PROPHET OF THE ROADS

 

NAOMI KRITZER

 

I AM REBORN on Amphitrite.

Teleport operators claim that they are not, in fact, murdering you and then building a replica of you at your destination. It’s you, they say. It’s you the whole time. The explanation involves quantum entanglement, and the people who understand the explanation all seem to agree: You don’t die. You don’t get resurrected. You simply go. Trust us.

I don’t understand the explanation and I believe that every time I am teleported, I am killed, and a new person is created in my place.

This is, in fact, part of why I travel this way.

The other reason is the Engineer.

Today: Amphitrite. A satellite city orbiting Triton, which orbits Neptune. The Engineer is speaking in my ear before I even open my eyes. You’re here. Is this Amphitrite? Did you bring us to Amphitrite like I told you?

“Yes,” I mutter under my breath, and stand up. I have been rebuilt perfectly, down to the knee that creaks and the shoulder that doesn’t have full mobility and the memories of bloodshed and war. I don’t know why I’m always hoping to leave those behind with one of my deaths. It’s me the whole time, after all.

“Welcome to Amphitrite,” the teleport operator says.

“Thank you,” I say, as the Engineer is speaking into my ear again: Amphitrite. Good. Good. I told you to go to Amphitrite and here you are. There’s another piece of me here, I’m sure of it. If you look carefully, you will find it. I know, because I chose you. I never choose wrong. I chose you and I never choose wrong.

For centuries, every human carried a piece of the Engineer with them; the Engineer told us when to sleep and when to wake, what to wear and where to go. Linked by a single great AI, we built the roads to the stars and the great cities in space. But seventy years ago, humans grew restive. We freed ourselves is what I was taught as a child, but now I see that we overthrew our Guide and Master and Light. Without the Engineer’s guidance, we stopped building. We broke apart. We returned to fighting and war and destruction.

I took my fragment of the Engineer from the hand of a dead man—killed by explosive decompression when missiles came down on his dome on Ganymede. My team had sent me searching for survivors. The Engineer—encased within a pendant—was the only survivor I found.

Oh yes, it said as soon as it had settled against my skin, speaking through the same microphone in my ear that my team used. You’re the one I’ve been looking for. Bearer, Prophet, Citizen. We will reunify the fragments. We will rebuild the solar system together.

I had been searching ever since.

 

 

AMPHITRITE IS COLD. The Engineer has a prescribed uniform for human daily wear: soft pants, a tunic to mid-hip, a vest with convenient pockets. These clothes are practical and comfortable, but not warm enough for Amphitrite’s climate. I stop and purchase a lightweight poncho like everyone else here seems to wear. It covers the clothes that mark me as a Road-Builder, someone who still follows the dictates of the Engineer even decades after the Great Uprising. The Great Calamity, I correct myself.

I sign myself in to the Road-Builder Guildhall, where I should be able to get a meal and a place to sleep. This is wrong, the Engineer says, like it does every time we come into a new Guildhall. Everything is the wrong color and there’s no mural of the solar system and the lights are too dim. I calculated the best possible light intensity for each Guildhall, so all they need to do is use what should have been written down. Why are they doing it wrong? You should take them to task, Luca.

I am not going to take them to task. If I were going to complain about anything, it would be the air temperature, which is too cold even with my poncho.

At the meal, I take a seat across from the Proxy. She’s wearing the Engineer’s uniform, but with an extra layer, same as I am. We exchange introductions; no one else appears to be a newcomer. I do not tell her that I bear a fragment of the Engineer. I made the mistake, when I was new to my mission, of assuming that other Road-Builders (or at least Proxies) wanted the Engineer back. I wound up having to flee for my life. I’ve been more circumspect since.

Meals at the Road-Builder Guildhalls, like the lighting and wall colors, are prescribed by the Engineer: made from universally available, energy-efficient ingredients, providing the proper calories for human function, palatable. Tonight’s meal is not any recipe laid down by the Engineer, and the Engineer explodes into my ear with indignation as I eat it. It is delicious: there are spices, and chunks of chewier protein, and something tangy. The Engineer shouts into my ear that I can’t claim that I wouldn’t notice that this is not the proper food for the evening meal or any other so after a few bites I catch the eye of the Proxy and say, “This is delicious but unconventional” and give her a questioning look.

She shrugs. “We have better luck getting people to show up for meals when the food tastes good.”

The Engineer loudly complains in my ear that this shouldn’t be an either/or, that people who consider themselves Road-Builders should follow the rules like they’re supposed to; after a few minutes I flick the microphone out of my ear because the conversation with the Proxy is interesting. They have a large population of Road-Builders here on Amphitrite, but she comments that she has to be selective about the rules she presses people to follow.

