Eschaton - Season One

by Kieran Marcus

  “… but our concern here cannot be for the short-term wellbeing of every single person in the world. We have to make sure that humankind will survive in the long run. We have to make sacrifices for future generations, and nobody is saying it’s an easy thing to do. You know as well as I do that extinction level events are really not that rare on a cosmic timescale. Modern humans appeared only a hundred thousand years ago. Our civilization is only about ten thousand years old. We were lucky that we didn’t have to deal with cataclysmic events like this before, and we are very unlucky that this is the second heavy blow in less than sixty years. But events like this can always happen, and there will be more such events in the future. It’s our responsibility to ensure that the human race will live another hundred thousand years and more rather than just looking at our short-term survival.”

  “I understand that,” Victoria said, “and it’s all very wonderful. I’m sure your descendants in the year 99,000 will be very grateful. However, my point is that these descendants might never exist if we put all our eggs in one basket in the year 2137.”

  “I don’t even know what you are talking,” Evgeni said. “Project Exodus alone will be twelve basket. And we already spend trillions on Project Nidus. Engineers already plan building shelter for millions of people. In Russia, we already commit fifteen percent of food production each year to be preserved for time after impact. You make it sound like we want to let everyone die. Is not true. World economy is committing twice as much money to Project Nidus than to all other project combined. But that is not why we are here. We are here to decide whether we will waste money and resources to destroy Fat Boy—which cannot be done—and put more life at risk, or whether we should commit ourself to seek future of mankind outside of Earth.”

  Throwing her hands into the air, Victoria said, “Oh please, spare me your science-fiction fairy tales of ark-ships that will take us to distant planets in search of a new home.”

  “These are not fairy tales, Victoria,” Xiu said. “We have been developing these plans since the devastating gamma ray burst in 2079. Are there still unsolved problems and unanswered questions? Sure. But the vast majority of scientists that have been working on Project Exodus in the last forty years agree that it’s a viable option.”

  Victoria shook her head. “You’re not even willing to try to deflect or destroy Fat Boy because you think it’s a waste of money and resources, yet you are ready to waste ten times as much money and resources on a delusional suicide mission for a chosen few, a tiny fraction of the population!”

  “Is not suicide mission,” Evgeni said. “Is survival mission.”

  “It’s insane is what it is! Project Exodus will condemn generations of people to live in giant metal coffins for hundreds of years while they don’t even know where they’re going! We have no idea if any of those exoplanets can ever be reached, and if they can we don’t know if they can even sustain life. And even if they can, we’re condemning entire generations to be born, live, and die in space without ever seeing the sun, or a blue sky, or clouds.”

  “To be fair, Victoria,” Xiu said, “most people living on Earth today don’t know what a blue sky looks like, and they will never find out when Fat Boy hits and a giant cloud of ash covers the planet for decades. Our studies suggest that the quality of life on an ark-ship will actually be better than on Earth after the impact. Besides, nobody will be forced to get onto an ark-ship and leave. If anything, we’ll have to turn people away because the amount of those we can evacuate will be very limited.”

  “You said nobody will be forced to get on an ark-ship,” Victoria said. “What about the unborns, though? What about the generations of children that you condemn to be born on a space ship? What about their right to choose whether or not they want to live on Earth?”

  Xiu shook her head. “Such a right does not exist. Nobody in the entire history of the world ever had the right or the opportunity to choose what kind of world, what kind of life, or what kind of circumstances they were born into. It’s a moot argument. Nobody gets to pick the cards they’re being dealt.”

  “Well,” Victoria said and crossed her arms, “I do not approve.”

  Xiu nodded. “I gathered as much.”

  “All right,” Lily finally said. “I’ve heard enough. It’s obvious that we cannot reach a mutual agreement. As per our statutes, if the committee fails to reach an agreement and the votes are evenly split, the chairman of the committee—that would be me—gets to make the final decision. I thank you all for your time and for your expertise. The meeting is adjourned.”

  She stood, gathered her papers from the table, and made her way to the door.

  “Wait!” Victoria said. “So what is your decision?”

  Lily turned around and looked into four confused, expectant faces. “I’ll let you know,” she said and left the room.

  Walking along the long, brightly lit corridor, Lily headed towards the elevator. All around her, people were bustling about like bees in a hive, talking on their invisible phones, carrying virtual documents from one office to another, hurrying to meetings, trying to organize the world, a world that might have no more than fifteen years left. Lily didn’t pay much attention to them. Too distracting was the burden that rested on her shoulders. No less than the future of humanity was at stake, a daunting responsibility that she took very seriously. She never would have jumped at the opportunity to be in the position she found herself in, but she didn’t shy away from it either. In a way, Lily was grateful that it had been her who had the final say in the matter. Sure, she would have preferred to have the fate of the world decided and to have that decision carried by as many broad shoulders as possible, but if that wasn’t possible—and apparently it wasn’t—then she was probably the best person she knew to be in that position. Lily had been a scientist all her life, and she had learned to reach conclusions that were solely based on facts. She didn’t think much of gut feelings, emotions, and personal agendas. There was a solution to every problem, and the only way to find that solution was through the sound reasoning of a set of entirely unpredisposed minds. There were too many people, even in the science community, who were only looking for the answers they wanted to find, the solutions that would in one way or another accommodate their innate human desires regardless of the consequences. Lily was not that kind of person, but that didn’t make her life any easier.

