The Last Builder

by Simeon Graves

  “Come on, Cutler. He invited you to become a Builder. We heard every word.” Greenwood tipped his head in the direction of a man wearing a white suit and a black, wide-brimmed hat.

  “He never gave me anything. As soon as we got back to Jessie’s and saw what you bastards did, I ran out of there.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” came another voice.

  A man walked through the door, and Katherine immediately felt the atmosphere shift. He was older, but he still stood tall and proud. His hair and beard were white with dustings of brown, but if he was concerned about being outnumbered, he didn’t show it. Instead, he dug his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the wall like he was having a regular conversation with a group of his closest friends.

  Greenwood had circled around Cutler to keep both him and the newcomer in his view, which also meant Katherine was to his back. She crept forward a few feet, feeling the metal of the screwdriver in her sleeve against her skin. She might be able to sneak up undetected if everyone stayed distracted, but they all had guns. Even if she managed to injure Greenwood, the rest of his team could kill her, her father, and the new guy in the blink of an eye.

  “Josiah, what are you doing here?”

  “Saving your life,” Josiah responded. “And Katherine’s.”

  “You have the terraforming data plans?” said Greenwood, practically salivating.

  “I do,” Josiah said, reaching into his pocket. Everyone’s guns jerked toward his chest. He held up one hand and slowly pulled out a silver device, rectangular in shape. “You wouldn’t want to shoot this and risk losing everything, would you?”

  “Hand it over,” Greenwood said, holding out his hand.

  “I will, gladly,” Josiah said, “as soon as you let Cutler and Katherine leave.”

  “I could shoot you and take it anyway.” Greenwood sneered. “This is merely a courtesy.”

  “You’re not that stupid, Tobias,” Josiah said, pushing off the wall and circling the group until they all had to turn to face him, allowing Cutler and Katherine’s eyes to meet for the first time. She swallowed hard and tried to look brave, but all she wanted to do was get away from this whole mess.

  “Come again?” Greenwood said, pushing the barrel of his gun harder against Cutler’s temple.

  “I’m still the High Philosopher for The Society, and despite whatever power you think you have, they would be none too pleased if you killed me in order to steal plans the government is legally obligated to keep their hands off of.”

  “I represent the Government of the United Nations of Earth, Josiah. The laws are changing, and soon you and your idiot followers won’t be protected by archaic rules anymore.”

  “The U.N.E. has tried unsuccessfully for generations to discredit and disband The Society. What makes you think you’re any different, Tobias?”

  “Perseverance,” Greenwood sneered. “We’ve never come so close to retrieving your secrets before, and now they’re practically in my hands.”

  “Do you know why you were denied acceptance into The Society?” Josiah asked suddenly. Even from her hiding spot Katherine saw a blush creep up Greenwood’s neck. “Because you’re less suited for being a scholar and more suited toward being a dictator. You’re too ignorant to realize that not only is the device encrypted, but the information is only valuable to someone who has studied with us for years.”

  “Then you’re going to explain it all to me,” Greenwood said, turning his gun back on Josiah.

  “I will. I’ll gladly return with you to Earth, but I’ll only do it if you first let Cutler and Katherine go.”

  “Josiah,” her father said, taking a step forward.

  Josiah held up a hand. “They will have the information sooner or later. I would rather know you and Katherine are safe for now.”

  Greenwood looked between Josiah and Cutler and rolled his eyes. “Sentiment is for the weak, Josiah. I thought you knew that.”

  “I did once,” Josiah said, folding his hands in front of him. “But I’m a human being. I learn through empathy.”

  Greenwood dropped his gun and stared at her father. “Where’s your wife now that I could use her?”

  Her father spat in his face. Greenwood responded with a pistol across his cheek, sending him sprawling. Katherine cried out, too scared to move from her hiding spot.

  “Escort the old man out,” Greenwood snapped to his men.

  “And this one?” said the man in the white suit.

  Greenwood looked back over his shoulder. “He’s a cockroach. Leave him. And his brat.”

  The man in the white suit shrugged and followed his boss out the door. Josiah went quietly, looking back only once to make eye contact with Katherine. The way he smiled at her, as small and brief as it was, was so genuine that it nearly broke her.

  As soon as the door clicked shut, Katherine ran over to her father and skidded to a halt next to him. “Dad?” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Dad, are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Cutler groaned. He lifted his hand to his face.

  “No blood,” she said. “But there’s already a pretty nasty bruise popping up across your cheek. You know, on top of all the other damage.” She gave a wry smile, which he returned.

  He sat up, swaying for a moment.

  She steadied him with a hand. “Who was that? Who’s Josiah Rex?”

  Cutler shook his head and blinked a few times before he answered. “My boss and mentor. He’s the leader of The Society, the coalition that I scout for. And now the United Nations of Earth has him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Katherine said, tears welling. “I can’t help but feel like this is all my fault. If I hadn’t been taken, if I’d been able to get away—”

  “This is not your fault,” Cutler said, placing a rough, warm hand on her cheek. “There’s no one to blame but the assholes who think a little bit of power gives them the authority to walk all over everyone else.”

