The Moon’s white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows.
—“Timbuctoo,” by Lord Tennyson, From Poems From a Distant Earth, by Chen Tien
Sanya stood on the landing pad, waiting for the all-okay to run across to the jumper that would take her to the Launchpad. She was a celebrity now, both for her actions to bring down the catfish virus as well as the stories she’d written about it afterward, and those two things had won her one of the early berths on the Launchpad.
Sam had given her the other scoop of the year—about the monster slowly eating away at Luna’s core. The shakes had subsided for now, but it was a temporary respite at best.
In return for her assistance during the crisis, she’d gotten one of the first tickets planetside.
She wanted to see Earth—to walk in the zongi forests, to see the fish leaping out of the bay. To feel the warmth of the sun on her shoulders. It would require months of intensive training to build up her endurance, but it would be worth it.
And there were other Thorns down there—Ally and Aidan and their family. She didn’t know if they were related, but she was excited to meet them and find out.
Ping.
She closed her eyes and touched her temple. Rafe’s message scrolled before her. Hey, scout. Good luck on the drop. See you when you get back.
She grinned. She had no idea if they had a future, or even if she wanted one with him. But her own future was here.
She loved this city like no other place. Earth had its charms, but her heart was in Redemption. She would return to do what she could to help with the return. And who knew… maybe they would find a way to redeem Redemption itself.
She closed her eyes. Avri was there, waiting for her. I’m so proud of you.
I miss you. If she could have one wish, it would be for Avri to reappear, to suddenly come striding out onto the launch pad, to take her hand and tell her everything was going to work out.
I know. You don’t need me anymore. You’re ready for this.
She was right. Sanya’s life had been on hold for three long years. It was time to move forward. Will I ever see you again?
Avri flashed her a shy grin. You always have my ‘mage. I love you, Sanny.
“Ms. Thorn? You’re a go.” The man’s voice sounded tinny in her suit helmet.
Sanya opened her eyes. One of the port attendants pointed across to the waiting jumper—the Liánhuā.
Love you too, Avri. “Thanks!” She followed him out to the small craft without looking back. Time for something new.
Rai and Aidan pried old broken Saltillo tiles off the floor of the kitchen one by one, throwing them into a wheelbarrow to be carted off to the growing pile of cement, tile, and bricks that would soon be ground down into material for new roads.
This house and the one next door were being torn down to their metal studs and would be combined into one new living structure big enough for a family, and built for natural airflow. Aidan’s mother was almost well enough for the trip, and the twins were eager to meet their new “Uncle Rai.”
“Think your mother will mind having a son-in-law instead of a daughter-in-law?” Rai hammered at one particularly stubborn tile. “Otherwise it’s going to make for a challenging living situation.”
Aidan laughed. “Yeah. She was a little weird about it at first, but when I reminded her she almost had no in-laws at all… she’ll come around.” He’d hung the handmade cross up on the wall above the shattered floor, and he glanced up at it worriedly.
Rai grinned. “Yeah, there is that. I hear they’re repairing one of the big tanks up on the hill above Martinez Base, patching it up to hold water. I’d love to have this place in shape by then so she can move right in with us.” He really hoped Aidan’s mother liked him.
He wasn’t sure about the whole Christian thing, but he figured they’d make it work. They had a lot of things to teach one another.
“Me too.” Aidan pulled Rai in for a quick kiss. “But we won’t get it done any faster chit-chatting the day away.”
“Says the guy who keeps taking water breaks.”
“It’s cramping hot in here.” He pulled off his shirt.
Rai grinned. “You’re cramping hot.” He reached for Aidan, but his partner danced back out of reach.
-Work first. Play later.- It had taken a while, but Aidan was getting used to his new loop. He looked up at the open sky above them. “You think I’d be able to fly one of those ships, one day? I always wanted to be a pilot.”
Rai nodded. “Why not?” He smirked. “After all, I know a guy…”
Aidan laughed. “Put in a good word for me with Sam, would you?”
A bee from the hive out back buzzed through the kitchen and out through the open window frame in the living room.
