Moment of Extinction

MAN ON EARTH CLUB

  By Paul R. Hardy

  Copyright 2012 Paul R. Hardy

  Cover image copyright Sdecoret | Dreamstime.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  GRAINGER STATION: Halo Orbit, Earth-Moon L1 Point

  HD y272.m9.w3.d1

  The official’s voice wavers. “I regret to inform you…”

  Hundreds of survivors look back at the man from the Interversal Union. They’re crowded into one of the station’s quarantine halls and yet they still don’t fill the space, for they are already so few in number. Many of them have been floated in on medical chairs, close to death. All of them are sick.

  “I regret to… I have to inform you…” The official’s hand shakes as he tries to read the announcement from a pad. “That the Yenoma species, that we, we cannot…” He puts the pad aside and looks out at them with tears in his eyes. “We can’t save you. There isn’t enough time. I’m sorry.”

  Hope dies on the faces of the remaining three hundred and seventy-six Yenoma. Some simply sit down and put their heads in their hands. Many weep. The medical and counselling staff who look after them are just as shocked, and do what little they can to comfort the last survivors of a dead world. At the front of the crowd, a father grips his young son’s hand tighter and tries to hold back the grief as the boy looks up at him, not understanding. Beside the man from the Interversal Union, an elderly woman in a floating chair scrabbles at a button on the armrest, and an artificial voice comes out, speaking the wrong accent.

  “I was told last night,” says Oimelia Threnos, last surviving head of state from her species. Her eyelids droop, and her head is strapped to the chair to prevent it falling forward: a symptom of what’s killing her. “There’s nothing they can do. There aren’t enough of us for the tests and there isn’t enough time before we’re all gone.” And though her eyelids droop, she still looks keenly out from behind them, and each person in the hall feels she looks at them alone.

  This is not the first time she has had to make such an announcement.

  “But they said they could do something–” starts one of the older men in the group, rising up from a chair, hands trembling on a stick.

  “They said they’d try, Ekhren,” says Oimelia. “Well, they tried. And they failed.”

  The official speaks up: “We have, uh, the report from the neurological group if you want to see it…”

  But Ekhren won’t have it. “They promised us!“ he cries.

  “They promised us nothing,” she says. “Only that they’d make the attempt.” Ekhren looks about the room for support; he finds eyes turned away from him, and sits down again in disgust. Oimelia looks out at the others. “We knew this might happen. They never once lied to us. They did all they could.”

  She looks up at the official, who casts his eyes down. “Thank you,” she says. “From all of us.” He wipes away a tear.

  She looks back out at the crowd. “But we’re all going to die. It’s going to be soon. It’s going to be painful. They’ll make it as easy for us as they can, but this is it. In a week or a month or however long it takes, we will be extinct.”

  “Daddy?” asks the little boy. “What’s extinct?” The man looks up at Oimelia, not knowing what to do. Much of the crowd looks his way; among all of them, there is only one child, only one of them who does not understand.

  “Abeiron, you’d better tell him what the word means,” says Oimelia.

  The father nods, and takes the boy to a corner away from the others. He crouches down beside him, and the boy knows it must be serious, for adults don’t do this unless something is terribly wrong. “It’s… it’s like this, Mel. You remember when I told you that lots of people were going away?” The boy nods. “Well, we’re going away as well.”

  The boy looks baffled. “Want to talk to mum.”

  “She’s already gone, Mel.”

  “I want mummy!” The boy will not be soothed, and he will not meet his father’s eyes. Abeiron sighs and closes his own.

  Oimelia turns to the crowd once more. “There’s one bit of good news. They’re going to let us pass on souls again.” A wave of whispers sweeps through the crowd. “No more True Death. Not until the very last. We’ll all have someone to carry our soul to the end.”

  Abeiron lifts his head, and something about his face is different. Lines of worry are gone, the muscles beneath the skin no longer tense. “Hey there, Mel,” he says. It’s still his voice, but used by someone else: someone overjoyed to see the boy after a long absence.

