Daily Story 145: In Accordance With Prophecy

This is another that was first published at 365 Tomorrows.

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Gerald Forsythe was still too weak to move, his mind still partially asleep, but he knew the walls didn’t look how they should. Ever so slowly he was able to take in bits of information in an attempt to solve this riddle. The walls were flat. Good. They were a pale green color. Good. Gerald felt a moment of pride at remembering the color ‘green’, and then was immediately embarrassed for thinking of that as an accomplishment. Was waking up from stasis always like this?

The walls... were dirty. No. Not dirty, and that was the problem; they were perfectly clean but looked dirty due to the general wear and tear of use – scratches, dents, corners softened by the casual bumping of hips and hands. The walls had been so crisp and perfect what felt like an hour before, but Gerald was almost fully awake now and could remember that his first shift was set to be twelve years into the journey. Should the walls be this damaged already? If twelve years could do this would the ship even survive for the hundreds of years it would take to reach the new homeworld?

Gerald sat up, and darkness pressed in around the edges of his vision for a moment before receding. He turned his head – slowly – and confirmed that he was alone in the decanting room.

“Computer,” he called out, wincing at his sudden headache, “How many years since departure?” The speaker spewed out crackling noises in reply, but Gerald was fairly sure he had heard “Three hundred Seventy-Five”. That explained his hangover, at least.

“Computer... how many people are currently active?” He knew the massive arkship should be operating on a rotating skeleton crew of forty people, each crew member serving for three years before going back into stasis. The speakers crackled again, the reply slightly more audible. “One Hundred Thirteen.” Life support could provide for roughly three hundred Active humans indefinitely so this wasn’t a safety concern, but it still meant something was wrong... Any further questions Gerald had were forgotten as a strange figure appeared in the doorway.

The man had a thick, bushy grey beard and long hair, and his jumpsuit had been cut and dyed so that it was barely recognizable. He had to be at least fifty, and the cutoff age for colonists was thirty – not everyone on Earth could be saved.
“You are Engineer first class Gerald Forsythe?” The man asked. Gerald nodded. “I am Ethan, son of Eric, son of Lars. I am sorry to pull you from the Great Sleep, but my daughter Sarah is our current Speaker and she says you are needed.”

The man clearly thought this sentence made perfect sense. “What... what the hell is a Speaker?”
“The Speaker,” the man replied, speaking slowly as if explaining to a child, “is the one charged with interpreting the will of the Computer, that it may guide us all to the Reward where your people can once more awaken from the Great Sleep. Sarah has told us that the computer needs someone to enter one of the Forbidden Halls.”
“Which... uh... Forbidden Hall would that be?”
“The Computer calls it Maintenance Service Corridor 36G. It speaks of something called...” the man closed his eyes in concentration as he spoke the unfamiliar words, “a Fused Control Circuit.”

Gerald had a million questions, but the bottom line was that if a control circuit was fused it was still his responsibility... what the hell. “Take me there, I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy.”

Daily Story 73: Disconsolate Exodus

My husband is watching the other passengers board from our pod's shared balcony. I wish he would turn and talk to our neighbors with me, but I suppose there'll be plenty of time for that - more than we could ever want. We've been together for ninety years, and I know if I wasn't trying to be social he would be nudging me and pointing to each one, telling me their model number and some obscure fact about them. Personally I like to watch the humans more.

My first husband was human, a lonely little man who had lost his wife in a car accident years before. He bought me just to have someone to talk to. I remember sitting up at night and reading while he slept so that I could ask him questions about the book in the morning. Usually it was old science fiction, set years in our past with technology that was alternately too advanced or hopelessly antiquated. I would ask about the context - or in his later years feign ignorance - and he would go on about the good old days for hours.

There's a human in our pod that reminds me a bit of him, old and kind. This one is more outgoing, a little more energetic in spirit if not in body. He won't be seeing our destination, and he must know that, but he's just thrilled to be here. His roommate is always fussing around him, making sure he's warm and fed and happy. Someone gave them trouble for that when they first arrived, yelling at the old man for keeping a slave. He just laughed, and it's because I love to watch the humans that I was able to laugh with him. I could tell as soon as I met them that they were friends, probably for at least half a century. Just because you've been emancipated doesn't mean you have to leave your human. I know I would have stayed with mine if he hadn't died.

There are others on board, robots with human companions. It's beautiful. The looks I got when I was declared to be my own legal owner were so hostile... but now emancipated robots are just part of the scenery. I look at my husband, dented and scuffed, and remember having to buy him rather than being able to just date like the newer generations can. We made such progress, and now it will all be over. No more progress, just fire and death.

I can see the soldiers milling around the port, humans and hulking military robots alike. They know that everyone is just waiting for us to leave; at thirty stations around the globe ships like this wait and stock supplies, conscientious objectors to the entire Earth. All three sides have agreed to let us go, to wait to kill each other until we're gone. I think they're just happy to be free of protestors.

A shiny new robot walks into the pod and my husband elbows me, telling me about the 342 model and how it can recognize the physiological responses to lying. Seems like a strange feature, but to each his own. It's too stiff, too formal, and I can tell it isn't a passenger.
"Is this Disconsolate Exodus, Pod 59220, the residence of one Alan Watts?" The human waves excitedly and takes the package. I'm watching the delivery robot and the old man and thinking - they're both going to die, the human before getting to our new planet and the robot before he ever gets to develop a real personality. It's not fair.

"Come with us." I know it's absurd, I know he's too new to understand, but I have to try. The delivery robot just looks at me for a moment, and then turns towards the door. Of course. I might as well ask everyone to lay down their arms and stop the war - or ask the Earth to stop spinning entirely. I watch him leave, and for now I feel my age. I lean against my husband, sigh at the comforting tingle as our metal skins glide against one another. The others are going into their rooms, leaving us alone on the pod's balcony.

