The Endling’s Song

Written by Zachary A. Bakht
 
 
 
 

He was thinking about the song again. An endless library of music, and only one song played on repeat inside the walls of his head. A twenty second solo that should have been a duet. No lyrics, not in the literal sense, but Stephens felt it said more than the thirty books he’d gone through on the first leg of his journey.

Leaning against the angled wall, he whistled the tune. He couldn’t whistle like Walter, couldn’t whistle like Dad or Grandpa Ed, it had skipped him—not his generation, just him—the way most family traits seemed to. His hairline peaked, theirs flat; Walter’s 100-metre speed enough to earn him a D1 scholarship, Luke’s enough to earn him pity. The hazel eyes the Stephenses used to dazzle and charm; Luke’s were a dull brown, the color of acorns on a November sidewalk. And the whistle: Grandpa Ed could belt out showtunes without missing a note, Walter too. Even dad could do the entire star spangled banner when the mood took him, usually with an empty PBR at his feet, dressed in his faded army fatigues. Not Luke. All he could muster was a clarion bird-whistle, the sound lonely and distant, an empty call to no one.

He watched the universe spill out before him in its black, endless stretch to the edges of reality as he turned, turned, around and around, pressing his hand to the cold glass and tracing images he saw in his mind.

Not much longer, he thought, whistling the endling’s song. I’m almost there.

It had been an easy decision. Not made with delusions of glory and fame, although that would come, a helpless byproduct of the excursion. It was a decision made with the same hardset practicality and determinism that he’d followed his whole life, the slow, thoughtful pursuit that had pushed him longer than he could remember: to be the first.

“It was made for you,” Dr. James had said one chilly September evening last year (by Stephens’s clock, at least—for Dr. James and the rest of his Earth-bound colleagues, that fateful September meeting in the stone-silent rotunda at NSEI’s Vermont campus had taken place over six years ago). James’s eyes had been gleaming, wet with excitement and he’d been tugging at the gray hair on his chin. “There’s no one else, Luke. No one else with the courage to step over the abyss and look infinity in its face without fear. No one else.”

Luke had known Dr. James for fifteen years, was the only Explorer that James would call by first name. That meant he could speak James’s language, even when James might have preferred otherwise. In this moment, when James spoke of courage, he meant baggage. Ties. Ropes wrapped around stakes pounded into the soft, yielding Earth—things that would keep him tethered to his natural home. Semantics aside, James was right. There was no one else.

“How long?” he asked. The sky through the slitted windows of the high-ceilinged dome was periwinkle, and brittle branches tapped and danced along the glass, scraping and singing in their Earthy language.

“One-point-four years. Sixteen months. That’s round trip.”

“For me?”

“Yes. For you.”

“And for you? For them?” He gestured at the empty room, the round, rising walls and everything beyond them. James looked down, gave his chin a tug.

When he finally lifted his head to speak, Stephens could see the truth before he spoke it. It was the moisture, the water, the lifeblood brimming over the edges of his eyelids, turning the aged gray-blue eyes into oceans of immeasurable depth. “Luke,” he said, speaking slowly. “This will change everything. Everything, son. The entire course of humanity as we know it. They’ll build statues of you. It would not be a stretch to call you the most important man that ever lived, if you accomplish this.”

“How long, Charles?”

Dr. James dropped his head again, went to grab his knotted beard and instead removed his glasses and wiped the tears spilling down his cheeks. He chuckled and said, “One hundred years. Your journey will take one hundred Earth years.”

Stephens shifted his gaze. It was the sky he wanted to see, now turning a deep indigo. Autumn was at the edge of the wind. Would he miss it? The seasons? Spring had always been his favorite, the rebirth, the beginning. This was a chance at a greater beginning. A species-level rebirth.

“When I return you’ll be dead. I’ll never see you again,” he said.

“Nor anyone alive today, likely. Certainly no one you know. We’ll be gone, Luke. All of us.”

Silence fell on the room. Somewhere in the main hall a custodian mopped the tile floor, his bucket whining with each push. Outside the trees continued their conversation, shivering in the darkness, brushing against the man-made obstruction in their forest, poking the windows with probing fingers.

“I understand what I am asking, Luke, and I ask with the greatest sincerity and respect I have ever asked for anything. Your sacrifice would be immeasurable. Humanity will never forget. I will make sure of that.”

“Why not Adams? She’s twice the Explorer I am. I’ve never gone farther than Mars. She’s seen the entire solar system at this point.”

James reached across the table to pat Stephens’s hand. “Luke, she’s a mother. She has two children. You’re a biologist. You tell me what she would say.”

“I have nothing, is what you mean.”

“You have everything before you. Everything. You’ll see things no human has ever seen. Eternity stands before you, Luke. The eventual survival of humanity depends on spreading beyond this rock. Someone needs to be the first. Who else?”



