“She needs time.” It’s my only defense.
“Uh, no. She needs support. God, Will, do you really need to be told this by an AI?”
“You’re more than that.”
“You see!” she says. “You’re capable of saying the right things, so why can’t you say them to Cap?”
I can’t help but smile. Gal can run mental circles around me, leading me to conclusions we both know are true, but one of us would like to avoid. And it’s not because it makes Capria uncomfortable, it’s because it scares the shit out of me. My heart might not be able to stop beating, but it can still be broken. Again. I don’t have feelings for her like that right now. The offenses of her past, which are fresh in her mind, are hard to let go. But I have no illusions about where my emotions will travel if I let them. She’s smart, funny, beautiful, and the last woman in the universe. That I will fall in love with her again is probably inevitable. But I’m determined to let her make that leap first. I’m not going to be a fool for her again. “Maybe she should say them to me?”
“A fair point,” Gal says, “but for her, the death of her boyfriend, her crew, her mission, and all of humanity, is just three months old. Do you remember how you felt three months after waking up? The desperation?”
“She didn’t have to kill Tom. Didn’t have to drag their bodies. Didn’t have to—” I shake my head at the memory of Tom’s soiled VCC and holding his dead, leaky body up to break through his security.
“Will, not even I can imagine what that would have felt like, but it was more than seven years ago for you, and you’ve gotten past it. You’re strong.”
I huff a dubious laugh. “I created you to help me escape the real world. That’s not strength.”
“You could still use it,” she says. “For both of you. But you haven’t brought the Great Escape up to me, or told Capria about the possibility. There is a VCC for each of you.”
“I’m not sure I could handle her choosing to spend eternity in a simulation rather than with me.”
“Such a softy.”
“Fuck you.”
Gal chuckles. “Look, the point is, the cure to your melancholy and building fears is sitting on the observation deck, crying into her arms.”
The image of Cap weeping by herself draws me to my feet, but it isn’t quite enough to get me moving toward the door. I’ll see her in two hours when we meet for dinner. I don’t want to impose. She probably wants to be alone. I say none of this aloud, but Gal knows me well.
“Don’t be a wuss, Will.”
“Have you tried talking to her?”
“I make her uncomfortable still,” Gal confesses, and she sounds a little sad about it, too.
“What do you do?” I ask. “In all your free time.” Gal is sentient, and hyper-intelligent. She must be bored, too. Maybe that’s why she’s playing matchmaker.
“Aside from exploring the vast reaches of the universe and pouring over the treasure trove of human knowledge stored in my memory?”
“Yeah, what are you doing? Aside from observing mostly empty space and re-reading your own memory. And don’t mention maintaining the ship’s functions. We both know that doesn’t really require your attention.”
I take her silence as discomfort. Maybe I’m not the only bored member of our crew?
“I’m writing a story,” she says. “And no, you can’t read it.”
“Really?” This isn’t just surprising, it’s…delightful. At the end of everything, Gal is still making something new. “That’s great. Will you show me when it’s done?”
“I’m not sure when it will be done.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Where you should be going is the observation deck.”
I look at the door, but remain rooted, like a tree, if there even are still trees. “You’re sure about that?”
“Have I ever led you astray?” If Gal still had a face, I know I would see a lop-sided smirk on it. While Capria might feel torn up about her indiscretions, Gal prefers to joke about hers.
“If you’re wrong, I’m going to reprogram you with a lisp.”
“Don’t make me build a new body,” she says. “Or maybe that’s what you really want? My drone body was pretty thexthy.”
The lisp gets me smiling, and moving toward the door. Gal says nothing as I move about the ship. But I know she’s watching. I stop in front of the observation deck entrance. “Any way you can give us some privacy?”
“Nope.”
“Because it’s not possible, or because you want to watch.”
“Whichever makes you feel better.”
“Can you, at least, not talk.”
“You can’t see it,” she says, “but I’m buttoning my lips.”
“Thanks.”
“Dughmeshoni”
The sound confuses me for a moment, but then my mind deciphers the sound, spoken through simulated buttoned lips. ‘Don’t mention it.’
I’m smiling when the doors open. Then I hear Capria. Gal wasn’t exaggerating. The resonating sound of Capria’s sobs are gut wrenching.
The doorway holds me captive, tempting me with the possibility of running away. But Gal is right. I need this, and it sounds like Cap does, too. I head up the spiral staircase and pause near the top. The Milky Way glows across the dome above. The last time I saw it, I wasn’t really moved by it. This time, no longer alone, all of creation seems to scream its beauty at me.
“Cap.” The sound of my voice feels insignificant in comparison to the universe on display. But Capria reacts like I shouted, snapping to attention. Tears are wiped away, emotions swallowed, and quivering lips fall still.
In seconds, she looks almost normal again, but then she speaks, and I know her transformation is superficial. “W-Will. I d-didn’t hear you come…” A sniffle betrays her. “What are you—”
“Thought you might like some company.” She doesn’t respond to that. Just looks at the floor.
The moment grows awkward as I stand still, unsure of how to handle the situation. Gal says nothing, but I can feel her presence, prodding me on. If I stop here, I’ll never hear the end of it. Literally, never.
