by Kyle Ratsch
The Earth was gone.
The cold and open expanse of space yawned perpetually as tiny objects—millions of miles across—crept along at speeds of a few thousand miles an hour. In their lifetimes spanning multiple millennia, nearly all of these objects would never meet another celestial body of significant size. The dust and rocks of space crashed into planets and stars and black holes with regular frequency, but other bodies regarded each other as distant neighbors they could always see, but never meet, and past each neighbor were a million more entities that could barely be discerned as anything but glitter in the black distance.
Jack’s breath fogged the dense window as he carelessly observed the expanse of space before him. The vapor coalescing on the aluminum-silica was the only liquid water for a few light years, but Jack didn’t know that. He could’ve deduced this information with the proper time and motive, but of the former he had a speck and of the latter he had none. Not a single star seemed closer to him despite the passing of a decade, and the only truly noticeable difference had always been that the Earth and moon were no longer in sight. If any object crossed their path, it would appear suddenly and quietly merely from their lack of observation. So far, that had not been the case. The only thing they had encountered were innumerable particles of radiation hurtling in the spaces between celestial bodies projected from the roaring rumble of fusing stars that hurtled to an unnamed destination on a meaningless schedule completely unbeknownst to him.
At one point Bill somberly mentioned how they missed Pluto by a few million miles, and how it would have been cool to see.
The entirety of the universe was on display to him, unfiltered by the color of an atmosphere, but the immutable visage before him was more like a painting than a window. The fact that anything happened at all became something of a surprise to him.
Jack could not see the radio waves of their distress signal, and he had not seen the incoming transmission announcing that the entire population of the Earth was now dead and the planet had been rendered uninhabitable. He could not see the space stations when they aimed their distress signals—Bill had enlightened him to the fact that they were far enough away that radio waves could miss or disperse before reaching anyone—and although he knew there were a few thousand people drifting through space just like they were, there was very little they could do to navigate towards them. They could pick a star cluster with a known colony, but the reality of the fact was that those stars were moving faster than they were, and it was very possible that they could spend their entire lives going towards another star and never reach it.
Jack could not decide if hope would sustain him or kill him.
A small beep drew him away from witnessing everything imaginable. A small machine nestled in the soil between two soybean plants flashed a green LED, indicating that the test was done. He checked the results of the sample and saw that the soil was slightly too acidic. It wasn’t enough to be a real concern, but he elected to take care of it anyway. Jake rose from the damp garden bed and squinted his eyes against the UV light. Rows of off-white cabinets lined the opposite wall of the greenhouse, each of which had small strips of duct tape with hastily scribbled labels. Bill had never been able to remember which cabinet was which, but Jake knew the fourth one from the left held the chemicals and fertilizers. He swung that cabinet open and plucked a small vile from a box of a hundred, then uncorked it and fed the mixture into the irrigation tube.
“How’s it looking?” A voice broke the silence from the door. It was Bill, the only other person on this small space-expedition shuttle.
“Good. Only one minor tweak.” Jack replied. He clapped his hands together to get the clumped dirt from his fingers and rose to regard his fellow.
Bill was in his sixties with grey hair and a firm square jaw. Jack was in his thirties and nearly a foot taller. They were both sinewy from a plant-based diet and a strict workout regimen. The glistening sweat on Bill’s brow indicated he had just come from the weight-room.
“What’s the plan for today?” Jack asked.
“Same as yesterday.” Bill replied.
Jack nodded and they left the greenhouse. Their footsteps echoed in the dark hallway and small motion-lights clicked on as they passed through and clicked off soon after to preserve their solar-panel collected power.
Bill opened the door to the cockpit and gestured for Jack to enter. They took seats in front of elaborate screens that switched between different readings. Jack checked the atmospheric levels of the air in the ship along with the temperature, status of the seals, the integrity of the hull, and other electrical readings. Bill checked the star charts, radiation in solar winds, the radio waves for any incoming correspondences, and finally the status of their internal server on the ship.
The process consumed an hour of their most abundant resource, during which they exchanged only as many words as necessary. Upon finishing they crossed their hands in their laps and stared into space.
