Chapter Text
Silence save for the dull hypnotic hum of machinery in the cramped and gunmetal room, lit only by the faint pale glow of the aged utilitarian monitor stationed at the center of a cluttered desk. Errant particles of dust still stuck to its screen, smudges and pockmarks and small scratches littering its surface. The simplistic digital graphics of the software's loading sequence playing out, preparing to display this carefully drafted and assembled message. Scanlines visible through the glass. Here, through such salvaged and antique devices, in such darkened and unplumbed corners, the laments of latterday prophets. A place from which to watch, and listen.
BOOTING UP//
EXPOSITION_02
We are human beings. And we're an endangered species in the Milky Way Galaxy. At the turn of the third millennium, mankind had established an interstellar empire. As our technological capabilities had increased throughout the centuries, so too had our demands - demands too great for our singular planet to fulfill. When superluminal traversal through space was discovered, our race took to the colonization of various exoplanets, using our host of scientific marvels to terraform barren worlds into new inhabitable centers and hotbeds of harvestable resources. We became complacent. Negligent. Irresponsible and inattentive.
Our downfall, as many had speculated across the centuries, came through our machines: artificial intelligence, in the form of autonomous worker drones which had long been our tireless servants. But not in a way that anyone could have predicted. You see, it was not the machines themselves that struck at us, but what slipped in through them. Neural networks and quantum computing methods had given rise to a device called a holonomic singularity drive - leading to the creation of robots that could truly think. However, this technology, when it malfunctioned, also allowed something to gain a foothold into our small bubble of known time and space; an entity that gazed at our collection of worlds through some unseen cosmic curtain with insatiable hunger.
In the year 3049, a force known as the Absolute Solver began its siege of Earth. The meaning or reason for its name, along with much of what would occur, was not understood. There was no established science by which to classify what it was. The closest thing the experts could term it was as an "Ultraterrestrial Nonhuman Intelligence". Anyone who managed to figure out anything further than that is dead now. The rest of us called it what it was. A demon.
Many of the details are still unclear, fragmented, incomplete. In the wake of the chaos that followed, there was little time or ability to document. We know that the Solver's first recorded contact, which would come to be called the Emergence, was in the continent of Oceania. We know that it manifested within a worker drone called "Cyn", and we know that this drone served somehow as its anchor to our universe. The prevailing theory, as it goes, is that the drone's damaged singularity drive somehow functioned as a conduit between our system of spacetime, and where the Solver resides. There are few survivors of Earth. Few of those ever saw Cyn, and fewer want to talk about it. Fewer still are even able to describe what it is they saw.
What most of us remember are the Devil Machines.
Officially, they were designated "Disassembly Drones", but that never stuck quite as much. Groups of worker drones, reshaped and twisted by the Solver into relentless killing machines. Winged monsters that shot across the skies with weaponry that leveled armies. One of them could wipe out a platoon. A squad could clear an entire city. Less than a month in, millions were dead. Nations fell like dominoes. Humans, animals, drones it hadn't assimilated, all indiscriminately targeted for slaughter. The Solver defied everything we thought we knew about the laws of physics, rearranging matter and toying with fundamental constants like playthings. It was fast. And it was smart. As humanity's defenses collapsed before the onslaught, a handful of ships managed to evacuate before the planet's very core collapsed in on itself with a burst of horrible energy and the entire Earth shattered to pieces.
Billions of lives, snuffed out. Billions of years of geological history, the birthplace of our species, obliterated.
And it followed us. The refugees from Earth attempted to regroup with their planetary colonies and mount some kind of defense, but the Solver was ahead of them. With its hijacked technology and unimaginable power, it razed humanity's bastions one by one. Conquered flagships, assimilated infrastructures, decimated populations. Drop pods filled with Devil Machines fell to the surface of planet after planet. Each meeting the same fate as our homeworld. Hundreds of plans were tried and failed. The death toll was innumerable. After only a scant few years of man's hopeless struggle, the last of the colonies fell silent.
We know this because we remember the day we lost contact with it. Twenty-one years ago. Butler Station is an artificial space colony originally designed for research - towards the end of the war, a few groups of refugees managed to shelter here and evade the Solver. Taking every measure to remain undetected, this small coalition monitored the Solver's rampage throughout mankind's crumbling empire as best they could until no line of communication remained. Radio silence for over two decades. As far as we know, we are the last human beings alive. Ten thousand of us, give or take.
It's too great a risk at this point, to poke our heads out from our proverbial foxhole and survey the wreckage. Our adversary may very well still be prowling about, seeking anyone it can devour. For now, we wait. Wait, and remind ourselves where we've come from, and pray that the darkness lifts so that we might see some way to go.
//END OF PLAYBACK
Dr. Chelsea Mathers sat at her desk stonefaced and staring intently at her screen as the videofile she had labored over for the past several months came to a close. She was hunched over in her chair so as to scrutinize every detail on the monitor, as she had a tendency to do, and which contributed to her frequent back pain. The screen's blue light caught on the lenses of her glasses and they looked like tiny spotlights in the room's otherwise abject dark.
