The End - Visions of Apocalypse

LIAM BALDWIN Silver Sky

Liam Baldwin is 53, and is still waiting for the shiny, wonderful Future promised him as a kid to arrive. This is the 21st Century? He is married, has three kids and hates talking about himself in the third person.

Silver Sky is a love story at heart, but don’t hold that against it. It’s also a glimpse into the future where our fellow mammals work alongside us, but long held beliefs and dogma still hold sway.

It was midnight and the sky was silver. It shone from horizon to horizon in a single gleaming blue-white sheen. Beyond the mountains, a cobweb of ice gleamed; delicate, bright, brittle gossamers that spread, as they rose, fanning out and thinning to invisibility; at the zenith, a small, warm, fuzzy reddish blur, Earth’s shadow.

“My God…” Clara Letoza said, her voice small in the stillness of the night. Though she had worked on the Project all her professional life this was her first visit. The first time she had seen it. Allan had timed her first sight of the Sail perfectly, keeping her indoors, tied up with endless technical details, till the moment was right. He had waited till midnight, then suggested they take a break. “Let’s get some fresh air, take a stroll outside,” he had said casually. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Clara stood and stared upwards, gazing awestruck at this beautiful, sky-spanning wonder she had helped build. It was minutes before she spoke. “I’ve seen the simulations and I saw it from the ship as we docked. It was just a structure up there, vast, but still a construct… all beams and engineering and stresses. I never…” Reverentially, she said, “I never thought it would be so… so beautiful.”

“I never thought it would be finished,” said Allan.

She laughed, the moment gone. “You are a pessimist.”

“Maybe. But I’m also a politician. It’s part of my job as Coordinator to make sure—” He paused, looking past her at something far away. She followed his gaze. “What’s that?” he said, and pointed skyward to the south. Something bright. A fading flash. “What the hell was that?” he repeated.

They stared at the disappearing light till it was no more than a faint after-image.

“There’s another!” she said and pointed. “Off to the left! See it?” For a moment a sharp yellowy brightness lit the sky like summer lightning, before leaving an expanding, fading core at its centre. An explosion of some kind.

“And another!” Clara pointed again.

“What the hell?”

They stood looking at the fading lights.

“Whatever they were, they were a long way up,” Allan said.

“Big too, if we could see them from down here.”

“We need to get back inside.” His voice was cold.

It was three in the morning when communications with Top Side were finally re-established. They were in Allan’s office. Allan, coffee mug in hand, switched from one news channel to another in frustration; Clara, calm and composed, sifted through what little hard data they had and tried to relate it to a schematic model of the Sail. It had become clear, very quickly, that someone had tried to destroy the Sail with nuclear bombs. Five of them, in a coordinated attack. What no one knew was who had done it and how much damage had been caused.

Within an hour, seven separate claims of responsibility had been made to the media — all of them from Pro-apocalyptic or Millennialist groups. Crude triangulation had provided the possible locations of the targets. The news channels certainly had no facts, just grainy footage of the explosions, captured by chance, looping endlessly behind pointless, repetitive speculation. It had been a very long and frustrating three hours.

There was a knock at the door and a communications technician, a middle-aged chimpanzee, came in. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a week.

“We’ve made contact with Top Side.”

Allan was instantly on his feet. He silenced the news channel.

“We’ve got voice only, and slow data links,” continued the technician. “You wouldn’t believe the lash-ups we’ve had to put together to get even that. Face to face will have to wait.” He sounded almost apologetic.

“I’m just grateful you got anything so soon.” said Allan. “I’ll be down to the comms room as soon as—”

“No need.” The technician waved Allan back to his seat. “It’s patched through to your desk. You can talk to them from here. Get things sorted before everyone finds out we’ve re-established contact.”

Allan gave the chimpanzee a smile. The chance to talk to Top Side privately before he had to face the media and the rest of the project staff was more than he could have hoped for. “Thank you,” he said. “You look done in. You should get a rest.”

The technician gave a weary smile and pointed at their coffee machine. “I could do with a coffee,” he said. “We ran out two hours ago.” Clara poured him a mug and he left, holding it like a sacred object.

Allan opened a channel on his com and beckoned Clara to join him.

“Top Side, this is Coordinator Allan, who am I talking to?”