“I hated it when my daughter moved to the city.” Bill said after a while.
“Yeah?” Jack asked. Bill hated nearly everything about the city, it was just a matter of what he was thinking about today.
“The night after we finished moving her furniture in, I remember going out onto the deck and trying to look at the stars. Couldn’t see a thing.” Bill said.
Jack nodded. They looked out at the stars together just like they had every day for the last decade.
“Well, I’m hungry. Want some tofu?” Bill asked with a smirk.
“Ew. No.” Jack wrinkled his nose.
“Fine, I’ll bring you a salad.” Brill rose from his chair. “You can stop growing the soy, you know.”
Jack shook his head. “It’s good for us. I’ll bake some soybeans later.”
“Alright.” Bill made his exit.
Jack unclipped a VR headset from under the dashboard and slid the goggles over his eyes. He plugged a single headphone in one ear so that he could still hear Bill or any of the meters, then turned the system on. A dazzling swirl of lights outlined the VR manufacturer’s logo and Jack wondered if their headsets were the sole surviving units in the universe.
The main screen loaded and Jack began scrolling. He passed single title lines that contained hours of agricultural training videos, emergency medical instructions, space ship maintenance, colony etiquette, and anything else the motherland had deemed necessary for their travels. The last item in the list was “morale,” and Jack selected it. Bill had made the argument that educational material wouldn’t suffice for the length of their mission, and it wasn’t reasonable for them to bear the full burden of entertaining themselves or each other, so the brass had given them access to movies and games.
They, of course, had brought terabytes of their own bootleg material.
Footsteps and a plastic plop announced Bill’s return—complete with salad and tofu.
“Thanks.”
“Mhm.”
Jack raised the headset long enough to shovel in a few mouthfuls of greens mixed with salt, lime juice, soy beans, and vinegar. He pulled the headset back down before he finished chewing.
Bill also donned a small, plastic window into electronic universes and put one headphone in.
“What’re you watching today?” Jack asked.
“I dunno. Some kind of western, I guess.”
“I’m starting to think that’s all you brought.” Jack said, knowing full well that was far from true.
“Something about them hits different,” was all Bill said.
Jack scrolled past the movies and into the video games section. He’d already beaten his own high score in “Tetris” a few hundred times and had finished the story mode in “Zombie Attack 4” more times than he cared to admit. His minutes of scrolling searched the binary code for the answer to his longing and boredom. The farming games didn’t appeal to him today, he’d already done enough work in the garden and saw through the thin veil to recognize the amusing paradox that these were electronic chores that were somehow more fun than their real life equivalents. The action games didn’t call out to him either; the call to action to save the world from evil emperors felt hollow when he knew in the back of his head that a volcano could explode and annihilate the city, or that a gamma ray burst could strip the atmosphere from the planet and asphyxiate the level fifty hero with the legendary sword, or that they could slowly drift into a black hole and be torn into atoms.
Instead, he decided on a strategy game where the player advances a Stone Age civilization forward in time while collecting resources, researching technologies, and developing culture. You could build society however you liked, be it militaristic, artistic, peaceful, religious, scientific, or a number of others. Jack pretended that he and Bill had landed on a new planet and would start their new utopia. Earth 2 or something. It would be peaceful and beautiful and artistic without all of the trappings Earth 1 had to go through. He would practice his diplomacy against the artificial intelligence in hopes that he’d be able to negotiate a real better future.
A few hours in he had discovered coal and hoarded it. It wasn’t because he intended to use the resource for its militaristic advantage like the game intended, but instead so that the A.I. players couldn’t burn the coal and cause the ocean to rise and sink the coastal cities and—
A bitter acidic taste burst into his mouth and he tore the headset away. Jack realized he was breathing heavily and sweating, so he took a few slow breaths and ate more of his salad. HIs eyes adjusted back to the massive expanses beyond the silica window. As far as he could tell, it was unchanged.
Jack looked over at Bill and was startled to see that the older man was looking at him. He must’ve heard the small commotion. They held eye contact, but said nothing. Something welled up inside of Jake and tears collected at the corners of his eyes. Bill put his headset back on.