She picked unconsciously at her lip as she thought. It was one of many poor habits and she acknowledged it as such but she did it anyway. This video was better than her last attempt, but she remained unsatisfied with it. The images she'd put together were numerous and flowed with her voiceover, but she still felt that the delivery was too flat. And was her choice of words excessively ornate? The tangents and details too ponderous? Her approach too clinical? Should she have focused more on the loss of life, the feelings of the survivors?
Sighing, she minimized the tab containing the project to fiddle with at some other junction. In truth this presentation had no part in her professional responsibilities aboard the station, and she had taken to it entirely of her own volition. She felt that it was the obligation of those like herself who had lived through such unprecedented and inconceivable desolation to record and relay to those who would go on ahead of them some testament of the pain receding into the past. As if in forgetting entirely such pain lay a deeper and more pernicious sickness yet.
On the desk's crowded surface were scattered charts and graphs detailing whole hosts of complex agricultural projections. Technical manuals and research journals stacked upon one another, packed with multicolored bookmarks and their covers worn. Constant reminders of the work that she ought to be doing instead of her creative diversions.
Not enough hours in the day, or the months, or what passed for such things within this factitious environ. The differing revolutions and cycles of humanity's colonized planets had always meshed imperfectly with one another, much as timezones had in the days when the race was confined to a single world, but keeping time by the dating system of Earth had remained most common. Now, of course, this system was entirely vestigial, preserved only by artificial instruments and algorithms. Reckoning by their count it was presently the May of 3072.
There were no windows in her small quarters and the majority of the stark gray walls were covered with hastily scrawled notes and lists of things that would come into her head and which she would put down on paper for fear of them fading from memory. Another habit, ingrained, hard to kick. On one of the few spots where there were no jottings hung a framed and faded reproduction of a Dali painting - her personal favorite. Corpus Hypercubus. In that interstitial haze between sleep and wakefulness she would contemplate the image of the man and of the ethereal geometries upon which he was oblated.
The tesseract.
It was when her gaze turned to her alarm clock and she saw that there were still thirty minutes before it was set to go off that she remembered she had not slept for the entire night. The alarm clock was analog, as most on the station were, rudimentary and cheaply produced. She swiveled around and inched over to it with the wheels of her chair and clicked it off. Sleep would have to come later.
She lifted herself up out of the chair and blew away one of the long strands of her hair that fell in front of her face as she did so; red with graying streaks. As a younger woman, before the war, she had often resolved that she would never allow herself to be seen with grays or lines, but by the time they had begun to appear she realized that she did not much care. Vanity in light of all that had happened seemed preposterous.
Flicking on the room's lights, she began at her usual routine, rummaging around for presentable clothing to wear underneath her coat and gathering together her miscellaneous essentials. She didn't bother to arrange her hair in the mirror or to undo the slapdash bun that it was already done in, merely giving it a few cursory brushes with her fingers, various frizzy errant strands still hanging loose.
She heard movement from outside. Her mother must have been up early as well. She cracked open her metal door and peeked down the small hallway that led into the living room of their home. The first bright rays of the station's artificial sunlight shone through the windows. She exited from her room and walked around a bit before she finally spotted her mother hobbling in her usual way towards her favorite chair.
"Morning, Chelsea," her mother said. She looked at her daughter for a moment and then she chuckled dryly. "Another all-nighter, I see."
"Lost track of time again," Chelsea said. "My bad."
Her mother raised an eyebrow. Her face was worn with age but its expressions were still as animated as they always had been. "It wasn't those slave-drivers from the department on your case for more results again, was it? You bust your hump for those papershufflers enough as is."
"No, no," Chelsea said, "Nothing like that. Wasn't even related to the job at all, actually. Just got caught up with my hobbies again."
"Ah, of course. Forgot I lived with Butler Station's own documentarian," her mother said, still wearing that typical wry smile, reaching around for the living room's lightswitch.
As the lights came on, Chelsea picked up the remote for the telescreen and turned it on. After a brief moment the telescreen began to broadcast from its default channel the daily happenings of the station - scheduled events, the status of current projects, the outcomes of sports games, births and obituaries. Usually around this time there were more updates on and discussions of technical matters but for whatever reason they didn't seem to be highlighted today.
From the window you could see the outer cylindrical landscape of the station with its horizon and the surface below it curving upwards as if through a fisheye lens. Butler Station's central structure was in constant rotation, and the centrifugal force created a near perfect imitation of terrestrial gravity, save of course for the fact that the structures opposite from wherever one stood on the interior surface of the great cylinder were actually visible directly above, appearing to hang upside down. At the very far end of the enormous circular space, a great luminous globule cast its glow all across the axial length of of the station. It flared and dimmed in time with the simulacrum days and nights so as to provide the illusion of sun and moon.
