by David Wind
Ten of the chamber’s twenty stasis units showed failure. The floor of the chamber held ten bodies in varying stages of decomposition. Bile flooded his mouth. He propelled out of the chair and headed to the chamber. When he stepped inside, the odor of death and decay hit him like a punch.
Roth returned to the bridge. Darkness bored deeply inward, centering within his soul. He forced himself to return to protocol by reviewing each chamber. When he was done, he had found thirty more stasis unit failures.
Forty people had died in the past four hundred years, which meant, since their journey started twenty-four hundred years ago, half the travelers were dead.
He reprogrammed the crew’s stasis reawakening duty schedule to adjust for the losses. Then, staring at the mission calendar, he wondered if he or anyone else would survive the next millennium.
Chapter 2
5248 AD
Roth stared at the planet centered on the control room’s main screen. I didn’t sign on for this, he thought. How long has it been? It was a pointless question because he knew exactly how long: two years, eight months and twelve days of consciousness since he had boarded the shuttle at Earthport; two plus years of life rationed out over three thousand years of stasis.
The ship had voyaged through the universe for three thousand one hundred and seventeen years, following a huge elliptical orbit. This was Roth’s ninth awakening or his service rotations. With each revival, there had been less and less travelers. He had spent as much time as possible, trying to find out what had killed them but had been unable to come up with an answer before he’d had to go back into stasis.
The last awakening had begun routinely but ended with the knowledge he would never return to stasis. He was the last person alive—all others had died either by a malfunction of equipment or by the same mysterious issue that had caused the other deaths, an issue he had finally solved. A dormant mutated virus, brought aboard by one of the colonists, had entered the ship’s air circulation units when the colonist’s stasis pod malfunctioned. When the virus entered the ship’s atmosphere, it went live. Of the two hundred people on the ship, over three quarters had died from the virus. Roth alone had proved immune. The forty-three who had not perished because of the virus died due to various equipment failures. Those who had started the war of annihilation had finally succeeded in destroying their enemy and themselves by destroying every inhabitant on earth.
For the first five months after the last awakening, he had been insane—a skeletal lunatic of a person who cried and screamed and ranted against everything. Then, one lonely day, the ship's alarms had gone off.
What Roth had seen in the ship’s monitors should have been the last straw of whatever shreds of sanity remained; but instead, what lay before him had returned him to sanity.
Two hundred thousand miles ahead, floated planet Earth.
After an unimaginable amount of time, his mind had worked through the insanity and his training had risen to the surface. He’d taken control of the ship from the computers, which had kept the ship in its elliptical orbit within the solar system for the last three thousand years, guiding it toward home. He had done this in spite of his wondering if there was any point to having remained alive.
The original mission had been the recreation of the human race; and, sadly, Roth knew he could not be the newest version of Adam, for there was no Eve—the women were long dead—unless you counted the embryos in stasis, though Roth doubted they had survived.
He’d gathered what little strength he could manage and put the ship into high orbit nineteen hours after the first warning had sounded. Once the orbit was established, Roth had sent out a dozen automated spy-bot probes. The almost invisible probes had spent twenty-six hours covering the entire planet, axis by axis. When the spy bots returned, Roth spent weeks watching every second of the videos they had recorded. Against every eventuality, the scientists had been able to theorize, he’d learned that the radiation unleashed by the nuclear holocaust had not destroyed the earth. In fact, the bacteria the scientists had released at the time of his voyage, had not just succeeded but surpassed all imagination.
What remained of America held life such as he had never before seen. Yet, the people inhabiting it were seemingly backwards— appearing more like the people who had lived just after Earth’s medieval period. They wore armor of leather and metal, fought with sword and knife and bow. They lived in castle-like keeps with towns spreading out about each keep. Science appeared forgotten, technology non-existent—a happenstance Roth believed to be for the best, seeing how science had murdered the planet.
He’d spent weeks reviewing the visual records. He’d laughed until he could no longer catch his breath and then cried for the billions who had died three thousand years before. Perhaps, he hoped, the people who had survived would do better.
Then Captain Solomon Roth, the last survivor of his race, and of all the races of the peoples of the planet from when he came, had done the wisest thing possible. He’d sat back, closed his eyes, and instead of rushing down to the planet’s surface, he had waited, studied and learned.
Roth spent the next seven months watching the world below. Sending out daily probes until he’d gotten every inch of the planet charted, he had learned the language and the customs of the people inhabiting what was left of the North American continent. What he’d seen in the remnants of Europe, Asia and Eastern Europe had terrified him. That part of the world held the desolate ruins of nuclear war and populated by horribly misshapen beings—mindless masses ruled by hidden beings that did not appear in any of the probe recordings. These beings, this darkly threatening force, he’d become certain, were the remnants of the Unified Circle of Afzal—the very ones who had destroyed the world of his time.