ITP CARAVEL
EXPLORER: STEPHENS, LUKE
MONTH ONE


Hello…Dr. James, Dr. Batir, Dr. Desmarais, Dr…..well, perhaps I should save our system the effort…you know who you are. Hello, NSEI. Hello, Earth.

As I record this, I am reaching the outer limits of the Oort Cloud. By the time you hear this, I will likely be beyond our solar system entirely. Which means I am seeing things no human eyes have ever witnessed. It is an intensely humbling experience. 

Everything is running smoothly to this point. Be sure to send my gratitude to everyone involved in creating this spinning life raft which has become my temporary world. The Cycle is in sync: every molecule is being reused. My waste is the nutrient that sustains bacteria, the bacteria feed the plants, the plants feed me. We truly have created a sustainable, onboard ecosystem.

Radiation levels are good, artificial gravity has held steady at 96.6% Earth gravity. Initially I felt a bit light; my right knee which has been a plague to my physical health since senior year of high school no longer sings to me at night. The effect is minimal—something that disappears if I stop thinking about it. Of course, I have a lot of time to think.

I suppose you need to hear about my mood. I am doing well. It is actually getting easier as time progresses. Being alone, that is. The first few days were okay. Going without speaking for two, three days has never bothered me. It was the end of the first week when I started to feel strange about it, somewhere in the ever-growing black distances between the planets. Seeing something as spectacular as Jupiter brings a certain speechlessness with it. Of course, once it is out of sight, your mind can’t help but show it again and again when you close your eyes. The eyelids create a perfectly black backdrop; the mind’s eye fills in the rest. It was Saturn that drove me nearly mad. I’d heard of its beauty, but words are a poor medium of communication. The right ones simply do not exist. If Explorer Adams sees this, I’m sure she will nod her head. If ever I wished for another human to speak to, it was the moment I barreled past that beautiful pale-orange swirl of clouds. I would say we’ll have to compare notes one day, but…

I’d be lying if I said thoughts of the future don’t trouble me. I left a world I knew…the only world I’ve known, and I will never return. When I get back, it will be a different place. Filled with different people. The thought does not fill me with dread, but rather exhilaration; a mingling that is equal parts fear and intrigue. I feel as if someone has hit the fast-forward button. I can sit here and count the minutes while hours and days speed past me in the vacuum outside this metal hull. I am not only traveling a greater distance than any human has ever known, but I am traveling through time. I will be an alien, a relic. I wonder if they will understand me. They will revere me either way. I’m not sure I want that, to be brought back from the dead, resurrected from the past.

I’m rambling a bit, but I suppose this is what you want to know. Any journey to these depths will require this bizarre, relative form of time travel. Those who want to go beyond and ensure the survival of humankind will have to sacrifice everything they have. I do not say this to earn your pity or your acclaim. It is simply a fact. But the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the individual. It’s not all bad. No one who has seen the ambitious splendor of creation can say that the journey does not imbue its own reward. Humbling. That’s the word I keep coming back to. After all, we’re just cosmic dust repurposed for our own exploration. Never have I felt smaller than when I gaze out the window and see the infinite empty expanse, interrupted only by pinpricks of light that are older and farther than my mind can truly fathom. Never have I felt smaller…or bigger. That’s not to say I don’t miss Earth. But absence is said to have a particular effect on the heart, after all.

Well, that’s enough for the first message, would you agree? I’m sure you will. I look forward to seeing your faces soon. One thing I’ve learned is the importance of routine when you’re locked away on your own. The mind craves structure. It is time for my exercises. Then tending to the greenroom. I have one hour with Mr. Tolkein scheduled to close out the night. Ah, that’s another thing I miss: day and night. I keep a clock, and necessary as it is to maintain the schedule I’ve outlined, it does carry a certain insignificance. Who’s to care that it’s 8am or 8pm when the sun never rises, never sets? It’s funny: The 24-hour clock is man-made, but more than anything it is Earth-made. Everything man-made is Earth-made because man is of the Earth. The way we carry those restrictions with us, even when their natural value becomes naught, says more about human nature than anything Dawkins or Darwin ever wrote. We take home with us wherever we go. That gives me hope that home can be anywhere.

Until next time. Grow wisely and grow peacefully.


END TRANSMISSION

Stephens lay on the foam-top mattress in the hollow set into the back wall, lazily tossing the black rubber ball. He couldn’t notice the difference in its drop speed anymore. It had delighted him, at first, but now it was just another fact. Humans are so quick to adapt, he thought.

He dropped the ball as he sat up and swung his legs over the edge; it bounced twice and then rolled to the far wall, the way everything eventually would if he left it untethered and free to move around the vessel. Beneath the metal floor was a tubular structure that spun at incredible speeds to create the almost-perfect artificial gravity in the Caravel. For Stephens it was nearly imperceptible, especially after four weeks of acclimating. But anything that wasn’t bolted down would eventually slide to the portside wall, and if you stared at some distant source of light with a trained eye, the Coriolis Effect would distort it. There were always reminders that you weren’t home.