  “Mummy!” cries Mel, and clasps on tightly as his mother holds him with his father’s arms.

  “Shh,” she says. “We’ll be together when it happens.”

  “We should decide what we want to do with the time we have left,” says Oimelia. She looks out of the windows, beyond the idle ships waiting to save a species that barely exists any more, to the blue and white crescent in the distance. Not their homeworld: that is dead and gone. But the parallel world called Hub will do.

  “You know, I haven’t seen the ocean in years. Not one that was clean. I’d like to see that, before we’re all gone.”

  One by one, they come forward and pledge that they will do that for her.

  TRANSIT VESSEL AURORA: En Route to Geostationary Orbit

  HD y272.m9.w3.d3

  Oimelia Threnos returns to her senses. She sees a kindly-faced counsellor’s concern, and the growing disc of the world outside a small window: they must already be on their way. Then she looks down at her hands and sees they belong to a man.

  “Well,” she says, her voice making Abeiron’s male tones seem thinner and sharper. “I wondered what that would be like.”

  “I’m sorry,” says the counsellor. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Dying,” says Oimelia.

  “Oh,” says the counsellor, who still finds herself surprised at moments like this. The Yenoma are unique among all the parallel worlds contacted by the Interversal Union. Oimelia is dead, but her soul lives on; or rather, her personality has been imprinted within the brain of Abeiron, her former aide, who now carries the burden not just of those he has absorbed, but of those that Oimelia herself carried.

  “Is that Oimelia?” asks the counsellor.

  “Of course it is. And who are you?”

  “My name’s Asha. I’m with the Refugee Service. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “No, you wouldn’t be. What’s all this about?”

  “I was talking to Abeiron about his son.”

  “Ah. Yes. How is the boy?”

  “He won’t talk to anyone except his mother.”

  Oimelia nodded. “I kept his father from him. I won’t apologise for that. I needed him. I had too much work to do.”

  “Mel doesn’t really know him.”

  “His mother’s still here.”

  “His mother’s dead.”

  A brief smile twitches on the man’s lips. “Dead, yes. But not gone.” Oimelia taps the side of Abeiron’s head. “She’s in here, with us. She’s…”

  Oimelia gasps. The tap against the head turns into a palm massaging Abeiron’s temple. “She’s...” Abeiron’s hand falls away and his eyes stare into space.

  “Oimelia?” says Asha. No answer comes. “Abeiron?”

  His eyes flick back on her, then around the room. Another voice answers. “Mel? Where are you?” And then pain comes. “Oh…”

  “Is that Elpetha…?” asks Asha.

  “Yes…” says Mel’s mother as she puts her husband’s head in hi
s hands. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Asha. I’m a counsellor. Can we talk about your son? Is that okay?”

  “Leave him alone.”

  “I only–”

  “It’s nothing to do with you!” She groans and rubs Abeiron’s temples.

  “Elpetha, do you really want him to go through this? He hasn’t taken on any other minds yet. He doesn’t have to–”

  She shoots a look back up at Asha. “I won’t leave him!”

  Asha looks back with sad eyes. “He doesn’t have to die.”

  Elpetha looks confused for a moment. “Die? He… what?” Then she grits Abeiron’s teeth as another spike of pain hits them.

  Another voice comes through his teeth. “I died!” The accent is strange, from another part of the Yenoman homeworld. “The bombs fell and I burned!”

  Abeiron’s head wrenches to one side. Another voice comes. “We should have been safe… no air in the bunker… I took all their souls and it hurts…”

  His head wrenches in the opposite direction. “I buried them – seven little graves… I buried all my grandchildren…”

  Wrench. “My little girl’s blind! She saw the flash! Someone help her!”

  Wrench. “Five pregnancies and five stillbirths! I’m cursed, I’m cursed!”

  Asha calls for help, and two medics rush in to give Abeiron a shot of nerve stabiliser. In normal times, the Yenoma can integrate a new mind safely over a period of a few months, so that the dead are never truly lost. But ever since the missiles delivered their megatons across the Yenoman homeworld, too many have died too quickly. There isn’t enough space in the survivors’ heads for all those who have perished from radiation sickness, cancer, starvation and disease. What was already a terrible disaster that killed half their species is now leading to their extinction.

