by Rob Favre
I really couldn’t comment on her fashion choices, though. I was wearing the very same outfit.
We had only brought a few outfits each, and there wasn’t really any good way for us to wash them. We’d rinse them in the sink using the ship’s apparently endless supply of hand soap, but that never really got them clean, and it gave our only source of drinking water a funky smell. Before long everything we had to wear was stained, and smelly, and worn, and falling apart. We sniped at each other with rude little comments about it when we were feeling hostile, which was most of the time. After months of living in foul rags, Renay complained to Mustard, and that was when he decided to tell us that he could make new clothes for us. He was programmed with specifications he could send through the same molecular assembler that the ship used to create our food paste. I was excited at the prospect of something clean and new to wear. That all ended when I saw what he had made us: long-sleeved unitards that made us look like walking jars of pickle relish. Mustard assured us that this was the most fashionable, trendy outfit he knew how to make. He also assured us, after lots of asking, that it was the only outfit he knew how to make. So, we both looked ridiculous, but at least we smelled a little better.
Renay made her way across my territory to the food paste dispenser. Without really meaning to, I watched as she walked across the room, relishy fabric swishing off the curve of her hips. The sludge plopped into her bowl, and she turned to look at me. She smiled, a little. It had been a long time since I’d seen anyone smile.
“I found this. I think it is the last one. We could divide it?” She held out a stale husk of what had once been a biscuit. It looked mouthwatering. As far as I knew, we’d been out of real food for weeks now, even with careful rationing. I had been eating nothing but brown sludge, day in and day out. The color of the sludge suggested that it might taste like chocolate. It did not taste like chocolate. So, the prospect of something to chew, even if it was hard as a rock, was the most exciting news I’d heard in a long time.
“Um, thanks.” I reached out and took a piece of the biscuit. Her finger brushed against mine, softly, just for a moment. It had been a long time since I’d touched anyone. The biscuit was stale, probably inedible. But suddenly I was thinking about my picnic with Zoe, sharing bread with her the night before I’d climbed up into the tiny, smelly room I was trapped in. I wasn’t hungry anymore.
I shook my head. “Never mind.” I put the biscuit back in her hand.
Her smile collapsed. She shrugged. “So I will just eat this myself. Very well.”
She ducked behind the wall again. I stalked back to the corner and threw myself face first toward the floor. My fall was interrupted by a light couch that appeared when I was halfway down. I laid facedown, staring through the glow at the dirt on the smooth floor below. I heard footsteps, the soft clink of a bowl being set on the floor, and a sniffle.
Whatever. It wasn’t my fault. None of this was my fault.
One more month until we reached Earth.
In the movies, when a spaceship comes back to Earth from wherever, they always show it soaring past Saturn or Jupiter. They do this because it makes for a beautiful shot and because it’s a quick way to let you know how close the ship is to Earth. When you’re really traveling through space, even inside the solar system, what you mostly see is empty space. Five days ago, we had spotted Neptune, far away off to the left, a blue dot just a little bigger and brighter than the surrounding stars. Apart from that, the only sign we were getting closer was that the Sun was getting a little bigger. Travelling at full interstellar speed, we could have gotten from Neptune to Earth in a couple of hours, but we had to start slowing down a long time before we got there, or we’d just zoom past it. It felt like eternity. It was hard to believe that after so many years, and two long, long trips, I was finally going to be back on Earth. And there was nothing to do but wait.
I was washing out my sludge bowl and trying to decide if I was tired enough to go to bed when Mustard shouted into the silence. “Dudes! We’re here! Earth orbit achieved! High five!”
Normally I ignored him when he said that, partly because high fives are lame, partly because they’re even lamer if you say “high five” out loud, but mostly because it’s just weird and unsatisfying to try to slap a squirming pink tentacle. But he had gotten us here, and I was excited. I did my best.
“Can we see it?” I asked. I had to admit I was a little worried that he might have brought us to some other random place in the galaxy, or that someone had built a giant Swedish meatball in space and named it “Urth” and he’d just brought us to see that. I held my breath while the floor beneath my feet dissolved into transparency.
Sitting below us, like a blue and white marble on a table of black velvet, was Earth.
We were really, finally here.
We were looking at the southern Atlantic Ocean, South America and Africa holding it in place like bookends, and if they weren’t exactly the same shape as I remembered, or quite as green as I remembered, I didn’t care. We were back.
I could feel Renay standing behind me. I looked back at her. She was staring down through the floor too.
“So. That is the Earth?” She sounded skeptical. Maybe disappointed.
“That’s it.”
“It is much smaller than I expected.”
I wondered what this was like for her. She’d only ever seen one planet in her life, but growing up on the Heifer, she’d heard so many stories, passed down from grandfather to grandchild, about Earth and the people who’d lived there. To Renay this must have felt like looking down at Mount Olympus, or Middle Earth, or Super Mario World. When you take something mythical and make it real, it’s always going to be disappointing. Reality can never compete with imagination. The perfect thing we dream of never ends up being quite so perfect when we really get our hands on it.
