To Miles this made perfect sense. Early space exploration had been dependent on lifting any resources into orbit; a process that exhausted vast quantities of fuel in order to overcome gravity. The abundant volatiles and minerals in orbit after Siva’s arrival made these launches unnecessary; resources could simply be plucked from space itself.
The modules were massive, dwarfing even the diameter of the Eridanus; clearly this was intended to carry several hundred thousand people. He could see that populating these modules would be a slow process, possibly even generational in nature. Their large size and accumulated resources raised a question.
“Fai, these ships weren’t in Earth orbit, were they?”
“Correct. The constructions were placed at the L2 Lagrange point, one point five million kilometres from Earth.”
“Lagrange?”
Fai updated her display.
A representation of the Sun was at the centre of the screen. Surrounding it was circle, broken in one place by a dot that was labelled ‘Earth’. Fai added five further labels as she spoke.
“L-points are where the combined gravitational pull of Earth and Sun interact to provide the exact centripetal force required to lock an object in orbit with them.”
Miles pointed to a dot that was furthest away from the Sun.
“A gravitational hotspot?”
“A crude simplification, but yes.”
“Is that why Anna and the others picked it?” he patted at a pile of papers on his desk, “I remember reading that the Node was built on a gravitational hotspot, so that it could gain an eversion volume assist.”
“Very good, Miles.”
He wasn’t sure if it was the college-like environment, or his predisposition to please others, but he felt a warm glow at being complimented on his Field studies. Quite how this was possible in his digital state he wasn’t sure, but he reasoned that even the feeling of reward was a pattern of electrical impulses. A pattern that Fai could presumably read.
“In case you’re wondering what that little i-o ripple was,” he smiled, “It was the feeling of being complimented.”
Fai was quiet for a moment but then used her television screen to display a colourful image of a cake that carried one lit candle.
“I think I experienced a similar reaction when you thanked me for your first birthday card.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I received your confirmation that, despite working independently, I had successfully assembled multiple sources of information to arrive at a solution that exceeded your expectation.”
Miles couldn’t help laughing out loud.
“Explain?” she queried his reaction.
“Don’t worry,” he smiled, “I’m just glad of your company.”
“A compliment?”
“A truth,” he looked around the confining walls of the room.
WALLS
2nd January 7142
Amoment ago, an incomprehensible event had saved her from a lethal gunshot. Time itself had slowed before her eyes. The ground had trembled and a swift moving crack had caused an opening to form in the side of the structure nearby.
Individually, any of these things should have been terrifying but, as Cassidy looked into the darkness beyond the rough doorway, she still felt no fear. She had only one thought. Where it came from she couldn’t be sure, but it was persistent.
“We have to get in there,” she told Marshall.
“I know,” he nodded.
Given the incredible events that had just unfolded, she hadn’t expected such an immediate agreement, but when she looked into his eyes she saw a calmness that reflected her own. A quiet confidence in the path that lay ahead of them.
Atka had found the courage to stand. Perhaps seeing Cassidy and Marshall as a guiding example, he helped Najo to her feet; putting his arm around her. They spoke quietly to each other, then she nodded and began looking in the direction of the entrance. As they started to move towards Cassidy, one of the elders of the village moved to stand in their way.
A quiet, but obviously heated, exchange took place between them; it was clear that Atka’s intentions to enter the building did not meet with the older man’s approval. With a deep-furrowed brow, the man used Atka’s name in a stern manner. In response, Atka adopted the extended hands gesture that Cassidy had used a moment ago.
“No,” Atka copied her word.
The word seemed to silence the man. Possibly he believed that the word and action might invoke a bubble of water around him. He anxiously backed away, allowing them to pass.
“You OK?” Gail suddenly arrived at her side.
“Yeah, fine,” Cassidy waved aside her concern.
“What the hell was that?” said Roy, holding Neil in his arms.
“It looked like a Field,” said Scott, joining them, “But…”
“There’s no tech,” Marshall pointed to the stone circle.
Cassidy could see that the only thing in the circle now was Alfred, who was simply rocking back and forth on his knees, murmuring in anxious tones. Cradled in one of his hands, there appeared to be a solidified splash of golden metal, almost like a simple crown but with the opening filled in. It took her a moment to realise what it was. During the time-slowed event, he’d fired several bullets at her. Each piece of hot metal had impacted the one in front, liquefying and spreading out as easily as a drop of water hitting the floor.
He looked up at her, but she could see there was no longer a calculating mind behind his eyes. It had been taken from him; exchanged for a tiny golden crown that would be his to treasure.
The cause of the event was still unknown, but she knew she wouldn’t find answers out here.
“Come on,” she pulled Marshall in the direction of the entrance, calling to the others, “Tell everyone to wait out here.”
Atka and Najo arrived at the entrance at the same time as Cassidy. He bowed to her and raised his fire-lit torch. In return, she bowed to him and turned on her stick-lantern. Pulling aside the last of the vines and moving loose stones to one side, they stooped through the low opening and moved inside.
