Eva

by Simon Winstanley

  Again, Ivan found himself thinking of Thomas Gray’s original lunar vision; the tropical domes and smiling settlements had come to pass, but they were now within the Moon.

  Although strictly, Ivan thought, the Eridanus was not really a settlement. In a few short days, it would begin its journey towards its stellar namesake.

  THE OPTIMIST

  DAY790 : 20APR6869

  Alfred reached the Sub-1 Beta level and walked to the door of the Beach facility. It had been reserved for his exclusive use this evening, but Trevor Pike had alerted him to a situation. Someone had taken advantage of the fact that the facility was closed to the general public and had forced their way in.

  He told his CPO to wait outside then pushed the door open. Beta Beach was empty except for two men; Trevor who was walking towards him, and another man who was sitting in plastic chair by the poolside.

  “Lonny Parkin,” said Trevor, holding up a bottle of whiskey, “He swiped a few of these from the bar… said he was gonna sell ’em on.”

  Alfred knew that Lonny had a reputation for minor theft, but to steal from his Beach haven was a different matter. This wasn’t about the expensive liquor, this was about the principle: handled incorrectly it could send a message that it was acceptable to challenge him.

  He knew the holding cell was still occupied by the Field engineer, but perhaps a different demonstration could be made; one that might resonate better with the population.

  “The one time I ask for sole use of Beta Beach,” Alfred sighed, “and the pool’s a mess.”

  “What are you talking about?” Trevor looked back at the pool’s clear water.

  Alfred knowingly tapped his tablet, then purposefully looked in Lonny’s direction. He saw the slow realisation dawn on Trevor’s face.

  “You sick bast-”

  “Careful, Mr. Pike,” Alfred cut in.

  “Or what?” Trevor pointed at his own Biomag.

  Alfred knew that Trevor’s Biomag wasn’t under his electronic control, but there were other ways to ensure loyalty.

  “How’s your DRB collection, Trevor?” he lowered his tone, “You are keeping it quiet I presume?”

  Trevor opened his mouth to speak, but Alfred could already see the look of defeat in his eyes. Alfred pointed to the bottle that was still in Trevor’s hands.

  “Why don’t you keep that?” he said, “My gift to you, keep it for a special occasion.”

  He could see that Trevor was trying to think of suitable words of rebuke, but none arrived; the bottle was presumably of more value to him. In dumb silence, he took one last look towards the poolside then walked to the exit.

  Alfred could see there was a half-empty bottle next to Lonny; evidently he’d already begun drinking through his intended source of profit. Alfred joined him and pulled up a chair.

  “I’m sorry,” Lonny began, “I’ll pay it back, I -”

  “Relax,” he pacified him with a smile, “It’s fine.”

  Alfred sat down and picked up the whiskey bottle.

  Studying its label, he laughed, “Mr. Parkin, you have expensive tastes!”

  Lonny laughed but there was a slight uncertainty to it. Alfred shook the bottle slightly, causing the alcohol to slosh around inside.

  “Half full?” said Alfred, “Or half empty. What d’you think?”

  Lonny shrugged and tentatively replied, “Half full?”

  “Absolutely!” Alfred smiled and held his arms wide open, “You, my friend, are an optimist… and I can work with optimists! You and I -”

  Alfred intentionally fumbled his grip on the bottle and it flew out of his hands into the pool. It landed with a splash and bobbed to the surface.

  “Damn!” said Alfred, “I was hoping we might drink to a new business arrangement, but…”

  Alfred could almost see Lonny’s sluggish thoughts working. He saw the glance at Alfred’s clothing; assessing his relative status. He saw him looking at the bottle bobbing in the water; evaluating whether he could exchange a favour for equal status.

  “If I get the glasses,” said Alfred, pointing in the direction of the bar, “I don’t suppose you could…”

  “Er, sure,” he replied, standing and slipping out of his jogging pants.

  Alfred turned and walked slowly in the direction of the bar. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lonny reach the pool’s edge and start descending the short ladder. There was no need for Alfred to go any further. He placed his tablet down on a nearby table and brought up the Biomag control panel. A few key presses later, the screen reported:

  ‘Confirm Biomag De-sync: Parkin, L.’

  He was about to confirm it, when a thought struck him. The last time he’d actually seen a Biomag unanchoring had been during Archive’s initial human trials. Even then, he’d only seen the convicted felon’s video tape. He’d never actually seen a Biomag desynchronisation in person. Hovering his finger over the button, he walked back to the poolside. Lonny was now in the water and had started swimming out to the floating bottle.

  Everyone knew the guidelines: if your Biomag failed, stay still while others got help. Provided that you weren’t moving relative to the Field it was possible to survive until others could reach you with a replacement unit. This assumed of course that you were aware that your unit had failed.

  He pushed the button and the tablet reported the de-sync was successful; a tiny component within the Biomag had quietly overloaded.

  Lonny kept swimming forwards to reach his goal but then froze, mid-stroke.

  The mass of water surrounding him was damping much of his bodily vibration, but he suddenly crunched under the surface. A muffled depth charge appeared to go off under the water, then the water turned blood red. An expanding cloud of shredded viscera spread through the pool and slowly surrounded the half empty bottle that was bobbing on its surface.

