by E A Carter
Tonight is the first night I'll see the stars again in almost half a decade, and I can't help myself, I'm like a kid at Christmas. I even told the water bears about it, but they didn't say anything back. But I am sure they are happy, too. That fucking sky was misery. Like the longest, shittiest hangover ever. I thought it would never end.
I lay down in the centre of the area I've cleared over the last five years and wait. It's late September, and surprisingly warm for nineteen hundred hours: minus twenty-one Celsius. It came at last, in the middle of August as I hauled twisted struts free of the rift and dragged them away. In less than two weeks, the dense barrier of soot, dust, and god knows what else thinned and then, just like that, the blinding glare and heat of a twenty-four hour sun slammed into me.
I won't lie. I cried. It felt like I'd been released from prison. I need to see the sky, the clouds, and the goddamned stars, to see the hope of life continuing to go on, even when there is almost none left here. I've never been more fucking lonely in my life. So, the stars. They are going to help. And tonight I will see them again. Sirius, Orion's Belt, the Pole Star. Old friends. Something from before. Something familiar.
Darkness sweeps over the horizon, a glorious stately tide that marks the line between day and night and fills me with joy. And then, they are there. One after another, bursting to life across the black, empty canopy until the entire band of the Milky Way arches over me. It's beautiful. I gaze at the river of stars, billions of them, and drink in the sight of other worlds spinning through the galaxy, each on their own lonely course—and hope they are doing better than me.
Sated for the moment, I scan the heavens for my favorite constellations and planets. Before Blue happened, I would spend my free time at Omega V's planetarium. After a few visits I had the locations and transits of most of the major constellations memorised. Orion's Belt was always the easiest to find, so I settle back and eye the sky. It's not there. Nor is it anywhere along its usual transit. A prickling tingles inside my scalp before the now familiar flick of binary code overlays my view. I don't want to read it, but it's there, staring me down, eating straight into my awareness.
Recalculating.
It's already cold but that word makes me colder. No. It can't be. I never even considered it. But then, how could I know? I have no idea how long I was dark after I came to the surface. Although, considering the whole world had burned, there was a distinct lack of residual heat.
And then, it hits me. I burned, and survived.
It doesn't take long for the sky's map to be measured against the stars of 2087, and deliver the answer I never asked for but am getting anyway.
The year drops before my eyes in that shitty code. It's worse than anything I could have imagined. I stare at a heaven computers could only simulate in 2087, but for me, right now, it's real and a nightmare. Above, a sky five thousand four hundred eighty seven years after I put Blue in her pod glares at me. 7584. Seventy-five fucking eighty-four. Denial storms through me, deluges me in horror.
I sit up, clawed by terror. Blue was supposed to sleep for one thousand years, not five fucking thousand. Five years. I thought only five years had passed since I came to—that I had time to find her.
Misery, panic, guilt, fear, and rage course through me in sickening waves. It's almost unbearable. I can't think. It's too much. I fucking failed. She's gone. I wasn't there. Futility bears down on me. Claustrophobia tears into me. I stand and break into an agitated pace. I don't know to do. For the first time in my existence I am lost, completely unmoored. The fruits of my efforts over the last five years surround me rank with utter pointlessness. Up until this point, I was proud my progress, now all I can feel is shame, regret and fury. She was already gone for more than four thousand years before I woke up. I punch a hole into the remains of a wall. She's dust by now. Blue. Oh god. Blue. It's unbearable. The thought of her dying alone, after all I had done to save her.
'Fuck!' My cry echoes through the ruined city. It returns to me, hollow, a mockery of my pain. I am alone. She's gone. Everything is fucked. I can't take it. There's nothing left for me. I delve into myself and activate hibernation mode. I'll come back again at some point, but for now I want to feel nothing.
For a very long time.
THREE | AMADI EZENWA
* * *
Adiana's lips touch mine, she pulls back and smiles. We are in the botanical gardens. Our favourite place. It's a Sunday. I remember we made love that morning, twice. She says something as she walks on, my wedding ring on her finger glinting in the light. I can't hear her words. The light is growing brighter, so bright I must shield my eyes. I blink and she's gone, replaced by the logo of G-II flicking past me as I am rolled on a gurney full of chemicals and drugs towards my pod. I'm in the pod now. I'm told to count back from one hundred. I count. Adiana. My love. How I miss you.
The dream ends. Abrupt, as always. I open my eyes and relive the hated memory. Of waking in this vine-infested world of strange, skinny trees, massive lakes surrounded by marshland that take an entire day to cross, and six long months of darkness that abruptly turn into six months of endless light. It's shit. And so far, despite undertaking a tedious search I haven't found anyone else who's woken up, or any evidence that anyone has ever even been awake. I try not to think about it too much.
The few pods I did discover were either never used, or their passengers were already long dead, collapsed into dust. That was when I started to wonder if somehow more than one thousand years had passed for me. The stars were definitely not where I remembered them to be. I also try not to think about that too much, either.