Capria glances at me when I sit beside her on the floor.
“The last time I came here,” I tell her, “I was by myself, too. The universe felt empty then. I never came back.”
I give her a moment to respond, and when it’s clear she’s not going to, I add, “It’s not so bad now.”
A hint of a smile puts me at ease. Then she leans her head against my shoulder, and my whole body seizes. The last thing I was expecting was any kind of affection. It nearly undoes me.
“Thank you for being patient,” she says.
“With what?” I ask.
“I know what you think I thought of you. I don’t know how much you watched, but I know how the records look. When I was with Tom…”
I’m glad she can’t see my face, or the sneer that comes and goes at the mention of Tom’s name.
“…I was a different person. He was infectious. I made a lot of stupid decisions when I was with him.” She lifts her head from my shoulder and looks me in the eyes. “I’m not pawning off responsibility for my part in what happened. I—I just want you to know that I never really minded your attention.”
She takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out. “I don’t want you to doubt what comes next.”
I swallow. “What comes next?”
“We’re the last man and woman in the universe. We’re inevitable.”
The way she says, ‘we’re’ implies a kind of unity, like we’re one person, and I think I understand where she’s going. Back when people still got married, tradition and religion said that they became like one person. It didn’t always work out that way, but for Cap and me, living alone forever, the odds are pretty good. There will come a time when we feel like an extension of the other. I’ve considered this possibility, but I didn’t expect Cap to have thought of it already, let alone to have accepted it.
>
“Part of me feels excited.” She looks up. “We’re going to see how it all ends. Maybe even see it begin again.”
“But the time in between cosmic events is going to be really boring.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
My insides seize up again, as I wonder what she’s implying. I’m not in love with her. Not yet. And I’m sure she’s not there, either. I haven’t done anything to earn it. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t—
“We could go back,” she says, and I try not to show my disappointment.
“Back?”
“To Cognata. To Mars. To Earth. We don’t need to stay in empty space. We don’t even need to stay on the Galahad.”
Gal doesn’t chime in, but I’m sure the idea of us abandoning her on the Galahad doesn’t feel great. While I agree with Cap’s sentiments, I can’t bring myself to say so and risk hurting Gal. But she had a body before. Maybe we could come up with a better solution for her.
“We probably won’t find anyone alive.”
“We’re alive.”
“Mmm.”
“It will give us a destination. A goal. A purpose. So what if it takes us seven years to reach Cognata, or another ten to get back to Earth? So what if ten thousand years have passed by the time we return? We’ll at least have a direction.”
I read between the lines. This is what Cap needs to feel better, to move on. But I’m not convinced. The idea of backtracking all that distance, to visit places I’m sure will only cause pain, is nauseating. We’ll be right back where we started, but thousands of years later. The human race will be long gone. I would rather explore new solar systems. Search for life. Engage the intellect. The way Leonard might have. But if that’s what Capria needs… We have time to go back and start over.
I’m about to make the request of Gal, who is fully capable of piloting the ship and has asked about a course change on numerous occasions, when her voice fills the observation deck. “Hey guys, sorry to interrupt your quality time, but I’m detecting some abnormalities.”
“With the ship?” I ask, pushing myself to my feet, and then helping Cap up.
“With the universe.”
“What kind of abnormalities?” Cap asks, equal parts worried and intrigued.
A wave of nausea roils through my body. I’ve felt it before, in simulations back on Mars. Gal has just dropped Galahad out of faster than light travel. When she speaks again, her voice is tinged with fear. “It’s ending.”
33
“The universe doesn’t have an end,” Capria says. The sadness in her voice has already faded, replaced by scientific curiosity.
“Do you mean it’s imploding or something?” I ask.
Capria shakes her head. “That would take so much time it would be impossible to observe over the span of a human life, or even the span of human history.”
I get what she’s saying, that cosmic events, even at the speed of light, take trillions of years to play out over the vastness of space, which expands far beyond our galaxy and universe. But Gal’s interstellar perceptions are without comparison, and from a perspective light years beyond anything previously observed.
“I mean,” Gal says. “We are reaching a physical boundary that expands in all directions.”
“That’s not possible,” Capria says.
The observation deck’s display of space shifts. The expanse of space looks unchanged, except for a single star, which seems twice the size and brightness of everything else. We’re in a solar system. “Where are we?”
“It doesn’t have a name,” Gal says.
Capria steps into the center of the large space, head turned up, fascinated by the view. A smile spreads onto her face. “This is a new star? A new solar system?”
“At first glance, and from a distance, yes.”
“Gal,” Capria says, “Are you feeling okay?”
After letting out an annoyed laugh, Gal replies, “I am not capable of feeling ill or contracting a disease that affects my intellect.”
Capria’s hands go to her hips, a classic sign that she’s about to engage in mental fisticuffs. I’ve never been on the receiving end, but I’ve seen Cap wield her mind like a weapon, even against experts in other fields. “But—”
“I’ve run several diagnostics. Galahad’s systems have not been compromised. There are no lingering traces of malware, viruses, Synergy, or Tom’s meddling.”