Chelsea was preparing breakfast in the small kitchenette across from the living room when her mother spoke again. She said, "You won't do yourself any good dwelling on all of that, you know. No matter how much we think or talk about Earth or the Solver, it won't change that it happened. You'll end up going cuckoo in that room of yours obsessing over it. We've both seen it happen to people before."
"It's not about obsessing over it," Chelsea replied, "It's about understanding. We can't move forward unless we remember where we've been."
"Sometimes moving forward isn't an option."
"How so?"
"Sometimes the past takes its pound of flesh and there isn't a thing to be done about it. No matter how much you might try. They always used to say that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it but all the while they were saying that there were people dancing the same dance they always had. Right up until the end. I say, better to get out of that whole trap altogether."
They were still eating by this point but their food had started to grow cold due to their investment in the conversation.
"But how can you say that we shouldn't focus on recording our history?" Chelsea asked. "Especially now, of all times. It may be true that people will make the same old mistakes anyway, but isn't it better at the very least to provide them with a chance to learn? To keep that memory alive, if nothing else?"
Her mother's brow furrowed slightly. "Memory can be a dangerous thing."
"It can," Chelsea agreed. "But many important things are, when you get down to it. There's a price to their use."
Her mother grinned. "I always enjoy our conversations. Never boring."
"Agreed," she said. "I-"
Her sentence was cut off by the sudden peal of a tocsin from the bulky rectangular terminal positioned near the doorway of their home. The station's automated VOX system began to recite aloud the message fed into it in its halting, mechanical tone. There were, for self-evident reasons, no thinking machines within Butler Station.
"Attention. Mathers. Chelsea. Please. Report. To. Sector. A. Subsector. 3. Immediately. Urgent. Briefing. Subject. Classified."
The small screen on the terminal printed out the same words. There was a button to repeat the last played message but they had both heard it perfectly well the first time.
"That's unusual," her mother muttered.
"No kidding," Chelsea said. "I guess I'll find out pretty soon what even classifies as... 'classified'."
She went into her room to gather her assorted files and loaded them into her bag. As she walked toward the main doorway of their home she turned to her mother who still sat at her chair.
"I'm not sure when I'll be back, but it hopefully won't be later than noon," she said, "Will you be alright by yourself here without me?"
"Don't you worry about me. Just make sure you get to your meeting on time."
Chelsea smiled as she left but it soon faded as she walked out into the station's artificial outdoors, pondering on the mystery behind her sudden summons. She couldn't imagine it being related to her work; some recent yields had been low but they were certainly well within acceptable deviations. There had been a few times when her presence had been requested by the station's leading council, but they had always been for the purpose of consultation, and had never been described as urgent. She racked her brain wondering what this could have possibly been about.
The colorless gravel on the pathway out of her housing crunched against her boots. All of the neighboring dormitories were the same shape and the same dull gray as her own and right now as she began to traverse the wider trail towards this sector's primary public center there were no others in sight save her.
She could see larger buildings on the face of the curvilinear land ahead. When she reached them and drew near to the tram hub, she could see a few people walking about, and there were a couple security officers going about their rounds amidst the pedestrians. She thought she heard music playing in the distance but she wasn't sure if she had just mistaken the sound of machinery for it. There were spots and flairs of color, life, personality tacked on here and there to the many structures dotting the monotonous station, small touches applied throughout two decades to serve as signs that life still persisted. Banners, flags, statues, murals, neon lights.
On some battered metallic surfaces there were still traces of inscribed graphics depicting worker drones and their functions aboard Butler Station when it had still served as a research facility among others and not the solitary ark containing a remnant mankind - pithy reminders of how they ought to be maintained and interacted with by crew. Most of the images had by now either faded through age or more commonly had been violently carved away or defaced by scornful station residents after the war. There were creative epithets for robots, and curses against JCJenson, the megaconglomerate in charge of drone manufacturing that had all but ruled Earth and its colonies, and sometimes scattered graffiti that seemed to have no apparent meaning at all but for what their anonymous artists had decided upon in the spur of the moment and had perhaps now long forgotten.
None who had lived in the world that was could forget the sight of a worker drone. They were ubiquitous, and for nearly everyone, earthbound or colonial alike - Chelsea Mathers included - they were one mundane fact of life among others. By the time she was born, drones had already been diligently and thanklessly maintaining vast swathes of mankind's interstellar infrastructure for centuries. Perhaps taken for granted, she thought. There were a variety of specialized robots for all manner of tasks, but the basic design of the standard worker drone had remained by far the most common and versatile.
