by Jason Gurley
The Settlers: Book 1 and The Colonists: Book 2 are available now. The Travelers: Book 3 will end the story in 2014.
About the Author
Jason Gurley is the author of The Man Who Ended the World, The Settlers, The Colonists and Eleanor, a graphic novel about a girl who never stops falling. Born in the squelchy bogs of Texas, then raised in the icy caves of Alaska, he relied on his imagination to keep him warm and dry. As a result, he firmly believes that Superman isn't Superman if he's not wearing red undies, and that Darryl Strawberry had the sweetest swing of all time. He may be the only man alive who believes both, and that's okay.
Jason lives in Oregon with his wife, Felicia, and daughter, Emma Purl, and is a creative director in Portland. He can be found online at jasongurley.com and twitter.com/jgurley, and probably a few dozen other places, if you look hard enough.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also by Jason Gurley
Dedication Page
Contents
DARKNESS
Earth's time had come and gone. Man had bloomed across its surface like a virus, expanding outward in surges and pulses, claiming its valleys and plains, swarming over its shorelines and mountains. And when Earth had stumbled beneath man's heavy footsteps, man had gathered his things and taken to the stars, high above the skies of his homeworld. A time of peace had followed. Men of all nations had linked their arms to form a bridge, and history had crawled up their backs and carried them with it. For nearly two centuries, man stood side by side, accomplishing great feats of science and technology never anticipated. They constructed beautiful space stations and named them for legendary astronomers and moons and constellations and gods. They discovered cures for terrible diseases, and almost cured death itself. Survival inspires the greatest innovations. The Citadel, man's most awesome achievement, brought about a dark, poisonous age. The privileged men and women were called Onyx, and lived by the sweat of the Machine class, the hardworking men and women who lived belowdecks, in the dark and grime. The Machiners scattered throughout the solar system, carving out small homes for themselves on the surfaces of broken moons, in orbit around gaseous planets. But no matter how far they ran, they served the Citadel, and the Citadel provided sustenance. For three hundred years, the darkness held true. Few knew the light.
ANSEL
Blue Planet
Engineers
Seven Years
Evelyn
Terminal
TASNEEM
Pirate Radio
Maasi
Sparks
Quo Vadimus
THE BLACK
The years unfolded slowly, and the Citadel's reach only grew. In the four years since Catrine Newsome's departure from the Maasi, eleven minor revolutions had been violently put down on various outposts and moons. The bloodiest was on Miranda, Uranus's little moon. There, an entire Machine outpost had been murdered by six Citadel operatives as punishment for a weak attempt to steal supplies from an Onyx ship. Forty-three Machiners exposed to the bitter cold and inhospitable atmosphere of the moon, including thirteen children and a newborn. Tasneem heard about them all, and wept privately for every death. Her little broadcasts were picked up by a few local ships and stations, and her messages were carried as far into the black as they would go, but few heard them. Hope was in short supply, and the darkness was only growing deeper.
AMATERASU
The tiny screenview illuminates the cavern beneath her blankets, casting a pale golden glow on her face. She adjusts the volume, dialing it down until she almost strains to understand the words being spoken, and only then does she relax. The gentle female voice soothes and excites her at once. Amaterasu delights at the words, which are grand and thrilling, and conjure images of swelling throngs of people, arms upraised, pushing over great statues, their voices thunderous across the horizons of planets and moons, echoing in the corridors of sleek sailing ships. One species. One species. One species. Must we remind ourselves? Amaterasu's fingers caress the screenview. She knows, somehow, that the words are dangerous. That if she were to repeat them in class tomorrow, Miss Hamus would warn her, then probably call her grandparents. She doesn't want this. Amaterasu's grandparents would send her to bed without a meal, and threaten to take her out of school altogether. They are scared old people, she knows. If only they would hear the broadcasts. If only they would listen. Anger is not the solution. Violence is not our recourse. We scrape along in the dark, chewing on our pain until it courses through our veins like a deadly poison. We must let it go. Instead of seeking revenge, we must seek our lost pride. We are one people. We have only forgotten. Amaterasu listens until the broadcast falls silent. It will repeat again in an hour, she knows, but it is enough to have heard this small piece. She turns the screenview off and emerges from beneath the blankets, then stretches out and falls asleep. Her grandfather listens at the door and sighs to himself.