  “Are we going to go after him?” she said, crestfallen.

  Cutler looked toward the door. He seemed torn, but his jaw was set. “No, Josiah bargained for us for a reason. Now all I have to do is figure out what that reason is.”

  13

  Katherine

  “I can’t believe I’m actually in space.” She couldn’t help the grin that spread over her face.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Her father looked younger to her, the effect of a weight having been lifted from his shoulders.

  It hadn’t taken long to reinstall The Artemisia’s missing part, wheel out to an open launch pad, and take off. Katherine had strapped in with some trepidation. It was, after all, her first real trip on a spaceship. She figured hiding out in a cargo bay and sleeping amongst food packets wasn’t the typical experience.

  The trip through the moon’s atmosphere proved to be almost as bumpy, but once they were into the wide open, it was a glide on angel’s wings. The ship had its quirks, including a constant humming that more than once got on her nerves, but more often than not, it was a comfort rather than an annoyance – a sign that everything was functioning smoothly. With so much emptiness around, she was grateful for the ship’s firmness, its floors and its walls. Having no ground beneath her feet was a concept she’d have to get used to.

  “There’s so much nothing out there,” she said contemplatively.

  “Being in space is like being in the middle of the ocean. You can feel so alone, so cut off from everything and everyone. You can look in every direction and see absolutely nothing. Its vastness can feel like a weight on your chest.”

  “Not helping,” she said, peering out one of the windows onto an ocean of star-studded black. She found it was getting harder to breathe.

  “But,” her father said, tapping his finger against the window, “that’s just not true. Space, just like the ocean, is so full. It’s full of rocks and water and plants and animals and life. But better yet, it’s full of opportunity. You can pick a direction, any direction, and you might be wal
king a path no one has ever walked before in the history of humanity. And that path is endless. There are stepping stones along the way, but there’s never an end to the adventure, as long as you’re brave enough to keep looking.”

  “You really love it out here, don’t you?”

  “I love you, Katherine,” he said suddenly. Katherine turned to him and saw an earnestness on his face she had yet to witness. “I chose the life I thought I wanted when I left you and your mother on Earth. I thought I could feel full out here, and in many ways, I have. I know you feel like I abandoned you—”

  “Dad, don’t.”

  “Let me finish, please. I can’t stop you from feeling that way. And that’s fair. I understand that it might take you a while to believe me.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the drawings she found in the hangar.

  His eyes moistened as he stared down at the sketches. “I can’t change what happened in the past, and I can’t change the fact that we both lost your mother.” He turned his gaze to her. “But I can shape the future. Our future. It might take some getting used to, but I hope you’ll come to love it out here as much as I do.”

  She looked back out the window. Every square inch of that nothingness held a new opportunity. Living on Earth had never given her that feeling.

  “You like history, right?” he said. “How do you feel about making some history of your own?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gestured to the window. “I’m a scout, Katherine. I find new planets to terraform and colonize. As humanity populates those planets, their cultures grow and evolve. That all starts with me. It could start with us. I’ll be the explorer and you’ll be my historian.” He held out his hand. “Deal?”

  There was a spike in her heartbeat at the proposition. She loved studying people, loved seeing what made them unique. Now she had an opportunity to guide them, to help people find themselves, to help people find each other and grow as a community.

  Katherine slipped her small hand into her father’s. “Deal,” she said, tightening her grip before he let go, “but you have to start calling me Kit.”

  A wide grin spread across his face. “I’ll do my best.”

  Her lips twitched in response, and she shook her father’s hand once more before letting go. A few days ago, it had felt like her world was ending. Her mother was dead and she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. Now, it felt like she had her whole life out in front of her. Despite the strange weight that still sat on her chest whenever she looked out the ship’s window, she now knew what her father had meant when he said space was full of opportunity.

  He handed her back the drawings and she tucked them into her pocket once more, and then smiled. “Want the grand tour?”

  She followed him out of the cockpit and down a narrow hallway that opened up into what her father called the foyer. It was a round room with doorways leading in a handful of different directions. He let her pick the direction and off they went.

  The Artemisia was compact, she thought, just the right size for the two of them. She’d get her own room, just down the hall from her father. The kitchen was tiny, but the dining area was spacious and comfortable. There was an exercise room and even a small library. Other than that, the rest of the ship was practical, full of scientific instruments and large storage areas that her father kept full of supplies.

  “We won’t need to restock for some time, which is pretty good considering we’re still quite a way from the closest refueling station.”

  She ran her hand along a wall of trays filled with packets of food. “While we’re on the subject, where are we going?”

  He pressed his lips together. “Josiah was supposed to give me a mission, but he never got the chance.”

  “So we don’t know what we’re doing?” The back of her neck prickled at the thought.

  Cutler opened his mouth to answer when an alarm suddenly sounded. He looked up at a large LED in the corner of the room, which was dark.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard this alarm before. That LED up there should blink in a technical failure.”

  She trailed him as he made his way back to the cockpit. He sat down in the pilot’s seat and stared at the screen in front of him. The alarm blared on.

