After the Winter (The Silent Earth, Book 1)

by Mark R. Healy

  She reached out and unerringly found the catch for the panel and flicked it open. Her fingers danced as she keyed in a sequence on the little screen. Digits and letters began to coalesce into readable information on the display.

  “It’s all here,” she said. She began scrolling through each parameter in rapid succession. “Humidity. Cell depletion. Ambient temperature.” I barely had time to read each value before she moved onto the next. She continued through until the end, then clicked the panel shut again without seeking my approval. “It’s all fine. It’ll hold for a good while yet.”

  I looked wistfully at the panel. I almost felt like opening it again and going through the numbers, committing each to memory, as if that might reassure me that everything inside was as it should be. Instead I just folded my arms and nodded.

  “Yeah. Looks like it’s done its job. Do you think we can re-purpose those cryotanks in a couple of weeks? Maybe use them for storing some more plant life.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, after we’ve returned to our bodies we can shut these cryotanks down and take them back to the workshop. We could haul them out in a couple of weeks, all being well.”

  “A couple of weeks?” she snorted, placing a fist firmly on her hip. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting that we use the Displacer as soon as possible, Arsha.”

  “And that means when exactly?”

  “Tomorrow or the day after. As soon as I’ve made preparations.”

  She threw her head back and laughed disdainfully, pacing about in a little circle. Her eyes fell on me again, filled with incredulity.

  “You’re serious,” she said, disbelieving. “You actually think you can do that.”

  I looked at her, quizzical. “What’s stopping me?”

  “Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying? We’re not ready. We won’t be ready tomorrow or the next day. We won’t be ready next week.”

  “Well, how long then, in your estimation?”

  Arsha waved her hands about uncertainly. “A year, maybe two. I don’t know exactly. There’s still a lot to do before we make that leap.”

  “No way,” I said emphatically. Now it was my turn to pace about. “I’m not waiting that long.”

  I eyed off the entrance to the lab. A few minutes ago it had seemed like a gateway to the promised land. Now it appeared more like a roadblock. A barrier.

  She shook her head, baffled. “What’s your hurry, Brant? First you blow in here out of nowhere, and then the first thing you want to do, before the dust has even settled from your arrival, is to charge into this lab and hook yourself up to a Displacer. You haven’t even looked at a single damn graph or projection that I’ve made. You don’t have any idea what’s going on, or how well suited we might be to make this step. What’s the matter with you?”

  I scrubbed a hand across my face. I could feel it bubbling up inside me, the blackness I’d tried to ignore all this time. It was like a caged animal trying to get out, trying to break free of the chains I’d wrapped around it. There was such power in it, such venom, that I felt it might rip me apart as it freed itself and escaped my body. But now I had to address it. I had to make her understand.

  Finally I lifted my eyes to hers. My voice brimmed with pain.

  “I can’t live like this,” I said.

  She struggled to comprehend. “Like what?”

  “I can’t live as a synthetic. As a machine. I was never meant to exist within this....” I looked down at myself. “This thing.”

  “Brant,” she said, her voice softening. “Brant listen to me.”

  “No. Arsha, I have to say this.” I held up my hands, entreating.

  “Okay. Say it.”

  “We’ve lived as synthetics. We’ve also lived as humans. I don’t know about you, but I can still remember what it was like to be flesh and blood. I can recall it like it was yesterday. And I know that life as a synthetic isn’t the same. It’s so much less.”

  She watched me but said nothing, her expression unreadable. I went on.

  “Life as a synthetic is diluted.” I struggled to find the words. “It’s incomplete. This,” I tapped my fingers on my chest, “is not who I really am. It’s like living a lie.”

  She moved closer to me, her voice little more than a whisper. “But we were programmed to experience all the things we did as humans - to feel joy, and sadness, and wonder. We can still learn. So why not do that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want all the joys and triumphs of my life to be digital reproductions and approximations of what they’re supposed to be. I want them to be real.” I looked back toward the spires in the city, saw the curve of the West Street Bridge. “Being back here, I feel it so keenly. Every street, every building, reminds me of who I really am. If I stay here, I feel that old life, my real life calling out to me. Strangling me. That life and this city are intrinsically linked.” I turned back to face her. “If the world is ready to support life, I need to return to my real body. That’s when I can live again.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully. Her mouth opened and it looked as though she were about to say something but thought better of it. I could see compassion in her eyes, and something else. A great sadness. Loss. A part of her understood what I was saying.

  “Come with me,” she said finally. “I need to show you something.”

  34

  She led me across the city, further to the north, where the factories and warehouses thinned out and were replaced by the gentle undulation of suburban homes. Some of these neighbourhoods had been hit pretty hard; they were cratered and barren with few structures still standing. In other places it almost seemed as though the Summer had never occurred. Houses stood silent and unkempt, dotted with rusted cars and pushbikes and empty garden beds, but on the whole in good condition. I could almost picture people pushing open their front doors and stepping out, clad in pyjamas, steaming cups of coffee in their hands as they watched the two of us walk by.

