CONTACT

She is the rock that lies still in the tide.

She is the branch unbroken in the storm.

She is the unwavering flame in the belly of the beast.

Know that She is alone,

exempt from mortal vice,

removed from our rabble.

Her love is unconditional,

pithing our souls—

the good and the evil,

the shadow of our intent,

its shape and hue,

weighed in absolute atop her scales

above the snow-capped peaks,

above the rain and thunder,

from her perch on high.

Know her sacrifice,

and weep in her stead.

- Meridian 2:1-3 (Exaltation of the New Century Version)

EVIE

“Tell me a joke, Oracle,” I said, and he did. I did not laugh; I did not listen. Instead I counted his words—one, two, twelve—each a span of the tongue, a stone in the river, marking its length, punctuating the flow of time. “Tell me another,” I said, and he did.

In deep orbit, there are no spans. There are no days in space: where the sun neither rises nor sets. There are no months where the moon does not wax nor wane. There are no years where the seasons do not turn and the tides remain still—at least, that is how they seemed through the frosted glass, forming the calm, round oceans of Concord. I had once stood on a beach, a long slice of pearly white against a sparkling pink sea, breathing salt as foam bubbled around my ankles, rolling past on rising waves—until the pendulum swung—and the sea sucked everything back in. I remember the lurch—the water draining out from beneath my feet, taking the roiling sand with it, shifting the earth beneath me. I remember the sway—falling, dizzy from the illusion of the tide, my body leaning against its pull. Only when the seawater had drained completely, leaving seaweed on the shore, did I realise that the beach had never moved at all. The ocean recoiled, ready to gush in once more.

There was none of that here, so time did not pass. I spoke with Oracle, knowing that with each word, time did pass. I never once stepped on Concord during that time—remaining on Mobius, orbiting Concord like a satellite, was far safer. I spoke to your comatose body every few years or so through the glass of the pod. It was futile, Oracle said—you heard nothing. I did so anyway, if only to keep my sanity.

Centuries dragged into millenia—how many, I could not tell. After an unimaginable stretch of time alone with you and Oracle, I saw Concord lit ablaze.

“What are those?” I asked, watching a video feed from Mobius’s hull-mounted cameras. Starbursts appeared one after the other on Concord’s surface, each a brief flash spouting a massive cloud.

“Nuclear weapons. Humanity means to raze itself to the ground.”

“These stars, these explosions—they are man-made? Why?”

Oracle rotated away, his sigil blinking. “Evie. We will have to make contact once more.” We were in deep orbit, far out of range of man-made satellites. “We cannot let this planet burn.”

Contact. I had long since forgotten the scent of grass, the taste of dandelions in the wind. But why? Let them burn. We can stay here as we have until now. Oracle turned back towards me, his sigil glowering. He could read me surprisingly well. “Evie. We are not here to spectate. The Progenitor and I were duty-bound to protect this planet and evacuate it if necessary. That torch has now passed to you—I hope you remember why.”

“I understand,” I said, slightly unnerved. “What do I have to do this time?”

“Nothing. Just accompany me. I will speak to the humans and negotiate a solution. You are myth and legend—your presence alone will force them to submit.”

“And Alice?”

“She will remain here in the pod. She must heal.”

There is nobody left but us. I prepared to don yet another mantle, the stage primed and ready.

*

Bluegrass whipped violently beneath Mobius as it landed, its ramjets screaming as they spooled down, its wings venting steam: the beast of legend come to life. The military had already assembled to receive us; Oracle had signalled our landing site over the radio and set our IFF to friendly. They have grown. They dressed like machines. Their armoured vehicles resembled Mobius, but smaller, studded with advanced weaponry, cannons, railguns, beam rifles—names I needed Oracle to explain to me. They even had aircraft that hovered above us, their rotor blades whistling in the autumn breeze.

I stepped onto Concord for the first time in millenia. Soldiers approached me, stopping a respectful distance away. A lone man marched forward and greeted me. “I am Drake, and I speak on behalf of Eirie—our proud country where you now stand. Welcome.”