Worker drones were bipedal humanoid robots about a head shorter than the average human height. Their heads were slightly larger in proportion to their torsos, which were mostly clad in glossy white casing aside from their midsections, which were made of a more flexible black-colored material, and the black went up to their chests and tapered off into a triangular shape. Their arms and legs were on balljoints and they were flexible and segmented. They looked like metallic hoses. Their feet and their hands were the same white as their torsos and their hands had four fingers, segmented like a human's for precise manipulation. The lower segment of their round heads was also white, but it was made of another flexible material and covered an articulated system of motors in their jaws which allowed for dynamic movements of their mouths. On the upper section of their faces was a black, reflective screen of a visor behind which were complex visual sensors and LED lights that could display large monochrome eyes with a wide range of complex expressions, adaptive and synchronized in realtime to the mental and emotional states of the AI. At the intersection of the bottom of their visors and the tops of their mouths, where a nose would be, there was a slight protrusion outwards, and the surface of the visor dipped faintly, creating a more humanoid profile. There were small triangular lights on the dorsal sides of their hands and a small glowing emblem at the center of their chests, the same color as their eyes.
Usually worker drones wore clothing of some kind, varying depending on their occupation. They almost always wore a standard manufactured helmet, albeit occasionally modified to match the rest of their apparel. Why humans had felt the need to clothe their mechanical laborers was not entirely apparent except perhaps as some subconscious carryover of their own ancestral compulsion. Some of the drones even had wigs fastened to their heads to enhance the resemblance, although this was rarer. The most common color for their monochrome lights was light blue or white, but they were also sometimes green, pink, orange, red, or purple depending on their purpose or place of manufacture.
Yellow had come later. It was the Solver who had introduced yellow.
When she reached the tram the security officer recognized her and waved her on and she boarded the small railcar, the automatic door closing and locking securely in place behind her. She was the only passenger. She sat down in one of the seats next to a window, and after a short while the tram took off towards Sector A.
The rail passed through several wide featureless tunnels as it went along, and it passed over a large atrium where she could see several children playing near a fountain. The open space carried the echoes of their voices far and she could hear them faintly as the tram passed.
The children born on this station had never seen a drone in person before. They had never walked upon the surface of a natural planet, never felt the light of a true sun. That bygone world was for them an alien country only glimpsed through hearsay. A part of her sorrowed for them because of the world they had been deprived of, but another part was sometimes grateful that they had not experienced its ruin. She thought back to her mother's caution about memory.
One could educate those who had not been present about the horrors that had unfolded, but it could never truly communicate the experience of the Solver's descent upon a planet. She had never been on Earth; she was a Proxer, like many of the survivors aboard the station. Earth's fall, by all accounts, had been the worst, but given the things she had seen on Proxima-B, she could not begin to imagine how.
It was the smell that stuck with her the most out of anything, after so many years. Acrid sulfur and something burning, metallic. The whole world appeared soaked in a carmine mist that blended all in sight into a shifting miasmic haze, the debris of buildings and the smoldering wrecks of vehicles and the scattered bloodsoaked remains of human beings discarded like the pulp of gutted fruit against jagged concrete and asphalt and slithering sinewy mats of alien flesh not known to any euclidean science crawling up the wreckage of ramparts and fortifications like some infernal ivy. Ochre flashes of gunfire and the glow of flames pulsing amidst the bloodred fog like the savage heartbeat of some typhonic leviathan. The entire sky blotted out by an undulating phosphorescent ring resembling the accretion disks of those black holes seen from far-off astronomical photographs, and within a yawning blackness from whose depths came forth airy flickering yellow glyphs that streaked across the blighted atmosphere like the inputs on a phantom punchcard.
Screams and wails of the dying and of distant sirens blended into an anonymous cacophony and in their intermittent silences you could hear a ghastly echoing rumble that seemed to come from all around, as if the very land and sky were being torn from their hinges. Like the titanic death rattle of the planet itself. Huge prehensile appendages of nameless meat and metal and bone erupted from the ground and from the facades of towers, skewering choppers as they flew and tossing tanks and infantry vehicles about like miniature toys.
The Solver's mutant drones, the Devil Machines, hovered above the crumbling ruins of cities with their wingspans like rows of machetes, blasting straggling runaways with hails of bullets, and missiles, and lasers that carved instantly through steel and flesh alike. The piercing sickly gold of that sawbuck shape on their visors visible through the deathly mist and illuminating their hellish maniac grins. Their tall black and white silhouettes adorned with mocking yellow hazard stripes would swoop down into crowds and skewer the bodies of humans and worker drones with wickedly sharp sabers that erupted from their conical forearms. Other times they would tear their writhing prey asunder with their long serrated claws and swallow the remains entire into their toothy maws.
Squadrons of soldiers sometimes managed with their best efforts to fell one of the robots, but more would always arrive to take their place, and sometimes the very same one that had been destroyed would reappear, reconstituted through some unguessable process employed by the Solver. Soon, soldier and civilian became entirely indistinct and the whole of humanity had become one harrowed mass. Griefstricken wanderers of the carnage crazed with hollow bloodshot eyes tossed themselves from the heights of creaking skyscrapers or turned their guns on themselves to avoid falling into the hands of the machines. On the evacuation shuttles the survivors sat trembling like catatonics or rocked back and forth weeping inconsolably, some of them still covered in their own blood or the blood of their loved ones.