  Arsha talked less than before and kept glancing across at me as if to gauge my mood. Her pace never slowed and that bubble of energy that always seemed to surround her was still there, but I could tell that the sheen of my return had diminished somewhat after our conversation back at the lab.

  I knew I’d disappointed her, but what other course of action could I take? I couldn’t pretend to be something I wasn't. I watched, with more than a hint of jealousy, at her striding ahead of me, ever confident, that indomitable self-assurance practically announcing itself to the world with every footfall. That just wasn’t me, at least not the synthetic version of me. In this body I was far less capable of being the person I needed to be. I was deficient in so many ways that she wasn’t, and yet we’d undergone the same procedure. How had it come to be this way?

  “It’s just down here,” she said finally, interrupting my train of thought. She turned into an avenue that fell away down the hill on a gentle incline. There was a sign here, covered by a film of dust. It read: Somerset Drive.

  This street contained a wide variety of architectural styles, not uncommon in the older suburbs closer to the city centre. We passed an ultra-modern double-storey place with an exterior that was impeccably smooth and white, styled in a circular, wind-swept formation with horizontal teardrop windows and a door curved like a broad fissure. It was as if a giant blob of toothpaste had been discharged on the ground and then been fanned around by the wind until it set. There was not a straight line to be seen anywhere upon it.

  In contrast, a number of other places were simple, traditional square shapes constructed from rendered brick. I had always found it to be an odd juxtaposition of old and new, these rustic old places like weeds poking up between roses, doggedly clinging to their own patch of dirt and refusing to give up their place in the sun. There was an olden-day kind of charm to them when viewed in isolation, but when wedged into a modern city they seemed like a fis
h out of water.

  We reached another little rendered brick place and Arsha came to a stop. There were cracks running across the faded grey exterior like spiderwebs, and some of the eaves were sagging, but on the whole it looked sound. I could tell that she had done some tidying up here. The yard was devoid of garbage and debris and the garden freshly raked and cleared of weeds.

  I looked back out toward the city. The towers were a few kilometres away, not too far for her to travel from the workshop.

  “This is my first plantation,” she said, backing up the concrete driveway as she spoke. “This is a nice, out-of-the-way location, it gets plenty of sun on the crest of the hill and there’s a tributary just down the road where I can fetch water if I need it.”

  The absurd notion that she was a real estate agent giving me a pitch jumped into my head. I tried to push it out of my mind.

  “Seems like a good choice,” I said.

  Arriving at the front door, she eased it open and went inside. She’d cleaned up in here as well. A big blue sofa lined one wall and a simple black coffee table was perfectly aligned in front of it. Bookshelves were stacked perfectly with a collection of worn old texts on one wall, and a large rectangular display screen hung on the other. Six neatly positioned chairs sat around a table in the kitchen as if waiting for a family to come home and cluster around it for an evening meal.

  Everything had the appearance of being recently dusted. It was spotless.

  “I chose this house because it isn’t reliant on modern technology,” Arsha said, pacing over to one of the glass windows. “In here, I don’t need to be connected up the Grid just to open a window.” She pulled on the sliding glass panel next to her and a breezed gusted in, ruffling her hair. She turned back to me. “I just pull it open.”

  “I guess the designers of those Grid-integrated places weren’t anticipating the end of the world,” I said wryly. She ignored me and continued on through the house.

  “Out the back is where I’ve been planting,” she said as we moved across the open plan flooring toward the back door. There appeared to be three bedrooms and a laundry adjoining this main area. “I’ve been trying to establish this one for a few years now.”

  She pulled the back door aside and held it open for me. I went through. The neatness and precision of the interior flowed through into the yard as well. Long, raised rectangular garden beds enclosed by wooden edgings sat in perfect alignment across the plot, a dozen or more, with a thin layer of grass covering the gaps that ran between them serving as walkways. I stepped out and began to pace among them.

  “Like I told you, they’re taking their time to get going,” Arsha said, manoeuvring in front of me. She pointed down at some spindly green sprouts. “Potatoes, they’re doing okay I guess.” She took a couple of steps and stabbed her finger down again. “Turnips, a little better. Sweet potatoes.”

  I bent down and dug gently at the outline of something long and straight that was running the length of the garden bed. My fingers closed around it and I lifted it slightly.

  “Careful with that,” Arsha snapped.

  I looked closely at it. It was a little polyethylene pipe. “Irrigation?” I said, impressed.

  She nodded. “Yeah, kinda. Just a little backyard sprinkler system, really.” She pointed back toward the house where a corrugated water tank rose up almost as high as the roof. “That’s the other reason I chose this place. It has a nice big reservoir.”

  “How many days’ supply does it hold?”

  “We’ve had some good rains lately, but not enough to supply as much water as I’d like, unfortunately. Not for all these.” She swept her arm across to indicate the other garden beds. “That’s why I have to supplement it with water from the stream now and again.” She glanced around wistfully at the yards either side. “I’d love to be able to fit more tanks in here and hook them up somehow. That would really help.”

