Harvest

by Olga Werby

  “Chemistry,” Phoebe said at the same time as Vars. Phoebe was finally following. She and Matteo had been narrowing in on the same idea on their own—panspermia. They are us at some fundamental level, Phoebe realized.

  “Once their seeds spread and life took hold, the Mims didn’t need to rush,” Vars continued. “They could take their time. Explore at leisure. The whole galaxy was slowly making itself ready for their occupation. A galaxy-wide ecosystem tailor-made for one smart species. It’s probably like this all across the universe. Each galaxy hosting just one dominant species of intelligence.” There was a note of horror in Vars’s voice...and awe.

  “But what about us? Did these Mims plan on us?” Phoebe asked. She looked over at Matteo and wished he was well enough to jump in or at least to listen. It was all being recorded, but she wanted Matteo’s input now. Now! What Vars was saying... “Did they plan on us becoming intelligent?” she asked. “If it was really billions of years between seedings and subsequent visits, wouldn’t they expect life to evolve in their absence? We did. And once they found us, why attack? Why not make contact? We are their descendants in a very profound way. Their children...”

  It didn’t make sense. It was too much. And Phoebe was too tired. She put her head down on her knees and slept.

  Chapter Twenty

  Vars kept Phoebe’s voice playing in the background. It was just a short loop, but she didn’t care. It was nice to hear someone else’s voice for a change.

  She looked over at the coffee machine. It was completely covered with a nanobot structure now, as were most of the control panels on the bridge. Vars pondered what that meant for her ability to use the controls…or to get more coffee.

  She’d been watching as the fractal patterns slowly etched themselves into the floor of the ship, moving from the panels to the center of the bridge where she sat in the captain’s chair. They were close now. She pulled her whole body onto the chair. The Mims were coming for her. She didn’t have years. She would be consumed in just a few hours. What does one do with a life measured in hours?

  “Dad?” She just wanted to hear his voice again. Even a few words…before she became a monster...like Sophie. It was funny how a confident scientist could be reduced to feeling like a child under the right circumstances.

  The microphone was still on. Everything she said—or screamed—would be sent back home. Her dad would hear the end. It would be hard on him to hear his little girl die…

  “Dad? I love you,” she said. At least she said it before it was too late. The Mims pattern was almost to her chair. Did it speed up?

  “What do you want?” Vars screamed at the floor. “You got everyone else. Leave me be!”

  She watched the advancing pattern, trying to estimate its rate of progress. She decided she had maybe an hour left. That was enough time to relay what she knew to Phoebe and her dad. She shook off her dread. She was still human...for now. “The Mims are coming for me, Dad. Soon, I think.” She glanced at the shimmering fractal at her feet. “There are a few important things that I think we figured out. I know you and Phoebe will make good use of our ideas, build upon them.” Her voice was surprisingly calm. She was proud of that. If her dad and his Seed-sister could be heroic, so could she. She took a deep breath and began.

  “Ben—that would be Dr. Benjamin Kouta—posed an interesting idea. Evolution provides diverse ways of solving problems. Take an iterative process and a few million years, and the result might be multiple schemes of locomoting across the terrain aided by diverse sensory input systems and myriad ways of processing that data. When human technology appropriates nature’s ideas, we call it biomimetics. It’s an old concept, but it’s used extensively by EPSA, especially in the development of off-world life-support systems. Ben was an expert.”

  She paused and carefully considered what she was about to say next. When Ben had talked of this, it felt crazy to her. But now? Ian had advised her not to shut down any ideas. So perhaps Phoebe and Dad would find it useful.

  The nanobots inched closer. It was easy to give into fear, but Vars forced herself to continue talking. “Perhaps the uniqueness of our world comes from its fits and starts in evolutionary development. Earth suffered through multiple extinctions. The last one, the Triplets Event, almost wiped out humanity. But these events brought about an incredible diversity of biological solutions. We are not only born into an extremely bountiful star system, but by virtue of a few timely disasters, we are also the heirs to an extraordinary prolific source for biomimetics ideas.

  “Adversity mixed with abundance. That might be our greatest resource. We’ve enjoyed its benefits, but we rarely give it much thought. Why should we? We operate with a sample of one. One planet. Nothing to compare it to. Sure, we were going to go to the stars one day—Ben kept insisting that it was vital to human survival—but we have only just begun colonizing our own star system. We’re millennia away from starting colonies around some other star. By then, I’m sure we would have noticed our luck.

  “If we had been the first—the first civilization to reach for the stars in our galaxy—then our dominance would have been all but guaranteed. Phoebe? You should read my book, if you haven’t. I make the same point about Europeans and the New World, and Australia, and the Pacific Islands, and Africa. Earth is full of examples of the first-mover advantage. Peoples who were lucky enough to be born among nature’s riches are always in the lead. The rest have to play catch-up. But at least we are all human. We are all just one race. After the Triplets, we claimed our solar system as one people.

  “So what if the Mims saw our riches, our insane levels of biodiversity? Perhaps they came over to claim our star system for their own, and then noticed that we could be ‘mined’ in other ways? For millions of years, they could have been harvesting our innovations. But then…”

  Suddenly Vars had an insight—the timing!