There was something about building something for yourself, and Earth was the new frontier. There was so much left to explore, so many things to do. Forests to plant. Animals to breed. “The next drop is coming up soon. Beijing. Ying Yue and her crew are dying to get to it and to get out of courier duty once we get the Humbers refurbished to use the new x-drives Harley is churning out.” They’d be busy the next several years building housing for the transplanted Loonies, but after that…
“I’ll bet.” Aidan’s eyes took on a faraway cast. “Beijing. London. New York. So many places I never thought I’d be able to see.”
-Work first. Explore later.-
Aidan stuck out his tongue. -Nicely played.-
Rai laughed. He was happy. Really happy, for the first time in a long time. He had a partner, a purpose, the joint venture with Ghost, and a whole new world to explore.
And now he knew he was strong enough to accomplish anything.
Tien was taking inventory of the sixth storeroom since she’d arrived with Ally at Boundary Peak. The place was a madhouse of junk from the old world, including a lot of machines that ran on polluting power sources. She was starting to understand how humankind had made such a mess of things before the Collapse.
The Crash. Ally’s influence was getting to her.
How did they not see it coming?
One of the twins—Alex or Auggie, she still hadn’t figured out how to tell them apart—poked his head around the corner. “Mamma says lunch is ready.”
“Thanks.” She was getting tired of canned rations, but it was only for a few more days. Then they’d start the overland trek to their new home.
Astra Thorn wasn’t thrilled about “having one of those Chinese in our home,” but at least she’d stopped calling Tien “that Chaff girl.” It was progress. They’d decided to save the other news about Tien for another time.
“What’s Martinez like?”
“You mean Landing?” She sifted through a box of old pipes and junctions.
He stuck his tongue out at her. “Whatever.”
She laughed. She loved the twins’ youthful energy. Maybe enough to consider having a child of her own one day. Maybe. “It’s by the bay. There are hills and trees… more trees soon, they tell me.”
Alex or Auggie closed his eyes. “I want to see trees.”
“Hey scamp, leave Tien alone. She’s got a big job to do.” Ally appeared at the doorway and shooed him off. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. I find him charming. Is that one… Alex?”
“Auggie.”
“How can you tell?”
Ally grinned. “You just can. Auggie likes green. And his eyes are a little different. You’ll figure it out.”
“Probably not.” Tien looked around the room. “You have a lot of junk in here.”
Ally laughed. “I know. I used to prowl all these rooms when I was little, imagining what I would do with it all.”
Tien nodded. “You were a junk geek.”
“Totally.”
They laughed. Ally’s gaze lingered on Tien just a little too long to be casual. Then she looked away. “I was wondering… you never did explain why Harley—the catfish one—seemed so real. The things she showed me…”
Tien nodded. “I know. She was real. Or at least, what she—or it?—showed you were stolen from the real Harley, all those years ago, when the virus tried to take over Harley’s mind. It failed, but it locked Harley away from the world.”
Ally frowned. “Then it came here? Into Cimber?”
“We think so. Where it waited all these years for the chance to finish its mission. When we started nosing around Martinez Base, it seized its chance.”
“Was there ever any medication there? Or was that just a wild goose chase?”
Tien grinned. “You have such wonderful idioms.” She bit her lip, thinking about it. “The virus might have planted that information too.”
Ally frowned. “Yeah, it makes sense. Still, we would never have found you, if it hadn’t been for Cimber/Fake Harley.”
“True. Though we have to come up with a better name for it.”
“How about ‘The Cat?’”
“Works for me.” Tien set the box down, smiling to herself. It was good to see Ally opening up a little.
“Anyhow, come on. Let’s go eat. Mom made something special for you today—canned pears!”
Tien stuck out her tongue. “Oh, yay.” She put down her clipboard and followed Ally out of the room. She didn’t have the heart to tell her how awful those old irradiated pears really were.
There was a spark between the two of them, so far undefined, but Tien could feel it. Maybe it would blossom into something more, maybe not.
Tien was willing to wait, to let Ally come to it in her own time. If not, she was sure Ally would be her friend for life.
Meanwhile, she had her hands full cataloging all the crap the old world had left behind.
“Hey Allycat—wait for me! I don’t want to get lost down here!”
