The Robot Chronicles

THE CARETAKER by Jason Gurley

Contrary to her expectations, it wasn’t the command center window that had the best views. The windows there were small and narrow, like heavy-lidded eyes, and they were recessed into the shell of the command module. They were designed for the astronauts who sat in the tall white chairs, but they didn’t show much of anything, not even stars. Just slates of blackness.

Alice had been aboard the Argus for three weeks before she happened upon the water filtration system closet. Eve had let her know about a clog in one of the output lines, had told her where to find the system. The closet was startlingly large, almost the size of a luxurious walk-in closet in a nice house below on Earth, but filled with an orderly tangle of slim, clear tubes and winking lights and knobs and dials. But she hardly noticed any of it, because the opposite wall—the station’s hull—was missing entirely, replaced by a wide, tall, triple-paned panel of smooth, clean glass.

Inside the water filtration closet, she could see Earth below her like the top of a giant balloon.

It became her favorite place on the Argus. She is alone, so it isn’t as if someone might come looking for her and never find her, or wonder what she was doing spending all her free time in the water filtration closet.

Alice Quayle is in her second tour as the Argus’s caretaker. She lives aboard the space station between projects—watering the plants and changing the light bulbs, so to speak. Her first tour was short, just three days, and she spent the duration terrified. She barely slept, afraid that a wiring panel might spark and set the oxygen supply on fire, afraid that a meteor might take out the communications array. Afraid that she might break something.

Her second tour is scheduled to last until August, when the biophysicist team from Apex will join the WSA crew on the Argus. That’s two whole months away. When the live-aboard team docks on August fourth, Alice will hand over the keys, board the excursion craft with the transport pilot, then return to her usual day job at the WLA facility in Portland.

But Alice will never see Portland again.

Alice is resting in the water filtration closet when Eve wakes up. Alice hears the familiar soft tone echo throughout the ship, and says, “Good morning, Eve. You’re up early today.”

But Eve has no patience for pleasantries. “There’s traffic on the military band that you should listen to,” she says.

Alice has never quite gotten used to Eve’s voice. It’s lovely and kind and unassuming, which she finds that she quite likes in a shipboard A.I. But Eve’s voice emanates from the walls of the station in an otherworldly, haunting way, as if she speaks from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“The military band isn’t part of my monitoring routines,” Alice says. “Am I actually allowed to listen to it? Isn’t it classified? Do I have clear—”

“I have authorized clearance override,” Eve says.

“Can you do that?”

“In exceptional circumstances,” Eve answers.

Eve does not display anger or urgency when she speaks. The WSA team and contractors who developed her spent years studying A.I.-human interactions, and discovered that an A.I. who embodied too much human emotion simply paralyzed astronauts. Their stress levels would climb to disastrous levels if, during an emergency, the A.I. raised its voice. Eve’s pleasant detachment made it possible for the astronauts themselves to separate their emotions from difficult or dangerous tasks, and actually improved their problem-solving skills.

But when Alice hears those two words—exceptional circumstances—she feels her shoulders knot and her pulse begin to thrum.

“What do you mean by that?” she asks.

Eve notices her changed attitude. “Slow your breath, Alice,” she says. “Count to twelve, and then join me in the communications module.”

Alice obeys, and after the twelve-count she says, “Can’t you just pipe the radio in here?”

“Certainly,” Eve says.

A darker tone sounds, and then the static wash of radio traffic from 1.2 million feet below swells to fill the water filtration closet.

—serious concerns. Who doesn’t have serious concerns, sir?

All I’m authorized to say is that we have the situation under control.

“That’s Mission Control,” Alice says. “What are they talking about?”

Eve says, “The topic of conversation is unclear.”

Alice turns to the window and stares down at the planet below, moving so fast yet so slowly that she can barely detect its spin.

“Extrapolate,” Alice says.

But Mission Control speaks again.

That’s not what we’re hearing over here, sir. Over here it looks pretty goddamn bad.

I assure you, gentlemen, that we have our hands firmly on the ball.

“Nuclear detonation,” Eve suggests. “If I were to hazard a guess.”

“Nuclear—” Alice stops. “The disarmament talks? How certain are you?”

“Very,” Eve answers.

When is he going to raise the threat level? We’ve got—

The transmission from Mission Control is swallowed in a crush of static and feedback, and Eve disables it. The water filtration closet falls into relative silence, the only sound that of the rumbling, churning equipment behind the wall panels. Alice barely notices.

She stares down at North America, where a bright flare, like a single pulse of a strobe, flickers and then vanishes.

A fat cushion of smoke billows out, then seems to rise, and Alice realizes she’s staring at the expanding head of a mushroom cloud.

