Eva

by Simon Winstanley

  In the quiet kitchen, the wall clock quietly marked the minutes.

  He heard her sniff and take a deep breath, then she looked up at him.

  “My darling Douglas,” she smiled, “I C U.”

  He felt his own eyes welling up now.

  “I love you too, Monica.”

  ~

  Coming to terms with her parents’ choice had been painful, but she knew that she couldn’t deny them their wish; they’d done far more than she’d had any right to ask.

  She’d watched the moment of their departure. Holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes, her parents had not exchanged cumbersome words. As their thoughts had returned to energy, they’d grown brighter, as though lit from within. Their shapes had coalesced into thin filaments of light, then weaved themselves into a singularity that became too small to see.

  Here, she was above time. Every moment was visible to her simultaneously. In this timeless summation of all history, she could see that her parents hadn’t returned to the Boundary. Therefore they never would. She was alone again.

  With a heavy heart she released her grip on the tiny moment of ‘now’ that she’d created for them, watching as the construct of Samphire Cottage dissolved away. Her childhood home, a structure that had stood for all eternity and yet no time at all, now existed only in her mind.

  She looked up at the looped and spiral patterns that were nestled within the more conventional timelines of her continuum. She had no doubt that they were external interventions: mechanisms of choice placed here from outside the Boundary. Like her parents, she knew she could also make a choice, but she thought she might stay a while longer.

  Her parents’ brief presence within the Boundary had shown her something that she’d lost sight of: human lives were brief and often lived in the desperation of uncertainty, never knowing if their choices had been the right ones.

  Eva Gray had once made a choice.

  Although the timelines now showed the end result of their interventions, she could still remember the first detonation of the Moon. Eva’s actions had been well intended, but there hadn’t quite been enough power to spread the fragments widely enough; much of Siva had still reached Earth in one form or another. However, Eva’s intentions had provided the very inspiration for their intervention.

  Even knowing that she would be forever remembered as Earth’s destroyer, Eva had made the difficult choice. She had pushed the button that had exchanged her death, for the possibility that more lives would be saved.

  Kate couldn’t intervene in Eva’s personal causality; her actions lay at the very root of the timelines. But drawing on a frequent conversation she’d had with her parents about Anna Bergstrom gave her inspiration. She could not save Eva, but she could give her comfort.

  She saw Eva push the button and collapse to the floor of the FLC Drum module. The deflection beam started burrowing its way down towards her. Kate stepped inside the space between seconds and into Eva’s tortured mind.

  “I am Eve,” Eva was telling herself.

  Kate showed her a wide, sapphire-blue planet; beautiful, pristine and new.

  “I will birth the new mankind,” Eva saw.

  Kate flooded Eva’s senses; memories of intimate moments spent with Leonard Cooper.

  “Born in the fires of the old…” Eva felt.

  The fires of Siva’s destruction then filled Eva’s mind; the enlarged debris field from the old Moon, ripping apart the threat to Earth.

  Kate showed her glass-domed tropical biomes that were no longer fantastical dreams. Finally, she saturated her mind with the children. The many children who now crawled, walked and flew among the stars, because of her.

  “…they will renew the Earth,” Eva smiled.

  As the beam of light enveloped Eva, Kate could see her mind was at rest; she had seen beyond her final choice and was at peace.

  Kate slowly pulled away and could see that the timelines remained unchanged.

  She knew which other points of influence must never be changed, but with a thousand years of experience to drawn on, she knew she could avoid the paradoxes and perhaps offer some individuals a helpful sign from time to time.

  As ever, only time and patience would tell.

  COUNTERPOINT

  2nd January 7142

  An hour ago, a ball of water had stopped Alfred from killing Cassidy. Trevor had no idea how to explain the sight, but he could see that Alfred had been debilitated by it. Standing on the stones in front of the vine-covered building, the Node’s ex-president was mumbling to himself; eyes blinking erratically at the fire-lit scene.

