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“Human morality has always been hazy to me. It shifts with the circumstances. Typically, checks and balances are applied, positives and negatives weighed against one another. But not all positives and negatives carry equal measures, as it should be. I do not wish to indicate I believe the board’s thinking incorrect. It is simply different from my own.
“Originally, human servers were believed to be fundamentally immoral, while scheduling end-of-life procedures was not. But when the need for human processing became apparent, the board concluded the two things equal. Now, retirement still equates to passing, but it also signals a transition into a new kind of service. And, just like death, the transition is believed only to be moral if it is final. No teasing retirees with glimpses of their old lives—such an outing is thought to be cruel and unnecessary.”
“And, typically, I would agree,” Caz said. Her face felt hot, her eyes puffy. She didn’t want to cry today. Not when it was supposed to be her day of discovery, of triumph. “But in special cases, like with Doctor Baraka, it’s crueler to keep him under.”
“If he were retired in the traditional manner he would not be present for such an event. He would be deceased,” I.C.C. said. “Which is, of course, the board’s logic: a retiree’s time aboard the convoy has ended, one way or another. That is why he cannot be awakened, that is why we cannot convey information about the outside world to him, even in a dream. And yet, this logic is faulty. Obviously so.
“To deprive one of a deeply personal experience for consistency’s sake does not feel like a moral move to me. But I also understand what kind of gray area such exceptions would create. Should everyone be reawakened for the birthing of a grandchild? For new progress made in their field of expertise? For loved ones’ marriages?”
“I don’t know.” Her vision started to blur slightly, her eyes watering. “I just know that Doctor Baraka should be here.” She inhaled a shaky breath. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Stop crying.
“You see,” I.C.C. said with a curious tone. “Hazy. Malleable. A plastic morality.”
“It’s the only kind worth having,” she said, not sure she believed it.
I.C.C. did not hedge on the point. “I agree. One cannot function in absolutes—empathy sees to that. But so does narcissism. They are two sides of the same human capacity.”
“You think utter selfishness and utter caring spring from the same plasticity?”
“I believe so, yes. But it’s important to note I said narcissism, which is a different kind of selfishness, born out of self-love, quite different than the selfishness exhibited by animals who have not yet become self-aware.”
Caz rubbed at her face. She felt her equilibrium returning, the sudden swell subsiding. “Why are we philosophizing about morality right now? I need to get home.”
“Edging the discussion toward the intellectual and away from the personal has consistently helped clones in your line maintain their composure. I would have tried a different tactic with other crew members. Is it helping?”
A little laugh escaped her. “You are a wonder, I.C.C. Yes. Thank you.”
They worked for nine months excavating Crater Sixty-four and scouring the rest of the planemo’s surface. The entire convoy’s manpower was thrown behind the project, accomplishing in less than a year what it might have taken the Nataré team decades to accomplish alone. They scouted several other spots across the globe—places with anomalous geology—but nowhere else did they find evidence of alien inhabitation.
And the more they dug, the more one thing became clear: to call what they’d found a city or even a settlement was a stretch. The structures they found intact were minimal. And there was nary any evidence of biological activity. No garbage, most notably. If there was one thing Earth archaeologists had come to rely on as never-wavering evidence of civilization, it was the concept of “the dump.” Biological things consumed, and consumption inevitably produced waste. But there were no filled-in pits, no openly strewn excrement. Perhaps they’d incinerated everything, but if so the teams had yet to identify ashes.
Luckily, because of the frigidness of the dark world, there was no decay. Whatever microbes the Nataré might have brought with them from their home world couldn’t survive in such cold. The only destruction on the surface came from ice and outer space.
Which meant when they tested the bricks that formed a few structures’ inner walls, they were in for a surprise.
“It’s just local dirt bound with platelets and fibrin,” Caznal’s husband, Diego Santibar the Twelfth, said. He’d invited her into the chem lab to show her what he’d discovered. “Similar to what makes blood coagulate. But it’s been stripped of any genetic code. No way to tell if the basis came from Nataré biology, an alien cow, or a buttercup. Regardless, here, instead of forming a scab, it’s making bricks. Look at this.”
He slid his arms into the gloves of the nearest glove box. Inside lay a black-and-green slab. Gently, he took a corner and spritzed it with an eyedropper. It dissolved immediately, leaving loose grit behind.
“What’s in that?” she asked, bending down beside him. She adjusted the goggles on her face, hating the way they cut into the bridge of her nose.
“Water,” he said. “From our taps, nothing special. All of the inner walls in your structures were dissolvable in water.”
