1: Mission, Uninterrupted
I remember the news before I left. Most of it was hopeful, looking to the cosmic irregularity with a sense of urgency and determination: “Francesca Williams will make it through the wormhole, and she will find us a home.”
I also remember my hands, clammy, taking over the controls as the ship moved from Monitor to manual pilot. And as I approached what I hoped wouldn’t be the last sight I laid my eyes on, I swallowed the sedatives and made one last prayer. Perhaps the god that had abandoned the people below would save me instead.
It felt like only seconds after I had swallowed the pills that I felt the lurch of an atmosphere.
Monitor’s voice filled the cockpit. – Engaging landing sequence. Autopilot or manual? –
“Autopilot,” I replied, finding my voice in my throat. I cleared my throat and continued, “Monitor, where are we landing?”
Monitor’s answer was short: – Earth –
I swore and pressed the button on the side of my seat to open the blackout curtains, expecting to see the charred landscape I left.
But no, there was green. Just above the horizon, sprigs of trees puffed out of the ground and shifted slightly in the wind. The ocean, as dark as the sedated dream I was wrenched out of moments before, hurtled below us. If this was earth, where were we?
Monitor engaged the parachute, and I pressed my head into the headrest to avoid whiplash. Once we were in the water, the ship used its last bit of fuel to push towards land. We slowed to a stop.
After unbuckling my seatbelts, I sat up and touched one of Monitor’s screens. It lit up with a
– Hello Francesca, happy landing – then showed me my vitals. My blood pressure was high from the stress of landing, but I was fine. Everything was almost the exact same from when I left.
The problem wasn’t my health. The mission had some kind of technical flaw; someone had put in the wrong code or used the wrong equation. Instead of finding a new home, I had fallen right back to earth. The mission had failed.
With a sharp exhale, I let a few tears gather behind my eyes and drop onto my clenched fists. Then I lifted my head and asked, “Monitor, how long was I asleep?”
– Twenty-four hours –
“Only twenty-four?” There were enough sleeping pills in that concoction to knock out a horse for three days. The re-entry must have been more violent than I thought. “Tell me where I am, Monitor. Give exact coordinates.”
My gaze was drawn out the window as Monitor calculated. The sun was brighter than I remembered it being. The view reminded me of Washington, the hikes we would do up and down Mount Rainier and the foothills surrounding it. Trees with thick, scaly trunks and moss covering every inch of the ground that wasn’t filled with roots. I wanted to open one of the vents and breathe in the air, taste the wetness, mud, leaves, and decay that always sat on the tip of my tongue.
Monitor spoke, – Sorry for the delay. Latitude: -77.8499966, Longitude: 166.666664. Does this answer your question? –
“No, that doesn’t make sense.” I pushed myself out of the chair and stared at Monitor’s screen, where the coordinates blinked. “Those coordinates would mean we landed in… Antarctica?”
– Yes –
“This is a temperate rainforest,” I said. “There’s no way we’re in Antarctica. It hasn’t been this way since-” I paused and wracked my brain for the right word, “-the Cretaceous period. When the CO2 levels were much higher than they are now.”
There was no response. An eerie silence filled the cabin. I whispered, “Monitor, what are the CO2 levels?”
The computer beeped. – CO2 levels are above average. 996 parts per million –
How was that possible? I pressed the comms unit on the side of my chair. “Professor Maxwell, are you there? Doctor Pierce? Is anyone manning the comms? I’d like to speak with someone at the base. I think my ship malfunctioned. I apologize, everyone. I know this was our last-“
Monitor interrupted the comms message. – There is movement from the forest, Francesca. Something is coming onto the beach –
“People?” I asked.
– I detect one human heat signature.. If you wish to greet them, you won’t need your suit. Even with the increased CO2levels you are safe –
There was a knock at the door. I had to stifle a scream by slamming my fist into my mouth. Monitor asked, – The visitor is speaking, Francesca. Would you like me to transfer the message? –
“Yes, do it.”
The language that came through my headphones was not one I recognized. It sounded like a mixture of Italian and German, hard syllables lost in the throat and rolled ‘r’s’. It had been so long since I had spoken or heard either language, I couldn’t decipher anything.
– Would you like me to defer your recorded answer? –
“Yes.”
I heard the click of the recording and I listened to my voice, “Hello, my name is Francesca Williams. I am from Seattle and I was born in the year 2025, Common Era. I have the blood type O negative. I am an engineer and am trained in First Aid. My native language is American English.”