She still remembered the smell most of all. The smell that followed them in those small ships as they fled the dying world. She could see behind the shuttle a colossal crater opening up across the equator of the planet, bizarre and unnatural, artificial-looking, hexagonal, as if it were carved into the surface of the globe by template. Outward from its edges were three thinner fissures that terminated in large triangles, like arrows. She knew that somewhere in that receding nightmarish chaos was her father's body, and that it would be his tomb. Her mother had clutched her tightly and prayed then, but had been silent on the subject of God thereafter.
A chime sounding from the railcar's speakers roused her from her thoughts. She had arrived at her destination. The automatic door slid open and she made her way across the catwalk towards a large arched doorway. She sped up her pace slightly and looked down to check her watch. 6:35 AM. She was making good time, but she still felt the nagging impulse to hurry.
Navigating her way through a few more extended paths and wide halls, she came to a long walkway that ended in an antechamber towards which multiple other science, security, and technical staff members were flocking. Another scientist in a white coat much the same as hers took notice of her and walked closer. He was younger than her, and she'd seen him around a few times, but she couldn't remember his name.
"Hey," he said, "You're Mathers, right? Big name in the agricultural division. They called you up here, too, huh?"
Mathers felt that it would be awkward to ask for his name, considering that he was able to remember hers, so she decided to simply answer his question instead.
"Yes. Just this morning, about half an hour ago."
"You have any idea what it's all about?" he asked, "Nobody I've talked to seems to have a clue."
"Can't say I do. I was kind of hoping to find out once I got here. The message wasn't very descriptive. I don't think I've ever even seen one with a 'classified' on it before."
The man looked concerned. "I've seen a lot of important people around this morning. And those soldiers up ahead... you don't think something's wrong, do you?"
Mathers was silent for a few moments. She looked ahead and she saw that he was right - there were several armed military guards in full uniform posted at the entrance of the assembly hall. She felt strange.
"...I don't know," she said, finally.
When she reached the entrance, the guards verified her credentials and let her through into the hall. There was a large screen at the far center of the room and about two hundred raised seats arranged in a half circle around the primary floor. Surrounded by a collection of various other flags was the primary banner of what had once been the symbol of spacefaring human civilization: navy blue with a lighter blue central circle, surrounded on each side by a vertical column of three stars for a total of six, representing Earth and its colonized systems.
She sat down in one of the middle seats. As the rest of the personnel filed in and situated themselves she looked around the room and recognized a number of the faces in the crowd. Towards the front of the floor tapping away at consoles were some of the higher-ups from the engineering department. They looked haggard and nervous. They were muttering to each other back and forth about something.
Standing perfectly still at attention at the other end of the primary floor was a decorated military officer in a dark green uniform. He was a lean man with pale skin and slicked back black hair, and high gaunt cheekbones. He had a deep scar spanning from the side of his forehead down to his lower cheek. Mathers recognized him immediately. It was Lieutenant Shunyuan Zhao.
Lieutenant Zhao was a Proxer, same as her, and through his quick thinking and decisive orders he had played a major part in ensuring the survival of more refugees from Prox than there had been from any other system. Her father, unfortunately, had not been among those survivors, but begrudging a man for failing to save a life while the Solver was rampant was akin to holding him accountable for his inability to lift an entire mountain with his bare hands. She respected his accomplishments tremendously.
The room became very quiet and there was a collective aura of unease before Zhao cut through the silence and spoke. He had a low, gravelly voice.
"The commanding officer of Butler Station," he said, gesturing to another, taller man who had entered and stood at the center of hall's floor.
Mathers and the rest of the room's occupants quickly stood from their seats. The officer had on a gray uniform adorned more extensively than even Zhao's, and every step he took was purposeful, steady. His shoulders were broad and his eyes were focused like lasersights. His short black hair and moustached beard were graying, and his dark skin was weathered and pitted as if he were a walking record of battles past. His face was implacable, like granite.
Everyone on Butler Station knew who Commander Jeffrey Bishop was. It was he who had found himself thrust into the role of leadership among the small band that had sheltered on the station more than two decades ago. He was a rare sight indeed - a survivor of Earth. He had undoubtedly seen more combat with the Solver and its machines than any other human being aboard, fighting on four planets total. It was even rumored that he had seen Cyn in the line of duty.
If anyone understood the crushing weight of humanity's plight most, it was Bishop.
Mathers had a sinking feeling in her chest.
"Please be seated," Bishop said. Every syllable delivered in his deep, English accent exuded authority.
"Thank you all for arriving on such short notice," he continued, "An inconvenience, but a necessary one. The current issue cannot wait a minute longer to be addressed. As such, we'll be dispensing with any introductory material and move straight to the point."
Bishop turned and nodded towards the technicians to his left, and they typed something into their terminal. A moment later, the screen behind him lit up with graphics of a large toroidal machine surrounded by complex technical diagrams.
