Divergence

“I don’t understand,” Edward said.

“It just means do your best,” Saskia said.

Of course I will, thought Edward, puzzled. What else would I do?

“Look,” Saskia said, pointing. A few Schrodinger cubes lay frozen on the ground.

“Sorry,” Frances said, “my fault. They’re reacting to my intelligence.”

“Where have the rest gone?” Edward asked.

“Gone with the Watcher. It was always his intellect pulling them in.”

“And where has the Watcher gone?”

But Judy just tapped her nose, knowingly.

The sun was setting fast. The Earth will be dark tonight , Edward thought with some surprise. Dark for the first time in centuries. All the lights have gone. What will come to life during this night?

Edward stood alone on the rear ramp, feeling it vibrate as their passengers’ robotic share in the Earth’s bounty made its heavy way towards the large hold.

He wondered if the Eva Rye was now the last ship left on Earth. The Ophelia had already risen into the air, to join the sparse few ships that still hung about there. Some of them were lighting up in evening colors, pastel lamps that floated above the empty land.

Judy and Frances had together boarded the Buridan’s Ass and gone swimming away who-knows-where.

Edward had a funny feeling looking out over the darkening land. Everything had just melted away. He wondered if it would ever come back. Would anyone ever come and stand here in this spot and maybe throw a VNM out from the ship into the sea of mud below, set it searching for materials, set it replicating so as to maybe build a city here again?

He dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Why would anyone want to do that?

That time had passed, evaporating into the night along with all the people who had once walked here. Edward turned to head up the ramp, and then paused for a moment. He turned back to the empty land, falling away in a rosy sunset.

“Good night,” he said to it.

eva rye

“What is life, Eva?” Ivan asked. “What does it mean to be alive, to be human? What is it that makes me able to sit here and speak to you? Do you ever wonder about this?”

“I used to,” replied Eva.

“You used to? You no longer wonder? Why not?”

“Because now I know what life is.”

She could just make out Ivan’s face in the predawn light. She wondered if he could see her smiling.

“I can see you smiling at me. You’re teasing me again.”

“No,” Eva said, “I know what life is, and I will tell you what it is very soon.”

“When?”

“When the sun rises. When the band begins playing.”

The residents of the Narkomfin were gathering in the darkness, smelling of alcohol and coffee and cold sweat. There was low muttered conversation and the sound of metal chinking against metal. The brass band that had performed in the hall the previous night was re-forming; players were blowing into their instruments, warming them up, the valves pistoning in the night. Hands were rubbed together and feet stamped.