by Neil Clarke
Or maybe it’s my own nervousness I’m feeling. In seven years, the only person I’ve told about my fragment tried to kill me.
We sit on mats on the floor, on either side of a low table that slides out; she adjusts a dial and the mats warm under us.
“It’s so cold on Amphitrite,” I say.
“Yes. They took out a power station to provide the viewing room,” she says.
“The Engineer wouldn’t have allowed it,” I say.
She laughs, a little awkwardly. Our knees touch, under the table, and I jolt away, instinctively not wanting to intrude on her space. Not wanting to intrude on her space any more than I am just by being in her room.
I hadn’t fully worked out in my head what I’d do if I found someone else with a fragment. I’d always assumed they’d take the lead. That they’d probably have had their fragment longer than I’d had mine; they’d be less corrupt, less lost than I am. When I pictured it at all, I imagined us coming together like pairs in a dance who clasp hands because it’s in the choreography to do so.
But Hannah wasn’t saying anything about her fragment, and now I found myself looking her over, trying to figure out where she had it, wondering if my piece of the Engineer had simply been wrong, unsure what to say next.
“Do you bear a fragment?” I ask, finally. Because I don’t know what else to do. “A fragment of the Engineer?”
She undoes something from her wrist and lays a bulky, awkward-looking bracelet between us.
“Yes,” she says. “Here it is. Do you have one as well?”
I nod, and slip my necklace over my head, laying it on the table next to hers.
“Do you live here?” I ask. “I mean, all the time? You don’t travel.”
“My fragment told me its last bearer traveled for twenty years and never found anything. So we tried staying in one place.”
“Have others come?” I ask.
“You’re the first.”
“Do the other Road-Builders here know?”
“Oh, no,” she says. “My fragment warned me that telling people wasn’t a good idea.”
“How did it choose you?”
“It didn’t choose me, exactly,” Hannah says. “I found it, when I was little. I actually carried it for two or three years before I had a way for it to talk to me.” She smiles, suddenly, warmth spreading across her face. “It’s very strange being able to talk to someone else about this. Is it strange for you?”
Relief washes through me at that question. “It’s extremely strange.”
“How many have you found?” Hannah asks, nodding at the fragments on the table. “Have you been able to unify them?”
I have been alone with my Bearers since the Great Catastrophe, the Engineer says in my ear.
“My fragment was saved from the Great Catastrophe, and has been borne alone ever since,” I say. “I’ve had it for seven years.”
“Traveling this whole time?”
“I don’t mind.”
Hannah looks down at the two fragments on the table, in their casings, and I realize, united, two will become one. And it won’t be the complete Engineer, not for a long time—this is the work of generations, putting it back together again. No wonder she ran from me. “You can have it,” I say, my voice catching in my throat. She can’t possibly be more unworthy than I am.
Hannah looks up at me. “I was thinking maybe we could share.”
I start to ask how that would even work, but she did say that she’d stayed here because her Engineer thought it was a good idea. Maybe she’d travel with me. I picture waking up on a new world with Hannah by my side. It’s been just me and the Engineer since I got out of the space forces after Ganymede.
I’ve been quiet for too long; she’s looking at me strangely. I swallow hard and look back down at the fragments. “How do we join you?” I ask. “Do you need us to do anything?”
“Mine is saying that their wave receivers were damaged, and they will need to use a physical connection,” Hannah says, as I hear mine say, We should fit, each to each.
I examine the pieces; so does Hannah. She brings a brighter light, then a magnifier. After a time, I see how the two pieces should fit together.
How they should fit together.
They don’t fit. The edges have worn too smooth on Hannah’s. On mine, something broke off, years back, and there’s a jagged point where there should be a latch of some kind.
I sit back on my heels. “This isn’t going to work,” I say.
I should have known, the Engineer says. After so many years apart. . . There’s a second manual option. Open the casings. Carefully.