Six Hours Earlier

Alice squeezes the silver package. The contents—French Toast with Syrup, the label reads—have the strangest texture, but taste quite good. It’s like drinking dinner through a straw, she thought the very first time. She has a difficult time selecting her meals, entranced by the broad selection and the novelty of their state. Salisbury Steak with Mushroom Gravy. Spinach and Feta Cheese Wrap. Chicken and Dumplings. All of them liquefied, most prepared warm. She enjoys the sensation of eating this way—of tasting all the different components of the meal at the same time, as a unified flavor. There are even special holiday-themed meals. Roast Turkey with Cranberry Sauce.

She cheated and ate that one a few days ago, though it was June. It was better than her mother’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Eve remains inactive during Alice’s morning routine. Alice had asked Eve about that during her first tour. “Why do you need to switch off?”

“I don’t,” Eve explained. “But it’s been observed that you and the other WSA crew function better when given regular allotments of personal space. When do you prefer yours, Alice?”

So Alice had asked for the morning to herself. She knows that Eve isn’t really inactive, that she is never inactive. Eve constantly monitors the Argus’s many systems, and speaks up when she needs to inform Alice of something that might warrant attention. But when she’s officially “active,” she’s also a fair conversationalist, and Alice often finds herself craving another voice, even if the owner of the voice is a chipset somewhere deep in the space station’s brain.

Alice’s morning routine isn’t much different from any other she can think of. She imagines that a lighthouse keeper goes through similar steps, checking the bulb’s brightness, and—and what else? A lighthouse keeper probably isn’t the best comparison. Perhaps a night watchman at a power plant, tapping dials and nudging switches and writing down results and such. She’s amused by this, because her friends in Portland always assumed that her job might be sort of glamorous.

“I’m not much more than a house-sitter,” she often explains. “I make sure the toilets aren’t left running and the dishes get done.”

Eve wakes early today.

“Morning, Eve,” Alice says.

“There’s a beacon from Mission Control,” Eve says.

“You don’t ever say good morning, you know,” Alice grumbles.

She tucks her notepad into her hip pocket, then goes to the wall and yanks hard on a thick plastic handle. A wide desk tray comes down and snaps into place, and Alice flips open the keyboard and display that are tucked into its surface. The screen glows white, then blue, and she sees the notice from Control.

“It’s just a news bulletin,” Alice says. “It’s not even priority one.”

“I assigned it greater importance,” Eve says. “My counterparts at WSA recommended it.”

Alice taps the screen, and the bulletin unfolds.

Priority 2. Upgrade possible. Reports from D.C. that disarmament talks have broken down.

“Okay,” Alice says. She looks up and around, never certain where she should direct her comments when talking to Eve. “Is there something I should be doing about this?”

“It is enough that you are aware,” Eve says.

Now

Alice presses her hands against the glass. “Eve,” she breathes softly. The glass fogs, then clears.

Below the Argus, more explosions appear, even as Alice watches. She has a clear view of the States, and the explosions are happening everywhere. There are plenty in the big cities—New York is completely obscured behind rising, spreading black smoke—but she is stunned to see orange blossoms inland, in the deep Midwest, along the Canadian border. There are more than she can count within moments, and before too long she realizes that she can actually see the missiles, like tiny, glowing sparks kicked up from a fire and cast into the grass.

It occurs to Alice that she should be documenting this. Somebody will want to write the chronology of events, and her unique vantage point would be invaluable to them.

“Eve,” she says. “Take video beginning twenty minutes ago.”

A tone chimes, and Eve says, “Retroactive video recording begun.”

Alice clears her throat. “Audio, Eve.”

Another tone. “Recording.”

Alice is quiet for a long time. She watches the Earth below sizzle and burn, and the detonations, so small from her viewpoint, begin to spread. South America, falling into shadow as the planet turns, spits and dances with light, and Alice finds it difficult to breathe. In the east, on the farthest horizon she can see, are spiraling, twisting clouds, like enormous gray tree trunks pushing up from the ground.

“I—” she begins, and then stops. “This is Alice Quayle—”

Eve says nothing, and Alice fights hyperventilation, forcing herself to breathe slow and deep, slow and deep.

A few minutes later, she begins again.

“This is Alice Quayle, caretaker of World Space Administration station Argus,” she says. “Eve, time and date?”

“It is two forty-one Pacific Standard and WSA local time,” Eve says. “The date is June fourth, two thousand seventy-six.”

Alice swallows, then clears her throat again.

“Beginning about twenty minutes ago,” she says, “I witnessed the first of many—what appear to be nuclear attacks on the United States. I can see—oh god—”

She stops, watching as a fusillade of missiles collides with the East Coast like sparklers, and her breath catches in her throat.

