by Matt Spire
Keene shakes his head. “The only one we ever knew.”
“What do you think caused the disease?”
“I don't know.”
“Do you really think it was an evolutionary response?”
“I don't know, but I think it's telling that if all that death was at our own hands, I find it murderous, and if it was an act of nature, I'm inclined to perceive it as justice.”
“What do you mean? That nature knows best?”
“No, but we know better. And it might be our refusal to behave accordingly that's made greed our own ingrained population-thinner. Perhaps this was the only way for us to go forward. To stop worrying about whether our progress made us less human when people capable of producing plagues to inhibit the equal distribution of progress were still in the gene pool.”
“I don't think that's very scientific,” Emma says. “But I think that's what you would call poetic justice.”
“Indiscriminate. But so were we.”
“If you're right, maybe that isn't the only world we'll ever know. If we're being given a new start, I'll fight for better.”
***
Lydia awakens to a low buzzing tone, the light above her now blinking a dull blue.
MAIA's voice comes from everywhere, “Begin making your way to the attachment pod. Descent will begin in twenty minutes.”
She tries to picture waves breaking on the beach, but can only picture Caligatha, its looming city of stone hanging over the empty sand.
“All passengers must be secured in their cabins.”
She tries to picture only her own footsteps behind her on the beach, but billboards stare back. The sand is pristine.
Her heart begins racing, and she focuses on her breathing, but then Keene is at her doorway.
“Come on. It's your hour.”
She closes her eyes as he touches her shoulder, and in a soothing voice he says, “Follow me.”
She rises in silence.
“The entire sleeping quarters detach,” Keene's saying, “but the three of us are going this way,” and he heads to the end of the hall, opens the last door.
It isn't another cabin, but a larger room with four chairs facing forward, screens running the entire perimeter. Emma is sitting, her back to them.
Keene walks to the chair nearest Emma, picks a box off the seat. “I don't believe you've met,” he says, handing Lydia the box, then sits.
Lydia takes a seat behind him, peering through slits in the box. A little white mouse looks up, black eyes glinting. Only the third living, wide awake thing she's seen in her entire life.
“Ten minutes,” MAIA is saying.
They sit in silence, Emma occasionally reaching forward to touch a screen.
“His name is Methuselah,” Keene says. Lydia watches his pink nose sniff the air.
“Five minutes.”
“You'd better set him next to you,” he tells her, and she places the box on the empty seat. Jericho's seat. “He's spent forty years in our green room. It's time you gave him a better home.”
She feels something wrap around her feet, then her waist, and looking at Jericho's seat she watches an amorphous material fluidly wrap around the box and tighten.
“We'll be fine,” Emma says, but Lydia knows it's a lie, and Emma knows she's lying.
“One minute.”
At this, there's a faint vibration coursing through everything. She can feel it in every limb, in her head.
She realizes she won't land near anything like Caligatha, no beach, no water, no buildings she'll recognize. MAIA's talking but she thinks of the places she's never been, forests and valleys and tundra and marshes.
Then there's a sensation like falling in a dream, except when she clenches her fingers into the armrest it doesn't go away, keeps pulling her down from inside.
Ice runs through her veins and she doesn't realize she's talking until she's been doing it for a while, saying “I'm sorry,” over and over.
She's going to get all of them killed, there's no way there could be anything good for them below, and all of this is over her. She thinks of Emma crying outside her cabin, her saying she doesn't care over and over.
“It'll be okay,” Keene soothes, and he's talking about landing safely and there's going to be people below, good people, and she's going to have a new life, the life she deserves, except that isn't what she wants at all.
She doesn't know how long it goes on, minutes or hours, but just as she's gotten used to the falling and can breathe, looking at the screens and realizing Emma's watching her heart-rate and an endless array of numbers about her, there's a sudden jolt. She’s weightless.
***
Lydia comes to crashing backwards, thinking in reverse. Her forehead sticky, pulling her hands away, red. Blood. It falls from her fingertips, dripping up to the ceiling.
Then she remembers the giant rock formation, two bright white scissor arms sticking out of the flesh-colored ground ahead.
Then how the screen surrounding them changed, revealing so many colors pooled together like clouds of white and brown with little green patches.
Emma had been yelling, yelling at MAIA. They hadn't ejected, were going to crash, and she remembers trying to break free from the seat as Emma struggled to land somewhere flat.
She feels her eyelids close, a heaviness pumping through her entire body, but Keene is yelling at her.
He's below her, reaching his arm out, and she realizes she's upside down, crushed between her seat and the wall.
Squirming, pushing with all her strength, the seat falls back and Keene grabs her arm. She isn't crushed.
Everything falls in a painful mess, the seat following her, hitting her head, her falling on top of Keene, until she lands on hard rock below.
Ten feet above, stuck between giant bone white rock, the orbiter hangs, blinding in the reflected sun. The seat stuck above her head, wedged in the open hatch.
Her whole body aching, skin burning, she tries to sit up. Keene is beside her, his arm twisted at an impossible angle. Emma is a few feet away, on her knees, disoriented.