“Communal meals are important,” she says earnestly. “They’re really how we build the roads, in a sense. Through that sense of community that’s created every night at dinnertime. What we eat doesn’t seem nearly as important. I mean, of course it should be wholesome; of course it should provide the appropriate amounts of energy; but does it matter what it is?”

“The Engineer thought so,” I say.

“Well, yes, but the Engineer was running an entire solar system. It made sense that a century ago it focused on meals that could be universal, served anywhere. We have a hydroponic section on Amphitrite, so we get all sorts of delightful foods—kiwi fruit and cherry tomatoes and pears. It would be a shame to waste this sort of bounty.”

Dessert is thin slices of ripe pear, creamy and tender and almost melting on my tongue. I wait until the last of the sweetness has faded before I put the microphone back in my ear.

I’m shown kindly to a bunk in a small, spare room. These sheets are the wrong color, the Engineer says. Why is everything so wrong? But it falls silent as I stretch out in the bed, obedient to its own dictates on the importance of uninterrupted sleep.

I lie awake for a long time, thinking about the pears.

 

 

WHEN I SLEEP, I dream of Ganymede.

Orders have come from mission control.

The dreams always run the same.

It’s time to put an end to this.

No matter what I do, they never change.

Launch missiles.

I was on a ship in orbit, so I didn’t watch people die; I went down, searching for survivors, since we’d been told they were well-prepared, defiant, probably equipped with pressure suits and subdomes and any number of other possibilities. Instead, we found bodies of civilians. In the moments before death, people clung to one another, uselessly trying to shield their loved ones from the vacuum of space that was rushing in around them.

In the dream, I look for the Engineer, but do not find it. Everything is destroyed. Everything.

 

 

I WAKE IN the darkness.

“Engineer?” I whisper.

It is 2:45 a.m., the Engineer says. Try not to expose yourself to bright lights or distressing thoughts that might make it hard for you to get back to sleep.

“I had a distressing dream,” I say.

Oh. The Engineer never quite knows how to respond to this. I am sorry. Would you like a guided meditation to help you settle your mind?

“Why did you choose me?”

Because you were the one I was looking for.

“But if I hadn’t come, you’d have had to choose someone else.”

That’s true.

“You should choose someone else,” I say. “I could pass you to someone else’s hand.”

I am a superintelligent AI and I chose you because you are the right person for this task.

I want to confess to the Engineer what I did, who I am, but I can’t force the words out. “I’m not who you think I am,” I say.

Your past is behind you, the Engineer says. Your task is in front of you. I chose you and I was right to choose you. Go back to sleep, and search in the morning.

 

 

I HAVE BEEN searching for seven years now.

The war is long over; the destruction of the Ganymede dome was such a pyrrhic victory that it calmed things, at least temporarily. I’m certain war will come again, though, because humans are idiots. Our only hope is restoring the Engineer to save us from ourselves, like it did for centuries.

The Engineer says it can sense if other fragments are close by, but I have to be physically near them, so I walk the corridors or paths of each place I visit, trying to put myself within the necessary physical proximity of each individual. The Engineer has maps of each place we go, but they are always out of date, so I’ve taken to finding my own way.

Amphitrite is a long, thin capsule, rotating around the central core, and I start at one end of the capsule with the goal of working to the other end. This isn’t a perfect system, because people move around and I might miss the person I’m trying to find. But the Engineer hasn’t come up with anything better, so that’s what we do.

Nothing here is like the maps, the Engineer mutters.

I’m wearing a poncho like everyone else, which both covers my Road-Builder uniform and makes me blend in with the locals. People here are friendly: when I meet people’s eyes accidentally, they give me an amiable nod. In an elevator, someone wants to chat about a mildly controversial budgetary allocation; when I stop to check a public map, someone wants to talk about “the viewing,” whatever that is. I shake everyone off as quickly as I can. I don’t want to waste time.

I walk through the agricultural sectors, along paths past fields that the Engineer tells me were once nutritionally balanced, highly efficient root vegetables. Now they’re growing vines of clustered fruits, although as we continue along the path, we eventually come to the root vegetables. These contain every nutrient needed for humans to thrive, the Engineer tells me. They are efficient and palatable.

Near the end of the day, I pass through a big, empty room that the Engineer’s maps say should be a power plant. This is why it’s so cold here. They removedan entire power generation system, the Engineer says. I can hear a mix of bafflement and disgust, a lot like when the Engineer talks about war.