  She passed the door to her office and was heading for the elevator when her virtual personal assistant Neil spoke in her ear. “Mrs. Conway, Pollux Pendergast is requesting to speak with you.”

  Lily smiled. She had been expecting a call from the twins. The Secretary General would have to wait.

  “I’ll take it in my office. Give me a minute.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Conway.”

  She turned on her heel and made her way back to her office. Slumping in the chair behind her desk, she switched on the computer monitor.

  “All right,” she said, “put the little rat on.”

  After a moment, her VPA replied, “Unable to process command. Please rephrase.”

  Lily sighed, once again confirmed in her honest conviction that all those Luddites who kept warning that one day artificially intelligent entities would take over the world didn’t have a case. “Put Pollux Pendergast on the screen.”

  Momentarily, the cheerful faces of Pollux and his brother Castor with their rosy cheeks and piercing blue eyes appeared on the monitor. They were standing outside Lily’s Upper East Side apartment.

  “Who are you two little punks,” Lily said with a stern look on her face, “and why are you loitering outside my door? Do I have to call the police?”

  The twins giggled. Even at the tender age of seven they could tell when their grandmother was just fooling around with them.

  “Hi, grandma!” they said in unison and waved.

  “Oh, it’s you!” Lily said, continuing her mock demented-old-lady routine. “Why, I didn’t recognize you at all! You have grown so much since I’v
e last seen you. If only I could remember when that was.”

  “It was last week!” Castor said, and Pollux added, “It was on our birthday, grandma! Don’t you remember?” They giggled again. Kids were so easily amused, especially by adults acting silly.

  “Oh, right!” Lily said. “Your birthday! Yes, yes, I remember it now. How old were you again?”

  “Seven!”

  “Seven, oh my! Well, let me tell you that you look at least eight. And there’s two of you! So two times eight, that’s …”

  “Sixteen!” the twins said.

  “Sixteen, that’s right! Together you look at least sixteen. You could be driving a car, and the police would be none the wiser.”

  From off screen, Lily heard the voice of her son-in-law. “Is grandma being silly again?”

  “Yes!” Pollux said, and Castor confirmed, “Grandma is being silly again!”

  “Well, tell her to stop being silly and buzz us in. We’re standing right outside her door.”

  “Stop being silly, grandma!” Pollux said, visibly delighted to call her silly, and Castor nodded emphatically. “Buzz us in! We’re right outside your door!”

  “Now listen, you two,” Lily said, “why don’t you put your dad on for a moment so grandma can say hi to him, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Dutifully, the twins passed the tablet to their father.

  “Lily,” he said and nodded.

  “Hello, Huxley. How was your flight?”

  “Good, good. Once we tucked the boys away in the overhead locker we even managed to sleep a bit.”

  Off screen, the twins were laughing at their silly dad.

  “Now who’s being silly?” Lily asked with a wink.

  Huxley shrugged. “Sorry. Must be the air over here.”

  “Right. Now where’s my lovely daughter?”

  “Meitner’s down at the butcher’s, but I’m not allowed to tell you that. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  “Oh that silly goose,” Lily said. “What’s she at the butcher’s for? I was planning to take you guys out for dinner tonight.”

  “Sorry, no can do. She insists on cooking your birthday dinner for you, and you know how she is. Once she’s got her mind set on something, ten wild horses couldn’t drag her away from it. I wonder where she got that from.”

  Lily laughed. “Well, don’t look at me. She must have got it from her father, that stubborn old pighead.”

  “Charming as ever,” Huxley said, “Now listen, I’m sorry to pounce on you like that, but when will you be home? Last night the team and I finished another set of calculations on Fat Boy’s mass, composition, and trajectory, and I’d really like to go through them with you. Very interesting results. I’m now more certain than ever that we can take that motherfucker down.”

  “Let me stop you right there, Huxley,” Lily said, all of a sudden very serious. “I’ll be happy to look at your findings and I’m sure they’re very interesting indeed, but you do understand, don’t you, that I can only do so in my capacity as your mother-in-law, not as the chairman of UNSPAG’s executive committee. If you have any crucial contributions to make to the Fat Boy project, and I’m sure you do, then you’ll have to follow the chain of command and put your results forward through the proper channels.”

  “I know, Lily, and that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. You see, morale within the team isn’t good; not in any of the teams that are working on Fat Boy. There’s a real buzz surrounding all the Exodus and Nidus work groups, but we feel like we’re constantly getting sidelined by the agency. We can’t get proper funding, and some people actually think you guys at the top have long since given up on us. Now if we follow the chain of command it’ll take months until our findings will make it anywhere near the executive committee, so …”

  “Huxley,” Lily interrupted him, “I can’t be having this conversation with you right now. Not on a line that’s not secure and with you standing outside my door where the whole neighborhood can hear you. I’m in between meetings at the moment, and I still have tons of stuff to do here before I can even dare begin thinking about going home.”