There was a delay. Top Side station was just below the Sail’s surface out beyond where the Moon used to be before it had been moved and reshaped into a great silver sheet. Top Side was the sail’s helm. From there the Sail and its cargo would be steered, nudged forward slowly by the solar winds, and then gaining full speed driven by the solar hurricane of the expanding Sun. The greatest sunjammer the universe had ever seen. Its destination, the Centauri system, 4.3 light years away.

“Hi, Allan,” came the reply. “It’s Ruiz.” Ruiz’s voice, which had the gentle lisp of all the evolved apes, was distorted and echoed. From the acoustic, it was obvious he was wearing a space suit.

“Ruiz. Good to hear your voice. What’s going on up there? What can you tell me?”

“Not a lot,” said Ruiz. “As far as we can make out, three of our own people and a couple of ’stroid miners making deliveries somehow managed to get nukes up here and suicided. Looks like a coordinated attack. They all kamikazed into major ganglia. Christ knows what they thought they would achieve. They could have done a lot more damage a few klicks further down. Could have ripped the whole thing if they had taken out a couple of the Mainstays.”

“Any casualties?”

“Amazingly, no!” said Ruiz. “The bombers were the only deaths. We got a couple of people who are going to need retina transplants and one guy needs to grow a new arm, but nobody else dead. We were really lucky.”

“Space is a big place,” said Allan, relieved. “Even lobbing nukes around, it’s hard to hit people.”

“Mind you,” said Ruiz, “with all the construction finished there’s only a few of us left up here. Everyone else has gone home. And the damage isn’t as bad as we first thought: shrouds 84g12 and 84f13 are torn, and two more are holding but will need some serious fixing. It’s a mess but no show-stopper. There’s a lot of debris flying about. I mean, a lot. We’re all in suits up here — which is slowing work up. We’ve had three living quarters blow out after being hit by some of this crap.”

“Christ!” said Allan. “Sounds messy.”

“It is. Very messy. Good news is that the Sail will hold. It’s had a few holes punched in it, and it’ll distort a little when we launch, but the simulations I’ve managed to run say it’ll still hold, even in a worst, worst, worst case scenario. We designed this thing well; hey, I’m proud of us!”

“Ruiz?” Clara leant in over Allan’s shoulder. “The torn shrouds, can you send visuals?”

“Should be with you already. We have a couple of data links open. I’ve been sending down the clearest images I can get. I know that voice. Is that you, Clara? I heard you were finally visiting. It’ll be nice to meet you in person.”

“Hello, Ruiz. Yes it is. It’ll be nice to meet you, too.”

Allan cut in. “Ruiz, be good when you meet her, shake hands; she’s human, not Bonobo.”

“And you’re a prude,” laughed Ruiz.

“I think we need to come up,” said Allan. “Assess the situation for ourselves. When do you think you’ll be able to clear a shuttle?”

“Couple of days at least,” said Ruiz. “There really is a lot of crap flying about up here. We’ll have most of the big stuff under control in a day or two. The smaller stuff we are just going to have let go and burn up. You’re going to get some pretty spectacular meteor showers for a few days. I’ll be able to tell you more when I can get full communications restored. As it is we’re having to bounce signals all over the place to get through to you; some of the delays between teams up here are potential killers. People are going to die in stupid accidents if I don’t get things working soon. Allan, I have to go.”

“Okay, Ruiz, thanks. Good luck.”

He killed the connection.

And threw his stylus across the room with sudden violence, “Goddamn Suiciders!”

Clara drew back. “Suiciders?”

“The nut-jobs who did this.” He saw her blank expression. “Hell, you really were out of touch on Centauri weren’t you?” He sighed. “It’s a doomsday cult with a real doomsday to look forward to. After thousands of years of people prophesying the end of the world, their day has finally arrived for real.”

“They want to stop us moving the Earth?”

“If they can. Stop us and the world ends. I really don’t understand why they want Earth to be destroyed, but they do. I mean, this is Earth. This is where we all come from. It’s got to be preserved. There are five main groups. All of them with different reason for thinking the world should end and most of them are divided into various factions. The only thing that stops them from tearing each other to shreds is the fact that they hate us even more than they hate each other. We’re the enemy. You noticed the security on the way in?”