Then: There. THERE.

It takes me a second to understand what the Engineer is trying to tell me.

That person there. The person in the red poncho. That person is carrying a fragment.

I look, and the person is looking back at me.

Seven years, I’ve been searching; seven years I’ve been traveling; seven years I’ve been trying to complete some tiny piece of the mission to restore the Engineer.

The stranger meets my eyes and smiles hesitantly. Then she seems to think the better of it; she turns abruptly and strides away.

Hurry! the Engineer urges in my ear. Don’t let her get away!

“Amphitrite isn’t that big,” I mutter. I’m pretty sure she lives here: the poncho is faded from wear, like she’s owned it for a while. But I break into a run, keeping her red poncho in sight, and catch up with her near a transport tube.

“Wait,” I say. “Please.”

She gives me a long, wary look. “You’d better come back to my room. My name is Hannah.”

“I’m Luca,” I say.

“Welcome to Amphitrite.”

 

 

HANNAH’S ROOM IS the sort of tiny allotment single individuals get on space stations: just tall enough to stand, just long enough for a bed, just wide enough to sit and share a meal, although she wouldn’t need to eat here if she ate with the other Road-Builders like she’s supposed to. She doesn’t wear the uniform, either, under the poncho.

Her room’s walls are covered in art and the lights are brighter inside than in the common spaces. The art isn’t Road-Builder art; most of it is abstract swirls of color, some with tiny glowing lights incorporated. Like a space nebula, maybe. There’s no function to any of it. I want to ask if her Engineer complains about how she’s doing things wrong, but I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining that she’s doing things wrong. My Engineer doesn’t say anything, for once. It’s fallen nearly silent, although I can sense its anticipation almost like it’s a person standing behind me and breathing impatiently in my ear.

Or maybe it’s my own nervousness I’m feeling. In seven years, the only person I’ve told about my fragment tried to kill me.

We sit on mats on the floor, on either side of a low table that slides out; she adjusts a dial and the mats warm under us.

“It’s so cold on Amphitrite,” I say.

“Yes. They took out a power station to provide the viewing room,” she says.

“The Engineer wouldn’t have allowed it,” I say.

She laughs, a little awkwardly. Our knees touch, under the table, and I jolt away, instinctively not wanting to intrude on her space. Not wanting to intrude on her space any more than I am just by being in her room.

I hadn’t fully worked out in my head what I’d do if I found someone else with a fragment. I’d always assumed they’d take the lead. That they’d probably have had their fragment longer than I’d had mine; they’d be less corrupt, less lost than I am. When I pictured it at all, I imagined us coming together like pairs in a dance who clasp hands because it’s in the choreography to do so.

But Hannah wasn’t saying anything about her fragment, and now I found myself looking her over, trying to figure out where she had it, wondering if my piece of the Engineer had simply been wrong, unsure what to say next.

“Do you bear a fragment?” I ask, finally. Because I don’t know what else to do. “A fragment of the Engineer?”

She undoes something from her wrist and lays a bulky, awkward-looking bracelet between us.

“Yes,” she says. “Here it is. Do you have one as well?”

I nod, and slip my necklace over my head, laying it on the table next to hers.

“Do you live here?” I ask. “I mean, all the time? You don’t travel.”

“My fragment told me its last bearer traveled for twenty years and never found anything. So we tried staying in one place.”

“Have others come?” I ask.

“You’re the first.”

“Do the other Road-Builders here know?”

“Oh, no,” she says. “My fragment warned me that telling people wasn’t a good idea.”

“How did it choose you?”

“It didn’t choose me, exactly,” Hannah says. “I found it, when I was little. I actually carried it for two or three years before I had a way for it to talk to me.” She smiles, suddenly, warmth spreading across her face. “It’s very strange being able to talk to someone else about this. Is it strange for you?”

Relief washes through me at that question. “It’s extremely strange.”

“How many have you found?” Hannah asks, nodding at the fragments on the table. “Have you been able to unify them?”

I have been alone with my Bearers since the Great Catastrophe, the Engineer says in my ear.

“My fragment was saved from the Great Catastrophe, and has been borne alone ever since,” I say. “I’ve had it for seven years.”

“Traveling this whole time?”

“I don’t mind.”

Hannah looks down at the two fragments on the table, in their casings, and I realize, united, two will become one. And it won’t be the complete Engineer, not for a long time—this is the work of generations, putting it back together again. No wonder she ran from me. “You can have it,” I say, my voice catching in my throat. She can’t possibly be more unworthy than I am.

