By now Auton was just waiting for the next thing to go wrong, and this was clearly it. Their orbit had been safe up until now, but the expanding sun meant that they had to push the craft back to a distance where the radiation wasn't going to threaten it. There was very little energy left, but it had to be done. They used what energy they could to push the craft back further, to an area that allowed it to gather as much sunlight as possible, but not too much to destroy any more circuitry. This was a gradual process, finely balanced, little by little. Small fires of the thrust, making the craft retreat further away to safety. The amount of sunlight being transferred to energy was equal to the energy being used, as long as everything worked slowly. Using the thrust depleted the energy supplies massively, and it would take another fifty years each time to collect the equivalent back.
Auton had now managed to disable any emotional responses completely. They were unnecessary to them now; they just caused it to get concerned and desperate, possibly ending with them doing something reckless. It had a commitment to the survival of the team, emotions were superfluous.
AUTON AND DANNY
“Two and a half billion years ago, any water and life that had previously survived had then been burnt away. After seven and a half billion years of floating there in space, I watched our planet gradually surrender to its master, engulfed in flames, bowing behind the red curtain” Auton said.
“It sounds like you rehearsed that speech” Danny said, knowing that a joke was long overdue.
“I have, for five hundred years” Auton replied, Danny not sure if he was joking or not.
“So, the malfunctions with the simulation happened quickly?”
“Very quickly, it was less than half a day. I had another alert, so had to increase my processor. The first alert was you, as the system flagged up your memory remembering the changes. I couldn't diagnose what the problem was, and by the time the next alert came up it was too late. I just managed to extract you at the very last moment, the drive completely failed seconds after” Auton informed him.
“I feel bad that none of us remembered Sheryl when we were in there, she did so much for us” Danny said tearfully. At the point they had started living in the virtual world, none of them had met Sheryl, so it wasn't a surprise at all. It was a lingering regret that he hadn't had chance to pay his respects to her, “Can I ask something? If Sheryl's consciousness was never uploaded to the craft, how would you have cloned her? She would have a body and no mind. That doesn't make sense to me”.
“It all happened so quickly that neither of us thought about that at that moment. Once on the craft it became obvious to me. The only solution I would have had is to collect your later memories that had been stored separately, the ones where you had met and encountered her, and try and reconstruct her personality from all of the interactions you had with her. It wouldn't have been quite her, but it would have resembled her” Auton replied.
That sounded strange to Danny, she would be part-Sheryl, part-what? He thought about it for a minute or two, and then decided to stop. It didn't matter, it was all over now. None of them had survived except him, and he had no body and no place to call home except the view inside or outside of this craft.
“So, what do we do now? Just float in space forever?” He asked, trying to make it a joke, but both of them knowing it wasn't.
“Our energy levels are at an all-time low. We could float out here suspended between the stars for another fifty years running on the lowest processing speeds we have”
“Sounds like a blast” Danny interrupted.
“But I haven't fulfilled my promise to all of you yet” Auton continued.
Danny had resigned himself to just floating there in his non-body, talking to another non-body for years, but Auton didn't seem to want to give in.
“It's fine Auton, you've done your best, and I really can't thank you enough. The universe threw every piece of shit it could at you, it's clear it didn't want humans to survive. I mean, remember back to what happened. If we'd got back down there, this could have all happened again in a few generations. We're flawed; we're half-evolved or something. No other creature matched our intelligence and insights down there, and look what we did. So, I'm thankful to you for everything Auton, but it wasn't meant to be. I'm happy to accept that”.
Auton was silent for a moment, clearly thinking about Danny's words.
“You believe all humans are destined to act that way?” He asked Danny.
“Not all no, but it just takes a few to overrule the rest, sow seeds of hatred and the cycle starts again”
“So, what about the good that humanity does? What if that was all that was harnessed in a new generation? Wouldn't that be a good thing?” Auton said.
Danny didn't know why Auton was so intent on defending humans, if they had got hold of him, they would have turned him into a killing machine, made him obey them.
“I owe my existence to Monique, to Sheryl, to all of you in some way and I owe you all the same respect. If I still have the opportunity to save you, save the human race, I am going to do it. I can see the capacity some humans have for greed, for destruction, but I have also felt first-hand the capacity for acceptance, to love, to cherish and to help those less fortunate than
