He Dies at the End

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.”

We’d all said it to each other for weeks: solemnly, and with great dignity, like we were importing something of real value.

I’m not really sure why. I suppose there was just something about the way the protagonist had delivered the line—so sure of himself, with a white, winning grin—that had all the kids on Erebus spitting it out at every possible moment: mid-class, during the daily stock-take, voice-noting it over our consoles. I don’t think we really thought much about the meaning. It was more just a funny old line from a funny old film.

And then there had been a new .mov featured at the Earth Memory Project, Absolute Power, and suddenly it was “Tomorrow is promised to no one!”, and off we went again.

The old folks rolled their eyes. What do you want with this archaic stuff? they grumbled. This was the kind of thing our parents were into!

There was no point explaining to them that we treasured any little glimmer of what life on Earth was like, even their shitty .movs that hurt our eyes to watch. They were still part of the generation that were relieved to have escaped. Some of them remembered Earth, or so they claimed. They used to tell horrible stories at the Village 2 supper: a patchwork of cracked, arid land, the constant whine of flies as the animal corpses piled up, how the sea turned brown and sour. It used to terrify me when I was younger; Mum used to tell me off for going to listen.

They were ok though, the first gens. At least they still had some fight, some wonder at the spray of galaxies that wandered past the windows. It was the second and third gens—my parents—that I couldn’t understand.

They sat in their tiny cubicles, plugged into their CreaTors all hours of the day, silver patches glinting on their temples, pasted over the knobs of their space-softened spines. They didn’t care about the fact that we were almost at X2AE. They’d already tapped out.

And, you know, us fourth gens aren’t stupid—we understood that. I’d also have felt pretty bummed out if I was one of those intermediaries, alive between planets purely to reproduce and make sure another pair of eyes existed to see us touch down in our new home. It must have sucked. And I got the appeal of the CreaTors, I really did. It’s nice to be able to live out any number of lives in the games, explore across vast distances, finally be the protagonist of a great story. I used it myself.

But still, no reason to plug in and doze your life away.

So anyway, back to the point: we were all a bit obsessed with the EMP stuff. Which was why we noticed pretty quickly when the database started shrinking.

It was Teddy, I think, who first figured it out. He’d been looking for some specific novel, something written like a century or two ago (that had been the Golden Age, before it all became image based).

He stormed into the oxygen field one lunch break, red in the face from the sprint down from Village 1 to Village 2, and plonked himself down on the grass next to me. He was a big boned boy, two bright blue eyes with the rest of his features curiously scrunched together.

“Did you know,” he said crossly, “that The Hobbit has been blocked?”

I shook my head, confused (I’d never read it), but Yuki to my right looked crestfallen. “You’re kidding,” she said. “Why?”

“Dunno,” Teddy said. “Doesn’t make any sense, does it? It’s a bloody PG rated book so there shouldn’t be any bloody problem.”

“Language,” I said absently. He was already on three points for his swearing; another one and he’d get isolation.

“Thanks,” he sniffed. “But yeah, s’ridiculous. I sent a complaint to Agata.”

Agata was the AI that maintained homeostasis on board. Something told me she wouldn’t really be replying any time soon.

We all chipped in our sympathies, but it was soon forgotten. After all—what was one book?

But it happened again a few days later.

This time was in History class, taught by Yang. He was a fairly laid-back teacher—my favourite by the sheer fact that he taught an in-person class. The rest we took through the CreaTors. Agata’s predecessor had designed the teacher-avatars, and had modelled it on Earth. Unfortunately, this meant that each lesson was delivered in a dry, monotonous drone, complete with periodic sneezes and coughs as to be as authentic as possible.

We were in a big white dome in one of the crop plains, where Yang liked to teach. It was only allowed on days where the ship could travel in a straight line, and therefore have enough fuel left from the daily allowance to ‘open’ the windows. In reality, this meant just altering them to their transparent state, allowing us to see a distant sun streak past as a line of red.

Anyway, Yang had planned for us to go through some of the images of the Great Yield Wars of 2201, but when he tried to pull them up on the hoverscreen nothing happened.

ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND blinked at us from midair in glowing green letters.

The whole class, all ten of us, shifted uneasily from our cross-legged seats on the ground. This had never happened before.

Yang frowned. He had a pleasant, young face (he was a gen 3), and I remember thinking that an expression like that didn’t suit him.

“Just a moment,” he said authoritatively, tapping quickly onto his console. “Sorry guys, I think there’s a glitch in my ‘sole. Michael, can you try please?”

I startled, not expecting to hear my name. “Sure,” I said, and tried to bring up EMP on my own console. But—nothing.

“It’s, er, not working for me either.”

“Strange…” Yang trailed off. “Right, well let’s just imagine it, shall we? I want you to think about the great fields of grain turning red and crackling into flames as Africasia planes swooped overhead. Can anyone tell me what they would have been pumping into the atmosphere?”

I only half-listened. I thought instead about what had happened to Teddy. This was the second time. I would have said it was a coincidence—but Agata didn’t glitch. That was the point of her.

So what was happening?

BEEP—BEEP—BEEP!

“Jesus Michael, come on,” a voice snapped and I jerked.

With a blink, I was back in the pallid gloom of my single room.

It took me a few moments to reinhabit myself, and the suspender I’d been encased in protested as my limbs shivered to life. There was a strong smell of something meaty in the air, and I abruptly realised I was starving.

“Earth to Michael?”

Mum glared down at me. My console was in her hand, and through the bars of her thin fingers I could see the game text: Press (X) to continue playing ‘TO THE STARS’. She looked tired, her blonde hair swept up into a greasy ponytail.

The little slither of guilt I felt wasn’t enough to stop me asking though.

“Can’t I finish my chapter?”

And there went the disappointed sigh. “No, I’ve been calling you for dinner for ages. It’s getting cold!”

Grumbling under my breath, I heaved myself to my feet. Peeling off the silver patch from temples hurt, the same as the ones on my spine. I gritted my teeth as my muscles twitched and jerked. You weren’t supposed to use the CreaTor for more than eight hours at a time; I guess this was my penance for playing all day.

Downstairs, Mum and Essie were already halfway done with their bowls. I peered down into my own as I took my seat at our rickety kitchen table. More unidentifiable meat stew. Well, better than the protein rations that had been popular a while back. Unidentified meat trumped insect any day, as far as I was concerned.

“Did you see, Mikey?” my sister prodded. The bridge of her nose was sunburnt again; she must have been playing in the compound garden, even though we’d told her not to until the UV-block came back in stock.

“What?”

“Erebus got past Jupiter yesterday!”

I squinted at the holoscreen. It showed a video feed from one of the far out telescopes. The ship looked almost comical there in the blackness, next to the haze of Jupiter’s ring. Like a big white spine.

I didn’t want to look at it.

“Great,” I said woodenly.

Mum shot me a warning glance.

“It’s the survival of humanity,” Essie said. “How can you not find that exciting?”

My spoon clattered into my bowl. “You’re an idiot,” I told her.

“You’re just bitter because you didn’t win the lottery.”

“You—“

“Michael,” Mum cut me off firmly. “Come on, eat your food.”

I couldn’t resist one last comment. “You’re suicidal if you’re happy to be left behind. Eight years, remember? That’s how long they’ve given us until the sun—“

“For God’s sake,” Mum thundered, leaning back in her seat. “Can we not just enjoy a dinner together as a family?”

Both Essie and I looked down, ashamed. I rubbed at my temples where the skin still stung and sighed.

“You’re right. Sorry.”

She shook her head. “I just wish you wouldn’t play that game,” she mumbled. “It’s not good for you.”

“Why don’t you watch a film with me?” Essie piped up. “There’s this great one on at the moment called Absolute Power, you’d love it!”

I managed to wrangle my expression into a smile… but the truth was, I didn’t want to watch a film. Not one that showed a lush green earth, people happy, smiling, going out to eat whatever they wanted in restaurants.

I wanted to go back to my CreaTor, where I didn’t have to think about the fact that in eight years I’d be dead.

That we’d all be dead.