Dozens of other Exo Project participants were already in the briefing room, seated in chairs facing a lectern. Matthew surveyed the crowd. Most of the people were Dunne’s age or older. Some were so old they looked close to dying already; one elderly woman pulled an oxygen tank on wheels behind her as she shuffled, hunched, to her seat.
The seats toward the back of the room were already taken, so Matthew, Sam, and Dunne sat down near the front. As soon as they settled into their seats, the door opened behind them and a hush came over the room. The young woman who had escorted them walked to the front of the room and spoke to the crowd.
“Good morning, everyone,” she began. “Thank you all for being here on this historic day.”
“Like we had a choice,” Sam muttered.
“Today, Exo Project volunteers are preparing for their expeditions at cryostations just like this one, all across the planet. But we’ve got a special treat. OmniCore has been kind enough to send one of the masterminds of the Exo Project to speak to us.”
The young woman beamed. “His name is Charles Keane, and I hope that you’ll help me give him a warm welcome.”
“Lucky us,” Sam whispered, but the woman had already started to clap, and the crowd halfheartedly did the same as Keane—a man in a sleek OmniCore uniform—came in the room and walked to the front. Matthew put his hands together a few times until he realized the absurdity of what he was doing: clapping for the man who had most likely engineered his death. He let his hands drop to his sides and set his jaw.
“Thank you,” Keane said when he reached the lectern. He was tall and thin, with dark hair, smooth features, and sleek, black-rimmed glasses. “Thank you for that warm welcome. And thank you to all of you for being part of this historic moment. The Exo Project is an amazing feat of innovation—it is the peak of human innovation, in fact, the most ambitious thing we have ever attempted as a species.”
Keane stepped out from behind the lectern and began to wander the stage, gesturing with his hands.
“Just think of it! One thousand simultaneous expeditions across the galaxy, one thousand ships and crews traveling faster than the speed of light. Just imagine all the work, all the resources and meetings and late nights that have gone into every aspect of the mission: identifying potential Earthlike planets to explore, mapping a course through the stars to each one, and then of course engineering the technology that would get us there. But all this innovation, this triumph of science and technology and human cooperation on a massive scale, it would all be for nothing without one thing.”
Keane paused, squared his feet and shoulders to the crowd, then laced his hands together and pointed with both forefingers.
“You,” he said. “Gentlemen, ladies, you may not believe me, but I’m telling you the truth: At this moment, you are the most important part of the Exo Project. Without you, all this science, all this technology, all this innovation—it would all be useless.”
At Matthew’s side, he could sense Sam moving restlessly in his chair. Now, as soon as Keane paused, Sam burst to his feet.
“Yes?” Keane said, backing up slightly on the stage, balancing on his heels.
“If we’re so valuable,” Sam said, “then why haven’t you come up with a way to get us back to Earth? You expect us all to die, don’t you?”
Matthew gritted his teeth as Sam shouted at Keane.
Keane didn’t respond with anger, though. His face became calm, almost expressionless as he prepared to answer Sam’s question.
“Ah,” he said. “I understand your concern. And I’m glad you asked the question. Really, I am. I’m glad because it gives me the opportunity to …” He churned a hand in the air as he searched for his next words. “To clear up some confusion, shall we say? To dispel some common misconceptions. Does that sound all right?”
Sam was silent. He sank slowly back into his chair. Keane nodded and lifted his head to the entire crowd.
“First of all, I don’t want to lie to anyone here. It’s true that there is no means of return to Earth once you’re at your destination. This should have been perfectly clear to everyone who volunteered for the Exo Project.”
Keane glanced briefly back at Sam with a reproach in his eyes.
“As to us expecting you to die,” Keane continued. “This is simply not true. We’d prefer it if no one had to die as part of the Exo Project. But unfortunately there’s simply no way around it. Deep space exploration is dangerous—even at light speed it takes decades to travel across the galaxy, and it’s very difficult to turn around and come back to Earth over such a long distance. You—all of you gathered here today—were aware of these dangers, and yet you signed up anyway. Why?”
Keane paused for a moment, let the question hang in the air.
“Because you knew that the future of the human race was the most important thing. You knew that the lives of billions of people on planet Earth outweighed your own life.”
Something strange came into Keane’s voice then, a kind of euphoric tone, as if he were being carried away by his own speech. His eyes grew wide, and words came from his mouth quicker, in a passionate torrent.
“Earlier I spoke about the Exo Project as a feat of human innovation. But in light of this … this question”—here he waved dismissively at Sam, batting his concerns away like gnats—“I want to introduce another word to you. That word is greatness. The Exo Project is not just the height of human innovation—it’s the height of human greatness. I truly believe that it will be the greatest thing we have ever accomplished as a species. And ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that no work of human greatness has ever come without equally great human sacrifice.”
At that, Matthew felt a chill. He knew that his participation in the Exo Project was a sacrifice, of course, but there was something in the way Keane said it that made the word sound different—sound evil.
“In Ancient Egypt, many thousands of slaves died in the desert constructing the Pyramids of Giza. The Romans built an empire that spanned the known world by forcing the people they conquered to serve them—and feeding those who refused to the lions. Millenia later, thousands more workers died of disease, of injury, and of exhaustion as they built railroads that spanned the continents, as they worked in factories and mines that created wealth for great men of history and built new, modern empires. And then, of course, hundreds of millions died in the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—but without these wars we wouldn’t have made the innovations in aviation and rocket propulsion that let us take our first steps into space, or the advances in chemical technology, biological technology, and nanotechnology that today are used to create synthetic foods that feed the world and to cure illnesses that were once thought incurable.”
Keane’s head lifted to scan the audience, but Matthew could see that Keane wasn’t looking at them—he was looking through them to some act of greatness that he wanted to achieve, that he wanted to be remembered for.
“I truly believe that the Exo Project will be humanity’s greatest accomplishment yet—greater than the pyramids, greater than the Industrial Revolution, greater than all the scientific discoveries and technological advances of human history from the dawn of time until this present moment.” Keane pointed a finger emphatically toward the ground he stood on. “And you, ladies and gentlemen—you are the sacrifice necessary to make that accomplishment a reality. Yes, most of you will die—but it will be a quick death. At worst, you’ll spend decades sleeping peacefully in cryostasis, then expire quickly, after taking the mission-termination pills. Compared to the sacrifice, the suffering, of the Egyptian slaves who died so their masters could achieve the greatness of the pyramids, your sacrifice, your suffering, will be small. But it will be remembered all the same.”
Keane’s eyes were frenzied. They burned with an ambition, a fire, that made Matthew want to lean back in his chair.
“Centuries from now,” Keane said, “when future generations are living on the planet that one of you has found for us, they’ll remember you and your sacrifice. They’ll remember all of us. So go. Get out there. Find us a new home. Good luck, and Godspeed.”
There was a sound of thunderous clapping from the back of the room. Matthew turned in his chair. At the back of the room stood dozens of OmniCore officers in matching uniforms. They were applauding Keane’s speech loudly, faces shining with pride and inspiration.
But none of the Exo Project participants clapped, or smiled, or looked inspired. They simply gazed forward, their faces blank and emotionless.
Keane left the lectern and filed out of the room with the other OmniCore officers.
The woman who’d introduced Keane took the microphone once more.
“Now the freezing process will begin,” she said. “You may wait here until your name is called.”
A few minutes later a man in a lab coat came into the room and read names off a handheld computer pad. Matthew was part of the first group.
He stood and followed the man with the others whose names had been chosen, feeling more than ever like a doomed person, a criminal being led to the gallows.