Monitor showed me the person at my door. They looked normal enough, olive skin and freckles plastered across their face. Their head was shaved. When they heard my message, their eyes widened. They dropped to the ground and covered their face with their hands. There was no movement for a few seconds.
I was growing impatient. “Monitor, send new message.”
Click
“I am coming outside. Voglio di parlarti. Aspetti per me.” I silently thanked my grandmother for her insistence on only speaking Italian when I visited her.
The person outside let their hands fall to their sides and lifted their head to the camera, but they did not speak. I unbuckled my travel suit, letting it fall to the floor.
I waited as Monitor checked the pressure before opening the door. The person was still waiting there, their mouth slightly agape, watching as I stepped across the threshold.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” they repeated, their eyes downcast.
There was a moment of silence. How much English did they know?
I asked, “What is your name?”
They didn’t answer. I pointed to myself and said, “Francesca. English. American?”
That seemed to elicit a response. They held out a hand and said, “Please.”
“Where?”
They pointed forward. If I squinted, I could make out a plume of smoke rising up from the treetops. I knew my mom would tell me not to follow them, not until I could communicate with someone.
I shook my head. I’d try Italian again. “No. I won’t go. Non… fuck. Um, non voglio… partire con te. Non ti conosco. Non ti capisco.” I don’t want to go with you, I don’t know you, and I don’t understand you. I had been trained well by my grandma.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest and extended my foot stance to drive the point further. The stranger furrowed their eyebrows but didn’t protest. I watched their retreating back and let out a sigh of relief.
The smell of the ship hit me like a gunshot after the fresh air of the land outside. My heart clenched again as if it was afraid of stopping. This was almost the place where I died. Body odor, reheated food, lavender.
I grabbed my shirt, grateful for the familiar softness of the cotton, whispering, “How am I not dead?”
Monitor heard me. – The wormhole did not have the identity of a black hole. There was no fatal event horizon or singularity. I am calculating its composition now –
“No, no,” I said. “ Stop that. Why were you saying we’re in Antarctica? The CO2 levels were rising when we left but they weren’t supposed to levels like these for hundreds of years.”
Monitor was silent. I hadn’t asked her a direct question she could answer.
I tried again, “Monitor, where are we?”
– Antarctica –
“For fuck’s sake.” I let out groan and covered my face with my hands. “How long has it been since we began the mission?”
– Based on the composition of the saltwater and how it compares to the samples that have been logged in my system, it has been 1,011 years since we left Houston, Texas –
The eerie silence found me again. I slipped to the ground and let hands fall to my sides, inhaling the scent of dried skin and the last trace of my lavender essential oils.
After a moment, I came to a realization. There was only one explanation for this. I crawled over to the controls and pulled myself up, saying to the log, “Monitor has malfunctioned. There isn’t much I can do now except allow myself to be taken in by the person I saw when I first landed. I’m bringing in my laptop so I can write these logs going after I leave, in case they keep me from the ship.”
A knock. Monitor, – Two people, Francesca. They are speaking. –
“Transfer their message.”
“- was told that you speak English. I study English. They call me Matteo, and I use male pronouns. Blood type B positive, born at McMurdo IV. My sister Melania tells me you speak an old Romance language, if you would prefer that please let me know. She couldn’t place it, but I have a colleague who speaks Old French and Old Portuguese.”
“Oh, shit.” I couldn’t place his accent at all, but he spoke fluently. “Monitor, send my recording.”
Click
I turned the outside camera on as my recorded voice burst out of the ship. The man was taller than Melania, but he looked remarkably similar to her. If they were siblings, they must have been twins. His eyes were closed, gloved fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as he concentrated on what my recording was saying.
Matteo asked, “Your name is Francesca?”
“Monitor, transfer –“ I paused. “Monitor, open the door.”
Matteo’s face paled and Melania looked away as I exited the ship, my knapsack slung over my shoulder. “My name is Francesca, and my mission began in the year 2061. Could you please tell me what year it is now? I’m afraid my Monitor has malfunctioned. It told me that I somehow traveled a thousand years into the future.”
Matteo opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before saying, “It is the year 3072 CE. Your Monitor was correct.”
My hands always seemed to get clammy in difficult situations. As I wiped them on my pants, I looked at my ship, the back of it partly submerged under the black ocean. Images flashed through my head; the yellow-sand beaches of North Carolina, snow covering the carriage trails in Acadia, all the places my mother took me. Where were they now? Where was I? Was this some elaborate joke?
“Mrs. Williams,” Matteo strode forward and placed a hand on me. “Please sit down. You were about to faint.”