  Abeiron comes back to himself as the medics make him comfortable on the couch. His eyelids tremble but he sees Asha there, still sympathetic, still wanting to help. “You should get some rest,” she says.

  He answers with his own voice: “I can’t take him away from his mother… I can’t…”

  “There’s still time,” she says, squeezing his hand.

  IHKKIKIT STATION: Geostationary Orbit

  HD y272.m9.w3.d4

  Few people stay long at Ihkkikit Station, and the joke is that it’s because no one can pronounce the name. It’s usually referred to as ‘The Counterweight’ instead: the small asteroid at the end of the Agvarterheer Column, itself known to everyone on Hub as ‘The Lift’. It’s a transit station for people heading up or down, to Grainger or Agvarterheer Port on the surface, or to the smaller stations in orbit. But the Refugee Service of the Interversal Union still keeps a mass of facilities here, carved out of asteroid rock, enough to house a million people during an evacuation from a dying world if there’s not enough space on the surface of Hub, or if the species being saved from an apocalypse is so used to living in orbit that they can go no closer to the surface.

  Today, the Yenoma stand in a hall buttressed by stone columns against the artificial gravity, holding a memorial service for all those who died on the way here. A hundred and forty-one have passed away; the oldest, sickest, and the most burdened with souls.

  Every last one of the dead is here, attending the service.

  There are two kinds of death among the Yenoma. The True Death is the tragedy of those who die with their souls trapped inside their skulls; they are usually interred in the earth, and most religions on the Yenoman homeworld required that they be preserved until the souls could finally pass on. But the Body’s Death is different. Those whose souls have been taken on by another are cremated after addressing their loved ones from the bodies they now dwell within. The memorial is supposed to be a celebration of life, not a funeral.

  No one has died the True Death since Grainger Station, but nevertheless the congregation is sombre and quiet. Too many caskets are stacked before them as a young woman walks to the front to speak: “I carry the voice of Ekhren Stassos. In time, his voice will become mine. But today he speaks for his own.”

  Her eyes flicker and her left hand shakes. Then she snaps back to reality, and another mind looks out over the crowd, realising that this is a memorial, and gracious words of comfort and thanks are expected.

  Her face screws up with an anger beyond her years.

  “It’s all bullshit,” says the elderly voice of Ekhren Stassos, trembling from a young throat. The woman’s left hand keeps shaking. “Passing souls like this, when we’re all going to be dead in a week! We should just die and be done with it. There’s no life eternal! It’s all a lie! Passing souls… it’s bullshit! You should have let me die!”

  A counsellor takes a step forward, concerned. Dozens of faces among the congregation look shocked, while others cannot meet Ekhren’s eyes.

  “Ekhren!” hisses Abeiron with a tone that belongs to Elpetha: scolding as she holds her son close, her husband’s hands shaking with a tremor they picked up after taking on two more souls. Ekhren looks down and sees the boy looking confused and scared. He looks ashamed for a moment, but he’s too angry for it to last long.

  “You should have let me die,” he says to them all, and propels his host’s body away to the dark corners of the hall.

  Mel looks up at Elpetha. “Are we going to die?” he asks.

  “In the end,” says his mother, seeing the tremor in Abeiron’s hands growing worse.

  “Will we get eternal life after?”

  “I… I… I think so.” She grips the armrests of her chair to steady her husband’s trembling hands.

  “Will you be there?”

  Abeiron gasps as his mind returns. He lets go of the chair, his knuckles still white.

  “Mummy?” asks Mel.

  Abeiron looks down at his son. “She’s gone. It’s okay. She’ll come back.”

  But Mel turns away, upset. Abeiron looks up and sees Asha, waiting by the side of the makeshift temple. She doesn’t have to say anything: the invitation and offer of help is clear on her face.

