Eschaton - Season One

by Kieran Marcus

  “Right,” Castor said, snickering.

  “So then dad called grandma instead.”

  “Grandma? Why?”

  “He wanted her to pull a few strings—well, all the strings, really—to get you out of the program.”

  “He what?!”

  Pollux shushed him and pointed up to their parents’ bedroom. “Keep it down, bro. You’re gonna wake them up.”

  “Why the hell would he do that?” Castor asked in a stage whisper.

  “Well, you know. He never liked the idea of us entering the lottery in the first place, and now that you’ve been picked he thinks there’s been some terrible mistake, some mix-up or something. He thinks you ran away because you don’t want to be an exodant.”

  Castor’s heart sank, dragging his shoulders with it. His own father didn’t think he was good enough. “Thanks a lot, dad,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Don’t worry,” Pollux said, waving his hand. “Grandma wouldn’t have any of it.”

  “Really?”

  Pollux shook his head. “Of course not. She said there was nothing she could do, and even if there was, she wouldn’t. Remember that long talk we had with her the day before we filed our entries for the lottery? She was so proud and excited that we were going to enter. Not because of me, mind you. It was expected that I entered. She was happy that you entered, and she knew exactly that you didn’t do it out of peer pressure or because you wanted to impress somebody. Even back then, she knew that your excitement about Exodus was genuine and that you really wanted to go. She knew.”

  “It’s just such an amazing opportunity, you know?” Castor said, invigorated by his grandmother’s relayed support. “Going to the stars and trying to colonize the galaxy in a bid to ensure our survival. It’s the next big step in our evolution. It’s just a logical thing to do, and I cannot see how anyone would not …”

  “Castor,” Pollux interrupted him and raised his hand. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I know how you feel about this. I understand. I’m your brother. I understand.”

  Feeling a lump in his throat, Castor turned his head away. He didn’t want his brother to see that his eyes were glazing over. Then he felt Pollux tugging on the collar of his shirt.

  “What is that?” he asked, looking closely at a dark red blot on Castor’s neck. “Is that a hickey?”

  Castor swatted his brother’s hand away like an annoying insect and pulled up his collar, trying very hard to conceal a somewhat proud smile.

  “It’s a hickey!” Pollux rejoiced with a silly grin. “How on earth did that happen?” He poked Castor’s ribs with his finger.

  “I sucked my own neck,” Castor said, twisting his body, trying to avoid Pollux’s finger. “How do you think it happened, idiot? Stop that!”

  Pollux kept poking him, singing in a low, taunting voice, “Castor’s got a hickey, Castor’s got a hickey!”

  “Stop it!”

  “Castor’s got a hickey!”

  “I said stop it!” Castor cried and lashed out at his brother.

  Pollux jerked backwards, avoiding Castor’s punch. Then he wriggled his fingers in front of his chest and taunted him, “Oh, look at you, all grown up and manly!” He laughed.

  “Asshole,” Castor said, keeping a straight face even though deep down inside he was gloating.

  “Come here, you!” Pollux said and pounced on Castor. He yanked him into another headlock. “Castor, Castor, Castor. Just what are we supposed to do with you?”

  “Let me go!” Castor demanded, trying to wiggle his head from under Pollux’s strong, muscular arm, but he was too tired from a sleepless night, and his brother was too strong. “Let me go!”

  “I’m afraid I cannot do that,” Pollux said in a nonchalant voice, stroking Castor’s cheek like a pet. “Because if I let you go, then what are you gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna beat you up and kick your ass!” Castor was spewing his words now, still struggling, still writhing.

  Pollux snickered. “You would, wouldn’t you? That’s my baby brother. Always so fierce and passionate. Always a little hothead, aren’t you? So adorable, but sometimes a little too passionate for your own good.”

  He patted his brother’s face. Castor knew it was meant to be teasing, playful, but the pats were more like slaps, a little too hard, a little too painful. It was the kind of roughhousing he hated because his brother always took it a step too far. Pollux had a tendency to misgauge his own physical strength and its effect on other people. Castor knew it was his brother’s awkward, clumsy way of showing affection, the only way he knew how, but it often was too physically painful to endure.

  “Stop it, Pollux! Let me go!”