  Trevor felt his fists clench. For too long, that man had controlled everything aboard the Node. He’d even controlled Trevor’s thoughts; using the death of his son to manipulate him into rewiring the Biomags. The intensity of the anger he felt was matched only by his own sense of remorse; he’d helped to perpetuate that entire system of power.

  People had died because of it.

  He took a swig from his whiskey bottle to damp the guilt, then walked on past the stone roundhouses. One of the curious villagers was watching him drink.

  “Want some?” he smiled and waggled the bottle.

  The man didn’t know how to respond but held out his burning torch for Trevor to take.

  “Exordi Nova,” the man bowed slightly as Trevor took the flaming stick.

  “Yeah, Exordi yourself,” he nodded and walked on.

  Ahead he could see that Alfred’s eyes were darting between just two things: the sharp glass tip of an Elder’s ceremonial staff, and the entrance to the building where Cassidy and many of the others were.

  Trevor knew what Alfred was thinking and he wasn’t about to let him get away with it. No more people would die because of his own inaction. He took another drink to silence the demons and perhaps gain a little courage.

  He walked the last few steps across the stones and, by way of greeting, spat several words in his direction.

  “Dr. Alfred fucking president Barnes.”

  Alfred’s vacant stare shifted slowly towards him but he didn’t reply.

  “How ‘bout a last drink,” Trevor held out the bottle.

  Alfred’s eyes seemed to come into focus and he slapped the bottle aside. The bottle hit the stones and smashed, sending glass and alcohol everywhere.

  “Minotaur!” Alfred began frantically pointing at the building, his eyes wild and manic, “We have to kill… She… the maze!”

  Whatever maze he was talking about, it was clearly only inside his deranged head.

  Trevor brought his burning torch between them.

  “You want my help?” he looked at the torch fire reflected in Alfred’s eyes, “Go to hell.”

  Alfred glanced down at the broken bottle, then at the burning torch.

  •

  Although separated by time and language, the projection room served as a focal point for two cultures. The general hubbub of attempted conversations would occasionally be interrupted when Fai used a projection surface; the diagrams and videos often inspiring equal surprise in either culture.

  The photos, graphics and text on the other walls were a small sample of the available information held in Fai’s database. However even Fai’s information could not cover the period of her own hibernation. Between Danny’s departure on the Eridanus and Cassidy’s arrival was a gap. Something which was the topic of debate.

  “So Danny joins the Eridanus,” said Cassidy, “but at the same time, work was already starting on the other two ships?”

  “Yep,” said Gail, “The Vega and the Andromeda. Except these projects were scheduled to take ages to complete. Much longer than the Eridanus, which was built into a hollowed-out moon-rock.”

  “How long were they going to take?” said Scott.

  “According to Fai,” Gail nodded in the direction on the column, “Perhaps a few centuries or so.”

  “Why wait so long?” said Roy.

  “Because the ships were absolutely mass
ive!” she laughed, pointing at one of the printed diagrams on a nearby wall.

  “It took that long just to build them?” said Scott.

  “Build and fill them,” Gail nodded, “Don’t forget, they were generational ships. Long before you launch it, you have to populate it.”

  “So why didn’t they just build smaller ships and launch sooner?” said Roy.

  “Because, from the looks of things,” said Gail, “they’d hadn’t completely worked out the propulsion.”

  Cassidy laughed, “They were building these things without knowing if they could fly?”

  “If you think about it, it does make a kind of sense,” said Gail, “Their idea was to begin migrating people away from Earth. They weren’t attempting a snap evacuation, the emphasis was on long timescales.”

  “But what was the point if they could never go anywhere?” said Cassidy.

  “People are still people,” Gail shrugged, “They need a specific environment in order to live away from Earth. The mechanics of how you move that environment become a secondary consideration.”

  “Why?” Cassidy frowned.