  BRIEFING

  19th October 2130

  It had been almost eighteen years since the Öskjuvatn Lake temporal anomaly had drawn people together from different time periods. One of the hardest facts for Mat to accept was that Siva’s impact with the lunar debris was now an event from history; for the rest of the world, the devastation brought by a second wave of lunar projectiles was something only remembered by their great-grandparents.

  When the Discovery had touched down at the sites of former cities, they’d been greeted with a sense of awe. Although many had seen aircraft before, the rarity of petrochemicals meant that very few had seen one in flight. Had the Discovery been dependent on these fuels, their various journeys would have been impossible.

  In the early years, most of their work had been in creating medical resources and power systems for the communities. Then had been the longer-term task of education; the idea that the Earth’s ecosystem would still eventually fail had been a difficult message for people to accept. Even now, there were groups who preferred to live in isolation, refusing to accept that the world had once possessed a moon.

  Thankfully, Mat thought, this outlook wasn’t typical; for the most part, people wanted to assist in rebuilding their shattered world. With fabricator technology at their disposal, there had never been a better time to improve the quality of people’s lives.

  The Eridanus Launch Centre around him now, was testament to the fact that mankind was slowly recovering. Several small-scale launches had already been conducted from this location and, in time, larger boosters would make the journey to orbit from the launchpads.

  He and Pavna made their way towards the Crandall Briefing Hall; a modest sized building named after its founder. Although the site lacked decorative space paraphernalia, he knew that Ross Crandall would have been proud of their achievements so far.

  “I heard that Noah Broadstone found Luóxuán,” said Pavna.

  “Biotech?”

  “What’s left of it,” she said, “Apparently they’ve been churning out simple painkillers and making a tidy profit.”

  “Typical,” he said, “There’s always some pain-
in-the-ass charging a fee to cure a pain in the ass.”

  “Two out of ten,” Pavna ranked his quip without breaking her stride.

  “Fair enough,” he conceded, “Why’s Noah out there anyway?”

  “To get a look at their archived Z-bank program,” she said, “Caroline and Abel reckon there may be additional DNA templates.”

  “You know, I still think of Abel as this big,” he indicated waist height, “Where the hell did the time go, Pav?”

  They walked on past a small collection of grounded aircraft. The large, dormant machines were now simply a decorative reminder that the site had previously been an airport. Although long-distance flights were still possible, they were not attempted in such fuel-inefficient machines. After crossing the concourse, they entered the briefing hall via a side entrance. Inside, the air was just as warm but at least they were out of the midday sun.

  Walking towards them along the corridor was Tessa Locke, one of the people they’d rescued from the Warren. Characteristically, her eyes were rapidly flickering from left to right as she speed-read the document in her hands.

  “Tessellate!” Mat called her nickname.

  Tessa immediately looked up and smiled.

  “Hey!” she put the papers away and hugged them both, “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show.”

  “Not much chance of that,” said Pavna, “Do you know if they’re ready in there yet?”

  “Pretty much,” she said, “Listen, did Lawrence get in touch with you?”

  “Not heard from him in months,” Pavna frowned, “Everything alright?”

  “He wants to get on the Eridanus manifest,” said Tessa, “Quantum mechanics and computing ticket.”

  “Makes sense,” said Mat as they continued walking along the corridor, “He’s always had a thing for Fai’s support tech.”

  “Speaking of which,” Tessa slowed down and looked at her watch, “Can we all catch up after your briefing? I’ve got a live link booked at twelve-thirty.”

  “Danny’s still in London then?” asked Pavna.

  “I’ll let you know,” she nodded and began walking away, “Good luck.”

  “You too,” Mat replied.

  Within a few strides, Mat and Pavna had reached the end of the corridor and arrived at a doorway. In place of a door was a velvety, blue curtain that had been placed there for the occasion. Peeking through a gap in the curtain, he could see that a table and microphone had been set up in the briefing hall.

  New for this particular briefing was a large photo on an easel; it featured him and Pavna posing for their mission portrait. The image was only a few years old, but the man in the photo had less grey hair than him. Pavna, to his eyes at least, hadn’t seemed to age at all.

  In front of the table he could see a block of reporters, seated amid what looked like a forest of thin sticks. He could see that each stick had a small black cube on the top to record the event. Sometimes he found it hard to keep up with the advances that were happening.

  “I hate doing these things,” he turned towards Pavna.

  “It’s the last one,” she straightened his collar, while he picked a hair off hers, “After this, we can put our feet up for a few decades.”

  “I’ll get bored.”

  “You’ll get sleep,” she reminded him.

  A murmured introduction was now going on in the hall; no doubt a brief update about the ongoing Eridanus construction in orbit. The tone seemed to change and he heard mentions of the larger-scale constructions further out. A round of applause began and they took it as their cue to enter the hall.

  They arrived at the table and took a moment to settle into their seats. As the clapping stopped, he leaned forwards a little so that the microphone could pick him up.

  “Phew!” he whistled and pointed at Pavna’s photo, “Who’s that good-looking gal?”