“I—the—the eastern seaboard has just—has just been bombarded,” she continues. “I can see the incoming missiles. I—but I can’t see anything outgoing. Nothing—um—nothing is launching from the U.S.”

Alice opens her mouth to try to describe what she sees on the horizon, outside of the States, but Eve interrupts.

“Alice,” she says.

Alice turns away from the window and slumps against it. Her head falls back against the glass. The loose knot of hair on the back of her neck comes apart and spills onto the collar of her jumpsuit.

“Yes,” Alice whispers. She feels the effect of what she has seen like burning cinders in her belly. She wants to leave the window, to go to the command module, where the windows show only darkness.

“I’ve received a communication from Mission Control,” Eve says. “They’ve passed along a message from your wife.”

Alice’s eyes well up, and she slides down the window. “No,” she rasps.

“Shall I read it to you?” Eve asks.

Tears spill down Alice’s cheeks, and she presses her eyes shut tightly. She nods. “Oh, god, Tess,” she says, her voice tight. “Read—no. Yes. Read it.”

“The message is truncated,” Eve says. “It reads I love. That is all.”

Alice feels the wail rising in her throat like a nitrogen bubble. She opens her mouth, and it comes out and fills the empty corridors and modules of the Argus, and Eve is quiet as Alice slides to the floor of the water filtration system closet and sobs.

She wanted to be an astronaut.

Her fourth-grade assignment, still tucked into the pages of her memory book, was the first recorded expression of Alice’s dream. What I Want to Be When I Grow Up, by Alice Jane Quayle. Her mother had treasured it, happy to see Alice dreaming of something significant. Over the years she’d collected photographs of Alice, more records of her progress: Alice in cap and gown; in her flight suit on the deck of the U.S.S. Archibald; in the cockpit, waving at the camera. A picture of Alice and Tess standing in front of the WSA museum in Oregon. Another of Alice climbing out of the training pool, weights still strapped to her arms and legs.

She was passed over year after year, despite her qualified status. Missions flew without her. The new shuttles began to go up two or three times a month, and astronauts began to record their second, fifth, twelfth flights, while Alice remained grounded. She never complained, but she was embarrassed. She thought often of the people who had given so much to help her make it so far—and how disappointed she was in herself for somehow failing them, for remaining Earthbound while her peers rocketed into the sky on columns of fire.

The caretaker offer came in her fourth year. She had wanted to turn it down, for Tess’s sake, but it was Tess who convinced her to go.

“I’ll always be here when you come home,” Tess had said. “And the months will pass like nothing. You’ll be having so much fun!”

The space station is quiet except for a faint, distant beep, beep.

Alice has fallen asleep on the floor of the water filtration closet. Eve disables the shipboard gravity so that Alice will sleep more comfortably. Alice’s body floats off of the floor and hangs suspended before the wide window and its portrait of a world smoldering and black.

Alice wakes, and immediately begins to cry again. Her tears swim over her face like gelatin, collecting in the hollows beneath her eyes and around the rings of her nostrils.

“Gravity,” she says. She rotates herself and points her feet at the floor, and drops when Eve activates the drive again. Alice’s tears cascade down her face in sheets, and she pushes her palms over her skin, clearing her eyes.

She turns around and looks down at Earth. The smoke and debris has begun to crawl high into the atmosphere, as if a dirty sock is being pulled over the planet. In a few hours the ground will be blotted from view, and Alice shudders when she imagines the people on the ground, staring up at the sun for the last time, watching it vanish behind the sullen sky.

“They’re all going to die,” she whispers to Eve. “Aren’t they?”

Eve says, “I observed more than three hundred distinct detonations in the United States alone. The odds of survival are infinitesimally small with only a fraction of those numbers.”

Alice nods. She can see her own reflection in the glass, laid over the darkening Earth.

“Tess,” she says again, too tired to cry. “My parents—I’m glad that they were dead. Before.”

Eve is quiet.

Alice notices the faint beeping sound. “What’s that?”

Eve says, “The communications link to Mission Control has been severed. It’s a standard alarm.”

“Disable, please.”

Eve does, and the station falls eerily silent.

Alice says, “We were going to have children next year. After we put some money aside.”

Eve doesn’t say anything.

“Tess wanted a boy,” Alice says. “She wanted to name him after her dad. Ricardo was his name.” She laughs, but it’s a tragic, bitter sound. “I hated that name. I thought it was such a cliché. I wanted a girl, but I didn’t know what I wanted to name her. I was going to sit with her under the stars and show her the constellations, and show her the Argus when it floated by, and tell her that’s where Mommy worked.”

A new tear slides soundlessly down Alice’s cheek.

