“Richard, I know this is difficult to process, but we’ve all lost our home and, if I may be so bold, your negative demeanor makes it very difficult to enjoy your company.”
Rich’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Oh my God. Kettle. Pot. Black!”
“At any rate,” Aldous said, ignoring the jab as he refocused himself and looked down at Thel’s unconscious body, “your magnetic field held, just as I’d calculated it would. We’re safe.”
“James isn’t,” Rich shot back. “His body was obliterated, and without the mainframe, there’s no way to reconstruct a body for him.”
Aldous patted the black hard drive on his hip. “But he is alive, Richard, lest we forget.”
“Wow. You’re a ray of sunshine and positivity today, Chief,” he said as he sat up, rigid with fury. “You know, we should hang out more. I know this great place in San Francisco at Fisherman’s Wharf—oh wait. IT WAS DESTROYED! What are you not getting about this, Chief? We just lost Earth! We failed!”
“We saved lives,” Aldous countered, his face like stone, only his brow furrowing slightly. “Humanity hasn’t been wiped out. Mars is terraformed. The Purists were given the newly terraformed Venus by James. All is not lost, Rich Borges. Humanity will endure.”
Rich took in a deep breath. “Apparently, Chief, you live in your own world. Wish I could hang out with you there, but I’m in this place called reality. And speaking of,” he looked straight up. “We’ve got to get back to the surface. I don’t want to be stuck down here for a second longer. I’m just now realizing that I’m definitely claustrophobic.”
“Agreed,” Aldous replied, “this would make anyone feel claustrophobic, including me.”
He held out his hand for Rich and helped him off of the table he was on, not far from where Thel was lying motionless.
Rich moved to the pilot’s seat. “It may take a few minutes to move all of this debris and rubble aside. We better get going.”
They set off, flying upward slowly, the earth giving way in front of them like ice giving way in front of an arctic icebreaking vessel before the post-human era. They continued making their way up for several minutes before either of them spoke again.
Rich, grumbly, broke the silence. “Do you have a large family, Chief?”
Aldous hesitated before answering. He’d usually brush off questions about his personal affairs as intrusive and rude, but he knew that the usual customs didn’t apply in that instance. “I don’t,” he answered, uncomfortably. “It’s just my wife and I.” He quickly steered the conversation back to Rich. “What about you, Richard?”
Rich’s eyes stared forward, unblinking. “Yes. Big family. Kids. Grand kids. Great grand kids.”
Aldous had no words to comfort a man who he knew had to be crippled with worry. He stayed silent.
“Why no kids?” Rich suddenly asked. “I mean, no offence, but you’re old as all hell, aren’t you? Like 150 or something? And you never had children?”
“164 actually,” Aldous answered. “And I didn’t…” Aldous paused as he struggled to find sufficient words. “I’ve seen very different eras. Eras when children just didn’t seem to make sense. And by the time I found the person I knew I’d love forever, children made even less sense.”
“Why not?”
Aldous licked his lips as he carefully considered his words. “By then, I felt everyone in the world was my responsibility. I didn’t want to have anyone else in my life that I favored over my people. Does that make sense?”
Rich nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird. It’s sad. It isn’t really true. But it makes sense. What about your wife? Was she okay with this?”
Aldous thought of Samantha; then, almost as quickly, he thought of Craig Emilson, the ghost who had haunted their relationship for three-quarters of a century. “Children didn’t seem natural to either of us. It was a mutual decision.”
The ceiling above them suddenly went from a perfect blackness to emanating an orange glow. It was a glow that grew in intensity, veins of liquid magma becoming more and more prevalent the higher they climbed. They each remained silent as it became clear that they were only seconds from breaching the surface, seconds from seeing the remnants of the Earth.
When they emerged, they emerged spectacularly, the green cocoon of their magnetic field engulfed entirely in glowing, orange magma that quickly cooled and broke away in smoldering, coal-black chunks of what used to be Earth, the smoke trails of the chunks spiraling down to the orange surface. When enough of the magma had cooled and broken away, they saw the full extent of the damage to their home—and it was total.