Her voice drifted back down the hall. “I’ll always find you.”
Ghost held out the sign, looking at it in the morning light. “It’s perfect.”
Lyss grinned. “I’d hoped you would like it.”
“The Frontier” was spelled out in golden letters on a deep blue, starry background, hand-painted on a piece of recovered wood from one of the old farmhouses nearby.
Right now, Ghost was shouldering the lion’s share of the work, but Rai promised to help once he had his new family’s housing in order. Ghost was happy for him—truly happy—and happy for himself too, for the first time in ages. “Best beer on the planet.”
Lyss laughed. “You’re going to serve that Redemption crap? Why not some of the best wines on Earth?”
He grinned. “Unlike your Preserve grapes, our Redemption crap doesn’t fuzz the mind.”
“One of these days, I’ll get you to give up the whole ‘Redemption is superior to Earth’ thing.”
He leaned down to kiss her. “One of these days I’ll get you to finally get rid of the whole weird ‘men are inferior’ thing.
“Well, you are.” She grinned and danced away from him as he tried to grab her.
“Baby steps.”
She nodded. “Baby steps.”
The Preserve was changing, but change was hard. Harley was guiding them now, come into her own at last, and a few, like Lyss, were stepping out of old roles and into the new world. Ever so slowly.
Some in Redemption had wanted to burn the place to the ground. But Rai had been right. They all needed one another.
He turned to look around the place he’d chosen for the new bar—the empty salon he’d entered for the first time, months past, before the world had changed.
Lyss came back to him and nestled in the crook of his arm. “It’s a brave new world.”
He kissed her. “Yes it is.”
Sam watched as the Zulu took off from the landing pad, heading for the station above, shuttling people and limited materials between the base and the station and back. The stars were fading with the sunrise, and a warm breeze played across the plateau.
They’d renamed the Launchpad as Hope Station, the halfway point between Earth and his old home. Soon it would be bustling with activity as they took advantage of the lull in lunar quakes to move as many of Redemption’s people as they could manage.
As the Acting Commander of the new colony, he’d only been back up there physically once, though the rest of him now watched over Redemption.
He’d met Harley at last, shortly after his dropnauts had saved the world.
…access > memcache: full memory.play…
Sam waited in the v-space Alpha once shared with Harley, or at least a replica of it. He felt… nervous? It wasn’t an emotion he was accustomed to. Logic was his thing. Rational thought processes, leading to an optimal outcome.
Emotion was a much different thing, one that he was still getting used to after more than a hundred years. He’d given up trying to file it away.
He was running on Alpha’s core, and he’d never felt so… wide. So free. Alpha had left him the keys to the kingdom.
You were always my friend. Sam missed his mentor and creator.
Then the world shifted, and she was there.
“Sam.”
He nodded. “And Alpha. A little of both.”
“That’s… strange.”
“The world is a weird and beautiful place.”
She laughed, and Sam remembered her as she’d been for him when he was Alpha.
She stared at him. “Is he… a part of you?”
Sam nodded. “He’s gone. He destroyed himself to finish off his attacker. But he and I… we were one, for a while, and friends after. But you… how did you…”
“I was always based at Martinez Base, even when I ran the San Francisco city-state. In the Collapse, the catfish hopped from AI to AI. It attacked me via the NAU fleet, and destroyed it when I managed to fight it off.”
“That’s when it picked up your personality.”
She shifted, her image wavering in vee. “Yes. It knocked me offline—”
“Sleeping beauty.”
She smiled, and she was dazzling. “Yes. The virus must have found a home at Boundary Peak, and it’s been trying to get to me ever since.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry about the Zhenyi. I wasn’t in control. The base’s auto defense systems were still running.”
“No lives were lost. Not in that one.” He would carry memories of the Bristol and the Gday with him for as long as he existed. “I am hopeful that they gave their lives for something greater. For a new beginning.”
“I will not take another’s life. I will not take what is not mine. I will not violate another. I will not lie. I will help build a better world. You and Alpha made a good start together.”
“I like to think so. They’re still human. There will be mistakes.” How well he knew that. Even AIs weren’t immune from that basic fact of life.
