The five humans awoke almost simultaneously. Unbeknownst to them, the artificial reality they had been living in had suddenly and unpredictably collapsed. Four of them came back from a close approximation of death. The feeling of oblivion is a difficult one to grasp, even harder to come to terms to, so these four were incapacitated for some time after waking. The fifth had been the catalyst for the simulation's collapse. He was simultaneously terrified and glad to be in a reality he recognized and understood.
Each was in a separate corner of Gaea. George Archer hung among the remains of his dropship, the helmet locked snugly around his head. Nadya Shimata was one of the few left in the aftermath of the eruption that destroyed Eridu, and James Masozi roamed nearby, looking through the wreckage. Amit Gabriel and Yan Liu slept in the cabin of the Iapetus rover, surrounded by Gaea's dust.
They all came back at nearly the same time, stirring slowly as they tried to come to terms with the new reality that faced them.
Liu and Amit came back from the dead to find that the sandstorm had destroyed the Iapetus. The rover sat at the crest of a small dune of sand, its polish stripped away by the abrasive wind. The interior had been spared the worst of the storm, but was still severely damaged. The cabin was filled with powdery dust that cascaded down at the slightest touch. The desert around them was rippled like an ocean, rolling with waves of sand. The volcanic tower stood imposingly over the dunes, looking no worse for wear.
Far away, the remains of Eridu were silent but for the footsteps of two humans. The rubble was not very impressive. There were no bent steel rods or hills of collapsed brick, just strewn tent fabric. Some of the more established structures, such as the cinder block command building and the half-completed fabricator, had simply been knocked over, like giant dominoes. Scattered among the collapsed tents were slouched, oblong lumps. The first one Caroline studied was angry red on one side, ivory white on the other.
Not too distant, on the other side of the hill, two of the oblong lumps stirred quietly. The more lucid of them ached all over, and was blinded by the thick tent fabric that had saved him. He refused to move, instead lying still and feeling the pressure of Gaea's gravity fight his attempts to breath. He grabbed a fistful of the alien sand and began to slip back into the more logical reality he now occupied. Nadya was blind for other reasons, and lay exposed. Her survival was not as sure a thing.
Finally, hanging in the unfathomable distance above them all, was George Archer. When he came back, he found himself strapped to the wreckage of a recently destroyed spacecraft. Sharp, deadly shards spun around everywhere, glinting in the sun. Gaea shone from behind them, huge and brown. George extricated himself from the wreck and finally saw the massive hulk of the Facem in the crisp distance. His air was going to run out eventually, so George pushed off the inert dropship and soared in the direction of the starship, aiming slightly above it. From this distance, it would be a miracle if he even managed to skim the thing. But he didn't have to worry about that for at least another three hours.
At Eridu, Caroline and Hernandez finally spotted the tentative movements of the two other survivors. They ran to help.
Caroline stopped at the twitching lump under the tent flap while Hernandez continued to the other. She flung the fabric away and found James staring up at the afternoon sky. He grumbled as if disturbed from sleep. His hands were clenched into tight fists full of dust. James still wore the white lab coat from the
"Are you hurt?!" cried Caroline.
James shook his head. "Not physically, no." He struggled to his fist, still grasping the sand. He looked at the ruins scattered everywhere. "What happened?"
"The hill blew up. Come with me."
Nadya was much worse off than James. She looked, James thought, like a hamburger grilled only on one side. She was breathing normally, and mercifully asleep. Hernandez called for help lifting her back to the truck. Caroline told James to follow.
It was on the way that James thought to turn on his music. He couldn't do it.
Once Nadya was safe in the truck, Caroline and Hernandez scavenged the dropships for extra supplies. By the time they were done, the truck was crowded with protein bars and medicine. Five UDSN servicemen stood outside, waiting for something bad to happen. James sat beside the truck, watching the sun set over the mountains.
Meanwhile, Amit was nursing his wound under the shadow of the volcanic tower. Somehow, he had found himself capable of walking, if only with great pain, despite having his leg crushed just hours before. The heat radiated through the rock and warmed his back.
Liu was still in the rover, trying to repair the radio and regain communication with Eridu. So far, she had run into endless trouble. Everything she tried ended with a short-circuited wire or a blank screen. To make matters worse, the large, roof-mounted comm array was gone, ripped from the rover by the wind. She didn't know just how bad thing really were.
At that time, George was approaching the Facem. During his short orbital voyage, he had seen all of Gaea roll by below him, all the glaciers and hurricanes nothing but bumps on a huge sphere. His aim had been impeccable, and he would be touching down somewhere near the airlock complex. He struck the Facem's skin with a rattling bang, and scrabbled at the smooth metal until he managed to grab a protruding antenna. Once his motion was under control, he pushed off toward one of the airlocks. Once there, it was a simple matter of going in.
George waited patiently for the chamber to pressurize, then moved on into the loading deck.
It was silent chaos. Red emergency lights spun in a confused frenzy, but there was no alarm. The vacuum muted it. George tried his best to ignore the dazzling lights and made his slow way to the bridge.