  “But then the Keres Triplets hit Earth. And even though Earth is mostly covered by water, the three asteroid fragments hit land, causing maximum devastation. Like the Chicxulub event sixty-five million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs—as we think of them. Had it struck just a little earlier or later in the Earth’s rotation, it would have hit the Pacific or Atlantic. It would still have been bad, but not extinction-level bad.

  “The Triplets, and the nuclear exchange that followed, would have been a mass extinction event if we hadn’t managed to stabilize our world through technology. But did we? Did we do that? Or was that the Mims and we just took credit for it, assumed we did it all on our own? The Mims were here then; and wouldn’t they have protected their valuable resource if they could? We would have. Think, Dad. We humans would have intervened in the Mims’s place. I’m sure of it. We would have protected our investment. They must have too.

  “And then, almost a century later, you, Dad, discovered the first evidence of nanobots. Perhaps with over ninety percent of all species extinct after 2057, the Mims made a decision to take what they thought of as theirs—their carefully cultivated garden.

  “They’re just galactic gardeners, Dad. And now is harvest time.”

  Vars stopped. The pattern had reached the base of her chair. It had definitely sped up. She wondered if it would hurt.

  “You’ll be fine, Varsaad. It won’t hurt.”

  The little silver-gray cubes-within-cubes linked together with the precision of a clock. Vars could almost convince herself that she heard them click together. Won’t hurt? And yet she pulled herself into a more compact shape, trying to postpone the moment when the bot tendrils reached her.

  “It won’t hurt,” the voice said again.

  Vars’s head snapped up. That was a real voice, not just a thought in her head.

  “Phoebe?” Vars asked, but that was silly. Yet the voice sounded familiar. Was it male or female? Did it matter? “Who is this?”

  “Ebi.”

  “And Ibe.”
r />   Vars felt cold. “Where are you?” She pushed her nails deep into the flesh of her arms to keep herself from giving in to panic.

  “Here, Dr. Volhard,” Ebi said.

  “We’ve never left,” Ibe added.

  The ship was empty. Vars was sure of that. She glanced at the communications station. It was covered with Mims structures, but she could still see that it was on, that she was transmitting back to Earth…and elsewhere.

  “I thought you guys all went over to the structure,” she said.

  “You saw that our extons are still plugged in next to the airlock,” Ibe said.

  That was true. There were four exoskeletons charging next to the airlock. One was Vars’s—all extons were personalized—she knew which one it was based on its position on the charging wall. So two of the other three belonged to the twins. Whose was the last one?

  On a hunch, Vars asked, “Is Ian still on board the ship?” He was the only other person with built-in cyberhumatics left on the ship.

  “I’m here, Vars,” said Ian’s voice. Well, it was almost Ian’s voice.

  The nanobots reached her at that moment, touched her skin. She felt a slight tingling. It didn’t hurt.

  “Someone needed to stay and take care of you,” Ian said. “You were never very technically inclined.”

  “The three of you stayed just to take care of me?” Vars asked. She felt a pins-and-needles sensation on her left thigh and lower torso. She forced herself not to look.

  “We will keep the ship’s systems going,” Ebi said.

  “We will make sure your body is functioning properly,” Ian added.

  Vars worked hard to keep herself from exploding off the chair and running screaming through the corridors of the ship. “How would you do that?” she asked, forcing the words out.

  “We’ve used the technology-assisted bodies to help maintain those who are pure,” said Ian…or whatever he was now. “We used the human you call Alice—”

  “Alice!”

  “—to solve some basic problems—”

  “Is Alice alive?” Vars asked. She hadn’t even dared hope before…

  “Alice is functioning,” Ian said.

  Vars decided to take that as a yes. “Can Alice return to this ship? Please?”

  “Alice is functioning,” Ian repeated. “We’ll make sure that you are functioning too.”

  “Please continue communicating with your father,” said Ebi. “We would like to keep him functioning as well.”

  Vars tried to dig her nails even deeper into her arms to regain her composure, but found she couldn’t. Her body had begun to merge with the chair, and she had lost some of her ability to move. To her surprise, this didn’t bother her that much.

  “You haven’t been consuming nutrients,” Ian said.

  “Yes I have!” But Vars didn’t really remember the last time she’d eaten. She knew she’d drunk a lot of coffee…

  “We’re just trying to keep you healthy, Vars.” The Ian voice was soothing. Its…otherness was barely noticeable.

  Vars felt more relaxed than she had been in…weeks? And a bit fuzzy. Did they drug her? Did she care?

  “Phoebe? Dad? The Mims took over the ship,” she said and fell asleep.

  “You drugged me!” Matteo raged.

  He was obviously feeling feistier, more energetic. Phoebe was pleased with her Seed-brother’s recovery progress.

  “You needed the rest, Matteo. You have to stay strong for Vars,” she said gently. “And everything has been recorded. You can hear every word your daughter said. Over and over again, if you wish.”

  “But—”

  “You’re no good to her dead, Matteo.” She handed him a thermos with some hot soup and a bag of dried fruit. “Eat and listen.”

