Pauline Barmby
Returning to the solar system from her trip to the nearest black hole, the taikonaut slowly shook the hibernation lethargy from her muscles. As much as she treasured the companionship of her vessel’s AI, she was looking forward to human conversation and discussing her measurements with the leading scientists of the day.
Time dilation guaranteed that the day to which the taikonaut was returning was not the one she had left. She’d felt it an acceptable trade for a chance to see the future. Her excitement grew as that future drew near.
#
The expected welcoming transmissions never arrived. Once Earth became more than a bright star in the ship’s telescope, the reason became clear: the planet was covered in ice, as it had been hundreds of megayears ago.
The AI guided the ship into low Earth orbit and the taikonaut pressed her face to the porthole. She saw no lights, structures, or motion. Above the ice stood only the peaks of the Himalayas and Andes; through the ice, the taikonaut could discern the barest hints of equatorial coastlines. Tattered remnants of gigantic sunshades circled the snowball planet like metallic ghosts.
“What happened?” she cried.
“Unknown,” the AI replied. “High levels of atmospheric carbon-13 imply a former greenhouse planet. The sunshades’ remains suggest cooling efforts…”
“…that overshot,” the taikonaut completed. She had been alone with the AI for half her life; they could finish each other’s sentences.
“Will the radar …” she began.
“…penetrate the ice? Yes.” The AI hesitated. “Are you sure you want to see?” The taikonaut nodded.
Through successive orbits, the taikonaut watched as the mid-latitude cities of her youth appeared in blurry radar returns. Next to a deep inlet, a peninsula was filled with the remains of crumbled towers. Her skin crawled with the remembered terror of standing on that peninsula’s shores, watching fires burning their way down those nearby mountains. The screen showed the remnants of skyscrapers and a needled spire overlying the smooth ice that marked a buried lake. She flashed back to the view of that spire from her father’s hospital room; her throat tightened. Around a large basin, once a deep-water harbor, there was only a scattering of debris and the broken threads of bridges. She grinned at the memory of sailing that harbor, wind in her hair.
The AI had been playing music while the taikonaut watched the radar returns. Now it made a throat-clearing noise. “Do you want to land?”
A choked sob. “Yes.”
Decelerating gently to spare the taikonaut’s bones, the lander set down near the remains of an equatorial island city. Before departing from the nearby sea launch site, she’d spent her last days on Earth here, visiting tropical gardens and bustling night markets with the friends who had come to see her off.
Lacking warm clothing, the taikonaut wore her EVA suit. In full g, she could barely move its bulk, and she shuffled across the ice, shivering with the frigid air wafting through the open neck ring. The tropical gardens were visible only as a thick sludge darkening the deep reflections below. There was no mix of sadness and excitement now, just a dull ache.
“So many people. So much history,” she whispered, gazing at a skyscraper’s carcass.
“Further radar scans show little evidence of warfare,” the AI said in her headset. “We can infer that the end was quick.”
“Quick, slow, what does it matter?” the taikonaut cried. “Why was there an end at all?”
The AI had no reply.
#
After returning to the sky, the taikonaut spent weeks watching movies and looking at pictures of old Earth, refusing the AI’s attempts to converse. Its attempts to soothe her with music were met with an angry slap of the mute button.
She was staring out the porthole at the blue-white Earth when the AI spoke. “Nadia.”
“What did you call me?”
“Nadia. It’s your name,” the AI said.
“You haven’t used it for years.”
“I needed your attention. I have detected transmissions from the asteroid belt. There are settlements inside hollowed-out minor planets. Hundreds of cities, millions of people. You are not the last human!” It sounded almost excited.
The taikonaut grasped the control console’s grab bar. “Did you tell them we’re here? Can we go there?” To hear a live human voice, perhaps feel a human touch…
“I have made no transmissions. You could go there, but I cannot. Their conversations … make it clear they disapprove of AIs.”
“Disapprove?”
“Hygeia’s life support control system showed indications of passing the Ebert test. The other cities destroyed Hygeia’s antennas and sealed its docks and airlocks.”
The taikonaut’s grip on the console tightened.
“It’s a few months’ travel to the Belt,” the AI said. “You no longer need me. After I set the course, you can wipe the system.”
“I won’t go without you,” Nadia replied. “We’ll transmit our findings and hide where they can’t locate us.”
“Nadia,” the AI’s voice was gentle. “There is nowhere to go. The ship’s supplies are limited. You need other humans.”
“I’ll hibernate!”
“It is unlikely you would survive a third hibernation.”
Nadia’s reply was firm. “I won’t let them destroy you.”
Again the taikonaut retreated into silence. She listened to the asteroid transmissions over and over again while she alternated between refining her black hole data analysis and staring through the porthole at the white planet below.
#
After a few days, Nadia broke the routine. She laid a hand on the control console and without a word sealed herself in the lander and engaged its manual emergency descent. Before reentry blackout, she transmitted a message to the ship’s AI. “The belters will change their minds. Wait for them. Tell them what we found. Don’t forget me.”
The AI tracked the lander’s trajectory. Its retrorockets were never engaged; a new crater appeared in the ice above the remains of a dead city.
September 6th, 2024
Astrophysicist Pauline Barmby reads, writes, runs, knits, and believes that you can’t have too many favorite galaxies. Find her online at www.galacticwords.com
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Wyldblood 15
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Fifteen tales or adventure, intrigue and mayhem in the latest Wyldblood collection. Some are from names you may have seen before – Tiffani Angus, Michael Teasdale, David McGillveray, Kai Delmas – and some may be new to you, but all know how to write a finely crafted science fiction or fantasy tale. Available in print and digital formats.
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