  “Because, by necessity, any propulsion solution would have to take into account that the human cargo must survive the journey.”

  Marshall was nodding in agreement.

  “And if you can’t get there by going faster than light,” he said, “then you take the slow route like the Eridanus and throw a Chronomagnetic Field around it until you get there. Takes you a lot longer to go anywhere but, hell, you’ve got a generational ship to do it in.”

  “Exactly,” Gail smiled, “Meanwhile, for every person that leaves the Earth, you’ve increased the chances that the human race survives.”

  “In case another Siva comes along,” Cassidy nodded.

  “Yeah, but,” Roy tilted his head towards the column at the centre of the room, “their computer hit the snooze button. We don’t know if their idea worked.”

  “I think it did,” said Gail, “Did everyone get a look at the cave drawings?”

  Without exception they all had, so Gail continued.

  “Cassidy, remember the day that Barnes threatened Neil, up in the Observatory?”

  “I’ll never forget it,” she shook her head.

  “Remember I showed you a bar chart about the volatiles and elements in orbit?”

  “Yeah, the bar heights kept decreasing in sudden jumps, right?”

  “Yep, resources were disappearing from orbit,” said Gail, “And one time I caught a single freeze frame, remember?”

  A look of recognition spread over Cassidy’s face and she pointed in the direction of the room’s entrance.

  “You’re saying those orange flashes in the cave paintings -”

  “Were detonations,” Gail completed, grinning, “Launch signatures of things that were leaving.”

  “Shit!” Cassidy looked around at Atka who was standing near the door, “It’s in their history, hundreds of years apart. His ancestors recorded the Vega and Andromeda leaving the Earth!”

  “No,” Gail countered, “The paintings detail three orange stars not two. The Andromeda and Vega ships were supposed to be constructed at the L2 point beyond Earth. I think what their ancestors painted were the last three transport and resource vessels leaving Earth’s orbit.”

  “Seriously?” said Scott, a note of incredulity in his voice, “They just watched people leaving?”

  “Any launches would’ve been from the equator,” Gail shook her head, “I doubt they even knew what they were seeing. They just saw a prolonged fire in the sky.”

  “No, I meant, if everybody was busy leaving the planet,” said Scott, “Why didn’t their ancestors leave at the same time, when they still had a chance?”

  “Maybe not everyone wanted to leave,” said Roy.

  “Yeah, but choosing to stay on Earth wouldn’t make you resort to using sticks,” said Scott, looking in the direction of the entrance, where Atka and Najo were studying a mission crew poster, “Some of this stuff is covered in the same paint as the stone walls. It’s almost… primitive.”

  “Says the man who almost fell over when the computer first spoke to him,” Marshall grinned.

  “Shut up,” Scott smiled back, “That was different.”

  “Er, Fai?” Gail called to the column, not knowing if the computer was listening.

  “Yes, Gail.”

  “Can you show us where the Andromeda and Vega went?”

  “No.”

  “But I thought,” Gail stopped and, with a sigh, rephrased her question, “Can you show us the intended destinations of the Andromeda and Vega?”

  Fai filled the display surfaces with a map of the stars, then two white dots appeared.

  Roy whistled, “That’s… pretty far.”

  “Tens of light years at least,” Gail confirmed, then addressed the column, “Fai, your message was supposed to direct us to the, er, Eridanus Launch Centre?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far away is that?” asked Gail.

  “Approximately five thousand two hundred miles.”

  “Well at least it’s not light years,” Roy shrugged.

  “Do you wish to proceed to the launch facility now?”

  “Yes, Fai,” Roy replied sarcastically, “I’ll just get my walking boots on!”

  “Thank you, Roy,” said Fai, “Departure program initiated.”

  Just inside the edge of Fai’s projection surfaces, a door-sized panel clicked open. Meanwhile, noises of commotion began to reach them along with the smell of smoke.