Stephens rubbed at his eyes, saw the clock showed 10:23pm. He was feeling pensive after his one-month update. It was the first time he’d spoken aloud—aside from the occasional muttering under his breath—since leaving Earth. Putting his thoughts into words had a way of bringing them to the front of his mind. They lingered. Sleep would be hard to find. He got up and started throwing the rubber ball off the hull, the way he had before finishing his exercise regiment and cleaning himself for bed. The hollow thud as it bounced off the wall was monotonous, helped him think.

He was thinking of Adams. What he’d said about Saturn. They were the only two humans to ever see it with their naked eyes, and they’d never get to talk about it. That seemed a sad thing, suddenly. Stephens had never liked Adams, had always respected her too much to actually like her. Her brilliance was aggravating, her success a brutal measuring stick to hold oneself too. She was the first human to traverse beyond the asteroid belt. First, to orbit Jupiter; she led a team of three. Two meteorologists and her. They were studying the Great Red Spot. No one remembered their names, but every human on Earth knew Explorer Patricia Adams. She was an engineer and she knew these vessels—the two she had taken and the one carrying Stephens now—better than any human alive.

She was entrusted with the first solo journey beyond the asteroid belt, a trip to Enceladus to collect samples from the water beneath the ice. They’d been desperately hoping to find signs of life (Stephens had been prepared for the trip to be a success; had imagined Adams’s face on every news network and inside every history book for the remainder of human existence), but the samples had come back empty, all of them. Just water. Vials of water from an icy moon.

They hadn’t sent anyone with her after what happened with the meteorologists. Stephens had never gotten to talk with her about that either, but he knew the details that were released to the public and a few that weren’t, from reading NSEI reports: Bad reaction, mental strain significant, loss of cognition. Those were the words printed in the diagnostic. Dr. James had debriefed Adams and her two companions, and had given Stephens the same story in different words.

“Insanity. They lost their minds, Luke.”

“How so?”

“I have Adams’s report, and interviews with the other two—not that much was learned there—but truthfully, I’m not sure we’ll ever really know. They were raving about the darkness. We always knew this was possible, Luke. Humans are of the Earth, we aren’t designed to be out there,” he’d said, gesturing to the dark sky. They’d been standing outside Dr. James’s office on a brilliantly clear winter night, the sky littered with icy sparkles of light. Stephens looked up and found a new shiver rocking his body, one not brought by the wind.

“Adams is fine,” he said through a mouthful of steam.

“Adams is fine, that is true,” James said, nodding. “I guess what I mean is that most of us do not have what it takes to leave home. I know I certainly don’t. I am Earthbound, Luke, and plan to be buried beneath the dirt from which I came. Adams is…different. I’ve known a few like her in my day. You are the ones that will push us beyond our naturally prescribed limits and extend the future of our species. Humanity needs people like Adams…people like you.”

That had been two years before the launch of ITP Caravel and Stephens had laughed at the comparison. Adams was an icon, a trailblazer—she was the modern version of the pioneers who had bravely set sail on wooden ships into the dark, endless horizons of Earth’s oceans. He, Stephens, was among hundreds of other Explorers that had been to Mars, no one special by that measure.

Now, spiking the ball against the metal hull and strafing to catch it, Stephens smiled a bitter, prideful smile. Didn’t serve my country like Dad, could never run like Walter, yet look now, he thought. Serving my species. Going farther than a pair of human legs could ever hope to run. These dull brown eyes have beheld sights previously reserved for God in heaven.

The smile faded. He let the ball bounce and roll and settle against the wall behind him. Thinking of home, of his family, left him feeling deflated. Over six years had passed on Earth. He’d said goodbye to dad and Walter before leaving, knowing it would be his last chance. Dad was in the VA living care facility, hardly conscious of the moment. The alcohol had rotted his liver and his brain, turned him into a drooling mannequin. Was he already dead? Stephens wondered. Did it matter? He was dead the moment this vessel had left the Earth’s atmosphere, really.

Walter too. That idea brought a painful heaviness to his chest, like the feeling you get behind your eyes when you’re trying not to cry. Walter was younger, married, no kids. He was left sterile from a car wreck right after he finished college. That meant only Luke could preserve the long line of Stephens men that had existed in New England and old England going back to the very first upright-walking creature of the plains. Luke had no plans to marry. No plans to procreate. His place was out here, alone. This had always been his place.

He was arrested by a memory: ten years old, in their backyard in New Hampshire. Dad was passed out by the fire, his chin resting on his chest, his limp fingers dangling inches above the litter of empty cans at his feet. Luke had built a telescope of 3D-printed parts after reading a manual on the internet. He was showing Walter the moon, and Mars, and Neptune. It was the end of summer and the wind was building its sharp edge, the one it would bring in full, slicing force in just a few weeks, turning the leaves to carnival colors and shuttering pools for the season. Walter had been zipping around the yard all night, sprinting from one end of the disheveled wooden fence to the other, tagging the walls and racing back. Finally, he’d settled, and Luke had lowered the telescope to his height.

