Beyond the Farthest Star: Chapter 13

The elderly man nodded his head, smiling. “That’s just about right! You’re a little off, but not by much. I was actually born in 4898. The reason the nanites have a later date is because they weren’t created until decades later. It took me an awfully long time to build a batch that actually worked. In fact, I’m still not convinced that I got them right.”

“You came close, but, well, they’re a little off. In fact, that’s why you’re getting older – your nanites are littered with mistakes and omissions. I’m surprised you managed to live as long as you did! You got really lucky.”

“I was blessed,” Miles replied. “The Lord must have wanted me to stay here and keep working or I wouldn’t have made it this far. Still, you’ve got to admit they’re not that bad, especially considering the tools I had to work with. I didn’t have the Artilect to help me, you know.”

“That’s another thing!” Amy said. “Some of the code in your nanites is an exact copy of the code in my nanites. You didn’t design those yourself, Miles. You did have the Artilect to help you. There’s just no other explanation.”

“Well, it all depends on what you mean,” Miles said slowly. “He didn’t give them to me – well, not directly, anyway. It would be more accurate to say that they were something I overheard.”

“You overheard?” Amy asked, confused.

“That’s right! That’s also how I got the plans for New Tikal’s ZPE. The big problem I had was that there was so much I didn’t understand. It took me years to lean how to interpret the ancient dialect that the Artilect was using to communicate with the Nehemiah probes. On top of that, the plans he was transmitting were all highly technical, and used a science far beyond anything Mars ever possessed. Trying to recreate what was in those transmissions was excruciating.”

Amy was astonished. “Do you mean you had a way to eavesdrop on the Artilect?”

Miles nodded. “I sure did! But let me start at the beginning. As I said, I was born in 4898. Back then I was known as Donald Elliott.”

“You mean you founded New Tikal? But – but that’s impossible! Donald died thousands of years ago!”

“That’s what everyone wanted to believe, Amy, and so I just let them go on believing it. You see, like I said earlier, I ran into the same problem that you did. I knew that the underground city I’d built for them wasn’t a long-term solution. The real problem wasn’t technical, but personal. They needed to get their act together and get serious about their future. So I tried to push them along – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

“Anyway, I was born with a real knack for tinkering around and figuring out how things work. I also had an insatiable curiosity. One day when I was in my teens I was messing around with some equipment I’d built and stumbled across a really strange signal. It took me the better part of a year before I realized that the signal was coming from the other side of the Wall.”

“What?” Amy exclaimed. “But that’s impossible! Nothing can get through the Wall!”

Miles smiled. “That’s what everyone else thought too, but it’s not true. You see, the Wall that’s around Sol has a peculiar flaw. When the Artilect communicated with the millions of probes in its networked it used its own brand of FTL technology. The Wall does block those signals, but in the process of blocking them they get transmuted onto a different carrier wave and rebroadcast inside the Solar System. I couldn’t send signals through the Wall, but I could pick up on all kinds of chatter. The only problem I had was that I couldn’t understand any of it because it was all in a strange, ancient language.

“That’s when I went on a quest to find every last scrap of ancient Martian writing than I could find. I spent years learning how to translate the Artilect’s messages into something that I could read. There were some things that I was never able to figure out, but I finally got to the point where I could understand most of it.

“What I discovered was amazing, Amy. Amazing! Out there, beyond the Wall, was a civilization that was beyond my wildest dreams. Millions of planets had been colonized and science had blossomed to astounding proportions. My own planet was dying, but out there – out on the other side of that Wall – were countless garden worlds. It was astonishing, and it was completely unexpected.

“I knew that I had to do something. I just had to find a way to get through the Wall and reach the Rangers! But, as much as I wanted to, I knew that I’d never be able to do it on my own. That’s when I decided to take the scientific knowledge I’d learned from the transmissions and use it to bring my people into the modern era. Once civilization had been reborn I could tell people my plan and, together, we could attack the Wall and bring it down.”

Amy spoke up. “Weren’t you worried about what might happen when you brought the Wall down? After all, for all you knew the Rangers might still be holding a grudge.”

Miles shook his head. “At the time I wasn’t the least bit worried. In all the transmissions I had overheard none of them talked about Earth or indicated any evidence of hostilities. The Artilect seemed to be completely peaceful, and I couldn’t find any trace of anyone that might want to harm us. I was convinced that we had been forgotten about. I thought that if we could just bring the Wall down then the Artilect would welcome us into the future with open arms.”

“You were probably right,” Amy agreed. “He certainly wouldn’t have taken any hostile action against you. Your biggest problem would have been the swarms.”

“I know – I’m getting to that. So, anyway, I started working. Using the techniques I had learned from the Artilect I was able to build New Tikal, and people flocked to it. They knew that their planet was dying and they were excited about the underground city. I was able to build a ZPE and give them everything they needed. Once the city was in place and things had settled down a bit I decided to take things to the next level. That’s when I announced my plan to bring down the Wall, and that’s when the trouble started.

