His home screen shook her.
She blinked and swallowed and pinched her bottom lip between her fingers.
Minerva | Anyone else
She stared at her name, concentrating on not accidentally selecting it, unable to fathom why she was so thoroughly terrified to follow the link.
With the survival bag pulled tight over her head, she closed her eyes and forced herself to proceed.
A pic filled her view, eclipsing the tent’s warm glow. It was so unexpected that it took a moment to understand what she was looking at. It’d clearly been grabbed from some recent fone vid. She recognized the screen bezel as the PCU she’d snatched from Ish’s EV. Above the screen, a tiny sliver view of two orange-suited legs, stretching out from under the PCU. And on the glowing screen, this was what John had wanted her to see. The supply pod network homepage.
For an instant, scanning without truly reading, she thought John had overwritten her message with one of his own, an update on their situation, a list of those lost. With disbelieving eyes she read each surreal word in order.
Her message had been received.
The rally camp had been established.
Survivors. All but Angela. Something had happened to Angela.
First contact with the Threck.
Friendly relationship established.
Rescue team on the way: Aether, Pablo, Threck.
If their ETA was accurate, they’d have arrived yesterday.
The ground tilted beneath Minnie’s body, her mind overflowing with invasive new data attempting to overwrite fixed, read-only memory. She didn’t need to read it again, the entire message was now branded into her brain. It repeated in her head, read aloud in Aether’s official voice—not her shrink voice, or her personal chat voice, or her real voice.
Wait.
It couldn’t be real. This was absolute BS. They were all dead. She’d already come to terms with that incontrovertible fact. If everything over in Threckville was all cake and coffee, why would they have waited so long to post a message? Sheer fabrication. A cruel, heartless lie.
Rage boiling up her neck, fizzing beneath her skin, Minnie rolled onto her back and shoved finger and thumb into her eye socket, dug filthy nails into the fone, and yanked it from her face. She hurled it away, blindly aiming for the breached ice wall and a terminal plunge. It bounced off the sealed tent door with a contemptible theh, dropping somewhere near her feet.
Fuming chaos. Why? Cursing John. No escape from these thoughts; this despair, renewed with insult; half-mended wounds torn open and acid vomit blasted in; a new call for the sweet respite of death, the only true escape from evil tormenters.
She scrambled to her feet, attacked the tent zipper—curses streaming out and echoing through the stone cavity—and marched downslope, through the ice gap, to the side of the skimmer. Wind struck her face and blew her hair behind her, 200 meters of unobstructed freefall flashing by like she was soaring on great eagle wings. Sans depth perception, the 30m-thick ice basin seemed to hurtle closer, sink deeper, zoom near.
With only her bare heels teetering on the glassy ledge, her hand slipped off the side of the ice wall, and her other hand caught her weight on the slick skimmer arm, woozy body tilting out over the sheer face, eye staring down at an increasingly real, petrifying abyss.
Why, John?
She pushed herself back, stumbled from ice to granite, and allowed her legs to give. Sitting, she hugged her knees to her chest and rocked. He’d written it to inspire her on, figuring the promise of returning to Earth wouldn’t be enough to keep her going on her own for a full year and a half. He’d made that up, too—that much was now clear. A good liar drilled in the detail; a great liar inspired with grace. He surely rationalized the heartless tale. The ends justified the means. Get her to the coast. Alarmed after days of no-shows, she’d fall back to the boat plan, get herself seaworthy, head to Threck Country. Even after finding the rally point empty, she’d still hold out hope. Head to the city, make first contact, discover the truth—the lie—but then she wouldn’t be alone anymore, would she? It was her absolute best chance of survival, so reasoned a desperate, dying John.
How could she hate him for that? It wasn’t a heartless scheme; it came straight from his heart. Knowing full well she’d despise him for it, he’d ranked her survival over his memory. And she hated him for it. And she loved him for it.
She missed being robotic. Emotions were exhausting.
A resigned breath, a flicked-away tear, she groaned as she stood. Her feet slapped up the rise, tent door thwacked aside, and she stepped in, stooping to find the chucked sphere. It was nestled at the foot of her survival bag.
Once more ensconced in warmth, she delved back into John’s fone to see what he’d left for “Anyone else.” Predictably, the link simply opened an extensive file catalogue. With an indifferent scroll, Minnie recognized familiar data from Ish’s fone intermingling with much of Minnie’s own work.
She closed the catalogue and considered the “Minerva” link, her mental image of the pic returning to her consciousness. What additional harm could the real image inflict? She selected the link.
The message hadn’t changed, of course, still glowing on the PCU, still transparent in its aims. It was strange, the omission of Angela. What was the thinking behind that? An insinuation of tragedy to lend credence to the rest of the message? And why Angela? Why was she the sacrificial lamb? Had he actually measured each crewmember’s “worth” or maybe his perception of their relationship with Minnie, settling on Angela to instill a specific measure of loss, dinging the too-perfect, potentially doubtable perfection of zero losses? Ugh, it seemed almost too manipulative for John. In his haste, he’d probably just missed her name. A simple flub.
She closed the pic and found a big scratchnote floating behind it, tacked in the air.
Oh crap, not more…
Hi Minerva, I guess my busted body proved less capable than my deluded mind. I blame the drugs (a bunch of drugs). Maybe a tinge of swollen ego. So don’t get all down on yourself as if this is your fault. I’ve been trying to skedaddle from this crapfest for a while, just didn’t want you losing the will to go on. Figured you’d need something to keep you motivated after I said farewell. Guilty confession: there’s no return module coming. Completely fabricated. I’m awfully sorry for lying to you about that. If Earth were to send anything (which I doubt), it’d be after our silence was noticed a few years from now, and then it’d show up 20+ years later. Don’t hold your breath there. Colonization-ready planets have always had priority. That aside, as you saw from the pic there, my dumb lies were unnecessary. You’ve got an epic hug waiting for you on the coast. A hug I wish I could’ve felt one last time. Please, as awkweird as it is, could you give her one for me? And tell her it’s from me? And tell her I never stopped loving her? She knows, and I know she knows, and coming from you it’ll be embarrassing, but it’s my dying wish so you have no choice. Ha ha. My only fear is that you don’t get this message. Please get this message. Pull through whatever you’re going through out there. Keep putting that vaunted SP rating of yours to work. Go lead the team. Build a colony for the long term, with no illusions about help coming. I love you, too.
PS: Don’t bother searching for those files you were worried about. I just deleted all vids. Wink.