Jack followed suit and closed out the strategy game without saving his progress. He scrolled through a list of unappealing titles until he came across a dating simulator. They were ridiculous things, he thought, and remembered that he had made fun of some kids in grade school who played them. The code could only showcase what a single person could imagine for an entire cast of characters and could not possibly account for the infinite complexities of life. The games had pre-written stories that had the same outcome for each dialogue choice. Every time you gave the red-headed girl a donut from the bakery downtown she’d squeal with excitement and thank you—she was never having a day bad enough that donuts didn’t matter, and she never quite caught on to the fact that you got her the same gift every week. It was a shadow of the real thing.
He chose it.
Enough time had passed since he’d last played that he’d forgotten where he was in the story. He opened the menu and checked his “relationship statuses” with the people who shared the city of 0’s and 1’s with him. Surprisingly, he had developed an 8 out of 10 “heart” rating with the quirky girl working on her dissertation in art history. That was definitely not his type, so he supposed he was going for something a little different this time. He had 1 heart with the cold CEO who wore glasses because she thought they looked cool, 4 hearts with the burly bartender with a pixie cut, and 3 hearts with the waitress who worked three jobs so she could move out of the flat she shared with her abusive ex-boyfriend.
The cursor blinked over the “next” button and he sighed. The dating candidates in this game were reduced to a job, a confrontation style, predetermined likes and dislikes, and a secret you could only find out through specific and convoluted dialogue choices.
He clicked next.
Jack had forgotten the binary woman’s birthday and she stood with her arms crossed. Her face was flushed and she pouted with an unrealistically protrusive bottom lip. There was a tear in the corner of her eye.
“It’s okay, I was at the library doing research anyway.” She said, and turned her eyes to the floor.
Jack’s stomach dropped and he felt real disappointment.
The dialogue options read:
- “I’m really sorry. Work was busy this week and I forgot.”
- “It sounds like you were busy anyway. Maybe we could do something this weekend?”
- “Hey, I’m sorry. Let’s go to the Thai place downtown. Dinner’s on me.”
Somehow he felt a strong urge to choose the right one, despite knowing that it was largely irrelevant. No matter what he picked he would pull the headset off and it would still just be him and Bill drifting.
“Let’s go to the Thai place downtown. Dinner’s on me.” He chose.
“Okay, I guess.” Her expression was unchanged.
Damn, he thought. She really was disappointed. A blank screen whisked them away to the Thai restaurant downtown and he slowly and deliberately navigated the dialogue while honing in on the pixelated array standing in for blue eyes. He watched her face for any twitch or twinge that could serve as indicators of her mood. If he wanted to guarantee her happiness, he could consult the strategy guide nestled on one of their hard drives. It would tell him what to say to see her cute little smirks or hear her electronic laughter, but something kept him from doing so. Jack wouldn’t be earning it. He’d be cheating on his coded girlfriend. Still, at the thought of her anger, his body temperature rose and his face flushed.
Some hours later, Bill tapped him on the shoulder and he took off his headset. The older man said nothing, but he pointed at a single solemn finger at a form out in space. It was barely more than a glimmer, catching only the wispy dissipated remnants of starlight so far removed from constellations.
“Is that…?” Jack started.
“Yes. It has a distress call on loop.”
Bill altered the trajectory of their ship a few degrees to align with the drift of the floating metal piece, then he picked up a radio transceiver and sent out a message. The men waited, but there was no response.
“Should we hurry?” Jack asked. His heart thumped harder, echoing in his head.
Bill shrugged. “They’re unconscious or dead. We can only do so much about either.”
Jack tapped his finger on the dashboard, but didn’t protest.
Ten minutes passed until they were close enough to interact with the craft. When they came within fifty meters, they immediately recognized it as an escape pod manufactured by some western company. The men worked in tandem to recover the escape pod, Bill with a crane and Jack with a space-suit and a tether. They pulled it into a hanger, waited for the oxygen and pressure to return, then Jack opened the hatch.
With clicks and hissing, the escape-pod door opened and slowly revealed a gloved hand, a sleeve, a shoulder, and finally a lock of brown braided hair inside a helmet. Jack gasped.