“That’s the moon,” he said, smiling, waiting for a reaction.

“Looks different up close.” Walter said. “How come I can’t see any people?”

“They’re too small to see with this, but if you look to the bottom left you can see the lunar station. It’s that darker blob near the crater.”

“If you say so,” Walter said, turning.

“Hey wait, wait. Check this out.” Luke turned the telescope, sighted it on the blinking red dot at the edge of the mountain line.

Walter put his eye to the glass. A moment later he said, “Just looks like a blurry light.”

“That’s Mars,” Luke said. “One day I’m going to go there.”

“Why? Are there people there?”

“Maybe. Not permanently, not yet, but people go there. They think one day we’ll be able to transform it into another Earth and people can live there.”

“Why do we need another Earth?”

“Because one day the Earth might not want us here anymore. Scientists think that in order for mankind to survive we have to be on more than one planet.”

“That’s stupid. I don’t want to go to another planet. I like it here.” This time when Walter turned, Luke let him leave.

He stayed hunched over, turning his telescope the rest of the night, scanning the black expanse hoping to find something no one else knew about. Something no one had seen. He could be the first. He’d be the first to discover it and the first to step foot on it. The fate of humankind was out there, somewhere.

Now, sitting against the blackness beyond the glass, Stephens’s eyes kept drifting from the tale of the hobbits on his small tablet to the limitless horizon outside his ship. He thought:

Are you out there? Are you really?

Four Caravel days later, the terminal dinged. It was a new sound; Stephens had thought he’d heard them all, every whir and clank and shuffling the ship could make, and even though he was expecting it, the sound still made his heart jump nervously in his chest. The transmission had arrived within fifteen Caravel minutes of when they’d said it would. Despite knowing very little—or maybe due to it—about how ftl communication worked, Stephens found he was impressed, almost frightened, by their precision. He worked to slow his pulse as he crossed from his quarters to the terminal which sat by the control panels and the wide glass viewing station. He breathed slowly and evenly, holding his inhales, prolonging his exhales, and told himself, I’m ready, I’m ready.

Then the screen blinked to life and he discovered he wasn’t. 

NSEI NEWBURY
EXPLORATION & ADVANCEMENT
MONTH ONE

 


Hello, Luke. I’ll give you a moment to process the shock before I divulge anything of substance. I know, I was old before you left. Now look at me: Has it been seven years or twenty? Have I begun moonlighting as a department store Santa Claus? Your sense of humor is properly grieved over in these silent, stuffy halls, trust me. I grieve it, at least. But what else has an old man to do but grieve?

It was so good to see your face, my boy. Good and…amazing. I thought many nights to find the right word; I knew I could come up with something more descriptive or poetic or at the very least obscure, something that might make you reach for that electronic compendium of the world’s knowledge you have with you, but in the end I settled on the first word that came to mind. So often that’s the right one. Simply amazing. You are the man I said goodbye to nearly seven years ago. No new wrinkles, no gray hairs you didn’t already have when you stepped foot into your small, traveling home. You are my personal time machine, Luke. You allow me to experience my past. So long I’ve read of the effect, but words are…well, you said it. They’re a poor medium. The experience is something that a person cannot be prepped for. But who am I telling? Good God, the stories you probably wish to tell. One day, my boy. I won’t be the one to hear them, but you
will be the one to tell them.

As you can see, I am as verbose as ever. That’s not something you reign in as you age, I’m afraid. Quite the opposite. But we have limited space on this laser beam of information they plan to blast into the sky for you, so let me get on with it.

We received everything in good order. Your update, and your ship’s. It took Edwin and Parth nearly two days to read through the entire diagnostic and note the few things worth noting. Radiation levels are good, as you mentioned, but not perfect. Worry not, my pilgriming friend: You’d have to spend five times longer on that vessel than we have scheduled (which would be quite the fatal sentence in itself) for it to have any effect on you. Your plants, on the other hand, show signs of radiation poisoning. We predicted this might happen—expected it, rather. The greenroom is not as shielded as your quarters. This data will prove invaluable as we work on the ITP Juggernaut—yes, your future vessel has earned a name. We haven’t spent the past half-decade doing
nothing. So, one month in and you could already classify this mission as a success.

No damage so far from anything you’ve run through on your voyage. You know, I wasn’t fond of the name myself, Juggernaut. But now that I picture you, gliding through the cosmos, turning to dust any floating rock that might happen to be in your way, yes, maybe it is an apt name after all. I digress.

The Cycle is what I am most impressed with. Everything is working precisely as we designed it to. You and your Caravel—you truly are self-sufficient up there, Luke. I guess you expected nothing else from yourself, hmm?