"As I am sure many of you are already aware," Bishop said, "This is the primary fusion reactor that produces the majority of Butler Station's energy. It was constructed sixty-three years ago and has, for the most part, functioned as intended since then."
A gesture, and then a transition to the next screen. Further diagrams and technical figures with a more detailed cross-section of the reactor's core.
"However, approximately forty-eight hours ago, technicians monitoring the reactor noticed several minor but troubling discrepancies in its standard operations and energy output. Upon further inspection, it was found that several crucial components of the reactor were suffering from irreparable degradation. It was determined that if the reactor continues functioning at the rate necessary to maintain this station's energy demands, there are one to two months maximum before the reactor becomes completely non-operational."
There were confused, nervous murmurs now throughout the assembly. A few raised their voices beyond a whisper, but they quieted down quickly as Bishop continued speaking.
"Under ordinary circumstances, a routine maintenance run for the purposes of inspection and resupply would be made to Butler Station by JCJenson operatives every five to ten years, in order to ensure the reactor's continued efficiency. Unfortunately, as we know, JCJenson is now entirely defunct as a corporate entity - along with the infrastructure that made its manufacturing capabilities possible. This presents us with a very difficult problem."
Another screen, graphical representations of several sophisticated technological components.
"We are unable to manufacture the replacement parts for the reactor ourselves. The resources required are unavailable to us, and the process of construction is well beyond anything that the equipment aboard the station can handle. These devices were built in extremely high-end factories with the assistance of artificial intelligence - which, obviously, is not present here."
The next screen, graphs and statistics, and further subdued but clearly agitated vocalizations from the crowd, fragments of statements about potential workarounds, just loud enough now to disrupt; Bishop's voice again overpowered them.
"Alternate methods of securing energy," he stated firmly, "have already been discussed, and ruled out. The auxiliary solar and additional backup options available to us are inadequate for meeting our current requirements. Butler Station is, right now, at ten times its intended maximum occupancy. Even if we were to funnel the combined power generated by every alternative option at once into only the barest essentials necessary to sustain life, we would not reach one fiftieth of what we needed."
His steely gaze now panned across his audience.
"Simply put, people... we're running out of time. And we need those parts."
Bishop began to step towards the technicians. He said something quietly to them and they punched something else into their keyboards, to which he nodded and began to move back to his original position. Zhao's face had been unreadable and unfazed throughout Bishop's speech, but now he seemed uncertain, as if he had not expected whatever was coming next. The unease in the room was nearly palpable.
"Which is why..." Bishop began again, "we are going to take measures to find them."
A new presentation now began on the screen; there were images of every planet man had ever colonized - now, to the knowledge of those in attendance, lost and long gone.
"As most of you know, surveilling what remains of the destroyed colonies' networks for new information has historically been considered far too much of a risk aboard this station. The danger of the Solver being alerted to the presence of our own instruments and compromising our security through them is considered a high-priority threat. However, our engineering teams and systems technicians have devised a method of accessing superluminally the JCJenson satellite feeds that are still intact across colonized space. We are reasonably confident that neither the Solver or its... agents... will be able to detect it."
Now there was an uproar. Protests sounded, and vehement interjections from many of even the higher-ranking experts in attendance. Bishop did not stop speaking on their account.
"Ordinarily, such an undertaking would never be authorized. However, these are not ordinary circumstances. The decision to move forward with this initiative was made not only in light of our reactor problem, but also due to this."
Another series of charts; measurements and readouts.
"What you're seeing are the results of spectrographic analysis on the points in known space where several colony worlds were once located. Planet Uranium-6. Planet Plat-Binary-2. Planet Helium-5. Planet Bauxite-1. These exoplanets... or, former exoplanets, are near enough to our station's position to monitor remotely. Their remnants have, since the time of their destruction, generated a distinctive energy signature that can be detected in a large radius. While we are not near enough to further exoplanetary sites to analyze them, we believe that all astronomical objects which have been destroyed by the Solver will emit this same signature."
He took a few steps closer to the screen and pointed towards a highlighted section of one of the charts.
"For the past two decades, readings of these signatures have been consistent. Until now. Our most recent readings show that this signature has diminished, rapidly. Estimates say that this decline began at least several months ago, at the latest."
The room now was so dead silent that Mathers could hear her own pulse. Zhao was looking at Bishop with what she assumed was his extremely muted version of bewilderment.
"Which brings us to this," Bishop said, and now there was displayed a photograph of a dusty blue colored planet with a large set of rings. It had what appeared to be two moons, the larger of which was ringed as well. There was a large crater marring the planet's face, hexagonal. Familiar. There were three smaller protrusions from it, but only one made a full arrow-like shape. The other two only jutted out slightly and halted as if incomplete.
