MIRIAM

He, born with the gluttony of sight

sees the world she wrought

as but a plated meal,

cooked to his tastes.

So he devours all that shines in the light

with eyes wide open.

To purge such filth from the land

she descended from her perch,

stepping from one star to another,

wings of steel casting a halo:

searing white,

made from the ashes of a dying sun.

She bade him first to kneel

then to look,

his grotesque face reflected in the sheen of her blade,

seeing all but the ignominy of his sin.

A silver thread traced an arc,

turned crimson—

as his eyes split under her holy sword.

To her horror, the man learned not humility

but greed and despair.

He crawled and howled,

his nails bleeding against raw stone,

his head not bowed, but craned upwards,

chasing the fled dragon.

She learned to fear the greed

of he who has loved and lost.

- Gault 7:17-21 (Exaltation of the New Century Version)

EVIE

I sat on a plush bed in a room prepared for Oracle and I. It was brutalist in its design and spartan in its furnishing, its walls painted grey, the chairs without cushioning. Still, the bed was soft enough to sink under my weight. Vents piped cool underground air into the room. There was even an attached bathroom with the most marvellous toilet I had ever seen. I had no complaints. We were to stay for the time being as consultants.

“Oracle. You never told me that about the incubators.”

“You never asked.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. It convinced them well enough.”

“Humans are like that. They do not see past their own noses.”

“Mortals are like that. I understand, however. They face their own extinction head on—of course they would put themselves and their families first.

“Of course? It makes no sense.”

“It does, Oracle,” I said, walking over to a window to draw the blinds. Past the glass lay a massive hangar where the new ark would be assembled. An array of spotlights lit the way for forklifts swarming like ants. They weaved through the scaffolding, skirting the bare skeleton forming the base of the hull that lay in the middle. Mobius looked like this, once.

Someone knocked on the door. A visitor? I walked over and opened it.

“Hello,” the stranger said, out of breath. She looked up at me with bright amber eyes, her golden hair spilling over a lab coat worn from use. She did not look older than thirty, however. “I’ve been dying to meet you.”

I read her name tag—Miriam—and suddenly the room froze over, leaving me alone in a dark blizzard, warm tears turning to ice on my cheek.

“You’re Her, aren’t you? The Progenitor?” Her voice cut through the gale.

I blinked and the walls reappeared, the air calm, the stranger still standing in the hallway. “I’m Evie,” I mumbled. A coincidence, then. “Just Evie.”

“Evie? That’s a beautiful name.”

“I’m not the Progenitor, either.”

“Huh?” She tilted her head.

“She’s… injured. She’s recuperating in Mobius. I’m not her. I’m—”

“The Child!” she exclaimed, tiptoeing. “I can’t believe it. The myths were true, then; all of it.”

“I don’t know what people have been saying about me, but there are two of us, yes.”

“And you look identical—right?” she asked, to which I nodded. Her eyes went wide as she took my hands in hers. “That’s wonderful. It really is. The Leiblich solution, born on a planet far away, long before our time. Tell me—do you remember your home?”

I faltered. “Who are you?” I eyed her coat again.

She recoiled, then smoothed down her coat and forced a smile. “I’m Miriam. I work here, you see—I’ve been researching the Leiblich solution for years—no, decades! It’s fascinating, it really is. We’ve made major leaps in the past half century, but to see you up close and—what is that?!” She hopped into my room, grabbing Oracle and stroking him like a cat.

“Unhand me! I am no toy!” he yelled as he finally spun out of her grasp. “I am Oracle—”

She interrupted him, grabbing him again and pulling him into a tight hug. “Wow! He speaks just like a human! These circuits—I suppose they form his eye?” Her finger traced the lines of his sigil which flickered so fiercely I thought Mobius might crash through the ceiling any moment.

“He’s connected to the ark, Mobius. They communicate via datalink, both ways,” I said, stifling a smile.