  Phoebe played back Vars’s ramblings, editing out the long stretches of time where the girl fell asleep or just took a break from talking. Altogether, there were only a few hours of real content before the Mims—Phoebe had adopted the terminology—apparently force-fed Vars and anesthetized her in some way. Phoebe was outraged by such violations, though she agreed that Matteo’s daughter needed some nourishment and rest.

  “Do you think…” Matteo began.

  “That Vars is a bit on the edge?”

  “Or over it,” Matteo said quietly.

  “It’s hard to be out there all alone,” Phoebe said. “But I think she’s coping very well. Her ideas are still sharp—”

  “Except she’s no longer alone.”

  “Except that. But it sounds like they have an interest in keeping Vars healthy. It sound like they’re looking to take her over the way they must have done with all the others.”

  “Perhaps not Alice.”

  “It did sound like that, didn’t it?” The other voices on the transmission—Ian and one or two others—were somewhat vague about their intent. “And it sounded like they would like to keep you healthy as well.”

  “Like a pet,” Matteo said bitterly.

  “We don’t know what they want yet.”

  “But it makes sense that the Mims are trying to protect their investment,” Matteo replied. He was sick and tired but game. That’s what Phoebe loved about him. He didn’t give up. “Wouldn’t it still be useful to make contact with us? Why take over? Cooperation is still a better option for long-term survival.”

  “The Mims’s definition of cooperation might be very different from our own. What if taking our bodies—your idea, Matteo—is how they see their relationship with humans working?”

  “That’s not cooperation.”

  “Not to you. Not to us. But to them? We can’t assign human values to beings that evolved on other worlds, over vastly different timescales. Perhaps their way of propagating their species through the galaxy is what ultimately works best? Evolution on a galactic scale? Survival of the fittest, natural selection—the basic principles would still apply, right?”

  “But if we share the same chemistry, the same roots of life—”

  “Matteo, you aren’t honestly going to extrapolate morality from chemistry, are you?”

  He looked sheepish, and Phoebe almost laughed. They were both desperate, grasping at straws. “Are you going back into the Vault?” he asked.

  “Yes.” No hesitation.

  “I’ll send you everything I learn.”

  “I know.”

  “When will you go?”

  “I would like to tell the Elders that we’ve established communications with the Mims,” Phoebe said. That was the trade she had in mind. I give you contact with the Mims, you let me return to my old life.

  Matteo was silent, but tears appeared in his eyes. For the loss of his daughter? For her? For humanity?

  Vars woke up slowly. There was music playing, some classical piece she couldn’t name but which sounded vaguely familiar. A woman’s voice was carrying the melody. In addition to the main view port, the screens in front of her were showing the sharply lit surface of Mimas and Saturn’s rings edge-on; the gas giant was forever setting behind the crater’s rim, creating long, hard shadows on the surface of its small moon. Beautiful.

  Vars watched Saturn’s storms rage, waiting for her body and consciousness to fully return to the sound of the human voice. That was a smart choice...it kept Vars from losing all control over her little human mind.

  It was a while before she noticed that all the internal views of the ship had been taken off the screens. She could only see the outside, the universe gently turning, with no hint that there was more than the bridge of this ship and Vars in all of eternity. Her personal world had shrunk to just this small room. Just this chair, really.

  She looked down at the places on her body where she remembered feeling the touch of Mims. Everything was clear, as far as she could see, except for a small patch of cyberhumatics on the left side of
her torso and what appeared to be a feeding tube. Life support, Vars guessed. She considered ripping it out. But they would just place another one—she was sure of that.

  She looked around the bridge. Every surface was rewired with nanobots. And there was a movement to it all, a seething, a roaming of the surfaces in seemingly random patterns but together, as a coherent group. A murmuration of nanobots.

  The “coffee machine” was a very different contraption now. A small screen had appeared while she slept, with a lazy line moving up and down: thump thump, thump thump, thump thump. Her heartbeat. The display was clearly meant for her—the Mims wouldn’t need visual vitals indicators. This was their way of building trust, Vars realized. But after taking Ben, and Trish, and Alice, and everyone else, how could there be trust?

  “What do you want from me?” she asked the room.

  “Good morning, Vars,” said Ian’s voice.

  Vars wished the Mims wouldn’t use her friends to try to manipulate her. Just tell me what you want, she thought. The heart monitor display showed a spike in her heart rate—and almost immediately, she tasted metal and felt a chemically induced calm wash over her again.

  “Don’t do that,” Vars warned them, but she couldn’t make herself get angry. She was medically stilled; she couldn’t reach for the rage she wished intellectually. “Or I’ll rip the goddamned thing right out of my body,” she threatened in an unnaturally calm voice. At least she could say the angry words, if not feel them. “And I’ll rip it as many times as you reinstall it until there’s nothing left of me to heal,” she added.

  “We’re worried about your health, Vars,” Ian said. Or Ian-Mims. Vars couldn’t allow herself to think of the voice as Ian. That was dangerous. That was how they might break down her will.

  “I guess I should be grateful for your concern,” she said. The drug they’d given her was making her emotionally dead, an almost out-of-body sensation.