I find that I’m thinking more and more of your future home with each passing night. I study the renderings with a devout concentration normally reserved for matters of the spirit. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the literature, I could recite the brochure verbatim. “PT 909 b: mass nearly seven times that of Earth; 40% larger in radius; gravity just above 3g. Rocky, massive, dense—one of the densest planets discovered. Orbits entirely within the habitable zone of its star—the tiny red dwarf PT 909—gets roughly 47% the incident flux of Earth. Tends to stay close to the outer edge of the habitable zone and completes an orbit of its star every 92 Earth days.” Those years will catch back up to you quickly, once you’re no longer an Earthling. We’ll have to come up with a better name than that mash of letters and numbers. Spend some of your lonely days and nights thinking on that.

It’s different now. It’s no longer just computer-generated images on paper. It’s as if the moment you left this planet, PT 909 b became real. Something physical, something that exists. At night, when I lay in bed awake, struggling for sleep, I sometimes see you, stepping off this ship that even as I speak now they work on, no more than a thousand yards from my office, leading a team of young men and women, and I see you taking that first step, being the first to breathe that foreign air, the first to feel the soft red beams from that alien sun…and I shiver. The magnitude wracks my body like a cold gust of winter wind. I can only imagine how you feel. How torturous it will be to reach the halfway mark and land on that desolate moon and point that monstrosity you have aboard at your future…at our future…and then turn around. But you’ll get there, Luke. Sooner than you know. Take it from me: The future is always closer than you think.

Well, I suppose there’s work somewhere around here for me. I’d stay and talk to you all day if I could, my boy, but like I said, precious data to transport. Brevity has never been in my repertoire. Let me wipe my eyes and get back to it. They take these transmissions seriously, you know. Each one is scheduled precisely and cannot be altered. So mark your calendar—I know you’re keeping one—and expect to see this face again. We can’t alter the send date, but we can pre-record, if necessary. I say that not to worry you—I feel great, Luke—but at my age, you never know. Should I feel myself fading sometime within these next 71.428 months, I’ll make sure I march my old bones to this very room and press record, even if it’s only so that you might hear my dying breath. Rest assured, you’ll see me again. I know such topics must be on your mind. You’re only human, after all—no matter where you are.

Until next time, Luke. Grow wisely and grow peacefully.

END TRANSMISSION
         

The longer he was in the ship, the more he thought of Earth. He tried to focus his mind instead on what lay in front of him: the frozen, unimportant moon of LHN 1601 c. One day, when they told his story to children, it wouldn’t be unimportant—it would probably even have a proper name. But for now it was an icy rock alone in the backdrop, a speck among specks, a place to dock his vessel and point the thermoscope. Once they could confirm the greenhouse effect and temperature of PT 909 b, he’d pilot his real vessel. Dr. James said they called it the Juggernaut. He liked it. Unstoppable progress. Stephens felt best when moving forward. And that would be the express line—no stops this time. No return trip, either.

But that got him thinking of Earth again.

He read to distract himself, although reading had always been a poor distraction for him, even when the view was no more spectacular than his backyard in Rumney. His eyes kept drifting, floating to the glass. The view was darker now. He thought of the meteorologists. He closed his eyes and then closed the page, opted for the internet instead. Of course it wasn’t really the internet—he couldn’t communicate with anyone (although they’d programmed AI with ten thousand years’ worth of conversation, if the desire struck him; Luke thought that was overkill and had yet to grow that desperate). But with the entirety of the internet downloaded to his device before leaving, there was plenty to do. He had a library of all recorded music, every book written, any movie ever filmed. He chose instead to surf the pages: it was easier, lazier, and his brain didn’t feel like working.

Knowing what lay ahead, Stephens had chosen not to read the news the weeks before he embarked. Two Caravel weeks into the trip he’d attempted to run through the headlines, but they felt stale, unimportant. They’d be three Earth years old already. He found himself there again, scrolling mindlessly. A headline on the fourth page caught his attention:


ARCTIC HARE OFFICIALLY DECLARED EXTINCT BY IUCN

His breath caught in his chest at the sudden rush of memory. Stephens had gone to Greenland in grad school to track the Arctic hare; they’d been classified as “extinct in the wild” then, existing only in captivity. The Arctic hare had been specifically constrained to one conservatory in Finland. Stephens’s professor, Dr. Jerzyk, believed they still existed in the wild in remote parts of Greenland, citing evidence of willow consumption along edges of the island. She hoped to recruit six students to travel with her; it was a six-month commitment, the entire winter, which meant missing Thanksgiving and Christmas. In the end three students made the trip. It was Stephens’s first time leaving the U.S. What stood out to him most, reflecting now and again throughout the years, was the feeling of freedom. The way the frozen wind and black sky made his breathing hitch, like diving into Lake Sunapee at the end of September on a dare. The excited, breathless appeal of an open world with never-ending possibilities.