He was clad in full dress uniform: ash grey traced with brass accents and a black beret atop his head. His vest was bare save for his rank on his chest. He was tall and broad, his skin tan, and his hair salted with grey. His eyes were black and deep-set, stern but dependable. I can trust him. He has seen the horrors of war.

“Just Drake?” I asked, tilting my head.

“I imagine our titles and accolades don’t mean much to you.” He gave a reassuring smile and held out his hand. I stared at it, but sensed no hostile intent.

“A greeting. Consider this a sign of our friendship.”

I looked up at him, gauging his face once more, before taking his hand. His grip was firm, his forearms scarred and veined from a long, illustrious tour of service. He shook my hand; mine hung limp, pulled along.

“How should we address you?” he asked.

“Evie.”

“Just Evie?”

Should I say more? “Just Evie,” I nodded.

Oracle whizzed between Drake and I. “I am Oracle,” he said, to Drake’s surprise.

“Oracle. You contacted us via radar. I did not think you were… a machine.”

“You may think of Mobius and I as one and the same. We discovered Concord and seeded it with life, as you may know.”

“As the myths said. So, they were true.”

“History, not myth. Regardless, we could not watch any longer. Concord needs an ultimatum.”

Drake furrowed his brows, his face wrinkling, though from stress or age I could not say. “This is humanity’s endgame. We have drained the planet dry, and now we fight like dogs over what scraps remain.” He looked at me. “We should discuss this indoors. We have an escort ready, if you’d like. Rest assured, your ship will remain untouched here, and your safety is paramount.”

I looked at Oracle. His sigil blinked once. It’s safe. “I understand. Take us, then.”

He turned and walked across the field towards an armoured car. His stride was surprisingly long—I almost had to jog to keep up. The car was boxy and angular, its windows thick and bulletproof. Drake took the passenger seat, while I sat in the back, Oracle floating next to me.

“Try it,” I said to Oracle, gently pushing him onto the leather. “It’s comfortable. Not even Mobius has seats this soft.”

“We did not come here to peruse chairs.” Still, he settled in after a few beeps of protests, his sigil dimming. I smiled and looked out the window as the car pulled out of the field and onto a tarmac road.

Eirie was a large country surrounded by the Coral Sea, named for its slight pink hint whenever the sunlight shone on its vast coral reefs. It was only coral in name now, however, as those reefs had almost completely eroded, boiled by the thinning ozone. The road cut through a vast open field that stretched far and wide. It soon gave way to scorched farmlands scattered with skeletal, abandoned barns and sheds. Bluegrass had reclaimed this barren land, but it lay hidden under thick, grey ash. Dead, bare trees lay scattered, eroding under the heat. The sky was covered in smoke, casting the land in shadow.

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The fields stopped abruptly, turning to dust and sand and crumbling buildings. They were tall, made of brick and rusty metal—apartments, Oracle called them. Nobody lived here either. Most were dilapidated, but some were tall, brutal spires that reached into the clouds.

I remembered the sheen of their weapons and vehicles—this is a country torn by war, forced to fund the war machine. They were on the brink, but so was the rest of the planet. Eirie seemed better off than the rest. Many countries were uninhabitable, sunk in an eternal nuclear winter.

“Where is everyone?” I asked Drake as the car sped over gravel and tarmac.

“Drafted or dead, mostly. The citizens live in bunkers now. These used to be residential areas—all abandoned. At least this area isn’t irradiated.”

“Bunkers? Underground, you mean? How do you fit everyone?”

“We don’t. They’re hideously expensive.”

I sat in silence for the rest of the ride, staring out the window. The world had taken on a slight orange hue, the air smouldering. The car was air-conditioned, but its windows were hot to the touch. A while later, we came to a graceful stop in front of a massive gate made of solid iron. It groaned as it lifted like a guillotine, permitting us through into an underground tunnel. An array of red lights blinked to life on both sides, guiding us deeper, before opening into a yawning cavern that housed a military complex, cut off from the outside world. Metal buildings—barracks, warehouses, hangars and training sheds—lay in a tight, claustrophobic layout. The windows cooled, spared from Myrmidon’s scorching heat.