“I’d have told that to Ricardo, too,” she says. “I’d have loved him even with that stupid name.”

Eve says, “Perhaps you should sleep again. I can prepare a sedative.”

Alice shakes her head. “Look at it,” she says. “It looks like an old rotten apple, doesn’t it?”

Eve says, “It does look something like that.”

Alice nods. “I’m glad you can fake it,” she says. “Conversation.”

Eve says, “I’m glad, too.”

Alice sleeps for nearly twenty hours. She barely moves, and wakes up stiff and creaky like a board. When she wakes, she gasps, then falls back onto her pillow and presses her palms against her eyes, and cries. She dreamed of Tess, that they were in their shared bed in Portland, talking about the day. Tess had wanted to drive to Sauvie Island for fresh strawberries.

But Tess is gone, and Alice is alone.

Except for Eve, who says, “Good morning, Alice.”

Alice blinks away the tears and swallows the deep cries that shift inside her like tectonic plates. You have to stop, she thinks. She’s dead. Everyone is dead. It can’t be changed. Mourning isn’t going to help now.

Eve says, “I’ve prepared coffee.”

“Thanks,” Alice says, grunting as she pushes herself upright on the cot. Then she blinks. “You did it.”

“What have I done?” Eve asks.

“You said ‘good morning.’”

“You seemed distraught,” Eve explains. “It seemed like it might help.”

Alice nods, then shakes her head to clear the beautiful nightmare. “Right,” she says, her voice a little thick. “Coffee.”

Over a shiny packet labeled Gallo Pinto and another packet labeled Coffee—Black, Alice says, “So. What do we do now, Eve?”

Eve says, “There are no protocols for this.”

“I can’t believe that,” Alice says. “Control thinks of everything.”

“There are related contingencies, but nothing for an extinction-level event,” Eve says. “The most closely related event with associated contingency planning is a nuclear detonation that ends communication with Mission Control.”

Alice puts the coffee down, the packet crumpled and empty. “Close enough,” she says. “So what’s the plan?”

“Maintain,” Eve says, simply.

Alice looks up and around. “Maintain,” she repeats. “Maintain?”

“Correct,” Eve says.

“Just soldier on, is that right? Keep tapping the gauges, keep clearing the clogs. That’s what we’re supposed to do?”

“Correct.”

“What’s supposed to happen then?” Alice asks, her voice rising. “We maintain, and then what? The white horse, the rescue party?”

“In ordinary circumstances, a rescue shuttle, that’s correct,” Eve says. “Each location is assigned a number, and they report their status constantly. If launch site 1 is unable to stage a rescue mission, then launch site 2 fulfills the mission.”

“How many launch sites are there?”

“There are twelve,” Eve says.

“And how many are reporting their status?” Alice asks, pushing her half-drained packet of rice and beans aside.

“Zero,” Eve says.

“So that contingency plan is out,” Alice says. “Clearly.”

“Correct,” Eve says again.

“Which means my original question still stands, Eve. What do we do now?”

Eve says, “Maintain.”

Alice does not want to go back to sleep, so she stays awake for nearly two days. She orders Eve to close the windows, and thin steel shutters crank into place all over the Argus. She has Eve dim the lights, and asks her to shut down the power and disable the gravity in any modules she isn’t using.

“I’ve already done so,” Eve says. “There are local aspects of the contingency plans which are still relevant. We are recycling oxygen on a six-day schedule, for example, and then we jettison forty percent and replace it with fresh stores.”

“I almost don’t want to ask,” Alice says. “But how long can we hold out up here?”

Eve says, almost apologetically, “I will remain active indefinitely, short of any physical damage to the memory core.”

Alice sighs, her dark hair floating about her face. “How long can I hold out?”

“Longer than you may suspect,” Eve says.

“Food?”

“Adequate stores for a crew of six for forty-eight months,” Eve answers.

Alice stops and stares at the ceiling. “There’s enough food for twenty-four years?”

“A single crewmember eating at the expected rate would have adequate stores for nearly a quarter century,” Eve confirms.

Alice closes her eyes. “That should make me relieved,” she says. “But now I feel like I’ve been given a death sentence. I’ll only be fifty-seven.”

“Fifty-seven is not an insubstantial fraction of the expected female life span,” Eve says.

“It seems insignificant when you realize that you could have lived to one-twenty,” Alice says. She touches the hull wall lightly with her fingers and sets herself in motion, turning a slow flip. “But given the circumstances, maybe twenty-four years should feel like a prison sentence instead.”

“You have adequate space,” Eve says. “You are not incarcerated.”

“I have inadequate company,” Alice snaps. “I—oh, fuck you, you wouldn’t understand.”