“Yes,” she said. “I did. Seemed excessive.”

“I suppose it might seem so when you meet it for the first time but it’s not tight enough. We’ve had lots of minor stuff. Sabotage, cargoes destroyed or contaminated, more every day, but nothing on this scale before. No nukes. And they’ve shied away from killing people until now.”

“If they all want to die, why don’t they just go to Mars or Venus? We’re not saving them.”

“I don’t think dying is the point,” said Allan. “I think it’s being around when God comes back that’s the point. I guess those five who blew themselves up had early bookings to Valhalla, or Nirvana, or wherever they think He’s taking them afterwards.”

“And God comes back?”

“You guessed it,” said Allan wearily. “God comes back the day the Sun explodes.”

Clara looked Allan full in the face, green eyes staring into his. Unblinking. Intense. “We have to go brief the press now,” she said. “We’re breakfast news in five hundred systems. But when we’ve finished…” She paused and blinked, then put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. She kissed him full on the lips.

Surprised, he pulled back, but she stayed with him. Her lips parted, her tongue pushed into his mouth. He responded. Held her. Pulled her to him. She broke free for a moment.

“When we have finished with the press,” she said, her eyes level with his, holding his gaze. “I want you to take me back to your place and fuck me. We need it.”

Later, in bed, exhausted, on crumpled sheets, they lay long and quiet, entwined and stroking each other.

Dawn was breaking. The Sail had set an hour before and now the Sun was rising. First light shone through the wide picture-window.

“It’s light,” Clara said. “We should sleep.”

“Mmmm?” said Allan, dreamily. He watched his fingers gently stroking her shoulder, the tips barely touching the fine downy hairs haloed by the rising sun.

“We should get some sleep.” Clara repeated and kissed him gently. She rolled over with her back to him and he wrapped himself around her. His hand cupped her breast and she held it. They lay very still, their breathing gradually slowing and each in time with the other.

In the silence Clara said, quietly, “Do you ever think they might have the right idea?”

“Mmmm?” Allan’s face was close to her neck.

“The doomsayers,” she said. “Do you ever think they might have a point? Do you ever doubt we’re doing the right thing? All things end, don’t you think? Eventually, I mean.”

He did not answer. She looked back. He was asleep. She lay for a long time holding his hand to her breast and watching the Sun rise. She watched the sky’s pinks and yellows, and the clouds’ purples and mauves brightening slowly in the growing light to make a perfect morning. Then she closed her eyes, and then she slept, too. It was one of the last sunrises.

The Sun was due to explode sometime in the next few weeks. It was inevitable. Strictly speaking, the sun wasn’t going to explode but, rather, expand incredibly rapidly, but as the expansion would take the Sun’s photosphere beyond Earth’s orbit within 24 hours, the distinction was a moot one. A chain reaction started by a misapplied experiment in the mid twenty-fifth century made it unavoidable. Earth, the mother planet of Man, Bonobos, Dolphins, and the other evolved sentients, was doomed. It had always been doomed of course. At some point in the far-distant future the Sun would have naturally expanded into a red giant, then exploded into a planetary nebular with a white dwarf at its core. Human interference (and everyone agreed it was the Humans who were responsible; even the Dolphins) had just bought the date forward by about five billion years. As monumental errors go, it was a big one. Humans were good at monumental errors; even the Humans didn’t argue with that. The unexpected side-effects of the experiment hadn’t become immediately apparent. It was 700 years before the alarm was raised, and another 300 before anyone came up with a workable idea of what to do about it.

They woke to a thundering roar, the sound of a shuttle lifting off from the nearby field.

It took a few moments for Allan to understand the significance. He rolled over and dialled through to Flight Control.

“What’s happening?” mumbled Clara, sleepily.

He kissed her. “A shuttle launch,” he said. “Someone cleared a take-off.” The bedside screen lit up and Clara slid down below the bedclothes. Allan killed the outgoing video.

“We’re on private,” he whispered. “He can’t see you.”

“Good morning, Coordinator!” Allan recognised the on-screen figure, Henderson, a senior launch officer. “I take it we woke you up.”

“Damn right you did,” said Allan. “What’s happening? Ruiz said it would take a couple of days to clear the debris.”

