Well here it is, my first short story that I’m going to publish here. I wrote this a few months ago, and only recently edited it. It’s not a tone I imagine myself keeping up with in the future. It’s about death and humanity’s fate, so… not the best example of a pick-me-up story.
Dan, Sacramento’s telemetry expert, had been clamoring all day to have a word with me. At the time, it didn’t seem all that important to listen to what he had to say. Dan had a history of overexaggerating any blip his autotelescopes had picked up on a given morning. I swear, he’d make a fine cosmofatalist if they’d ever managed to get their hooks in him.
“It’s an object!” He had said when he finally was able to burst into my office. “Man-made, it’s vector indicates that it will come dramatically close to us, perhaps even collide with Sarcophagus’s outer shell.”
I put on my face of concern to humor him. “What are you suggesting I do about it?”
“Intercept it!” Dan said. “Don’t you realize what this could mean for us? It could be salvation, it could be communication or even aid! Dammit, Gabe, don’t pretend you don’t get it!”
I glowered at him. “Dan, you don’t have to convince me that it would be good for us to pick up this thing, I just don’t know what you expect me to do about it. I could go out there myself, sure, if I can scrape up a spacesuit from the science guild, but I doubt that any of them will deem it necessary to join me. You might as well talk to them, they at least respect you as a learned man.”
Dan sighed. “I will give it my best shot. But the weight of your authority would be greatly appreciated.”
“The more I use my authority, the less I have,” I explained.
I don’t think Dan had a good appreciation for the difficulty of my given vocation. Nobody did. On Sacramento, there was no centralized ruling body, just an unceasing set of squabbling factions with no real power. We had a constitution once, but it had been abandoned after the first two centuries since our founding.
All that was left was me, the Arbiter.
The Arbiter. Part judge, part investigator, part lawyer. I am the only one whose commands hold any actual muscle, and my term will last until I die or am deemed unfit. According to the records, I am the 83rd person to hold this position. Who knows if those records can be trusted? They could have been written by the ancient Assyrians, for all we know.
For that matter, nobody truly knows how long this colony has existed. It has been at least 1500 years since we lost communication with Earth and Mars, and shortly after, the Jovians. Since then the records have been somewhat the subject of debate.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “You ensure that the object makes landfall with the shell. I give you the authority to use our drones to guide it in if its path isn’t leading to a direct interception. You and I will go out there ourselves to get the object. If any of the science guild members other than you want to come with us, I will roll out the red carpet for them. I’ll clear it with the Defense Department. I highly doubt they’ll consider two citizens doing a spacewalk to be anything of a security breach. Stan!”
My secretary waltzed into the room. “Arbiter?”
“Whatever plans I have for tomorrow morning are now going to be pushed back.”
“That includes the briefing with Helena Espada,” Stan said.
“Shit.” Helena. The matriarch of the Cosmofatalists, our century-old religious group. They were not comfortable with our current state of stagnation. Their sect formed when someone made some sort of prophecy about an artifact. Lately, they’ve wanted more and more power, because it seems their prophecy is near completion. “Get her on the video,” I commanded.
Moments later I could hear her lazy voice speaking to me through the screen. “Arbiter.” Her video feed displayed her round dark face being filtered through video effects which made her seem otherworldly. “Gabriel.” She began, each syllable dragging on for a bit longer than it should. “I knew I should be expecting your call.”
Sure you did. “Helena, important business has come up. Our negotiation tomorrow may have to be postponed.”
If she was disappointed, her face did not reveal it. “What is the nature of this postponement?”
“Nothing, just business with the outer shell which I must see to personally,” I said furtively.
Her face beamed as a mischievous smile split it. “Something has arrived, hasn’t it?”
She could see through any poker face. “Nothing that can’t be handled by Dan and me.”
She knew, and she wasn’t about to let it go. “Gabriel, this is the very matter we in the Church have been meaning to discuss with you. There is something new, something which has arrived, and I would very much like to see it. I am coming with you.”