All around her, a world of baking clay, rolling dust and waves of heat. Everything spins and twists.
She tries to find a comfortable position and sit still, but she shakes all over until her body forces her onto her side and she vomits hard.
The sensation of her baking skin, the acid in her mouth and nose.
Then something explodes above, like a gunshot, and she's afraid the suspended orbiter is going to come crashing down, feels her arms and legs flailing.
Keene is yelling something, but a giant white insect body descends over her and she screams, flailing harder but getting nowhere.
It extends long, spindly legs around her, down to the ground, its torso close enough to touch. A blank white face, like a mask, stares down, expressionless. Where the eyes and mouth should be there's round protrusions, glowing red. The torso slides open, in half, and a series of bright flashes envelop her body. Thin wires whip out of the legs, grabbing her arms, piercing her wrist.
Then everything retracts and it stands erect. A group of half-limbs flanking each side twist around, begin blowing air and throwing up dust around her until the thing is floating again, turning its head to Keene.
Now she sees a second one hovering over Emma, striking her with its series of intense flashes. The process repeats for Keene, so much dust in the air now she can barely see anyone, and then they ascend higher, above the dust and turning their heads across the horizon.
Emma and Keene are standing up, but she feels an onset of nausea again, waits to throw up.
“We're okay,” Keene says, but Emma starts yelling, limping forward, faster and faster.
More gunshot sounds, except these sound like they're real gunshots, and Emma is yelling ahead with cupped hands, “It's a medic!” In front of Emma, shots are reflecting off one of the hovering white bodies with long legs. It’s struck in the face, the expressionless mask falling to its chin.
The other has made its way much farther by now, performing its lightshow over a just-discernable body until a shot makes it fall.
Then, through the dust, Lydia watches something shoot through Emma's body, a thick black line spiraling out behind her and splashing loud and wet on the rock below.
Screams are coming from all directions. Time seems frozen, Emma's body flowing gracefully, following the blood trail and falling back. Keene is running through the dust.
Through a gap in the dense white, Lydia catches an overturned vehicle on a stretch of road in the distance, just beyond the source of the gunshots, but then Keene's yelling out, collapsing violently as a chunk of his neck explodes in a burst of black. Lydia feels the spray, cool against her hot face.
A red laser sight pierces the dust, and two figures emerge, standing over the slowly writhing bodies.
“Holy shit,” one says, steadying the butt of a rifle against his shoulder, aiming erratically back and forth between Keene and Emma, bright red line shaking over their faces.
Keene gurgles more black, pooling around his neck and running in dark lines across the rock, spreading thin fingers towards Lydia.
“They don't make none of this anymore,” the other says.
Emma lurches up, and another shot, another burst of black. She's screaming, screaming, screaming and it doesn't end, doesn't change, inhuman, one long and extended note, slowly getting quieter and quieter until it's gone.
Then they see her. She throws her hands over her face, red light shining between her fingers.
“Don't move! Don't move!” one of them yells.
“Ah, shit, what the fuck is that?” the other says.
Peering between her fingers, she sees them look up at the orbiter.
“Okay,” the one without a rifle says. “Okay. Watch her.” He paces away, screaming now. “Crane! Fuck! They've got fucking medbots and droids.”
He continues walking off, rambling in anger.
“What the hell, man?” the other says, shaking his laser sight across her face.
She looks over at Keene, starts crawling towards him. He struggles to turn his ravaged neck as she approaches.
“Lydia,” he manages, choking. His blood is so thick, pure black, pooled under her palms.
“You're...” she begins.
He tries to nod. “You are,” he manages, slow. “Human.”
“Keene,” she sobs, “You're the most human person I know.”
“Emma.”
Her body is still.
“What did they do to you?” She demands.
“You are,” he repeats. “I passed.” A gush of black. “The test. A year... as professor...but...” He struggles to look at Emma, moves his arm towards her slowly. “The real test,” and he closes his eyes, taking his time, “is the same...for flesh.” The black stops running from his neck. “Regrets.”
“No, Keene,” she says softly.
“Go.” His lips unmoving. “And.”
Behind her the men are talking, and in the thinning dust she can see more approaching, more men with laser sights relaxed and shining on the dirt.
Before she realizes what she's doing, she's at the foot of the rock, scrambling up, sliding, struggling to overcome her defeated muscles until she's reached the hatch. Her abdomen feels gutted as she exhausts the last of her strength hoisting herself up with slippery arms. She makes it in just as the yelling starts below.
“This is not where they were supposed to land!” someone yells. “And you didn't say a fucking thing about droids or medbots!”
“We can't lose our cool over one crushed truck!” a voice hollers.
“Perez is fucking dead and military bots are fucking crawling out with flashing lights, what do you expect, Crane? It looks like a goddam ambush.”
She steals a last look back, but the men are still arguing amongst themselves.
“Anything should have been expected!”
One hits another hard across the face, and then the scuffle ends as they all look up at her.
