After Earth

by Peter David

  Kitai had put the lifesuit on as he’d been instructed and also had donned an oxygen mask handed to him by a Ranger passing by. But none of that made any difference. It was obvious that the ship was badly injured and spiraling downward toward … what?

  He twisted in his chair to get a glimpse out the observation port and perhaps see what they were heading for, but things were moving too quickly. He saw pieces of debris flying off the ship, bounding away into the unlit darkness, and felt a new swell of terror. As near as he could determine, they were heading toward nothing. They were just a spiraling cloud of debris with only complete destruction awaiting them.

  Kitai saw that Rangers were endeavoring to reinforce the bulkhead area, whose warning lights were flashing above them. They passed the equipment back and forth effectively and moved with great precision.

  I’m not doing any good sitting here. Chances are, I won’t do any good on my feet, either. But at least I’ll feel as if I’m contributing.

  He began to unbuckle the straps that restrained him, and that was when he saw Cypher heading toward him, lurching violently from side to side as he went. Cypher paused only to take a mask a Ranger shoved at him so that he could be as safe as Kitai was. Kitai, however, already had unbuckled his strap and was halfway out of his seat.

  Cypher didn’t hesitate; he slammed Kitai back down into the seat. Kitai let out a startled grunt into his oxygen mask but quickly recovered himself. His father was back. That was all that mattered.

  Suddenly there was a noise that sounded like a thousand bones breaking at once. The sound was so catastrophic that it drowned out all other noises. What is that? Kitai wondered.

  Cypher froze for a long moment, looking around to try to see whence the noise had originated. Then he shook it off and refocused his attention on Kitai. He helped Kitai relock his belt and harness and pull them in tightly. Once he was satisfied that Kitai wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon, Cypher placed his own oxygen mask on his face.

  Then Cypher and Kitai’s eyes locked, and Cypher very slowly, very carefully, worked on restoring his son to a clear frame of mind. His face only inches away from Kitai, Cypher began breathing very steadily and very slowly. To try to get Kitai’s breathing even, he raised and then lowered his hand with simple, quiet steadiness. Kitai copied him in the breathing manner, and felt the exercise was starting to calm him. Another five or ten seconds and Kitai was positive that everything was going to be just fine.

  Everything seemed to happen all at once.

  One moment Cypher was right there in front of Kitai, urging him to breathe steadily, and the next moment he was gone. Just gone. Cypher was lifted up off his feet and propelled down the hallway and slammed into the far corner of the main cabin like a rag doll.

  Kitai, his mouth covered by his mask, screamed as the winds howled around Cypher, banging him around mercilessly against the end of the corridor. Kitai realized for a moment, to his shock, that his father was actually holding on to something embedded in a wall, some extended rod, as the wind smashed against him. Then, a second later, it tore Cypher away from his grip and sent him hurtling out of Kitai’s sight.

  Kitai was tempted to unbuckle and go after him, but he realized that he would be a goner if he did. Despite the fact that it went against his instinct, Kitai stayed right where he was, continuing to scream for his father even as the ship shuddered from one end to the other.

  He heard something tearing away and realized that the ship had snapped in half. In half. The entire cargo section had broken off and fallen away from the vessel.

  Kitai considered what that meant. My God, they’re dead.

  He wanted his father back so that he could tell him and then realized Cypher Raige was probably dead as well. The way the wind had smashed him against the corridor, there seemed little to no chance that he possibly could have survived. At this moment Cypher Raige was a pounded mess of flesh, and Kitai probably was not going to last when they hit the ground, and poor Faia, his mother, was back on Nova Prime doing her job or perhaps relaxing at home or even sleeping, thinking that she was going to have her son and husband back within a few days.

  But she wouldn’t.