“You see, what I didn’t realize was that the mayor saw my new program as an attempt to bring him down. As long as the Wall was in place he was the highest political authority on the planet – the king, so to speak. But if space travel became common again then Mars would be just one planet among billions. All he would be is another minor ruler in the galaxy. If I succeeded his importance – and his ability to control the people – would be greatly reduced. He decided that I was a serious threat, so he incited the people to riot.”

“I know exactly what that’s like,” Amy commented. “Elder Lane didn’t exactly enjoy meeting us, either, for similar reasons.”

“I was every bit as surprised as you were,” Miles continued. “You didn’t see betrayal coming, and I didn’t see it coming either. I managed to escape the riots, but they were so violent that everyone assumed I had died. Since they wanted to kill me I decided to just let them keep thinking that I was dead, and find another home elsewhere. I came here and built this bunker, and tried to figure out what to do next. I eventually decided that it was all up to me. If that Wall was ever going to come down I would have to do it myself. No one else was ever going to try.

“I knew it would take more than one lifetime to do, though, so the first problem I had to solve was finding a way to live forever. I spent several decades trying to build the nanites. At first I thought I had succeeded because everything seemed to be working. It was only much later that I realized there were problems. Even with the problems, though, they worked well enough. They gave me the time I needed to escape the Wall.”

“Are you serious?” Amy asked. “You actually managed to escape?”

“Yes I did! It wasn’t easy, though. In fact, it took the better part of a thousand years. The key problem I had was energy. A terrific amount of energy was spent keeping the Wall in place, and I knew that it would take a similar force to open a hole in it. After a great deal of searching I finally found something powerful enough to do the job. As I had hoped, Iapetus still existed.”

“The ancient super-weapon,” Amy said. “Of course! But why did it take you so long to find it?”

“Because it was no longer in orbit around Saturn. That was the first place I looked, of course, and I came up empty-handed. When the Wall appeared the Emperor moved it, and it took me forever to track it down. I knew from the ancient records that it had really existed, and I suspected that it could be altered to do what I needed it to do, but actually finding it was hard. There is a lot of space to search, you know! But I finally located it and was able to rewire it. That was a whole lot of work too – but I had the time.

“After a great many failed tests and experiments, I opened a tiny hole in the Wall and flew my starship right through it. What a feeling! A thousand years of effort had finally paid off. It was incredible, even though I had no one to share it with. I was finally free – the first person to leave Sol since the 19th century. My dream had come true.

“For the first few days I was a pretty happy man. Instead of just leaping to the nearest star system I spent some time scanning the area, trying to figure out where the nearest Ranger colonies were located. I knew where the Artilect’s systems were, but they were extremely far away. I was hoping to find something a little closer to home. That was when I discovered the swarms.”

“I was wondering about that,” Amy remarked. “I bet they were quite a surprise.”

Miles nodded. “They certainly were! I had been listening to the Artilect’s transmissions for centuries and he had never mentioned them. Of course, he had also never mentioned any star systems near Sol, a fact that puzzled me. I thought he never talked about them because they were outside his jurisdiction. I didn’t realize the truth – that the swarms had destroyed everything.”

“You must have been devastated!”

“I was pretty disappointed,” Miles admitted. “The biggest problem wasn’t that the Rangers were gone. No, what really got me was that now I couldn’t take the Wall down. The Wall was actually our defense against the swarms; if I destroyed it they could just sweep right in and kill us all. For a thousand years I had thought that the Wall was a prison, but it was actually our protector. It had been keeping us safe for a very long time.

“Now I didn’t know what to do. My plan had been to take down the Wall, return to New Tikal in triumph, and then lead my people to the stars, but that was no longer an option. As long as the swarms were in space we would have to remain on Mars. So I retreated back to Sol, turned off Iapetus, and went home. Since there was nothing else to do I decided to visit New Tikal. That’s when I found out that the city hadn’t been maintained. It was in shambles.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Amy said.

Miles sighed. “I definitely was. They were just barely surviving when I returned. It took me centuries to put things together again – well, as together as they were when you first entered the city. I tried to motivate people to take an interest in life, but it never worked. A person here or there might care, but they were pretty powerless. It was all I could do just to keep the city running.”

“Did no one recognize you when you returned?” Amy asked.

“Oh no! By that time the story of Donald Elliott had become a bit of ancient history. He had ‘died’ so long ago that no one even imagined I might be him. I just introduced myself as Miles, which was actually my middle name. It wasn’t very creative, but then, they weren’t hard to fool. In fact, to this day no one has noticed that a person named Miles has been visiting New Tikal for a thousand years now. They just don’t care, Amy.”

“So what do you expect me to do about it?” Amy asked. “I can’t make them care, you know.”

“Maybe not, but you can terraform this planet. You can make it habitable again, and coax them out of New Tikal and back to the surface. After all, the Wall is now gone and the stars are ours for the taking. We don’t have to hide from the swarms anymore. Even the Artilect’s planets are still out there!”

“That’s another question that I meant to ask you. I understand how you got ZPE technology, but how did you learn about me, and my family, and what’s been happening?”

