”

  Last week they had almost had the revived crew member crash and burn on the floor of the Cryo Deck. Her legs had buckled, and if it hadn’t have been for Evers quick reaction, they would have had to explain to the Captain how one of their best civil engineers had a concussion or worse.

  BEGIN REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON ZRADCE, NATHAN

  00:02 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL

  “Here we go.” Deeks said.

  REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON ZRADCE, NATHAN COMPLETE

  PLEASE RELOCATE REVIVEE TO OBSERVATION ROOM

  The pod door had clicked open and Nathan’s eyes were still closed, but his cheeks were pink now and his breaths shallow.

  “Watching them come out of it never gets old. I mean, seriously, the technology of bringing someone to the brink of death and keeping them there for weeks, months, and years. It’s amazing.” Evers said, pushing the cart close and locking the wheels.

  Deeks nodded, “The most efficient way to transport two hundred plus humans trillions of miles in space. But yes, it is amazing.”

  Deeks pressed a sensor to Nathan’s chest, reading his pulse and more.

  “Barely a blip of resources taken up, no food necessary, little wear on the ship or equipment, and the Cryo pods are designed to last for decades with minimal power usage.” Evers mused, slipping into engineering mode.

  “Yup, designed to ensure that no matter what happens on the ship, the sleepers within will survive, come what may. Impossible to break into as well.” Deeks commented.

  Nathan’s eyes slowly opened. They rolled about, focusing on little.

  Deeks commented on it, “The neurons are still trying to remember how to interpret the data. Hang in there Nathan.”

  He turned back to Evers, “Cryo affects the big switch, the true ‘on off’ button on a human being. And unlike a computer, our ‘on off’ switch isn’t as easily recovered from when pushed.”

  Evers had recently been cross-training and assisting in Cryo. He had taken basic emergency response training on Earth and found that, despite having a degree in mechanical engineering, he had a knack for the entry-level medical studies as well.

  “Hi Nathan, how are you feeling?” Deeks assessed their patient.

  “I wha...uh...time to...can’t...” Nathan Zradce struggled to speak.

  “It’s all right man. All the words will come back in a few minutes. You are in Cryo, by the way, it’s your scheduled wake-up call and all that.” Deeks smiled at him.

  He motioned to Evers, “Give him some water, but not too much, just a few sips. I’ll be back in half an hour. I’ve got some reports to upload to the Command Deck.”

  Evers nodded as Deeks walked away, and wheeled Nathan to the observation room. An hour later, Deeks returned.


  “How is he doing?” Deeks asked, returning from his work station. He leaned over, a penlight in one hand and checked Zradce’s pupils. They had stopped rolling about and the pupils responded appropriately to the stimuli.

  Evers nodded, “Doing better, aren’t you, Nathan?”

  Nathan groaned, “I, uh, oh...”

  Evers helped the man turn onto his side, hanging off the wheeled cart, before he lost what little was in his stomach. Evers wiped up a small amount of vomit.

  “Sorry.” Nathan croaked

  “No worries, Zradce, it happens.” Deeks reassured him. “It’s a documented fact, nearly three-quarters of Cryo revivals toss their cookies within the first hour after waking up. It’s a lot for a body to take, after all.”

  Evers handed Nathan his cup of water, “Just take small sips.”

  Jacob Carter arrived a few minutes later, passing through the titanium-reinforced blast doors that separated the Cryo Deck from the rest of the ship.

  Deeks eyed Carter, “We will give you some time to talk with Dr. Carter here who has some news of Earth that we are sharing with all of the new revivals.” He nodded at the doc, “Jacob, take all the time you need.”

  Evers moved as far from the Observation Room as he could, walking down the last aisle to check the readouts on A.R.C. Within the machine the size of a walk-in freezer was the entire repository of Earth’s genetic history. Collected over the past two decades, it included everything from 3,000 species of fresh and saltwater fish, mollusks and crustaceans, to over 20,000 different animal species, along with human sperm and ovum from every ethnic region of the planet. There were also more than 50,000 species of plants and a staggering 140,000 different species of fungi. In other words there was everything the colony needed to reproduce Earth’s unique life on another planet. Somehow, in the light of the grim news from Earth, that seemed reassuring to Evers.

  Here on the Cryo Deck the human species remained safe and untainted, possibly the only ones of their kind left.

  Despite not wanting to hear the news of Earth, or Nathan’s reaction to it, he couldn’t help but wonder at how Nathan would react. Some people freaked, others wept, many were stoic. Often there was denial and panic. Having to see it, watching it repeated over and over, that was the difficult part.

  He had met Nathan, they had all had time to meet each other, although some you knew in a distant sort of way. Zradce and his wife, Jennifer were nice enough. Nathan was quiet, and had kept to himself during training while Jennifer was a social butterfly. That was fine. Not everyone was going to be your best buddy. Both Nathan and Jennifer were more than competent. Jennifer held multiple masters in civil and mechanical engineering, and was scheduled to be awakened when they established orbit around Zarmina’s World.

  Evers wound his way back to the Recovery Room.

  “We have a link for you to view in your quarters,” Carter was saying, “It will give you suggestions on how to locate surviving family members as well as some appointments I have scheduled for you and I to meet. Remember Nathan, that I am always available to you if you are in need of immediate one-on-one counseling outside of those scheduled dates. We are here to help you deal with your loss.”

