Destiny's Path

 Celham knew going outside the space station alone was a bad idea. But with main power failing, he had no choice but to spacewalk and replace the transfer coupling on the main solar array. Celham shivered inside the EVA suit over the blind luck that they had a spare coupling. Unfortunately, having the replacement coupling was the easy part of the operation. Normally, such a repair would have involved three spacewalkers, two people inside the station controlling the power, and most of the planet-side ground control. The only thing he knew for certain that Mia inside the station and him were the only humans left alive.

The clouds around Brigham started to clear weeks ago but the surface of the planet looked dead. It was spring in the northern hemisphere but where there should have been a healthy green showing forests and grasslands was instead brown, black, and gray. Pretty much what you would expect after a protracted nuclear war along with Walau supervolcano being triggered which coated the entire planet in a death shroud.

Celham reached the panel housing the transfer coupling and quickly removed the cover. “Well,” he said to Mia over the radio, “Brigham civilization can claim at least one achievement over Earth and the rest of human-settled space.”

Mia said nothing directed but did grunt a barely audible response suggesting she was listening. “The histories say the nations of Earth fought two nuclear wars back before the Flourishing. But neither of those conflicts ever came close to driving humanity extinct.” Celham continued as he disconnected the cables running to the old coupling.

“It does seem to be the end for our species on this planet,” Mia said surprising Celham. Two years had passed since the Walau eruption and since then Mia didn't say much beyond the most basic communications. Mia held citizenship in the Southern League of City-States, a loose federation of old pirate kingdoms and republics for whom neutrality in geopolitics was the main pillar of their foreign policy. Located in the Ten-Thousand Islands region of the southern hemisphere ocean, the League had successfully avoided becoming entangled with any of Brigham's three power blocs..

What had finally pushed the Southern League of City-States into the global suicidal fire was the triggering of the Walau supervolcano by the narcissistic little bastard running that country. Walau always wanted to play in Brigham's big leagues of geopolitical games but never could be taken seriously. So as the recent world war raged, its Dear Leader became offended that Walau wasn't being asked to join any of the three major planetary alliances. Somehow Dear Leader got his hands on a megaton-level nuclear device and detonated the device in supervolcano's caldera.

The supervolcano was overdue for an eruption by several thousand Brigham-years and whether by design or dumb psychotic luck the weapon set it off. Walau's Dear Leader and the rest of that tiny nation was essentially vaporized in the space of an hour. Mia's family lived in the city-state that had the misfortune of bordering Walau. As the eruption continued for months it threw up enough material into the atmosphere to cause a planetary extinction event.

Civilization, already pushed beyond the breaking point by the rest of the nuclear war, didn't stand a chance as Brigham was encased in a death shroud of toxic dust and gas. The only survivors were the twenty-four people living in the experimental space station orbiting Brigham.

“Kill the power,” Celham said to Mia over the radio.

“Power disengaged,” Mia replied, “station now on batteries.”

Celham quickly pulled the old coupling out of its slot and inserted the new one. Incredibly, reconnecting the cables was easy and fast allowing Mia to bring the solar arrays back online. By that time the station's orbit had taken it to the nightside of Brigham bringing out the full radiance of the Milky Way. For Celham, the galaxy seemed to be taunting him with its beauty and mystery.

When Celham was a child, his grandfather had read the newly recovered histories to him of how humans left Earth to live among the stars and eventually come to settle their world. The recovered histories told of technologies like unmanned seedships that crossed the stars, of humans being encoded into computer memory, synthetic wombs, and massive machines that turned Brigham into a copy of Earth. All applied sciences that despite the tireless efforts of the best minds on Brigham was still closer to magic than practical applications.

But the recovered histories did offer numerous examples of technology that had accelerated the advancement of Brigham civilization. Most of the scientific knowledge went to the betterment of all humans, but like all technology, it had a darker side that unscrupulous men and women began using to gain and hold power.

Celham was silent as he hung in space wondering just where humanity's birth world might be located. The unmanned seedship that settled the planet had arrived over thirty-two hundred years earlier. The initial settlement had begun as planned with Artificial Intelligence guiding robots to gather local resources to build a safe outpost for the reconstituted human embryos even then growing in synthetic wombs. A few years later, the seedship AI then turned to introducing Earth plants and animals to the surface and oceans.

