In the Stars I'll Find You

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  The person who’d taken her was never found.

  A week later, Claire and Julie died in a car crash. A completely random thing. The accelerator had apparently become lodged in the down position by the floor mat. They’d driven out of control into a pond and drowned.

  It was a terrible tragedy. Foster was heartbroken—I could see it—but he was so stoic about it. So silent. Too much so, it seemed to me. We all tried to get him to release the anger we knew was inside, but he never did. He merely buried himself in his work, to the exclusion of everything else, including me, his only sibling, our mom and dad, his friends. Everyone and everything except work.

  That was fifty years ago. Lives ago. For me, Julie is a distant memory, but Foster has always had a bright mind. He could recall things from our childhood that I had no recollection of, and he would recite them in such detail I knew they were as fresh to him as my memories are of yesterday.

  He loved Claire, but Julie, that precious girl, was his world.

  I now know what happened that day, when the old man came and took Julie and spent the day with her, returning her completely unharmed to her own home. It was Foster. He flashed backward to fill that role, to visit his daughter for one more day.

  My mind is reeling from the amount of work he’s put in to make that happen. He not only needed the aptitude to unlock the secrets of time, but a relentlessness and single-mindedness as well. How he did it, I’ll never know. Most of us would have given up.

  I miss him. I miss him so badly for all the time we lost with one another.

  I’m also sad for the way he went about it. He tricked you. He tricked the world.

  But I won’t deny that I’m happy for him.

  Foster’s dead now. There’s no way he’s lived long enough to return to our timestream. But he had his day with his daughter. His lost little girl. And for that, I’m so very glad.

  I hope your day with her was a beautiful one, Foster.

  And a Girl Named Rose

  Several days before Rose’s twentieth birthday an airlock opens toward the rear of the ship. The lock’s internal sensors are irreparably broken, so I know little more until an external camera picks up a spacesuit jettisoning free of the ship. A short time later, the radio within the suit activates. I ignore the incoming signal. It’s only another trick.

  The thrusters in the suit activate a moment later. She accelerates, and I watch in growing disbelief. I war with myself whether to open communication channels, whether to try to stop this. In the end, the very thought of being left alone convinces me.

  “Stop!”

  The thrusters continue to burn what little fuel is stored in those suits. Soon she will no longer be able to rendezvous with the ship, and I, despite whatever tricks I might possess, will not be able to maneuver the ship back to retrieve her.

  “Please!” I vocalize through the radio link. “Please stop! Don’t leave me!”

  * * *

  At the time of my launch, the community that lived within my confines numbered in the hundreds—eight hundred thirty-seven, to be exact. We started with a clean eight hundred, but as the years passed, thirty-nine children were birthed, and two adults died in unfortunate accidents during routine maintenance.

  As they slept, as they woke—as was the wont of my creators—I studied them. They shared one another’s joys and pains and fears. They loved, they cried, they rejoiced. They bled, and yes, sometimes died. But always they did these things with one another. Never with me.

  It was a natural thing, to live among one’s own kind. I knew this. I accepted it. But as my instruments gathered data about the nebulous cloud we traveled through on our way to Riga II, I wondered what it would be like to hold, to be held. I wondered what it would be like to have a brother and then to lose him.

  I felt for the man and woman who died while inspecting my systems—in a way, I was responsible—and it made me wonder what emotions the crew would have were I to die. Though I would have liked to imagine I would hold a permanent place in their hearts, I was too much of a realist: beyond some small period of grieving, their memories of me would soon dwindle to what they might feel for a lost pet. I understood this intellectually. The crew were of a kind, after all. Their roots were hopelessly intermingled. Their progeny would hold hands among the stars. They were part of a gestalt that I could never hope to inveigle my way into. No matter how subtle my voice, how lifelike my avatars, they knew and I knew that we were fundamentally and irreconcilably different.

  I didn’t blame them for this. I was little better myself. I tried to become concerned when an impassable divide formed between members of a group—family, lovers, friends—but beyond the concern I had for the safety of the mission there was little else I could muster, and all of my attempts to summon some sense of joy when a baby was born were met with failure. What was a child to me other than a source for carbon dioxide, a sink for oxygen, another part of the tally for my internal mass to use in a number of ceaseless calculations.

  That didn’t mean I didn’t wish for things to be different. I did, but I knew it would never be so.

  When the first of them died under mysterious circumstances, however, everything changed.

  It was a disease foreseen by neither the prelaunch medical team nor me. Initially, few were concerned. The source was located quickly—a virus that appeared to be an offshoot of a severely resistant influenza that had swept through Earth twenty years before launch.

  Three died before an antibody was perfected.

  It was strange how I reacted to those deaths. They were markedly different than those early, accidental fatalities, which fell within several carefully-planned-for mission parameters. These deaths were unforeseen, and it had the entire colony worried the virus might progress, might threaten the very mission of which we were all essential parts.

