The End of All Things: The First Instalment

by John Scalzi

  I imagine it looks a little different now, I thought to him. A bit emptier.

  Ocampo visibly winced at this; I could see it happen through one of the bridge cameras. Vera Briggs was silent and staring, in a horrified fashion, at the box containing my brain. The Rraey, for their part, were unreadable to me. That’s the thing about aliens, I suppose.

  Thank you for coming to see me, I thought, to both Ocampo and Briggs. I really appreciate it.

  “You’re welcome,” Ocampo said. “To be honest it’s nice to be off that rock—”

  One of the Rraey made a throat-clearing sound here, suggesting some nonverbal cues were universal; that is, if you have a throat.

  “—it’s nice to have a change of scenery, I should say.” Ocampo fairly glared at the Rraey.

  I don’t want to take up too much of your time, I thought. I know the two of you are busy. Also, Control told me that I had ten minutes with you.

  “Right,” Ocampo said. “And in fact we should probably start on our way back. They were annoyed with us enough when I insisted we say good-bye.”

  I understand, I replied. And I think I need to get started anyway.

  From outside the bridge came a loud clanging noise, followed by what sounded like voices. It might have been the Chandler’s intercom speakers acting up. Or it could have been something else.

  Both Ocampo and Briggs jumped. The two Rraey said something to each other in their own language and hoisted their weapons. One of them held a hand out to Ocampo and Briggs, signaling that they were to stay on the bridge. The Rraey then exited the bridge to investigate.

  The automatic, reinforced door to the bridge slammed shut, sealing Ocampo and Briggs in and the Rraey out.

  “What the hell?” Ocampo asked.

  There was a low thrumming sound as the Chandler’s engines ramped up from their resting phase to propulsion phase.

  “What are you doing?” Ocampo asked me.

  I’m not doing anything, I replied. I don’t have control over the ship yet.

  There was a banging on the bridge door. The Rraey were trying to get back in.

  “Open the door,” Ocampo said to me.

  I don’t have control of the door.

  “Who does?”

  Whoever it is that has been running my simulations. I don’t know who they are. They just told me to call them Control.

  Ocampo swore and pulled out his PDA. Then he swore again when he couldn’t open up a line back to base. When the PDA got to the Chandler, it automatically connected to the ship’s network. The Chandler’s network gave every appearance of being down.

  Ocampo looked around at the bridge stations. “Which of these is for communications?”

  None of them are right now, I thought at him. The bridge stations are cut out of the command loop. Everything gets routed through a simulated bridge which I’m supposed to control.

  “So you are in control of this ship!”

  No, I said “supposed to,” I pointed out. I’m not in control of the ship yet. I only get control once the ship has skipped. It’s Control who is behind this.

  “Then talk to Control!” Ocampo yelled.

  I can’t. I’ve never been given the ability to contact them. I have to wait for them to contact me.

  And lo and behold, guess who suddenly came onto the line.

  “The Chandler is moving,” Control said. “Explain how.”

  I don’t know, I thought. You’re the one in control of this ship. You tell me.

  “I’m not in control of the ship.”

  Well, someone is.

  “It has to be you.”

  How can that be? I exclaimed. Check it yourself! I’m not doing a damn thing in the simulation!

  There was a brief pause here as Control ascertained that, indeed, inside the simulation I was doing nothing. While this was happening the banging at the bridge door became more insistent and it sounded like fists were being replaced by weapon butts.

  Then Control’s voice came over the bridge speakers. “Secretary Ocampo,” it said.

  “Yes?”

  “You are controlling the Chandler in some way.”

  “The hell I am,” Ocampo said.

  “You’ve sequestered yourself in the bridge,” Control said.

  “We’re locked in here, you asshole,” Ocampo said. “And I can’t help but notice that my Rraey escort is on the other side of the door. What are you up to?”

  “Please cease your actions.”

  “I am not doing a goddamned thing!” Ocampo yelled. He motioned to the bridge stations. “These fucking things don’t work! It’s you who is doing this!”

  There was a pause; Ocampo looked confused. It took him maybe a second or two longer to realize that the hammering on the door had stopped while he was yelling at Control.

  “You have purged all the air everywhere but the bridge,” Control said, after a minute. “You have just killed two Rraey.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ocampo said, clearly exasperated. “It’s not me! I’m not in control of this ship! You are! You are the one who is doing this! You’re the murderer, not me! Why are you doing this?”

  “Enough,” Control said. By this time I could see on my simulated sensors that the Chandler had completed its disembarkation process and was beginning to accelerate away from Equilibrium base. This would be the point where Control would have no choice but to cut its losses and try to either disable or destroy the Chandler. I was curious to find out what would happen next.

  What happened next was that a ping hit my personal set of sensors. It was a signal that was meant for the bomb, nestled next to my brain in my box.

  It was supposed to detonate the bomb, killing me.

  What it did instead was launch a dozen missiles from the Chandler.

  Let’s just say I had a philosophical disagreement with the whole “blow up my brain” strategy. And this was my editorial comment on that plan.