Through the last two cycles of endless night and the one and half cycles I have had of day I only found one active pod. For an entire month I deliberated whether to risk waking whomever was inside or not. But fear won that fight. I didn't want to destroy my last chance to speak to another human again. Better to wait it out. Let science do its thing. It would have been nice if they had woken up while I waited five more months—being alone all the time in a strange, empty world is an endurance test made of nightmares. I still can't decide which is worse, endless light or endless dark.
After six months of sitting in the dark debating whether to stay or continue my search for someone else, I decided to carry on. I tried to carve a message into the pod in case they woke up while I was gone to say they weren't alone, but my efforts were futile, whatever the pods were made of made them utterly impervious to my attempts to carve anything into them.
It's clear whatever was supposed to happen at G-II didn't go to plan. So here I am, feeling like the last man on Earth—unless that solitary pod still has someone alive in it. G-II must be gone considering pods buried two kilometres underground were brought to the surface. I also suspect only a precious few of those thousand made it up. I wish mine hadn't been one of them.
The day I woke up from my dreamless sleep, I sat up in a world bathed in warm summer light. Even with the benefit of daylight around the clock, it took me a full month to find what was left of Alpha VII. Beyond a veil of thin trees, all that remained of the city's previous glory was nothing more than a few eroded sections of its shattered dome, and a vine-carpeted wasteland of crumbling structures in between. I covered the long circuit around the edge of the city, searching for others, and for pods, but there were neither. And the entire time, from the ruins of the city's depths: a silence, deafening. The soundless roar of a world long gone, never to return. I couldn't bring myself to go in. Maybe it was a mistake, but I felt like if I went in, the last of my memories of the world I had lived in would be erased. That Adiana would be erased. That it would all become nothing more than a dream, like the ones I have of the life I never had with Adiana. I walked away, with the intention never to return.
Almost a year after I woke up, as I worked my way along a ravine, I caught a glint of reflected sunlight. Nothing glints in this world. I had forgotten what a glint even looked like. With trembling hands, I hauled away the vines and discovered a smo
oth metal box with a cracked smartscreen panel which I assumed had been the mechanism to unlock it—and the reason for the glint. Whatever could have once opened it was long gone. The only way to get it open now would be to use brute force. The kind of force I didn't have. I had no idea what could be inside, but I didn't care. I had found something which linked this world to the one that was gone. For me, it was proof the past was real and it was the lifeline I needed to skirt the walls of madness.
That little box gave me purpose. I spent hours in speculation, wondering what it contained, trying to figure out how to open it without destroying it. It became my constant companion, an umbilical cord to the man I used to be: Amadi Ezenwa, the son of a president of the United States. The man who loved Adiana. Who still loves her even now.
I clung to that box as I forded rivers, climbed moraines and battered my way through vine-choked forests, as I memorised the land, and created a map in my mind. I talked to it. It became my friend. I told it everything. Adiana. My father. The world of Alpha VII. The whiskey I took from the Prime Minister. Being frozen in time. And eventually, how one million people died a slow and painful death because of me. How much I wished I were dead, too. It was a good listener. It gave me comfort. It gave me purpose.
It's still dark, but by my calculations there should only be about twelve weeks left before the light returns again. The warmer temperature tells me it's day. I've had a meal of grubs that should keep me going until this evening, when I can eat the others tucked into my pocket. I crest the rocky ridge of a steep ravine and set the box down so I can lean over to look. It's deep enough to be lost in shadow, even with the moon's half-light.
Beyond, to the south, it's too dark to be certain what's ahead so I have to decide to risk going down the ravine to discover whether I can continue my trek southwards from here, or not. The amount of dead ends I have hit in my exodus aren't worth mentioning, all I know is I'm not moving fast and at the rate I'm going it could take me ten years to reach the southern coast of Greenland. Of course, that's if the ocean hasn't slid in between and separated Greenland into two or three islands . . . or an endless archipelago.
I leave the box and head further down the length of the ridge to see if there's an easier way down. I have to go far before I find a decent spot. Feeling like I have already lost too much time I hurry back to collect the box, and in my haste I stumble as I bend to pick it up. It slips from my hands, and falls into the darkness, its metallic clangs ugly and desolate, as if crying in pain. My heart in my throat, I chase after it, desperate to save it, but I am too late, and all I do is hurt myself sliding down after it.
It comes to rest in a little gulley, dented out of shape, the door is misaligned and bent into itself, its smartscreen obliterated. I stare at the wreckage of it, horrified. It was all I had to connect me to my previous life, and now it is gone, destroyed by haste, and for what? The truth hits me like a tidal wave, and pulls me under. I have no point. No purpose. Nothing matters here. I made it matter, but it doesn't matter. Everything is meaningless. There is no thought, only rage. A wild bleat of red behind my eyes. I heft a rock and slam it against it the box, over and over until the rock shatters. A year and a half of loneliness, loss, and the futility of my existence fuel the violence I rain on that little box.
I come to my senses, my hands slippery with blood, and my heart ragged with hopelessness. I force myself to look at the object of my desolation.