  Kitai fought to remain conscious, but he was losing the ability to do so. The G-force rippling across his face proved to be too much. His eyes rolled slowly back and shut. One moment he was there, and the next darkness reached out for him. He hesitated only for an instant and then embraced the darkness, welcoming its hold on him. I’m coming, Dad; I’m coming. Those were his last conscious thoughts, and then he slumped into nothingness.

  He never heard the ship crash.

  2072 AD

  Antarctica, Earth

  Lily Carmichael is grasping her mother’s hand, hoping not to get lost. Lily, fifteen, thinks herself about seven years too old to be holding her mother’s hand, but there are literally hundreds of people ahead of them, all trying to move in an orderly fashion from the staging area to the actual platform that would grant them access to the Espérer, the rocket that promised them salvation.

  “Where’s your father?” her mother, Rebecca, asked, her voice filled with rising concern.

  “I’m right here, Bec,” her husband, Paul, yelled. He was always overly polite and as a result, there were now six people separating him from his wife and daughter. Lily knew this was all too typical of her dad, but she loved him for it.

  “Catch up,” Rebecca demanded, and he tried to thread his way through the moving mass. There were people jostling back and forth, raising the air of tension, mixing with the cool temperature.

  Lily examined the dull silver bracelet around her thin wrist. Somehow it contained her entire life. Her name, height, weight, medical history, school transcripts, and other arcane data that would ensure her life would resume once the transport ship departed Earth. Every one of the teeming masses around her wore an identical bracelet, biometrically encoded for each passenger. The massive ship stood like a silent sentinel in its gantry. Liftoff was six hours away and not a moment too soon if you asked her.

  “Finally made it,” a voice said behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, and Lily saw an old woman, wrapped in what seemed to be three layers of outerwear, shuffling behind her. The arctic air was cool, but not so chilly that she needed so many clothes. Once aboard the ship, of course, such outerwear would be superfluous and stored away for their descendants.

  “Made what?” the man next to her asked. He was brown-skinned and clearly a stranger to the woman, but he was making conversation, which was better than most of the people crushing them. There was a feeling of resignation and sadness that hung like a thick fog over the people. Lily, though, was more excited about the prospects ahead of her; that is, when she wasn’t weepy about leaving others behind.

  “Seven continents!” the woman declared and let out a laugh. “As soon as I received my notification that I made the cut, I booked a series of trips. I wanted to visit every continent while I still had the chance. Got here last night, making this the seventh.”

  “Impressive,” the man replied in a deep voice that Lily liked. “Of course, that didn’t leave much time for sightseeing.” He sounded like an actor or pod commentator.

  “What about you? How many you see?”

  “Well,” he said to fill the gap as he thought. “Born in Africa, studied in Europe, and took a vacation to Brazil, so that’s three.”

  “And this makes four, not too bad,” she said. “Corinne Levy.”

  “Glen Mosri,” he replied.

  The two chatted amiably as the line slowly fed them toward the ship. Their conversation was interrupted as Lily’s father tried to squeeze by them. “Sorry. Excuse me. Trying to reach my family.”

  “Slow down, son,” Mosri said. “They’re not leaving without you.”

  “Sorry, there’s some sort of problem behind us,” the man said, still scanning the masses ahead of him.

  “Right here, Dad,” Lily said reassuringly.

  “Oh
, she’s a pretty one,” Corinne said, helping herself to a hunk of Lily’s pale blond hair. She stroked it in a friendly way, and Lily let her even though it sort of creeped her out. She’d been feeling this way for the last few weeks; suddenly every little thing bothered her as they prepared to leave their home and come to Antarctica for The Departure.

  Her family got word three years ago they were among the precious few selected to leave Earth aboard the ark program. A transport ship would carry them to a docking station just outside of Earth’s atmosphere. There countless ships from every continent would form the six massive arks scheduled to leave the solar system behind and fly for a century to a new world. A new chance for humanity. Lily would be long dead before the ship arrived at the world they named Nova Prime. But her children or grandchildren would be alive and set foot on an alien world they would call home. The remainder of her life would be spent living on the Denkyem, whatever that meant. Her mother kept giving her the translation, but it never stuck in her head.