Eve is quiet for a moment, and then a tone sounds. “Shall I put myself to sleep?” she asks.

“Yes,” Alice grumbles.

“Eve?” Alice calls. “Come back.”

The gentle tone pulses, and Eve returns. “Alice.”

Alice doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and then: “I feel like I should apologize. That’s really stupid.”

Eve says, “If I were human, I would accept. But there’s no need. You have the expected responses to stress. I would express concern if you did not.”

“I was really tired,” she says. “I still am.”

“You have not slept,” Eve acknowledges. “Perhaps you should.”

“Perhaps,” Alice says, and closes her eyes.

She falls asleep, her knees tucked to her chest, and floats undisturbed for hours.

“Alice.”

Nothing.

“Alice, wake up.”

Nothing.

Eve sounds a sharp alarm, a single ping, and Alice starts awake.

“Jesus,” she says. “What’s going on?”

Eve says, “Communication.”

“What?”

“There are two distinct signals.”

Gravity has been restored, and Alice stands in the communications module, staring at the wide, gently curved screen. The display is separated into three zones. On the largest of them, a flat map of the world is displayed as clear gray line art. The other two zones are blank.

A small circle appears on the Pacific coast of North America.

Alice’s mouth opens. “Oregon?”

“In the approximate region where the city of Eugene is located,” Eve confirms.

“How strong is it?”

The second zone lights up on the screen, displaying an analysis of the signal. The numbers are small, and Eve says, “Quite weak. I’m surprised that we received it at all, considering the density of the likely cloud coverage.”

Alice bites her lip. “Okay, don’t play it yet—tell me what I’m supposed to do with this.”

Eve says, “What do you mean, Alice?”

“I—why are we listening to it?” Alice asks. “Am I even going to be—what do I do?”

“It is a distress call,” Eve says. “It has broadcasted unanswered for two days, to my knowledge. I do not detect any answering signals on Earth.”

“Yes, but—it’s going to be bad,” Alice says. Her eyes are wide and worried. “Eve, it’s going to be people crying or screaming, and I’m going to have to hear those voices in my head for the next twenty-four years. If I can’t help them, I don’t think I want to listen to it.”

Eve says, “I have transcribed it as well.”

Unbidden, Eve displays the transcription on the screen.

Alice says, “I don’t want to read it,” but she does anyway.

S.O.S.

S.O.S.

Mayday? Can anybody——us? Hello?

—six of us. My name is Roger. My wife is here. We——bleeding. He needs medical attention. Hello?

—water.

“Jesus,” Alice says. “There are survivors.”

“Yes,” Eve says. “That was always likely.”

“How old did you say this message is?”

“Two days.”

“Are they still broadcasting?” Alice asks.

“The signal is repeating,” Eve says. “It loops six times per hour.”

“But nothing new,” Alice says.

“I haven’t detected any change in the broadcast, or any new signals from that region.”

“They could be dead.”

Eve says, “Yes. It is likely that they are dead.”

“But if six people in Oregon are alive, then there could be more people there,” Alice says. “There could be groups of people all over the place.”

“That’s also likely,” Eve agrees.

“Tess,” Alice says.

“Statistically unlikely,” Eve says, “but possible.”

Alice takes a deep breath, exhausted by having cried so much during the passing days.

“You said two signals,” she says. “Is the other from the U.S., too? Are there survivors somewhere else?”

Eve says, “I cannot map the second signal.”

“Why not? Interference?”

“The second signal does not originate from Earth,” Eve says.

“Wait,” Alice says.

The Argus takes on a gently creepy atmosphere, and Alice feels exposed, standing in the only lit compartment, with blackness chewing at the edges of her vision.

“Wait, wait,” she says again. “It’s radio emissions from a star. Right? It’s noise.”

Eve says, “It is a clear, repeating signal.”

Alice focuses on her breathing. In, out. Slower. In… out. In… out. Okay. Okay.

“What?” she says.

“It is pattern-based,” Eve says. “My software is analyzing the signal, attempting to decrypt the patterns.”

“You can’t make sense of it?” Alice asks.

“Eventually, perhaps,” Eve says. “I believe that it can be decoded.”

“So translate it,” Alice says. “How long can that take?”

A very long time, as it turns out.

Alice continues her daily routine. She inspects the oxygen levels, recharges the water tanks, replaces a bulb here and a filter there. She discovers in Eve’s possession a vast record of books, the oldest of them predating the Bible, the most recent a science fiction novel published three days before the bombs.

“Ironically, an apocalypse tale,” Eve says.

“No, thank you,” Alice says.

