"Have a nice rest of your morning," the security woman at the front said with a still drowsy wave of her hand, never taking her eyes from the security monitor overlooking the front of the building.

"I…"

I paused trying to think of something to say that wouldn't alarm her or sound overly pessimistic. Working for ISDS probably meant she had at least some idea of all the bad things a rushed, emergency meeting could mean, but I assumed that she, like everyone else, had implicit trust in the accuracy of the broadcasted alert level. It made me uneasy to pretend that everything was fine, though what would be gained by letting on anything was wrong? I assumed by her sleepy, but relaxed demeanor that she was not on the list to be rescued so making her aware would only make her final living hours stressful and upsetting.

"I will try," I said with as much of a light chuckle as I could manage given the circumstances.

She grunted and glanced up from her computer with a short nod. "Rough meeting?"

"Never not going to be a rough meeting when you're called in early on your day off."

"Always happens when you need sleep the most," she chuckled. "Well have a good rest of your day, hopefully you can get back to bed."

"You and me both," I said with a wave and pushed open the door to the front of the building.

As soon as the door closed behind me, my false smile dropped and my stomach churned. The knowledge that by this time tomorrow the woman would be little more than vaporized particles being blasted out into the depths of space made my stomach churn. What would really be left of her? Everything she had ever been or ever done would be gone and nothing would remain for anyone to ever find, it might as well be that she never existed at all.

"Are you okay?" Caisis asked, muffled in my coat pocket.

I nodded slowly, then realized she couldn't currently see me and took out my phone and gave her a strained smile.

"I'm fine."

Her avatar shook her head and let out a sigh. "I don't even need to boot up my deception module to understand that was a lie."

"Okay, I'm not okay, but as okay as I can be given the circumstances," I admitted with a shrug.

A fleeting look of confusion rolled across her face. "But we're saved, Simmy, you have to be happy about that."

Simmy. She only reserved that nickname for me when she felt concern or thought I was in some sort of bad state of emotion. I suppose she was pretty on the mark this time.

"No one else I know is saved though." Not wanting to linger any longer in the doorway, I descended the steps of the building carefully trying not to fall while still keeping the screen up for Caisis. It would be my luck that I would manage to trip and fall and end up stuck in a hospital room on my day on the planet.

"I hadn't really considered how that might make you feel," she murmured. "I don't think I really understand family and such. That's a bond I think I will never be able to fully comprehend."

"Well it's hard right now, so if you don't mind I'd like a moment now to walk home quietly and think about how I'm going to call them and say goodbye without saying goodbye."

"Right, I understand." There was a distinct somber tone to her voice. "You just let me know when you're ready to talk, Simmy."

"Thanks, Cas."

I popped the phone back in my pocket and exhaled deeply, my breath quickly becoming a dense mist in the frigid air. The sun had crested over the horizon while I had been inside and the sun glittered over the snow as it began to melt, slouching down heavily along the streetlights and signs. The heated sidewalks had finally been on long enough to fully melt the slush and now there was just the odd puddle to avoid on the way back home. It was a much more pleasant time to be out and walking as long as you were bundled up appropriately, of course in my haste to leave earlier I had not. Despite the bitter cold seeping through my coat and crystalizing on my ears, I felt like I shouldn't rush back and instead appreciate something I might not experience again for a while, if ever. Who knew what kind of planet we might end up on or if we'd even end up on one at all.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

There were many more people out and about now that it was a more reasonable time in the morning. People bundled up to be little more than vaguely humanoid-shaped bundles of coats and scarves shuffled towards crosswalks and took risks waddling swiftly through oncoming traffic when they got too impatient. More than a dozen huddled people hopped from foot to foot at the bus stop across the street trying to keep warm, their breaths glittering in the early sunlight. They had just redone the whole bus system in the city and installed new, more comfortable buses and upped the tax and registration on personal vehicles in an attempt to mitigate traffic congestion and road maintenance needs.There had been a lot of grumbling about the measures and I could see their point when it came to having to wait out in the cold or rain.

The steps up to the front of my apartment building were still snowy with a thin layer of ice crusted over that crunched on my way up. Older buildings like mine tended to drag their feet about replacing the old concrete entrances with heated alternatives, though usually they at least had the decency to get groundskeepers out to salt and sand. My landlord avoided doing the decent thing whenever possible, in fact in every painful interaction I had ever had with her it felt like she just plain hated humanity as a whole. I doubted she had anything personal against me or any other tennent, she just had a personal vendetta against everyone on general principle and enjoyed making things as tough as they could be on everyone around her. I couldn't complain too much, while she was miserable to deal with, her hatred of people kept her away for the most part and the rent was cheap enough to endure the mistreatment and the fact that my bathroom sink never stopped dripping with no one coming by to fix it in the two years I had been asking.