“Out of the question,” I commanded. “I don’t want your fanatics raising questions if you don’t return.”
“I’ve braced death many times, Gabriel. I am also a free citizen. I go, and like you say, if it’s nothing, then there won’t be any problems with me returning.”
She was right, I couldn’t stop her.
The “object” did not need to be intercepted by a drone at all. It’s trajectory led it dead into the center of Sacramento’s outer shell. Made of decades of excavated silicate rock, the shell expanded Sacramento’s livable space to about three times its original volume. As I took the elevator that led outside, I braced for the shock and weightlessness that existed when you were no longer contained within Sacramento’s spinning inner drum.
Sacramento was supposed to be humanity’s waypoint out of the solar system. An Oort cloud object, it was situated far enough to provide a relay station for information, energy, and particle beams to transmit towards future extrasolar colonies. Coupled with its two sister colonies, humanity could potentially expand outward towards some of the nearer star systems within a few centuries.
Colonization came with a price. Sacramento was situated about eight light-months away from any human contact. Even though space farming and architecture had been perfected, travel was always met with inherent dangers. Still, you can always find a selection of people who are both qualified and crazy enough to want to make the journey. Three two-hundred person colony ships left Ganymede pointed in three separate directions for the farthest reaches of the solar system. They became the founding settlers of Sacramento, Lisbon, and Jakarta.
This what the records show, and we have no reason to doubt them. But, they could have been easily doctored. We lost contact with Earth many centuries ago. Lisbon and Jakarta shortly followed, but because they were oriented on the opposite ends of the Sun it took us years to know that they’d gone dark. We still don’t know why and we probably never will. Our telescopes are not powerful enough to visualize what could have happened on Earth. We know it’s still there, at least. Maybe there was political instability or a natural disaster. Or maybe they just gave up on the space exploration altogether.
Put more succinctly, we’re on our own out here, and I’m the only one who’s remotely in command. What’s more, it’s also possible I’m in command of the only remnants of the human race.
Sacramento has long since given up on the idea of colonization of other worlds. It wouldn’t be hard to turn our little rock into a spaceship, we have enough water to create hydrogen fuel that could burst us into a guided course towards another planet. The problem is what we’d do once we got there. We have little metals, not even enough to construct automated mining excursions that could shepherd us some additional resources from the closest rocks. Our best engineers have yet to come up with a solution to this for as long as they have tried. Barring contact from an outside source, we are destined to die here.
Your average citizen of Sacramento would likely not even know what you were talking about if you called the settlement by its real name. “Sarcophagus” has been our nickname since way before I was born. Hope is the only thing sustaining us. Hope that the Humans, or a distant alien race, or God, will contact us. And save us.
I have no idea whether that’s going to happen, I just don’t want to be Sacramento’s last Arbiter.
The three of us stood on the exterior door. A security officer checked us through and we descended into the airlock. Once the redundant door overhead shut, we all double-checked to make sure that our space suits had a tight seal before the door below gave way, revealing the blackness of the space beyond. We climbed out.
Here, everything was indistinguishable from stars. The Sun, Jupiter, Saturn… all nothing more than tiny dots of light. You couldn’t even see Earth from out here without a telescope. Yet somehow, we were all still orbiting the same Sun.
We clung to the surface of Sarcophagus through its limited gravity. The spin of the colony took place entirely underneath the shell, so there was no danger of being flung off. We tread carefully, being careful not to spring too high off the ground.
After about a 20 minute walk, we came upon our mark. Jutting barely into the rock was a distinct black shape. The closer we got, the more unnatural it looked. The material seemed neither rock, nor plastic, nor metal. When we got closer we saw that the face we saw resembled a hexagon, but that was only one end of it. It was long, about the shape and size of a coffin. Its black surface could have been mistaken for volcanic basalt if it were not entirely uniform in consistency, almost like a frosted deep dark glass. I put my gloved hand against it, almost expecting my hand to disappear inside its alien mass. It did nothing of the sort, merely behaving like a rock.