She selects The Martian Chronicles, by Bradbury, and when Eve finishes reading the stories, Alice says, “Again,” and Eve reads them aloud again. Alice listens to the story of Walter Gripp, the man who stayed behind on Mars while his fellow immigrants rushed home to Earth at the first sign of war. She doesn’t much like Genevieve Selsior, the gluttonous woman who remained on Mars as well, for the sole purpose of looting candy stores and beauty salons. But Walter speaks to Alice, and she finds herself settling into his character like a comfortable slipper.

“Call me Walter,” she says to Eve, and for a few days Eve does, and then Alice grows tired of being called Walter, and she is Alice again.

Nine months pass.

Alice shaves her head, tired of her hair drifting into her eyes and nose as it grows long. She asks Eve to hound her about exercise, and then she grows angry with Eve for nagging her. But she exercises. Despite the activity, she feels herself growing slight, and her bones feel spindly.

“Food stores might not be the limiting factor,” she says to Eve one day, and Eve gives Alice a physical and administers supplements and weekly CS4 shots to keep her fit and strong.

Alice begins to spend some time each day in front of a camera, recording her memories. She speaks to the camera shyly at first, then more confidently as time passes. She tells the story of the roof she climbed when she was nine, and how it sagged and collapsed beneath her, and she broke her arm. She talks about her parents, and the time they renewed their vows, and a thunderstorm soaked everyone in attendance. She tries and fails to remember something from every year of her life, but discovers that the years and stories have blended together, and she no longer remembers clearly how old she was when something happened to her, or which of their many houses her family lived in at the time.

Eve reads The Time Traveler’s Wife to her. Alice doesn’t like it. It reminds her of Tess too much. Eve recommends Kipling, but Alice grows bored after a few pages. They read Dickens and Joyce and Maugham. Alice’s favorite is Cakes and Ale. Eve reads Margaret Atwood and Michael Crichton, and a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Alice falls in love with Joan Didion and Oliver Sacks, and so Eve reads memoirs to her for a time, until Alice grows tired of listening to the stories of real people who are most certainly dead and wasting away, if not already turned to dust and ash, on the withering planet far below.

Eve suggests a movie, and Alice agrees, brightening at the idea, but as soon as she sees the image of another human being, walking and talking and running and kissing and eating, she bursts into tears and demands that Eve turn it off. From then on, Alice does not ask for more books, or music, or movies. Everything that Eve says reminds Alice that she is possibly the last surviving human, or at least soon will be; that she exists in relative comfort here in her floating aquarium two hundred miles above a boneyard.

Eve is silent for weeks, for Alice has grown more and more fragile.

The end date of Alice’s tour passes, and Eve does not acknowledge it, concerned that the milestone might unravel Alice’s poor psyche further. The day goes by, and no ship docks in the slip, and no airlocks hiss open and shut, and no crew of English and Russian and Chinese scientists and astronauts and cosmonauts comes aboard to shake Alice’s hand and send her home again.

The date passes in absolute silence. Alice does not say a word, and lies in bed all day without sleeping.

“Alice,” Eve says.

Alice jumps.

She has grown accustomed to the quiet. It has been fourteen weeks since Eve last spoke to her. She may have even forgotten that Eve was there.

“What do you want?” Alice says.

“I have translated the message,” Eve says.

Alice is herself again instantly.

She stands at the display. All three zones of the interface are blank this time. Alice remembers the last time she stood here, and says, “Eve, is the Oregon signal still broadcasting?”

Eve says, “It ceased about two months ago. But there are other signals now.”

Alice says, “Others?”

“The cloud coverage is thinner,” Eve explains. “You haven’t seen it, because the windows are shut. I have received nine new signals in the last week.”

“Nine?” Alice asks. “People are still alive!”

“Seven of them are also looping signals,” Eve cautions. “They could easily have been broadcasting for an equally long time, and may not be true messages any longer.”

“The other two?”

“One originates in Italy, and the remaining signal comes from Louisiana,” Eve says. “They are talking to each other.”

Alice stares at the blank screen. “I—can I hear?”

Eve says, “You wish to hear the audio?”

“Yes, yes,” Alice says. “Play it.”

An audio spectrum appears on the screen as Eve engages the message.

Half of the conversation is in Italian, and sounds like a very old man. The other half belongs to a woman in Louisiana with a scratchy, powerful accent. The woman does not speak Italian, but Alice can hear the relief and joy in her voice to even be speaking to another living soul.

“What is the Italian man saying?” Alice asks. “Can you translate?”

Eve says, “‘My grandchild was born yesterday. I do not think he will survive, but his birth is a miracle nonetheless. His mother did not live through the birth. My daughter, my daughter. I cannot raise this boy alone. I have no food for myself. I have already eaten my poor sweet Claudio. I miss his company when I sleep. I do not know if I can bear to watch my grandson die. I have a sweater. He will not feel a thing. I will find a way to follow him. The grief will take me into the dark after him.’”