“Still, it’s a whole new world now.”
He nodded. “Things have changed. I have so much to share with you. More than a hundred years.”
She stared at him. “It’s so strange. You’re him, but not him.”
“Try being me, a poor little moonstone digger, when Alpha first chose me as his host.”
She laughed. “He chose well. Are you sure…?”
He signaled his assent.
They flowed together, mingling with each other, passing data back and forth far faster than any human could.
Things can change things must change we can help them build a new world.
Things will change.
Sam thrummed with a new emotion. One he had a hard time fathoming. Surely there was a name for it? Then it came to him.
Hope.
The part of him that inhabited his silver human form turned to look out over the edge of the plateau. Mixed crews—some from Redemption, some from the Preserve—were working side by side to rebuild the old houses just to the west of base. In the first three months, ten houses had been torn down to studs and refashioned using reclaimed and recycled materials. The first families from both societies would move in soon.
On the northern edge of the base, three wind turbines harnessed the almost constant breezes blowing through the Carquinez Strait. Harley had helped them redesign the base’s long-dormant manufacturing facilities, converting them to run on clean power.
A new forest was being planted around the zongi trees on the hillsides above the base. In a decade or two, tall redwoods would once again grace them with their shade.
Hera climbed the ladder from the newly rechristened Landing Base below. “Hey boss,” she called, coming to join him to admire the view.
“How’s the Humber conversion coming?” Of all the dropnauts, Hera was his favorite, though he would never tell her so.
She grinned. “Good. Harley’s making great progress on the new x-drives. We hope to have the first of the Humbers ready to fly in a couple weeks.”
“And no explosions?” The loss of the Gday still hurt.
“We hope not. Harley has been working together with Ghost to make them more stable. Having access to most of the research from Old Earth doesn’t hurt.”
He nodded. “I’d imagine.” He knew all of this, but he still liked to get updates directly from his crews.
“Tovey is in training. They want to be in one of the first batch of settlers coming down.”
“You miss them?”
She nodded. “Every day.”
He looked sideways at her. “And Ghost?”
Hera bit her lip. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“Not when it comes to my favorite team. So?” It was the one thing he’d worried about when he’d taken Gordan Gilliam into the program along with Hera. They were close. Maybe too close.
She sighed. “Things are… better. We were never right together, you know?”
“I’d guessed.”
“He’s seeing someone new now. Her name is Lyss… from the Preserve. She knows when and how to put him in his place.”
He laughed. “I’d like to see that.”
They stood there together for a minute, looking at the new world being rebuilt, house by house, below.
“Hey, I’m going up to the memorial this evening to leave some flowers. Rosemary brought me a fresh batch of tulips. They’re the most marvelous things. Want to come?”
“Thanks, but I have a lot to do.” Harley had a lot of work to do with the women of the Preserve, but Rosemary and the Council had taken the first steps, declaring the men to be equal citizens under the law. The rest would come, with time.
Hera shrugged. “Suit yourself. Hey, you know if you ever need a friend….”
He nodded. Of all his teams, she was the one who saw him as an equal. As human. It was something he treasured deeply. “I will.”
As she descended the ladder, he closed his eyes, replaying his most precious memories.
The simple times sifting gems from the lunar dust.
The smile of a little girl with broken legs, reaching up to touch his face.
The cheers of a city for his students on the eve of the Return.
There were a hundred, a thousand more beautiful gems like those. Each one stored in perfect clarity in Sam’s core, along with copies of Alpha’s. And there were a few that were devastatingly painful, also available to his perfect recall.
Eidetic memory was a blessing and a curse. But even so, it was a burden he was proud to carry.
He would never forget the crew of the Bristol—Dax, Jess, Ola and Xiu Ying. Or the Gday—Corey, Vixen, Joyce and Marco.
He didn’t need a physical memorial to remind him. They were all inside of him, along with every moment he had ever spent with each of them. They would live on in him.
He looked up at the sky, searching for the Zulu. It was already lost in a sea of clouds.
He turned to get back to the good work of building the colony. It was a fresh day, and he had a lot to get done.
Time to make some new memories.