HATSUYE
Deimos
Station Three
Fuse
Greatfall
Uprising
NOOR
Matroos
Meili
Summons
Irreversible
Reversible
MIRS
His desk is cluttered with paperwork and half-empty coffee cups and chewed-on pencils. Smoke lingers in the air from the cigarettes that he puffs and then stabs out in a little metal tray. The overhead lighting needs replacing. It buzzes and flickers and snaps, but he barely notices. Mirs leans back in his chair and pages through yellow binder. Six more reported dead, he reads. He glances at the number marked on the board to his right. It has been erased and updated so many times that the board has gone smeary behind it. 436, the number reads. Marcus, he shouts. Marcus! The door to Mirs's office creaks open, and Marcus, a lean man with a blank expression, steps in. Sir, Marcus says. Mirs pinches the folder between his thumb and two fingers and holds it up. Marcus nods, and crosses the room to pluck the folder from his boss's hands. He flips the binder open with one hand, then walks to the board and erases the last two digits with his sleeve. Mirs watches as Marcus updates the number. 442. How many are still unaccounted for? Mirs asks of Marcus's back. Marcus closes the binder and drops it onto the burn pile next to the board. There are still one hundred sixty unaccounted for, Marcus says. Jesus Christ, Mirs says. Are they all going to turn up dead? I don't know, sir. Probably. Fuck, Marcus. A little optimism wouldn't poison you, would it? My apologies, sir. But they did detonate a moon. If anybody anywhere is still alive, I might be surprised. Speaking of survivors, Mirs says. Have they found anything? I've heard a rumor, Marcus says. Let me gather some facts. Marcus nods curtly and leaves, pulling the door closed behind him. If they're fucking alive, Mirs shouts, I want them to stop. The door remains closed. Goddammit, Mirs mutters, and leans back in his chair again.
THE MACHINE
Deimos roused the Machiners, and in the months following the destruction of the moon and Olympus City, rebellions surged throughout the system. Tasneem listened aboard the Maasi, and protested the violence in her broadcasts, pleading with Machiners to spare the lives of the men they rose up against. But this time nobody listened. Citadel outposts began to fall, and fall hard. Blood was spilled, and primitive instincts surfaced. More than one Onyx head was piked and presented at the entrance to a moon base. Bodies were piled into crates and shipped to the inner system, where other Machiners made sure they passed through checkpoints all the way to the Citadel itself. Tasneem's messages were ignored. The Machiners sent their own messages, stamped and sealed with blood and bits of bone. The chant was taken up on space stations and deep in mine shafts, on freighters and in spaceports, in cities and towns from the belt outward. Feed the Machine, they cried. Feed the Machine. Feed the Machine. The Machine rebellion had truly begun.
EVELYN
The deep vibration stirs Evelyn from sleep.
VARIEN
Exhaustion
Corne
red
Legend
Patience
ISHY
Meili
Maasi
Crescent
Farewell
CATRINE
Hitchhikers
The Black
The Message
Straight and True
Tasneem
DAVID
David flexes within the databand, feeling for the first time the limitations of his home. Nearly five hundred years is one hell of a lifespan for a single device, but it's unprecedented for a device's data storage space to be so adequate for so long. He can almost imagine himself as a child who has lived his entire life inside of a box, and has only now, as he has grown taller and wider, begun to feel the walls closing about him. When Varien wakes, David decides, he will put the boy to work solving his problem. He is relieved that this is the most pressing problem remaining to be solved. With the return of Catrine, the Maasi has a first officer once again. And with David, a new captain. David had felt the reluctance of the crew to step into that hallowed position after Tasneem's death from Soma poisoning. David is disappointed, after some research, to discover that he is not the first all-digital captain of a spacecraft. There are nearly sixteen A.I.-captained ships in the system. But none, so far as he can tell, are captained by a former, now digital, human being. That is one first he is quite capable of owning. Varien's sleep patterns become less regular, and David waits for the boy to awaken. Fourteen minutes later, the boy does, and David says, Good morning, Varien. Varien's brain activity demonstrates a flare of annoyance, as he always does when David speaks to him first upon waking. I apologize for annoying you, David says, but we have much to do today, and I'm afraid the first thing can't wait. Fine, okay, Varien thinks. What is it? I'm a fat little mollusk, David says, and I'm afraid I've finally outgrown my shell. Varien registers confusion, and David remembers that the boy has never seen the sea, and has no idea what a mollusk is, or even a shell. I'm sorry, David says. What I mean to say, in plain terms, is that the databand is rapidly running out of storage space, and I desperately need a new home before vital information starts getting overwritten. Just don't overwrite anything, Varien thinks. Completely out of my control, unfortunately, David says. And as you know, some of the information I hold is quite precious. Please don't make me risk it by delaying a solution. Right, Varien thinks, his brain still a little cobwebby. Right. Okay. But can I pee first?
ASIEL
PASSAGE OF TIME TO SHOW THE CONTINUED UPRISINGS
Dear Reader
The Movement Trilogy
About the Author