I blinked stars out of my eyes and said, “Call me Francesca, I’m not married. Did you know I was almost married?” Matteo lowered me to the ground. The rocks were still wet from high tide and I felt the cold seeping through my cargo pants.
I watched the two of them exchange looks and speak quickly in their language, Matteo’s hand still on my shoulder. It was reassuring and sent sparks down my spine.
His hand guided me up again and I felt myself lean against his shoulder. “Sorry. I’m not usually like this to people I just met,” I said, noticing that my words were slurred. “I must still have some drugs in my system. Any chance I could take a nap? Right here would be fine.”
Matteo shook his head. “No, you can come with us and we’ll find you a proper bed. We live in a town nearby; I am a teacher there.”
I heard myself mutter, “Okay,” before darkness clouded my vision once more.
~~~
Something that comes with living during the apocalypse: you dream a lot about the end of the world. I think I’ve gone through all the scenarios. The scariest one was when a plague wiped out everyone overnight, leaving me alone on the top of Mount Everest. I remembered the feeling of looking down at the valleys below me and over the horizon and knowing that no one was out there. No one would ever be alive again. Everyone I had ever loved and everyone I would have loved was dead.
But the dream I had as Matteo and Melania carried me to their home was more theatrical than a plague. I was looking up at the sky, where a brilliant aurora of dark purple and blue swam across the stars. Mist was covering the landscape and people were fleeing into their houses, but all I could do was gaze at the solar storm above me. Stars exploded above me, and a rain of meteorites fell towards the ground. It smelled like… sweet potato fries?
“Are you hungry?”
It was so dark I hadn’t realized my eyes were open. Matteo’s voice came from my right side and I blinked a few times before I could see him. The only light came from a night light next to my bed.
He tried again. “You must be starving, Francesca. I have some cooked sweet potato here that I believe you should eat.”
“I can’t remember the last time I had sweet potato,” I said, rolling onto my arm and lifting myself up. “Thank you.”
The plate was cold, and the sweet potato was unseasoned, but it was the first real meal I had eaten since the beginning of my trip that wasn’t freeze-dried, so it was delicious. I heard Professor Maxwell’s nagging voice in my head, You’re eating food that was given to you by a stranger, Francesca. Have you always been this stupid?
I let the memory of her attitude slip away.
Matteo pulled out a pad of paper and scribbled down something as I ate. When the plate was clean, he said, “You’ll have a bigger dinner, but we were afraid of giving you too much too early. The doctor wasn’t sure if you were ready for a bigger meal.”
We were silent for a few seconds. Finally, I said, “I’m not tired anymore, would you mind turning on the light? I can barely see you.”
He let out a short chuckle. “Of course. I apologize for not thinking so earlier.”
The teacher flipped a switch and the room was bathed in a soft white light. The bed I was lying in and the sheets were a deep blue color, smooth against the pads of my fingers. I gathered some of the blanket in one hand and grasped it tightly as I observed Matteo, who was still writing things down on his clipboard. His face was stern and sharp, the kind you would expect a young teacher would have, and he had a heart-shaped birthmark above his lip. Black gloves covered his hands and wrists.
Matteo caught me staring and flashed me a bright smile. “Is there something else I can help you with, Francesca?”
“Just a question.” I gestured at his hands. “Why do you wear gloves?”
He looked surprised at the question. “Oh. I suppose…” A pause. “Disease. We’re unsure what diseases you might carry from the past.”
“Ah. I guess that makes sense.” Embarrassed at my potential dirtiness, I searched for something else to talk about. Paintings covered the white walls surrounding the bed. I pointed to one. “Is that Monet?”
“Hmm, yes,” Matteo replied, gazing at the painting fondly. “One of my favorites, Woman with a parasol.”
I glanced at him. “It’s not the original, is it?”
“Well, no,” he admitted, walking back over to my bed. “But nothing really survived the burning of Earth, especially not things made of paper. With the technology scavenged afterwards we were able to hold onto things we found especially beautiful.”
The burning of Earth.
The image struck my stomach with pains. I grabbed Matteo’s sleeve and stammered, “C-Can you explain, exactly, what happened? Where are we, really? Did my mission succeed?”
“Ah, Francesca.” The way he said my name was odd, as though it was a song. He took my hand and said, “You were in the wormhole for a millennium, did you really expect things to stay the same?”
I shook my head. “No, I was asleep for twenty-four hours. Monitor told me that, and that’s something it can tell me easily since I’m hooked up to the computer itself. There’s no room for error. Don’t lie to me again.”
There was something behind his eyes that I couldn’t make out. He sat down on the chair by my bed, still holding my hand, and muttered, “Time passes differently in cosmic irregularities, Francesca. I had assumed you would’ve been briefed on that before your mission.”