“Everything okay?” Bill’s crackling voice popped through the radio.
“Shit, Bill. She looks alive!”
“What?!”
The skin around her cheekbones was tight and sunken and her lips were pale, but her skin showed no signs of putrefaction or marbling, and her lips and eyes were not bloated. Jack took her hand and raised her arm. It was not stiff with riot mortis. He unlocked the clips of her helmet, pulled it off, and put his ear to her mouth.
Breath.
“We need to get her to the med bay. Get the IV and first aid ready.” Jack said.
“You got it.” Bill crackled.
Jack unbuckled her and shifted her body over his shoulder. With a groan he pulled her out and carried her to the lab where Bill was waiting.
The older man’s hands were swift in cutting her sleeve open and cleaning the pit of her elbow for the IV needle. Jack blinked tears away as he watched Bill set up various machines to check her vitals, and it took him several glances to realize that Bill was crying too. They said nothing.
It took nearly eight hours for her to regain consciousness, and for the entire duration Jack hadn’t left the room. Bill intermittently checked the ships radars and occasionally brought them food, but otherwise he too sat and waited with eyes roaming over the monitors displaying her vitals.
When she finally broke the silence, it was a rustle and a whimper. She peeled her eyelids and lips open, brown eyes peering out and lips cracked and unmoving.
“Hello.” She whispered.
Jack smiled. “Hello.”
She blinked hard and propped herself up with one arm. “You found me.” Her voice was like a croak.
“Yeah, in your escape pod. I’m Jack, and this is Bill.”
She nodded as Jack waved and then followed his gesture to Bill, who also waved.
“I’m Claire.” She said, words still slow and garbled. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to introduce myself. Is it just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
Claire nodded. “You’re probably just as happy to see me as I am to see you then.”
Jack nodded his affirmation.
“Was anyone else with you? Should we be on the lookout?” Bill asked.
Claire shook her head. “We all took to the escape pods when the integrity of the hull was compromised… For a while we could see each other… A couple of days, I think. I followed them for as long as I could until…” She brought a hand to her mouth and stifled a sob. “Until I couldn’t…”
Claire laid back on the table and her body twitched as she fought back tears, then convulsed as she lost the fight and began weeping.
Bill rolled his chair closer, checked her vitals again, then took her hand and wrapped it in father’s fingers. Bill and Jack said nothing, but all three shared in tears.
Claire’s recovery was slow. Her body was emaciated and her muscles atrophied. Jack brought her food from the garden and Bill worked her through slow physical therapy. She talked the entire time.
* * *
“Wait, you’re still growing soybeans?” She exclaimed at the toasted edamame mixed in with the salad. “Our last plant died three years ago.”
“That must’ve been terrible.” Jack said.
“Oh, it was. We needed you on the ship!” She smiled and then shoveled a mouthful of salad and crunched away. Jack’s heart swelled with pride.
* * *
“Bill!” She shouted.
Her unnecessarily loud voice crashed down the hall and the old man flinched. He turned around in his chair with a scowl that could’ve been playful. “What?”
“Look at this!” Claire removed her hand from the wall and balanced delicately on bony legs. Once the shaking stopped, she snapped one foot to the slide and twisted her shoulders into a ridiculous pose. Then she danced in the spindly way that only atrophy can. One wild motion flung her too far off balance and she collapsed into the floor and began giggling.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bill asked, his voice firm and concerned, but unable to hide his smirk.
Claire was barely able to answer through her giggles. “Dancing, dummy! Your exercises work!”
Bill rolled his eyes. “Well don’t break a hip. I don’t have a stretch that can fix that.”
* * *
Halfway through a barbarian attack, a frustrated grumble announced Claire’s presence only moments before she peeled the VR goggles from Jack’s head.
“Oh come on!” He protested.
“I can’t believe you.” She quipped back.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“Not that,” she said. “Look.”
Jack followed her finger to something he’d stared at for nearly a decade.
“You too, old timer.”
Bill groaned and took off his headset. “It’s a nebula.” He said.
“Exactly. Isn’t that a gorgeous color?” Claire said, insistent.