  “What is it?” she said. The screen had gone black.

  “I don’t know,” he repeated frustratedly.

  Suddenly, the alarm cut off and the screen came back to life. On it was a green blinking cursor. After a moment’s pause, “A:DATABANK/grfkernel/messagereceived” popped up.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. Then he laughed. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Dad?”

  “It’s okay.” He waved her forward. “Josiah must have programmed information on the terrafarms into the damn circuit board.” He laughed again and typed in, “Receive message,” then hit enter. Immediately, “S:” appeared on the line below. Cutler paused for a moment and typed in, “Josiah Rex.” When “R:” followed, Cutler added, “Cutler Copeland,” to the line. A password prompt appeared and he typed in a fifteen digit alphanumeric code without a second’s hesitation.

  Before she could ask what was going on, the screen was filled with a video showing Josiah from the shoulders up. He appeared to be in an office of some sort. His face beamed with a smile that made him look ten years younger.

  “Cutler,” Josiah began, “I’m not sure how much I’m going to be able to explain to you before I hand over this information, so for the sake of covering all my bases, I’m going to start from the beginning. Forgive me if you’ve heard all of this before. I promise I’ll get to the good stuff soon.”

  He cleared his throat and continued: “The Keresian Virus is reaching the end of its gestation period. The U.N.E. would like to keep this fact a secret from the citizens of Earth, and in most cases, it has. The truth about KV is, perhaps, the greatest secret ever kept in history. I don’t know if it’s reassuring to know you are one of the few who are aware of the truth, but it is something that can keep you and your daughter safe in the coming months. And yet it may also make you a target. What a terrible burden to have to bear, to be one of the only survivors of KV. I wish there was more I could say. I’m one of the lucky ones in that I won’t have to see the world collapse, but you will. And so will your daughter.”

  Katherine swallowed audibly when Josiah mentioned her. Without realizing it, she reached out to put a hand on her father’s shoulder. He covered her hand with his, his eyes still glued to the screen.

  “Not to put too fine a point on it, Cutler, but it’s up to you now.” Josiah’s eyes were bright and blue, full of knowledge and experiences that Katherine couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  “As the virus continues to spread across the universe, humanity will die. Two people in every billion will survive. How many does that leave? A thousand? Maybe more? Censuses are a little hard out there in the empty sky. People will be spread all across the galaxy. They’ll have whole planets to themselves. Some will rise up, take care of each other, rebuild. Some will take advantage of the system and become tyrants, or worse, they’ll degenerate. They will pit people against each other in order to gain and keep positions of power and authority. It’s not up to you to fix the world’s problems, Cutler. That’s not your burden to bear. But it is your responsibility to leave it a little better off than it was the day before.”

  Josiah held up a small drive, much smaller than the silver one he had when Katherine had last seen him. “In this file you will find all the information you need to terraform new planets, to make sure there is a home for everyone and anyone who needs it. As our numbers dwindle, it’s important to keep exploring, to keep expanding, to keep discovering new life. There will be people spread out all across the galaxy. There will be people who will want to move on from their homes, to forget what they lost and discover what they can find. That’s your job now. As scientists, as philosophers, it’s our job to always move
forward, to always look ahead, to never stop questioning the universe.

  “I know you’ve been through a lot, Cutler. I know you’ve lost your wife and found your daughter. I know you are afraid, as much as you don’t want to admit it, to have people rely on you again. What happened on your last mission was a mistake, nothing more. It was an accident, and it was nobody’s fault. I know you don’t feel that way, and I know you feel responsible for the lives that were lost, but the truth of the matter is that you survived for a reason, and this is the reason, Cutler.”

  As they listened, the hush that had fallen over the both of them became thick and heavy.

  “I hope you have another crew one day,” Josiah continued. “I hope you have a crew you can rely on, one that you can trust, that you believe in, and that looks up to you. I hope you feel that responsibility for life because that responsibility drives you to greatness. I’m sorry you have to do this alone, Cutler. I’m sorry that the rest of The Society is either dead or dying. I wish there was more we could do to help make the transition easier, but it’s time to push forward. It’s time to make your mark, and I hope you can do that with Katherine and with anyone else you can find along the way.”

  Josiah stopped speaking for a moment and looked off-screen. He nodded his head once, curtly, and then his gaze drifted back to the camera.

  “I wish we had taught you more. I wish there had been time, but the time for wishes has passed. Now, it’s time for action. The U.N.E. will get their hands on me one way or another. I will stall as long as possible, but they’ll have access to the same information you have. The only difference is what they intend to do with it. We’ve already seen what they did with the planet they inherited. What do you think they’ll do with the planets they create?

  “Take this information about terraforming, study it, learn it, and know it by heart, so that when you take the leap, there’s no question, there’s no uncertainty, there’s no self-doubt. I know you can do this, Cutler. The vote was unanimous. I didn’t even have to make a speech.” Josiah laughed. “The Society chose you, not because you’re a survivor, and not because you’re brilliant, but because you’re a good person. And we need that out there right now.