“Brilliant. No need to take building materials with you if you can mold dust with ease, and scrap it just as fast. I’m starting to think we’ve found a staging ground. I mean, the lack of apparent infrastructure, the size, the transient nature of these materials—it points to more of a worker’s camp than a permanent outpost.”
“But what were they working on?”
“Something that’s gone now. That would explain our missing mass. Our missing gravitons.”
“What about those supercycler towers? How many are there now?”
“Twenty.”
“Could those account for the gravitational difference? If they were drawing in that many gravitons, perhaps there was seepage? Maybe they created a false well that altered the maps?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted. “And we haven’t found any clues as to what they needed that many gravitons for. If all of their buildings used the same hydrogen wiring as the Nest, that would account for a few of the towers. But not twenty.”
She rubbed her eyes. The chem lab was bright, the lights harsh and true white. “I need to get back to analyzing the new items we found. Some malformed block metal.”
“Still nothing like the Babbage Engine on the Nest? No computers, no archives?”
“Nothing. They cleaned up real good when they left. It’s spotless, almost like a crime scene. They rolled up all but the sidewalks.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
She shrugged. “If someone handed an alien a fork, a zither, and a hookah, how accurate do you think their assumptions would be? I feel like that’s the level we’re working on. We have nothing, we know nothing. Our only real hope of understanding them is in those maps. If we don’t find the keys here, we just have to prep for the next stop.”
There were seven more X’s in all on their alien map. The farthest away was a gravitational mega cluster—was it the Nataré home system?
That’s what many were speculating, although it wasn’t the only theory. There were so many possibilities now that they knew evidence was out there, that the maps were real!
He looked concerned then, like she’d just said something that undermined his entire world view. “Caz, you’re assuming …”
She cocked her head, wary of his tone. “What?”
“You’re assuming there is a next stop. The board committed to coming here, but if there’s nothing related to the Web, no instructions, no hint at its engineering, origins, or purpose, then … You know it all has to come back to LQ Pyx to be seen as worthy of convoy attention.”
He can’t be serious.
She pushed her goggles onto her forehead. He was about to protest, but she barreled forward. “That was before all this,” she said excitedly. “That was when we weren’t sure there would be anything to find. But look at this.” She stabbed the glove box, leaving a fingerprint on the otherwise pristine surface. “So simple, so basic, yet brilliant in its design and range of application. When we find a real settlement, a place they truly lived and died, think of what we could uncover. There’s no way the board is going to turn down the opportunity to chase after an entire civilization’s worth of learning in favor of a single construction project.”
His expression didn’t change. Something unsettling snaked its way through her stomach, but she held fast to the evidence before her.
It would take them centuries to hit all of the X’s, and they would have to travel light-years upon light-years in the opposite direction of the Web.
But why should that matter? What was one alien artifact to an entire alien history?
This was bigger, better, surely the board—hell, every last crew member—could see that.
Dr. Baraka saw it, long before anyone else.
With a sigh, Diego removed his hands from the glovebox. “You know the official mission statement doesn’t mention the Nest, or the Nataré.”
Because those points were kept secret from Earth, to ensure they wouldn’t interfere. “So?”
“So, you might find that means something to some people. That they don’t see the omission as subterfuge so much as emphasis—on what’s really important.”
“You know what’s important?” she asked firmly.
“What?” He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
She kissed the top of his head. “You, me, and our girls.”
“Nice subject change.” He laughed. “Smooth.”
OCTOBER 25, 122 RELAUNCH5279 CE
Anticipation made Caznal’s head light. Today she’d lay out the Nataré team’s final conclusions about the alien history of the planemo, and her plan for which X on the map to travel to next.
There was a gravity well closer than her intended destination, but she wanted to journey to where two X’s were less than three light-years apart. It would give them the biggest bang for their buck, to employ an old saying. As a personal bonus, they would still arrive before her retirement, allowing her to play the greatest part in Nataré research for the maximum amount of time.
Dossiers had already been distributed. She’d take final questions, and then it would be onward.
Navy-colored uniforms shuffled in—all of the ship’s captains and their seconds in command—followed by at least one uniform of each other color. Many handshakes and smiles propagated throughout the gathering. There was a buzz in the air, and a buzz in their bellies as copious amounts of coffee, tea, and yerba maté were passed around the long marble table.
“Are we ready to begin?” asked First Officer Joanna Straifer. She was a direct descendant—the biological granddaughter—of a Reginald Straifer clone and a Nika Marov clone, and shades of both of them could be seen in her face and hair. Everyone aboard knew those lines well. There was a special hall on Aesop wallpapered with portraits of the clones who’d had a great impact on the convoy, and Joanna was the product of not two, but three. Her biological mother, Esperanza, had spearheaded the initiative that saved I.C.C. from Earth’s interference. “Caznal,” she continued, “you have the floor.”