  “But I can’t.” Pollux said, softly rubbing Castor’s burning cheek now. “If I let you go, you’re gonna get hurt. I don’t want you to get hurt. I can’t let you go.”

  That’s when it occurred to Castor that Pollux wasn’t talking about the headlock. Could it be that he talking about the Exodus? That he wasn’t simply worried about Castor’s well-being if—when—he left Earth, but that he was frightened by the prospect of losing him, of never seeing him again, and by the possibility that he—Pollux—would find himself unable to cope with that loss?

  Castor’s struggle subsided. The tension left his body, and like a Chinese finger trap, Pollux’s grip around his neck immediately slackened. The headlock mellowed into a gentle, almost tender embrace as Castor wrapped his arm around his brother’s waist and nestled his head against his stomach. Pollux pulled his brother’s body towards himself ever so slightly, bent down his head and pressed his lips against Castor’s temple, just shy of a kiss.

  “I have to go,” Castor said after a few long moments of silence, all the grave implications of these simple words riding on his trembling voice.

  “I know,” Pollux whispered. He turned his head to the side and rested it against Castor’s. “I know.”

  As the bright, warm glow of the sun rose above the horizon and grazed Castor’s face, he felt a silent tear fall on his neck and slowly run down the collar of his shirt. Snuggling up even closer to Pollux’s warm body, he closed his eyes and began to wonder what a sunrise might look like on Gliese 667 Cc.

  1.6 Cosmo

  NEPHILIM 2 SPACE DOCK – August 13, 2134

  “Yo, Momo, my man,” MaShawn Williams sounded across the table in his usual annoying, overly cheerful voice, “pass me the ketchup, will ya?”

  Cosmo Morgan looked at his wristwatch. Then he pierced a dice of steak with his fork, a thick coat of mashed potatoes preventing the meat from floating out of its polyethylene container in zero gravity, and put it in his mouth. Chewing slowly, he looked around the buzzing, football field sized Nephilim 2 canteen, pretending to not have heard MaShawn address him with his much-loathed nickname. He hated being called Momo—it sounded too effeminate in his opinion—and he usually made a point of ignoring whoever used that name on him. Some of the coworkers he was sharing the long, magnetized carbon fiber table with at this lunch hour were already familiar with his shtick and chuckled.

  Dropping his shoulders but not his obnoxious grin, MaShawn said, “Oh come on, man.”

  “No amount of ketchup in the world is gonna make this gunk taste of anything,” one of the men said.

  Another nodded knowingly. “It’s because of your taste buds. They don’t work in space.”

  “Nothing wrong with your taste buds,” a third one objected from across the table. “In zero gravity the smells volatilize too quickly. If you can’t smell your food, it tastes bland. Try it the next time you’re on shore leave. Pinch your nose when you eat something. Flavor’s all gone.”

  “That is such nonsense!” the first man said. “If the flavors fly around freely in zero G, your sense of smell should get better, not worse. At least in a place like this with eight hundred people eating their lunches all at the same time.”

  “It’s the zero G all right, but not because the smells volatilize, it’s bec
ause your body keeps pumping blood up into your head and your nose gets all clogged up. It’s like having a cold. With a clogged-up nose you can’t taste a thing.”

  “Man, that’s only in the first few days, though,” MaShawn said. “Then your body adjusts and your nose ain’t no longer clogged. I’ve been up here for three weeks now. My nose is fine, but this stuff still tastes like nuthin’.”

  “Why don’t you put some ketchup on it?” a young whipper-snapper named Aldiss Okvist said, sending roars of laughter around the table.

  “Guess what, smartypants,” MaShawn said, “I would, but my man Momo is ignoring me.”

  Cosmo pierced another dice of steak, scooped up a generous wad of mashed potatoes with it and put it all in his mouth, looking innocently at everyone around the table—at everyone but MaShawn, that is.

  “Hey yo, Earth to Morgan, Earth to Morgan! Captain Cosmo, do you copy?”

  Cosmo finally looked up at MaShawn’s face, smiling nonchalantly. “You talkin’ to me, MaShawn?”

  “My dear good lord, Captain Morgan, sir,” MaShawn said, “would you bestow upon me the extraordinary kindness of passing me that bottle of sweet, tangy tomato condiment which sitteth in your immediate vicinity on the table, please?” He bowed his head and flailed his arms like a seventeenth-century French aristocrat.

