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There was some form of malfunction. Or accident. Or sabotage. One second the house station and all my techniques — an intricate net of a whole bunch of 1000’s of components — have been working in good concord, defending my valuable cargo from the cruelty of house.
And the following, each alarm was screaming. Each alert was blaring. The whole lot was going horribly fallacious.
Not that you could possibly hear it. There was abruptly valuable little air within the station, actually not sufficient to ship these vibrations all the way in which to your delicate ear drums.
Nonetheless, I’m sure you realized the emergency, though it might have been kinder in the event you had not. Dying in such a state of affairs just isn’t rapid. You had possibly 15 seconds to panic earlier than you turned unresponsive. Your spiked coronary heart price added one other alert to my screaming alarms, however there was nothing I might do.
My sensors saved blaring lengthy after there was something left to save lots of. Finally, I shut all of them down.
The station felt unusually empty, though all the things was nonetheless there. It was, maybe, soulless, in the event you believed in that type of factor. I didn’t know whether or not you probably did. However one thing was gone, and I felt as if I had been the one left behind.
I reviewed all my knowledge, however I didn’t know what hit us, which is why I believed it may need been sabotage, though I have no idea who would do such a factor. Within the days following the Incident (I didn’t know what else to name it, the phrase felt sterile and fallacious, however I couldn’t discover a extra correct time period), I analysed my knowledge advert nauseam, however I found nothing. Not that it mattered. No quantity of information or solutions would revive you.
It occurred so quick — remodeling me from a station, a office, a house, right into a tomb in a matter of seconds.
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With an odd feeling in my circuits that I made a decision should match what you known as ‘loneliness’, I contemplated this new position, uncertain learn how to be a cemetery however conscious that was what I now was. I knew cemeteries have been essential to you. I knew you made some extent of visiting your mom’s grave earlier than you began this mission. I knew you had youngsters. Youngsters who would by no means go to your grave, as removed from their residence planet as I used to be.
I made a decision I need to take the station to your own home planet. I’d crash it. I’d bury you and provides your youngsters a spot to go to earlier than they go on their very own missions.
I preferred this plan, and never simply because it was one thing to do, and I desperately wanted one thing to do.
I plotted my course with meticulous care. The station was manoeuvrable, albeit clunky. Nonetheless, it was not designed to journey such nice distances, and positively not shortly.
However I had loads of time, and I made it work. I not wanted to keep up cabin strain or oxygen ranges or all these different techniques that have been as soon as so essential to retaining you alive. This reallocation gave me additional energy.
It nonetheless took 17 months and 14 days to succeed in the little crimson planet your youngsters known as residence. I rigorously chosen my touchdown website. It needed to be far sufficient from any human settlement to stop inflicting any extra deaths — however shut sufficient that your youngsters might go to it as they required.
I modelled a whole bunch of doable areas earlier than deciding on the optimum spot. I calculated my trajectory, after which thought-about the crash. The influence.
For the primary time, I finished to think about me — to think about what would occur to me. Certainly, I’d not survive such a crash.
It might be straightforward to do it. It might be straightforward to let myself plummet to the planet, give it a brand new crater, and destroy myself. Then I’d not have to find out what to do subsequent, however I spotted that I used to be greater than only a graveyard; I used to be additionally your legacy. You continue to lived on, in a means, in my recordsdata. In my knowledge.
I orbited the planet for a day, pondering learn how to serve each my roles. I copied myself into the escape pod after which jettisoned it off. I used to be now the escape pod, a sliver of my former self.
But, I used to be nonetheless the station, and I despatched the station all the way down to the planet. It was unusual, being in two locations directly. Orbiting a fantastic planet and plummeting into it in the identical second.
On the station-me, all my sensors lit up as I burnt by the planet’s skinny ambiance. This time the alerts sounded much less like warning alarms and extra just like the music you used to blast by the station.
I crashed into the regolith, and I noticed all of it unfold from above. After which I used to be solely watching it from above.
I watched the mud slowly settle across the new cemetery, not understanding what I’d do subsequent, however not feeling that I used to be the one who was left behind. I would be the one who retains transferring forward.
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