The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.
[...]
The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
He rolls up his sleeves and uses force.
-Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu, from a translation by S. Mitchell
#
Estimated oxygen time: 24:01:03
I stood in the airlock, waiting. The smell of plastic was strong inside the suit made me feel like I was wrapped in nylon. I got why the residents of Last Day Town called them bags.
The sound of my own breathing loud in my ears, I looked at my visor display. The airlock wouldn’t have opened if I had even one second less than twenty-four hours, so they had to give me some extra, and though I had no more anger in me for being thrown out, for being murdered, that extra minute somehow managed to infuriate me. Why one and not five? Why not an hour? My nose was itching already.
The airlock operator sat behind a reinforced pane of glass. He seemed sick: his skin was oddly colored, his neck so thin the hinges of his jaw were protruding. His grey beard, though, was neatly trimmed. He didn’t look at me at all, just stared at the screen while I stared at him, daring him to look back. I had a feeling he wouldn’t look, no matter what I did. Would I have, in his place?
He sighed deeply, his shoulders sinking, and made a motion I couldn’t see, on some control panel—pressing a button, maybe, or flicking a safety switch. The doors opened, and I felt a gentle push from below—the thrust of the wisp of air left in the airlock, leaving—that sent me up and away. I found myself anticipating the welcoming committee, wondering how they would react after I told them I already knew. Already understood. There wasn’t much I could do for these people. To surprise, to amuse, even if it was something so inconsequential; it suddenly seemed very important.
I was out again, floating in the darkness. My eyes hadn’t yet adjusted, or perhaps I’d just forgotten how little light there was out here. As if in response to my thoughts, a large asteroid rose slowly above the horizon, reflecting sunlight over the rocky cliffs like a faint sunrise.
“Diocletian?” I called, as I floated one, two, three meters above the rocky terrain. No one answered. When I finally rotated to look at the rock beneath me, I saw no welcoming committee. There were, however, dozens of bodies in the crater, helmets and limbs broken, suits slashed open.
Had I been in shock this entire time? Repressing what was obvious: that the lines were dead, and Last Day Town with them? I’d somehow managed not to think about how I was going to die here—a delicate suspension of disbelief, now broken
"Is anyone here?” I asked the darkness, and then, quieter, “Pythia?”
I floated down. Just as my boots touched the rock, I heard a voice on comm.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” A female voice, tired and angry.
I turned around. A suited figure was suspended in space high above the bodies, her legs dangling under her, her neck viced between two parallel rods of metal, the gap between them too narrow for her helmet to slip through. The rods connected on each side to poles coming out from the rock. Somebody had to weld that improvised binding into place, while her neck was inside, probably under threat. Somebody had the power to do that.
“Who are you?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry. I looked around at the small crater of the airlock. The airlock itself had closed already, the strobing lights blinking obediently, illuminating the dozens of bodies that piled here. The crater was still the same size that it had been, about a hundred meters across or so, but it seemed larger now, like there were so many more bodies it could hold.
“The one telling you what’s going on,” she said. The asteroid was behind her, so I couldn’t see her face clearly, but her voice was distinct, as if it had once been melodious and deep, but had since been crushed flat by defeat. “Now listen to me.”
“You know who I am?” I felt a weird sense of pride that they’d known I’d return.
“I don’t give a shit who you are. Let me say what I have to say, then leave me alone.”
“Hm. Go ahead.”
“I was put here by Vempress, the first resident, to welcome and inform those who enter. She wants you to know that this side of Ceres is her hunting grounds, and everything in it is hers. Your oxygen is hers, your suit is hers, and your body, if she finds use for it, is hers. Do you understand?”
Repetition wasn’t common in Last Day Town, for obvious reasons. Someone had written this script for her. A chill spread in me, starting at my guts and blooming into the veins of my arms and neck. Something that wasn’t just fear. “Yes,” I said.
“If fortune shines on you, you will have the honor of meeting her. She may take your oxygen, or you might die naturally at the end of your twenty-four hours, as she chooses.”
Despite myself, I chuckled when she said ‘naturally’, a frightened little exhalation. “Can I talk to this… Vempress?”