They found no hares. Stephens knew they wouldn’t. Greenland was melting, its limited biodiversity shrinking by the second. The culprit responsible for eroding the willow growth was a new fungus. They came close, or thought they did, one night mid-January. It was warm by Greenland standards that winter, but still cold enough to kill an exposed person in hours. They’d been hiking and camping along a ridge on the north side of the island for six days. Laying in their tents, Dr. Jerzyk heard a sound. Something shuffling through the undergrowth. She was apt to hear sounds, to track phantom hares that existed solely in her head, but Stephens had heard it too. They grabbed flashlights and headed into the steely midnight darkness. The sky was opulent with glittering jewels.

Twenty steps from camp, Reynolds quit. “It’s bloody cold,” he said, disappearing into the night. Thirty more steps and Jerzyk was having second thoughts. Stephens’s fingers had already gone numb; the exposed flesh under his eyes was red and stinging. “Maybe my imagination,” she said. Half-apology, half-grimace. Stephens turned and continued.

“Luke! You will get lost! Luke!” She ran after him for a moment, continued yelling when she stopped. “You will die out there crazy man! Stop it!” Stephens jogged until he couldn’t hear her voice, strafing his flashlight along the ground. He wanted to find her hare. He wanted to give it to her. When he finally gave up and turned back, he saw nothing. He was staring at a wall painted the darkest black his eyes could create. The beam of his flashlight died three feet in front of him. In that moment, Stephens accepted death. He found he was less frightened than he’d expected. A soothing calm fell over him. He was alone in the darkness, alone in a strange land, yet he was home.

The realization of what he was reading brought him back to his body. An entire species, gone forever. The headline was buried four pages deep. How many more had gone the nine years he’d been away? He saw Dr. James in his head, the specter that had visited his screen two Caravel weeks ago, his hair as white as the Arctic hare. The thought upset him more than the news; he returned to the page.

Toward the bottom there was a message about the endling, the last Arctic hare, and when it had died. Stephens knew about endlings, the name for the final member of a species. It wasn’t a word you forgot once you knew it. Minutes later he was listening to the mating call of the last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, a small bird from the islands of Hawai’i that had gone extinct lifetimes before his birth. The endling was a male and they had recorded him singing his mating call for a female that would never come. It was a twenty second recording that started again as soon as it finished.

Stephens let it play as he gazed at the emptiness beyond his ship.


ITP CARAVEL
EXPLORER: STEPHENS, LUKE
MONTH TWO

Hello, all. I am well. Surviving. The Caravel continues cutting her path through infinity, and I continue to sit and watch it happen. All is as expected. I’m sure her diagnostic report will tell you more than I could in ten thousand breaths, so I will get straight to the parts only a human can speak on.

I’m lonely. At least I think I am. It’s not a feeling I’m accustomed to. At the moment it’s not overwhelming, but it bears mentioning. The sensation grows as I approach the days I’ve marked on my calendar for your transmissions. And my own. I don’t speak between recordings and I’m starting to notice the sound of my own voice when it does appear. Out of place. It is an alien thing this far from home.

If my mind was replete with feelings of kinship with Explorer Adams last time we spoke, this time it is her meteorologists I understand. Not to worry—I’m not cracking up. I haven’t gone mad. I’m fully aware of my mission and cognizant of my surroundings: the Caravel’s own regularly scheduled psycho-consultations will act as my corroborator. “The darkness, the darkness,” that’s what you relayed to me, Dr. James. Charles, if I may. This is likely the last time you hear my voice; let me drop the formalities. And if I may say, before I continue—thank you, old friend. A student knows not what they are until the teacher appears.

“The darkness.” That’s where I was when you found me. You yanked me out and it seems now you did so to shove me back in. I say this with no ill will; you found what you were looking for and you made use. A tool begs for purpose, lest it find itself a thing with no place.

I am not unhappy to be here, but I understand our conversation from that night in ways I only pretended to before. You told me humans are of the Earth, that we aren’t destined to be out there…out here. I keep thinking of the color blue. Do you know there is no blue in this vessel? A design flaw. Mark that on the blueprints for your Juggernaut. Of course, you’ll be six years further along by now. Add it either way. Even if it means undoing progress. It is necessary.

My first memory is of a blue sky. I didn’t know that until recently. My best memories involve water—the placid reflection of Lake Sunapee, the mighty, white-crested roar of the Atlantic. It was made for us. I crave the smell of dirt. Two days ago I went into the greenhouse and picked some up, let it drip from my fingers. Put my nose in it like a dog. I miss the animals we share our home with, our companions. The ripe, floral scent of spring. Those high places in the hills where you can see the curvature of the Earth if you look far enough. I miss open air, filling my lungs with the pine-sweet smell of the forest. The way the sun’s heat on your skin feels like life itself when it interrupts a cool breeze. I long to run down an empty dirt road as fast as my legs will take me. Thunder. The gusts of wind that precede a storm. Lightning flashes that leave marks behind your eyelids. That sweet, Earthy smell of the first rain drops saturating the ground.