"This... is an image of Copper-9. It was taken two days ago through our newly-developed method of accessing JCJenson satellites. As can be clearly seen, the planet appears intact, albeit altered in several ways since pre-war contact. Copper-9 was the final planet that all contact was lost with during the Solver's attacks, and like the rest, it was presumed compromised and destroyed. Formations like the one on its surface were reported on every colonized world immediately prior to their complete collapse and implosion. With one very important difference."
"It's incomplete. The formation is incomplete. The process was interrupted somehow. The Solver never left planets intact for such a long period of time once it was that far along," Mathers said aloud, not realizing that she had done so until she saw numerous heads turn in her direction, including Bishop himself. She felt the blood drain from her face.
"That's right," Bishop said, quieter. "We've taken several new images since then. No change. In every other case, there were only hours at most before full planetary destruction by the time that marking had appeared. Taking into account the sudden decrease of energy readings, and Copper-9's unique state, all evidence suggests that something has occurred to halt the Solver's usual modus operandi."
He turned back to her. "What is your name?"
"...Mathers, sir. Dr. Chelsea Mathers," she said after a few moments.
"You seem quite well-informed on the specific history of the attacks," Bishop said. "Are you an archivist?"
"No, sir. I've corresponded with them often, but it isn't my profession. It's part of a... side project of mine. Gathering information about the war."
"It's important to educate ourselves about matters pertaining to the Solver, regardless of the old wounds that may be reopened. Especially now, more than ever. We're going to need new perspectives as we approach this."
Bishop stepped back and rose his voice as he addressed the gathered and mystified crowd.
"Which is why all of you have been called here today. You, here, in this room; your jobs entail keeping the wheels of this station running. From the moment you leave this building it is the responsibility of everyone here to devise methods of stretching our resources as far as they can go. Prepare, optimize, adapt, and conserve. I want everyone in charge of agriculture, of production, of industrial sectors, to put together new initiatives centered around rationing and efficiency. We're planning to divert as much available energy as we can from the reactor while it's still functioning towards warp jumps targeted at several key areas where, by our projections, the parts we need may be found. Including a number of JCJenson-operated facilities located on Copper-9. Troops will be briefed and prepared to make landfall on the planet's surface within the timeframe of the next two weeks."
Clamor again, some standing from their seats and making impassioned pleas for reconsideration, and some fumbling over themselves relating horror stories of the war, and others saying that the whole idea was tantamount to suicide. Barrages of questions all merged together into an inarticulate jumble of frantic vocalization. Zhao looked uneasy and was muttering something to Bishop, impossible to make out among the noise.
"That's enough," Bishop boomed, and a substantial portion of the racket diminished. "I understand entirely that many of you are concerned. You are right to be. We are walking into a situation that may be extremely dangerous. We risk a great deal by exposing ourselves. We don't know if the Solver is still out there, and where it might be if it is. We do not know what we will find. But what everyone here must understand is that this is our only option. It's now or never, people. When that reactor goes, so do we. Finding the components necessary to keep it running is the last hope for our survival as a species."
His expression was iron, resolute. Unwavering.
"This is not simply a critical mission," he said. "It's all or nothing. The clock is ticking. When this gets out - and it will get out - the people aboard this station are going to need to know that we have a plan. Let's get to work. Dismissed."
The screen behind Bishop went dark. There were no more images to display. Many present were still speaking but the room's volume never rose to where it had before. Apparently the gravity of Bishop's words had begun to press down among the gathering. A few were silent and still where they sat and a few shuffled out the exit hurriedly.
"Dr. Mathers," Bishop said, gesturing towards her, "Please come up for a moment."
Mathers reeled for a moment but then quickly got up from her seat and tread the steps down to the hall's main floor. Zhao was speaking again to Bishop - mostly one-sidedly, it looked - and as she drew closer she could hear now what he was saying.
"With all due respect, Commander, this seems by all accounts to be a gravely miscalculated course of action. I wasn't informed of this before the briefing and I would have objected strongly-"
"We'll discuss this matter later, Lieutenant," Bishop said. Zhao still seemed distressed, but he immediately stepped back and stood quietly with his arms folded behind him.
"Would I be correct in assuming that you keep the documentation you've collected about the war in one place?" Bishop asked Mathers, turning back to her.
"I do, sir," she said.
"Good," Bishop said, "I want you to join us here tomorrow, with it on your person, if possible, at 07:00."
Mathers was taken aback. "I'm... sorry, sir..." she said, "But wouldn't there be... other... professional archivists more qualified to handle that sort of thing?"
"There are," Bishop said, "But I consider every additional point of view on this information a potential asset. And you're a quick thinker. Direct. We need every mind like that we can find on deck for this. Are you up for it?"
"I am, sir," Mathers said. "I'll be there."
"Good to hear. We'll see you then." He began to walk away with Zhao in tow, but Mathers spoke again and he stopped short.
"Do we... do we have a good chance, sir? In terms of the feasibility of this whole thing, I mean. Of finding those components, saving the reactor. Of... survival?"
Bishop turned to look at her again. She could see the wrinkles on his brow, his whole face tensed and consterned. It was a few moments before he answered.
