I run my fingers through nonexistent sand, hang my head and bask. Eventually, I look up and see her—Mother. She’s walking along the beach, dressed incongruously enough in her usual avatar clothing, a business suit and sandals. I watch her approach, her smile frozen until she reaches me. Then the avatar breaks into recorded motion as the reel begins.
“Darling. My darling Ambrose,” she says.
My breathing hitches, coming out in a sort of hiccuping gasp.
“I know you haven’t been gone so long,” she continues, “but it feels like forever. I was so sorry to hear about the solar storms. They won’t be going away anytime soon. But I’ll continue to send messages like this, updating you on what we know. I hope you send me messages back. I know you will, darling.
“We’ve continued to run through simulations of what might have happened to your sister. One thing hasn’t changed: in the majority of all outcomes, she’s no longer alive. If only the Titan camp hadn’t gone dark so soon after she arrived, then we’d know that she at least had life support set up. Of course, you and I both know that if anyone could figure out how to survive on a frozen moon with a minimal atmosphere, it’s our Minerva. My heart is with her, and with you, every day. You two are my crowning joy.”
Her words might be over the top, but I believe them. Mother is cold, but also totally devoted. She loves Minerva and me as much as she loves anyone. She’s also incredibly ambitious, and her love for us merges with her love for the family dynasty. It’s weirdly reassuring: when adoration is selfish, it’s not going anywhere.
Back when I was in the process of ghosting on Sri, they told me that I was a scientist about the heart. It wasn’t a compliment.
“Mom,” I say, even though she can’t hear me. “I missyou.” I say it quietly, because it’s not exactly a world-class spacefarer thing to say.
The reel pauses while I speak, Mom’s lip caught quirking in mid-syllable. Once I shut up, the reel continues. “I need you to be strong, darling, stronger than any person should ever be expected to be. That’s why you were chosen. You’re expertly trained in the procedures of space travel, of course, but you also have a high awareness of your feelings. You’ve examined your own life more than most people your age have. I assume you’re working alongside the Dimokratía spacefarer. Pause this if he’s in the room.”
Now it’s getting interesting. My skin pricks with tension as I wait a few beats of silence. From somewhere back in time, recorded-Mother scans through her notifications on her bracelet, then continues. “We know very little about him, unfortunately. We had to work hard even to get his name. Both countries’ space agencies examined the ship together, and there are no hidden weapons on board. He might not be the special friend I’d choose for you, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be a strong ally all the same. Your goals are aligned, after all—investigate Titan, rescue Minerva if you can, report back. He’s motivated more by bringing prestige to Dimokratía and keeping up with Fédération, but that shouldn’t affect his performance.”
A cloud passes before the sun, momentarily shadowingmy mother’s digitized face. She looks left, where a figure approaches along the beach. It’s Minerva, all legs and arms and swagger. She stands next to my mom and looks at me, smiling, hand cocked on her hip, like a video game character. “I found this old reel profile uplink Minerva created, where the whole point is to show off how good you look to your friends. Anyway, I figured you hadn’t seen it before, and might appreciate the reminder of who you’re heading to save. Perhaps save. Lords willing. I’ll leave off here, darling, and wait for your response. I love you.”
I ask OS to start recording my answer right away, but the moment the red light is blinking, I blank. My heart is spinning, and I’m not sure what feeling will be faceup when it lands. Relief, resolve, wistfulness, hopelessness, helplessness, despair. Whatever it is, I’m not ready to send my recorded-for-all-time emotions beaming across the solar system for billions of people on Earth to scrutinize.
Instead, I search through the ship’s memory for old reels of Minerva.
Once in a while, Mom had our surrogates pull her children from our automated schooling sessions to go on a trip. We never had warning—when and where we could go depended on weather patterns and the crime map, both of which could change in a flash—but I remember one outing when my siblings and I suddenly left the walled city and headed to the mountains with an armed escort of warbots.After so much time inside, being under an open sky felt like falling upward.
My siblings slunk back to the vehicle as soon as they could, hungry for the familiarity of their computer lessons, but I stayed on the mount with Minerva, hugging myself to her. She pointed out the ruins of abandoned cities, the debris-clogged seashore that was once high land. “Maybe we could have stopped this, maybe we could have held on to the species we’ve lost, maybe we could have prevented the polycarb seas. But it doesn’t matter now.”
While Minerva spoke, our warbot protector wheeled and pivoted, scanning for bandits. It was bulletproof and heavily loaded, capable of 120 rounds a minute. If it was restrained or captured, it would detonate, killing hundreds. Thirty Cusk warbots on their own took back Egypt and ended the Third World War, and the Fourth World War was fought over who would control the warbots that eventually won World War Five. Military contracts for warbots were the origin of my family’s wealth. To this day, every warbot ships with “Cusk” printed across its murderous head.
They bear a healthy family resemblance to Rover.
Minerva pointed to the spaceport in the distance, to the Cusk walled compound. “That’s why Mom’s building theEndeavor. To bring a human crew beyond here, to exoplanets where humans might live if Earth becomes uninhabitable.”
“Exoplanets,” I said, savoring the word. “Those are far away, right?” I snaked my hand into hers and drew as close as I could. I can’t smell it in the reel, but she had a popular skin fragrance mod installed that year. Cannelle douce.Sweet cinnamon.
“Very far away. There are closer possibilities, like Saturn’s moon Titan, but the best places for people like us to live would take many thousands of years to reach.”
“That’s longer than you’d be alive.”
“And you, too,” she said. “We’re working on strategies to get around that, though.”
I didn’t say anything. Every kid knew that cryostasis was proving impossible—no one can reanimate a mammal that’s been killed, and turns out it’s impossible to be frozen without dying in the process. The difficulties went beyond that, though. No biosphere experiments had established that we could make a ship of any reasonable size that could host an ecosystem stable enough to grow food. And no ship could launch with enough food for a human crew to survive on for thousands of years.
“In the meantime,” Minerva continued, “I think I might just go to Titan.”
I remember wanting to have something smart to say back to Minerva. I remember wanting her to admire me. But I was just a kid, so the best I could do was hug her. Five years later, and I’ve started thinking it’s the best any personcan do in most situations.
“Actually, Ambrose, Iamgoing to Titan. It’s going to be announced tomorrow. I wanted you to be the first to know, because you’ll be the one I’ll miss the most.”
“Minnie,” I said, hiding my tears by burying my face into her side. That was my name for her—I’d started when I was little, and was surprised she let me continue now that I was almost a teenager. “You can’t leave me.”
“I’ll be back for my little brother,” she whispered. “I promise you I’ll be back.”
“I know you will,” I murmured. “But I’ll miss you so much.”
She turned quiet, so I leaned back to see her face. I was shocked to find tears in her eyes, too. I’d never seen her sad. She held up her hand to shield me. “I’m scared, Ambrose.”
