Red Origin

Grit poured out of the machine, churning through the hopper like the unsettled, bitter bones of ten billion murdered souls. The harvester crawled forward as the sky faded from dull orange to muted crimson, and finally settled into the darkness of night.

The main cabin was dimly lit. An operator sat behind a control panel bathed in low-wavelength light. His left hand rested on a throttle. In his right hand, he held an open paperback novel titled Badgerblood, by S.C. Monson. He chuckled, eyes darting from line to line. He must’ve read it a thousand times by now. He liked to imagine the forest. Massive trees. Soft brown soil. A different time. A different world.

A green icon sprang to life on the central display, pulsing firmly in the dimly lit space. It showed the atomic symbol for astatine 235. The operator immediately dropped the book, simultaneously pulling the throttle back to full-stop and picking up his transceiver. He switched the mic on as the machine juddered to a halt and spoke quickly, “Harvester 99871 to Red Origin. Isotope located. Request shift change.”

The response came almost instantly, crackling coldly through the speakers, “Harvester 99871, system-wide update in progress. Please hold.” It was a feminine voice, with a perfect 21st century accent, indistinguishable from biological speech, but the operator knew it wasn’t human.

The operator spoke into the mic desperately now, almost shouting, hands shaking, “Red origin, urgent! Isotope located. Astatine 235. Request shift change now!”

No response. He threw the transceiver down and began typing frantically at the control panel. “Work, work, work, please work,” he whispered.

Far away, a drone pilot reclined quietly in her cubicle, head bobbing to the rhythm only she could hear. There was nothing to do during a system wide update, but her shift wasn’t over so she couldn’t go home. A notification vibrated her wristband. Two short bursts. She frowned. Adi wasn’t even supposed to be able to send her messages while he was at work on the harvesters. She tapped twice, opening Adi’s message.

Isotope 235 located. Harvester 99871. Send drone now. Xaea, I love you.

Xaea gasped, still processing the short text. She didn’t have time to feel. She reacted in an instant, tearing off her headset and leaping out of the cubicle. She ran down the row, cubicle after cubicle, turning the facts over in her mind. Astatine was the only hope for a safe return to Earth. It was used to manufacture a temporary vaccine, generally unstable, with a radioactive half-life of less than 8 hours. Red Origin’s harvesters crawled through the ruins of Earth’s desolated cities, grinding them up for isotopes of astatine creating during the nuclear apocalypse of 2071. Red Origin didn’t have the capability to manufacture synthetic isotopes of astatine on Mars. Even if they could, there would be no way to transport it back to Earth in time. Unless…. Had Adi really found 235? It was an isotope that should exist but had never been found or created before. It was theoretically stable, so it could be transported from Earth to Mars and back, but the deep internal vibrations of the harvester’s machine might ruin it.

The vibrations of the machine were also what kept the zealots away. Their diseased, deformed bodies and their rage. Their absolute need to take and destroy. If Adi had powered the harvester’s machine down to preserve the isotope… Xaea didn’t want to think about it. She skidded around the corner, out of breath and scanned her wrist at the door. The implant glowed green beneath her skin and the door slid open. She jumped into the Axsim. The room was full of them. They were used before the development of the hive drone technology that allowed one pilot to simultaneously operate thousands of drones in the trans-modern age. One pilot, one drone. So modern.

Communications travel at the speed of light between Earth and Mars. That’s three minutes, plus maybe a minute for Adi to hack the harvester, and a minute for me to get here, Xaea thought, as her cockpit slid into a domed cocoon and the displays lit up. She entered her target destination, grid 99871, and the countdown started.

BUFFERING 3:03… BUFFERING 3:02… BUFFERING 3:01…

Adi glanced back at the feed from the security cameras around the harvesters. Two showed nothing but static. The others were crawling with zealots. There was no sound through the feed, but Adi new they were screaming. Their limbs flailed, breaking acrimoniously against the carbon shell of the harvester. Carbon was strong, they would never break in, but it was also highly conductive. Another camera gone. The zealots tore them away to get access to the power lines. He looked at his watch. It had been five minutes since he sent the text to Xaea. No way to know when or if she saw it. He looked back up at the control panel. Another camera gone. Power availability was dropping fast. The harvester could only produce 2 gigawatts, enough to power life support systems, the containment module, and the machine. Fighting the zealots was pointless; it would only put additional strain on the fusion reactor. They would never stop coming while the machine was off. The zealot’s hunger for power was animal, their lust for electricity instinctual.

A fifth camera went to static as Adi sat down, picked up Badgerblood, and began to read. His breathing slowed and he felt a sense of peace and clarity. His heart rate slowed. He reached up, placing two fingers on the tattoo just above his sternum. Xaea was coming.

BUFFERING 0:03… BUFFERING 0:02… BUFFERING 0:01…

Xaea’s simulation came to life. She was in a drone launched from a suburb in grid 99800. She turned the drone North toward the city and began to accelerate. “Hold on, Adi,” she cried aloud, expertly navigating through the dust devils, “I’m coming!”

Two minutes later, Xaea’s drone arrived at Harvester 99871. She circled once, then launched a decoy reactor about 200 meters from the site. The swarm of zealots moved like angry bees, dismounting the harvester and rushing the new, pulsing energy source. Xaea maneuvered the drone into position and docked with the containment module, initiating the transfer of the isotope. Her system confirmed 235, and she barely noticed the shockwave ripple through the dust around the drone as the decoy reactor exploded like a grenade in a blinding flash of pure light.

Xaea undocked the drone, diving from side to side as she climbed to dislodge the zealots who leapt after her and clung to the drone’s edges. The decoy had only killed a few hundred of them. The rest were returning to the harvester. Xaea circled high above, camera zoomed in on the machine below. The system log showed that power dropped to 5% just three minutes before she arrived. Life support systems had been shut off by the operator at that moment to preserve power for the containment module. They came back online when the drone docked. Three minutes without air.

“Please,” Xaea whispered to the stars as she reached up and placed two fingers just above her sternum, touching the silver, heart-shaped tattoo. Three minutes more and that locket would tell her everything.