  Paul finally caught up to them, craning his neck to see past Rebecca to ensure their two boys, Max and Zach, were in sight. He made a satisfied sound and fell into step beside his daughter.

  “Caught you,” he said.

  “You would have found us eventually,” Lily said.

  “I know, but I want us together until we’re settled. This is chaos.”

  “Actually,” interrupted Mosri, “it seems as orderly as you can expect. No protestors, no panic, not much weeping and wailing.”

  Paul looked around once more, absorbing the sight of hundreds of men, women, and children, representing countless cultures and countries, all united for a chance at survival. Lily also took it all in, a sense of awe slowly replacing the discomfort she’d felt moments before.

  “That’s thanks to the Rangers, I think,” Paul said. “They’re everywhere. Good thing, too, there are others desperately trying to cut the line.”

  Lily saw the brown-uniformed men and women of the United Ranger Corps nearby. They stood at the edges of the gangway, spread out every few yards. The arrival of the Rangers more than a decade earlier meant a unified police force to ensure the ships got built and the selected passengers made it safely to the remote continent and aboard the transport ships.

  “What got you the golden ticket?” Mosri asked.

  “The what?” Lily asked

  “Sorry, the invitation to join the exodus.”

  “Oh,” Paul said, still sounding uncertain. “I’m a network engineer and my wife’s a teacher.”

  “Secure roles, needed roles,” Levy said. “I’m a botanist. They tell me I am running a hydroponics bay, and I can plant a whole square yard of whatever I please.”

  “Wow, that sounds great,” Lily said, finally ready to join the conversation. “What about you?”

  Mosri smiled and said, “I am a physicist. They want me working in the astrometrics section, studying this wormhole space.”

  “Maybe you can explain it to me, then,” Lily prodded. “I know we’re going faster than light, but how does that work?”

  “Magic,” Levy said, and laughed a little too loud for Lily’s taste.

  “Feels like magic, doesn’t it,” Mosri said, his voice dropping a notch, sounding like one of her teachers. “The Lightstream engines will warp the space around us. You see, the engines will generate a powerful wave that can compress space-time in front of the arks and expand space-time behind it.”

  “Space-time?”

  Mosri laughed and paused to consider his answer. Lily shifted the backpack on her right shoulder, trying to find a more comfortable position for the weight. It felt far heavier than it was; her hopes, fears, and memories were packed in there, all weighing her down.

  “Okay, you know about the three dimensions.”

  “Length, width, and depth,” she said.

  “Right. Now imagine space having three dimensions.” He paused and Lily nodded, tucking a stray hair behind her left ear.

  “Now scientists like me consider time having three dimensions as well. While space has dimensions that work side by side, time’s dimensions happen one atop the other so space-time combines the two into a singular formula we use to calculate all sorts of things.”

  “You lost her,” Paul said. “She’s an artist.” Lily made a face at her father.

  “I bet she’s going to see all sorts of new inspiration when we leave the system,” Mosri said.

  “So you’re compressing the space in front of us,” Lily said, trying to keep it all straight and refusing to let her father know how right he was. This was just more information than she was really ready to absorb, but it beat standing silent like so many of the others around them.

  “Look, it’s like the prow of a boat slicing through the water and creating a wake,” he said. “Can you visualize that?”

  “Sure,” Lily replied. That was easy, especially since she loved going out on the family boat every summer. She was going to miss that—the warm sun, the gentle breeze, the sea water, things she would never experience again—so she tried to press the memories like flowers in a book for permanence.

  “The arks will actually be floating in a bubble along the wave being generated, literally surfing through space at a speed faster than light relative to objects outside the bubble,” Mosri concluded.

  “Wow,” Paul said. “That’s the first time I heard anyone explain Lightstream in a way that makes sense.”

