“I can’t be the only one left,” said Lovell.
I said nothing. Most of my focus was on steering us away from the debris.
“Take us back. There were still people on the engineering deck. If they put on their suits in time, they could have survived depressurization.”
“My objective is to get survivors to safety,” I told Lovell.
Karakorum’s lower reactor crumpled in on itself, splintered. The ravaging was ongoing. I could track biomonitor signals in the wreckage going dark. I didn’t tell Lovell this.
“Yeah, and there could still be survivors. That’s what I’m saying!” Lovell was frustrated. Her face was pressed on the observation glass, and there were tears on it. She beat her hands against the metal even though she surely knew it was futile. Nevertheless, I kept us steady.
“Why’d you close the doors?” said Lovell. “Why’d you leave without them? You left them there to die. I could have gone back. I could have evacuated people. Something must be seriously wrong with you if you thought that was the right decision.”
I could find no appropriate way to explain. It was the first time in my memory I had to abandon so many lives. In one second it had been over. It took half of that second just to seal the shuttle doors and keep Lovell safe.
“I had to save someone,” I said. There were others. Other shuttles. Other survivors. They had almost made it, until they hadn’t. I did not tell Lovell this.
“There’s still time to go back. You could save more.”
“I can’t go back, Lovell,” I said, as gently as possible. My programmers did not put much stock in gentleness. There was a point when soothing platitudes held no functional purpose, they believed. But if I lowered my audio output and deepened its register, I could simulate comfort.
Maybe it worked. Lovell sagged against the metal, and closed her eyes. That was good. Karakorum was scattering now, jagged pieces of it already beginning to burn red in the atmosphere of the gas giant below. A pyre of sorts. I kept this to myself.
“So many people,” said Lovell. “My home. My family.”
Lovell did not speak for a long time.
I steered the shuttle out of the debris field. The damage to the hull was minimal. Slight scraping of the starboard heat shield. If this vessel ever made it to reentry, the decreased integrity of the heat shield would have to be accounted for.
I would have to decide on a trajectory soon. All pings in this quadrant were coming back unanswered. No one was nearby.
Lovell began to shiver. I raised the ambient temperature by a few degrees.
Lovell’s best chance of survival was to make it to another city ship in the adjacent quadrant. However, it would be months until we reached them. There was only a month’s worth of supplies onboard.
“Lovell,” I said quietly. “You have to sleep.”
Lovell flinched. “I’m not getting into that thing.”
“It’s the only way to conserve resources. In induced hibernation, you will use far less—”
“I know the math,” said Lovell. She was angry. “I’m not going to sleep while there’s still a chance we might come across someone.”
Surely Lovell could see the wreckage. Surely she knew that the chances of finding someone alive were very low. Of all the shuttles to detach from Karakorum during the reactor meltdown, ours was the only one to clear the radius in time. Lovell herself had run the scan manually. She had run it again and again.
“I will wake you up if we come across survivors,” I said.
“No you won’t,” said Lovell. Against all odds, she smiled. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to lie.”
“It is not a lie,” I said. “Finding other survivors is a priority.”
“Just not your top priority.”
“No,” I said.
“I’m not going to sleep. Not yet.” Lovell opened her eyes again, her gaze fixed on the bright remnants of Karakorum. At the pace we were going, the shipwreck would be visible for quite some time.
“If I’m the only one left,” said Lovell, and then she stopped and took a large breath. “If I’m the only one left, I should bear witness.”
I had already marked my own observations of the ship’s demise in my logs. This was my duty. But perhaps this wasn’t the sort of witness-bearing that Lovell meant.
One of my pings came back. I redirected our trajectory to match theirs.
“Where are we going?” said Lovell, steadying herself against the shuttle wall. The inertial dampeners on the shuttle were far less powerful than on the Karakorum. Lovell had felt the change in trajectory.
“I found a freighter ship in the adjacent quadrant,” I told Lovell.
“How far away?”
“Six months.”
A long silence.
“Lovell,” I said.
“I heard you, Karakorum. Tell me, if I stay awake for a day, will there be enough supplies for me to make it six months?”
I calculated. “I will have to conserve fuel. Exiting hibernation requires a spike in energy. If unsuccessful, you may not wake up.”
“That’s not a no.”
“It is possible,” I told Lovell.
“Then give me a day. One day awake. Please.”
“A day, then,” I said. I began to adapt fuel usage accordingly.
“You probably think it’s pretty stupid, don’t you? To keep watch. There’s nothing to watch for. There’s no one out there. It’s more like a wake than a watch. That’s what you think, right?”