We alighted after a long drive through the maze. The tarmac was clean—no sand nor gravel. I followed Drake into a building, a hexagon circumscribing an eye blazoned on its walls.

He turned to me as we stopped outside a room. “Evie. I understand this is unfamiliar to you. Rest assured—I understand your cause and agree with it completely. There is no hope for Concord. However, it is not just me who needs to be convinced. Let Oracle and I handle the talking. Your reputation precedes you, and will lend us the credence we need.”

“Evie is not a figurehead to be paraded around.” Oracle hovered next to me.

“Of course. I didn’t mean to offend.” He nodded to him, then looked back at me. “I will let Oracle detail the plan. What I meant was—you may entrust the political minefield to me.”

We stepped into a conference room, smokey and dimly lit, occupied by a long varnished table. Drake sat at its head, with Oracle and I to his right. Every other seat was occupied by men like Drake, though their uniforms were studded with pins and medals.

Drake cleared his throat. Every head snapped to him. “I thank you all for coming. Yesterday—the sixth of May, to be exact, at 11:58PM, we made contact with a hitherto unidentified flying object: U-285, henceforth dubbed Mobius after its true name. It introduced itself as an ancient relic from the far reaches of space. It is, in essence, the Ark of legend.”

The room stirred and a few gasped, though nobody dared speak. “Mobius carried aboard genetic material from a lost civilisation and seeded this planet with life. It claims it has come once more to lend us aid.” He picked up a sheaf of papers and shuffled it, finding a transcript. “The message we received last night was:

Humans of Concord,

This is the Ark-class cruiser, Mobius—built to endure any test of time.

Our old world, consumed by fire and blood, built us, two sister Arks

to carry the genes of our people and bring them to brighter shores.

We found Concord, seeded it, and watched it flourish.

Now, we watch as it burns itself to ash.

Let us share our technology with you,

so you may save yourselves,

as we once did.

Recited verbatim,” he finished, before sipping from a cup.

I rolled my eyes at Oracle, but the gravity of his words had silenced the room. They waited with bated breath for more.

“It should be clear by now that this all but confirms the prevailing panspermia theory, and that Oracle and Evie here”—he looked at us, and the rest of the room looked with him—“have been around since the beginning of history. They put us here, and now they come with technology that might save us from our current predicament.”

“Predicament?” one of them interrupted. “What an understatement. This is a catastrophe, Colonel Drake. Escalation to mutually assured destruction. Concord will never recover from the fallout.”

The man next to him turned to him and replied. “No—humans will burn and die, never to return. Concord will remain. Concord will endure, and the bluegrass will reclaim what we stole and desecrated.”

“Yes, yes. Poetic. Set yourself on fire, then, if you are so convinced. I will be sure to plant some grass on your grave,” the first retorted.

“Silence!” Drake yelled, and all fell quiet. “You can bicker after the meeting.” He shot me an apologetic look before continuing. “At 0743 this morning Mobius landed at Cape Duvet, about four kilometres from this base. Our surveillance indicated nothing suspicious about its flight path. There were no unidentified craft besides Mobius, which now sits parked and guarded at the landing zone. Now, I will let Oracle explain the alien technology on board.”

Oracle hovered and turned, facing the audience, his sigil flickering as he transmitted with Mobius. “Hello. I am Oracle. I speak where Mobius cannot. The Lazarus flight specified that its Arks be capable of carrying enough genetic material to incubate about two hundred humans each.” His sigil lit up the air with holograms detailing Mobius’s hull and blueprinting the incubators. “Each incubator is two metres tall, designed to raise a single embryo not just to birth but to adulthood. We cannot twist time—it still takes about twenty years to fully incubate a grown adult, but what comes out is genetically stable and fit. By writing their memory within the incubators, they emerge ready to survive on a hostile planet and not as crying infants.

