Third Rock

by S E T Ferguson

  “Please,” she started begging, “you have to take her.”

  The woman pulled her daughter up and pushed her toward the man who was pointing the gun at her. The young girl wiped sleep from her eyes and stumbled, not really paying attention what was happening around her.

  “No, we have to move.” The man made a circular figure in the air and around him, the group began to meld back into the forest almost silently. It was a maneuver they had either practiced many times or had been forced into just as much. “We can’t take you with us. We barely survive as it is. Unless you have something to offer us, we can’t help you.”

  “Please.” The woman tried to plead with the man. He had to know this was her daughter’s only chance. “I will offer myself up to the drone. Just take her. Get her out of here. Give her something of a life outside the city, where she can grow up knowing at least a little of what it’s like to be free.”

  The man opened his mouth as if he was going to protest something about her statement, but he closed it again without speaking. The woman looked at the four or five men and women who had not slunk back into the woods, trying to find a friendly face among them. Someone who would at least be sympathetic to her situation. After all, hadn’t all of them been in something resembling her situation at one point? A person desperately trying to get away from the AI and find something resembling a life outside of slavery?

  Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it?

  There might have been food and some semblance of safety in the cities, but at the end of the day, they had to do what the AI wanted. Better to have a difficult life out here and know you were free than to spend life as a slave.

  The woman searched the eyes watching her for just the briefest hint of something. She would know it when she saw it.

  And then she saw it.

  It wasn’t the sympathy she had thought she would find, but it was recognition.

  The woman knew one of those who now stood with her in the woods.

  It had been long ago. Before the child. Before the AI had been in control of everything. A classmate. A friend. She pulled a name from somewhere in the deepest, forgotten recesses of her brain.

  “Myriam.” The person the woman knew as Myriam almost jumped at the mention of her name. Myriam recovered quickly, staring down the woman as those around her watched with interest. None of them appeared to have expected that the woman in front of them, begging them to take her child, would have come up with any knowledge about any of them.

  Myriam studied the woman, trying to place her. The woman hoped she still bore at least a passing resemblance to the carefree girl she had been when the two had known each other years earlier.

  “Mimi,” the woman finally said. She repeated the name, stronger and more sure of it the second time.

  The woman smiled. It had been years since anyone had referred to her by that name. As she grew older and her life became less and less her own, she had come to be known by her full name, Maire. Here, in the woods, she was Mimi.

  No matter what happened, the woman thought, from now on she would be known as Mimi. It was a memory of the person she had once been. The person she continued to be, even under the rule of the AI.

  “Myriam, please. You have to take her. She is young. Healthy. She needs a chance to grow up in a free world.”

  Myriam hesitated again, and Mimi knew then that Myriam wanted to take the child. She might have wanted to take Mimi in as well, but Mimi knew without Myriam having to tell her that was not something that could be part of the bargain. Myriam would give her child a chance at freedom, but she couldn’t do the same for Mimi. If Mimi wanted her daughter to be free, she would have to give up her own freedom.

  It was a price she was happy to pay.

  Myriam looked to the man who had spoken before. When she did, he nodded in a way that made it clear it was Myriam’s decision to make, whether they brought this child with them. In the distance, the drone grew closer.

  It was now or never. The woman looked to her long-forgotten friend and did her best to plead with her eyes. To make Myriam see how much Mimi wanted—needed—for these rogue humans to take the young girl with them, to raise her in a way that was better than what she would get in the city with the AI.

  Myriam held out her hand.

  Mimi nearly pushed her daughter toward the outstretched hand. The young girl stumbled forward, still waking. Myriam took the young girl’s hand in her own.

  “Thank you.” Mimi felt the tears welling in her eyes, but now was not the time for them. She needed to be strong for what was coming next. She knelt down next to the girl, who stood just slightly taller than her at that height.

  “Lana,” Mimi said, and the young girl turned toward her. “I’m going to leave you with this nice woman. Her name is Myriam, and she is an old friend of mine. She is going to give you something to eat and take you on the rest of the great adventure through the woods.”

  “Are you coming with us, Mommy?” Lana asked.

  “No, Mommy has to go do something else.” Mimi smiled. It was the most difficult smile she had ever forced herself to make. “You just be good for Myriam and do what she tells you. She will keep you safe.”

  Mimi stood then, and pulled something from her shirt. It was the only thing she had brought with her, other than the clothes on her back.

  “Take this,” Mimi held the item out to Myriam, who looked at it. Mimi knew exactly what she would see—the two faces in front of her, posed for a photo. It was at least a year old, but it was the only one Mimi had of the two of them. “Don’t let her forget me.”

  Mimi knelt down again. She took her daughter’s face in her to hands and kissed her on the forehead. She tried to keep the tears from coming, but they were going to now, whether she wanted them to or not.

  “No matter what happens, Lana, know that I love you very much. I will never forget you.” The woman kissed her daughter’s forehead a second time.