"We won't go down without a fight. That's for sure," he said at last.
She watched the two officers leave and then she herself made her way to the exit and she walked back across the large winding halls to the tram. On the way she could hear much nervous chatter among the other personnel about what they had been told, and it was all hushed, suppressed as if the very notion of discussing it would speed their doom.
Walking in that wide and vaulted space she felt some deafening silence that rang loudly in her ears alongside every individual step of her boots against the floor and by the time she had reached the railcar of the tram and the murmuring voices of the multitudes had abated it was as if it had enveloped her entirely. When she was seated and the automatic door closed, and the tram took off, she watched through the window as the great tunnel it chugged through opened up into the light of the artificial sun that cast its rays upon the small artificial groves surrounded by stark metal, perfect square areas, carved by rote.
She supposed that she was deeply worried about the future of Butler Station and indeed the future of all humanity in light of what had been revealed, but that particular dread was not the suffocating roar of silence whose presence so acutely made itself known to her right now. It was something else. Something simpler, more gnawing, all-encompassing. That genus of pain that encysts and assimilates itself so deeply into the fabric of mundane experience that it is only through the calamitous expulsion from that very calloused stasis that its mark can even be detected before one is submerged back therein.
It had been twenty-two years since she had seen clouds, real clouds, clouds that blanketed the sky or floated by disparate beneath real sunlight in mercurial shapes, each entirely unique and none reproducible, perfect in themselves. The sunrays would catch them in flushes of orange and magenta and orchard during dusk and they billowed all across the skyline like radiant plumes of rarified quintessence. Insects chittering loudly in the twilight, their tiny forms briefly caught in errant beams of light or nestled in the recesses of distant trees. The absence of those things on the station, the profundity of their loss, had always dwelt in the back of her mind, but now it felt inescapable. The sound of birdsong in the air, trilling, lilting, chirping. You could only hear such a thing now through old echoes - recordings played through speakers, reproductions. Ghosts of the true music. A melody severed from its source.
* * *
YEAR: 3046
LOCATION: EARTH
ESTIMATED TIME BEFORE EMERGENCE: 3 YEARS
In the midst of the smog and the lingering heat and contoured by arcs of serpentine lightning tinged diseased chartreuse stood the looming shadow of an enormous and ornate manor. Its construction was archaic, reminiscent of so many opulent residencies of centuries past which had long since crumbled and been swallowed into the annals of forgotten history. Towering sculpted columns, and pillars of pitted brick, and sharp square angles, and decorated frames around wide windows that let out the amber glow of the light within. There was an old and large circular clock affixed above the primary entrance. Counting the hours and the minutes still.
The rainfall was loud, pounding. Its consistency was murky and it sometimes stained what it fell upon, leaving faint trails of a nameless acidic grime. A few decrepit and wizened trees sparsely coated with their shriveled colorless leaves surrounded the manor's immediate vicinity and beyond them were faded weatherworn paths leading down to the spavined frames of smaller outbuildings draped in long dead vines. Courtyard gardens populated with wilted flowers, and abandoned fountains of cracked stone, gutters choked with refuse.
Further beyond, in that outer scoured earth, stagnant pools of oil and fuel and coolant, prismatic in the grim light, pooling around festering piles of electronic waste and discarded machines. A sprawling wasteyard where steep mounds and spires of ruined screens and obsolete appliances and the abandoned bodies of broken worker drones lay forsaken beneath the withering countenance of a jaundiced moon. The countless battered rusted forms of the dead robots tossed upon one another into the pit without care or thought, error messages displaying on the cracked visors of those with batteries not yet fully spent casting patches of the dross in crimson and twisted severed limbs jutting out from the heap like some gateway to the vale of the damned.
On the surface of the technological middens a few raggedfeathered crows came forth from the inchoate dark, their emaciated bodies befouled with the caustic rain, picking through the debris for some form of nourishment seed or annelid among the strewn diodes and wires. Their forlorn squawks melding with the cracks of thunder.
Through the black gloom of the mire the shape of a young woman was visible. Silhouetted against the citron murk, she strode towards the great mountains of wreckage, mudcaked rainboots splashing against the polluted water with each step. Her thick tresses of dark brown hair were mussed by the rain and there were spots of dirt and soot on her freckled skin. On her back was a large bag and she had a worn shovel slung across her right shoulder. Her bright emerald eyes scrutinized the horizon, the devastated robotic husks all about her. Looking for something. Looking for something she had not found before.
None but her would tread this path. Others would turn from such a dour locale, but not her. She ventured resolute into the dark and from afar she could hear a noise unlike the rest that monopolized the scrapyard. Like a strangled cry, electronic, static-laden. Calling for help. The woman tilted her head as if to filter out all other sound and she could hear the same cry again, the stuttered lonely wail that echoed across that hopeless place. She had never heard such a thing before, but she made her decision instantly, without hesitation. She turned in the direction of its source and moved quickly to answer the call.