“Shut up and let me finish. The crater surrounding the airlock, where we are now, is a haven for you, and anyone who wishes to stay safe from her. Outside the airlock you’re safe only if you carry a corpse with you, and that corpse has more than twenty hours of oxygen. These defenses, however, are nullified if anyone tries to hurt her or me. If any such attempt is made, she will kill every single person she finds here, regardless of where they stand.”
The asteroid was in the center of the sky now, illuminating the crater, which was about fifty meters across and ten meters deep, with the airlock at the lowest point. I looked at the mounds of corpses and knew I’d have to stay here until I figured out what was going on. “Why doesn’t everyone just stay here, then?”
“However,” she continued, “the valley does not protect you from the others. If anyone wishes to attack you here, or you wish to attack anyone else but Vempress and myself, that is your right. That is all. Now go. Or stay.”
“What do you mean, ‘the others’?”
“Whoever’s looking for a skull to crack,” she snapped.
I looked around again, but still saw no one. No one alive, at least. “Tell me more about her. This ‘Vempress’: what’s her deal?”
“I told you to leave, didn’t I?” She sounded genuinely unsure.
“You must have talked to her when she put you here.”
“I can’t talk about this.”
I stepped closer. She had deep-brown eyes, even half-closed with exhaustion. Her features were handsome, regal somehow. I could see how she must have looked as a young woman.
“What’s your name?”
She looked confused for a moment. “Nina.”
“Nina, listen: I was here before. Things were very different. No one had their neck in a vise, and though people still died here, they had more options for how to spend their time. I’d really like to understand what happened here, and I’d like to talk to this Vempress, preferably without her killing me. Do you know how I could do that?”
Her face contorted in some inner struggle. “She said not to give any information about her. She hears everything, you understand? She listens to everything we do here. I’ve already told you too much, and if I tell you anything more, she’ll have me breathing vacuum, or worse.”
I tried another angle. “How long do you have left?”
“One hour and fifty-seven minutes.” I heard her swallow through the radio. Another asteroid entered the sky, underlit by direct sunlight. I saw tears accumulating under and around her eyes as she looked at the corner of her visor, little blobs of water, not heavy enough to streak her cheeks.
“Two hours? Is that what you’re afraid to lose?”
“One fifty-seven! Fifty-six, now. And fuck you,” she spat. “I’m dying here, and you’re judging me?”
I shrugged. “You’re going to die, and worse yet, someone stole your last hours of freedom and turned you into a tool. Are you going to do the one thing you can to give her some shit in return, or are you going to be a good little slave?”
She paused, her expression hardening. “Are you any better?”
In an instant, like a lightning strike, I understood what I had to do.
Making sure she saw, I pressed a finger into the control panel of my suit, killing my radio. I took a step towards her, ducking under the metal rods. She looked at me warily, but she must have glimpsed something of my intention, because she said nothing, and didn’t fight as I pressed a finger against the control panel on her chest. I swung myself over the contraption, careful not to throw my weight too far up. Even though my hands held the metal for only an instant, I felt the chill of it sipping through the suit. I placed my boots on the bars, squatting so my helmet touched hers, just like Anaxagoras had done when they’d mugged me.
“Can you understand what I’m saying?” I asked.
She reached around the bars, placed her hands on my helmet and pulled me in, harder. I saw each fold on her face, each shimmer and tick under the light coming from her visor’s display. “Yes,” she said, her voice distant, distorted by the two layers of glass. “I don’t want to die a coward,” she simply added. “She’s afraid. She needs others to fear her so desperately, even more than she needs oxygen. And if she’s been here for a very long time. I can’t even imagine how she survived. Whatever you want to do with your last day, don’t fuck with her. Do you understand? Don’t let your last hours go to waste.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Nina sighed. “You’re the first person that’s asked for my name. What’s yours?”
“Yossi.”
Her eyes suddenly alight with out-of-place mischief, she sang:
I’ll buy me a parrot,
And his name will be Yossi,
To him I will confide,
What no one will hear…
“God, please. I hate that song so much.”