  Eyes screwed up with tears, he shakes his head and puts a shaky hand on his son’s shoulder. Mel looks back up at him with hurting, needful eyes.

  “We’ll all be together. Your mother as well.”

  EVACUATION CAR: Agvarterheer Column, 28,000km above sea level

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  An evacuation car is designed to carry up to three thousand evacuees at a time, accompanied by hundreds of medical staff, counsellors and sometimes security guards. During a normal evacuation from a doomed world, they’re often hard pressed to cope with all the refugees from nuclear war, asteroid strikes, environmental disaster or worse.

  On this journey, there are fewer than two hundred survivors, and less with each passing hour.

  Abeiron walks down halls and corridors, meeting more of the Refugee Service staff than his own people. He finds he needs a stick to walk with from time to time; there are tremors in his legs now that come and go. But he rarely has to travel any great distance. The Yenoma have been assigned quarters together, so that they will never be far from each other in their final moments.

  A chime comes from Abeiron’s wrist; he looks at the device secured there, which gives him a room and deck number: C872. He rushes as fast as he can on the stick to the gravity lift and rides it down two decks, then makes a hobbling rush to the room as the door swishes open. He and a few others have been granted access to all the quarters of the Yenoma, so that someone will be there when the time comes.

  A man and a woman are here, and the place is a wreck; everything that’s not welded to the wall or floor is overturned or broken. They’ve kept the window opaque, like many who cannot bear the view outside. The lights are low, concealing some of the cracked and smashed hypo-applicators they’ve been using to make the last days more bearable.

  But it’s over for them. The woman sits wrapped in a sheet, shaking with the naked body of her lover in her lap and tears streaming down her face. r />
  “I took him,” she says, the words coming out in stutters. She can barely keep control of herself, her teeth chattering and eyes unable to fix on anything. “He told me not to but I took him…”

  “I know,” says Abeiron, kneeling with her and putting his stick to one side. “It’s okay. Are you ready?”

  “No… I don’t… what’s the point?” Abeiron recognises her: the woman who carries the soul of Ekhren Stassos.

  “So we can go together,” says Abeiron.

  She clutches at him, though her hands have no strength. She’s young; far too young to take on so many souls.

  “Together? All together?”

  “None of us should be alone when it happens.”

  “All go together…”

  “Yes. Are you ready?”

  “I… I…” she has to struggle to raise her head up, and fix her eyes on his. “All together?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When you go… when you… when it happens to you…”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you pass us to your boy?”

  Abeiron pulls back. “What?”

  “It will be… all of us… yes? No? I don’t…”

  She’s losing control, and will soon be gone, yet she pleads with eyes that can barely hold their gaze. Abeiron still pauses, not wanting to confront her last question.

  Until he remembers his duty.

  “Are you ready?” he asks.

  She manages a nod. Abeiron presses his temple to hers, and the hematite crystal clusters in their heads tremble as they sense the magnetic field of the other. Abeiron remembers for a moment how it was with Elpetha when they shared their love, heads locked together, sensing the delight in each other’s skin.

  And then the rush of a mind – of thousands of minds – flooding into his own hits him, and washes the memory pale.

  EVACUATION CAR: Agvarterheer Column, 12,000km above sea level

  HD y272.m9.w4.d1

  “What will it be like for him?”

  Abeiron has lost the use of his legs, but is still stronger than most of the others. As Oimelia’s aide, he was in a protected occupation for most of the crisis, and required to take only the lightest burden of souls. Now, by common consent, he will be the last – or the last but one.

  “He’ll have whatever he needs,” she said.

  “I mean… what would it be like? To be alone like that?”

  Asha pauses for a moment. “It won’t be easy. It’s hard for every refugee.”

  “Most refugees aren’t the only ones.”

  “No. But he’s still very young. That’ll make it easier on him in the long run. He’ll have a hard time to begin with, but he’ll adapt.”

  “And forget us.”

  “No. He’ll remember. But the pain will fade. He’ll have as much help as he needs.”

  “From people like