We had gathered in Lore’s chamber, in a circle of folding chairs set in the blue glow of Lore’s aquarium. I was somewhere in the back, facing the glass. I glanced up from the faces of my co-workers and saw Lore float silently in the water, eyes hidden behind a visor, as they always were. My brother, Alex, sat closest to Lore. He sat in reverse, arms folded over the back of his chair, chin rested on his arms. He stared at me, at all of us.

Earth was nearly out of time. Orbital bombardment by the invaders had collapsed our biosphere and the stopgap measures to protect the remnants of humanity had begun to fail. Crews of pilots and their trans-atmospheric shuttles had long prepared to evacuate the last humans from Earth. However, the thirteen arkitects, chief authorities on the Ark’s human re-build, hadn’t gathered to discuss the evacuation. It was for what came after.

“I would like you all to reconsider,” Alex said as he straightened his back. He gripped the top of his chair.

The arkitects around the circle, sitting in or standing near their chairs, wore white lab coats. Most of us were experts in a scientific field, so we picked clothing that fit the description of a ‘scientist,’ but the truth was were just role-playing. Proper society had long collapsed and those civilian leaders that remained were figureheads. The fate of the human race hinged on whatever decisions we made. We should have worn suits, because in those final years we’d become Earth’s last politicians.

“We already voted,” I said to him. “Are you going to argue with the result?”

Alex frowned at me. “The storm has exceeded our worst predictions,” he said. “With Lore’s assistance, we’ve determined that it will obliterate our final refuge in the Andes. We can’t support all mankind aboard the Ark for long. Departure Day will have to come soon.”

“No one disagrees with that,” Ziegler said. She was the cunning-looking woman to my right, a German engineer around my age. Years ago, she had earned her place among the arkitects with a workable theory for Lore’s stasis field, what she called the Ziegler Field. Therefore, her primary concerns related to the operation of the stasis pods.

“What you propose is indefinite incarceration,” she continued. “Is an eternity in stasis sleep any different from the death of us all?”

A prune beside Alex appeared to stir from his seat. It was Harold Smith—a real professor from before the war—and the oldest among us. His position was earned by reverse engineering Lore’s brain imaging functions and providing the basis for the inter-space simulation system. He licked his dry lips, glanced up at my brother, then folded his hands over his cane.

“What is life, but indefinite incarceration of the soul in the body,” he said slowly.

A fire-eyed woman on the right side of the circle piped up. “Well of course you don’t give a damn!” Lavoie shouted with an upturned hand, gestured at the decrepit heap across from her. “You’re going to die after we reach the next world anyway!”

Arkitects around the circle started arguing, one side to the other. My brother restored order by clapping his hands. “I understand your objections,” Alex said to me and the others of my faction. “The colonizers have spoken, the vote stands; however, I will remind you why we virtualists feel so strongly.

“Even if we traverse space and reach a habitable planet, it’s uncertain whether the 10,000 that remain will be enough to make a new world anything like Earth. Many of us are sick; weakened by malnutrition, poisonous air, and the Wasting that the aliens brought. It is apparent to us that humanity’s greatest chance for survival is not to escape, but to retreat into the virtual space we’ve made. Ark World is a perfect environment for humans, a space tailorable to every need. It could be indistinguishable from reality, except that there would be no true death or severe illness, wasting or otherwise.”

“And no true life,” I said, arms folded, back straight in my chair. “We can’t have kids in the game, Alex. Lore confirmed whatever off-spring are produced in the simulation are just AI approximates of humans: NPCs. Our species has been reduced to 10,000, and that’s where we would remain, for eternity. What difference is there from creating a museum of ourselves? A tomb filled with holograms of people that once were.” Tears pricked in my eyes. I brushed them away with my hand, scowled at my brother. “A world that cannot change will not be a home for humans.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Alex had always been smarter than me, stronger than me. As a kid he would finish first on every test, every competition; if it weren’t for video games, I’d never win. Despite that, I didn’t resent him. He carried around his mantle of superiority, but he also treated me warmly. Even then, on opposite sides of the debate, he looked at me with compassion and a shallow smile. It was as if he was saying ‘oh, poor thing. My stupid sister.’

