Happy Annihilation Day! We’re older than we’ve ever been. Twenty-four! Well, maybe the original Kodiaks and Ambroses made it to old age before human civ ended. But we’re certainly the oldest clones the ship has produced.
I’m recording video of us to the ship’s computer, in case you want to know what you’ll look like someday. I hope OS doesn’t delete it. In its current mindset, Idon’t think it will. Now that it doesn’t need to lie to us, it’s really not the enemy it once was. It’s been defanged.
You know what? All these carefully balanced and portioned-out meals will work very well for you. But it turns out that seventeen-year-old Kodiak has a much higher metabolism than the twenty-four-year-old one. It’s hard to imagine, but that washboard body you’re around right now has a tendency toward puffiness. He’s cut his rations down by a third, trying to get back in shape. I tell him not to worry about it, but he insists. I find Fat Kodiak just as sexy as the old one, by the way, so you probably will, too. A little extra bubble to the butt, if you know what I mean.
This life? It feels surprisingly complete. There was some pain, but we’ve managed to start looking at our ship like a homestead on the frontier. Like a smaller version of how your exoplanet will feel?
Love,
Ambrose #13
May 1, 18301 Common Era
(1 task left—we’re not going to test OS by going down to 0)
Happy Annihilation Day! Big updates of the year: radio signals from Earth have a clear path to us again,so our transmitter started receiving old Earth news. Some pockets of humans must have survived the worst of the war’s devastation, because radio programs were back.
There was one mention of the spacefarers sent to settle the exoplanet, as a trivia item on a quiz show. Then we were never mentioned again. OS searched all the bands. This radio wave had traveled a long way to get to us, so it represented many thousands of years post-launch. We’d been forgotten, lost in the noise of the war between Dimokratía and Fédération.
There is no mission control anymore. There is just you. No one will know if you succeed or fail. No one will notice your landing day.
This lifetime is yours to make what you will of it.
Love,
Ambrose #13
May 1, 18303 Common Era
(1 task left)
Happy Annihilation Day! We’re thirty-seven now, how about that?! I honestly didn’t think we’d survive this long. Kodiak has a thyroid tumor that I had to learn how to remove, but he’s healing well, considering. Rover makes a surprisingly good nurse.
Update from Earth’s radio history (I’m recording the transmissions to OS’s storage, by the way, so you can peruse them yourself): shortly after I recorded the last letter to you, there was another burst of chatter, all about an oncoming asteroid. They scrambled a ship to intercept it, but it must not have succeeded. There was a huge spike in radio signal from Earth, but not communication. The sort that the sun emits. The sort released by a giant explosion.
There were no more transmissions from Earth, not ever again.
You’re all there is.
Love,
Ambrose #13
May 1, 18304 Common Era
(1 task left)
Happy Annihilation Day! Here’s this year’s surprise: we’ve begun to garden. We harvested an asteroid, and before we deposited it in the engine for propulsion, Kodiak noticed what looked like a little rust-colored leafy thing in the debris. Frozen solid, poor little sprout from the beyond. He carefully chipped it out and dropped it in some water. It seemed reasonable to think that even an alien plant would want water. Thiswas all in a sealed containment tank, of course.
It’s turned into a little moss, not spreading much, but digging tendrils into the bottom of the tank. I can only assume that it will die soon, but the truth is unmistakable. We’ve encountered the first extraterrestrial.
This might not be the little green Martian humans always imagined, but there is life out there! It gives me hope for the mission, for what you’ll find on the exoplanet. When the plant dies, I’ll press it flat and save it so you can see it. Maybe it can live with you on the exoplanet, this wayfarer on the open ocean of space, pulled from the drink by two men in love.
Love,
Ambrose #13
June 11, 18304 Common Era