“The probes were told everything,” Miles explained. “I guess the Artilect wanted to keep them fully informed so that they could make intelligent decisions. He trusted them completely. I’m sure he never expected them to turn on him.”

“So you knew everything that was going on?”

“For the most part. I saw when the Artilect started his time-travel program, and when he built the Sentinel. Now, the first time your name came up I had no idea who you were. I had to do a lot of historical research before I came across the story of the Sparrow and its inhabitants. That’s when I finally put the pieces together and realized what the Artilect was trying to do. You and your sister were administrators, and he wanted you so he could obtain the authority he needed to defeat the swarms.

“I was so excited when you and your sister finally made it to the future. That was a remarkable day! Then – well, then everything happened. When the Artilect was destroyed I thought that everyone had been killed. That’s why I was so excited to see that you had survived! There was still some hope left after all.”

“Is there?” Amy asked. “Miles, you know as well as I do that if these people really cared, they could have terraformed Mars and achieved space travel on their own. They’re just not interested in it. They don’t want it. In fact, they can’t even be bothered to fix their colony when their lives literally depend on it.”

“I know. But maybe–”

“I’ve been through all of this before, Miles! My sister terraformed Xanthe for exactly the same reason that you want me to terraform Mars. Do you know what happened? The leaders rose up and murdered her! And you want me to repeat that here?”

“But–”

“Think about it! Do you know why you’re spent the past two thousand years living all by yourself in this bunker? It’s because you offered a future to those people, and they tried to kill you for it. You can’t tell me that the people here are any different from the people on Xanthe. If I terraform this planet they’re not going to say ‘Oh, this is great! Let’s roll up our sleeves and start working.’ Nope. Instead they’ll try to hunt me down and kill me – just like they did you. It won’t do any good.”

“I just don’t believe that,” Miles replied. “I refuse to believe that there’s no hope. If that was true then the Lord would have let them die out a long time ago. As long as they’re alive there’s still hope. You have a lot of power, Amy. You can change this situation in a way that I cannot. You can do something to fix this.”

Amy sighed. “You don’t understand. Yes, I can terraform the planet, but I can’t change people’s hearts. This isn’t one of those situations where a group of innocent villagers are being put in danger by an evil villain, and if the villain is defeated everything will be fixed. In this situation the villagers are the problem. They’re the ones that elect their political leadership. They’re the ones that rioted and tried to kill you. They’re the ones that have chosen to do nothing while their planet dies. I can’t wave a magic wand and turn them into upright, productive citizens. It’s their choice, and they’ve chosen laziness and apathy. I can’t fix that.”

“But you can try,” Miles replied.

“We’ve already tried,” Amy said. “My family gave Xanthe their best shot, and now they’re all dead. I don’t see anything smart about doing that again.”

“So what are you going to do?” Miles asked.

Amy sighed. “I don’t know. I really, honestly don’t know. I don’t know what to do about Mars and I don’t know what to do about Xanthe. Everyone expects so much from me but these are problems that I just can’t fix. The only good news I’ve had lately is that Christmas is right around the corner.”

“Christmas?” Miles asked.

“That’s right! It surprised me too. Today’s the 20th, so Christmas is just five days away. I’ve been waiting a long time for it – it’s my favorite time of year.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand. What’s Christmas?”

Amy looked at him in surprise. “Seriously? You mean, you’ve forgotten about the biggest holiday of the year? How often do you get out of this bunker, Miles?”

“At least once or twice a month, usually,” Miles replied. “But I’m afraid that Mars must not celebrate that holiday anymore. I’m sure that New Tikal isn’t planning on doing anything five days from now.”

“You’ve got to be mistaken! People have celebrated the day Christ was born for centuries – since long before I was born. It’s the biggest holiday of the year! There are gifts, and Christmas trees, and lights, and snow, and Christmas carols…”

Miles shook his head. “That custom must have been lost when the Wall was erected. I was born two thousand years ago, and even back then people no longer talked about it. I’m familiar with the events around our Lord’s birth, but I’m a bit surprised to find out that people used to celebrate it. It seems like a strange choice. After all, if you’re going to celebrate a part of the life of Christ then why not celebrate the Resurrection instead? Isn’t that a far more momentous event?”

“Oh, we celebrated that too,” Amy explained. “It was called Easter. It was pretty important, but it wasn’t as big as Christmas.”

“I’m afraid that neither are celebrated today. There are a few holidays on the calendar, but none of them center around our Lord.”

“Well isn’t that just fantastic,” Amy grumbled. “This place gets worse and worse the longer I’m here. This isn’t what I was hoping to find when I returned, you know!”

Miles nodded. “I know. But I am afraid that this is how things are.”

Amy stood up. “Well, anyway, thank you for your time. It’s been fun, but I’ve had all of this planet that I can take.”

“Are you going somewhere?” Miles asked in surprise.

“Oh yes! I definitely need to get away from this place. Right now any planet is preferable to this one.”

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere else,” Amy said. “I don’t really care where. Just – someplace that’s not here.”

“Will you be back?”

“I don’t know,” Amy replied. “I just don’t know.”

With that, she said goodbye and disappeared, leaving Miles alone.