I wanted to argue, but he was right. That was something that mission control had warned me days before I left; the three likely outcomes with survivable entry: a new home, empty space, or a time jump. But no one expected me to be ejected into the year 3072.
Matteo was scrutinizing my face, again. “Are you all right?”
“No,” I answered. “Of course I’m not. I had a life back in 2061. I had-” I stopped. No, that’s not right. That’s why they chose me to be on the mission.
The memory came flowing back to me, a woman in a brown cardigan leaning back in her chair, feet propped against the desk in front of her. Professor Maxwell Her words were curt and simple, Everyone you loved is dead or missing, right? It’s perfect. If you leave behind this world and can’t come back, it won’t matter. You can finish out your mission, uninterrupted by familial loyalty.
“What?” Matteo’s eyes searched my face. “What are you thinking about? What did you have?”
I continued, my voice wavering, “I-I had no one. They were all dead by the time I even applied for the mission. There was nothing left for me on Earth.”
His smile was kind as he squeezed my hand. “But now you are here, Francesca. You can start again. I can teach you our language, Terran.”
I looked at his gloved hand clasped in mine, his tendons visible through the thin fabric. “I’ll think about it, Matteo. Part of me wishes to see if there’s a way back home. Maybe I can change something. I mean-“ A nervous laugh. “I’ve read so many books and watched so many TV shows about changing the past, maybe I can make a new timeline.”
“It’s impossible.” Matteo brought his hand away, and his eyes held something that frightened me; something worse than anger, or frustration. It reminded me of the eyes of the bankers and politicians that went on TV before everything fell to pieces, the ones who would decry the protests and speak of the growing industries they wanted to protect more than the soil beneath their feet.
I opened my mouth to reply, but Matteo was already standing up to leave. “You can reach into the future as much as you want, Francesca, but the past is already written. Even if it was possible, the wormhole is gone. It disappeared the moment you entered and only reappeared to expel you.”
~~~
Logs of Francesca Williams: March 1st, 2056 – May 5th, 2056: All Dogs Go to Space
3/1/56: First orbit. Parsons, Madda, and I ate together, all strapped to our seats so we wouldn’t float away. I think I can live here easily with these people for seven months.
3/4/56: I take it back. Parsons can go to hell. He thinks I don’t know what I’m doing and talks down to me all the time. He doesn’t do it to Madda, which is equally annoying. She doesn’t seem to notice my frustration. I’m going to go insane.
3/31/56: It’s been a few weeks since my last log. I’m not as angry at Parsons anymore, but he’s still a dick. Also, sorry these logs aren’t very scientific, but Dr. Pierce said to make them more emotional since they’re public, and I don’t think people really care that much about our research up here. If you are curious, we’re doing a Venus flyby to measure the atmosphere composition and then send a robot down to measure the soil (if there is any). It seems unlikely that we could change the composition of the atmosphere for us Earthlings (at least in the allotted timeframe), but NASA feels inclined to draw out every possibility.
4/5/56: Parsons is an irretrievable ass. He’s hidden the picture of Abby because I coo at it too much. He’s annoyed by my noises. Hoping he will be fired once we’re back on Earth.
4/13/56: Madda found my picture of Abby yesterday and put it back where it belonged: taped to the wall next to my cot. Abby is my greyhound, and she’s perfect. I want to kiss her little head and squeeze her so tight she whines like a squeaky toy. I miss her more than anyone I’ve missed before. I wish dogs could go to space.
5/7/56: If you’ve been keeping up, here are the stats: Parsons = ass, Madda = angel, Abby = perfect, Fran = hungry (for drunken noodles, medium spice, fried tofu, no mushrooms).
2: Concordia
I remained in the hospital for another week. About halfway through my stay, my bed was moved to a room with a window and I spent most of my days gazing out of it.
Directly below was the town of Concordia. Things had changed in the millennia that passed, but not as much as I would’ve thought. If the apocalypse hadn’t happened and technology had continued, the world would’ve been unrecognizable. As I looked at the town square below, I wasn’t sure what I would’ve preferred.
What lay outside my window was beautiful; the square was always filled with vendors selling fruit and vegetables, people walking with their arms brimming with groceries, or children, or holding someone close to their chest. The buildings that surrounded the square were also charming, made mostly from wood cultivated from the trees that stretched across the continent. The architecture reminded me of the rich areas of Europe; modernity built upon tradition.