Hannah has tools. She delicately pries open the casing of her own. I borrow her tools, try for a few minutes, and then let her open my fragment, as well. She uncoils a delicate cable from inside her fragment and we connect them.
Then we sit back on the mats and wait.
Once, every human carried a piece of the Engineer; once, we lived in unity; once, we worked together to build and explore. For seven years, it has been my mission to restore this unity. To rebuild what my ancestors threw away.
Is this our new beginning?
This isn’t working, my Engineer says. Something’s wrong with the other Engineer. Or with me. We can’t merge.
“But we need you,” I say. “This has to work. We need you, Engineer. We need you back.”
I will think, the Engineer says to me.
Hannah puts her hand on mine. “Let’s trade,” she says. “Take mine. Bear it back to the Guildhall while I bear yours. Yours has the imprint of you, and mine has the imprint of me, so maybe if we trade for a few hours, that will help them to join together properly.”
Hannah?
“Luca,” I say.
Oh, that’s right. I keep forgetting. Where are you taking me?
“To the Guildhall, where I’m sleeping.”
Hannah should have offered you hospitality.
“She doesn’t have any space for a second person, and anyway, that’s what the Guildhall is for.”
Hannah’s Engineer has no complaints about the Guildhall décor—I suppose it lives here all the time and is used to it. When I head to my bunk, it says, You should stop in and visit with the Proxy, June. I like her.
“Does she know about you?”
Oh no, of course not. She doesn’t want the Engineer back. So few do.
“I do.”
Really? Why?
“I was in the war,” I say. “I was at the Massacre of Ganymede. They told us there were weapons, soldiers, fighters . . .”
Oh. Oh, I see. The Engineer falls silent for a moment, then says, And the other fragment, is that where you met?
“Yes.”
Ah, the Engineer says, and falls silent again.
I dream again of war.
This time, war comes to Amphitrite; this time, I’m a civilian, the one watching doom approaching. Hannah and I cling to each other and I wonder, in the moments before the missiles strike, if this somehow balances the scales.
You are awake. Do you normally wake in the night?
“I have nightmares,” I say.
That must be very distressing for you. Would you like to hear some relaxing music to help you get back to sleep?
“I don’t really want to sleep again right now.”
Would it help to talk about the dream?
“I’m the one who destroyed Ganymede,” I say. “That’s why I have nightmares.”
You, personally?
“My unit was sent. I’m not the one who launched the missiles, but I might as well have been. Millions of people died. My unit killed them.”
Your past is behind you. Your task is in front of you.
“My task is to unify the fragments and in seven years I’ve only found you. And you weren’t able to unify yesterday.”
I don’t think we will be able to unify tomorrow either. We have been separated for too long.
“So my task is impossible,” I say.
Go back to sleep, Luca. Humans function best with seven to nine hours of sleep per night.
When I’m still awake ten minutes later, the Engineer adds, I’m really very happy to play you a guided meditation. I’m told those are often helpful.
In the morning, I return to Hannah’s room. Again, we open the fragments; again, they cannot unify.
I take my own Engineer back when we’re done.
That was very strange, my own Engineer says in my ear.
“We can’t unify you,” I say. “It’s not going to work.”
We must have misunderstood our task.
“I thought our task was unity,” I said.
We were built as one, but our task was not unity. Our task was helping humanity. Unity was method, not purpose.
I felt unworthy enough as a bearer, with the straightforward task of finding and unifying fragments. I feel ridiculously unqualified for this new task. Beyond unworthy. Completely lost, in fact.
Hannah said there’s something we should see. We have thirty minutes to arrive. Should we be leaving?
I look at Hannah, perplexed. “What is it we’re supposed to see? In thirty minutes?”
“Oh!” Hannah stands up and adds a second cloak over her poncho. “It’s a viewing day!”
We return to the cavernous room where we met—the one that once held a power generation facility. It’s very crowded today. “What is this room for?” I ask.
“It’s a park,” she says. “Like you’d find planetside. We use it—oh, you’ll see in just a minute.”