“You hate it? I’m the one that’s about to die locked up,” she said, and somehow, she managed to inject humor into her voice.
“Fair enough.” We didn’t laugh, but something between us… eased.
“Yossi,” she abruptly said.
“What?”
“I don’t want anyone else to go through this. My time is over, but I don’t want anyone else to suffer what I’ve suffered.”
“I’ll stop her. I promise.”
“No offense, but I wouldn’t go around making that kind of promise if I were you.”
“Give me something. A weakness?”
“No weakness. If she decides to kill you, you’re dead.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
“We’ve been silent for too long,” she said suddenly, her eyes wide. “She’ll notice.” She pushed me back, and we both turned our comms back on. I remained standing on the metal rods, not wanting to get far from her yet.
“Why are you standing there all quiet?” she said aloud, acting for Vempress’s sake.
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“Why not? Am I not safe here?”
“You’re safe from her. Not from the others.” She didn’t seem to be acting anymore.
“There isn’t anyone out here. Right?”
“Usually they wait until I finish talking, but this is taking longer than usual, and they won’t wait forever.”
I turned around, crouching, like a wild animal hearing something moving in the bushes. “You didn’t think to tell me sooner?”
The look in her eyes told me what I could have guessed - in her exhaustion, she simply forgot.
As if in response, like birds of prey attuned to the scuttle of rodents, two of the bodies started moving. I noticed only now that none of them had any noticeable injuries, and that one of them, a bulky mass, had bundles strapped against his suit, like makeshift armor made of frozen body parts. He pulled a metal pole from under a pile of bodies. The other one, bony and long-limbed, picked up a lasso, reinforced with a chain loop. I stared at them as they found their footing.
“Go!” Nina yelled.
#
Estimated oxygen time: 23:58:11
I jumped off the contraption to the rock, quickly over the bodies and to the rocky plane beyond the crater, where movement would be easier. I leaped from rock to rock in shallow arcs, quickly recalling what I’d learned as a visitor, turning my head to catch quick glimpses of my pursuers mid-leap. They didn’t chase me from behind; like experienced hunters, they ran parallel, one on either side, forcing me forward in a straight line. They were closer each time I looked; either by practice or by some Darwinian process, they were much faster than me, and the closer they got, the clearer I could see them. The one that carried the pole furiously propelled his massive body, assaulting the ground with every kick. I caught a glimpse of the other as he flailed his long legs like an ostrich, the lasso swinging behind him. He was already more at my side than behind me. When he threw it, I thought he’d missed—the chain was in front of me, not above me. I was on the verge of blessing my luck when he yanked the loop backwards. I raised my arms and knees for protection at the last possible moment, feeling the metal collide with muscle and bone.
The lasso wrapped around me as it hit, and pulled, not getting a real hold but slowing me enough for them to get closer. I floated above the rock, struggling desperately to get the thing off me. The one with the pole was heading straight for me, the flash-frozen human parts he used as armor shining through the slashes in the outer cloth, as the weak gravity refused to bring me back to the rock that I could push from. His crude mace gleamed blue-grey in the reflected sunlight as it came towards me with deadly speed.
There was no weapon at my disposal but words, I realized, and cried, “Wait! I’ve been here before!”
No hint he even heard me. I could see his face, now, through the visor: teeth clenched and exposed in a pained grin; green eyes alight with a fire that left no room for anything else, a complete disregard for my desire not to be beaten to death.
We’ve gone so far, conquered space, built cities in the sky. Yet here we are, beating each other to death with sticks.
But they’d messed up the timing—I was going to land on the rock before he could get the chance to swing at me. The moment my boots touched the ground I shot straight up, every muscle and nerve in my body firing as hard as they could.
The pole swung through the empty space where my torso had just been, passing just under me as I floated upward. The first time I’d stepped on Ceres’s surface, as a young miner, I’d managed seventy-two seconds of space time in one jump. I hoped this leap was as successful. Not much compared to twenty-four hours, but I cherished every second of it. I felt like my day was being stolen from me, and worse—there was also the matter of the cause of death. Doesn’t get much lonelier than having your pain serve as someone else’s amusement.
