The Robot Chronicles Page 20

  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,” sh
e 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. Everyo
ne 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.”