My little box, smeared with my blood, lies huddled and half-wrecked in the ground. I have killed it, my only friend. Remorse washes through me, a bleak tide. I want to cradle the box in my arms, to apologise to it, to take it all back. But I can't. It's ruined. I have destroyed my last connection to myself. To Adiana. The last of my dignity leaves me. I weep. Over a box. Over everything. Over nothing.
I remember the deep lake that lies less than a day's walk away. With enough rocks to weigh me down I could drown myself. There is nothing left for me. I no longer wish to go on. Nothing makes more sense to me now, than this. Numb, I lean past the box to pick up a rock when I notice a crack in the door's seal. I try to prise it open with my fingers but it is impossible. I need something thinner, stronger. I need leverage.
I wipe away my tears and sniff at the broken seal, seeking the scent of the air within—air from who knows how long ago—and breathe it in. It's stale but I don't care, it is from then. From before. Inside this box is a piece of the past. It could be anything. It could be nothing. It could be everything.
I climb back up the ravine, the battered box in the crook of my arm and face the wilderness before me, chaotic and wild, freed of the violence and control of men. Even though I swore I never would, I know I am going to go return to Alpha VII. It is my best chance to find something to pry the box open. The long trek back to the city plays out in my mind, one month of walking, maybe five in this darkness. The box once more by my side, I set out with my only friend and companion, my salvation, and my purpose. And, I realise, it is enough. For now.
FOUR | RYAN MADDOX
* * *
When the glitch hits, and the fucking memories return to torment me, it's night, but it's not cold. A host of stars blaze far lower down in the sky than I remember. Around my legs, arms and torso are bindings which pin me to the ground. I push my weight up and against them. A snap, followed by a series of others liberates me from the clutch of a mass of vines.
Recalculating.
Still weighted with the loss—for me only moments ago—of everything that ever mattered to me, I stare at the sky and wait for whatever I am to tell me how much time has passed. Not that it matters. Without Blue all I have left to do is find a way to cease to exist. I wonder how long it will take for the nanobots to eventually run out of whatever it is that keeps them going. I refuse to think I am immortal. But then again, I survived the fires of 2087 so fuck knows what it will take to destroy me. I'm not interested in waiting it out. I consider the possibility of jumping into an active volcano. I want it to be over, to escape from whatever I have become so I can find her in the afterlife, and not be stuck here, the last sentient being on Earth for fucking ever.
Year: twelve thousand one hundred twenty-six. Month: twelve. Day: thirty-one.
The code melts into a nightscape completely different to the previous two in my existence. Another four and a half thousand years gone in what feels like the blink of an eye. If I wasn't so fucked up I might be impressed, instead I just feel monumentally alone, my ache for Blue a raw, hungry thing.
I lay awhile longer and force myself to think of anything but her, now more distant to me than twice the length of all recorded history. Instead, I dwell on whether I can remember if there were any volcanoes on Greenland. Of course I can't. And whatever I am doesn't immediately know either, I guess that information wasn't necessary. Eventually I sit up, and untangle the lengths of tough, sinewy vines encircling my body. I don't know what I expected to find after four and half more millennia have passed, but it's definitely not this.
I stand and take a look. In the distance, where the crater wall should be stands a forest of trees, tall, spindly things with strange clusters of tufts at the top, like lichen, or maybe a fern, that look as fragile as feathers. I can't even begin to comprehend how trees could grow in a place that is dark for six months of the year, so I don't even try. Around me, the shadowy ruins of the remains of Alpha VII have been drowned in a sea of vegetation so lush I wonder if I am dreaming. I check the temperature. Twenty-one Celsius. In February. At night, and in a place less than seven hundred and fifty kilometres from the North Pole. What the hell. This can't be right.
I sit back down because I need to think. It's the last day of December, which means another three months of darkness. I ponder whether I should go into hibernation again until daylight returns when my thoughts drift to the key de Pommier gave me. Incredibly, it's still there, tucked in my pocket in the same condition as when I went to sleep. Now I am certain the nanobots are maintaining it, the same way my clothing nev
er rots. Even my boots still look like they did the day it all went to hell. I push myself back to my feet to examine the weird trees again when I see it: a blinking light. It's faint as fuck, but it's there, pale blue, bleating its presence into the darkness, steady as a heartbeat.
The soldier in me resists the urge to barge into the vegetation after it. I know what I want it to be. A pod. More precisely—Blue's pod. But the odds are pretty much nil for that, and this place is a whole lot different than the one I left, which means I have no idea what could be out there, or if whatever I am looking at is a relic of a world long eradicated—or of another civilisation that's arrived.
But still. A frisson of hope sears a hot path through me. It does look similar to the blinking light of an activated pod. I scan three hundred sixty degrees around me, using every enhancement I have. Nothing. Just that one maddening, steady blinking light, shrouded by the creep of vegetation. I long to go to it, to see what it is, even if it's not a pod, whatever it is could benefit me in some way.
Fuck it. I'm indestructible. If it is another civilisation there's a good chance they won't want me around, either. Maybe they have the power to destroy me. And it's this wild hope that drives me forward, and clambering through the vines that blanket the shrunken remains of what was once the home of the most powerful and wealthiest humans of all.