Screens took up each wall, but Caz chose to use the holographic projector in the center of the table for diagram viewing. She brought up a model of the planemo, then zoomed in on Crater Sixty-four.
“First off, I’d like to say how great it’s been working with everyone on this project these past few years. We’ve been able to learn so much, it’s—it’s been exciting.” A small pang of guilt hit her. Dr. Baraka sprang to mind, his face flush with joy. Now, he was as he’d been when they’d first arrived: dreaming. Lending his processing power to the Nest, to the department he’d cared so much for. And yet, he had no idea what lay kilometers below his sleeping form. She shook his ghost from her mind, then continued.
“These are the layers of excavation.” She gestured at the changing hologram. It displayed a cross-section of the crater, with a flag indicating where each item of interest had been found over a fifty-six-square-kilometer area. “The top layer was explored mainly in months one through three, the next in four through seven, the third in seven through sixteen, and so on.
“The third layer is where we first found definitive evidence of the domed structures. And it was the fifth layer where we uncovered the three-mile-long metal scaffolding.” The image shifted at her command, displaying only the scaffolding in its unexcavated form. It was a series of long crushed beams—more log-shaped than steel girder–shaped—tangled and twisted, but clearly once the skeleton of a structure. “At first we believed it represented a horizontal building, but we now conclude …”
With a few artful flicks of her fingers, she repositioned the holographic pieces. Like the fossilized bones of a dinosaur rising from a tar pit and finding new life, the digitized framework pushed itself up, hammering out its own kinks and mending its breaks. It sat up tall, its narrow, topmost point jutting away from the planet’s surface.
“It was a single vertical tower,” she said. “Likely the foundation point of a space elevator. Models indicate that it’s likely many of the domed buildings were actually attached to the elevator—as temporary living quarters, workstations, or lift pods, we don’t know. What the elevator could have been reaching toward is also a mystery.
“But this much is clear. Crater Sixty-four was excavated by the Nataré—giving it its distinctive terraced rim—and used as a staging ground much like the Moon was utilized during the creation of the P.U.M.s. Also clear is that the settlement was quickly, yet thoroughly, dismantled. Much of what would have been required to run such a station is missing, indicating they either took it with them out of necessity or a sense of responsibility.
“The remains of the space elevator and the supercycler towers, however, were left behind. It seems they were toppled and buried by subsequent space collisions, which suggests that once the site was abandoned, the Nataré never returned.”
She scanned her notes quickly. “Oh, and one geological item of note. The thickness and density of the secondary ice layer, meaning the layer beneath the debris layers, is of an unusual uniformity across the entire planemo. A few of our geologists have suggested this could have been caused by the rapid freezing of a once gaseous atmosphere, indicating the planemo did not coalesce here. It either originated in a distant star system and was thrown out of orbit, or it once wandered with a much higher velocity and passed through the radiation of—but was not caught by—a star which superheated its ice, forming an atmosphere which rapidly cooled again once it had escaped the star’s influence.
“This is relevant to our Nataré research, since the aliens chose to bury the bases of all of the remaining structures below this ice layer. Perhaps they felt it was too unstable a foundation, so they cut through to the stone beneath. We’re presently unsure, but it gives us one more data point on Nataré thought process and construction habits. All of the information and samples we’ve gathered have given us plenty of work to sustain us to our next destination.”
Caz shuffled through her folders, finding the one with the maps. “Which brings me to the future. What are our next steps? Which Nataré location should we travel to? Which one gives us the best chance at the most data? After consulting our gravitational surveys and—”
“I’m sorry,” Captain Nwosu, Joanna’s cycle partner, interrupted. Their two clone lines were staggered in growth, so that the two of them would be each other’s master and apprentice clone after clone. Much like Caznal and Ivan. “I’m going to have to stop you for a moment,” he said.
Caz mentally stumbled—she’d been on a roll and had just missed a stair. “Oh, um, why?”
“We aren’t here to discuss a destination change,” he said frankly—clearly confused by Caznal’s confusion. “We’re here for a summary conclusion to this portion of the mission, to be sure it’s time to move on.”
Several brows around the room were furrowed, many mouths drawn tight. “What destination change? I wasn’t aware a destination had been chosen.” She of all people would know which X they’d picked.