Capria’s arms go slack. She’s never faced off against Gal, who is not only hyper-intelligent and has access to all human knowledge, but is also not afraid to remind us of our own foibles. In Cap’s case, that’s Tom, and mentioning him pretty much shuts down any argument she might level against Gal’s interstellar claims.
But that won’t work with me. “Gal. Just tell us what you found.”
“I was trying t—”
“Gal.”
“Fine.” There’s a pause, during which a human being might pace, or take a seat or any number of time-wasting activities performed while thoughts are gathered, but Gal doesn’t have a body, and doesn’t need to gather her thoughts. So the pause is just for us. “What do you know about cosmic rays?”
I open my mouth to answer, but my astronomy education at Command was fairly limited. That’s why Capria is here.
“They’re highly energetic radiation. Protons and atomic nuclei. They move through the universe near the speed of light.”
“They’re fairly constant,” Gal says.
“Yes.” Cap still sounds doubtful, but less so now that Gal is speaking her language.
“Can you imagine something for me?” Gal asks.
Cap nods. “Sure.”
“If the source of the universe’s cosmic radiation was, say, a wall of white holes—”
“Supernovae,” Capria says.
“Why did we wake her up?” Gal asks, annoyed and clearly talking to me. “Oh wait, we didn’t.”
It feels like a cheap shot, but Cap actually smiles. “Fine.”
“I’ll make it simpler for you,” Gal says. “Lightbulbs. Thousands of them. They’re lining a wall, spaced out every six inches. Look at it from a hundred yards away. What do you see?” The dome above us shifts from a display of space to a wall of light, demonstrating the image. “Now move closer.”
The image zooms in at a steady pace. The wall grows brighter, a solid beam of illumination, until the edges expand beyond our periphery. The light loses its uniformity, turning into a warbling field of fluctuating brightness. And then, as we close in, each individual bulb separates from the whole. “What once looked like a steady constant from a vast source, when observed from a closer distance, can be discerned as emanating from multiple sources.”
“So you’re saying the cosmic rays that evenly permeate the universe are generated by…”
“I couldn’t begin to speculate,” Gal admits. “I’m only stating what the data suggests: that cosmic rays, measured from Earth, or even a million miles behind our current position, appear to be constant. But here, there are holes where I’m unable to detect any cosmic rays. No quark or gluon field fluctuations.”
“So,” I say, “in these holes, space is emptier than…space?”
“Correct,” Gal replies. “And all detectable energy in the universe, beyond this solar system, is being emitted by a wall of points, which I believe is spherical in shape, enveloping a portion of the Milky Way galaxy, roughly fifty light years across.”
“You can’t possibly think the universe—the multiverse—beyond that area is non-existent?”
“Your assumptions about what is and isn’t there are limited by what was previously observable.”
“Assumptions?” Capria asks, stunned. Gal is challenging her entire understanding of existence. “These are facts.”
“Not anymore,” Gal says. “The data has changed.”
Capria paces back and forth, fingers curled around her black hair, tugging at it. “I want to see the data. The numbers. The math. Show me. Please.”
“There are easier ways to make you understand,” Gal says.
“Couldn’t you have programmed her to make sense?” Capria says, and I flinch when I realize she’s speaking to me. She’s smiling, but it’s forced. Nervous. Full of doubt. “This doesn’t bother you at all? Your AI is going off the reservation again, and you’re just taking this craziness in stride?”
I nearly address the fact that I didn’t program Gal’s personality, or the way she decides to communicate information, which would then bring us around to the argument of whether or not Gal is actually an HI. That’s a distraction I don’t want—not because it could hurt Gal’s feelings, but because I’m far more interested in the prospect of a limited reality. And if Gal wanted to defend herself, she would. So I stay on topic. “It’s not crazy.”
Capria is baffled by the three simple words. “Wha— How… C’mon…”
“I’m assuming you have more?” I ask, speaking to Gal, and then to Capria. “She always has more. Likes to tease out information. Makes it easier to digest. She probably even has a theory, but wants one of us to present it first.”
My assurances fail to put the pacing Capria at ease, so I add, “Look, if she’s telling us, it’s because she’s exhausted all doubt. Whatever you might think of her personality, or past, she still has access to the ship’s sensor arrays, processing power, and wealth of knowledge. If she’s sure, I’m sure.” I turn my eyes back to the wall of lightbulbs, still slowly spreading apart. “So show us.”
“I’m not sure Doubty McKnowitall will believe it,” Gal says.
I turn toward Cap, and she shrugs. “She can put whatever she wants on this screen. Doesn’t make it real.”
“What possible purpose could she—”
“Capria fears trust,” Gal says. “She believed Tom was a good man, but—”
“Gal!” Her honesty makes me cringe.
“It’s okay,” Capria says. “She’s right. I have trust issues. Probably will for a long time. That’s not fair to you—” She’s looking right at me now. “From what I can tell, you’ve never done anything overtly wrong in your whole life.”
She’s clearly been studying up on her partner for eternity, but I don’t think she’s gone back to my childhood. Doesn’t know about Steven. And if I’m honest, my goody-two-shoes life has all been about making up for his death. Subject for another time.
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