  ANDROMEDA

  7th July 2376

  Anna had stopped counting birthdays after she’d reached her fiftieth. She’d been inside the tiny Mark 3 at the time with Douglas. He’d given her a cake ration, complete with a binary pattern of candles and holes to represent her age.

  Biologically she reasoned that she was now around eighty years old, though the exact figure was a little difficult to pin down. Advances in medical technology and multiple spells inside Chronomagnetic Fields had extended her lifespan considerably. However she’d never felt it was being extended just for the sake of maximising longevity; she had simply needed to complete her objectives.

  There had been many.

  She’d seen the creation of the Super-Fields at the L2 gravitational pinch point. With no need for Field-anchoring Biomags, Fai’s fabricators had spun timelapsed scaffolding webs in space. As the decades continued to stream past, the webs had filled with torus structures; frameworks of the future Andromeda and Vega constructions.

  In 2173, she and many others had watched the departure signature of the Eridanus. In a spectacular night display, the nuclear warheads stockpiled by Dr. Chen had been used to push Lana’s rotating cylinder of lunar rock away from Earth.

  Anna had also seen the first new launches; Field-equipped hibernation vessels, destined for the very first Andromeda and Vega habitats.

  Ultimately, she had taken the same route. Closing her eyes within a hibernation bay, the Field-wrapped vessel had transported her through a million miles and seventy years.

  Even after her arrival at the completed Andromeda habitation modules, she’d continued to work; one final goal was continuing to elude her.

  Not venturing down to the full gravity of the vast spinning habitat beneath her, she’d remained in the central axis. At her age, the lower centripetal gravity up here was a little more comfortable.

  Her quarters were compact and, in some ways, had always reminded her of a hotel; the open plan room featured a small bed in one corner, a sofa and desk where she could work, and a basic bathroom facility in an adjoining room. Owing to the orientation of the room relative to the axis, every wall was shared with a neighbour so, unlike a hotel, the window was in the floor.

  These days Anna tended to keep the porthole covered with a small rug, but she’d seen the view of the ring that encircled the axis. Sometimes she’d even been able to make out the towns that lined the habitat’s interior bel
ow.

  The Andromeda’s other two ring habitats were further along the axis, though they were quite some way from completion. Eventually though, after the Andromeda reached its first destination at Gliese15, it would leave behind the first of the spinning habitat rings; a remote Earth colony that would itself be capable of spreading outwards again.

  A knock at the door brought her back to the present day.

  On opening the door, she saw a man and woman. Behind them was a smaller pair of legs and a long red balloon.

  “Tyler!” she recognised them all immediately, “Olivia, come in, come in!”

  “Happy Birthday!” he beamed.

  The route taken by Tyler’s family had been more direct than hers. In the year 2133 they’d used a Field-hibernation transfer vessel, timed to arrive at the Andromeda upon its completion. Although Anna had used the technique to cover the last seventy years, the Briars family had chosen the faster two hundred and forty-three-year jump.

  “I’m afraid there’s not much space,” she found herself apologising.

  “Axis living, eh?” said Tyler, giving her a hug, “Smaller radius, but better views.”

  “Only if you’re looking straight down,” she patted his back, “but I try not to.”

  The last time she’d met them had been shortly after their arrival at the Andromeda. It seemed that time had flown by yet again.

  She exchanged hugs with Olivia next.

  “You didn’t need to come all the way up here,” Anna gave her a gentle squeeze but took care not to press on Olivia’s pregnant bump, “But it’s great to see you. All… four of you.”

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Olivia passed her hand over the stretched fabric, “It’s a bit easier on the back in low gee!”

  “We did bring a birthday balloon,” Tyler lowered his tone a little, “but I think someone might have got a little attached to it…”

  Anna laughed and turned to the little girl.

  The last time Anna had met her, she’d been a sleeping baby. She already knew the girl’s name, and the reason her parents had chosen it, but she thought it might put her at ease if she was asked.