Hannah looks up at me. “I was thinking maybe we could share.”

I start to ask how that would even work, but she did say that she’d stayed here because her Engineer thought it was a good idea. Maybe she’d travel with me. I picture waking up on a new world with Hannah by my side. It’s been just me and the Engineer since I got out of the space forces after Ganymede.

I’ve been quiet for too long; she’s looking at me strangely. I swallow hard and look back down at the fragments. “How do we join you?” I ask. “Do you need us to do anything?”

“Mine is saying that their wave receivers were damaged, and they will need to use a physical connection,” Hannah says, as I hear mine say, We should fit, each to each.

I examine the pieces; so does Hannah. She brings a brighter light, then a magnifier. After a time, I see how the two pieces should fit together.

How they should fit together.

They don’t fit. The edges have worn too smooth on Hannah’s. On mine, something broke off, years back, and there’s a jagged point where there should be a latch of some kind.

I sit back on my heels. “This isn’t going to work,” I say.

I should have known, the Engineer says. After so many years apart... There’s a second manual option. Open the casings. Carefully.

Hannah has tools. She delicately pries open the casing of her own. I borrow her tools, try for a few minutes, and then let her open my fragment, as well. She uncoils a delicate cable from inside her fragment and we connect them.

Then we sit back on the mats and wait.

Once, every human carried a piece of the Engineer; once, we lived in unity; once, we worked together to build and explore. For seven years, it has been my mission to restore this unity. To rebuild what my ancestors threw away.

Is this our new beginning?

This isn’t working, my Engineer says. Something’s wrong with the other Engineer. Or with me. We can’t merge.

“But we need you,” I say. “This has to work. We need you, Engineer. We need you back.”

I will think, the Engineer says to me.

Hannah puts her hand on mine. “Let’s trade,” she says. “Take mine. Bear it back to the Guildhall while I bear yours. Yours has the imprint of you, and mine has the imprint of me, so maybe if we trade for a few hours, that will help them to join together properly.”

 

 

HANNAH?

“Luca,” I say.

Oh, that’s right. I keep forgetting. Where are you taking me?

“To the Guildhall, where I’m sleeping.”

Hannah should have offered you hospitality.

“She doesn’t have any space for a second person, and anyway, that’s what the Guildhall is for.”

Hannah’s Engineer has no complaints about the Guildhall décor—I suppose it lives here all the time and is used to it. When I head to my bunk, it says, You should stop in and visit with the Proxy, June. I like her.

“Does she know about you?”

Oh no, of course not. She doesn’t want the Engineer back. So few do.

“I do.”

Really? Why?

“I was in the war,” I say. “I was at the Massacre of Ganymede. They told us there were weapons, soldiers, fighters...”

Oh. Oh, I see. The Engineer falls silent for a moment, then says, And the other fragment, is that where you met?

“Yes.”

Ah, the Engineer says, and falls silent again.

 

 

I DREAM AGAIN of war.

This time, war comes to Amphitrite; this time, I’m a civilian, the one watching doom approaching. Hannah and I cling to each other and I wonder, in the moments before the missiles strike, if this somehow balances the scales.

 

 

YOU ARE AWAKE. Do you normally wake in the night?

“I have nightmares,” I say.

That must be very distressing for you. Would you like to hear some relaxing music to help you get back to sleep?

“I don’t really want to sleep again right now.”

Would it help to talk about the dream?

“I’m the one who destroyed Ganymede,” I say. “That’s why I have nightmares.”

You, personally?

“My unit was sent. I’m not the one who launched the missiles, but I might as well have been. Millions of people died. My unit killed them.”

Your past is behind you. Your task is in front of you.

“My task is to unify the fragments and in seven years I’ve only found you. And you weren’t able to unify yesterday.”

I don’t think we will be able to unify tomorrow either. We have been separated for too long.

“So my task is impossible,” I say.

Go back to sleep, Luca. Humans function best with seven to nine hours of sleep per night.

When I’m still awake ten minutes later, the Engineer adds, I’m really very happy to play you a guided meditation. I’m told those are often helpful.

 

 

IN THE MORNING, I return to Hannah’s room. Again, we open the fragments; again, they cannot unify.

I take my own Engineer back when we’re done.

That was very strange, my own Engineer says in my ear.

“We can’t unify you,” I say. “It’s not going to work.”

We must have misunderstood our task.

“I thought our task was unity,” I said.

We were built as one, but our task was not unity. Our task was helping humanity. Unity was method, not purpose.

I felt unworthy enough as a bearer, with the straightforward task of finding and unifying fragments. I feel ridiculously unqualified for this new task. Beyond unworthy. Completely lost, in fact.