South America was barren of life, both human and animal, and separated from North America by a swirling ocean of what had once been the lands of Central America and Mexico. The giant rainforests of the equator were gone. Canada and Alaska were ice-infested frozen mountain ranges surrounded by oceans of ice and tar fields.
While North America’s land mass had changed, it appeared to be the only surviving land mass of the Americas. The nuclear attacks that had destroyed so much of the world had not destroyed North America. The reports he’d viewed from the bots had shown only a few small hits and two massive strikes. One strike was on the finger-like island of Manhattan. It was still there, but only the rubble of the once mighty center of American and world commerce remained. Where Central Park had been, there was now a giant fused crater. The damage from the explosion had radiated outward in a huge circle of destruction that left nothing standing.
A strange orange-red haze floated over Manhattan, like a dome of quarantine set upon the island. Roth was certain Boston had been the second strike, as there was no trace of it left. He could only imagine what had happened where the west coast and the western states had been. The once great land of North America had lost a full forty percent of its mass.
From then on, he’d spent the rest of his time studying North America. Although the land mass itself had changed, everyone spoke the same language. There were dialects, true, but only slight differences between the ten dominions that made up this new world.
He’d learned about their sciences, which seemed to be more spiritual than physical—metaphysical. His belief was born from his study of the women who he’d realized were the scientists or… sorcerers. He was more inclined to thoughts of mysticism caused by what he had seen on the probes’ recordings, for the women were able to do things that he could only describe as paranormal.
Roth studied their ecology and understood, while the animals and the foods growing were not the same as in his time, the principles of evolution controlling the world were the same. One of the wonders of the mutations produced by the radiation was a strain of moss that glowed in darkness and was used everywhere to illuminate the interiors of their living structures.
However, the changes in the animals had captivated him the m
ost: the people had tamed what he assumed were the mutated descendants of horses—large four-legged animals called kraals. Kraals were perhaps twenty percent larger than horses, with thick strong legs and triangular heads, which looked like a cross between a horse’s and viper’s head, only a hundred times larger. They were fast, much faster than the horses of his time, and carried their riders with ease. There were gorlons, which reminded him of large dogs, somewhere between a Mastiff and a Great Dane, but fiercer. Like dogs, they were everywhere people were. There were also small dog-like creatures called coors.
Roth saw parallels in every form of life; large cat-like animals called rantors hunted the mountains and the forests with the king-like majesty of cougars and lions while snakes—which the people called snucks—as well as fish and birds of all varieties flourished. Elephantine-like beasts roamed the hotter areas of the planet. However, the birds caught his imagination as much as the horse-like kraals. They called the largest of the birds treygones. They were larger than the size of an earthly eagle, but anyone with any sort of imagination would have drawn the parallel to miniature dragons. The shape of their heads was oval and triangular at the same time; the folds of their wings, their long bodies and elongated tails were similar to what earthly artists had envisioned as dragons, for thousands of years.
Because the probes were nearly invisible and could receive audio from within a quarter mile of wherever they flew or hovered, he’d been able to get a full-working study of the evolved version of English. Within weeks, he had used the computers to gain full understanding of both its meaning and syntax.
The people fascinated him too. The lines between races had disappeared; the people were an ethnic mixture of multiple races, yet they were not bi-racial. The people of this new earth were a homogeneous race—their features a mixture of every race he had known three thousand years before. The color of their skin had nothing to do with the color or shape of their eyes or the color or elasticity of their hair. He learned too, from the recordings, that while each had distinct roles, men and women had evolved into what he could only term as complete equals. In most instances, men were stronger, physically, yet there was no division between the sexes when it came to anything, be it soldiering, working or ruling.
The only division seemed to be in the metaphysical abilities of the women. No matter how many recordings he had watched, he had not found a single instance of a man showing any paranormal ability.
After studying all the probe reports, Captain Solomon J. Roth set a full routine for himself. Exercise in the morning after breakfast, language studies mid-morning, sword practice after lunch followed by the study of the people, their society and its political hierarchy.
What appeared medieval was far from such. A king ruled his dominion with the aid of his queen in a partnership of equals. Both had their strengths and each needed the other’s to rule properly. The people in a domain had the freedom to stay or move to another one, should they feel the need to change fealty. Loyalty was given, not taken by strength. The rulers knew this and largely treated their people with respect.
Yet, from what he learned, there was continual discord between the ten dominions, and they fought in many skirmishes. But try as he could, the information from his probes was not adequate for him to understand why these dominions fought each other so fiercely, as nothing changed within their individual borders at the end of a battle. The importance of this was something he knew he must discover if he were to become a part of this earth.
When he reached the stage of readiness he needed, he put together what he believed would be everything necessary to begin a new life on the planet below. He took no weapons other than those he created in the machine shop: two swords that were made of Trilimion, a metal found on the surface of Saturn’s moon, Titan. It was the hardest and strongest metal humankind had ever discovered, with ten times the strength of titanium and used primarily for satellites and the hull of the star cruiser on which he had spent the last three millenniums.
