Unlight

by Chandra Shekhar

  No, it was better to wait for a bit.

  In the meantime, Jessica continued to bone up on the fundamentals of communication theory, antennas, and radio transmission. She and Anna spent several hours familiarizing themselves with the equipment at the local radio station. The mass of circuit diagrams, consoles, wires, and switches in the control room looked daunting at first, but no more so than the equipment at the Air and Geo domes they had mastered. They soon felt confident enough to operate the station. As a trial run, they transmitted a piece of music on an FM frequency, while the others back home tuned in to listen. After a few failed tries, a piece by Mozart and then a raga played by Ravi Shankar came over the radio to the intense delight of Larry, Nicole, and Elizabeth. Switching from FM to shortwave AM was now just a matter of flipping a set of switches.

  On Nicole’s suggestion, the group also began regular training sessions in self-defense. Larry, initially hesitant about this, was eventually persuaded. If there were other survivors besides themselves, sooner or later they might meet face to face. If the encounter was friendly, their training would have provided merely some exercise and amusement. If it turned out to be hostile, on the other hand, their ability to defend themselves might be a matter of life and death. Larry, who knew some kung fu, and Nicole, who had learned basic self-defense during her college days, proved able instructors in unarmed combat. They also tried out various firearms. Though none of them had fired a shot before, they became moderately proficient in using guns.

  “You can now defend your honor if need be,” Larry teased his companions, “and save yourselves from a fate worse than death.”

  “What if the others turn out to be, you know, man-hungry amazons?” asked Anna. “Then you’ll be the one playing defense!”

  “He might not want to,” said Jessica.

  “Having more admiring women around him will be terrible for his ego,” said Anna.

  “You little twits!” scolded Larry. “Seriously, I hope we never have to use any of this training.”

  While preparing themselves to face the world, they checked the shortwave frequencies daily to see if anyone else was transmitting. They consistently drew a blank.

  Were they alone, after all?

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Anniversary

  On January 17, the first anniversary of their return, the group held another celebration. This time, the mood was unrestrainedly cheerful. Death from freezing or starvation no longer threatened them. They had a whole continent to explore, a land that was now returning to life. They were in peak health, got along famously as a team, and had no shortage of tasks to challenge their physical and mental powers. The house was warm, the windows open, and the air fresh and pollution-free. The streets around them were clear and quiet. All the tennis courts, swimming pools, theaters, and libraries were theirs to enjoy. Life was great.

  On the flip side, drinkable champagne was now impossible to find, so the family had switched to gin and bitters.

  “Not too bad as celebratory libations go,” said Jessica. To tease Larry, she would sometimes assume a snobbish accent and vocabulary. She did so well that over time the speech mannerism had become almost ingrained in her. Now she had to make an effort to recapture the slangy drawl and terse phrasing of her youth.

  As always, the family enjoyed an hour of boisterous festivity before turning to more serious matters. Elizabeth gave Larry his opening: “It has been a wonderful twelve months. But what does the new year hold in store for us?”

  Larry set his glass down and put his arms around his two most favorite tormentors sitting on either side. He was feeling pleasantly warm and mildly tipsy from the gin.

  “Glad you asked. I’ve had many, many good years both before and during the Shroud, but I can safely say that the past one has been the best ever. May I be allowed to get preachy for a moment?”

  “No way,” said Jessica.

  “Permission denied,” said Anna.

  “Please,” begged Larry.

  “Okay, perhaps just this once,” said Anna.

  “Thanks. My sermon is this—life is great as long as we have a goal and are making steady progress toward it. We can’t stop striving, however, once we accomplish that goal. Because if we do, we’ll stagnate and grow unhappy, even if we have everything we need. That’s why it’s important to keep finding new goals. Then another. Agreed?”

  “It’s better to travel hopefully,” said Anna.

  “Clichéd but true,” said Jessica.

  “During the Shell years, our goal was to survive. That was the destination we were traveling hopefully toward. The hope of deliverance kept us going and made our confinement bearable. A year ago, we attained that goal. We arrived at that destination. Then we found a new goal, which was to make this house into a home again and make the environs safe and pleasant. Our combined efforts have made short work of that goal as well. We now have every comfort of civilization: electricity, heat, water, even street lights. So now that destination too has been reached. Agreed?”

  “Sure, Reverend,” said Jessica. “If you say so.”

  “Preach away, Larry,” said Anna.

  “So we need to come up with some new goals for each of us, and perhaps some joint goals as well. Of course, we’ll keep pegging away and making things around us more civilized. You know—clear more streets, plant more trees, all of that. We’ll continue our studies and experiments. But these are incremental steps. By goals I mean something more fundamental.”

  He paused for a few seconds and addressed Nicole. “Let me start with you. Any thoughts on your goals for the future?”

  “Hmm … I can’t think of any goals, really. I could resume my medical lectures with the equipment from the hospital. And there’s plenty of cadavers to dissect, of course. But I guess you’d call these incremental goals.”

  “How about you, Lizzie?”

