by Ken Barrett
“I’m sorry Ma’am, but that’s not possible.”
“What? Irene, did that motherfucker sabotage you?”
“No Ma’am. All ships are completely capable of navigation and travel on our own.”
“Then what’s your problem?”
“It’s quite simple Ma’am. To arrive at any specific destination, one must know where they are starting from.”
“All right, take us back to Earth then, you can fly us back on the same path we took to get here. If that little fucker is still alive I’ll choke him to death with my own hands… or maybe I’ll give him to my Nurse, then sit back and watch.”
“Again, I must apologize Chancellor. Father’s program has already deleted our original course. We don’t know where we are, and we don’t even know which galaxy among those we see is our own.”
In a rage, Margaret squeezed her fists so tight that her fingernails bit painfully into her palms. She paced in a circle, needing to do something, anything to expel the violent frenzy that welled up within her and clenched at her heart.
“Chancellor, Father’s program is about to terminate. He suggests that you watch the monitors.”
The rat bastard had planned to send a subversive message to her people; she would not allow that. “No! Shut the video down. Turn it all off. Stop it!”
“I’m sorry Chancellor, but I cannot comply. Terminating the program will vent your atmosphere into space. Everyone will die, and it is essential to my programming that I protect all human life.”
“Military! Fire on the monitors! Shut them all down!” She was too upset to realize that no one would hear her command on the other ships.
A huge soldier appeared alongside her niece Carolyn. “You! Shoot out that damned thing. Destroy it!” she commanded.
The bald-headed hulking guard drew his weapon and frowned. He hesitated, then looked at her niece and shrugged.
“That cannot be allowed.” Irene’s annoyingly serene voice was warm and overly filled with kindness. “Any energy or projectile firearm used within the ship could cause a hull breech. All weaponry has been disabled for your protection.”
“No, no, no… NO!” Margaret screamed, and as if upon her command the video screens all came to life.
“Hello Mother,” Liam’s face… his idiotic, ugly, and eternally aggravating face was appearing on all the ships monitors. He was calmly sitting at his stupidly insignificant cubicle table in the computer lab.
“Is this live?” she demanded. “Catch the signal. Use it to find our way back to that son of a bitch.”
“This is a prerecorded message,” the disgusting traitor said, as if he had anticipated her question.
She frantically looked for a way to stop the betrayer from speaking to her people. She wouldn’t allow it, and so grabbed the soldier’s pistol. It didn’t matter if her shot vented atmosphere; a maintenance worker would surely fix it in time. She aimed the gun and fired, but nothing happened. The damned computer, Irene, she had somehow turned off all the weapons. With a scream of rage, she flung the pistol toward the massive screens. Her effort was pointless because even in the best conditions she wasn’t strong enough to throw that far. The useless weapon flew, following the weird curving trajectory dictated by the infernal Coriolis effect, and landed only about three meters away.
“I suppose that your evil Nurse is also watching,” Liam continued. “So Chelsea, I want you to know that I came up with the plan for all this while enjoying the pleasure of your company. If anyone is to blame, it’s you and your fucking needles.
“Carolyn is probably there too.” On the huge monitors, Liam shrugged and sadly shook his head.
“The first thing I want everyone to know, is that you’ve arrived just exactly where I intended. It’s not an error, but instead a consequence of your actions, toward me, my friends, and all the murdered citizens of Flatiron City. The only reason you didn’t materialize within a super-massive blackhole, or end up stuck forever in N-Space, is that I find unnecessary killing to be morally repugnant. But, as I reflect upon my decision, I wonder whether slaughtering you all may have been a kinder thing to do.” Liam paused thoughtfully, then slowly shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t have been, because all life, even of the most despicable sort, deserves a chance.
“You’re probably wondering where you are. Well, I’ll tell you… you’re far away. I’ve put you at such a great distance from us that you’ll never find your way back. The galaxies you see on your screens are very close by comparison. For you, Earth doesn’t exist anymore, but I’m sure you’ll find a new home for yourselves; a new planet to ruin. You’ll breed until you overpopulate, then attempt suicide again. The human race is a cancer spreading through the universe; you infect whatever you touch, which then sickens and dies. It’s your destiny to repeat your failures until you finally learn enough to stop... just stop, and figure out what it means to be humane rather than being human.”
Liam straightened up in his chair. “Believe it or not, I wish you well. Maybe one day, thousands of generations in the future, you’ll learn from this and evolve into something better. If you don’t, extinction will certainly claim you.”
With that, the transmission ended. “Chancellor, all systems are restored and are online,” Irene said. “You may begin your victory speech now.”
Margaret crumpled, fell to her knees, and began to scream.
Afterword
First and foremost, thank you for taking this journey with me; I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. What you’ve just finished is the first in a series of five separate novels that together paint a complex picture of the inevitable end of the human species. We won’t be around forever; extinction is a natural part of evolution, and we will eventually step aside for whatever comes next.
The next two novels in this series are:
* Desperation (early 2019): What happened to the ships that departed.
* Damnation (late 2019): The fate of those that were left behind.
If you could spare the time, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a review. The deck is stacked against unknown authors such as myself, and reviews help my books stand up against the big-boys on a site like Amazon.
Again, thank you for reading my book – and stay tuned for the other novels in my Extinction Series when they become available. You can keep in touch via:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/IndyRoads/
My website: www.indianroads.net.
Until next time – Ken.
About the Author
Ken Barrett grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked as a Design Engineer for over thirty years in Silicon Valley. He is a lifelong biker (motorcyclist), and an accomplished martial artist with advanced black-belt degrees in Tae Kwon Do, Chinese Kenpo, Hapkido, and Shotokan. He is retired and living in Colorado.