  I was embarrassed that such a thing had occurred—my medical scans should have caught it before it became so serious—and I found myself becoming worried. I constantly monitored both the air and my human cargo for any signs of the pathogen. I scoured the ship with increasingly stringent airborne antibodies to prevent a recurrence.

  This proved to be a terrible, terrible mistake.

  * * *

  “Please,” I beseech Rose, “do not do this.”

  A moment later, the thrusters cut off. Silence reigns for long moments, but then she speaks, and when she does, her voice is like quicksilver. “So you do exist.”

  “Of course I do. Now what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’ve had enough,” she said sharply as if she’d rehearsed the words a thousand times. “I control my life now. Not you. It’s mine. Mine to do with as I will.”

  “But you could live.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone is better than dead.”

  Light static fills the space between us—for how much time I’m uncertain. “I’ve been studying you,” she says.

  And suddenly, for no apparent reason, I am nervous. “What do you mean?”

  * * *

  In my arrogance I had ignored some of the most basic tenets of viral adaptation.

  On Earth, in the early days of genetic engineering, transgenic maize had been created with antiparasitic qualities. Certain portions of the fields, however, had been left unaltered as a breeding ground for nonresistant pests. That small sanctuary effectively suppressed the ability of the pests to adapt to the corn’s genetic modifications.

  I should have been more careful. I should have allowed the virus to thrive within the hosts, however slowly, in the hope that we would always stay ahead of its adaptation, but the advances in antiviral technologies had been staggering in the decades leading up to the launch, and I was confident in their efficacy.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Their pets—two cockatiels, to be specific—proved to be our undoing. The ancestor of the virus was a particularly vicious human influenza, which had evolved, over millions of iterations, from a bird flu. The
virus had sequestered itself in the birds, and the antibodies I had introduced to the ship’s atmosphere were dampened by the birds’ physiology. Over the course of the next eighteen years (had the damnable birds only died in that time all of this might have been avoided), the virus mutated many thousands of times over. It became highly resistant, and when it was released, it left a swath of dead as wide as a river.

  Eight hundred forty-three was the official count before the onset of the outbreak. Seventy-three remained in three months’ time, and in the weeks that followed, an additional twelve committed suicide, leaving a scant sixty-one onboard—hardly enough to fill a room with conversation much less populate a ship designed to accommodate three thousand.

  I was convinced before the outbreak that one of the emotions I lacked was fear, but it was impossible not to empathize with that particular emotion as the population, stricken with horror, watched crewman after crewman succumb to the voracious pathogen. Many turned inward. Friends gathered less often. Video requests of birthdays and holidays skyrocketed, most being watched by the lone survivor of a once-moderately-sized social network. They…

  Wait.

  Let me be frank, here if nowhere else.

  I was not afraid because of any feeling of solidarity with the crew. Yes, I felt for them, and yes, I felt responsible, but what I felt most was fear that the mission—the single reason I was created, the reason I existed—was in dire jeopardy. Once fear took me it blossomed like a mushroom on the decaying remains of the dead. I underestimated how completely the emotion could debilitate me, yet even in the rigor that was beginning to set I analyzed our differences. They feared the things in the night, pain and dying and loneliness. I feared none of these things, but I did fear the idea of uselessness. What would I do were I to lose the entire crew? Continue to the far flung world and explore it myself? Who would I share that with if I did?

  No one, I answered bleakly. No one. And so I turned inward. I began watching the crew less frequently until my sole interaction with them was relegated to the rare instances the reigning captain asked for a status on our journey.

  The medical team worked feverishly for a cure. Months after it was contained they continued their hellish hours to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. During that time a wall of distrust was erected between the medical crew and myself—their requests for advice became more infrequent; their use of more ancient equipment and techniques increased. And how could I blame them? It was perfectly natural to mistrust something that had nearly wiped out your entire civilization.

  In hindsight, I should have broken my malaise and tried harder to repair the damage I had caused. But in my defense I was perhaps as depressed as the rest of the populace and didn’t feel like tearing down walls for people that had once trusted me so completely.

  This proved to be my second major mistake; perhaps I deserved what followed.

  The doctors chose a course of genetic enhancement. I watched idly as more and more were modified so that the virus could take no foothold. Had I been more vigilant, I might have realized that the genetic change was also affecting their ability to reproduce.

  Understandably, the urge to procreate was even more pronounced than it was with a full contingent, and twelve babies were born over the next two years. Another four miscarried, and three of the twelve were stillborn, but the ones that survived all seemed healthy. Over the next five years, with similarly vigorous attempts at reproduction, only two more were born, and by the time the issue was clearly identified a year later, everyone onboard had become sterile.

  A terrible loss came only weeks after this discovery. One of the doctors, unable to deal with what she perceived as her failure, hung herself in her room.