“Want to go see what it’s like?”
Renay stared through the floor, motionless. “The sooner we find some help, the sooner we can get home and put this whole trip behind us.”
“Okay. Mustard, can we call someone? Ask them for permission to land somewhere?”
Mustard hesitated half a second before he answered. This usually meant he thought I was being dumb and he was trying to find a polite way to answer. It usually didn’t work, but I appreciated the effort. “Dude, like, I can try, but nobody down there is listening.”
“Please try.”
He stood silent and motionless. I glanced at Renay. She was still staring down at the planet. I wondered what she was thinking about, but I didn’t ask.
Mustard animated back to life. “I asked, dude. No answer. Just like I said.”
“What, there’s nobody listening?”
“Here’s the thing, dude. Any message I try to send can only be heard by people.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Mustard, are you saying that there’s nobody like me down there? On the entire planet?”
“Oh, no, dude. Not at all. There are billions like you.”
I didn’t have the time or patience to try to figure out the game he was playing. “Okay, great. Take us down then. We’ll just have to talk to someone the old-fashioned way.”
“Sure thing, dudes! Where should we touch down?”
I gave Mustard some instructions. He spent a few seconds calculating, then formed a double-thumbs-up out of four tentacles.
We fell toward Earth.
Things down in Safe Home F were quiet and tense.
The facility was plain, and space was tight. There had been no time or resources to make the ceilings high, or the lighting warm, or the smell pleasant. It was damp, and hot, and cramped. But there was enough food, and ample water. There were a few dozen other children for the boys to play with. They ran, and chased one other down the hallways, and threw things, as children do.
On the first day after waking her sister, she had answered many questions. A lot changes in twenty years, after all. But in the weeks since, her si
ster had withdrawn into herself. Life had moved on without her. The kids her age were now grown adults with families of their own; the adults she’d known were elderly or passed away. Their mother was always tired now and tended to complain. And their father, of course, had been gone for years. She and her brother tried to include their newly thawed sister in meals and gatherings, but it was going to be long time before everyone adjusted to this new relationship.
Was there enough time left for things to feel normal again?
Phase Six was coming.
Chapter 14
Renay’s hands flailed in the air, wildly swinging at an elusive foe. “What… is this thing?”
“A mosquito.”
“Why does it keep trying to land on me?”
“It’s just… curious.”
The sun was shining, bright and yellow in a clear blue sky. Not just any old star, either. The actual Sun. The sky made it look like a lovely day for a picnic. But there were not a lot of great places to spread out a picnic blanket. The ground was damp. Black ferns swayed in gusts of stinging, sour wind. We stood on a small hill above a shallow bog of greenish water. At least, I think it was water. The air was thick, heavy with the smell of decay. High in the sky, four buzzards were circling. A fifth joined them. I hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.
The mosquito, bored of trying to find a spot to land on Renay, perched on my arm. I looked at it for a second. It had been a long time since I’d seen one. We hadn’t brought any with us on the Hope/Freedom. I sort of missed them. It felt like being back home.
I felt a tiny prick as the mosquito bit me. I squished it. I realized I didn’t miss mosquitoes anymore.
Renay pulled her relish-colored poncho-onesie tight around herself as more mosquitos got curious. “I grew up hearing stories of the Old Ones on Earth. They were great builders. Earth was full of wonders, glittering mountains of glass and steel, vibrant gardens full of fruit and flowers. Herds of huge animals I had never seen.” She swatted at another insect. “They were right about the herds of animals. Wrong about their size.”
“It didn’t look like this when I lived here, okay? And I didn’t actually live here, exactly. Just spent a lot of time here.”
I stared at the corroded beams and crumbled concrete in what had once been Dodger Stadium. Somewhere down there in the reeking bog was the parking lot Dad and I had walked across on summer afternoons long ago. We would always stop so Dad could buy a program, which I always thought was funny because he would never look at them. I wore my glove to every game. Never caught a foul ball, but I was always ready. When I was eight, one went over my head and landed about five rows behind us, but the Padres were batting, so I wasn’t too upset. I wasn’t going to be catching anything today though, except maybe a handful of mosquitos. This place hadn’t seen a baseball game in hundreds of years. In fact, it might not have seen any people at all in hundreds of years. The only living things here were ferns, and mosquitos, and buzzards. Off on the horizon, I could just make out the decaying husks of skyscrapers where downtown used to be. From here, it didn’t look any more populated than the stadium.
“Tom, there is nobody here.” Renay was getting impatient. “We have to find someone who can help.”
I hadn’t counted on this when I asked Mustard to bring us here. I figured it wouldn’t really matter where we landed in L.A. We would be a big enough deal that as soon as someone saw us, we’d get all the attention we could possibly need. I honestly hadn’t considered the possibility that L.A. could just be… empty. “Yeah, I know. Mustard, can you detect any signs of human life?”
“Let me check, dude.” Mustard raised up to maximum height, standing on the tips of his tentacles, and looked around. “Nope. No humans detected. Sorry, dude.”
“Well, come on. Let’s have a look around.”