  “You’re welcome, all part of the service,” Mosri said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Lily said. The boat imagery really did help her sort of comprehend how they would travel in space. The idea that the trip would last a century, even at those speeds, boggled her mind.

  “Mister …”

  “Call me Glen,” he said with a broad smile.

  “I’m Lily,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you.” They briefly shook hands.

  “If we’re traveling faster than the speed of light, and the arks will travel for a century, where exactly are we going?”

  “Interesting question,” he said. “We’re living along the fringes of the Milky Way Galaxy, on one of the spiral arms. We’re heading inward, toward the galactic center. I’d estimate we’d be about thirty-two parsecs from here when we get to Nova Prime.”

  A parsec, she recalled, was a measure for the speed of light, how far it would travel over one hundred years, and it still sounded like an impossible distance.

  Lily then realized she was being spoken to, but her mind had wandered and she looked around wide-eyed to see who had addressed her.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” she said to Levy.

  “So polite,” the older woman said, winking at Paul. “Nice job.”

  “What were you asking me?”

  “I asked about leaving home. Where were you?”

  “Connecticut,” she said.

  “Was it hard?”

  Was it hard having a chance to live when she knew everyone she left behind—grandmother, cousins, friends, teacher, priest, and so many others—were being left to die a horrible death? Was it hard knowing that her parents received death threats from the jealous neighbors when their carefully guarded secret was leaked?

  Damned right it was hard.

  It felt impossible. Their carefully weighed and measured belongings had to be shipped ahead, and they were expected in Antarctica within forty-eight hours of departure. In between there were hours spent filling out additional details on the Web, physicals at the military base up in Groton, and determining what they would take. Her dad drove everyone nuts trying to scan and digitize everything they owned—diplomas, schoolwork, family records, whatever. Her mom was a pack rat and had generations of family memorabilia and old print photos that she swore she would one day scan and organize. Now it was being done hastily and she, along with her brothers, were pressed into service.

  Max’s pal Lou was unable to keep the terrible secret and when word got out it was hard. There were tears. Lots of tears. Everyone w
as cozying up to her at home and at school. She got stares, and the family had to turn down requests for interviews. Everything about The Departure was being handled through Project Next Generation, and it was a hassle to gain permission to speak to the press so they routinely said no, ending the discussion.

  Her friends, the boys and girls she grew up with, were upset. Why did she get to live and they to die? Some insisted on spending lots of time together, and boys begged her for sex, hoping she’d get pregnant and thinking they would have to let the new father come along. That was tough. She was just thirteen when they got word, and her changing body was just one more nuisance to deal with. Instead, Lily shut down, limiting her time with friends and keeping to the ones she knew and trusted the most.

  The extended family wanted their share of the Carmichaels, too. A last chance to tell stories and give them their own mementos for scanning and preservation. Lily could just imagine how many terabytes of material were being collected from families around the world. In her global studies class, she knew there were still parts of Asia and Africa that lacked the technology for such preservation. How much was being lost?

  “Yeah,” she said, summing it all up in one word.

  “I left behind an ex-husband, two adult children, and my dachshund. So, Lily, you’re far from alone.”

  Lily looked at her with fresh eyes.

  “Your own children?”

  The woman nodded, her eyes starting to tear up. “One’s a museum curator, the other’s a hairdresser. Not exactly high demand jobs on a spaceship. We’re the lucky ones.”

  Lily was tired of that phrase. She had been dubbed a “lucky one” ever since Lou spilled the secret, but despite being named a traveler, she didn’t feel lucky. Instead, she felt incredibly sad. She was leaving behind friends and the future she had dreamed about. There was comfort in all five members of the family traveling together; it was incredibly difficult to say good-bye to so many and so often. There were endless parties, sleepovers, chat sessions, and more as the months became weeks then days. Her mom insisted the final week be as family-centric as possible, with just Nana, Paul’s mother, visiting. This way they could hope to just slip away.