  One hour later, at 1100, Zradce walked out the door, still slightly unsteady on his feet. He had said little, responded just enough to fall within the guidelines of acceptable recovery behavior, and Deeks had signed his release.

  Zradce finally made it to his coffin, his mind spinning around the dark truths he had just learned. The small amount of food he had managed to eat, sat in his stomach, churning, and his body still felt lethargic from the Cryo meds.

  Mother.

  He climbed in, slipped off his soft ship shoes, pulled up the links on his touchpad and tried to find the information on how to search through the survivor lists. There were no results when he searched, but he wasn’t terribly surprised. He didn’t look for his foster family, the ones who had taken him in after.

  Those last moments with her haunted him still.

  The madness in her eyes and her screams as they took her away.

  If she had only known who he really was at that moment, he could have forgiven her. But she denied him, even then after so many years, erasing him, as if he wasn’t important, as if he didn’t exist.

  Mother.

  It had always been that way. Immanuel had been the one, her golden boy, her heart. The bond between mother and son had been far stronger than the bond between twins. He had never felt that connection to his twin brother that he had read so much about.

  She had felt it, tried to make him be Immanuel in those months and years after his brother had died. Tried to remake the world into what she thought it should be. She had almost convinced him that he, Nathaniel, was really the one that had died. Not her Immanuel, oh no.

  Mother.

  And as before, as in all of the years since that terrible night and the loss of losing his twin, Nathaniel felt himself slip away. Maybe Mother had been right. Maybe he was Immanuel, the golden son, the one she really wanted, the one who should have lived. Had she died with his name on her lips? Had she died alone? Frightened? Or certain in her faith that these were the end of days, that this is what had been coming for a thousand years?

  Nathaniel closed his eyes. He could see her better that way. Straining against the handcuffs, spittle flying from her mouth, screaming for them to let her go.

  Mr. President

  “Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be the one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.” – A. Bartlett Giamatti

  Date: 06.15.2099

  Earth – Washington D.C.

  Madeline straightened her husband’s tie, kissed his cheek and followed him out of the dressing room. Her heels sunk into the thick carpet lining the living room of their suite. A small group of men and women waited quietly in chairs, their faces grim. They immediately stood as Gary Chen entered the room, a sign of respect to what might be the last president and First Lady of the Reformed United States.

  The Oval Office was temporarily closed, thanks to the gruesome end of the Chief of Staff, Ian Warchowski. In the midst of giving a report the man had suddenly begun swallowing handfuls of foreign objects, including paper clips, a large jar of antique marbles, and far too many staples. Holding him down as he fought to ingest more had only led to the perforation of his stomach and esophagus. Madeline wondered if she would ever be able to walk into that room again and not see it replay a thousand times in her mind.

  She could hear her husband’s stomach gurgle. His appetite had been elevated, as had his temperature, for weeks now.

  “I’ve got it Maddy. I know I do. I’ve felt hungry for days.” He had said it in the darkness of their bedroom.

  “Don’t say that, Gary, please.” She couldn’t bear the thought. He had said nothing more, his hand reaching out to her in the darkness.

  She wasn’t blind. She knew, they all knew, what the symptoms were. She had watched him and others, seen their increased appetites, even as hers held steady, unchanging.

  Why me? Why am I fine, but Gary isn’t?

  She could see him struggling with it, this need to eat more and more. He quickly ate a muffin. Madeline could see him eyeing the stack of them, obviously fighting his growing hunger in order to focus on the business at hand.

  They had been up most of the night, all of them, and Alice, his personal secretary, was gray and shaking. The platter, heaped with muffins only moments before, was down to three.

  Madeline’s eyes tracked the room. Each of the occupants, except for her, appeared flushed. Each of them had eaten more than normal. She couldn’t help wondering, who will be left?

  She seemed to be the only exception, and she took a seat in the corner of the room. Her blue
pantsuit was perfectly tailored, and her hair coiffed just so. No matter who sickened around her, she hadn’t had a speck of fever and her appetite was its usual slight self.

  How the rumor mill loved to talk about them, her and Gary, their marriage, their lack of children. Gary was particularly close-mouthed about it, keeping his personal life with her, and his public life as president, strictly separate. She knew that he worshiped her, even before they were married and, despite the efforts of many willing women attracted to his power and prestige, was completely devoted.

  She smiled, remembering the first time they had met at a charity fundraiser. She had been stuck listening to her date complain about the very people the money was to benefit. From across the room, their eyes had met. She knew it sounded corny, but it had happened exactly like that, and he hadn’t taken long to cross the wide room and stop in front of her, bowing slightly and extending his hand.

  “Forgive me for intruding, but my name is Gary, Gary Chen. Your father asked me to speak with you about volunteering on the upcoming campaign.” His olive complexion, liquid brown eyes, and intense stare had an immediate effect.

  Within a week they were dating, two months later they were living together.

  Their marriage did have political ramifications. Marrying Madeline gave Gary access to old money and prestige all in one fell swoop. When they had first spoke of it, she had warned him that their marriage would be open to endless speculation, especially due to his political aspirations.

  “My family are one of California’s original blue bloods. They had a fortune even before the 1849 gold rush, and afterwards, well.” She had smiled at him, “People will say that you married me for my money and my family name.”

  He had smiled back at her, “And the Chinese-American contingent will denounce me for marrying outside of my ethnic heritage. So we are both damned.” He had winked at her, “Who cares what they think. Let them talk all they like. You and I will know the truth of it.”