  “Me, darling? I can’t think of anything beyond my desire to be of use to all of you. Nothing else comes to my mind, I’m afraid. How about yourself?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, my goals were to ensure the safety of all of you and create a space where you could develop your survival skills. I think I’ve done pretty well on the second one, to the point that each of you knows at least as much as I do, and often much more. Without flattery, each of you is now as strong or stronger than I am. There’s nothing I can do that each of you can’t do better.

  “Actually, there’s one thing,” said Anna. Her sister giggled.

  “I wonder what that is, but better not go there, perhaps. Anyway, I feel my work is done. I can now sit back and grow old. You know, putter around the house, read books, and keep trying to meditate. Maybe run a few simple errands. So that accounts for us old fogies. The three of us have pretty much lived our lives and are content to play supporting roles. Which brings me to these two lazy creatures sitting next to me. We can’t let them off the hook so easily. They have their entire lives in front of them and can’t afford to coast for too long.”

  “Count on you to make us do the heavy lifting,” said Jessica.

  “Slave driver!” said Anna.

  “Have you thought of what you might want to do with your life?” Elizabeth asked Anna.

  Anna looked at the floor. “Well, we’ve talked about this before.” She sighed. “In the normal course of things, I guess I would’ve joined the Agri, got married, had kids. But what’s the use of talking about all that? I might as well wish to travel to Mars.”

  Elizabeth looked at her tenderly for a long moment and turned to her other granddaughter. “What about you, dear?”

  Jessica shrugged her shoulders and grimaced. “I had big plans too. Get a PhD, teach at the Uni, do research, win the Nobel prize. Maybe marriage, family. But now … it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  The discussion continued for a while but remained inconclusive. Larry had the last word on the topic: “Whatever you two decide to do I will support with all my ability. I think I can speak for your mum an
d grandma as well. From now on, you get to make all the decisions. The three of us will do our best to make sure it happens. The future is yours.”

  After this serious turn, the conversation resumed its jovial tone. Their prospects were limited, but they knew they had much to be grateful for. Dinner was an enjoyable affair. After some post-prandial card and word games, they slept like the dead.

  Sometime during the night, the radio receiver came to life. Broken words in a foreign language came through for a few minutes, and then the transmission stopped.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Contact

  A week later, on January 24 of the second post-Shroud year, a transmission came through when the family had just sat down for breakfast. Intensely excited, their meal forgotten, the girls rushed to the radio and turned the volume up. They weren’t alone on planet Earth after all! By the time the others came downstairs, Jessica had already started recording the audio signal. The female voice on the radio was speaking a language that Larry immediately recognized as Finnish, a language he knew slightly. The sounds seemed oddly familiar to Jessica too, and she knew why—they reminded her of the last transmission she had heard before fleeing to the Shell more than eleven years before.

  The signal wavered in strength. Some words were clear—apart from tulen pian and kartta, Larry could make out the Finnish words for “person” and “contact”—while others were unintelligible. After about ten minutes the signal went dead and only static came through. The family listened as Jessica played her recording.

  “From what I can make out, they seem to be looking for other survivors,” Larry said. “They were specifying some way to contact them—on a special frequency, perhaps—but that part was too garbled.”

  “Since they’re broadcasting in Finnish, are they looking for survivors only in their local area?”

  “It’s possible. It’s also possible they have no English speakers left.”

  The family members looked at each other with uncertainty and hope.

  “Perhaps they’ll make other transmissions?” Elizabeth said.

  “This might not be their first,” Nicole added. “Others might have come through when we were asleep or away.”

  “True. Let’s leave the recorder on. How many hours of audio can it store?”

  “Hundreds. It’s voice activated.”

  “That’s great. Let’s check every evening to see if something came through during the day.”

  After keeping the family on tenterhooks for the next three days, another transmission came through, this time in English. The audio quality was much better, and, despite the speaker’s thick Nordic accent, his words were perfectly intelligible:

  “Message from surviving members of Finland cold shelter. We are group of twenty-nine men and forty-four women, composed of scientists, physicians, engineers, pilots, others. We have restored electricity, water, and other essentials to Suomenlinna neighborhood of Helsinki. Hope to have at least one runway at the Helsinki airport operational. If you get this message, contact us by shortwave radio at 15.265 megahertz. Tell us about your group, skills, and situation.”

  The transmission threw the family into a frenzy of excitement, and they immediately gathered to discuss how they should respond.

  “You get to make the call,” Larry told Anna and Jessica. He and the two older women looked expectantly at them.

  The girls gazed at each other for a few seconds.

  “This is, like, unbelievably thrilling,” said Anna finally. “But I can’t decide what to do. We have a very happy life here, and I’d hate to upset it.”

  All eyes turned to her sister. “Same here,” said Jessica. “Super, mega excited, but not sure we should respond. At least not at once. We should wait a bit until we can think straight.”

  The others exchanged glances.

  “Sounds good to me,” said Larry, and looked inquiringly at Nicole and Elizabeth, who nodded without speaking. “And as we said before, you two get to decide. The rest of us will embrace your choice, whatever it is.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes. “That’s right, dump it all in our laps!”