“He did, but most of it is currently on Sailside. We’ve got it all mapped. The main body of the debris is orbiting in two waves going in opposing directions. We can stagger launches through the gaps when the waves have passed overhead and miss the worst of it. It’s not ideal. There’s still a more-than-minimal risk.”

“Why wasn’t I informed? Dammit, Henderson, I need to know about—”

“We figured you needed the sleep, sir. You had a hard time last night.”

Clara stifled a giggle. Allan shushed her.

“We’ve got you booked in on an upshuttle at 13:00 if you want it. You said you wanted to get up as soon as possible.”

“Talking about ‘up’…” muttered Clara, sliding further below the sheets.

Allan struggled to keep his voice level as she started to work her way down, kissing his chest, his belly, and then his semi-erect penis.

“How’s communications?” he managed to say.

“About seventy percent operational. We’ve full data transfer but not enough bandwidth for luxuries. No face to face yet. Oh… “ Henderson suddenly looked conspiratorial. “If you should happen to see Clara Letoza, would you tell her that her people have been trying to find her all morning. Something about ‘needing her shipboard, as soon as’.” The look of innocence on Henderson’s face wouldn’t have fooled a blind man. “Just to speed things up, I’ve already put her on the same flight.”

Allan smiled at Henderson’s circumspection. And then gulped as Clara cupped his testicles with her hand and moved down, taking his rapidly hardening penis fully into her mouth.

“I’ll be sure to tell her,” he gasped, and cut the connection.

They were seated next to each other in the upshuttle. They held hands. Each had detached a glove ignoring the warning signs insisting that ‘Full suits must be worn at all times!’ The gloves would take moments to reattach in an emergency and the comfort they gained from the touch of each other’s skin was worth the possible inconvenience. Allan hated the acceleration of take-off. He panicked every time.

“Clara,” he said, “when you’ve finished your meeting at Mainstay One will you come up to Top Side? I’d like you to meet Ruiz.”

“I’m not sure….” Clara was hesitant. “My ship’s at Mainstay Three port. It’s a long way. I’ll be on intershuttles all day.”

“Your ship?” Allan was confused. “I thought you came in on the regular flight.”

“No,” she said. “I came in my own ship.”

“From Centauri!”

“I didn’t pilot it myself,” she said. “I have a crew.”

Allan was impressed. Not many people outside of the pages of cheap fiction really had personal interstellar yachts.

They docked at Mainstay One’s transfer point. Neither were accustomed to free fall and when the shuttle’s hatches opened they made their way, clumsily, hand over hand, along the wide connecting tube’s wall. The more experienced of their fellow passengers jumped the length of the umbilical, turning in mid-flight to arrive at the other end feet first. A dolphin sailed past, propelled by puffs of air from a small jetpack, harness-looped around its fins and controlled by neural implants. Allan recognised the cetacean. Klakkatik-k’ka, a systems analyst from Capella, who had helped design the Sail’s gravity anchors. Allan whistle-clicked a greeting and the dolphin slowed.

“Coordinator Allan,” Klakkatik-k’ka said. “What an unexpected pleasure. I left farewells with your department. It is good to say them to you in person.”

The dolphin was one of the last of his team to leave. There were few Project people left on the surface and those that remained were packing. It’s one thing to know that the Project would work; another to be around when it didn’t. The planet was all but abandoned to the hands of a billion Zealots.

The three of them ducked into a nearby observation globe to get out of the flow of traffic. The view from the globe was spectacular. They all instinctively orientated themselves so the Sail was over their heads; it seemed natural to have the Earth ‘below’ them. The central core of Mainstay One, vast, shining, white and silver branched some ten miles above them, and then branched again and again, till it formed a web of glistening rigging that spanned, arch-like, to meet the rigging from other Mainstays. Below them Mainstay One divided into three and then those divisions divided into three again. The ends of these nine roots were supported by, and supported, the vast Gravity Anchors that gripped the planet. Embedded cores of incredibly dense Neutron star stuff that would tug the Earth from its orbit as the Sail pulled them away.

“It’s like a cathedral,” said Clara. “The way the rigging forms those arches. Like a vast Gothic cathedral.”

“What the humans build the humans would destroy,” said Klakkatik-k’ka.

“You mean the bombings?” said Allan.