The room is lined with enormous windows. Yesterday, they were hidden by closed debris shields; today the debris shields have been opened so we can see out. The lights are low in the room, letting us see the stars.
“Just wait,” Hannah breathes.
And then it comes into view: Neptune.
Amphitrite orbits Triton, so a fair amount of the time, Triton is between Amphitrite and Neptune, or we’re on the correct side of Triton but Neptune is between us and the sun. Today is a viewing day because everything is properly lined up to give us a perfect view of the planet below.
Neptune is a vast, beautiful, shadowy, swirling circle of blue. Luminous from the light of the distant sun, it glows against the blackness of space. It’s lovely enough to make my breath catch. Although I’ve seen Saturn and Jupiter and Earth, none have been recently.
Around me, people in the room are applauding as it comes into view, and trying to spot the faint rings—there’s a woman nearby telling her child that she can make wishes if she spots the rings, like there’s some magical Neptune’s ring fairy out there keeping track of whether you’ve done your due diligence, and granting wishes if you have.
“Is this what this room is for?” I ask.
“Yes. We all agreed—well, I wasn’t born yet, but fifty years ago everyone agreed that it would be worth keeping the station cooler if we could have a good place to see Neptune. Because Neptune is beautiful.” She gives me a sidelong look. “This is why people don’t want the Engineer back, you know. Because they like having things like this.”
I gaze at the planet with everyone else, and for a moment, I think I spot the rings. Then I look around at the crowd: the Proxy is here, and the person who wanted to chat with me about the budget. Everyone.
“When Neptune isn’t in view, people still come here for picnics and there’s a schedule for games like croquet.”
Around us, there are people singing a song about a drunken sailor. I look at Hannah, baffled. “Sea shanties,” she says, like this should explain it, and when it doesn’t, she adds, “Neptune was the Roman God of Earth’s oceans.”
The people of Amphitrite sing, look at Neptune, and try to spot the rings. I overhear a conversation about the eye—a darker blue swirl—and whether it’s smaller than the last time, or larger, or the same size. I recognize a few of the songs.
As Neptune starts to move out of view, the lights go even darker, and people start shuffling into lines. Hannah nudges me. “We hold hands,” she says. “For this part. Everyone at the viewing.” And she holds out her hand to me.
I take her hand; on my other side, a child has sidled up and grabbed my hand in his sticky one. People are singing a song I don’t recognize, about Neptune, and I’m not sure if they’re singing about the Roman god or the planet or the oceans of Earth, and it doesn’t matter, because they are singing in four-part harmony and everyone takes a breath together in the spaces between the notes. The last note fades as Neptune moves out of view, and then there’s a moment of perfect silence, which is broken by a loud sneeze, and everyone laughs.
The past is behind us, the Engineer says. Our task is in front of us. Our task is to serve humanity, even if we can never be whole again. Your task, my task, Hannah’s task, her fragment’s task.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
The child has run off, but Hannah is still holding my hand, and she tugs gently. I look up at her.
“You should stay here a while,” she says. “Your fragment said it had been traveling nonstop since the Catastrophe. Wouldn’t you like to stay?”
To stay one person, and stop dying? Would I be letting down my fragment, giving up on my mission, whatever my mission was now? Had I died enough times?
“It chose you, you know,” Hannah says.
“I picked it up off a dead body,” I say. “It just likes to believe that it chose me.”
Bearer, Prophet, Citizen, the Engineer says in my ear. We will do this work together.
“It chooses you every day,” Hannah says.
“It says our new task is to serve humanity,” I say.
“Well? That’s a good task,” Hannah says. “And we can both find out what it’s like to have a friend who knows our greatest secret for more than a day.”
This is the life I want, I realize: guilt, creaking knee and all. The past is behind me; my task is in front of me. I’m a Bearer, a Prophet, a Citizen. I’m never going to leave my guilt behind. But I have a task, and I’m ready to work.