After a few feet, they emerged into a high-ceilinged section with ragged, almost cave-like walls. The combination of Atka’s fiery torch and the more modern white lantern light cast multiple and ghosted shadows throughout the uneven space.
It may have been the irregular perspectives that prompted the memory, but Cassidy found herself recalling Day One within the Node. Equipped with flashlights, she and Tyler had been in the depths of the Node searching for some missing DRB processing equipment. She remembered how freaked out her brother had been by the dark space and the strange noises. She’d teased him, saying that the Icelandic Dead were going to rise up and take back the Node; a somewhat prophetic statement given that a few moments later they’d found Danny’s coffin-like crate.
Danny’s arrival in the crate had later given her the idea of how to get Caroline Smith out of the Node on Exiling Day. She now found herself recalling the whole experience and the moment that Caroline had, for some reason, defiantly stood alongside the other exiles.
For Cassidy, it had only been a few years, but time had moved more swiftly out here. She’d had the thought before, but here in this confined space it now hit her more strongly: Tyler and the others were long dead.
“Cassidy,” said Marshall.
She turned to see that he was pointing his lantern at a wall that was covered with paint markings.
“There’s more,” he gestured at the long wall that stretched into the darkness.
Najo was inspecting the drawings nearby and whispering to Atka; her eyes wide in wonder. It all seemed to mean something to them, but from their excitement, Cassidy knew this must be a discovery.
“Oh,” she sighed.
The Elder’s earlier reaction to Atka suddenly made sense, as did the fact that the entrance had collapsed whilst the building itself had merely shaken.
For some reason, the Elders did not want people
to see these markings so they’d sealed the entrance with stones. From the thickness of the vines and branches she’d pulled aside, she could only assume the entrance had been closed long ago. Perhaps the Elders had wanted to bury or forget something in their past. Or perhaps, as time had progressed, the reason had become something different; a way to maintain power by ensuring the ignorance of the villagers.
She’d seen this pattern before.
“Obscura,” she said out loud, raising her lantern and dispelling the darkness from the wall, “This is their history.”
With Marshall at her side, she began walking through the narrow space, trying to interpret the primitive drawings; representations of events that were once important to Atka’s ancestors.
A bright white circle surrounded by many trees had been drawn onto the wall. In the space above it were white dots and a single orange star.
“D’you think that’s the Node?” she asked Marshall.
“Yeah,” he pointed at the dots, “and the stars. Is that orange one supposed to be the Sun?”
“At night?” she said, “Can’t be.”
She heard Atka and Najo’s whispers of awe as they examined the treasure trove of lost information. From their looks of recognition, it seemed that some aspects of their culture had extended from these beginnings.
“Here’s another one,” said Marshall, walking to a second bright white circle scene.
Although the lines were still broad, it appeared that more care had been taken when it had been painted. It seemed that the surrounding forest had been cut back. The sky was again filled with white dots, but there were two accompanying orange stars.
“Definitely not the Sun then,” Cassidy remarked.
Marshall held up his lantern and studied the diagram. Without a word, he quickly backtracked along the wall and looked at the first white circle.
“What is it?” she called after him.
He appeared to nod to himself and then he returned.
“Look,” he held up the lantern to each of the two orange stars, “They’re different colours. One’s more faded than the other. The trees… there’s not less of them in this picture… it’s simply earlier on. We’re seeing events in reverse. The further we go along the wall -”
“The earlier the events,” they both said together.
“I think this star,” Marshall pointed to the orange marking, “was added a long time after the main painting. That’s why it’s not as faded as the other one.”
“So… something bright appeared in the sky?”
“Twice,” Marshall nodded at the two stars, “Actually, if you take into account the first drawing we saw, maybe three times.”
They continued their walk through the darkness; torch and lantern lights illuminating the deep past. Soon their long shadows were unable to reach the present-day entrance.
Cassidy could see that the further they walked, the quality of the illustrations improved. Or rather, she mentally reordered the historical events, those skills had gradually been lost over time. It was impossible to tell the timescales involved, but she estimated it must have been hundreds of years, at the very least. It was possible that the Elders themselves no longer knew why the entrance had been closed. The reason may simply have become ritual and superstition.
The dirt floor ended abruptly.
Shining their lanterns ahead of them, Cassidy saw that they’d reached a doorway with perfectly straight sides. The floor beyond its threshold was dark and completely flat. Above the door, metallic lettering read:
‘ID USV AND ME’
The doorway and lettering clearly did not belong in the middle of a cave wall. From the tone of Atka and Najo’s voices, they were thinking the same thing.
“I’m no archaeologist,” Marshall studied the doorway, “but this is just wrong, right?”
“Looks like there’s missing letters,” she pointed at the irregular gaps then instinctively checked the floor, half expecting to find them strewn in the dirt.
“Cass,” Marshall was raising his lantern towards Najo.
Tied on a woven necklace, she was holding out a piece of metal. Although excessively worn away around the corners, it was unmistakably a letter ‘N’.
