Michael Siemsen - Exigency

Back to the PCU, she held her breath and opened the homepage. This was the first thing anyone connecting to the pod network saw. This was where anyone with half a brain would leave a message for others.

Default crap, albeit enlightening.

As she suspected, no Backup Habitat. Interesting that two pods were dead. Probably taken out by the station’s debris field. Minnie navigated the menu and initiated an unfiltered search, sorting by date to find recently uploaded code. She was certain that the pods would at the very least track changes. They had plenty of onboard storage and, even though no coder ever expected the system to be used this way, it would make no sense for existing code changes to be overwritten without something logging the actions.

There was indeed tracking, but the most recent code change was a firmware update dated three years ago. If this was truly the case, it meant that no one—not a single evacuee—had connected to the only available network that others on the surface or in orbit could access. The only place where anyone could leave a message. And like any perfectly dumb network, changes were instantly synced across all other nodes, so even if she checked every pod she’d see the same thing.

No one had left a message. Over 300 hours had passed since landing on Epsy.

No one had left a message because everyone was dead . Why was she surprised? She’d said all along that none but EV5 and 6 could have survived. Why would there be something new to find here?

Because denial said so. She’d performed a convincing show of certain pessimism, all the while holding out hope to find a surprise message—from Aether, of course—saying how they’d made it back to the BH, everyone was good and safe but worried about her and John, and Qin and Zisa were rigging up some kind of lander that would go down and pick them up so everyone could live happily ever after, though, sadly, in the BH’s more confined space. Right. She’d known the truth from the start: EVs launching away from the atmosphere would not be able to reestablish a proper trajectory, regardless of piloting skill. It was the equivalent of shooting a person into space with only a pressurized fire extinguisher in hand, and expecting them to make their way back. That was the stuff of lazy science fiction, not reality.

Fortunately, Minnie hadn’t wasted too much actual work time on this ridiculous fantasy. If she and John were to survive, those people must be banished from her head. All of them.

Minnie rolled her shoulders and moved on to accessing the pod’s homepage source file.

ROOT ACCESS REQUIRED

She tapped in the passcode and the file unlocked. The homepage reappeared in edit mode. As it had been for her, it would now be the cold, insentient purveyor of bad news to unknown others. Syncing across all the orbiting pods, it would forever remain—the last digital communication from one of the disaster’s only survivors. If another mission came to this place 50 years from now, they’d know that at least a few people surface evac’d. Maybe their remains could be returned to Earth, as if she gave a crap about that.

She appended the beginning of the homepage, pushing down the oddly cheerful welcome message and status links.

She wrote:

Post-station evac, EV6 landed Hynka country 39S112,95E908. Survivors Minerva Sotiras and John Li (level 8 injury post-landing). EV5 discovered today, sans sabotage suspect Ishtab Soleymani. EV6 planning to leave hostile territory for west coast 50N when able.

She read it over once and saved it, initiating a system reboot to force a network sync. A 10-minute countdown clock began—some sort of grace period.

Leaning forward onto her knees to disconnect the rig, Minnie paused, considered, a dry swallow, another safety scan of the landscape. She rolled back onto her rear and reopened the file.

Why? Not sure. She didn’t want to think about it—just do. Words—stream of consciousness, no hesitation, no edits—filled the screen before her.

Zisa: You are so quick, so brilliant, and with so much heart you almost make up for those of us who are more like robots than people. You live on another emotional plane. I suck for every time I tried to knock you down from way up there.

Tom: An inextinguishable light of positivity. If anyone was keeping score, you’re surely responsible for more laughs bursting from my mouth than any single person ever. You’re a hundred times smarter and more capable than you give yourself credit for. Lucky to have known you.

Qin: I loved our every argument. And even though I clearly won 98% of the time (OK, fine, 96%), I’ll now confess that you often got in my head, continuing to present your cases long after I’d ever admit. I may have actually been swayed once or twice, or once. I’ll also, painfully, concede that you’re smarter than me… in a couple of trivial areas. Wink.

Angela: You’re a bad ass. Watching you in training and our first couple years made me a stronger, more confident person. In reality, John has you to thank for me making his life miserable. Ha ha. I always loved how you owned what you know and said “how the hell should I know?” to what you didn’t. Also, I could never tire of the banter between you and Tom. Heart.

Pablo: You know how much I love WYSIWYG, and that has always been you. It’s super weird to have one of my best friends doing my OBG checks, but you skillfully made them seem like a haircut. Also, you give great haircuts. No idea why I think of OBG and haircuts first, but I guess I feel so close to you that it doesn’t matter. You’d laugh and shrug. Wish you could’ve bought me that first beer.

Ish: You’re super cute. (Wanted to say something nice. I’ll save my other thoughts for when I find you, you silly, irrational, selfish, daffy, murderous bitch.)

John: You’re less than 50m from me right now, and hurt so badly. But somehow talking to you, real talk, seems like the scariest thing imaginable. Maybe it’s because, as much as I’ve always resisted and denied, you really are like a father to me. This is especially rough for me to swallow, given each other’s past and present relationship statuses. Combine that with your enviable logic, problem-solving, insanely broad knowledgebase, and impenetrable calm, one can see why the psych analytics threw red flags about us from the start. I’ve often wondered why you went to bat for me to keep me on in training, and whether you later regretted it. And if so, because you’re a better person than me, I know that you’d never say so. I couldn’t possibly explain it, but I am so thankful to have you with me right now. We’re surely the last human beings each other will ever see—the sole remaining connections to our own humanity, because if someone else isn’t there to see it, are we still human? I believe I’ll disappear. Since we both know I’d never say it aloud: I love you, John.

Aether: I wish we’d met sooner; I could have loved you longer.

B eep… beep… beep… beep…

How long had it been going off? Was it a wake-up alarm? Someone needed to turn it off. Would someone turn it off?

Beep… beep… beep… beep…

Minnie felt her warm breath reflecting off something just in front of her face. Her whole head lay in a snug cocoon of enchanting warmth.

Beep… beep… beep… beep…

The sound echoed in the cave.

In the cave, Minnie repeated in her head.

Good grief someone needed to shut that thing off. But who else was there but her?