He made two knives of the same metal and used the ship’s computers to replicate the armor worn by the planet’s inhabitants—primarily armor for the upper torso, biceps and thighs. This too was made of Trilimion. He built a second set of armor as well, for Roth believed in back-ups. He took a week to walk through the ship, deciding on what would be best to bring with him. In the end, he realized he could bring only a little of what the world had once been.
Technology would not only be unnecessary, it would be foolish, as the inhabitants had not yet found any need for technology. He had spent many hours debating over this and had come to the only possible conclusion: what happened three thousand years before had caused a genetic memory so deep it had prevented the growth of technology as a means of preservation of the species.
Should he bring the books from his dead version of the world? Then he wondered what possible purpose it could serve if he were to teach these people his Earth’s history. He could think of no benefit, no reason why anyone would want to learn about a world which had destroyed itself because its people needed to control every aspect of their planet, while doing their best to use up every last natural resource of their world.
In the end, Roth decided to bring those things he would need to stay alive until he adapted to his new home and to take a few select pieces of technology and history, which might eventually prove to be important.
With that in mind, Roth gathered his supplies. He loaded the food, water, clothing and the weapons he’d made, along with thirty pounds of raw Trilimion. After a long and final consult with the ship’s computer, he put together the medications the computer assured him would allow his survival and acclimation to his new home. For the past three months he had been inoculating himself, using the medical computer designed for that purpose three thousand years earlier, in preparation for the people of the ship to populate a new world, which he thought was the joke to end all jokes—the new world was the old world.
When the lifeboat was loaded, he returned to the ship’s control room and reprogrammed the ship’s main computer. Two hours later, he stepped into the lifeboat, his appearance an almost perfect replica of the planet’s inhabitants.
He piloted the lifeboat out of the ship and, when he was clear, sent a signal to the ship’s main computer. A bright glare had followed his signal as the starship engine kicked on. Roth continued down to the planet’s surface, while high above him the huge ship sped into a new orbit where it would wait a signal to begin another voyage through the solar system—a ghost ship from a ghost planet. Then Solomon Roth turned the shuttle and headed home.
Chapter 3
The ground was dry and cracked, the air hot, but when Solomon Roth drew a breath of Earth air into his lungs for the first time in three thousand years, he tasted sweetness instead of recycled ship atmosphere. In that moment, he understood how his decision to come home had been the right one.
He looked around. The desolation was complete.
In what had once been the borders of Texas and New Mexico, there was now nothing more than hills and valleys of crushed gravel, sand and dust. The geological changes staggered him, and wisely, Roth did not dwell on them. Instead, he walked to the closest of the hilly outcroppings and found what the drones had already discovered: a cave formed by earthquakes so fierce they had turned this once magnificent cattle country into a desert the likes of which made Death Valley of his day look inviting.
Roth knew there was no fresh water within a hundred miles. The salt water of the Pacific Ocean was two hundred and fifty miles west of his location, and fourteen hundred miles closer east than it had been in the time from when he had come. Nevertheless, there was water east of his location.
He spent the next four hours setting up the cave. He carried five poly-steel crates into the interior. Among the crates where three computers: each powered by a nuclear battery designed to endure for centuries. In the computers’ solid-state memory banks rested the history of the Earth from man’s earliest writings until t
he twenty-second century. In addition to the historical files, the computers contained the entire digitized catalog of the Library of Congress; a wealth of information from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Stanford Universities; and the digitized artwork from every major museum in the world as well as the logs of the starship Mayflower.
Roth did not intend for anyone to find or use the computers—considering no one alive today knew what a computer was—he just believed they belonged here rather than on the starship. Making sure the crates were as far back from the entrance as necessary, he stepped into the mouth of the cave, placed three explosive charges in the predetermined positions and returned to the shuttle.
Unloaded and next to the shuttle was the armor, swords and the knives he’d made onboard; an all-terrain vehicle, which was one of the many aboard the ship designed for exploration, stood waiting. He put on the upper body armor and helmet, strapped on his sword and stored the rest into the two compartments of the four-wheeled vehicle.
He went into the shuttle and, sitting before the controls, programmed the shuttle to return pilotless to the starship. He set the timer for three minutes, looked around once and left. Outside, he mounted the all-terrain vehicle and drove a hundred yards away.
The shuttle’s engine kicked on and, in a dust storm of swirling gravel and sand, lifted straight up. It hovered for a few seconds and then shot upward, angling toward the heavens.
Watching, Roth’s throat constricted. He turned to the cave, lifted the remote detonator and pressed the switch. The cave opening disappeared in a cloud of dust. Two minutes later, he stood in front of the blocked opening. Five feet of rock had completely sealed the cave.
He placed a map of the entire western area on top of his spare set of armor. The map would lead him back here, if necessary.
