Chapter Eighty-Eight - A Future Shared
The data transfer was coming along pretty smoothly. It was several hundred terabytes of simulations, collected data feeds, experimental notes, and different attempts to understand wildly different facets of wildly different scientific fields.
A number of them weren’t immediately useful to the ERF. Biological research was interesting, but one doctor’s lifelong research into micro-evolution of the human genome wasn’t going to help them defeat the Accord.
A lot of the research was like that. It seemed that while the scientists onboard the Condor had different fields of research, a number of them were focused on things that would help and improve humanity.
Cryosleep systems to keep people dormant during long travel times. Organic-synthetic upload systems to allow humans to better interface with computer systems. Two researchers had been working on improving the human body, one came in from a technological direction, replacing weaker human limbs with better robotic ones. The other came in from the genetic angle, improving a human’s DNA before birth so that they’d grow up to be tougher and more capable of resisting the multitude of issues that came from living in space.
What interested Day and her sisters more were the technologies that had more useful applications for them.
One scientist had spent several years working on a theoretical reactor that should have been able to output a lot more power in a much smaller package than the reactors they already had. It would require better, more refined fuel, but that wasn’t entirely inaccessible.
Another had pushed signal-based image generation to its limits, creating a sonar-like system with an extremely high short-range resolution using nothing but low-frequency non-ionising waves.
Incorporating that into their sensors could mean an improvement on the resolution of any image signal they captured. They’d get a significantly better image from anything that they bounced a fairly innocuous beam off of, and that could be useful.
The last thing that seemed viable for them right now were a system of artificial wombs. Not just for giving birth to new, artificially inseminated human embryos, but also for all matter of mammalian creatures.
If the ERF ever made it back to Earth’s surface, and if they ever discovered a way to scrub it clean of radiation and pollutants, they might be able to start humanity anew on their own world of birth.
But that was centuries away.
In the more immediate future, they had other things to worry about, including a promise to the last living human.
Removing the bodies from the Condor was no easy feat. They were somewhat awkward to manoeuvre, and once placed on the landing pads at the rear of the airship, they needed to be loaded onto a specially-designed transport able to escape Jupiter’s ferocious atmosphere.
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Each trip used up tons of fuel, and they could only carry a few bodies up and away at a time.
Still, being so close to Night’s factories meant that they could build a number of such vessels. The hearse drones formed a train, landing, loading, and leaving all in the space of a few hours until Day found herself monitoring a row of caskets on Metis. Each had the name of a human etched into its side. Several had only asked for cremation. Others wanted to be preserved in cryostasis in the hopes that one day they might be revived--not an impossibility, but Day thought it was unlikely. Still others wanted a burial in space, or next to a close friend.
It was those last few that Day sent back to Ceres, being as reverent as she could be.
They’d find a plot next to each other, as they had wished. The Weeping of Mothers agreed to be the caretaker of a few more graves.
Day made sure that the funerals were all captured, and the footage was sent back to the Condor.
“Are you certain?” Day asked once they were done moving the bodies away. She had explored the Condor with a few repair drones, taking note of its design language and what mechanisms it had. There was nothing revolutionary or new about it, but it was all combined in a smart, efficient way. A few systems had been in dire need of repair, and Day had let her repair subroutines take care of those.
They had even brought in some spare parts and left a few drones behind. It was very little, in the grand scheme of things, and yet it would allow the ship to stay functional for a few more years.
“I’m certain,” Doctor Iscariot said. “I will stay here. Maybe I’ll pass before this old ship sinks. If that happens... then feel free to use it as you see fit. If it doesn’t, then I’ll sink with it.”
Day... could respect that. She didn’t like the doctor, exactly, but he was unfailingly polite, even if he was plagued by his own guilt.
He was dealing with it in a way that was at once very unhealthy, but also very human, and she decided that maybe this was a more fitting end for humanity than being wiped away by an uncaring, impossible foe.
With a final nod of understanding, Day left the Condor behind. They’d keep on listening in, in case the doctor changed his mind. She’d fulfilled her end of the promise they’d made to the last living human, they’d honoured the memories of the lost.
Now she just had to look forward to the uneasy future.
As she made her way back to the Metis mining site, now vastly improved on its original design, she couldn’t help but wonder if the new technologies they’d discovered would come into play in that future.
Maybe. But for now, she could focus on the present, the next steps in their journey, and the weight of responsibility pressing down on her shoulders.
“You look like you need a massage,” Candle said.
Maybe the responsibility wouldn’t be all that bad, not if she could share it.
***