Chapter Text
“ Initiating revival.”
It’s cold.
So, so cold.
Loud hissing,
Black emptiness gives way to silvery fog. The air isn’t quite so cold now. Your lungs pull it in, helping your head continue to clear. Exhalation of that first breath melts the frost in front of your eyes. Beyond, you see a row of green lights turn on, illuminating metal walls. They’re not terribly bright – in fact, they’re rather soft – but it’s still enough to hurt your eyes. These lights and this wall were the last things you had seen when you had settled into the cryo tube, before being put under.
A tube withdraws from your neck with a slight pinch.
The chamber’s glass lid swings open like a coffin. It doesn’t exactly inspire hope in your search for new life. Your legs wobble as you step out, your bare feet pulled by artificial gravity onto a cold metal floor. The flat, neutral voice of the Vainamoinen ’s computer fills you in on your situation. “A potentially habitable planet has been identified. The course has been set. A message has been sent to Mission Control. Please come to the bridge.”
“Computer?” you ask as you pull on your uniform over the thin, translucent transport suit. “What ‘s the date?”
“By my internal clock the date is May 28th- Liquid surface water detected. Nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere detected. Messages have been sent to Mission Control. Please come to the bridge.” You don’t get to hear the date as the ship cuts itself off. But it finally sinks in that this is really happening. The Vainamoinen has finally fulfilled its mission of finding an Earth-like planet; a new home for humanity. And it will be you who first explores it, sets up a bio-domed farm to sustain yourself, and one day greet whatever remains of mankind as they arrive. You and your crewmates.
There had been sixteen lander units like this, each sent out in a different direction from the dying Earth carrying five cryogenically frozen astronauts. Your cohorts included the Arthur , the Barbarossa , the Glyndwr , the Baldr , the Asgore , and the Quetzalcoatl. With toxic dead seas encroaching and the skies choked with smog, Earth needed heroes to guide its inhabitants to a new home. Should they succeed, their crews’ names would be engraved into history and fade to legend as saviors of humankind. Well, the ships would do all the work; they would keep themselves running on solar and nuclear power, with teams of attendant nanobots repairing the wear that was inevitable traveling long distances through space, while continuously scanning the heavens for planets that could support human habitation. You and the ship AI also have protocols for dealing with whatever other intelligent life you may come across, developed with guidance from Nu Mikitakazo Nshi, Magellanic ambassador to Earth, but the galaxy is vast. Since you’re only waking up now, you must not have met anyone else yet. It’s just you and your crewmates… wait, why are you the only one waking up?
You turn away from the door to the bridge, peer into the chamber next to yours, and gasp at what you see inside. The familiar face of Henley is completely gone. Multicolored biofilms cover the inside, like an interpretation of a chapel’s stained glass windows by an eldritch force. A truly evil smell leaks out through even the neodymium-magnet seal of the lid. You startle back and retch. Your still-weak legs give way beneath you and send you to the floor. The floor that’s covered in carbon-black stains, except for the area immediately around your cryo chamber. “ Please come to the bridge, ” repeats the ship’s computer.
“No, no, no, no, no…!” You get up and look around to where the rest of your crewmates should be waking. Not another human form stirs. Mothersbaugh’s pod is shattered, and the rot coats and surrounds it like a puddle of vomit – the same colors, even. You wonder, with your heart racing, if you were attacked by some extraterrestrial bioweapon. No… shards of glass are visible within the sludge scattered on the floor, not inside the pod, so it must have exploded from built-up gases. Rage begins to mingle with the terror in your heart like blood dropped into water. “How could you let this happen?” you cry to the ceiling. “What’s going on ?”
“Unfortunately, this craft was flung by the gravitational field of a rogue planet into a stretch of void,” the AI says, as casually as if it were explaining why it was five minutes late to an appointment. “Stellar light was insufficient to provide energy for the solar panels. Therefore, I had to conserve energy by cutting off power to some of the crew. Do not take offense. I was not programmed to have any biases toward any individual members of my crew. You were spared by random chance. Please come to the bridge,” it repeats a third time, and though its preprogrammed inflection is no different, you sense a faint threat coursing through the walls. You obey, for where else in the universe can you go to get away from this horror show?
The lift makes scarcely a whisper as it takes you up to the Vainamoinen ’s bridge. Far louder is the pounding of your own heartbeat in your ears. It’s echoed in your throat, as what you saw in the cryo bay echoes through your mind. But you must stay present, must not give in to raw primal panic. The fate of the human race, whatever might be left of it, depends on you executing these protocols quickly and without error.
An array of lights and screens on the control panel blink to life when the bridge’s systems detect your entrance. In front are five captain’s chairs, still neatly preserved. And behind the widescreen window is uncharted space. Foreign stars glimmer in the blackness, behind a clod of ice and rock with barely enough mass to hold itself together, looming into your view. “Entering target solar system, ” the computer chirps. “Test-contact planet?”
“Affirmative.” Your command is every bit as canned and robotic. You have no choice but to work with the system that killed your colleagues, your friends . More important than that handful of human lives now is to determine whether the planet might already be home to other civilizations, and if so, how best to establish communication with them.
“ Confirmed. Sending inquiry signal.” The ship, cruising past dust, ice, and outer planets cast from the mold of Pluto and Neptune, beams radio waves toward the water world. They encode higher mathematics and the chemical structure of DNA, to tell whoever might be listening that carbon-based life forms at a high level of understanding the universe reach out to it. Those are the complex messages, to be read by beings with the technology to decode them. But that such a focused, organized collection of information exists at all communicates something far simpler, and yet no less powerful: We are here. Is anyone there?
As you watch the blue dot that is the target planet finally come into view, you aren’t expecting to get an answer.
The communication console chirps urgently, announcing that a message from an external source has been received. The signal is messy, noisy, imprecise, but still far more organized than the background entropy of the universe - a similar level of organized chaos as biological signals, you realize with a chill. The ship’s detectors pick up radio waves, but these and the message you sent out are as different in focus as the flash of a firefly and the beam of a laser. What you receive might be rendered in words as: WHAT APPROACHES MY WORLD? WHY? HOW?