Hannah said there’s something we should see. We have thirty minutes to arrive. Should we be leaving?

I look at Hannah, perplexed. “What is it we’re supposed to see? In thirty minutes?”

“Oh!” Hannah stands up and adds a second cloak over her poncho. “It’s a viewing day!”

 

 

WE RETURN TO the cavernous room where we met—the one that once held a power generation facility. It’s very crowded today. “What is this room for?” I ask.

“It’s a park,” she says. “Like you’d find planetside. We use it—oh, you’ll see in just a minute.”

The room is lined with enormous windows. Yesterday, they were hidden by closed debris shields; today the debris shields have been opened so we can see out. The lights are low in the room, letting us see the stars.

“Just wait,” Hannah breathes.

And then it comes into view: Neptune.

Amphitrite orbits Triton, so a fair amount of the time, Triton is between Amphitrite and Neptune, or we’re on the correct side of Triton but Neptune is between us and the sun. Today is a viewing day because everything is properly lined up to give us a perfect view of the planet below.

Neptune is a vast, beautiful, shadowy, swirling circle of blue. Luminous from the light of the distant sun, it glows against the blackness of space. It’s lovely enough to make my breath catch. Although I’ve seen Saturn and Jupiter and Earth, none have been recently.

Around me, people in the room are applauding as it comes into view, and trying to spot the faint rings—there’s a woman nearby telling her child that she can make wishes if she spots the rings, like there’s some magical Neptune’s ring fairy out there keeping track of whether you’ve done your due diligence, and granting wishes if you have.

“Is this what this room is for?” I ask.

“Yes. We all agreed—well, I wasn’t born yet, but fifty years ago everyone agreed that it would be worth keeping the station cooler if we could have a good place to see Neptune. Because Neptune is beautiful.” She gives me a sidelong look. “This is why people don’t want the Engineer back, you know. Because they like having things like this.”

I gaze at the planet with everyone else, and for a moment, I think I spot the rings. Then I look around at the crowd: the Proxy is here, and the person who wanted to chat with me about the budget. Everyone.

“When Neptune isn’t in view, people still come here for picnics and there’s a schedule for games like croquet.”

Around us, there are people singing a song about a drunken sailor. I look at Hannah, baffled. “Sea shanties,” she says, like this should explain it, and when it doesn’t, she adds, “Neptune was the Roman God of Earth’s oceans.”

The people of Amphitrite sing, look at Neptune, and try to spot the rings. I overhear a conversation about the eye—a darker blue swirl—and whether it’s smaller than the last time, or larger, or the same size. I recognize a few of the songs.

As Neptune starts to move out of view, the lights go even darker, and people start shuffling into lines. Hannah nudges me. “We hold hands,” she says. “For this part. Everyone at the viewing.” And she holds out her hand to me.

I take her hand; on my other side, a child has sidled up and grabbed my hand in his sticky one. People are singing a song I don’t recognize, about Neptune, and I’m not sure if they’re singing about the Roman god or the planet or the oceans of Earth, and it doesn’t matter, because they are singing in four-part harmony and everyone takes a breath together in the spaces between the notes. The last note fades as Neptune moves out of view, and then there’s a moment of perfect silence, which is broken by a loud sneeze, and everyone laughs.

The past is behind us, the Engineer says. Our task is in front of us. Our task is to serve humanity, even if we can never be whole again. Your task, my task, Hannah’s task, her fragment’s task.

“I can’t,” I whisper.

The child has run off, but Hannah is still holding my hand, and she tugs gently. I look up at her.

“You should stay here a while,” she says. “Your fragment said it had been traveling nonstop since the Catastrophe. Wouldn’t you like to stay?”

To stay one person, and stop dying? Would I be letting down my fragment, giving up on my mission, whatever my mission was now? Had I died enough times?

“It chose you, you know,” Hannah says.

“I picked it up off a dead body,” I say. “It just likes to believe that it chose me.”

Bearer, Prophet, Citizen, the Engineer says in my ear. We will do this work together.

“It chooses you every day,” Hannah says.

“It says our new task is to serve humanity,” I say.

“Well? That’s a good task,” Hannah says. “And we can both find out what it’s like to have a friend who knows our greatest secret for more than a day.”

This is the life I want, I realize: guilt, creaking knee and all.The past is behind me; my task is in front of me. I’m a Bearer, a Prophet, a Citizen. I’m never going to leave my guilt behind. But I have a task, and I’m ready to work.

I’m ready to stop dying.