Given the engineering and replication technology available to the first humans on Brigham, it only took a century for the planet to become a copy of Earth. Even when the colony obtained a stable and healthy human population of sixty-thousand, the leaders expanded the number of synthetic wombs and continued to crank out thousands of babies, which like the first colonists were raised by robotic caregivers.

At that time the decision to keep the seedship wombs going was considered a no-brainer by the colony leaders. But it would eventually produce a schism that brought down the colonial government and cause a war that pushed the survivors into a deep dark age. Much to the chagrin of every one of the modern era who read the recovered histories, very little about the schism was explained. Compounding the mystery of those times further, nothing was ever mentioned about the fate of the seedship and the technology it housed.

“Celham, Mia said over the radio bringing him back to reality, “you need to get inside, the radio signal from the surface has returned.”

They met in the crew mess hall located in a section of the rotating torus. The artificial gravity supplied by the rotating torus was about one-third of the surface of Brigham. It was enough to prevent all the maladies associated with living in micro-gravity like bone and muscle loss. For the crew of the space station, it also allowed meals to be far more relaxing compared to trying to eat in the free-fall sections.

Mia had pulled up a map of one of the barren regions of the northern hemisphere on the wall monitor. Called the Utah Expanse, the area had been divided up in the modern era by the four nations that had existed before the war. Development had never advanced much beyond the coasts due to the extreme weather.

“The transmission is a data signal but it doesn't correspond with any scientific or military code,” Mia said while sitting at the nearby table. “I've tried to hail them with our communication array but we're either being ignored or they're simply not receiving,” she further said frustrated.

“You want to go down to the surface,” Celham said confirming what he already knew about what Mia wanted to do.

“The station is falling apart,” Mia said, “sure the areogarden is still viable but everything else is months away from failing. If we didn't have that transfer coupling we'd be heading down to the surface now.”

Neither talked about the other option the rest of the station crew pursued since the world had ended. As the months rolled by each crew member had surrendered to the hopelessness of a dead world. Only Celham and Mia had held on to any hope of a future, even with Brigham dying before their eyes.

This mysterious signal had first appeared as the clouds around Brigham started clearing. Mia and Celham had narrowed down its location to a remote valley thousands of Kilo-Steps from any known settlement. Mia had instantly wanted to use one of the remaining escape pods to find the signal figuring someone on the surface had survived.

Celham had talked her out of it saying that the ultraviolet radiation hitting the surface was still too strong and that the signal was probably from an automated military source. The truth of the matter was that Celham wanted to do something completely different.

The space station had originally been conceived as a way station for the manned exploration of Brigham's largest moon. As technology had progressed from the recovered histories, new telescopes built on Brigham had detected an artificial structure on the surface. A vast complex that looked like an abandoned city. What really raised the curiosity of the nations was that every twenty-years something from that location generated a visible light and radio signal that appeared to be aimed at Brigham's surface. It was an overwhelmingly accepted theory that the signal was saying, “Here I am, come see me.”

Mere months before the start of the world war the spacecraft that would take astronauts to the moon had been completed. Called the mothership, it had a tiny craft attached to its side that would be used to land on the moon.

“You can't go Celham.” Mia exclaimed upon hearing of his plan to use the mothership. “We're all that left, our only option is to return to the surface. The best bet for other survivors is that signal coming from the Utah Expanse.”

The two had never become lovers during their lonely exile in orbit. But neither Mia nor Celham could conceive of going their separate ways. Celham was emotionally distraught but since his childhood, he had dreamed of going to that distant outpost and maybe, reconnecting with that lost past of the colonial era and even discovering the fate of the rest of humanity.

Mia's secret desire was to be around children again, no matter how improbable that might seem. With conditions on the surface of Brigham improving every day, there was a real chance that the signal they were receiving was from a community of survivors.

Two weeks went by as both prepared for their individual fates. Celham had to wait for the moon and space station to be in the proper locations to launch the mothership and Mia wanted to wait until he was gone. She cried to herself as Celham pulled away from the station and fired the mothership's main engine.