Growing up, I remember adults griping about how you had to have a car to get anywhere in L.A. This never bothered me much as a kid – I was never the one driving. If mom or dad were stuck in another nightmarish traffic jam on the 405, I was usually just fine in the air-conditioned back seat, playing a game on my phone. Now, I was starting to understand. Everything was so far from everything else. We walked for about twenty minutes before I realized we weren’t going to find anyone this way. We hadn’t even made it to Chinatown yet.
I kept looking around, expecting a flood of memory to wash over me at the sight of some familiar thing, but this didn’t feel like home. I felt alien, disconnected. Lonely. I had known it wouldn’t be the same. Nothing stays the same for a thousand years. But I had expected some connection, some sense of returning to a place I belonged. I felt nothing. I might as well have been visiting another alien world. I leaned against the rusted frame of an ancient car and gathered my thoughts.
“Tom, I understand that you miss your home. But all this died a long time ago.” Renay pointed toward the sky. “Up there someplace are the people I care about, and they are running out of time. If we do not get them help, they will be just as dead as this place. If you wish to sit here and be sad, I will come find you before I leave. But I am going to find help.”
She stomped off. I didn’t make any effort to follow her. What was the point? There was nobody here.
A low, rumbling howl pierced the silence. Both of us jumped.
Something was here, and it was big.
Renay looked back at me. “What made that noise, Tom?”
“It was probably a…” I thought about it and realized I didn’t recognize that sound at all. Not a wolf. Too deep to be a lion. Did elephants roar? “I’m not sure. Something big. But it sounded pretty far away. We should keep an eye out.”
“I plan to. Are you coming?”
I nodded. We moved on.
“The Old Ones certainly built large paths. Were there so many people?”
We were walking along the freeway toward downtown. Well, what was left of a freeway, which was a low garden of weeds and small bushes growing up through the pulverized remains of what had once been pavement. Dragonflies and mosquitos buzzed around us noisily, as well as some shiny green bugs that I didn’t recognize. It was peaceful, I guess, but way too quiet. The number of buzzards circling in the sky had doubled. One in particular was circling lower and lower. I was keeping an eye on it, but I didn’t mention anything to Renay.
“There were. About five million people lived here when we left, give or take.”
“Five million? How many people are in each million?”
It turns out it’s tough to explain big numbers to someone who was never taught any math. I ended up just saying it was a lot. There was awkward silence. Something small dashed rustling through the weeds away from us as we approached, but we never got a look at what it was.
We were close to downtown. I figured if there was any place around here that might still be populated, that was it. Plus, it was easy to head toward a landmark like the L.A. skyline, even if it didn’t look quite the way I remembered it. There were still some buildings I recognized, or at least their skeletons. There were also some taller structures I that could have been antennas. And towering over the entire skyline was a giant McDonald’s “M,” which had probably once been golden, but now was grayish and cracking. At the top of each arch, hundreds of stories above the ground, I could just make out little clumps of trees. I wondered how long they’d been growing there.
With every step, I had less hope that anyone was still alive here. I ducked inside what had once been once a burrito place to get out of the sun. The door and windows and furniture were all gone. I leaned against the counter and looked at some delicate purple-blue flowers growing in clumps between the tiles in the floor. I tried to remember what a burrito tasted like.
Renay was standing in the doorway still, looking up and down the street. She shook her head. “All of this was full of people?” I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to herself. I didn’t answer.
Another roar echoed through the empty streets. It was closer now. Renay and I looked at
each other. We both pretended not to be scared.
She came inside and sat in the shade. Her forehead was damp with sweat, and a strand of dark hair clung to it. Her hair was longer now that it had been back in the colony, hanging halfway down her back. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. She fanned herself with the billowy sleeve of her relish poncho.
“Tom, we need a new plan. There is nobody here.”
“Yeah. Looks that way.” I felt a sudden craving for a Coke. I hadn’t had a Coke in over a thousand years. If we found one somewhere, would it still be safe to drink?
A small, black shape drifted past the window. I stepped outside and saw it hovering in the middle of the nearby intersection, floating lightly on the breeze.
“Renay, look!” I pointed. Hope surged through me.
“What is it?”
“A drone.”
It hung steady in the sky about twenty feet above the street, kept aloft by four props that made a faint, high-pitched whine. And it had a camera, pointed right at us. Which meant that someone was watching us, someone who might not be too far away.
“Hey! Hey! Help!” I jumped up and down, waved my arms, shouted as loud as I could. “Come help us! Please help!”
Renay jumped and shouted too, and after a few seconds Mustard began waving his tentacles in an intricate pattern and singing about how much better hot dogs were than meat. I tried not to think too hard about what that meant.
For a few seconds, the drone hung motionless, just watching us. Then, without warning, it shot up into the sky and away toward the hills. I hoped its departure meant help was coming. I worried that it might mean something else.
“Wait.” Renay held up her hand. “I think I heard something.”
I listened. I heard wind whistling through empty storefronts, the rustle of palm branches high above. I was about to tell Renay she was imagining things. Then I heard it.