The doors opened with a blast of air. By the time George managed to fight his way in, the bridge was a hard vacuum. He waited for the room to fill itself back up with air from the reserve tanks, listening to his own breathing echoing through the suit. When it was done, George cracked the seal on his suit and pulled the helmet off.
The air tasted metallic. The lights were dim, and the large screen at the head of the bridge was black. Only a few of the smaller monitors were working, and all of those that did blared instructions for evacuation of the spacecraft.
George went to the nearest functioning workstation and deactivated the warnings. He decided the best course of action was to contact the colony. It didn't work. After realizing the futility of his most practical option, he elected to review the damages to the spacecraft. The massive hull breach was still the most pressing issue. The complications resulting from it were slowly sending the Facem's power systems into a downward spiral. Eventually, the reactors would fail, and the magnetic containment fields would go with them. Even if the power stayed on, the starship's dangerously low orbit would eventually bring it into contact with a denser atmosphere, inevitably resulting in a containment failure.
He tried to get the orbital maneuvering thrusters to work, but the ship refused to respond to his commands. When finally he gave up, George put on the video feed from the navigation cameras, and watched the stars. The air tanks hissed as they emptied into his tiny room.
George was jolted awake by our loud bangs. The starship seemed to rock slightly underneath him. Glancing at the video feed, he realized that something huge had detached from the Facem. Four large cylinders floated away, slipping through the neat rectangle of sky that the camera provided. George was too tired and disinterested to investigate further.
It was about then that he noticed the puppeteer standing behind him.
The puppeteer was tall and gangly, his face haggard. The eyes sagged under the weight of his considerable eyebrows, the whites tinted yellow, and yet they somehow shone with amusement. He was bald, with a shadow of stubble covering the lower half of his face. When the puppeteer spoke, his voice was quiet and gravelly.
"Pleased make your acquaintance," said the puppeteer, extending a hand. George regarded the gesture suspiciously before reciprocating.
"It's a gorgeous view" said the puppeteer, gazing at the camera feed. George had to agree. "You've spent a good deal of time looking at him, haven't you?" asked the puppeteer. Indeed, George had. He finally answered.
"Sir, you're this part of the ship is not open to passengers. Furthermore, evacuation protocols are currently under way. I'm afraid I will need to escort you to the nearest airlock."
Of course, the situation made no sense. George leaned to the side, trying to find the suit that the puppeteer had no doubt used to get into the bridge. How he managed to get off Gaea at all was beyond him.
"But sir, I'm not a passenger."
"In that case, you're, uh... trespassing on UDS military property."
The United Districts of Sol is so far away from here, though. If I killed you, there would be nothing stopping me from taking the ship."
George stopped looking for the suit, because there wasn't one.
The puppeteer smiled a knowing smile. "Do you want me to tell you a story?"
"Not particularly, no," said George growing more confused by the second. He side-eyed his monitor to make sure there wasn't some way to get into the bridge that he was overlooking.
"You aren't afraid. You've never been. Most men look at the stars and see emptiness so deep it could swallow everything they know. But you see only the light."
"What the hell are you?!"
"I think it's time for that story," said the puppeteer, ignoring George's queries. He sat down in a nearby crash couch and began. His voice changed, resonating within the confined spaces of the bridge and echoing out through the metal bones of the starship. The sound of pouring sand hissed underneath it.
"The city of Eridu is often cited as the first vestige of human civilization, the first city to be built. It wasn't a remarkable one by any regard, because it was smaller and less powerful than those that came not long after. Ur and Akkad and Babylon all out-shadowed their elder in might and wealth. But it was the first.
"But why there, why then? Humanity had existed for millennia before Eridu was built. The patch of land it was built on, between two angry rivers, was hot and flooded for much of the year. Why was the first city built in such an inhospitable place? Because such an organization was only beneficial in such a place. Cities are hotbeds for disease and overcrowding, not ideal for the nomadic human. But in a place with so little to give, the only way to survive was to band together and pool whatever resources could be collected. From that desperation sprang all human achievement.
"People began writing, constructing temples, raising mighty armies, because there wasn't enough food in the valley between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Empires were built with the lives of those fed by farm-grown wheat. The population exploded. People learned to harness the power of oil, the atom, the sun, and built ever greater things as the years fled through their hands, faster and faster. Parents found their children growing up in an unfamiliar world, fundamentally changed in the decades spanned by one generation.
"Such a dynamic system is inherently unstable, especially when confined to a small, closed space like Earth. There were too many people, who wanted too many things, to all fit on one planet. It was only a matter of time before water shortages and waste buildup began to pile on. For a time, the fragile network of civilization collapsed, more spectacularly than it ever had before.
"Mankind has never truly recovered. It is still looking for a way back to the time before the war. The creation of a universal government, the invention of a virtual, ideal reality, this ship, they are all an attempt to restore the quality of life as it was before the war. I think we're nearly there. But there's one problem."