“Yellow?” Jack asked, with a hint of disdain.
“Yes!” She said, loud and indignant.
“I mean…” Jack began, but she cut him off.
“When’s the last time you got to see honest-to-God yellow?”
“The last time I looked at this nebula…” Jack said. By now the barbarians had probably destroyed his city, and he’d have to start the game over again.
She slapped his shoulder playfully, but still hard enough to sting. Maybe she actually was mad…
“Ow!”
“Get over it.”
Bill interjected with a voice that was level and melancholic.
“I’d kill to see sunflower yellow.” He said.
Jack wrinkled his nose in confusion and Claire’s eyes brightened.
“I love sunflowers!” she said. The starlight glimmered across a mournful tear.
“My daughter did too.” Bill said. “I used to grow them outback just for her. She’d squeal every time she went outside, and then she’d run around in the patch and knock ‘em over.”
All three were smiling and stars glimmered across tears—though the light couldn’t tell us if they were mournful or grateful tears.
“I didn’t know you could grow anything.” Jack said. “Why have I been doing all the gardening?”
Bill scoffed. “You never asked.”
Claire’s jaw dropped. “You mean to tell me the two of you have been on this ship alone for ten years and you didn’t know that?”
The men shrugged.
“You two are ridiculous. I’m going to jettison those headsets of yours.” Claire rose to her feet suddenly. “Come on, Bill. Let’s go play checkers. Winner tells a story.”
The old man groaned.
“You’re just mad you can’t beat me,” she said.
* * *
Some hours later, Bill tapped him on the shoulder and he took off his headset. The older man said nothing, but he pointed at a single solemn finger at a form out in space. It was barely more than a glimmer, catching only the wispy dissipated remnants of starlight so far removed from constellations.
“Is that…?” Jack started.
“Yes. It has a distress call on loop.”
Bill altered the trajectory of their ship a few degrees to align with the drift of the floating metal piece, then he picked up a radio transceiver and sent out a message. The men waited, but there was no response.
“Should we hurry?” Jack asked. His heart thumped harder, echoing in his head.
Bill shrugged. “They’re unconscious or dead. We can only do so much about either.”
Jack tapped his finger on the dashboard, but didn’t protest.
Ten minutes passed until they were close enough to interact with the craft. When they came within fifty meters, they immediately recognized it as an escape pod manufactured by some western company. The men worked in tandem to recover the escape pod, Bill with a crane and Jack with a space-suit and a tether. They pulled it into a hanger, waited for the oxygen and pressure to return, then Jack opened the hatch.
With clicks and hissing, the escape-pod door opened and slowly revealed a gloved hand, a sleeve, a shoulder, and finally a dried lock of brown braided hair.
Jack took a deep breath and let out a long sigh.
“Everything okay?” Bill’s crackling voice popped through the radio in Jack’s helmet.
The skin around her cheekbones was tight and sunken, it was marbled, wrinkled, and textured like vellum. The orbs of her eyes were discolored and slightly shriveled.
“Yeah. She’s dead. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s been dead for six months.”
Bill’s reply was long in coming. “Okay. I’ll be in there in a minute.”
Jack took a step back from the pod and dropped into a squatting position. He hugged his knees to his chest and reached up to switch off his radio, then paused. No, he’d let Bill hear him cry.
When the old man came into the hangar, Jack was still trembling. They briefly locked eyes, and Bill slowly inclined his head.
“I’m going to check her pod for supplies.” He said.
Bill stepped past him and started to inspect the craft, but Jack snapped a hand out and wrapped it tightly around Bill’s wrist. The old man jolted back and looked at Jack’s hand, then into the eyes of his crying companion.
“I’m sad, Bill.”
The old man’s eyebrows raised in surprise. After a long moment he said, “I… am too.”
“I wanted… so… badly…” Jack couldn’t get all of his words out.
Bill’s eyes shimmered. “Me too.” The old man patted Jack’s tightly clenching hand.
Eventually Jack let go.
“Bill?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you tell me more about your daughter? And why you hate the city so much?”
A smirk broke out at the corner of Bill’s mouth. “I’d love to.”