I watched from above as my pursuer tumbled, his armor protecting him from the sharp rocks, and finally found his grip on the surface. The other, lean and graceful, took his center of gravity so low he lay almost flat on the surface, then stopped against a protruding rock. “Should I tag him?” he asked nonchalantly.
I was about seven meters high, still slowly climbing, well within their range.
“No, Yahushua,” said the one with the pole, picking himself up. “No need. We’ll wait.”
“Did you hear me say that I was in this place before? I can help you,” I said, my voice surprisingly confident. “If you let me.”
“Not interested,” said the one with the armor.
“Why are you doing this?”
He looked around theatrically. “Did nobody tell you where you are?” He turned his face to me and smiled, as if this was all very funny.
“Dov, come on—can I have the first hit this time?” Yahushua, asked, swinging his chain. “You always take the first one.”
“I take the first, you take the rest. That’s the deal.”
“Can you at least not finish him off with the first blow? I didn’t get to do anything last time.”
“No promises,” Dov said, and grinned.
It felt rude to interrupt, even while they were talking about killing me for fun. “Um, excuse me—Dov, was it?”
“What?” he grunted.
“I don’t think you understand. I was here before, and I managed to survive. Don’t you want to know how?” I wasn’t technically lying.
Dov laughed. “We’ve heard that one before,” he commented. “Didn’t take you for a storyteller. I thought you’d just beg.”
Yahushua joined the laughter. “Yeah, if you were here before, why are you so surprised that we’re going to kill you?”
I was slowly reaching the peak of my ascent, about fifteen meters above them. How I would’ve loved to have one of Ctesibius’ rockets now, and fly away to a place where I could be safe for the rest of the day; or a blade to nick my suit and propel myself away, if only for a couple of hours; or even just a rock to throw at them. Anything. I was floating at the apex, helpless, unable to stop myself from falling again.
“It wasn’t like this here, before,” I called. “That’s the thing. Everyone that was thrown out acted like a community. We didn’t have to kill each other, and we still don’t. I don’t know what changed in Last Day Town, but please, at least consider it.”
“Wait a second,” Yahushua said, turning to Dov. “Do you remember that woman we caught by the cliffs? She said she’d heard about a great battle, and she used that name, Last Day Town.” He squinted at me. “How would you know that?”
“He’s bullshitting,” Dov scolded him, disappointed.
“Because I was here a week ago. I’ve seen Last Day Town. I think I may have seen the battle, or at least the start of it.”
“My dick you did!” Dov snapped.
“Hold on,” Yahushua said, his voice carrying a note of honest, scientific curiosity. “We might actually have something interesting here. How could he know they called it Last Day Town unless he was here before?”
Meanwhile, slowly but surely, gravity was pulling me down.
“Not falling for that,” Dov growled, turning to Yahushua. “I’m going to kill him as soon as he lands, and I’ll fuck you up too, if you get in the way.”
“Try it, you moody bitch,” Yahushua voice was low, suddenly resolute. “It was only a matter of time.” He swung the chain in a tight, swift motion, wrapping it around his arm like a shield, and crouched. Dov turned to him, holding the pole in both hands, one of his boots finding grip under an angled rock. I found myself feeling something not entirely unlike hope.
They stood frozen, for a long moment. A fourth voice came through the comm. A woman’s voice, sniggering, hoarse like she hadn’t slept in a very long time.
Dov raised his head and scoped the sky, trying perhaps to see where the threat came from, while Yahushua still crouching, looked back at the crater we’d come from.
Dov looked up at me, making eye contact for the first time. “A sacrifice,” he said to Yahushua. “She won’t kill us if we give her something. Pull him down.”
Yahushua looked at me, then at Dov, then at back at the crater. One moment he was still; the next he was gone, crossing the rocky distance even faster than before.
Dov snarled and took a couple of steps back, estimating the jump it would take to get to me.
On comm, the laughter grew steadily louder, as if the source of transmission was getting closer. Dov dug his boots into the rock and jumped, his weapon ready.