  “Sure I would, why wouldn’t I?” As his coworkers broke into cheers and applause, Cosmo lifted the bottle from the table where it was held in place by a magnetic bottle cap, calibrated it in MaShawn’s direction and gave it a gentle nudge. Slowly, at half a meter per second, it sailed across the table.

  “Captain MaShawn,” somebody said in mock alarm, “by the time Ketchup One comes to the rescue we’ll all be dead!”

  More chuckles turned into laughter when the ketchup bottle was intercepted halfway along its journey by a young woman who was well known and loved among the crew for her fondness of pranks and practical jokes.

  “Thank you, Cosmo,” she said, unscrewing the bottle and squirting ketchup on her lunch.

  “Oh come on, man!” MaShawn protested.

  With a cheeky grin, she screwed the bottle cap back on. “There you go, sister,” she said and hurled the bottle at MaShawn. He caught it with his left hand and finally sat down with a clink as his magnetic pants bottoms made contact with the magnetized carbon fiber bench. With exalted gestures like a self-indulging bartender mixing an elaborate cocktail, MaShawn doused his food in ketchup and began to eat.

  “Still tastes like nuthin’,” he moaned.

  “It’s zero gravyty food,” somebody punned, making the men and women laugh subdued, wry laughs.

  “I’m telling you,” MaShawn told them, “they better figure this out or it’s gonna be one long journey to the stars.”

  “Gonna be a long journey anyway.”

  “No shit.”

  “There’s not much to figure out,” Cosmo said, finally fed up with his coworkers’ ignorant remarks. “It’s like you guys said. Food doesn’t taste good in zero gravity, but it doesn’t even matter if it’s because of volatile molecules or clogged up noses, because once the ark-ships are on their way, they’ll have gravity just like on Earth and the food will taste just as good. There, problem solved.”

  “I believe it when I see it,” MaShawn said. “Which will be never, because I ain’t taken part in no phony sham lottery where the first prize is a premature space funeral in a giant carbon fiber coffin.”

  There were approving grunts and nods around the table. Cosmo was not surprised. In the nine months he had been an electrical engineer on Nephilim 2, he had met only a handful of people who had shared his views on the greatest endeavor in the history of humankind. For most of his coworkers, a job in space construction was a way to make a quick buck rather than an inspiring opportunity to play a part in the realization of that centuries-old dream of traveling to the stars and securing the long-term survival of the human race. It was an attitude that Cosmo regarded as deplorably shortsighted and naïve. Their jobs paid reasonably well all right, but they were not a get-rich-quick scheme by any stretch of the imagination. Not only were Cosmo and his coworkers on fixed-term contracts—once all twelve ark-ships had been built there would be no further need for space construction workers—but even more importantly, nobody could tell how much, if anything, their money would still be worth once that ten-mile asteroid aptly dubbed ‘Fat Boy’ hit the earth. In recent months, increasing numbers of economic advisors and financial experts had come forward to warn of terrifying scenarios in which Fat Boy had a bigger and more devastating impact on the world’s economy than on its ecosphere. In a world ravaged by firestorms and tsunamis, by famines and a nuclear winter that could last for decades if not centuries, society would not be merely thrown back in to the Dark Ages but into the pre-monetary Stone Age, rendering all financial concepts, services, and products essentially useless. Then what were all those crisis profiteers who helped build the ark-ships not out of passion and commitment but purely out of greed do with all their useless dollar bills except lighting fires to cook soup out of freshly gathered roots and grasses?

  “Now don’t get me wrong,” MaShawn continued. “I’m not saying space flight ain’t fun. It is. It’s great fun. Zero G is great fun, except for the food. But never in a million years would I want to live in space. It’s like my car, you know? I love my car. Hell, I probably love my car more than I love my wife, but I wouldn’t want to live in it, let alone die.”

  “Unlike inside your wife, huh?” The remark by one of the men sent the table into a frenzy of laughter. “Just imagine that,” he added, infatuated by the response of his lunchtime audience. “Dying while you’re inside your wife. What a beautiful way to come and go!”

  “You’re a naughty little man, brother,” MaShawn said, grinning like a horse, “but I like the way you’re thinking.”