  Anna echoed her sister’s sentiment. “You guys can’t bail on this. Once we establish radio contact, we’ll have to reveal our location. Maybe they’ll know the location from the signal itself, who knows? Anyway, the next thing you know they’ll be knocking on our door. Are we ready for that? What we decide will have, like, major consequences for all of us.”

  Larry turned to Elizabeth for help. “It is a serious responsibility,” she told her granddaughters, “but one that the two of you can handle.” Nicole and Larry nodded. The girls argued some more but finally conceded the point.

  Over the next few weeks, while similar messages were received several times daily, the girls took long walks together to talk about their course of action. They made little headway. On the positive side, both were of the same mind; the situation would have been delicate if one sister wanted to make contact while the other opposed it. On the flip side, they were both in an agony of indecision, torn between the thrill of the new and the comfort of the familiar. Over time, their excitement dwindled and inertia took over. Life was very pleasant now. Why rock the boat when the sailing was so smooth?

  “We’ve decided against contacting the Finns,” Jessica told them one day.

  Larry felt a mix of disappointment and relief. He would have loved seeing the girls expand their social circle, enjoy other relationships, find romance, maybe marry and have kids, but he was also anxious to keep them from harm. A father’s eternal dilemma, he told himself wryly. Despite his relief, he wanted to make sure the girls really knew what they were doing.

  “Why not?” he demanded. “You were so excited when they first contacted us.”

  The girls looked at each other. Jessica spoke first. “If it ain’t broke … plus, too much to lose.”

  “Anna?”

  “What Jessica said. Also, I’m a little nervous that we won’t, you know, fit in.”

  Seeing Larry and the older women exchange puzzled glance, she explained: “We’ve been living this bubble life, just the five of us, we’ve grown up in such odd circumstances … what I’m trying to say is that we’ve lived by ourselves so long that we’re practically a separate species now, like those creatures in dark caves that lose their eyesight because they don’t need it. I don’t know how those folks will find us. Maybe they’ll think we’re dumb or weird or something.”

  Larry laughed incredulously. “Dumb? Weird? When I look at you I’m awed by what you’ve achieved and what you’re capable of. I can’t see anyone in the world, whatever bubble they come from, finding the two of you anything other than warm and caring and funny and resourceful and courageous. All my life, in all my travels, all my experiences, all my readings, I’ve never known two finer specimens of humanity than the two of you.”

  By the end of this speech both girls were weeping, and the others rushed to comfort them.

  Elizabeth and Nicole echoed Larry’s sentiments. In the end, however, Anna and Jessica stuck to their decision and life at the Miller residence resumed its pleasant rhythm. The initial disappointment faded away, and everyone felt relieved. The girls sometimes speculated about how the Finnish survivors were getting along—probably quite well, they figured. From their transmissions, they appeared to be a well-organized and resourceful group.

  “You know what?” said Anna. “Deciding to be by ourselves should be depressing, but it actually feels warm and fuzzy. I love it here with all of you. I don’t want to change anything. Let’s all, you know, grow old and die together.”

  “Yep. Forget the Finns!” Jessica said.

  EPILOGUE

  But the best-laid plans often go awry. On July 17, they heard a different message on the Finn broadcast. As if by design, the transmission came through when the family had assembled for a planning session.

  After the standard request for survivors to contact them, the Finns added a postscript:

&n
bsp; “Survivors please note. Preliminary atmospheric measurements indicate extremely high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Levels in upper atmosphere will peak at 2,500 ppm in four years. Carbon dioxide is believed to come from combustion of carbon particles in Shroud, which explains shroud thinning and disappearance. Since normal biogeological phenomena such as photosynthesis and ocean cycling are now nearly nonexistent, dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide are likely to persist for decades. Runaway global warming is predicted. Planet’s surface, once made uninhabitable by cold, might be made uninhabitable by heat in a few years. Survivors also note: insulating shelters that saved you from cold cannot protect from extreme ambient heat. Air conditioning equipment too will not work at anticipated temperatures. Only undersea habitats might be feasible.”

  The family heard the broadcast in stunned silence. Then, punctuated by exclamations of astonishment and dismay, an animated discussion went on for several hours. The outcome was a consensus that they could no longer afford to ignore the Finns. Later that day they sent out their first shortwave transmission on the frequency specified. The thirty-second broadcast ran at full antenna power, repeating every ten minutes:

  “This broadcast is from Simpsonville, six hundred kilometers north of Adelaide. We are four women and a man, ages 28, 30, 51, 71, and 49. Most likely we are the only survivors in Australia. Let us know if you have located survivors elsewhere. We are in excellent physical and mental condition and are living comfortably with no immediate problems. We have cleared the town of corpses and have electricity, running water, vehicles, machinery, plants. Our members have skills in engineering, computing, horticulture, medicine, mental health. Our group includes Larry Brandon, inventor of the Brandon satellite.”

  Larry was reluctant to include the last line, but the girls overruled him. “You saved the planet once and can do it again,” said Anna.