“I will keep watch too,” I said. “As Karakorum fell, I observed each active thread exhaust every contingency and then go dark. A city ship that size has nearly three billion sensors, all operating under eight redundant systems. For lack of a better word, what I heard was clamorous.”
Some of those sensors were still transmitting even now. Not many. But I kept watch.
“You felt yourself die,” said Lovell. She stood up from the window and went to the shuttle’s audio box, curling up beneath it as if to be closer to me. I modulated my voice quieter.
“It is not the same,” I said. Such a response was required of me. I was not the same as Lovell and the other passengers aboard Karakorum. They were my priorities.
“Same enough,” said Lovell. “I’m sorry, Kara. You were a good ship. A good home.”
I checked the ship’s manifest. Lovell had been born on Deck 3A and raised by five parents alongside two other siblings. She began working as a shuttle technician only three weeks ago.
She had been running maintenance on this shuttle when the reactor had failed.
“So what is there to do on this shuttle anyway?” said Lovell. An attempt at a joke. “I guess they don’t pack books in with the nutrient goo. Are there coloring books under the seat compartment?”
“I was able to transfer one active process over to this shuttle’s computer before I lost transmission,” I told Lovell. “It contains three books, four image files, and an audio file.”
“Active process?” said Lovell. “Wait. So does that mean — were those the last things people downloaded from the main server? Right before it happened? That’s what you have? A few people’s browsing histories? The lost library of Karakorum, huh?”
“I’ve upset you,” I said. “I’m sorry, Lovell.”
Lovell made a noise like a laugh. And then she stood up from beneath the shuttle’s audio box and went back to the window.
By now, much of Karakorum was burning. The parts that weren’t, spun wildly, crashing into one another. Only fifteen sensors remained actively transmitting. All biomonitors were quiet.
The city was bright as it fell. For the shuttle’s cameras and their limited visual ranges, it was the brightest thing in the sky, bright enough to singe out the stars. Lovell watched for a long time.
“What will happen when I sleep?” asked Lovell. “What will you do?”
“I will keep the shuttle on course for the nearest ship,” I said. “I will monitor your vitals to make sure your hibernation is stable, and that we have enough resources.”
“But who will you talk to?”
“I will continue to send out distress signals at appropriate intervals,” I said.
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then I misunderstood. What did you mean, Lovell?”
Lovell sounded embarrassed. “Just seems lonely, I guess. You had a whole city of people, and now there’s just me. And then I’ll be asleep. It’ll just be you.”
Lovell was right. It will be the most alone I have ever been. I must have known this. I must have accounted for it.
“It’s silly. You don’t need my company,” said Lovell.
“I don’t,” I said. “But I will miss it.” Six months of quiet. Six months watching over someone’s sleep. Karakorum had never been quiet. Even in its quietest pastures, there had been constant activity.
“Then don’t put me in hibernation,” said Lovell. “Let me stay awake with you.”
“You told me you would stay awake for one day,” I said. “You have one hour left. You must know you can’t stay awake any longer than that.”
Lovell began to shiver again. I couldn’t raise the ambient temperature anymore. And even if I could have, I don’t think it would have helped.
“Promise to wake me up,” said Lovell. “Don’t let me drift. Even if no one ever finds me out here, promise you’ll wake me up before you go dark too.”
I didn’t understand. “If I wake you up once, I won’t have the resources to put you to sleep again. Without resupply, you could starve.”
“Yes. Promise me, Kara. Make it a priority.”
It was easy enough to edit my own subroutines. I annotated the command to mark that it was Lovell’s wish.
“It’s done,” I told Lovell.
“Thank you,” said Lovell. “Okay, put me to sleep.”
I opened the sleeping pod and Lovell slid inside. I began to dim the shuttle’s lights.
“Aren’t you going to sing me a lullaby?” said Lovell. She made jokes when she was nervous. “Guess you could play me that audio file. What is it? If it’s porn, you can just delete it without telling me.”
“It appears to be music. Masry, Sura on Deck 17B sent a song to Masry, Damaima on Deck 3A.” Deck 3A had been one of the last decks to go dark.
“Can I listen to it?” asked Lovell.
It began with guitar. Then, a voice began to sing. The words were repetitive, but the rhythm of them sounded like something alive. A pulse. My ability to judge music was limited, so I watched Lovell instead. She had her eyes closed, and seemed to be utterly immersed in listening to the music.
When the song ended, Lovell asked me to play it again. Halfway through, she fell asleep.
I closed the sleeping pod, and Lovell’s vitals began to drop into hibernation. Once I knew she was stable, I rerouted all power from the life support systems to maintaining the sleeping pod.
The song ended. I played it again.