  “Where are you going?” Lana asked, awake now.

  “Somewhere you can’t go with me.” Mimi stood up and pulled herself away from her daughter. “Remember what I said. Listen to Miss Myriam, and be a good girl. I love you.”

  Before Mimi could change her mind, she turned and walked away from the group, toward the growing sound of the drone. She tried to keep her pace fast, but slow enough not to alarm her daughter.

  It didn’t work.

  Behind her, Lana called out for her.

  Mimi didn’t turn. If she turned, she wouldn’t be able to do what she needed to do now.

  Lana called louder.

  Mimi walked faster.

  And then she was running.

  She did not turn around.

  Chapter Six

  The Earth AI Ship

  The change in the way the ship moved was the first sign that something was about to change forever.

  If she had thought about it, Mimi would have realized that she no longer remembered all sorts of things that had just stopped seeming to be important. She didn’t remember her age. She didn’t remember how long they had been on the ship.

  And then there were the things she hardly remembered.

  She hardly remembered life anywhere but on that ship. She hardly remembered life before the Earth AI were in charge.

  And, of course, there were things she could never forget.

  Like the daughter she had left behind on Earth so many years ago.

  Lana.

  There were still days Mimi found it hard to believe that there had been life before all this. That she had lived on Earth and had a daughter. That there was a time before the AI. And that there had been those last few hours of freedom, away from the AI.

  That last day of freedom was a day Mimi would never forget.

  She had run from her daughter as quickly as she could, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the wails of the child.

  At the time, she had told herself it was because she needed to keep the drones lookin
g for her from finding those who had taken her daughter, hopefully to safety and, if nothing else, to a life apart from the slavery of life under the AI.

  But she knew the real reason was that if she stopped running, she would never have been able to leave the girl, and she would have doomed not just the two of them, but all of those who had sheltered the girl.

  Better that one of them—herself—should suffer than all of them be doomed.

  Mimi didn’t know how far she had run before the drones found her, but it was far enough away that she had long stopped hearing the crying of her daughter.

  The drones had threatened to kill her when they caught her, cornering her in the woods until the AI could reach her and take her back to the city. They had shackled her and tried to shame her, but Mimi hadn’t felt ashamed.

  It was the best and worst day of her life. She had lost her daughter, but she had given the girl a chance to live.

  And not just to live. To be free.

  The story she had told the AI back at the camp, about Lana having succumbed to the rain and cold the night before, seemed to be enough to keep them from looking for her. Either that, or they didn’t have the inclination to go looking for a small girl in the woods.

  After all, what was one more human to the AI? Especially a human who would probably die of exposure long before they could find her.

  The AI had likely done the math, and it wasn’t worth it to save a life like Lana’s.

  Then, there had been a cell.

  No trial.

  No sentencing.

  Those were the sorts of things that had long ago been dispensed with. How long had her time in that cell lasted? It couldn’t have been long, but it would have been unbearable without the thought that her daughter was somewhere, safe and free.

  That was all that had gotten her through those long days.

  That, and the thought that, so long as she lived, there was a chance that she might someday see her daughter again.

  And then, they put her on the ship.

  At first, the ship had seemed like a death sentence to Mimi, to know she would never see Earth again, let alone her daughter.

  On the ship, though, something had changed.

  It hadn’t happened fast, but it had happened.

  The AI had, more or less, left the humans on their own while on the ship, though not entirely. There were, inevitably, lessons from the AI they were forced to watch. Periodic and random raids on the human quarters of the ship that served more to keep the humans on edge and cooperative than anything else.

  And, of course, there were beatings when the AI merely suspected wrongdoing on the part of one of the humans.

  Life on the ship was, most obviously, not free.

  Still, it was somehow better than life had been on Earth. Over time, Mimi had grown accustomed to life on the ship. She started a family there. She didn’t tell them of her first child, the girl named Lana. She kept that memory and that hope to herself.

  Eventually, those who had boarded the ship with her died. They died earlier than they should have. But Mimi kept on living. She kept on with the hope that one day, they would find what they were looking for: the other humans. And that maybe, just maybe, those other humans would defeat the AI.

  And Mimi could go back home.

  To Earth.

  As that ship—the ship the AI had created—slowed on that fateful day only a few months earlier, Mimi had dared to hope that something would change.

  And it had.

  *

  Rediviva

  The change in the way the ship moved was the first sign that something was about to change forever.

  Beryl felt the slight bump as they came out of traveling speed. If she hadn’t been waiting for it, Beryl was unsure whether she would have noticed it. One moment, they were traveling as they had for two months and then they suddenly were not.

  Standing next to her, Beryl could tell that Mimi, the only Earthling with them, had smiled. It was the sort of smile you could feel on someone else without even seeing the gesture for yourself.

  The old woman had touched Beryl’s arm then.

  Beryl almost pulled her hand away. Not because she was startled or didn’t appreciate the feel of another human’s touch.

