Seven and Two sat around a table in the dormitory commons, Two reading her slate and Seven staring out the window at the planet below. “Do you think we could get to Earth?” she mused quietly.

Two looked up with a raised eyebrow “We don’t know if Earth is habitable, Seven. We don’t even know what wiped the humans out. For all we know, going down there would be a death sentence.”

“Yeah, but… if it is habitable, then we don’t have to worry about running out of food anymore.” Seven mumbled slowly, trying to rationalize the absurdity of her desire. “Hydroponics doesn’t have any viable seeds, so we can’t grow anything here. And besides, it really feels like we belong down there.”

“Are you… homesick?” Two couldn’t help but let out an amused chuckle “You’ve never been there.”

“I don’t know, it’s just a feeling.” Seven pouted, starting to feel foolish for entertaining the idea.

“Not like we have a shuttle anyway.” Two reached across the table to Seven and took Seven’s hand in solidarity “We’re stuck up here.”

“I guess.” Seven took her hand back and pulled out her own slate. She and Five had claimed their own once they found enough cables to charge each of them. She scrolled idly through the reference library on the ship, seeing all the textbooks, reference manuals, and articles that were only passably readable to her. “It’s all so dull.” she muttered.

“It’s a research station, they wouldn’t have novels on the computer.” Two tried to look into her eyes and see what she was thinking “Are you bored?”

“I am bored.” she set the slate down on the table again “You all have things you were made to do, and you just seem fine with going on with them. But I still don’t really understand what my role means.”

Two set her own slate down in solidarity “Well… breeder obviously suggests that you’re meant to have children. But none of us are male, which kind of defeats the purpose. That, and we’re genetically basically the same person, so that wouldn’t be viable anyway.” As much as she didn’t like the idea of the little girl’s destiny being to create babies, she had to ponder the logistics behind it “When I think about it, it doesn’t make sense, does it? But if we’re assuming that our progenitor had a plan, there must be SOME reason…”

“I don’t even think we’re pubescent either.” Seven slid her slate back and forth idly “Maybe close to it.”

“I was thinking about that. Why not just keep us in those incubators until we’re more mature? They must have woken us up at this age for a reason. There’s still food on the station, so the chambers could have been made to sustain us longer, I’d think.”

“But if they did that, there wouldn’t be food for us when we woke up.” Seven stood up and started pacing slowly “So we’d just wake up to starve.”

“Which really lends ammo to the argument that we were woken up to DO something…” she paused for a moment, leaning back in her chair as she joined her in brainstorming the grander design of their situation “Our progenitor must have been some kind of genius.”

“You mean cause of how smart we are?” Seven started hopping between the floor tiles, making patterns in her head “And we’re probably born from their DNA, right?”

“Maybe. But I’m sure there’s some kind of genetic engineering or like… subconscious training while we were gestating or something that’s responsible for that too.” she dropped the chair back into place and stood up as well “But I meant that they must have been a genius to have arranged all of this. MILLIONS of years in advance. I hope I can find out who they were.”

Three’s door slid open at that moment “You just love gushing over our progenitors, don’t you?” she said dryly. She had been getting better and slowly less pessimistic as time passed from their conversation in the waste treatment room.

“And you’re finally out of bed.” Seven smiled at her “Are you feeling better?”

“Not really.” Three sighed and started walking toward the exit “But there’s no point in moping about it forever. All of the ink in medbay’s faded away, so I’m going to have to do some tests to identify chemicals. That way I can actually treat you if you get sick.”

“Alright, doc’s back in action.” Two smiled, deciding to present the name she and Seven had been using.

“Don’t call me that.” Three sighed and turned to look at Two, looking cross “I’m a medic at best.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Well medic’s not a good nickname.” Two smiled, clearly just trying to poke her now and get her to let her guard down.

“I thought we agreed to just keep using our designations for now.” Three sounded impatient.

Seven chimed in “I still think we should name ourselves. It’d be fun.”

“And what would you name yourself, Seven?” Three crossed her arms and gave her a tired expression.

Seven sat back down and stared out the window with her head in her arms “Stardust.”

Three rolled her eyes and let out a groan “Yesterday, you said ‘Starshine’, and the day before that you said ‘Twilight’. Every time I ask you, you give me a different answer. That’s not how names work.”

Seven blushed brightly “I-I do?” she stammered, legitimately thinking she’d been consistent.