The comm spoke to me through my suit. “You think there’s somebody in this thing?” It was from Dan. “Looks just large enough to fit a person. Maybe they froze themselves and launched way out here.”
“If that’s true, I think a scan should reveal it,” I said. “We can get a mover out here and haul it back inside for us.”
“Haul it back in?” Dan was aghast. “Are you fucking crazy? You have no idea what is in that thing and you want to just bring it into our colony? Not to mention, it’s been floating around in space and is likely radiated beyond safe levels. It needs to undergo an extensive decontamination process before you even consider bringing it into the Sarcophagus interior.”
“You are very wise, Arbiter.” This time it was Helena’s voice. “This is a cosmic gift, meant to be shared among us. Daniel, what happened to your excitement? Do you not want to unravel the puzzles within the artifact?”
The way she spoke, forceful yet lofty, bothered me.
“I’m excited to discover it and to learn about it. But with patience, this can be done from afar. Let me set up a camp out here, bring in the other guild members. They’ll be happy to run extensive tests. We need as much time as we can get, Gabe. Don’t rush this.”
It shocked me to see the change in attitude I was seeing in Dan right now. He was the reason we’re all out here. And yet, looking at this new discovery, it doesn’t seem new to me at all. It seems as if I have known about it for years. It shape speaks to me as if I’ve known it would be here my entire life. I’ve dreamed about it. The more I look at it, the less frightened I am of its presence. As if I’d merely seen it in the wrong light before, and now the shadows cast on it seem less deep.
“I’ll take it into my room,” I spoke. “There, I will examine it personally, then determine what course of action to follow. It can’t stay out here.”
Dan and Helena both jolted within their suits. After a good ten seconds, Dan was the first to break the silence. “You take it? This is way outside of your field! Did you not hear me when I said that this has to undergo decontamination?” His voice became softer. “Gabe, I don’t want you to be alone with this thing. It is not a natural occurrence, and it came straight here. I’m going to say that it came intentionally. We have no idea why. I want to know what’s in this too, but this needs time. Please, don’t order this.”
Helena didn’t allow her tone to falter. “It’s a holy relic. It belongs with the church. We will respect the contents, but it can’t be dissected by the hands of callous scientists.”
“Oh Helena, I don’t have time for your damned death cult.” I spat at her. She stopped talking. I don’t think she was used to being spoken to that way. “Neither of you deserve it. It’s here for me. Now go away, I’ll fetch a security team to bring it in for me. Leave!”
Helena didn’t press the issue, she merely shrugged and bounded back towards the colony hatch. Dan stood there for a while before talking. “Gabe… what is this? What are you doing?”
I turned away from him and faced the artifact again. “You have your orders, return to the colony at once.”
Dan, my only friend in this lonely world, did not speak to me again. He obeyed me perfectly and disappeared silently.
It took a team of five security workers to haul the monument in from the surface. Sacramento’s citizens murmured in dreadful tones as they saw it carried through the alleyway into my administrative building. I did not allow it to leave my sight.
“You may leave,” I instructed the monument crew outside of my building. I did not regret dismissing them so hastily, there was work to be done.
Its severe black appearance gave no signs of an opening, or interface, or mechanism. Yet it seemed to be hollow. I dare not touch it, in fact, no man had used their bare hands on the device. There could be no telling what danger lay if I exposed myself to it. I used every scanner I had devices on it, testing infrared, x-ray, gamma-ray, ultraviolet, micro and radio waves to see if I could peer into it. The material that it was encased in, some sort of black stone, appeared to only block radiation or allow it to completely transmit through, without giving me an image.
The monument itself appeared to be comprised of some sort of silicate-lead composite. Radiation scans showed up negative. With latex gloves I found it cool to the touch, and entirely still, giving no indication of an active mechanism lying inside it.