  “I’ve heard rumors that the Executive Committee is planning to axe our project, and that the decision is imminent. Is that true?”

  “You know I cannot comment on that, Huxley. Now will you please let me get back to work, or I’m going to be late for my birthday dinner.”

  “All right then,” Huxley sighed, visibly disappointed. “Buzz us in then, will you?”

  “Neil, please open the door for Huxley and the kids.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Conway,” her VPA replied.

  Behind Huxley the door buzzed open and the twins scrambled inside.

  “Thanks,” Huxley said, and before Lily could say another word, her screen went dark. She hated it when conversations ended on an unpleasant note like that, but there was nothing she could do about it now, so she grabbed her documents, left her office and made her way towards the elevator once more.

  When the elevator door closed behind her and she found herself alone, she leaned her head against the wall, sighed, and mumbled to herself, “Jesus Christ.”

  She remembered the day that had changed her life when she was nine years old; the day that had changed everybody’s life, really, no matter how old they were. It was the day of the burst.

  Lily, then nine years old, had woken up in the early morning hours feeling sick. When she opened her eyes, blinking red and blue lights were shining through the window and created an eerie shadow play on her bedroom walls. She slipped out of her bed and walked over to the window. In the garden below she saw an ambulance and a police car. Men were standing around two filled body bags, a big one and a smaller one.

  When Lily made her way down the stairs, she heard her mom cry in the living room. As she entered the room, she found her mom in a sea of tears, sitting on the sofa, surrounded by two police officers and a paramedic who was checking her blood pressure.

  “What’s going on?” Lily asked.

  Upon hearing her voice, her mom rushed over to her, ripping the sphygmomanometer from the paramedic’s hands. She fell onto her knees with the medical device dangling from her arm and threw herself around Lily’s tiny body.

  “Oh Lily!” her mom sobbed. “Lily, my Lily! Something terrible has happened!”

  Confused, Lily looked at the strangers in her family’s living room. They didn’t dare look back at her.

  “What happened?” Lily asked.

  With a choking voice, her body trembling, her mother said, “Oh Lily! It’s your dad and brother!”

  “Are they dead?” Lily didn’t even know why she asked the question. Unbeknownst to her, her subconscious had put the pieces together.

  Her mother couldn’t reply. She just tightened the grip around Lily’s body and continued wailing and sobbing. One of the police officers and the paramedic finally showed some mercy. They separated Lily from her mother. The paramedic dragged her mother back to the sofa as the police officer took Lily’s hand and led her to the kitchen.

  “Look,” he said, “I know this must be very difficult for you. It’s very difficult for us, too. We don’t know exactly what happened. Do you see this?” He pointed at the big bright object in the night sky that was shining through the kitchen window.

  Lily nodded.

  “We’re not sure what this is, but …”

  “It’s a supernova,” Lily interrupted him.

  “A what?”

  “A supernova. An exploding star. It’s how stars die. They explode.”

  “Is that right?”

  Lily nodded again.

  “And how do you know this?”

  “I know a lot about stars.”

  The officer smiled. “You’re a clever little girl, huh?”

  Lily nodded and smiled.

  “Anyway, Lily, we think that this … this supernova has something to do with what happened to your dad and your brother. They are not the only ones. Very
many people all across the city were affected by it.”

  “Are they all dead?” Lily asked.

  Hesitantly, the officer nodded. “Many are dead.”

  “Will we die too?”

  “I don’t know,” the officer said. “It looks like people who were inside a building were protected from the radiation, but … I don’t know.”

  That night bore Lily’s desire to know exactly what had happened and to do everything she could to prevent anything like it from ever happening again. Whenever she told people about it in later years when she was in school or in university, they told her that the gamma ray burst of 2079 had been a once-in-a-million-years event and that nobody alive today would ever experience anything like it again. She had always found that kind of attitude incredibly naïve, shortsighted, and delusional. And she had been right.

  The elevator door opened, and Lily made her way down the corridor towards the Secretary General’s office. As she entered the anteroom, his receptionist said, “You can walk right in, Mrs. Conway. He’s expecting you.”

  Lily nodded, and without knocking she opened the door to the Secretary General’s office. Much to her surprise she found Phan Vinh Thiet sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, cross-legged, his eyes closed, and his hands resting on his knees. He was taking slow, deep breaths.

  “I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  As if to make a point, Vinh took a full minute to reply without opening his eyes. “You’re not disturbing me, Lily. I’ve been expecting you.”

  After another minute of silent meditation, Vinh finally opened his eyes and slowly rose to his feet. “It’s good to see you, Lily.”

  “It’s good to see you too, Vinh,” Lily said. “Well, I wish the circumstances were different, but it’s always good to see you.”

  Vinh smiled and walked over to the tea trolley next to his huge wooden desk. “You’re too kind. Would you like some tea?”

  “Please,” Lily said.

  Vinh poured two cups of tea. When he was done he handed one to Lily, nodded towards the sofa and said, “Let’s sit, shall we?”