Any questions I had were answered by Matteo, who made it a point to visit me three times during the week I was there for lunch. He always came bearing gifts, usually old artifacts from their museum that he thought were from my time. He handed me an iPod from 2005, and I had to explain that my grandmother used it when she was pregnant with my mother, decades before I was born. When he brought me a portable printer I nodded and told him, “We had that in our house. It came with me to school every day, but I think that was just my mom holding onto her childhood. Kids made fun of me for relying on paper.”
“They made fun of you?” Matteo looked concerned.
I shrugged and leaned against the headboard of my hospital bed. “Well, they were right to. There was a paper shortage since I was a child.”
“The forests were burning even back then?”
“Of course.”
On my last full day at the hospital, Matteo showed me a few different apartments, all of them just off the town square. A few town leaders also visited me and given me a pension; several bags of coins that I could either put in an account in their bank or keep by my side. I met them on the steps outside of the hospital, wearing an outfit that Matteo had picked out for me a few days earlier.
After giving me money, a woman named Lena touched my shoulder with her gloved hand and said in halting English, “We are blessed in your company. We are so glad you could make it.”
The apartment I chose was on the second floor of a newer building, the smell of freshly cut wood and polish filling each of the rooms. As I walked through it, empty, I had to keep reminding myself where I was. When I was. Things were the same, like the bathroom with the long metal rods for towels and the living room with the heater that snaked around the four walls. I sat in the middle of the room and stared at the two windows, outlined with wood, as the sunlight filtered through the panes. My mom’s face flashed in front of me, the smell of a carpet in a warm room and plastic toys gripped in my hands. Memories came back in small doses, things that were too painful to think about for more than a moment. I knew if I let them flood into my consciousness I wouldn’t get up from the floor.
I shook my head free of that whisper of a memory and stood up. Matteo and Melania were waiting for me outside, they wanted to take me to dinner at one of the restaurants near the temple outside of Concordia. Matteo had mentioned the temple a couple of times, but evaded any questions about religion when I mentioned it.
“Do I get answers today?” I asked as we wove our way through the crowd. I could feel everyone’s eyes on my back. Matteo had mentioned that everyone one in Concordia was excited to meet their newest member but understood that I needed my space. We had decided to wait until I knew a bit of Terran before my first official public address.
Matteo looked back at me and grinned. “About the temple? Sure. I wanted to wait until you could go inside of it and see for yourself.”
I heard his sister say something behind me. Matteo replied, then said to me, “She’s warning us that it’s going to rain, and since the dinner was originally going to be outside, she suggests we eat inside of the temple.”
“Sounds perfect.” I turned my head and caught her eye. She gave me a shy smile.
The temple was made of wood, unsurprisingly. Before he went to get the food, I asked Matteo, “What do you do if there’s a fire?”
A few drops of rain slid down his face and he brushed them away when they reached the corners of his mouth. “There is no fire here.”
The temple was designed in the Greco-Roman style. Undecorated, wooden pillars reached to a ceiling that was carved with swirling symbols, like the shells my mom had lined on the window in our bathroom. The temple itself seemed to have been erected around one of the larger trees, the top of which broke through the ceiling. There were no walls.
We were situated on a blanket just at the front of the temple, Melania leaning against one of the pillars with her eyes closed as we waited for Matteo to come back. The day was eerily quiet, save for the patter of rain against the ceiling. I found myself yearning for someone to sing and listen to what acoustics a wooden temple had to offer. My grandma had been a devout Catholic, and part of me missed the hymns I would hear at Mass whenever I visited her.
The teacher brought back simple sandwiches; something that tasted like sourdough bread that was filled with tomatoes and basil and a soft, salty cheese. I ate in silence, listening to Matteo and his sister speak in that beautiful language of theirs.
During a lull in their conversation, I asked about their religion.
“It’s similar to Christian Catholicism,” Matteo explained, his eyes grazing the ceiling above us. “We have one Savior that we worship, but we also worship others, like Saints, who have brought us this prosperity. Rain and Sun are represented by people who lived around your time, just by the records that we were able to salvage from the apocalypse. Their names were lost in the last two hundred years. Like the Bible’s John, Paul, Peter; I’m sure their real names were something quite different, but we’ll never know.”
“And why didn’t people stick to Christianity, or Judaism?”
He laughed. “We found salvation in another. Why waste time when humans haven’t put their trust in God for a thousand years? He has done nothing but brought suffering. Our Savior has brought us peace.” The translator pointed towards the middle of the temple. “Do you notice anything about the tree?”