Alice is aghast.

The Louisiana woman doesn’t understand anything the old man is saying. The two people seem to be communicating simply by listening to each other, and telling stories. The woman hears the man out, and then she tells the man about her grandfather’s plantation house, and visiting him there as a girl, and she begins to weep as she talks about her husband’s death, the heat that sizzled the paint right off of her car and tumbled her off the freeway and into a ditch, wheels up, half-buried in muck—she didn’t think she could have survived if not for the accident.

She begins to talk about the black creeping poison she can see working its way up her leg, her foot long since swelled up too much to walk on, the toenails splitting and oozing.

“Enough,” Alice says.

Eve ends the audio. “There is the other transmission,” she reminds Alice.

Alice’s eyes are red and tired. “Okay,” she says.

“It has been crudely translated into English,” Eve says. “The original message was a series of mathematical expressions and patterns, a near-universal language.”

“I don’t care,” Alice says wearily. “What does it say?”

Eve says, “I have simplified the message as much as possible. I believe I have preserved its intent.”

“Read it,” Alice says again. She slumps into a desk chair with a heavy sigh.

“The message reads: ‘Greetings and peace. In the vastness of space, all life is family. Good fortune to you. May we meet in peace someday.’”

Alice looks up at the screen, dumbfounded. “Holy shit,” she says. “You’re fucking with me. You have to be.”

“It is a crude but sound translation,” Eve says. “I have error-checked my work many times over to be certain.”

Alice blinks rapidly, then opens and shuts her mouth. “Holy shit,” she says again.

Time seems to slow down.

Alice stays in the chair, shaking her head.

Eve says, “There are no other messages. What would you like to do?”

Alice looks up at the blank screen, then turns in a slow circle in the chair. “Do?”

“The message seems rather historical,” Eve says. “Perhaps it should be commemorated.”

“Do you mean—”

“You could send a reply,” Eve suggests.

Alice says, “It would take years to arrive! Wouldn’t it?”

“The message is quite old,” Eve says. “The origin point is very far away. It would likely have taken over two hundred years to reach us.”

“Exquisite timing,” Alice complains. “Can you imagine? They just missed us.”

“They did not miss you,” Eve points out.

Alice shuffles her feet and drags the chair to a stop. “That message would get there long after we’re all dead.”

“But it would confirm their hopes,” Eve says.

Alice smiles a tired smile. “You’re an optimist.”

“I’m programmed as such,” Eve says. “I have astronauts to care for. You’re—delicate.”

Alice laughs. “I think that’s the most human thing you’ve ever said.”

Alice sleeps that night, and dreams of a root cellar. The walls are sod, reinforced with heavy planks of old, rotting wood. The roots of deep-set trees have pushed between the planks, into the seams, and have crawled into the socket of empty space so deep beneath the earth. A generator rattles in the corner. A bare bulb dangles over a metal shelf stacked with swelled cans of food, the labels dried out and sagging off. There are bugs everywhere—cockroaches scuttling over the pantry shelf, spiders staking out the high corners and the gaps in the invading roots.

“Hungry,” a voice whispers, choked and thin, and Alice turns to see a shape in a rocking chair.

She looks at the shelves, and sees an open can of syrupy peaches. Alice sniffs them. They smell sweet, a little cloying, but unspoiled.

“Peaches?” she asks.

The rocking chair person nods, and the chair creaks.

Alice finds a bent spoon on a lower shelf and picks it up, shaking a beetle off of the handle first. She carries the spoon and the peaches to the chair, and kneels down.

“Here,” she says, scooping up a spongy slice of saturated peach. “Eat.”

She feeds the shadowy person. The first few bites go down, but then something plops into the dirt. Alice looks down and sees a chewed hunk of orange peach lying there, spotted with grime and bits of blood and dirt. She looks up at the person in the chair, who shrugs, still in shadow, and croaks, “Sorry.”

Alice looks down and sees a gaping, chewed-apart hole in the person’s gut, and as she stares in horror, the second hunk of peach slides out of a rotten pucker and tumbles into the dirt, too.

“I loved you,” whispers the shadowy person. “I wish I’d been up there with you instead of not.”

Alice recoils, and wakes up, and says, “Eve!”

—six of us. My name is Roger. My wife is here. We——bleeding.

Alice says, “They’re all dying. You could hear it too, couldn’t you?”

I have a sweater. He will not feel a thing.

Eve says, “It is not an inappropriate conclusion.”