  “I’m sure it’s something we can work on.”

  “Yeah,” she said absently, her mouth a thin line of concentration. I could tell she was already mentally going through plans for making it happen.

  “What else is there?” I said, glancing around.

  Moving to the next garden, she began to point again at some tiny saplings. “An apple tree, a grape vine. Tomatoes.” She shook her head. “They’re growing so slow.”

  Further on there was another garden devoted entirely to what looked like soybeans, and beyond I caught sight of something else. I pointed toward the back of the yard.

  “You’re growing wheat, too?”

  “Yeah,” she smiled. We went and stood before it and watched the golden stems ripple in the breeze. “There was a spare lot at the back of this place, which gave me room to expand. It’s a very small crop right now, but enough for me to harvest a few grains for storage.”

  Reaching out with my hand, I allowed the wheat to flutter back and forth across my fingertips. There was only a few square metres of it, but it was a start.

  “It’s amazing,” I said earnestly, and I had to admit to myself that this was too much work to be done in a single year. Maybe I had lost track of time out there in the desert, although I couldn’t explain why.

  “But it’s not enough,” she said ruefully. “Not nearly enough.”

  “For what?”

  “To feed people,” she said pointedly. “Look around you, Brant. This is it. This, and one like it, are all we have. That’s why I brought you here, so you could see for yourself how tenuous this situation really is.”

  I surveyed the plot and tried to weigh things up in my mind. “This looks promising, though, Arsha. We’re not feeding an army. I think it’s adequate.”

  “Yeah, there might be enough here to feed one or two people, Brant.” Her eyes flicked from one garden to the next as she tallied up the resources in her head. “Might be. But you have one lean year, just one year where temperatures drop and there’s a marginal decrease in yield....” She spread her hands horizontally, palms down. “It’s over. You get me? One tough season and it’s over.”

  “So meanwhile we do what?” My voice was starting to rise to match hers. “Just sit around watching the sky while we wait for the city to be populated by vast fields of fresh produce?”

  “If waiting longer means a greater chance of success then yes, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “And how long do you expect to wait around? The clock’s ticking, right? The embryos won’t last forever. They could suffer irreparable damage by the time you’re ready.”

  She glared at me. “I’d still prefer that than to bring them out early and watch them starve to death because I was in a hurry.”

  I grunted and threw my hands in the air and began to walk away. Then, thinking better of it, I rounded on her again.

  “So what’s your plan, then?” I wanted to know. “Enlighten me.”

  Looking cool and composed, she folded her arms and said evenly, “We stay as synthetics.”

  I gave her a sceptical look. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  “I mean exactly what I said.” She stepped closer to me, imposing herself through those eyes of cobalt blue, her voice clear and measured. “We stay just the way we are.”

  Grasping at the meaning of her suggestion, I struggled to demonstrate the same composure. “Stay the way we are... forever?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever it takes.”

  My mouth dropped, incredulous. “That was never the plan.” I swung my arm in the direction of the skyscrapers in the distance. “Those embryos, those little dots sitting in a freezer who will one day be children need people to raise them. People, Arsha, not machines. That was the whole point of using the Displacers, to bring humans back into the world to shape the future.”

  “Okay, I agree with that,” she said more calmly. “Yes, we need to bring people back. That’s what we’re here to do. But it needs to be done right, first time. We don’t get another shot at this.”

  “Exactly, and that doesn’t mean-
”

  “Listen, Brant,” she cut in, starting to lose that aura of self-control again, “I don’t care that you were gone all that time, or even that you weren’t around to help. Okay? I’m happy to wipe the slate clean. It’s done. It’s over.” She waved her hand as if brushing away the past. Then she stepped up close. “But the time for screwing around has long gone. You need to stop looking at your own needs and focus on what’s best for us. Both of us need to work together, now. We need to look at our options and very, very carefully choose the right ones. Because if we screw this up, we lose everything. You got it? Everything.” Those eyes made me feel like I was pinned against a wall. “Am I starting to make sense here?”

  Reluctantly, I nodded, dropping my eyes. What she was saying did make sense. “Of course. I want to do the right thing.” I met her eyes again and her posture relaxed. “What do you suggest?”

  She tapped her index finger thoughtfully on her chin. “We wait it out for now, concentrate on the crops, on building what we have.” She knelt at the garden bed and lightly touched a tiny green tomato. “They’ll get stronger, I know they will. In time, the offspring of these plants will feed the world. But right now, we focus on making them stronger, on storing away resources for the hard times. Then, we assess it again. Maybe in months, or even years. I’m not sure. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  I sighed, grimaced. It sounded like such a long time, when all I wanted was to be out of this cage.

  “I don’t know if I can wait that long,” I said, dejected.

  “There's something else.”

  “What?”

  “I've been studying cell degeneration over extended cryosleep back at the lab, and I think there's a very high chance that by now there would be irreversible damage to our bodies. A very high chance.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I'm saying that if we tried using the Displacer, we might actually destroy ourselves. We'd be potentially returning to uninhabitable vessels.”