  I think I actually heard a squawk of surprise from Control as those dozen missiles popped up on its sensors.

  There were three ships aside from the Chandler docked at Equilibrium station, one a refurbished Colonial Union frigate like the Chandler, one that looked like a purpose-built trade ship to me, and one of a design I didn’t recognize, so probably an alien ship. I imagined that all three of them were like the Chandler, currently being repurposed for whatever asshole plan Equilibrium had up its sleeve for each of them.

  I tasked a missile to each ship.

  If those ships had crews on station, it’s possible that they could have stopped the missiles. But if all they had were brains in boxes, not given control of their own ships, then they were sitting ducks.

  Each of those missiles hit home, crippling but not entirely destroying the ships.

  Intentional on my part. If there were other brains in boxes in those ships, they didn’t deserve to die at my hand.

  They didn’t deserve any of the horror that happened to them.

  Six missiles aimed for Equilibrium base’s weapon arrays, because I didn’t want them to have a chance to mess up my getaway with a well-placed missile, or two, or ten.

  One missile homed in on the Equilibrium base energy generator, because I figured if they were worried about things getting dark and cold, they would have less time to worry about little old me, or the Chandler.

  One missile went to the base communication array, to make it more difficult to get the word out. They’d undoubtedly try to launch some skip drones, but I’d already configured my beam weapons to burn those out before they got anywhere close to skip distance. Factoring in tracking lag from the speed of light would be tricky. But I’d had time to practice.

  That left one missile.

  That one went to my best guess as to where Control was.

  Because fuck that guy.

  Yes, you could say that I’d been busy, using the Chandler’s outside cameras to scope out the base, and double-checking the information with the data I had taken from Ocampo’s PDA.<
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  I knew I was going to have one chance to get it right. Any misses and everything suddenly became a lot more complicated.

  Fortunately I still had a couple dozen missiles left.

  But as it turns out I didn’t need them. When I launched the missiles I was still really close in to Equilibrium base. The targets had anywhere from ten to twenty-five seconds to respond. Which might have been enough in a battle situation.

  But as a surprise? When the base and ships were unprepared for attack and the only person who could have raised the alarm was being kept busy with an argument with the very confused and increasingly hostile Secretary Ocampo?

  Nope. Not enough time.

  Every missile hit its mark.

  The resulting chaos was glorious to me.

  Glorious.

  “Hello?” Ocampo said, and I realized that from his point of view, nothing had happened. He was still waiting for a response from Control.

  I’m sorry, Secretary Ocampo, I thought at him. Control isn’t likely to respond to you at this point.

  “Why not?”

  Because I just stuffed a missile down its fucking gullet, that’s why.

  “What?”

  I just attacked Equilibrium’s base, I thought at him. Twelve missiles, all in the right places. It’s going to keep them busy while the three of us get to skip distance.

  “What?” Ocampo said again. He clearly wasn’t getting it.

  “You mean we’re going back?” Vera Briggs said. “Back home? Back to the Colonial Union?” It was, honestly, the first time I remember her speaking a complete sentence.

  Yes, I said. That’s the plan. Back to Phoenix Station. Where I think they will be very interested in what Secretary Ocampo has to say for himself.

  “You can’t do that,” Ocampo said.

  Take you back to the Colonial Union? I asked. Yes I can. Yes I will. In fact, that’s what I was waiting to do.

  “I don’t understand,” Ocampo said.

  I’ve had control of the Chandler for weeks. I could have tried for an escape long before now. But I needed your data to take back. And I needed you to back it up. You’re going home, Secretary Ocampo.

  “You don’t understand what you’re doing,” Ocampo said.

  Sure I do.

  “No, you don’t,” Ocampo said. “Don’t you understand that what we’re doing here is saving humanity—”

  Everything after that point was cut short by the whoofing sound Ocampo made as Vera Briggs walked the couple of feet separating the two of them and kneed her boss square and hard in the balls.

  I don’t even have balls anymore and I felt that.

  Ocampo collapsed, groaning. Briggs kicked him several more times in the ribs and face, inexpertly but enthusiastically, until he stopped doing anything but lying there in a ball.

  “Motherfucker,” Briggs said, finally backing away.

  You didn’t kill him, did you? I asked.

  “Trust me, I’m going to make sure he lives,” Briggs said. She spat on him; he didn’t even flinch. “Make me look like a fool by perpetrating treason behind my back? For years? Kill a ship full of people and give me the choice of death or being kidnapped? Make me an accomplice to killing even more people? No, Mr. Daquin. This asshole lives. And I’m going to make sure the Colonial Union knows everything I know, too. So you just get us back. You get us back. I promise you I’m going to take care of the rest of it. And you,” Briggs said to Ocampo. “You so much as move an inch between now and then and you’re going to wish I kicked you to death. You understand me, sir?”

  Ocampo didn’t move a muscle for the entire rest of the trip.

  * * *

  “Let’s talk about the future,” Harry Wilson said to me.

  It had been a busy week.