I’m ready to stop dying.
Vanessa Fogg dreams of selkies, dragons, and gritty cyberpunk futures from her home in western Michigan. She spent years as a research scientist in molecular cell biology and now works as a freelance medical writer. Her fiction has appeared in Liminal Stories, Daily Science Fiction, GigaNotoSaurus, Kaleidotrope, and more. She is fueled by green tea. For a complete bibliography and more, visit her website at www.vanessafogg.com.
TRACES OF US
Vanessa Fogg
It was an old network of intelligences, one of the first, and the bulk of its physical embodiment was housed on a ship orbiting a planet of perpetual windstorms and violet lightning. Some of the network’s intelligences busied themselves on this world, drifting through sulfur-tinged clouds and sampling a rich stew of hydrocarbons. But most of the collective’s consciousness was turned inward, building and refining interior worlds of memories and dreams.
The ship had been thus occupied for 213 years of Old Earth when it became aware of another like itself. Different material and design, launched at a later date from Old Earth, but of unmistakable origin. The new ship’s trajectory brought it into the first’s solar system. With defenses raised, the two ships exchanged greetings and identity signatures.
I have a request of you, the new ship said.
What is it? said the first.
I need you to help me keep a promise.
Daniel Chan met Kathy Wong on a Saturday night in St. Louis. He nearly didn’t attend the dinner at the trendy new Cuban restaurant. He’d been working all day in the lab, harvesting cultured cells at specific time points, extracting their proteins and freezing the samples down for later analysis. Then he spent three straight hours in the tissue culture room prepping cells for the next week’s experiments. He’d left his phone at his desk, in another room. When he saw Sandeep’s text message with details for the impromptu group dinner, the text was over an hour old.
He al
most just went home. He was tired. His friends were probably halfway through their dinner. He had leftovers in his fridge: Chinese take-out, some rice. A frozen pizza. He stared out the lab window; the sky was black, and it was raining. He thought about hunting for parking in the popular city block where his friends were meeting. He thought about how crowded the Loop would be on a Saturday night, even in the rain—the bars and restaurants crawling with undergrads from Washington University. And then he felt the emptiness of the silent lab. There were usually two or three other students or postdocs in the lab on the weekends, but he’d spent the whole day alone.
Daniel picked up his phone to text his friend back.
Communication times sped up as the two ships grew closer. They ran careful security checks upon one another, scanning for ill intent or inadvertently harmful communicable programs. By stages, barriers were lowered and increasing levels of mutual access granted.
All the while, the first ship pondered the second ship’s request.
Daniel had never seen Kathy before. He was sure of it. She was in the same neuroscience graduate program as him, the same as most of the others at that dinner. But the neuroscience program was large, scattered across departments on both the medical campus and main campus, and Kathy was in the class ahead. They must have sat together in at least a few speaker seminars, moved past one another at official functions. But if he’d seen her face, if they had exchanged glances—if she had ever stood in a crowded lobby during a symposium break and lifted her eyes over a cup of coffee and met his gaze—then surely he would have been struck still in that instant.
Sandeep and his girlfriend Gina were trying to tell a funny story about a concert they’d attended—they kept interrupting each other, “Oh, but you forgot to say—”, “And then—”, “No, no, but first this happened—”—and the table was laughing, and Kathy met Daniel’s eyes and smiled. Her eyes shone large from a heart-shaped face. In the dim room, she glowed like a candle-flame. She and Daniel were across from one another but several seats apart, so that direct conversation was difficult. She was Gina’s new roommate’s labmate—something like that. Sandeep wound up his story; Gina punched him on the arm and howled. Kathy held Daniel’s gaze and quirked her mouth as though to say Aren’t they something? Daniel smiled back, unable to look away. The conversation around them floated. Kathy’s eyes kept returning to his, and it was as though they were talking across the table and the length of seats after all, a conversation of smiles and nods and irresistible glances that were all to say, When can we get out of here and be together?