And that, made me a little mad.

“It’s because Ark World can’t change, that it’s safe for humans,” Alex said. “It’s because we lack the power to change the Earth now that it’s so dangerous to be alive. In a system where we control all the variables—assume ultimate power over reality—what’s left of humanity will flourish. I don’t think mankind should risk another alien attack or suffer a plague for which there is no cure. In the virtual world, all humans will be like… gods. We will bow for nothing, want for nothing, and achieve all parts of a utopia at once: Perfect health, perfect equality, and everlasting peace.”

I stood from my chair; hands stiff at my side. “We colonizers,” I began, and spoke as the leader that I was: the first member of the colonizers, first among seven of Earth’s most powerful men and women. “We believe that although there will be more pain in the future, it would be immoral to turn our backs on our mortality and deny a future for our progeny. So many billions died on Earth, we cannot lock ourselves away and refuse ourselves the basic right to prosper.”

“Even if that would bring hunger?” Alex asked. “Our world was not so rich to provide food for all those billions.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Even if it would bring war between ourselves? We weren’t so enlightened—so united, then—that we could have resisted the aliens together. They picked us apart, before the Alliance, and if we spread again, we’d fracture. We’d be vulnerable again.”

“Even so,” I said.

“And if we suffered a new disease on this colony world of yours, at just ten-thousand strong, we could be wiped out in less than a month! There’s no guarantee that our farming techniques will apply there. There’s no guarantee that our habitation modules will survive there! Even if we take every precaution, we can’t know all the variables before we arrive, and by then it could be too late.”

I looked at Alex. He was a calm, collected man. He was cool and strong, like a superhero, and he was arrogant, because he knew he was great. Through his skills he had contributed the most to modifying the Ark for humanity. He was so indispensable to departure that he had become the informal leader of mankind. He coined the word ‘arkitect’ and transformed us from designers and philosophers to masters of the human race. I was just his sister.

That I was the first to discover Lore, or the one to create Ghost, was immaterial. These things happened to me by accident, or even my own clumsiness. My place among the arkitects was largely by Alex’s own clout. That I led brilliant men and women was because I was Alex’s sister. That we held a vote at all was because he wanted to be fair to me, above all others. I was not a cool-headed genius, I was a stubborn woman, easily moved to tears. Had he wished it, he could have dropped the role-play of democracy and had his own way.

He looked angry with me, exasperated that I and the rest would resist his peerless logic. I thought that despite his personal feelings, he would stand by his word and allow a conditional release from stasis sleep. I believed in him.

“Everything you said could be true, Alex,” I said, clutched my lab coat in my hand. “But we believe that humanity, for all its many faults, only came so far because of that pain. The virtues and things we hold dear are only so precious because of what we’ve suffered. The colonizers believe that this is not our last act, that humanity can still grow and become greater. We believe that if we cannot change in the virtual world, then we cannot become the best version of ourselves. The future ascendance of all humankind is what we want to see. A future for us in the real universe.”

My brother rubbed the bridge of his nose, paced before Lore’s aquarium. He huffed to himself, vented through his nose, and returned to a spot beside his chair. He looked at me with sympathy, and I trusted him.

“The vote stands,” he said with a thin smile. “We’ll see what the new world looks like soon enough.”

Alex and I both wanted the best for humanity and in the end, it may have been semantics whether we were in a real world or a virtual one. Whether or not we could ‘grow’ in one world vs. the other was something the arkitects could have debated endlessly. Earth’s deterioration was why we had to make our choice, whether to stay in the stasis pods or leave them for a habitable planet. I thought Alex would see that we were all on the same side.

I really believed that.