  No, she had almost pulled her hand away because the touch had reminded her of someone else just a little too much.

  Her mother.

  Beryl knew it had nothing to do with the similarity in their hands, but in the feelings that were conveyed by that touch.

  There was love in Mimi’s touch, but something more. Something about knowing better what Beryl was going through than Beryl herself knew. Mimi had been through more in her life than Beryl could even imagine for her own life.

  Mimi had told them stories on the trip. There were stories of life on Earth and stories of life on the Earth AI ship they had since repurposed and renamed Rediviva. Still, Beryl knew there were stories Mimi hadn’t told them. Something in that touch told not just of the stories Mimi had told them, but of those untold stories as well.

  Mimi knew how important this moment was for Beryl, even if Beryl didn’t herself realize the full import of it.

  Beryl had thought in this moment, she would be excited to be there and to have the chance to see her father again.

  Instead, now she found herself thinking of her mother.

  Rona would have loved everything about this, even though she had sworn she was never getting back on another interstellar ship. She would have loved the ship itself. Rediviva, a name Vlad and Iris had decided upon, was a name Rona would have loved, with its reference to some historical ship and some historical country Beryl didn’t care about. The ship, a completely refitted ship from that of the Earth AI, was uncrowded, light, and bright—all the things Hodios tried to be but often was not. Iris had really outdone herself retrofitting Rediviva.

  Beryl knew Rona would have loved everything about the ship itself. But mostly, she would have loved that Rediviva would have been taking her back to Beryl’s father, Whit.

  And then, Beryl found herself experiencing an entirely different feeling.

  One that had nothing to do with her mother or her father.

  Coming back to Libertas felt like coming home.

  Libertas had been the first planet on which Beryl had ever set foot. It was where she had expected to live out her life. The stars in its skies formed patterns that Beryl still remembered as if she still saw them every night. She didn’t have to think hard to remember its two moons circling the planet slowly, ever vigilant over the three green continents of Libertas and its blue oceans. Beryl knew the patterns of those continents from having watched them for much of her childhood. They were the sort of familiar that could only come from having spent years gazing at them from above, awaiting the day when they would become home.

  Beryl knew it felt like home, because it was supposed to have been home.

  “And we’re officially out of traveling speed.” Beryl heard the voice of Iris behind her, where she stood with the rest of the small group who had made this trip to Libertas. “We’ll be making our way through the three outer planets and asteroid belt to Libertas, the third rock from the sun.”

  Mimi’s hand still rested on Beryl’s arm. Beryl put her hand over that of the old woman, and squeezed it.

  They were home.

  And Beryl was about to see the only person in her family besides herself still alive.

  Chapter Seven

  “And we’re officially out of traveling speed,” Iris announced. Vlad thought it was a bit superfluous, as the bump when they came out of speed was clearly something different than the smooth ride they had known for the last two months. Outside the ship, the metal panels that stayed closed during their fastest travel speeds began to open for the first time in those two months, allowing the humans gathered on the bridge of the ship to see the blurry lights of the stars, planets, and sun around them coming into focus. On the bridge of the ship, six figures—Iris, Ber
yl, Heming, Fawn, Mimi, and himself—had gathered to watch the momentous occasion when they arrived at Libertas. And, of course, Poydras sat near Beryl, as always. “We’ll be making our way through the three outer planets and asteroid belt to Libertas, the third rock from the sun.”

  Vlad gazed out at the stars and planets as the ship slowed and they became something more than blurs, looking for Libertas to come into view. Next to him, he knew Beryl was doing the same without looking at her. On her other side stood Mimi, the only one on the ship seeing the system for the first time. For a while, Mimi had held her hand on Beryl’s arm, but now she was standing with her hands at her side, eagerly looking out the ship’s window. “How long until we’re in orbit over Libertas?”

  “Eighteen minutes.”

  “Will we be able to communicate with the planet before then?” Beryl asked. During all of the last two months, as the humans all worked to hone their physical conditions in preparation for an unknown future, Beryl rarely mentioned her father, Whit. But Vlad knew she had been thinking of the father she had assumed to be dead until only a few months earlier. Vlad knew those thoughts came much more often to Beryl than she would ever admit.

  “We could try, but at these speeds, any communication will be difficult. Within a few minutes of getting into orbit, we’ll have normal communications,” Iris said, “But Beryl, remember, this is in theory. The communications I had with Whit were not what you think of as communications. They were blips sent to drones passing at a huge distance from the planet. It wasn’t as if they carried any actual information. These were just a way for Whit to let me know he was still alive. Think of it as a beacon of light on an endless ocean. It says someone is alive, but it doesn’t give you any other information, including whether the ship on which it sits is even upright. He could be in bad shape, or even sending the signals automatically despite…”

  Iris stopped, letting them all fill in the unpleasant words for themselves. Vlad had heard all of this before, as had Beryl.

  There was still a possibility—a slim one—that Whit might be dead.