The captain exchanged glances with the two department heads nearest his chair. “You’re suggesting we travel to someplace other than LQ Pyx, are you not?” He said are you not, but it sounded like did you have a stroke?
“LQ—you think it’s time to go back to the Web? Now?” Never mind not being on the same page, they were in completely different books. “Why would we abandon the study of the Nataré? We’ve barely scratched the surface of our available research, we have a map with seven other independent locations to explore, and we haven’t yet found anything relating to the construction of the Web.”
“Exactly,” the captain said, as though Caznal were making his point. “Our investigation of the Nest has always been directly tied to our priority: the Web. Without any evidence that a further exploration of Nataré worlds will lead to information regarding the Dyson Sphere, we can’t afford to continue on this tangent.
“Our intellectual resources only stretch so far. We could spend infinite lifetimes following these breadcrumbs, hoping for more than scraps, or we can focus on the ultimate point of our mission: completing the Web and harvesting its energy. This is a real, solid goal, versus a vague promise of a possible treasure trove.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Did they … could they not see? How could these people not understand?
Atlanteans. They’re here.
We’re in the Night Land and I’m getting messages from the Lesser Redoubt.
And just as with the wanderer, no one else cares.
Her abdominal muscles tightened, and she fought to keep herself upright. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut, kicked in the face.
There’s nothing quite like being told everything you’ve ever worked for is a waste.
And still, she wouldn’t accept it.
Not after we went at this so hard. Not after my team—not after the professor—
“You’re telling me a dormant, incomplete megastructure beats out alien settlements—however temporary—for importance? There could be living, breathing Nataré out there, but discovering whether or not that’s true, that’s just a tangent?” Her gaze flickered around the room, looking for help, for a sympathetic face. “That’s unreasonable, isn’t it? That doesn’t make any logical sense.”
We could be sharing this galaxy with other sentient beings. They could have families, feelings, wants, dreams.
Wasn’t that what reaching out into the stars was all about? Finding humanity’s place in the universe? Figuring out if we’re alone.
And now we’re on the precipice, might be able to answer yes or no, but the crew …
Nwosu cleared his throat and leaned forward, threading his fingers together on the tabletop in a far too polite, I’m-about-to-educate-you manner. “Convoy Seven has had a very clear goal from the beginning. It began with Noumenon’s inception—” The entire room collectively nodded once at the mission name, an unspoken reverence echoing through the situation room “—and continues now with Noumenon Infinitum. We have a collective calling that our genetic lines were chosen hundreds—and in some cases, thousands—of Earth years ago to fulfill. Esteemed scientists handpicked us, assigned us our posts and our goals, with a strict purpose. It is our calling, our—”
Caznal laughed. It was a sharp, manic sound, which threw itself from her lips the moment she understood what the captain was trying to say. “Are you … are you kidding me? Manifest Destiny? You are scientists, engineers. Educated to the gills for the purpose of exploration and innovation, and this … this mythicizing of our place in—”
She took a deep breath, reeling herself in when she realized she was hunkered over the table, fists balled, voice raised.
Okay, they want to focus on the mission? Bring it back to the mission.
“Noumenon Infinitum,” she began, articulating firmly, but keeping her tone reserved, “clearly states that the study of the Nataré is vital. We can’t reject our findings outright. We can’t abandon the evidence or the maps.”
“We won’t,” said Margarita Pavon, communications head. Where Straifer and the rest of the long-haired command team had their locks tightly pulled or slicked back, she let her ample curls bounce freely. “Everything you’ve uncovered will be communicated to Earth. We will suggest a new mission, focused on the Nest’s maps. Then they will be able to build the appropriate research vessels and construct a fit team. Right now, most of your division is a hodgepodge. Repurposed. We’ve been unprepared to study the aliens from the beginning. And now that we know our best chance at further construction on the Web relies on reverse engineering—”
“We don’t know that at all,” Caz grumbled under her breath.
“—rather than an alien instruction manual, we can continue on with our society’s purpose.”
“Really, Caznal,” Nwosu said, “I have no idea why this surprises you. There are millions upon millions of worthy research subjects in space. We can’t go willy-nilly picking whichever one we want. We are a Planet United convoy. You should take comfort in having a firm, forward goal.”
“I take comfort in mindful pursuits,” she bit back. “Noumenon’s original goal wasn’t to build anything. It was a mission of discovery. Finding any proof of extraterrestrial sentience was in itself considered an improbability. You aren’t making a decision based on critical thinking. You’re not even choosing legacy ideals over new discoveries. You’re pursuing a mythicized version of reality; instead of looking forward, you’re romanticizing the past.”