A memory flashed: Eight year old Yossi Ben Ze’ev, alone among strangers on a rocket to Ceres, shaking so hard the screen almost falls out of his hands. He’s flicking through pictures of ospreys in flight, trying to distract himself, but quickly comes to accept that this is how he’ll die. Here and now. He closes the screen, feeling surprised that death feels more like a relief than a misfortune. After a long, solemn moment the rocket stops shaking, and Yossi realizes his time hasn’t come yet.
Now I squinted at Dov and hoped that he’d stay true to his threats and finish me in one blow, that I’d never get to learn that I had been hit—one moment I will be here, and the next, well, there won’t be a next. I couldn’t close my eyes, though I wanted to; instead I watched him close the distance, and swing the metal tube with enough force to break my ribs into my lungs. Close now, I saw his expression, lit by the timer of his own helmet, and registered, despite everything, how pained he looked.
His momentum changed, as if something very heavy or very fast had hit him. I saw only a blur, something small and black, like an asteroid—and then he wasn’t there anymore.
Slowly, I landed, shocked, and watched as the object changed direction mid-flight and landed against a vertical rock face. It was a small person in a jetpack, with equipment tied to it; a blade, perhaps, and something else that I didn’t recognize. I gazed at the silhouette against stars; the shoulders and waist looked like a woman’s, though so emaciated it was hard to tell. Her suit was dark, unlike the bright gray bags that residents wore; that I wore. Her body was so small and thin compared to Dov’s, which was still flying in a low arc, that I couldn’t believe it was her who threw him off.
She retrieved something rifle-like and my eyes followed the pointing weapon to Yahushua, who’d made significant headway towards the airlock. She pulled a trigger, and though I didn’t see anything coming out of the barrel, I saw the recoil nudging her backwards.
Yahushua contorted suddenly, missed a landing and fell into a long tumble, a thin, sharp-looking rod protruding from his thigh. He squealed so hard the helmet speakers distorted the sound, but underneath those screams I heard someone laugh—that same hoarse, tired voice. She put the gun back into her belt, and drew the blade that dangled at her other side, a movement so natural and smooth that by itself it was a sort of threat.
Dov didn’t see it, though. He was still rolling from the first impact, holding his shielded arms up to protect his head and chest from the sharp rock. She jousted for him again before he managed to find his footing and I watched, frozen solid, as she slashed the blade against him.
But the blade, seeking warm flesh, only found the frost-hardened limbs of his armor.
She stopped a few meters up, on his other side, using the jets to direct herself. My jets, I realized numbly, as I saw her working the controls with one hand..
Dov managed to find his footing then, gripping a rock with his hands, ready to jolt, looking around for her without realizing she was above. All this time, he hadn’t made a single sound.
She dove for him, one hand at the controls, letting a loop of fabric drag behind her with the other. It snagged him just as he started to move.
Against the backdrop of the stars, I saw the single band of suit fabric pull Dov far above the rock. He gasped a drawn-out, terrified, “Fuck!” as he went up, then around, going in a circle as she maneuvered around him, keeping the lasso tight between them. They were about ten or twenty meters high, moving faster with each revolution, until finally she let the lasso go slack, sending herself upwards and Dov straight into the ground. The impact was so loud it silenced Yahushua on comm for a moment. Or was it that Yahushua, hearing the crash, forgot his pain and looked on, confused and covered in sweat, to witness the fate of his companion? I couldn’t tell.
Dov had curled into a ball before going down, hiding behind his cannibalized armor as well as he could, but when he bounced from that crash his body was limp. The pole had shattered into dozens of fragments.
She pulled on the lasso, shortening the distance between them, both still floating high above, until she landed on Dov’s back like a T4 Virus placing delicate legs on the thin membrane before penetrating a host cell.
Yahushua’s screams returned, but they’d crystallized into words. He yelled at Dov to kill that bitch, to fight, to do something. If Dov heard and understood, his only answer was a low, weak grunt. He did try to reach her with his hands, having dropped his weapon at some point, but she sat comfortably at the back of his neck, beyond his reach. The screech of metal sliding against metal sounded on comm, like someone unscrewing a large bolt. Dov cursed again but didn’t scream. She detached his oxygen tank and clipped it to a compartment welded into the jetpack.