And the sounds…goodness, how I miss the music of nature. That’s why I let that awful recording play as long as I did. I never knew birdsong could be so magnificent and so painful all at once. 

Of course I know it wasn’t made for us, the Earth. We were made for it. Made
of it. It precedes us and it will certainly continue spinning after we’re gone. I know you’re a God-fearing man, Charles, just as you know that I am not, but I’m not sure the details matter. Call it the hand of creation, call it fate; label it intelligent design, or natural selection; let it be God, let it be the Universe. Something shaped us, molded us, line by line, note by note, to be perfect. We belong to the Earth more than it has ever belonged to us. I see what you meant now. More than anything, as I look to the enveloping darkness that surrounds me, I feel wrong. Out of place. One thought rings true time and time again: I am simply not meant to be here.

Ah…but you also said that some of us are different. That some of us must leave the comfort of the womb and ensure our survival. I do not regret my choice. But I do long to see my home again. I hope there will be time for me to linger when I return. To take it all in before I say goodbye. If you can do one thing for me, work that into the schedule.

Thank you for everything. There was a time when I would have felt embarrassed to say such a thing publicly, as surely this message will fall on more ears than just yours, but what good does embarrassment do me out here? It’s a social function and I am no longer a social animal. So I say: I love you, old friend. I hope you have grown wise and grown peaceful in my absence.

Until next time. I know you believe there is always a next time, so I choose to believe the same.

END TRANSMISSION

When the terminal dinged five Caravel days later, Luke raced to it. The screen resolved itself and he saw the aged face of Dr. Desmarais. The hollows around her eyes were dark and tired. Her stare was vacant. Her voice was empty, behind the respirator. Her words were worse.

He’d expected one man. Not all of them.

NSEI NEWBURY
EXPLORATION & ADVANCEMENT
MONTH TWO


Explorer Stephens. I am pre-recording this transmission two years earlier than scheduled. It can be erased, as I’ve learned, and hopefully that is what will happen. If this is the communication that reaches you, then I’m afraid it might be the last. Things have changed, Stephens, they’ve changed so quickly.

Humanity is suffering a crisis. I have little time to elaborate and even less desire. There’s so much work to do. We’re rushing, but there are limits. There are limits. If the ITP Juggernaut were finished, or even close, we would launch, we would send them out to you even without the confirmation of habitability you were sent to obtain, but it’s not. We thought we had decades—lifetimes—to prepare it for you. Things have changed.

People are sick. They are dying in mass. The public is being kept in the dark, but they know, or they’re figuring it out, at least. If they truly knew I fear there’d be panic and mayhem. We’re not far from that. I know things that not even the NSEI knows, only because of Marcus. Do you remember Marcus? Surely you do. It’s only been a few months since you saw him. Goodness…I know it’s true yet I struggle to comprehend it. He’s not so little anymore. He’s graduated from bio homework to intelligence briefings. The White House is keeping the truth from us—they all are, all the governing bodies of the world. As wrong as I believe it is, I understand why they do it.

The official numbers say there are 800 million confirmed cases worldwide, and likely another 300 million presymptomatic. The DCPA estimates the real number to be closer to 4 billion. Less than two weeks ago they told him 3 billion. It won’t be much longer they can hide the truth. They don’t know where it came from, only that it is zoonotic and novel to humans. If it killed quickly we wouldn’t be in this mess. They are estimating the incubation period to be nearly a month long. Presymptomatic spreading is rampant. Once the symptoms begin, you don’t die quickly. It takes weeks. Hospitals have long since been overwhelmed. Most healthcare systems are beginning to shut down entirely. All the doctors are dead or dying. No one knew what they were dealing with until it was too late.

There are currently no known survivors. None. I can’t bring my mind to accept that. There has to be one, doesn’t there? It can’t be zero…

Within days, I fear, society as we’ve known it for centuries will crumble. There will be no one to continue our work. We could all be gone within a month. All of us.

I don’t have anything of value to offer you, but you need to know. You deserve to know. By the time you hear this, you might be the last human being in the universe.

Dr. James has passed. It may have been unrelated—we’ll never know. Old people get sick and die. This isn’t supposed to happen to our children. The babies are dying. Young people are dying. No one is spared.

There is one thing I can offer, actually. He kept his promise to get himself in front of the camera when he knew his time was limited. I saw the recording and heard him speak of it. I’m so sorry, Stephens. I deleted it in trying to record this. He wanted you to know that you shouldn’t be afraid. He said, “The darkness around you is nothing more than the shadow of man’s former limitations.” He said that he loved you, and that he’d see you again.

I hope when your next message arrives, I am here to hear it. If not me, someone. Anyone.

END TRANSMISSION

Stephens recorded five more transmissions before the Caravel began decelerating in anticipation of LHN 1601 c. He received zero.