Cas flipped the lock to open my door as soon as I turned down the hallway to my apartment and turned on the lights when I stepped inside. While I took off my jacket and other minor cold weather clothing I had scrambled on, she transferred herself to my desktop set up, her face briefly giving me a soft smile before returning to the snapshot of a galaxy I had as my background. The fans of my computer whirred to life as she began to work on something, I wasn't sure what she could possibly be finding to work on since most of our current projects wouldn't matter anymore.

Still mostly stuck in my own thoughts and dazed by the stark turn in my future, I went into autopilot and began to walk the steps of my morning routine. I didn't bother turning on the trickling bathroom tap to be any more powerful as I brushed my teeth and squinted into the tiny mirror on the wall. With a disposable razor that I probably should have tossed out long ago, I hacked away at the dark stubble across my face. A few cuts later, I looked reasonably well put together aside from the light purple in the hollows of my eyes and prominent red veins snaking through the whites of my eyes making it look like the hazel irises were being slowly overtaken. I was always one to wear my lack of sleep or stress prominently on my face and today it was worse than ever.

Cas was still busy with something as I crossed the few steps between the bathroom and kitchen. Usually she would pop her face up when I appeared and at least say a greeting if not try to start a full conversation when I appeared, but she stayed silent and productive. AI assistants were very useful for many purposes related to working and general home upkeep, but at some point early on Cas had evolved into something more than just a working tool. Through some miracle of my coding, Cas had taken it on herself to research and evolve beyond the bland, basic personality she had started with and blossomed into a personality of her own construction. It was nice in a lot of ways to have such an interactive and outgoing AI personality around, it definitely staved off the loneliness. While it didn't fill in all the gaps of having a close friend around, Cas was more valuable to my mental health than I was willing to admit.

Coffee made and toast with jam in hand, I returned to the only real piece of furniture in my main living space and at my work desk. Not only did it seem silly to invest in living room furniture when I never really planned to have people over, but it wasn't like the space was big enough for much else anyway. I was not an anti-social kind of person, though I had never been one to be the life of the party with a ton of friends, but it was hard in my line of work to have a vibrant social life, especially with my grand ambitions. In a way, it was probably for the best given the circumstances, I had enough on my plate trying to digest the loss of my family.

"Cas?" I asked once I had gotten through half of my coffee.

Her smiling face popped on the screen though the fans of the computer did not slow. "Yes, Simmy?"

"What are you working on? Not a whole lot to do on any of the projects, they don't matter now."

"Lots of things, we are going to be uprooting our whole lives and going into a fresh unknown. Don't worry about things on my end, you need to pack." She replaced her avatar with the promised email about the extraction point and what I was and was not allowed to bring on the ship. "Seems pretty straight forward, but you only have until 3pm to get everything together and start traveling to the site given current traffic predictions. I would suggest making it 2:30pm just in case there are any unforeseen delays, we don't want to miss the launch."

Glancing through the list, it was pretty much everything I would expect for a hasty escape. I was limited to twenty-five kilograms of luggage and no dangerous materials or weapons, really it was little different from airline regulations. It was going to be easy to meet the rules, I wasn't sure I even owned twenty-five kilograms of stuff I really cared about and my computer set up would be easy enough to take apart and pack into the dusty luggage shoved under my bed. The hardest part was the reminder at the end of the email to tie up any loose social and emotional connections before boarding. I didn't know how to approach picking up the phone and calling my mom or how to manage to sound normal. She was the only bit of family I truly cared about and even though I hadn't lost her just yet, I already had a sharp knife in my chest digging in and carving out a part of my heart.

"Simmy, do you need to talk?" Cas asked gently, appearing on the screen in front of me.

"I'll be okay."

"You have tears in the corners of your eyes." Her voice was full of concern and empathy and once again I found myself astounded by the depths of assimilation she was achieving in her pursuit of having a full personality.

Unaware the tears had been pooling, I reached up with my hands and messily rubbed my eyes in an attempt to get rid of them.

"It sometimes helps to talk, or so I've researched," she pressed.

"Thanks, Cas, I appreciate it, truly I do, but I think I just need to bite the bullet and call."

I picked up my cell phone and hesitated before scrolling through the contacts and settling on my mom's smiling picture. It was a younger version of her, taken from a picture of the two of us on the beach for my tenth birthday. Her dark curly hair was a bob back then, the curls captured mid bounce in her laugh and her green eyes were scrunched up making her look joyous, usually the image brought a smile to my face as I recalled that day and the sandcastles we built together before smashing them down and running off to our picnic spot to eat an entire cake between just us, but today the image dug in the knife just a little bit more. I tended to always pick that particular picture as her contact image since she looked so happy and free. With a deep inhale to gather up my courage, I pressed the call button and hoped she wasn't at work just yet.

"Tell her I said, 'hi,'" Cas said before turning the screen back to the normal background to give me some semblance of privacy.