  A polite wave of laughter rippled through the hall.

  “She’s out of your league,” Pavna replied with a smile.

  The laughter notably increased and there were one or two claps of approval near the back. The man who’d introduced them gave a cough and welcomed them.

  “Mat, Pavna, the Eridanus Launch Centre welcomes you both. Thank you for sparing the time to talk to us.”

  “Not at all,” said Pavna, “Our pleasure.”

  A movement from the within the forest of sticks caught Mat’s attention. A woman suddenly stood, sending a chair sliding backwards. As she reached for something at her side, Mat instinctively pushed the table away and stood to place himself in front of Pavna.

  He felt his chest take the first impact, then another hit him in the forehead. It took him a second to realise that the woman was throwing eggs at him. The woman continued shouting as other people moved to stop her.

  “Get off me…!” she struggled as two men forced her to drop her bag.

  Mat suddenly realised he was looking at a flashpoint; her on-camera protest was supposed to trigger a backlash that would discredit the efforts of Anna Bergstrom’s project. Something he couldn’t let happen.

  “Hey!” Mat shouted to the men, “Let her go!”

  The men stopped, but they remained next to her.

  “It’s OK,” Mat smiled, “just back away, let her go!”

  The men complied and the woman began backing away slowly.

  He turned to see if Pavna was alright, “You, OK?”

  “Yep,” her eyes darted between him and the woman, “You?”

  He calmly turned back to the woman.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” he wiped at his face, “It’s just egg. Guess I’m lucky they weren’t hard boiled…”

  A quiet snort of appreciation came from somewhere in the quiet room and he felt the mood shift slightly.

  “If you want to leave, nobody here’s gonna stop you,” he calmly addressed the woman, “But if you want to talk, then I’m listening.”

  Mat thought she seemed hesitant, perhaps because her food-based statement hadn’t quite gone the way she’d expected; conducting a conversation probably hadn’t been foremost in her mind. She reached the door and, with a nervous glance over her shoulder, she hastily exited the hall.

  People often found the concept of Foothold difficult to accept and sometimes reacted out of fear of the unknown; casting blame or anger at something they couldn’t understand. As protests went, today’s demonstration was one of the more succinct statements he’d had over the years. One of the men started to make his way to the rear of the hall, no doubt intending to pursue her. Mat knew it would be pointless interrogating her and they didn’t need any negative publicity.

  “Please, just let her go,” he sighed, pulling the table back into place and sitting down, “Now, where were we?”

  He waved away a few claps of applause and, as the reporters retook their seats, Pavna whispered to him.

  “They don’t know how to deal with the change.”

  “I know,” he sighed, “She was just egg-spressing her feelings.”

  Pavna shook her head in mock dismay, “Don’t you ever stop?”

  He just smiled back at her and raised an eyebrow.

  In truth, he was aware that he often masked his own feelings behind a defensive shield of wit; it was a small wonder that he and Pavna had ever got together.

  The hall grew quieter again but, despite the reset, he knew he couldn’t deliver the words he and Pavna had planned. For a moment, he wondered how he was going to deal with the situation, but then it came to him.

  “Eggs…” he wiped at his blue jumpsuit, “Eggs in baskets.”

  He glanced over at Pavna. From her smile, he could tell that she knew the direction he was going to take.

  “I don’t know who said it,” Mat shrugged, “but when they first saw Siva coming, somebody said it’d be a good idea if we didn’t have all our eggs in one basket. They thought we should try different ways of saving the human race. If Siva or other disasters came our way, we shouldn’t just go extinct be
cause we happened to be in the same place. Their plan didn’t work out the way they’d hoped, but the idea was right.”

  He looked up in the direction of the ceiling.

  “The Eridanus, way up there, is just a different basket to the planet we’re standing on,” he shrugged, “In time, the Vega and the Andromeda will become other baskets. Mankind’s insurance policies against the unknown.”

  He took a deep breath and looked out at their audience.

  “Shortly, we’ll go into orbit and await the transfer to the Vega,” he said, “Upon its completion, it will be our privilege to guide it. It will be our hope to find new planets, new homes. It will also be our dearest hope that Earth never needs to rely on our efforts.”

  Paraphrasing the words of a president who had always inspired him, Mat concluded his short address.

  “Now it’s time for us to take longer strides,” he turned to Pavna, “We choose to go beyond the Moon.”

  DAWN

  DAY795 : 18MAR7137

  She felt him run his hand down the smooth skin of her back and she rolled over to face him; the lightweight bed sheet wrapping around her.

  “Good morning,” his warm breath reached her.

  Without opening her eyes, she smiled and stretched, arching her back.

  “Mmm,” she opened her eyes, “it is now.”

  “Oh really?” he smiled.

  “Mmm,” she nodded.

  “Again?” he raised his eyebrows.

  “You’ll be late!” she laughed, “And I have to shower, or people will start to talk!”

  “So let them talk…”

  She laughed and threw back the sheet.

  “I want to try something new tonight,” she swung herself off the bed and scooped up her underwear from the floor. She turned to face him, letting him see her silhouette in the dim light, “Think you can wait that long?”