I squinted. The tree was gnarled and thick, some of the branches reaching out to form an underbrush of leaves that fell towards the floor every time the wind whistled through. I felt a jolt rush to my stomach when I noticed; someone had carved the image of a young woman into the tree. Her right arm was wrapped around her stomach while her left arm reached above her head. I couldn’t read her expression.
“Is that your Savior? Am I allowed to approach her?” I asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Matteo’s hand graze Melania’s.
He replied, “Please do, Francesca.”
The Savior’s face was intricately carved, even more so than the rest of her body. Her expression was one of peace, eyebrows relaxed, a smile with her mouth slightly open, showing just the bottom of her two front teeth. The carver hadn’t bothered giving her wrinkles. She reminded me of my mother when she was young.
Matteo’s face was guarded when I came back. “What did you think of her?”
“She seems very young,” I told him, picking at the crust of my sandwich. “But I suppose Jesus was in his thirties when he died.”
Melania made a noise. I looked towards her and was surprised to find her crying, tears flowing down her cheeks and into the corner of her mouth. She turned away from me and dabbed at her eyes with her shirt. Matteo placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
The town square was almost empty by the time Matteo and Melania walked me back to the apartment, even though the sun was still high in the sky. A thousand years was not enough time for a continent to be displaced by plate tectonics, so the midnight sun of the poles still occurred. Every house and apartment had blackout curtains installed.
While we had been eating, movers had brought in the furniture that Matteo had picked out for me. The bed was already made, and I slipped under the covers, which felt like they were made from the same material that was in the hospital. Even on an astronaut’s salary my sheets had been scratchy and filled with holes. I didn’t close the blackout curtains.
Predictably, my dreams were filled with sunlight.
~~~
Parsons wasn’t very tall. He wasn’t short, but he barely stood an inch taller than me. In my dream I looked up at his blue eyes and crow’s feet and felt anger. I kept reaching up to him, trying to touch his face and feel his lips under my thumb or rest my palms on his cheeks. “Why are you moving away from me?” I screamed. I never scream when I’m awake, but my throat felt raw in the dream. “Please, I miss you. Come closer so I can feel you again.”
The sun was behind his head suddenly and I couldn’t see his face anymore. From the space where his face used to lie, my mother’s voice came, “Where are you?” he asked. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere. We’re leaving soon. We’ll wait for you.”
“But I’ve already left,” my voice didn’t work anymore. It felt like I was choking out the words. “Don’t wait for me, just leave! If you wait, you’ll be caught in the fire!”
The sun moved away. Mom had braids in her hair, like when I would sit in her lap and twist and twist until she had to stop me. “The fire isn’t the reason I’m gone, bunny.”
~~~
The radio next to my bed woke me up. It was Matteo’s voice, “Francesca, are you awake? There are some people who want to talk to you about your ship. Can you meet us outside your building in twenty minutes?”
I pressed the button and replied, “Yes, I’ll be down soon.”
There were two women and one man waiting outside with Matteo. He introduced the women as married government scientists, Drs. Lena and Abby Cohen. They both greeted me enthusiastically in English then turned to Matteo, who said, “The doctors are both part of the archaeological department at the university and were hoping they could study your ship for an upcoming unit in their classes.” He gestured to the man with blonde hair tied back in a tight ponytail. “Mr. Miller is the curator at the Concordia Museum of Human History. He was wondering if he could take the extra pieces from your ship that aren’t being used for the university.”
I nodded. “That all sounds good to me. Are we going to my ship now?”
Matteo shook his head. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll be accompanying you and Mr. Miller to the museum. He has a few things he would like to show you.”
The museum was a five-minute walk from the town square, a building that was large but unassuming. From the outside, it looked a bit like the library that I would spend hours in at the University of Washington. But the inside was something else entirely. Matteo had explained that for the first five hundred years after the apocalypse, nothing new was created. Societies had tried to form but nothing stuck in a world that had turned to charcoal. Most of the items in the museum were from the time after that, six hundred years post-apocalypse until now. That was what humans were most proud of.
We spent a few minutes in the main part of the museum. Mr. Miller pointed out some things he thought I would be interested in, with Matteo translating as we went. The first agricultural machines used in Antarctica, wood from the first houses made from the first fully-grown trees, a sign made from the first metal welded in Concordia (founded three hundred years ago).
I felt Mr. Miller’s gloved hand on the small of my back as he guided me through another room without allowing me to stop and look at the artifacts. I glanced back at Matteo, who gestured forward, his smile warm.