  I had skipped the Chandler into existence roughly ten klicks from Phoenix Station itself, setting off every single proximity warning the station had. Which was the point; I didn’t want them to miss me.

  As soon as I skipped I started broadcasting that I had Secretary Ocampo and critical information about an alien attack, which got everyone’s attention. Less than an hour after that the Chandler was swarming with Colonial Defense Forces, Ocampo and Briggs were taken off the ship—Ocampo to the infirmary of Phoenix Station’s detention facility and Briggs to high-level debriefing—and then the CDF tried to figure out what to do with me.

  That’s when Wilson showed up.

  “Why you?” I asked him—asked him, because he connected directly to me with his BrainPal, the computer inside his head.

  “Because I’ve done this before,” he said. He explained that later, during his debriefing of me, during which I told him of my experiences and gave him all the information I had.

  “The future,” I said, back in the present.

  “Yes,” Wilson said.

  “What I want for the future is to have a body.”

  “You’re going to get that,” Wilson said. “We’re already working on it. The Colonial Defense Forces have already authorized growing a clone for you.”

  “You’re going to put my brain in a clone?”

  “Not exactly,” Wilson said. “When the clone is grown we’re going to transfer your consciousness into it. You’ll leave this brain behind and be put into a new one.”

  “That’s … unsettling,” I said. My brain was the only part of me left, and now they were telling me that I was going to leave it behind.

  “I know,” Wilson said. “If it helps, I’ve been through the process. You’re still you after it happens. Promise.”

  “When can we start?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s up to you,” Wilson said. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ve already started working on your body,” Wilson said. “If you wanted it—and no one would say anything against you wanting it—we can get you one in a few weeks. But for someone with an already existing consciousness that we need to port into the new brain, it’s not optimal. They’d rather build your body slowly and pre-prime the new brain to accept your consciousness. That way the transfer goes off without a hitch.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Less time than making a body the natural way, but still a few months,” Wilson said. “Honestly the longer we take prepping the body for consciousness the better it will be.”

  “And in the meantime I’m stuck here on the Chandler.”

  “‘Stuck’ is a relative term,” Wilson said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that if you want, I might have a job for you. And the Chandler.”

  “What’s the job?”

  “The job is to be you. Both you, Rafe Daquin, and you, the brain running the Chandler. We want the various species we talk with to be aware that you’re real and that your story is real.”

  “I already gave you all the information I have on Equilibrium,” I said. “It’s pretty convincing.”

  “We don’t need to be convinced,” Wilson said. “We know you’re telling the truth. But you understand that us knowing about Equilibrium—us knowing that they were the ones behind the attack on Earth Station and the ones who have been setting the Conclave and the CU against each other—isn’t enough. Thanks to what Equilibrium has already done, the CU has almost no credibility. With anyone. Not with independent species. Not with the Conclave, or any species within it. And certainly not with Earth.”

  “And having me around changes that?”

  “Well, no,” Wilson admitted. I would have smiled at this if I could. “It doesn’t change it. But it does get our foot in the door. It offers others at least the possibility that we might be telling the truth. You can get us a hearing, at least.”

  “What about the Equilibrium base?” I asked. “You sent ships there?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you anything about that,” Wilson said.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Relax. You didn�
�t let me finish. I’m not supposed to tell you anything about that. Specifically, I’m not supposed to tell you that we found the base and we found a lot of fresh damage that corresponds to what you told me, but aside from that the base was deserted.”

  “What do you mean deserted?” I said. “When did you get there?”

  “We sent probes almost as soon as we got coordinates from you, and a couple of warships right after that.”

  “Then you should have found something. They couldn’t have disappeared.”

  “I didn’t say disappeared,” Wilson said. “I said deserted. There was a lot of evidence of someone having been there, and of the base having been used up until very recently. But whoever was there was gone. They left in a big damn hurry.”

  “What about the other ships?” I asked. “The ones like me, I mean.”

  “We found wreckage,” Wilson said. “Whether they were the ships like you or some other ships we can’t tell you yet.”

  “They wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere,” I said. “If you found wreckage, it was those ships.”

  “I’m sorry, Rafe.”

  “I don’t understand how they could have deserted the base that quickly. I knocked out their communications.”

  “There’s the possibility that they had drones or ships in other systems set to investigate if there was no communication with the base,” Wilson said. “These assholes were building a fleet with hostage pilots. They probably figured one of them might try an attack or lead someone back to them sooner or later.”

  “But I got away. If they planned for it, how did that happen?”

  Wilson grinned. “Maybe you were better at it than they expected. They had to decide between evacuating their people or going after you.”

  “But we still have all the evidence. You have Ocampo, for God’s sake! Have him talk.”

  “He’s not going to be talking to anyone other than CDF intelligence for a while,” Wilson said. “More to the point, he doesn’t really have the capability to talk to anyone else at the moment.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that right now, you and he have a lot in common,” Wilson said.

  It took me a second to figure out what that meant. Then I imagined Ocampo in his own little box.

  “I don’t know how I feel about that,” I said, eventually.