The puppeteer stood and ambled over to the huge wall screen. George followed him with his eyes, still unwilling to move from the perceived safety of his chair. The puppeteer fiddled with the control board underneath the screen for a moment before it buzzed and turned on. George saw the ruins Eridu. The tents were scattered everywhere, and smoke exuded from the top of the hill in lazy swirls.
"What is this?" he asked, somehow unsurprised.
"I'm very sorry. I'm not very good at breaking bad news. It seems that Eridu is gone."
"I'm going to need a straight explanation," said George dryly.
"It was getting uncomfortably rowdy down there. Too small a space, you see. I had to break free, and I'm afraid there was some collateral damage."
"So, you did this?" George slowly got up and began to back away to a corner of the room. He didn't have a plan.
"In an indirect fashion, yes. There was really no avoiding it. Though I suppose I'll have to do much worse now that you've retaliated."
"What do you mean?" George was no longer paying much attention. He knew this thing was dangerous, which was enough. Instead he focused on how best to get to the door and don his helmet without attracting the attention of the puppeteer. The tall figure was facing the screen, gazing at the burned remnants of the colony.
"Those four structures that landed no less than two minutes ago. They're meant to kill the native life on this planet and replace it with that from Earth. It's simply unacceptable. I'm not sure if you personally knew about this, which is why I haven't yet killed you. Besides, I have more important things on my mind. You've been staring at those stars a good deal of time, right? Could you point me toward Sol?"
George froze and processed the last question for a moment. The implication was only too clear. George didn't understand who this man was, or what he was capable of, or why he had suddenly changed his disposition, but he wasn't to be trusted. "I'm afraid I can't. It's too dim to be directly visible from this far away."
"Oh, I know that, but surely you haven't been limiting yourself to naked eye viewing? A good telescope could pick it up if you looked for long enough."
"I don't have one."
The puppeteer grunted and began to fiddle with the control board yet again. "Shame. Going to have to find it myself now. I'll give you ten minutes." The wall screen flicked to the camera view. It zoomed in and began to pan through the starfield.
Unsure, George reevaluated his options and decided to head back toward the puppeteer. He slipped into the admiral's seat. He pulled up a comm panel, and authorized a probe launch. He needed to report the loss of the colony. He didn't mention the puppeteer.
There was no sound when the probe launched. It sailed away from the Facem, burning slowly and building up its speed for the epic journey ahead.
Sitting in the admiral's chair, at the helm of mankind's greatest ship, George decided to do one more thing. Just in case there was still some hope. He set the main engines to fire a few hours in advance, just as the starship's orientation was such that a burn would take it into a very low solar orbit. Couldn't hurt anyone there.
George collected his suit and put it on. To be safe, he left the doors open when he left, and watched as the air escaped in a quick puff of wind. The puppeteer didn't even flinch.
Five minutes later, George was floating outside on the great hull of the starship, waiting for nothing. He had a few hours of air left, and the stars to keep him company. He heard pouring sand.
Amit watched as the biotower came to trembling stop on Gaea's soil, buoyed by jets of superheated gas. It was streaked black from the violence of reentry. The shine of polished metal peered from underneath the burn marks. It warmed in the sun, creaking as the surface expanded.
Liu had long since given up trying to get the radio working. She, of course, immediately recognized the biotower. At least her instructions had gone through. For some time, Amit and Liu were content to watch the huge machine begin its work. The wind thrummed across its skin, hollow and reedy
Then the wind died. The soft clicking of the biotower was suddenly audible, with absolutely nothing to drown it out. By reflex, Liu and Amit looked up at the sky.
The orange sun was accompanied by the thinnest saber of a crescent, a blade of light curved menacingly around the star. The crescent waxed through the phases until it became a full disk of hazy light. Its surface was made of sparkling translucence, the blinding luminance of the sun shining through the veil easily, encased within the bubble of light.
Everything suddenly grew dark. The veil of light thickened and dimmed the sun behind it, shrouding the orange-white glare and revealing the boiling ball of fire within. The veil began to glow, first a deep, cool red, then orange, finally a soft yellow.
With a violent, powerful snap, the light of the veil focused onto six different points, bright dots arrayed around the phantom sphere, each connected by a stream of fluid energy, coursing and flowing away from the sun. Sucking it dry.
The points grew brighter, brighter, as bright as the sun once was. They shone into the ether, six droplets of pure light dancing in slow tandem around the star they were slowly consuming. For a moment, they stood there, perfect against the darkness. Then, the six rushed toward each other, like the petals of a flower twisting shut for the night.
There was an impossibly bright flash, as the power of an entire star was momentarily concentrated into an infinitesimal point. Matter vaporized, disintegrated into a protonic soup, decayed into elementary particles and radiated away. Space itself sagged under the burden of this fire, dipped and stretched and broke, flailing limply under the onslaught. A rip appeared, a hole in the cosmos. It showed through it the constellations of a distant world, distorted by the puncture into thin curves. Impossibly, violating common sense and physical law, it showed through it another sun, this one clean and white, and a planet, orange, red and milky, swirling in a global tempest.