He pushed off the slanted wall, stood up. Shook thoughts of Walter and Dad and Grandpa Ed from his mind. He tried to forget the bird, but its song rang through his ears. His own whistling reflected from the chrome, angled walls, and met him from strange directions. It was almost possible to believe it was somewhere in the ship, with him. Two voyagers, far from home, singing to each other.

Stephens cleared his throat; wiped the dirt from his cheeks. It was time to record his version.


ITP CARAVEL
EXPLORER: STEPHENS, LUKE
MONTH EIGHT

Hello again. This is Explorer Stephens. Human. Of Earth. If this message is reaching you, please let me know. Please.

I’ve spoken into the void for the past six months. I know not to whom I address this. It is strange to speak and not picture a face, a receiver at the other end. You could be anyone. Probably you’re no one. I wonder if in some dark, dilapidated structure, a video illuminates a shadowed corner, my voice breaks the heavy silence that has fallen over the planet. Or does someone need to be there to press play? I wouldn’t know. It likely makes no difference; the message dies as soon as it leaves my mouth. But yet, I persist.

“If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.” I liked that, when I first read it. It sounded strong. Inspiring. But now I hear that word “despise,” and I can’t help but cringe from it. Something tells me Maslow never found himself lost in a dark ocean, with thousands of miles of blackness in every direction. I find it hard to despise anyone in that situation.

I think for what is likely my last transmission, I choose to picture the face of my good friend Dr. James Charles. This is my swan song, James. Only fitting that this endling’s song should carry the name of a bird, after all.

I find myself in a predicament. I’m in disbelief. I find it hard to comprehend that Earth is truly empty. Well, there are animals, I’d imagine; Desmarais didn’t say anything about them. But even so, even if Earth is still filled with trees and wind and water and animals, I can’t help but feel she is empty without us. Empty and waiting. Does she wait for me to return? Is that what the Earth wants, its once begotten son to come home and start anew? Or does it hide in wait, shimmering blue in the darkness that surrounds it, so that it may kill me when I touch down, the way it did my brothers and sisters? Someone must have survived. But why haven’t they called to me?

I feel an obligation to return. There could be survivors trying to begin again. I could help them. The social nature of my existence calls to me, tells me I have a responsibility to my species. There could be men and women and maybe even children—who knows what has changed since I have left?—stranded on Mars or on the moon, waiting for me to help. Although, what help would I be? Once I touch down on the Earth, I am just as stranded as they are. I can’t return to the cosmos once I am grounded. I don’t have the resources, nor the ability to create them. To build a ship. I’m a biologist. I know life, not how to enact its ambitious desires.

If I return, I commit myself to an Earthly ending. Likely alone. I’ve been alone for so long, and it’s a long way home.

But if I continue on, that is committing to death. I have a sustainable ecosystem on this vessel, sure, and you yourself said it could last me longer than my voyage, but I’d rather die in a strange land than this metal tomb.

But to see it. To see what no one has ever seen. To step foot on untouched soil, to breathe foreign air into my alien lungs, to see as a sunrise the dying breath of an ancient star…it calls to me, James. There could be life there, too. I know—I know what the computers say. The chances of life at all are miniscule, of intelligent life, nil. But how else could we…I…know?

A piece of me wishes to die on the Earth with you, with my family, with everyone I’ve ever known. To be returned to the soil from whence I came. Another part longs to be deposited as fertilizer, as a seed, so that the invisible bacteria on my skin might have a chance at beginning the cycle again.

If only you were at the other end of this message to advise me. I can see LHN 1601 c now. Within minutes I will touch down on its gray surface. It is as icy and lost and unimportant as you described. I could use your advice. But I fear this message has no receiver. I sing a song that will never fall on comprehending ears.

I can whistle. Do you want to hear me whistle? Here, listen. Listen.

END TRANSMISSION

Luke Stephens of Rumney, New Hampshire, Earth, watched as the ITP Caravel slowly descended to the rocky, gray-blue surface of an unnamed moon, somewhere in the dark, icy depths of creation. His eyes were not the striking amber-hazel of his lineage, yet those plain, dull, dark brown eyes had seen the black edges of existence. His legs weren’t slim and fast, they would never carry him past the competition into a swarm of screaming supporters, yet he’d gone farther than any man had ever dreamed. His pursed lips couldn’t produce a triumphant imitation of brass and splendor, but he could imitate the final song of a lonely bird, when he wanted. A solo performance that should have been a duet—a chorus, an orchestra, a crescendo.

He was a biologist. Life was his specialty. And although he would never be the gifted engineer and pilot that the late Explorer Patricia Adams was, he knew enough to address the control panel of his vessel and alter the final destination, should he choose to.

  • Leah

    Holy……sh….

  • Susie

    This is incredible! Haunting, melancholic and (for me) an existential terror of the void.
    Mind-blowing.

  • Kari

    The most beautiful thing I’ve ever had the privilege to read.

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