“Najo,” she spoke her own name, “Mimohma Na Jo.”
Cassidy could see that the letter’s style would once have been an exact match with the lettering over the door. It had either been designed to mimic the lettering or, bearing in mind their lack of technology, it was more likely that this was one of the original letters.
“An heirloom?” Marshall seemed to reach the same conclusion, “How old is this place?”
He pointed his lantern ahead of them again and Cassidy saw the light briefly reflect off something within the dark space on the other side of the doorway. Presumably the area beyond the door predated everything they’d seen so far; if they wanted answers then they’d have to move on.
She stood up straight and stepped over the threshold.
The same faintly earthy smell was still present on the other side of the door’s threshold, but the surroundings felt very different. Although the dark space prevented her from seeing beyond the reach of the lantern light, her first few footsteps had echoed back to her more readily; the floor was as unyielding as those within the Node.
Trying to keep her footsteps as quiet as possible she crept forwards, keeping a close eye on the floor; the one part of this space that she could see clearly. She heard a click from the darkness. At first its echo made it difficult to pinpoint the source, but then something more primitive came to her aid: an instinct, invisible to her modern sensibilities yet emerging to protect her.
She found herself looking in the exact direction of two small disks of light. They appeared to be staring at her.
“Marshall,” she whispered.
“I see it,” he replied at her side.
THE LAST SUNSET
In his somewhat posthumous studies, Miles had read the entirety of Fai’s accumulated data. According to her records, 1951VA had been provisionally first identified in November 1951 by Howard Walker.
Archive had adopted the use of the last four digits, 51VA, in order to simplify spoken references to the comet; ‘SIVA’ was quicker and easier to say, and had the added advantage of concealing its true astronomical origins from the public.
In Sanskrit, the word Siva translated as ‘Auspicious One’. Many had commented at the time that it had indeed been auspicious that the comet’s collision course had been detected.
Others had drawn a more ominous meaning; in certain cultures the name was synonymous with the title ‘Destroyer’.
Some also thought that the emergence of the alphanumerics within the name was too perfect to be a coincidence, and was perhaps evidence of a higher power at work. Had 1951VA been discovered one month earlier or later, the emergent name would not have had the same inherent significance; it would also have been less appealing to the pattern-hungry human mind.
The ability to recognise patterns had been present in every successful species; a trait that had never diminished. Those who were more adept at spotting a threat, got to live another day.
Miles knew that evolution had often experimented with new ways of maximising the principle; pruning away unsuccessful branches over the course of thousands of years. Miles also knew that, for some people, slow evolutionary processes were a time-wasting inconvenience.
Individuals like Dorothy Pittman, Monica Walker and Noah Broadstone had taken it upon themselves to intervene in the process; respectively forcing, nurturing and guiding genetic change.
Between Noah setting foot on the shores of Iceland, and Fai’s last sync with the Eridanus, only sixty-three years had passed, so there was only a limited amount of Z-bank data that Miles could study. But as far as he could see, receptivity to metathene had been the key. The exact way that change manifested itself appeared to depend on the host: some had shown greater physical strength, while oth
ers had shown elevated dexterity with language or mathematics.
Miles hadn’t found this entirely surprising though. During his former ego-morph years, his own metathene receptivity had undoubtedly given him advantages. He did find it somewhat ironic that his own ability to order information had in some way prepared him for his later digital life.
Noah Broadstone’s data confirmed that metathene-enhanced individuals, and a few of their offspring, tended to adapt to new environments more quickly, but there had been no instant superhero-like changes.
Whatever had happened after Fai’s last data sync was anyone’s guess, but Miles knew that larger changes would take time.
The monumental, generation-spanning efforts of Dorothy, Monica and Noah had simply begun the process of steering mankind’s evolutionary chain away from a very dead end.
Miles felt a sense of regret that he would never know how it had all worked out; those evolutionary chains were now close to six billion light years behind him.
In his simulation of an observatory there was no need for a representation of a telescope; he could interpret the data directly. His entire surroundings were the remote stars and nebulae of space. The Solar System wasn’t even visible anymore; it was lost within the dot that held the Milky Way.
He and Fai were about to mark a milestone event.
Between the ISS and the Eridanus Void Anomaly lay one final red dwarf star. After that point there would be no more fuel to harvest. He knew that in space, fuel wasn’t necessary to continue flying in a straight line; momentum would take care of that. However, any course correction would require them to start converting ISS matter into propellant.
He looked out at the wide universe.
Having no biological component had certainly been an advantage. With no dependence on Biomags, they’d managed to make further advances in their Chronomagnetic Field. Their triple-nested M-Field generators were providing a total ratio of over 1.7 billion to one; 2000 days were passing in the literal blink of an eye.
Although his mental picture was of the ISS streaking across the universe, he knew it was nothing of the sort; their physical speed was still slow. Their observations of the outside world were simply compressed into a much narrower band of time.
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