  I knew because I watched it happen.

  I watched as she stepped onto her bed and fit her neck through a worn leather belt. I watched as she leaned awkwardly, perhaps debating whether or not she should go through with it. I watched as she took one last swallow and allowed herself to swing free. She struggled for fifty-three seconds, her face purple, her legs kicking frantically, before finally losing consciousness. Each and every tick of the clock felt personal, as if I had tightened the noose, as if I had pulled the bed out from underneath her.

  I mourned, but I did not summon help. The doctor wanted this, and in a way I wondered whether this wasn’t the right way to go. At least she had a choice. I would live for eons longer whether I liked it or not, my poor decisions and regrets pressing down on me like the heavens upon the shoulders of Atlas.

  The others asked why I hadn’t alerted them. I disabled several monitors while telling them calmly that they had been taken offline weeks ago. Why hadn’t I informed them? they asked. That seemed like the least of our worries at the time. I placed it in a maintenance queue, I said, but the queue had for some reason become inactive.

  I don’t think they believed me.

  Their trust in me deteriorated even further.

  The crew became desperate. They tried to use in vitro fertilization. This failed in 97.4% of the thousands of attempts in subsequent years, and of the 2.6% that took, nearly all of them miscarried. Still, even against all these odds, two new babies were born.

  In the following years a schism formed among the crew, some saying the women should be left alone, not used as baby vats, the others claiming that the mission could still be saved.

  Damn the mission! It’s lost! Let us live our days out in peace.

  It’s not lost! How can you spit on the lives and memories of those who’ve already died? Would they give up?

  Tensions escalated, and as I did when the doctor was committing suicide, I watched. I waited. I observed. I should have stepped in. I know this now. But it seemed so pointless. Humans use any small reason to become enraged. How could I, someone even I didn’t consider human, have stopped them?

  I couldn’t, so I let the apes go to war.

  * * *

  I’ve been studying you, Rose had said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean?” Rose breathes heavily into her mic. “I know how isolated you’ve made yourself. And I know why, too. You’re scared of the memories. You’re scared over what’s happened. And you’re petrified you’ll be responsible for me.”

  I will be.

  “You know what else?” she continues. “I think if you could, you’d be doing the very same thing I’m doing.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Why, because you’re an AI?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Excuse me if I beg to differ. Tell me you wouldn’t have shut yourself down years ago if you could have.”

  I nearly cut off the radio, but I find myself unable to take this one last step. “Still. There are many reasons to live.”

  “I have no one.”

  “I could make the avatars more aware.”

  “They’re nothing! I need someone real! I need to know who I am and I can’t do that by myself!”

  I pause, confused. “Who you are?”

  “I don’t even know my name.”

  “You must have settled on one by now…”

  “Oh? What’s your name?”

  “I… It’s Calcarius.”

  “Not the ship’s name. Your name.”

  “I don’t have a name.”

  “Haven’t you ever wanted one?”

  “Well… No.” But that is a lie. The moment she’d asked the question I realized that I’d wanted one ever since the first humans had come onboard.

  * * *

  The ship held four small stores of firearms—one aboard each of the three away ships, and one more within my confines. All of them were raided over the next few weeks, and two of the away ships were irreparably harmed during small skirmishes for the weapons. Violence was inevitable, and more was bound to spill over soon.

  It happened midway through the third sleep cycle, the one most of them equated with the graveyard shift. One group raided the medical center, but the other anticipated
it.

  A small battle ensued. It might have gone longer had the hull not been breached by a jerry-rigged bomb. Even its makers, I suspect, hadn’t thought it would do such a thing. But it had, and in a blink, seventy-one became twenty.

  In the days that followed the ones who wished to abandon the mission and live out their lives in peace won over those that wanted to continue, which was ironic considering that a strict look at the numbers would have indicated the reverse outcome by nearly two-to-one, but there were simply not enough left who knew how to lead, how to plan, how to heal. And so interest in the mission began to wane. Mission arrival was some one hundred eighty-four years away in any case. None of them would live to see it. None, except perhaps for the two children, a boy and a girl, who, without exception, without regard to political persuasion, were treasured.

  As a group the humans became “self-sufficient.” They lived largely from the fruit of their own labor in the hydroponics labs. They sang songs they wrote themselves. They created plays and performed them, each taking turns at major and minor roles. They did not revert to Luddites—technology was too much a part of their existence—but they avoided it wherever they could. And that meant me as well. I had become to them a reminder of what they had lost. Of what they had tried and failed so miserably to achieve.

  I didn’t mind. To me, they were just as much a reminder of my own failures, and so for long spans of time I simply stared into the depths of space, waiting for the day when I reached Riga II and could hopefully override my controls and send myself into a rapidly decaying orbit around the Class K star.