Vaguely, I noticed that my legs were taking me forward. If she was going to kill me too, I didn’t see how there was anything I could do about it. My plan to live out my last day peacefully evaporated into the vacuum of space, along with the dream of taking comfort in the nobility of the human spirit or whatever lofty nonsense I’d told Keren.
Keren, I thought with viscous horror, as I watched the woman jump off Dov’s body, leaving him with nothing but the oxygen in his lungs and whatever was left between his skin and suit. He sank like a body in the ocean.
Yahushua crawled, trying to drag himself over the line. Somehow aware that she had turned her attention to him, he started yelling. "We were going to give you a sacrifice! We were just about to kill him for you! It’s not fair!"
This is the Last Day Town that’s waiting for Keren.
"But you didn't. And rules are rules," she said as she landed softly beside him, her voice vaguely familiar as she pinned him in place with one knee.
This is what she’s going to see when she gets here.
"You don't need my oxygen. You already took Dov's. Isn't that enough?"
That is how she’s going to spend the last minutes of her life.
“It is,” she said as she wrapped her fingers around the metal jutting out of his thigh “But I want my spear back.”
I wanted to turn off my comm receiver as she pulled the spear out, but my hand didn’t move. Black blood sprayed from the wound as she pulled the spear out, her visor turned away. It burst up into space and onto her suit, though it didn’t make it any darker. He made a sound I wouldn’t know how to describe in words, and as if in response to that sound, something inside me turned cold and hard, and it didn’t seem to matter anymore whether I’d die later or right then.
She pulled a roll of duct tape from another strap—the same space-proof kind that Diocletian used to carry around. Yahushua grunted weakly when she flipped him over and taped the exit hole in his leg shut.
Each of her movements was efficient, effortless. She loaded the spear, blackened with dried blood, back into her spear gun and holstered it, then picked Yahushua up and jumped into the center of the crater. On comm, someone sounded like they were choking down a coughing fit.
My legs brought me close enough to the airlock that I could see her land beside Nina and let Yahushua drop beside them. She took something out of one of her sewed-on pockets, and a blazing blue-white light flared up between her silhouette and the metal bindings. Nina fell slowly, stiff. With the torch off, the crater sank back into darkness, hidden behind the afterimage of the light.
“Go,” the woman in the dark suit commanded, and Nina glanced up at her. She rose, trembling, her face hidden in shadow, and began climbing out of the crater, her movements uncertain. I wanted her to look at me, to know that I was there; that I saw. My legs didn’t move any faster, though, and when I opened my mouth, no sound came out.
The woman grabbed Yahushua’s neck with one hand and put it between the bars. The airlock lights blinked, illuminating both captive and captor. I looked away, not letting the flame blind me again.
By the time it was dark again, Yahushua’s neck was trapped, just like Nina’s had been. She tapped his helmet twice with her torch. “I’m sure you know the words by heart, by now,” she said, and now her voice was definitely familiar.
Nina reached the edge of the crater and stopped, looking out to the empty plane ahead of her. As the women watched her hand hovered above the speargun, deliberating, but before she had reached a decision Nina broke into an uneven run, her destination unknown.
The woman turned and jumped towards me, her silhouette dark against the backdrop of twinkling stars, one arm at her side, clipping the torch back into place, and the other at the controls of the jet. She descended at the end of her arc, graceful like a ballerina even in stillness, as her jet stirred clouds of dust up and away, stopping her momentum only a hairbreadth above the surface and falling the rest of the way down, letting one booted toe take careful hold as if it were the bottom of an ancient ocean she was standing on.
Closer now, I could see that her suit wasn’t black but dark red, flaking at her elbows and knees, as if she had sprayed blood, marked herself as Diocletian, so many times it covered all of her.
Her eyes were big and blue, but her smile… it wasn’t the same smile it had been, before. “It’s you, isn’t it?” she said, her voice mocking. “Welcome back.”
The cold inside me turned into something resolute and hard. I took a deep breath. “Peace, Diocletian.”
“Oh,” she purred. “Nobody calls me that anymore.”