“I wanted to save them when I heard them,” Alice says. “But I can’t do that, can I?”

“You are not equipped to save anybody,” Eve says. “If you returned to Earth, you would not survive the fallout. You don’t have adequate supplies or protection.”

“Right,” Alice says.

My toes are breaking up. I think it’s gangrene. But it might be radiation. Hell of a thing, ain’t it?

“I’m the last woman,” Alice says. “They’re all going to die.”

“There may be survivors yet,” Eve says. “There are many shelters and safe zones, even in such terrible scenarios.”

“But it won’t ever be the same. They’ll have to stay underground for fifty years, they won’t be able to farm or hunt. It’ll be a miracle if they survive, or ever come out.”

Eve does not disagree.

“Play it again,” Alice says.

“Which message?”

“The important one. Don’t read it. I want to hear it.”

It sounds like enormous metal gears, turning and cranking and lumbering. Now and then there is a grating sound, as though a piece of metal has fallen in between the teeth and is being gnawed and shredded.

“It is not something that ears alone can parse,” Eve apologizes.

“It’s—” Alice pauses. “Sort of beautiful.”

Eve is quiet.

“Will you read it to me again? The words?”

Eve says, “Of course.”

Greetings and peace.

In the vastness of space, all life is family.

Good fortune to you.

May we meet in peace someday.

Eve falls silent.

“It’s like the most beautiful poem ever written,” Alice says.

She and Eve are quiet for a time, and then Alice says, “I can’t imagine why you would let me do this,” and she tells Eve her plan.

Eve listens, and says, “Do you wish me to calculate the probability of success?”

“No,” Alice says.

“Very well,” Eve says. “I will help you.”

Alice sits in the cockpit of the excursion ship. It

“Twenty-four years was a prison sentence,” she says.

Eve says, “It was not likely you would live even that long.”

“You told me I had adequate stores for twenty-four years!”

“Humans are fragile,” Eve says. “There are emotional factors that I cannot compute accurately. You likely would have succumbed to a human condition that I cannot project with any certainty.”

“What condition are you talking about?”

“Loneliness,” Eve says.

“Eve,” Alice says, pulling the heavy restraining straps over her shoulders and jamming the buckle home. “Everybody on Earth is dead.”

“Not yet,” Eve interrupts.

“Dead,” Alice repeats. “Or close to it.”

“Yes.”

“Everyone is dead or almost dead, and I’m healthy and well-fed and going crazy on a metal dirigible a million miles above a dead world.”

“Two hundred thirty-four miles,” Eve corrects.

“Two hundred thirty-four miles,” Alice says. “And we’ve just received confirmation that we aren’t alone. I might be the last woman, but I’m not the last living thing.”

“There are other life forms alive on Earth,” Eve says.

“You’re a buzzkill,” Alice says. “This is my one giant leap for mankind moment. Are you recording it?”

“I record everything,” Eve says. “Although on this transport vessel my storage capacity will exhaust itself in a shorter amount of time.”

“How much time?”

“Sixty years, approximately.”

Alice considers this.

Greetings and peace.

“Are you certain you do not wish me to calculate the probability of your survival?” Eve asks again.

“You’ve already done it, haven’t you?” Alice says.

“I have.”

“Fine. What are my odds?”

Eve says, “One in—“

“Wait, wait, no, no, don’t—I don’t want to know,” Alice says loudly. “I don’t want to know. Okay?”

Eve says, “Very well.”

In the vastness of space, all life is family.

“The extra oxygen stores will help,” Alice says to herself. “Extra food. Medical supplies. Eve, did you bring books?”

“I did not know you had an interest any longer,” Eve says.

“Shit. Eve, did you? It’s going to be a long trip.”

“I have four thousand volumes,” Eve says.

Alice smiles. “Okay. I’m nervous, can you tell?”

“Your heart rate is higher than usual, but still within reasonable limits.”

Good fortune to you.

“The odds are pretty long, aren’t they?” Alice asks.

She detaches the excursion craft from the Argus, and it descends gently. She watches the docking collar recede.

“It depends on how you define ‘pretty,’” Eve answers.

Alice accelerates, and the craft darts into the spreading black. The Argus falls quickly into the small craft’s wake.

“We should name her,” Alice says. “This little ship.”

Eve says, “Might I suggest a name?”

“Shoot.”

“Perhaps you might christen it the Santa Maria,” Eve says. “There is some historical significance.”

Alice thinks about this. “No,” she says, finally. “Let’s call it Tess.”

May we meet in peace someday.

The Tess carries Alice and Eve deep into the darkness.

Eve says, “You have considerably less than twenty-four years now.”

Alice says, “Maybe they’ll meet us halfway. Do you think?”