“Save us all from gods with thumbs,” said the dolphin. He waved a flipper. “Man’s gods are always making things, and destroying them, and making anew.”

“And ’phin gods?” asked Clara.

Klakkatik-k’ka rolled. A complex sequence of jet puffs sent him joyfully twisting and spinning in the air.

“They dance,” he called, and spun again. “They dance!”

They parted in the docking area. Klakkatik-k’ka swam off first; his flight was being held for him, leaving Clara and Allan to say goodbye. There was an awkwardness between them. Then Clara kissed him.

“Goodbye, Allan.”

“I’ll call,” he said. “As soon as I know what I’m doing… after my meeting with Ruiz.” She smiled and turned, following a blue guidestrip towards the low level intershuttle bays. He watched her go, vaguely hoping she would look back and — what? Wave to him? Run into his arms and swear she’d never leave his side? He shook his head. He was far too old for juvenile fantasies like that. It was a bit of fun, he told himself, leave it at that. But the memory of their lovemaking was strong. Her passion had been intense. Her scent was on his skin, occupying his suit with him. He watched the blue departure airlock till it had fully cycled and opened again. Only when he saw she wasn’t there did he turn and leave.

Ruiz met him at the lock. Smaller than Allan remembered, he bounced, as only a Bonobo in free-fall can bounce, and landed on Allan’s chest, knocking them both spinning end for end. Ruiz picked through Allan’s hair, ritually grooming him.

“Nya!” Ruiz grunted in mock disgust. “Nothing! You never bring me anything!”

Allan laughed. “Can we shake hands now?”

Later, after a seemingly endless round of meetings and status reports from department heads, they retired to Ruiz’s quarters; a three room apartment with a private bathroom and (of all things) a window. Ruiz cooked as they chatted about college days. Allan looked through the window. It was comforting to see Earth cosseted in its mesh of rigging. He understood why the designers had included it and he was glad he had approved the expense. After the meal Ruiz fetched brandies.

“I meant to send you this,” he said. “But with one thing and another….” He motioned Allan to sit before the wall screen. “I’ve had a chance to run a few more sims and a few ‘what if?’ scenarios. Looks like our suiciders weren’t as random or careless as we thought. Take a look…” The screen filled with an animated schematic of the Sail. Red dots flashed, Allan recognised the pattern of the bombs, and the Sail slowly distorted.

“What you’re looking at is vastly speeded up, of course,” said Ruiz. “It would take about three weeks in real time.”

When the animation had apparently finished, the Sail, now a slightly lopsided, elongated shape, a sixth red dot appeared, far nearer the Earth’s surface than the others had been, and the distortion of the Sail suddenly became much more pronounced. It buckled and flexed. The centre moved outward at an alarming speed before slowing. The edges drew in. The shape the Sail settled into was symmetrical and somehow familiar. Allan watched the simulation, as he had watched thousands of such simulations over the years, with mixed understanding. He appreciated the scale, and the rough outline, but had little comprehension of the finer detail, the ‘joyous mathematics’ Clara had called it.

The simulation started to loop. “Ruiz,” he said. “I’m a politician, an administrator. I’m not an engineer. I don’t make the damn wheels. I keep them oiled and turning. What’s your point?”

Ruiz’s moved closer. “Okay, I’ll step you through it.” He gestured, pointing out the red dots on the animation. “These two, here and here, are the suiciders taking out shrouds 84g12 and 84f13. These two,” he gestured again, “are the bombs damaging shrouds 34j88 and 34k77. At least that’s what we’re supposed to think. I think the real targets were, the platform seven winching stabilisers. They got totalled in the blasts, too, but all our attention was on the shrouds.”

“What’s so special about the winching stabilisers? From what you’ve shown me, they have nothing to do with anything that was hit.”

“They don’t,” said Ruiz, “but bear with me. The last bomb — here…” a red dot bloomed at his fingertip, “took out a small parts transfer point, ripped open a supply conduit, and damaged several accommodation modules. Not an obvious structural target like the others. Inconvenient though; I spent three days in a suit because I had nowhere to sleep. Three days without sex; I nearly went crazy! But something bugged me. It didn’t fit the pattern. Turns out the shuttle involved wasn’t scheduled to be there at that time. The launch was bought forward because of weather and its course altered. When the bomb went off, it should have been — there, at the Mainstay Three docking station.” He pointed again and the sixth, low level, red dot appeared. Ruiz stopped the animation. “At this point, with Mainstay Three severed, the Sail starts to distort rapidly. Just the sort of sudden catastrophic situation that the winching stabilisers were designed to cope with.”