With her path clear, Mia then boarded the escape pod, programmed the landing coordinates into the guidance system, and headed for the surface. Reentry was a nightmare all by itself with upper-atmosphere turbulence seemingly trying to exact revenge on one of the creatures that had so destroyed the world. Several times Mia feared the escape pod would break apart before reaching the surface. It didn't but the retros didn't fire properly and when the escape pod hit the surface Mia suffered a skull fracture and several broken bones even though she was wearing all the proper protective gear.

Unable to move, Mia drifted in and out of consciousness believing she would die before long. But at some point, the hatch was opened and a strange-looking group of men pulled her from the ruined craft. They didn't look quite right and spoke a bizarre language that was nothing like she had ever heard.

They loaded her on a vehicle that floated in the air. Pain medication hit Mia once she was onboard and her vision cleared allowing her to get a good look at her rescuers. The people surrounding her weren't really men, they seemed oddly intermediate between male and female. Even stranger, their hands felt like a combination of plastic and metal but moved with a steadiness and speed that no person could ever hope to emulate. Before she passed out, the thought occurred to Mia about a word mentioned in the recovered histories, a reference to mechanical beings called robots.

When Mia returned to consciousness she found herself laying in what had to be an incredibly advanced hospital bed. Mere seconds after opening her eyes, one of the robots appeared beside her bed.

“How do you feel?” it asked in her own native language. “Your injuries were extensive but we managed to repair everything.”

“Where am I,” was all Mia could say to the thing in front of her.

“You are in the main complex of the reestablished Colony-One Base. With your global war drawing down the Group Leader AI decided it was time to reemerge and recommence the Designers primary mission.” The robot said in a soothing voice that actually seemed musical.

“What mission are you talking about?” Mia asked feeling lost despite the obvious implications.

“The establishment of a successful human civilization on this planet.” The robot said in a tone that betrayed a bit of frustration. “The main settlement dome was completed mere months after the effective end of the war while the reconstituted embryos entered the artificial wombs the following week. That first batch of children are now over two-years-old.

Despite the protests of her robotic caregiver, Mia was taken to the nursery a few hours later. The children had never seen a human adult and were fearful when Mia was wheeled into their area. But it didn't take them long to rush into her lap and feel the warmth of her love.

Celham piloted the mothership into lunar orbit ten days after leaving the station. A day later, he boarded the landing craft for the trip down to the airless surface. Despite it all, he successfully landed the craft just outside the perimeter of the mysterious, ancient complex. Certain he was about to fulfill his destiny he climbed down the small ladder on the side of his craft and stepped onto the surface of another world.

Celham had difficulty walking on the lunar surface since the gravity was even less than that of the space station. But he slowly made his way to the nearest building and what looked like a door. The buildings were pitted with micro-meteorite impacts but all seemed structurally sound. What bothered Celham though was that while the windows of every building he could see were also intact, they were totally dark. Suggesting his lifespan would only be as long as his air supply lasted.

Stepping in front of a window, Celham leaned over trying to see inside despite the interference of the glass of his helmet and whatever clear material made up the ancient porthole. It was difficult to be sure, but there seemed to be a human skeleton slumped over some sort of control panel.

“Well, I guess the right choice would have been to go with Mia,” Celham said to himself, the dead person inside the complex, and the uncaring universe. With nothing left to lose, Celham walked over to what had to be an airlock door and began hitting what was obviously the controls beside it. Much to his surprise, after hitting the first button, the light in the nearest window came on and the airlock door began to open.

Having come so far, he stepped inside to see where his destiny would next take him. 

THE END

Author's notes:

1.)This story takes place in the same universe of several others I have written before. One day I'll link all of them together. More importantly, I'll correct all the various mistakes in canon and organize a better timeline.

2.)The first mention of the concept of seedships for came from a Arthur C. Clark novel called Songs of a Distant Earth. Unmanned seedships get around the near impossibility of building functional starships that could travel between the stars and establish human colonies on planets in other star systems. Strictly speaking seedships have no life support systems and either carry frozen embryos or human DNA recorded in computer memory. Upon arrival at the destination, the embryos would be thawed, or in the case of the encoded DNA, reconstructed and grown in artificial wombs.

3.)At first I was going to have the seedship that colonized the planet Brigham be sponsored by the Mormon Church. In that Arthur C. Clarke novel I mentioned, he had several religions and even cultures send out such seedships in hopes of preserving their beliefs or way of life.