“Our proposal is simple. Redirect your efforts to building an ark and filling it with genetic material. You may model it after Mobius; we will provide the blueprints. Launch it and pray. Life on Concord may end, but your race will live again. Arks are built to last indefinitely—enough time to find a new planet, habitable under the wing of a distant star.”

The room remained still. I breathed deeply, looking for any trace of emotion in the crowd, but there was none.

“Is this it? Your grand proposal?” A man stood up near the far end of the table. “To give up on Concord?”

“Concord is a lost cause. You and I both know that, Asher,” Drake said, his face stern. “Even if the bunkers survive the war, the nukes will glass our planet, leaving only a barren wasteland.”

“The war is not over, Colonel. The eastern front sees battle daily—”

“And will continue to till there are none left to fight. This is not a world war; this is every country fending for itself, desperate for the few drops of water left.”

Another spoke up, seated closer to us, far younger than the rest. “No—We outnumber the rest, and we dominate the air, land and sea. Eirie will remain when the dust settles. Then, we can rebuild.”

Drake clicked his tongue. “Concord’s resources have already run dry—which is what sparked the war. We might have enough to rebuild, but not to survive longer than a generation or two. Besides, our supreme technology is nothing in the face of suicide nukes. It is only a matter of time until our land lies fried by radiation, at which point it will be too late to build an Ark.”

They’re seated in order of rank. I watched Asher remain silent, still on his feet, letting the younger man speak. “Why build one, then? We would have to drain our reserves, leaving nothing for the war. Why not just use the one that landed?” Everyone turned to stare at him, Drake’s eyes the sharpest of them all. It was Oracle that broke the silence, however.

“You will not step foot on Mobius without our permission. Our directives were to grow our species, not preserve it. Concord must produce two ships, each bound for a different planet. Those two will become four, and so on. If you cannot build a second Ark, our discussion ends here.”

The audience looked at each other. The man named Asher broke the silence, slamming his palms against the table. “You realise this ship does not carry people, correct? It carries genes. It is as good as leaving our people for dead. The people aboard are not the people on Concord—they are hardly people at all! Just cells.”

Drake sighed, turning back to him. “Humans nonetheless. The Arks ensure the survival of our species, not just us and our immediate families—” he said before faltering. Everyone stared at him. What could he say? Could he really ask them to give up the war and abandon their families to send embryos into space?

“No,” Oracle interrupted. “The incubators are not just vats of soup. They are configured to be deterministic—incubate the same embryo a thousand times, and the same human will emerge, identical down to each and every atom. This ensures the seamless transition of the self from host to spawn. In essence: the moment you die on Concord, you will wake up in your clone on your new planet. Only four hundred souls in total will be saved between both Arks.”

Oracle’s words stilled the room, which then burst into a flurry. They murmured to each other as Drake stared in shock. One of them raised his hand and spoke. “The Leiblich solution. They made identical twins who behaved identically even when separated.” The rest fell silent and nodded at him. “They were never able to explain why, however, and it was too difficult to repeat. Are you verifying their claims? That the self is a product of our physical composition? That two bodies, completely identical, share a single self?”

“Yes. That was what our people concluded aeons ago. They would not have boarded Mobius otherwise. They prayed to save themselves and their families, and they did. They woke up on Concord without their memories, but with their souls.”

The room broke into frenzied discussion once more. They had fallen in love with the idea—why wage war on a dying planet when they could save themselves?

“And… one more thing, um, Oracle,” one of them asked. “Are there any restrictions on who may board?”

“No,” he replied. “Biologically, no. It would be best if you did not include anyone with genetic defects, for obvious reasons. Still…” he turned to me. “I will have to check if the seed storage on Mobius is still in good shape. We might not be able to bring a full four hundred, but besides that, you may choose who amongst yourselves to save. I can see that this room has fewer than two dozen, so perhaps you may start with yourselves and your families.”

Drake did not have to say any more. Mortal greed took over, and the proposal to build an ark was unanimously approved. Had they the resources to, they might have built another, but it seemed one was all they could afford. It did not seem to bother them much.