I had barely stepped through the door to the final room when my hands started shaking. iPods and iPhones, the oldest piece of paper that survived the burning (circa 2025; a page from a young woman’s notebook that read: “I’m not sure what to do. There are so many possibilities and yet I feel like I’m stuck in one. Mom and dad want me to go to graduate school, but I just want to move somewhere far away and open up a restaurant. And I’m still hung up on my ex.”), and a computer with a note next to it with something written in Terran.
Wiping my sweaty hands on my pants, I turned to the curator. “Mr. Miller, thank you for showing me this. I’m still grieving the people I’ve lost but this makes me feel like they’ve been immortalized. It brings me great joy.”
He took my hand and nodded as Matteo translated. His response was, “You’re welcome, Francesca. I’m glad our offerings have pleased you. And please, call me Parsons.”
My hand tightened around his in shock. “Parsons? Your name is Parsons?”
The curator’s smile widened as Matteo translated and replied in English, “Yes. You like my name?”
I pulled out of his grasp and stumbled away. Matteo caught me before I slammed into the old MacBook on the display. The note was in Terran, but I recognized my name. Francesca Williams.
“Matteo, what is going on?” I pointed at the MacBook. “What does it say? Why is my name there?”
He said something in Terran to Mr. Miller, who was still staring at me with his wide grin, and we both watched as he left. We were silent for a moment. Then Matteo moved the mouse on the MacBook and said, “I have a feeling you’ll recognize these.”
I read the screen: “Logs of Francesca Williams: September 19th, 2056 – October 23rd, 2061: Untitled.” I brought a shaking hand up to my mouth.
9/12/56: We’re almost back home. As mentioned in earlier logs, the composition of both the atmosphere and the soil weren’t promising for terraforming/atmosforming. We’re not really surprised, but don’t tell Prof Maxwell. He was staking his tenure on this idea. Maybe he’s just a dumbass, wouldn’t be surprised. Tenure doesn’t matter in a world with no universities.
10/23/56: In sight of home. Earth looks like it did in that old movie, WALL-E, with the smoky atmosphere replacing the cinematic halo of trash. I’m not sure which I would’ve preferred to die under.
10/24/56: Commencing landing sequence in an hour. Parsons, of course, decided that this was the right time to ask me on a date. At least he kept it professional most of the trip. Maybe I’m looking too far ahead, but Dad’s asked me this a lot; Will there be a world to bring a child into, if the chance presents itself?
11/24/56: Happy birthday to me. Back on Earth, kept the laptop and the log. This’ll be my last entry until I go on another mission. They probably won’t spend any more money on space travel, unless they have a really good reason. Even if they do, I’ll probably just stay here. Parsons is looking promising. He thinks we shouldn’t waste any time and get married ASAP, before we lose too much else. I don’t really want to get married.
01/01/57: I’m not sure what to write. I’m not really sure what to do. Parsons was killed the other day in a hit-and-run. Seems like an awfully normal way for an astronaut to die. I have a feeling he would’ve preferred to die in space. I had finally agreed to marry him, because sometimes the universe really does want to hurt you in the worst ways possible.
01/17/57: Dad’s four-year death-iversary. Mom stayed over at my apartment and we spent the night holding each other and trying not to look at the news. Australia’s on fire again, but there aren’t a lot of people left there at this point. All of Southern California has gone up in flames, so it looks like I might have to move again, with everyone else. NASA promised me a place in their bunks in Texas if I agreed to go on a mission for them in the next few years. I have a feeling it has to do with the gravitational anomaly that just appeared a few thousand miles outside of our orbit.
03/02/57: Mom’s gone. She didn’t leave with me, like she promised. Every day I would message her and ask her to come, telling her I would sneak her into the barracks and she could sleep on my cot and I would sleep on the floor. According to the insurance company, the fire came at night and she didn’t cooperate with the firefighters. The text read: “Stephanie Williams died at 12:56am last night due to smoke inhalation and severe burns.” Then they called me and told me that she just gave up. There was no saving him. I guess she wanted to be with dad.
10/23/61: Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave such a gap. They took the computer away from me after they realized they needed to back up the logs, and then I was too busy training to write anything. In a few days I’m going up to space again, probably for the last time. Prof Maxwell told me that everyone thought I was going to die in the wormhole, which I’m not surprised about. I suppose it’s about my turn. Mom married dad at my age, and since the man who I was supposed to marry died. I guess this is just the universe telling me that I have a different adventure to make.
3: Divinity
The square was empty as we passed through, Matteo’s arm wrapped around my waist, his other hand on my shoulder. My apartment felt emptier than it had when I left that morning, but the blackout curtains were still pulled to the side. Blue light from the rainclouds that had gathered later in the afternoon hit Matteo’s face as he lowered me onto the bed.