“And the stabilisers that should have compensated for this were….”

Ruiz nodded. “…were the Platform Seven stabilisers totalled in blasts three and four.”

Allan didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. Mainstay Three was the central structural nerve centre for the whole Sail, with it severed the Sail would be unsteerable. The Project would have been over.

The animation ran its course. There was a moment’s silence. Then, Allan, his eyes taking in the beautiful symmetry of the curved Sail said, “That shape… what they were trying to achieve….”

“It’s a circular paraboloid,” said Ruiz. “A parabola that’s been revolved around its axis. Like a giant communications dish. All the light hitting it would be reflected to a single focus point….”

“Oh, my God!” said Allan.

“The surface of the Earth,” said Ruiz. “By my calculations the temperature at sea level would be like nothing we’ve seen in this part of the galaxy since the Big Bang!”

But Allan wasn’t listening. “Oh my God!” he said again. “Oh my God! Mainstay Three…!”

He scrabbled for the com.

“Ruiz!” His voice was harsh. “Ground everything. I want all ships stopped where they are. And clear the net. I need the bandwidth. I want a face to face with Clara Letoza. Find her! NOW! And get me the security chiefs. We may have to… destroy a ship. Kill people. I hope I’m wrong…”

They got Clara first.

And as soon as he saw her face on the screen he knew that he was wasn’t wrong; she was so calm, so secure, so at peace.

“Hello, Allan,” she said. “I’m glad it’s you.”

“Clara!” He tried to keep his voice level. “Please don’t do this. I’m asking you. Please.”

“I’m sorry. But I have to, Allan. It’s God’s Will. This is the time of The Great Tribulation. And God’s Will shall be done. The Sail is God’s tool. It’s not too late for you, Allan. You are a good man. Come with us.”

“Clara…” his voice faltered. He could think of nothing to say. He could think of no rational argument that would sway her. She had spent all her life working towards this moment, he saw that now. All her life designing the Sail to do this thing. To destroy rather than save. What could he say? What words could he find that could overturn all that? One night weighed against a lifetime of belief? He knew he was lost.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t believe that…”

“Then I’m glad you’re safe at Top Side,” she said. “We waited till I heard from you. I wanted you to know. I’m going now, now that you know — before anyone can stop us.”

“I love you, Clara,” he said. “Don’t do this to me.”

“I love you, too, Allan, but all things end.” She smiled. “Everything ends. Even the good things.” She blew a kiss to the screen. “I will pray for you in Heaven.”

And the screen went blank, fizzing into blind static.

Sudden brilliance filled the room with harsh shadows and Allan turned away from the window. Far below, and far away, a ball of fading light was expanding and around it the fibres of Mainstay Three were twisting, shredding, uncoiling, flying apart. The gravity anchors were falling. And above him, he knew, the Sail was slowly, and inexorably, starting to billow….

Three weeks later, and half a light year away, Allan watched the relayed images. Earth was empty now, save for the Zealots, and everyone in the fleeing armada was watching with him. Watching as the light, the raw, savage, relentless wind of light, hit the Sail and was reflected back. Reflected into a single focussed point of heat that moved upon the surface of the Earth as the world turned beneath it.

The Homeworld burned, and a billion people burned with it. And all its history, and all that came before history, too. The dinosaurs burned, and the Neanderthals, and the Cromagnon and Homo erectus. And the Romans burned, and Athens burned, and Minos burned, and Atlantis burned. All the empires that ever were, and all the artists, and all the poets, and the echoes of the songs the Great Whales sang, and the patterns of the clouds, and the places walked by Jesus, and by Buddah, and by Mohammed. All ashes now, and melting, and white hot, vaporising, and blowing away, atomised, and blowing away in the wind. Blowing away into the dead, cold emptiness of space.

And Allan, watching all of this, saw nothing but the morning-lit, golden down on Clara’s shoulder. The tears that ran down his face were only for her.