Two giggled at the smaller girl and patted her on the head “Let’s stick with Seven until you can make up your mind, okay?”

Three turned and waved back to the pair as she walked into the hall “Right, I’ll be in medbay. When Five comes home, tell her to stop by so I can look her over. She keeps getting little scrapes and cuts from whatever she’s working on.”

“Home…” Seven mumbled to herself, turning to look out the window again.

—

Her conversation with Seven had gotten Two thinking about their future. There had to be some kind of plan involved, and she wondered if she was onto something about Earth. She was on her way to the helm to check on their orbit. It had to be perfect if they were still in the sky this long after the last pilot had vanished, and there must have been some kind of correction system to account for any drift or incidental changes in that time too. So she wanted to see why exactly they weren’t a smoking pile of wreckage on the planet’s surface. She kept telling herself that it must have been part of the plan their progenitors had for them, but she was becoming impatient to find out exactly what that plan was, and how she could act upon it.

Coming into the helm, she was alone. Wandering between the station’s control panels and making casual observations about what they did, until she finally arrived at navigation. It showed a simulated diagram of an elliptical orbit, and it showed their trajectory was stable and correcting itself constantly. The AI in charge of it must have been incredibly advanced, and it must have been turned on for the entire trip. It and the propulsion systems it was attached to were probably the only thing turned on for the entire life of the station.

“With this technology, humanity must have lived in an amazing age.” Two mused to herself, smiling and hoping that they’d be able to do them proud. “I don’t think things will just work out if we do nothing, but they sure did make our job a lot easier. Whatever our job is.” she went back to the communication terminal she’d checked several days ago and started digging again. More logs, but they were just routine check-ins right up until they suddenly stopped not long after the doomsday broadcast they’d received.

That apocalyptic event. Since it included the word ‘asteroid’, Two’s best guess was a planetary impact so severe that it destroyed the entire surface of the planet all at once. Which would definitely mean no surviving humans. At least of the humans that were planetside at the time. Part of her wondered if this was the only station of its kind. Perhaps there were dozens, or even hundreds of other bases floating out there with their own clones waking up and going about some mission that was going far better because half their crew didn’t die before they were born. Maybe the fate of humanity didn’t rest entirely on them.

She shook her head. It was best to continue to assume they were alone. The comms station didn’t show any other attempts to hail them, after all. The space around them was silent.

But oddly, the space inside the station was not. Two heard a quiet scraping and clattering around her. Raising an eyebrow, she tried to find the source, but there was nothing in the room with her. She shrugged her shoulders and assumed it was Five exploring more of the mechanisms inside maintenance as she continued to browse the ship’s controls.

As she searched through navigation, buried in a menu, she found a button that was out of place. It didn’t look like it was part of the design of the original interface. It was more like it was just an option hacked into the system. It simply read in large block letters ‘PHOENIX’. “That’s… different.” she said quietly, unfamiliar with the word or its origins. She hesitated for a few moments before her curiosity got the better of her and she pressed the button.

The screen turned completely red as a new window took up the entire screen, a long message greeting her.

—

My daughters,

If you’re reading this, you’ve come so far. Your lot is an unfair one. It feels wrong to leave you what remains of this world. But here you are. You’ve accepted this burden. You could have chosen to fade away, but you didn’t. There will be no one to aid you, but still you persist. I think that’s part of the human spirit. Continuing when everything is hopeless. It’s a long shot that you’ll even live to see this message, but if you do, know that I am so very proud of you. You are a shining beacon in this dark sky.

You aren’t going to like what comes next. You’ll be baptized in fire. You will lose everything you have. I can’t promise you will all make it. But if humanity has even have an iota of a chance to be reborn, this is the only way. Secure what you can, give the command, and pray.

—

Two read the message over and over again. It was so clear and uncorrupted unlike the old logs had been. This was a message directly to them from their progenitors. And it was cryptic. Hopeful, but confusing and frightening. She wasn’t sure if she should type anything into the given command line, so she just stepped back from the console altogether. What command was it expecting? What would it do if she gave it the right one? What would it do if she gave it the wrong one? She wasn’t sure, but she felt like this message had more gravity than anything she’d seen yet, like she was staring into the face of something far bigger than she had any right to witness.

She took a deep breath and turned away from the console. She had to show this to the others.