She let go. Oracle landed on the floor with a metallic clunk before recovering. “Mobius? Incredible! So, like a personal sidekick, then? He pilots the ship while you seed the planet?”

“Like I said, I wasn’t the one who seeded the planet.” I nudged her out of my room and back into the hallway.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, embarrassed. “I’m just so excited. I never thought I would get to meet aliens.”

“Aliens? We’re humans, like you.”

“Yes, but… you know. Older humans, from beyond interstellar space. You and Oracle must have seen so much—our entire history, from start to finish. I envy you.”

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I stared, saying nothing.

“Sorry! I don’t want to impose. Is there anything you want to do or ask? I know you’ve met Colonel Drake, but he’s a busy man—I could show you around! I grew up near this base, so I know this area pretty well.”

I glanced back at my bed, soft and inviting. I won’t be here for long. “You said you research the… Leiblich solution, was it?”

“Yes! Yes. You’ve heard of it? Entangled twins?”

“No.”

She beamed, eager to discuss her work. “It’s a technique devised by a military lab to generate twins that behave similarly. Not completely, of course, but eerily so compared to regular people. The research that went into that happened to also overlap with anti-aging—immortality. With Leiblich’s work, we managed to solve both riddles.”

Disgusting. “Have you tried it? Generating twins, I mean. Or immortals.”

“Both, yes! Though they weren’t entirely successful. I was just about to go pay them a visit. Do you want to come along?”

I nodded, afraid of what I might find.

*

Oracle and I sat in the passenger seat of Miriam’s car as she pulled out of the base, the guillotine-shaped door closing behind us. “Is this safe?” I asked.

“It is, don’t worry. Security is tight, but I have permission to escort guests in and out, even you. Besides, this base is well hidden—there’s not much around.”

We drove south. Past the glass lay a dry, arid wasteland, barren, but with canyons in the distance that streaked orange against a clear blue sky. The sand lolled lazily in the wind. This was not land that had once thrived only to be glassed. This was no man’s land, where nothing could survive—not even bluegrass. Here, humans were but a blip, evaporating just as they fell from the clouds. The canyons rolled then, now, and forever.

Miriam stopped the car, jerking suddenly. To our right lay a metal cube in an unmarked plot of sand. “Watch your step,” she warned as she stepped out and opened the door for me. My foot sank to the ankle as I climbed out and trudged towards the cube. She tapped her lanyard against a reader embedded into it. The metal slid open—its surface was so smooth I had not realised it held a door.

Inside lay a shrine made of polished stone, carved into a pillar, embedded in a steel base that lay half-sunk in the sand. An epitaph lay inscribed into a plaque at its base:

Here lie the Children of Light:

From Concord they rose, and to Concord they return,

not as mere ash,

but as they were,

dancing from one canyon to the next,

playing at hide-and-seek in grass fine and soft,

lifted on spring breeze, sweet like honey,

borne by pink tide to brighter shores,

hand-in-hand, eyes locked, smiling.

For they are eternal,

and this is their home everlasting,

reflected in their pure eyes,

mirrors whole,

seeing all, seeing us

plunder their garden

that now returns to them:

a rhapsody for and by them alone,

frozen still in time.

She bowed her head slightly, murmuring, before turning back to me. “They were the first, and they were beautiful.”

“They’re dead?” I asked, too confused for tact.

“Ah… right, I suppose you don’t know. Yes, they were cremated. They were our—Leiblich’s—first attempt at entangled twins. After the tests, however, it seemed they had developed certain… faults.” Her eyes shifted, as though uncertain.

“What faults?”

“I’m not sure. They never told me. I wasn’t part of the testing team, after all. They finished their tests and said they had to be euthanised, and that was that.” She stared at the pillar for a moment before turning back to me. “But it won’t be much longer before they’re back. Thanks to you”—she took my hands and shook them vigorously—“we’ll need them again. Right? That’s what they told me.”

“What? Why?”