I’d spent hours, perhaps days, locked inside my chambers analyzing it. The press wanted to talk to me, my coworkers and family wanted to know what I was toiling on that made me withdraw from the public. I couldn’t face them until I had some sort of an answer. I’d brought this thing back with me, and I would not resurface until I had something important to announce.
It knew me. It came to me, alone. Not the colony.
I couldn’t remember when exactly I fell asleep. But when I did, I dreamt of an old woman. An old woman with a face I couldn’t recognize but looked like mine.
“It has to be you,” She said. “Open it. It’s time. I knew it would be you.”
I woke up and opened my hard drive.
Information is kept at a limited capacity on Sacramento. Everyone is allotted one terabyte of storage, which must be surrendered upon death. Any pictures, documents, data you were hoping to store must be transferred to your next of kin through explicit clauses in your will. I mention this because I’ve watched my grandparents, parents, and older brother all go through the same process. I keep most of their important data in the same folder in my drive.
I open it up and search for what I know is true, but am hoping not to see. My great grandmother, Argentia. The last member of my family to be an Arbiter of Sacramento before me. I knew I would recognize her face. It was exactly the one in my dream. I looked over to the coffin and knew. She was in there. She was communicating with me. Somehow, through my dreams, she was telling me what I needed to do.
“I can’t,” I said to the monument.
I’d holed myself up for about two weeks with the coffin before reemerging. The reports said I was unshaven and rank, and that I was withdrawn and wouldn’t speak to anyone. It was true, for a while. I returned to my work but would take no questions on the coffin. Dan tried to talk to me again, said that he’d been able to plot the trajectory, and determined that its orbital path indicated that it came from here, decades ago. I didn’t need him to tell me that.
My family did our best to ensure that the legacy of Argentia Teves remained intact. The job of Arbiter didn’t suit her very well, according to my mother. Towards the end of her life, she’d caved into hopelessness. She refused to carry out her duties, hoping instead that conflicts would resolve themselves. She wanted the colony to decompose. According to mother, she’d refer to us as a gangrenous extremity of humanity that needed to be amputated. She’d be the one to do it.
This was around the same time that the cosmofatalists sprang up. I know this because it was Great Grandma Argentia who was their messiah. She began preaching to the sickly and distraught members of Sarcophagus. She’d gathered a secret following that had spun itself into nearly every level, every faction inside our rock.
Her carelessness during her tenure took its toll. There were whispers of mutiny surrounding her final days. Before they could manifest, my family declared her dead. Nobody saw the body.
So here we are.
Years passed. I never mentioned to anybody else what was inside the artifact. I tried not to let it cross my mind. Dan and the rest of the science guild grew ever more distant, and Helena grew vigilant. Every time I skirted through public, her eyes followed me. She wouldn’t speak to me, but she knew. She’d prophesized this. What seeds had my great grandmother sewn in her circles?
It didn’t matter, I couldn’t open the damn thing. I had tried everything. A crowbar, hammer, NFC hacking. Nothing made a dent. Of course, the simplest solution had eluded me.
It was the only thing that I hadn’t tried. I took off the protective glove from my right hand. Clamminess made my hand stickier than usual. I pressed it against the bare rock of the coffin.
It made no sound. No grinding, no mechanical whirring. It merely slid, the top third of it forming a seam, exposing its contents. There she was. A husk of a human being, mummified, her paper-white translucent skin and eyeless sockets. Gripping something with her emaciated fingers. A vial.
I no longer feared it, nor did he fear her. In fact, he knew exactly what it was, and what she had been working towards during the last years of her tenure as Arbiter. The only thing that made sense for us was euthanasia. Not only for her, for all of us. Nobody was coming, and we were utterly hopeless. We could have been here years, centuries, millennia, it didn’t matter. Mankind wasn’t destined to leave, to survive.
I took the vial and opened it.
chemicalbernswrites 