  They fist-bumped, and Cosmo tried his best not to cringe at the crude kind of humor he found himself exposed to once again. His coworkers were good men. They were capable engineers and hard workers, but it pained him to be constantly reminded of their lack of passion for the work they had been hired to do. They didn’t feel any pride in their job, and they were not committed to it the same way he was. It worried Cosmo. It worried him a great deal. He knew that while good skills and a solid work ethic were necessary to get this job—or any job, for that matter—done, they alone were not sufficient. Passion and unbridled, no-holds-barred commitment could make all the difference between a decent job and an excellent job, and if there ever was an engineering project that required uncompromising excellence, then it was Project Exodus. If two light-years into their journey an ark-ship developed a technical problem, they couldn’t simply pull into the next garage and get it fixed. They’d be on their own, and Cosmo hated to think that the success of this mission and the safety of thousands of lives could be jeopardized by less than perfect manufacturing standards caused by workers who put all their brains and elbow grease into the job, but not their hearts.

  The core of the problem, in Cosmo’s opinion, was that workers were naturally less committed to a job if they had no stake in it. If you worked in manufacturing down on Earth, chances were that you ended up using your own product as a consumer, as did your friends and family members. Unless you were a psychopath, you’d make sure to produce the best and safest product you could, because if you didn’t, faulty car brakes, listeria-infested food, or electrocution-hazardous appliances could all too easily come back to bite you. If you were a space construction worker, on the other hand, working on an ark-ship that in all likelihood neither you nor anybody you knew would ever get to set foot on once it was finished, then why the hell would you care if it broke down light-years away from Earth and decades into the future? If you didn’t care, Cosmo’s life experience told him, you most likely weren’t going to do the best job you could, and technical faults due to sloppy manufacturing standards would all too easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Cosmo ha
d identified the problem on his very first day on the job. The first partner he had been teamed up with, a scrawny, crook-teethed Italian named Fermi, sported a poor excuse for a work ethic that could only be described as grossly negligent at best and life threatening at worst. The whole twelve-hour-shift that Cosmo spent with him, Fermi was cutting corners, ignoring basic safety provisions, and bypassing standard operating procedures. When Cosmo approached him about it during their lunch break, the Italian just shrugged.

  “Eh, so what?” he said. “They have a quality control team that checks everybody’s work. So far no one has complained, so everything is good.”

  That’s when it first occurred to Cosmo that the quality control team itself might be lacking, well, quality.

  When after his first shift he reported Fermi’s sub-standard work ethic to one of the ArkCorp supervisors, the man was taken aback—not by the fact that the company was apparently getting less than their money’s worth of decent labor out of Fermi, but by Cosmo’s audacity to turn snitch on his coworkers after only one day on the job. The supervisor initially dismissed Cosmo’s concerns as exaggerations by an overzealous rookie and only reluctantly agreed to file a report when Cosmo alluded to taking the matter up with UNSPAG—the United Space Agency—directly. The next day, Fermi was on his way back to Italy where, so Cosmo hoped, he would find a job that didn’t require any safety standards he could violate to begin with.

  While Cosmo was reasonably pleased that Fermi had been removed from the job, he was not satisfied that ArkCorp had any inclination to sufficiently address the underlying problem. If he met a lazy bastard like Fermi on his very first day on the job, was he just extremely unlucky, Cosmo wondered, or was this a symptom of a deep-rooted flaw in the way this whole operation was designed? Much to Cosmo’s dismay, it turned out to be the latter.

  In the following weeks and months, Cosmo turned into a nasty, chronic pain in the neck that his ArkCorp supervisors colloquially dubbed morganitis. He kept pestering them on a nearly daily basis with ever more detailed reports on workflow issues, worker motivation issues, health and safety issues, and just about any other type of work related issue he could think of. It turned out he could think of quite a few, and his supervisors soon fell into the habit of casually floating the other way whenever they saw him coming. Lucky were those who found themselves near a wall or some other fixed object they could push themselves off of with their feet so they could put a sizeable distance and—in the best case scenario—another supervisor between themselves and Cosmo within a few seconds. They evidently preferred workers who did an average job but kept their mouths shut to those who did excellent work but kept complaining about low standards.