“For the ship! We’re building an ark, aren’t we?”

My stomach dropped. The ark needs a pilot. I never considered who. “No… no, the arks can fly themselves, can’t they?” I looked at Oracle, pleading.

“No. I will not permit it, and neither will any Ark-class cruiser. They were designed to carry a lone pilot. A machine alone cannot be held accountable, and thus must not be made responsible.”

“Why?! I trust you! Isn’t that enough?” He’s talking about Alice and the seeding, I realised too late. Not me. I was never the lone pilot; just a spare.

“You saved the Progenitor, did you not? Without you, she would be dead in the snow.”

Your face flashed to mind, deathly pale through the glass of the pod. “No… no, that’s irrelevant. That doesn’t mean we need a human to pilot each ark. You could have seeded the planet without either of us. Besides, I was the reason Alice got hurt. If I hadn’t been around—” I choked back the words, my eyes tearing up.

“Alice is immortal. Someone would have tried to kill her eventually, be it humans or polar bears. I was ordered to keep you safe. I counted their men and saw no way to save her—the risk to you and Mobius was too great. Had I assumed control of the ship then, I would have taken us into orbit immediately and left her for dead. You did not, however. You broke all protocol, running Mobius through them like a knife through butter.” He tilted closer to me. “A machine cannot reach past its circuitry to do that. We may mix thoughts like soup, like colours in a palette, but we cannot conjure them from thin air. That is why we need a human on board.”

I stood and shook, unable to speak. My guilt weighed heavy on my shoulders and had sapped my ego. I could never stand proud and call myself necessary aboard Mobius. If anyone, that would be Alice. She loved humans for who they were. Still, I could not bear the thought of subjecting another pair to what Alice and I had seen.

“You can’t,” I said, my shoulders trembling. “You can’t generate another pair.”

Miriam looked at me, confused. “Why?” She glanced at the tomb. “They were so happy, so delightful. I loved them, and I miss them. You’ve finally given me a chance to generate them again, from the same embryos we configured—”

“No!” How can I explain this to a mortal? She sees me as a miracle. “Please. If you have any respect for me and my station, please—do not generate another. I despise whoever did this to me—whoever put this curse on me. Do you really plan to generate humans in a lab, their genes twisted beyond recognition, not just once, but twice, just to send them into deep space?” I stared at the tomb, envious. “Give it up.”

Miriam looked at her feet, crestfallen at being scolded by what she idolised most. “ I know it isn’t right for us to be playing God like this, but…” She straightened her coat and looked me in the eyes. “I’ll listen. If you don’t want us to generate another pair, so be it. I don’t make the decisions, anyway. But what about the ship? We need someone to pilot it. Even if you don’t need a spare, we need to generate at least one, and if we’re going to generate one, we might as well generate—”

“I’ll fly it! Alice can fly Mobius. Isn’t that enough?”

Oracle turned towards me. “Are you sure? She will recover long before Mobius reaches its destination, but…” For the first time, he hesitated, almost like he could not read me.

“Yes. It’s fine. Isn’t that enough? We have two of us, and two ships. We don’t need any more.”

“I thought you would want to bring Alice with you.”

I grit my teeth. Is he stupid? Of course I do! “If both ships need a pilot each, we have no choice,” I stammered, my grief written clear on my face. “Besides, I seem to bring trouble wherever I go. Let me fly the ark. Please. Cold sleep will wipe our memories anyway.” I turned on my heel and huffed out of the tomb, stumbling as my foot sank into the sand.

It was an awkward, quiet drive back. I sat in the back seat this time, my head against the window. It rumbled with the engine, making me drowsy. I stared at the canyons and saw a pair of shadows flitting from one to another in the distance. I watched them keep pace with the car, knowing my mind had drawn them out of boredom. Miriam’s twins were dead, and there was no bringing them back, no matter how delusional she may be. A lone tree whipped by, stripped bare and rotting, and the shadows vanished.