But now she's on her knees, slick on the floor with her and Keene's blood.
“MAIA,” she's begging, “We have to go. We have to go back.”
“There's insufficient fuel for a second return,” MAIA calmly tells her.
“Just go,” she screams.
“Are you sure you want to return to orbit and–”
No, no she doesn't know what she's doing but this isn't the lonely beach, the real end of the world, there's only more death.
“Get me the fuck out of here,” she sobs.
“Twenty minutes are required for cool-down”
“Okay,” she says breathlessly. “Okay.”
There's a rending, mechanical sound behind her.
“To begin preparation for ascension, the rear escape pod hatch must be sealed. Check for and clear any blockage.”
The seat. She scrambles over, pushing against it with her weary muscles, but it won't budge. Shoving as hard as she can, she finally stands over it, peering at the rock below, looking for leverage as she places all her weight on it. It gives way, her arms flailing for anything to hold onto, but they only whip back and she's falling down, landing with the seat on the rock.
Above her, the hatch door slips into place.
She's surrounded by rifles.
“Who are you?” a man without a rifle asks her, adjusting a pair of dark, broken sunglasses. The man who was hit during the argument. He's younger than the others, dressed in a simple plaid shirt and jeans rather than covered in equipment.
She's too hurt to say anything.
“Alright,” he says, “Bring the trucks around. Let's load all this up. Get to work opening the hatch, quick. We don't have time to waste. This place is gonna be crawling any minute.”
As the men scatter, she watches the blood-stained ground.
The youngest man kneels down, takes off his sunglasses and stares her in the face.
“Where you from, lady? Anything in there I should know about?” he nods to the orbiter.
She watches a lone red ant stop at the edge of Keene's black blood. Flatbed trucks are pulling up around them.
“Look,” he says. “We don't have time for a friendly chat. Now, I can tell you're injured pretty bad. You need medical help, and a place to stay. If I'm right, we can offer you temporary refuge. But try anything funny and you'll end up like them.”
He nods at his men, approaching Keene and Emma's bodies cautiously, prodding them with the barrels of their rifles, then hoisting their limp forms into the trucks.
Several men are struggling with the giant white insect-like bodies, hauling them in one per truck.
He smiles, gives her a hand.
The orbiter begins wailing, and his eyes widen.
“No,” he mouths.
His hand grabs hers, hard, and as abruptly as she fell to Earth, she's evacuated onto a truck.
“Where is it going?” he demands, his voice and eyes wild.
“Away,” is all she manages.
He surveys the orbiter, unable to sit still, as though about to leap back out and pin it down himself.
He starts to speak as the truck revs, but collapses in disappointment and slams his hand on the flatbed.
So this is it. A prisoner once again.
***
Lydia and the man in plaid, who the others have called Crane, ride across from each other in the bed of the truck, bumping and speeding along, leaving a haze on the dirty asphalt behind them amongst the dead brush and trash-littered desert.
He’s given her a surgical mask to keep over her face. It itches, and her trapped breath makes her all the more hot.
Beside her, a woman in fatigues named Mae stares icily at Crane, unspeaking.
He sits with one arm on a rifle longer than the other men had, with all kinds of intricate instruments and a hazy blue screen reflecting everything they pass. It must be some kind of sniper. The other arm holds a flask at his chest.
He repe
ats the same routine every few minutes: looks into the cab nervously, gulps from the flask, adjusts his sunglasses, and says something different.
First, “That was some interesting stuff we picked up back there.” Then, “So, are you gonna tell me where you're from?” Then, “We're staying on 15 for now, but I can't let you see where we go when we hit the city.”
Finally, he takes his sunglasses off again, squinting in the hot sun. “I'm sorry about your friends.”
In the distance, just a tiny dot by now, Lydia watches the orbiter righting itself from its wedged gliding position, standing upright with a large plume billowing around its base. She catches him watching it too, and he mouths God damn it and breathes deeply.
“Stop,” Crane yells to the driver, knocking on the truck’s window.
They slow, watching the orbiter rise.
“Lydia,” she says, dismissive. Her voice muffled by the mask.
“Alright,” he says, returning his attention to her. “Got a place that you come from, Lydia?”
All she can think about is Emma's sickening scream, unending, one long and gut-wrenching sound of terror, slipping slowly into silence.
“Realm,” she says.
“Realm?” He pretends to laugh. “No one's used that in forever.”
She can only see the black gushing from Keene's neck in a heartbeat rhythm.
“Are you trying to tell me you're not infected?”
She looks him in the face.
“Bullshit,” he says. “Everyone's been infected for decades. Are you trying to tell me you rammed us with a fuckin' time machine back there?”
Lydia says nothing. He's playing games with her. He knows more than he's letting on. He knows more than even she does. Everyone knows more than she does.
She watches the tiny dot lifting off. Just a faint white streak cutting through the sunrise, through layers of blood and honey, through bruised and then violet sky.
She feels a tinge of panic, thinking of Methuselah, but tells herself it was just a mouse. Just a mouse.