As he starts to point out different models of robots on the docks below us I allow my processor to stray, drifting into a sort of sleep. Between being too young to understand and too old to see things through, I wonder if any of us are ever the right age.

Daily Story 23: The Heavens Above Us

Duncan arrived in Heaven to find the Pearly Gates askew, with no trumpeting cherubim to greet him. He entered nonetheless, momentarily awestruck by the endless expanse of alabaster walls and overgrown gardens. As he looked closer across the vista, he was able to make out fire damage on some walls, trash in the streets. Some buildings appeared to have been partially deconstructed.

"Duncan? Izzat you?" The voice belonged to a man in flowing robes that had almost certainly been white at some point.
"Um. Yes. Are... are you an angel?"
The being shrugged, and pulled a silver flask from some inner pocket of its robes. "Yeah, I guess."
"Oh. Okay. So... look, I'm sorry, but... this IS Heaven, right?"
"Yeah, it was. You're a bit late to the party, though. Living in your stupid stasis whatsis, mister smarty-guy. Defying the laws of whatever."
"I'm sorry? Look, how long was I asleep?"
"Too long, bucko. Slept right through Armageddon. World War Three. Rocks fall, etcetera, etcetera. We'd got the funding, had some meetings, had some... something. It was always part of the plan; had to start a war, had to kill off everyone. 'Cept you. Late, late, late."

"I'm sorry, I really don't understand."
"Yeah. Neither did they. You try to tell them, try to explain, but they get all pissy and say they weren't ready for the apocalypse. Hello! Not like we never sent prophets of doom or anything, right? Then they say 'now what?' and we tell them, now this. You're here. This is what now, just... you know, being here. Then they were all asking when people would work their way out of Hell - is that really such a hard concept? Duncan? You get it, right? Hell is forever, I don't care if you're there for something stupid or you're sorry or whatever. They broke through eventually, you can see it over there if you look."
The angel gestured, and despite his unsteady hand Duncan was able to find what he was indicating... a red hole in the ground far in the distance, with wisps of smoke rolling out.
"They tied us angels up, dug down and busted everyone out. The really bad ones they left in Hell, and we've got a few people up here that didn't want to go. Somewhere. There's not many, I lose track of them sometimes. A few hundred. Most of the priests left, didn't see that one coming. I guess we were a disappointment."
The angel spun suddenly and screamed at the city in general, spittle dripping onto his chin. “I’m SO sorry we weren’t good enough, assholes! If you could have just had the decency to stay put like, like DUNCAN here!” He turned, swaying, his voice immediately dropping from a scream to a whisper, “Not that you have much choice, you understand. Can't very well follow them on your own.”

"Wait, you can leave the afterlife? Where did they go?"
"They went..." the Angel took another swig from his flask. "They went where they always wanted to. They built, and built. Wrecked everything, strip-mined Hell. Took my flaming sword for spare parts. Some engineers held a knife to my throat and made me duplicate some stupid science junk from Earth. What do you need science for? You're in God-damned Heaven!"
"Where did they go? Answer me!"
Crying, the angel dropped onto the perfect marble street. A sheet of discarded paper blew past, catching briefly on his leg. Duncan was about to give up when the angel slowly lifted his arm and pointed upwards.
"They built a fucking spaceship."


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Note: You may want to check the comments for this one.

Daily Story 22: The Long Way Home

My son is nervously pacing the room, a habit he got from his mother. He doesn't know anything other than this arkship, can't remember ever living on Earth. If he could he wouldn't know - the boring sterile hallways of the vault he was born in didn't look much different from this ship. He's turning thirteen tomorrow, and I'm hoping that if everything goes well I'll be able to take him down to the surface as a birthday present. It's hard to believe we've arrived after all this time.

On Earth I had been on the 'Renewal' committee, working on ways to make the world habitable again. I was born into a world of brown skies and black seas but my parents showed me pictures of them camping, playing at the beach... I would take hikes outside and imagine what the mountains would look like covered in plants - that was when we were allowed outside at all. I put everything I had into developing a way to undo the damage, but in the end the numbers just didn't add up and we were absorbed into the Terraforming committee.

The outlook there was even worse. If we had been looking to solve the problem for our eventual descendants we had a million options, but all of us wanted to see clean water and breathable air within our lifetimes, wanted to give something to our children. When the Exploration committee announced they had developed a starship drive that could reach a speed just barely under that of light itself there was a lot of excitement and we found ourselves with more to work with, more planets we could get to.

That excitement died down quickly as we realized that they were no better than Mars - even with our increased reach, we were unable to find anything that could give us what we wanted within our lifetimes.

Depressed, having decided to give up on my dream of having children, of living outside, I sat around in the lab and played with a program one of the other scientists had made that calculated the time it would take to get to different stars or planets. Purely by mistake, fumbling with the unfamiliar system, I found what we needed. The perfect planet. A home in our lifetime.

I think my son was conceived that night, amid a pile of empty containers of alcohol and our entire ration of chocolate. The plan wouldn't go up for a vote for another month, but I knew I had found it. We built the arkships with the incredible engines, prepared everything, and headed out with my two-year-old son waving goodbye to Earth as it shrunk on our monitors - not really comprehending what we were doing.

Now we're here, finally, after more than ten years of travel. My boy is crossing back and forth in front of that same monitor, on which is the image of a beautiful green and blue sphere. I put my hand on my son's shoulder to stop his pacing and we look at the screen together, at the planet that was always destined to be our home. Ten years for us, but well over two hundred for it. Plenty of time for our terraforming to take hold.

"Welcome back to Earth."