“You have questions.”
I didn’t answer.
“Are you wondering why you’re our Savior?”
Still silence.
“You were the only one who would sacrifice themselves for humanity. How could we not worship someone with such selfless ideals?”
This elicited a reaction and I grabbed his arm. “I’m not selfless. I had no one left, there was no reason to stay on Earth. My fiancé had been killed, my father died from the burning, Maddalena had disappeared. Even Abby was gone!” I was yelling, like my dream. “I had no one, I have no one, and you expect me to believe an entire civilization worships any sacrifice that I’ve made?”
Matteo placed his hand over the one that was still gripped around his arm. “You have me, Francesca. I don’t see you just as our Savior; you are a woman. And I love you as that woman.” He leaned down and kissed me.
A thousand years ago, I would have forced him away from me. Parsons had to wait until our fourth date before we had sex. But my heart sung for someone so tender, someone whose hands wiped away the streaks that tears had left on my cheeks. Nothing happened without reason, and my body wanted a reason to hold him until all the grief had emptied out of me. Maybe when we woke up the next morning there would be no Savior, no Rain and Sun, no temple with my image carved into a tree.
~~~
There were no faces in my dreams, that night. Only a sea of people. I heard them whisper the names of my dead family; Parsons Franklin, Stephanie and Matthew Williams, Abby, Maddalena Fritz, Melania Fiorelli. Fiancé, parents, dog, friend, grandmother. If I rubbed my fingers together, I could imagine the feeling of Abby’s velvet ears between them. My mother’s lips pressed to my forehead. The scratch of my father’s beard against my cheek. Parson’s arm wrapped around mine. The feeling of Madda’s breath on my ear as she whispered, “Goodbye.”
~~~
I woke with a jolt. Matteo was gone, the side of the bed he had fallen asleep on was cold. He had closed the blackout curtains, which I thought was odd. He knew I liked to sleep with them open. I pulled on the clothes that still were littered on the floor and pushed them apart.
There was commotion in the square below. People were screaming. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their tone was frantic. I pushed open the window, leaning out to get a better look. What looked like the entire population of Concordia was rushing in the direction of the temple, some of them with their hands lifted to the sky.
I pulled on one of the sweatshirts that Melania had gifted me and pulled the hood over my face. The crowd pulled me forward immediately after I stepped out of the lobby of my apartment. For the thousandth time, I wished Matteo had been quicker to teach me Terran. If a person wasn’t crying out, they were whispering to the person next to them, shaking their hands vigorously. Something had happened while I was asleep.
The crowd at the temple reminded me of the rock concerts I would go to with my dad, before he died of cancer. They moved forward like a school of fish as the front row of people had finished viewing whatever it was, whoever it was, that sat in the middle of the temple.
As we were about to make it to the tree, someone grabbed my arm. I turned to find a young woman, around my age, smiling at me and saying something in Terran.
“Uh,” I replied. “Sorry.”
Her eyes widened, and I realized I had made a mistake.
In English, she screamed, “Savior! Savior!” and pulled the hood off my head.
I reached back up to try and undo any damage that she already had done by pressing my finger to her lips and hissing, “Shush! Please be quiet, please!”
She jerked backwards and away from my touch, her hands clawing at her lips. “Thank you!” There were tears in her eyes as she pulled at the skin. “Thank you!” Blood peeled down to her chin. “Thank you!” A pile of skin was gathered in the palm of her hand and she smiled at it like it was a gift. No one around us seemed to react, and once I looked up I understood why.
We had reached the tree, in front of which sat Matteo, stripped completely naked, his chest gleaming with sweat. His crotch was wrapped with multiple bandages and a copious amount of blood was dried on the inside of his legs. In front of him was a table. A cry of horror escaped my lips.
The people of Concordia were swarmed around what was left of his penis, cut off with the dull knife that also lay on the table. They weren’t touching it, only staring and pressing their foreheads against the table when they were close enough, muttering prayers in Terran. No one spoke to Matteo, allowing him to rest on a chair in front of my essence carved into the tree. He was smiling, occasionally letting his tongue flick out to wet his dry lips.
Even in grief, I never really screamed. The true, guttural, screams that were only in horror movies made for teenagers horny for gore and sex. The ones that came from women being tortured with their tops off, sequined and lacy bras glistening in the moonlight as they were chopped to pieces by someone in a mask. And when the horror became real and people were being burnt to death in their own homes, I didn’t scream. Why scream when you would only breathe in more smoke?
But I was screaming now.
A. C. Rosenfeld 
Leave a comment