Interstellar distress signal intercepted by the Tranquility
Time: +3412 in radiation decay since The Rip
Integrity: unauthenticated, unencrypted
Source: the _Feynman_
Destination: Kuiper belt broadcast router #32
"Bethod has gone rogue! He is on the warpath.
Requesting backup from any and all ships in the Eris orbital; intercept the Ravager or rendezvous at Earth.
I repeat: BETHOD.. ROGUE.. WARPATH.
Breq, over and out."
The sky is covered by a layer of pink cotton by the time I reach Earth. It's falling down like snowflakes from a sunny empyrean, all beautiful and peaceful like. But peaceful like and peaceful are two different things, and there's nothing peaceful about Bethod's Cinereal Destroyers unleashing a nuclear winter on this world.
You have no idea who I am, or why I grab you, but I grab you. I drop an anchor in my timeline so I can return. Then we jump to the year 40k.
A man runs out of a citadel, approaching a satellite. One of its arms is on fire. He douses it with cold water from a can and waits for it to simmer.
Many pairs of eyes watch him from the windows. Men and women hold rifles over ledges, all trained on the spacecraft. There're no cars on the street, no mode of transportation whatsoever, just troughs of water and saddles on a wooden fence. The horses have fled.
That's when you notice that the thing on fire is really a Magnetometer. You've seen several hundreds of these on the job.. but it's an anachronism.
I can literally read your mind. You think this is an alien invasion of the wild west.
Meanwhile, the man is acting like he knows what the wreckage is. He's motioning to others in the building. As he puts his hands in the air, palms out, a woman walks up behind him with a megaphone.
"Greetings to you, whoever you are. We come in friendship to those who are our friends."
Familiar words but you can't quite place them. That's when you notice the inscriptions on the vessel. One says "Voyager", the other "Nasa". You gasp, your heart inching up your throat as you realize the significance of this event.
"If the Voyager is inhabited we implore you to emerge. We mean you no harm".
No doubt it is a nonsensical scene. Tens of gunmen training their weapons, a woman with an airhorn, a man with his hands raised, and the Voyager. They're obviously winging it. But you'd probably not know what to do in this situation either.
I wait for you to ask the obvious question..
"We are approaching the satellite."
The man with his arms raised walks slowly forward.
"We are touching the satellite."
The man prods the Voyager with his gloved hand.
Nothing.
You ask the obvious question. "Which year is it?"
I smile. "It reached Proxima Centauri. Do the math".
You cruch your face like you're about to initiate an act of masochism. Then you realize the answer is a rusting five digit number. This isn't the wild west. This is far, far into the future.
"What ...happened?"
"The Voyager just landed"
"No, what happened to Nasa? To us? There's no way we haven't already detected this. These people.. this town.. they look almost primordial."
"Ah that. There was an attack. Humanity put itself into a deep cryogenic sleep for tens of thousands of years. All digital, magnetic and tape storage was destroyed in the interim. All scientific thought reborn. Sociological conventions erased. In short, your species was rebooted."
The man has stopped prodding at the space craft. He seems to have hit a release key because an open hatch is casting light upwards.
"Ironic" you say, one end of your mouth curving upwards, "that the gift of civilization left us when we needed it the most".
I smirk at your shit-eater platitude. Blades aren't really so hard to hit as some claim, especially if you have enough of the figurative refuse matter.
The man turns around and throws up.
Several pairs of eyes disappear from the windows as guns go off.
A purple gas begins leaking out of the punctured holes in the hull.
The light from the hatch takes the form of a hologram.
"Your bio weapon has all but eradicated my kind. I am among the last few left. Hear my", the playback loops, repeating this over and over.
Your pupils dilate in recognition as I walk up to the lurching woman and lift her megaphone.
"Your bio weapon has all but eradicated my kind. I am among the last few left. Hear my message: Today we return the favor."
By this time the Luciferium has made its way into your mouth, lungs and nasal tract. You fall to your knees coughing blood as the microorganisms enter their condensation phase. It's like someone opened your hole and fired a shotgun cartridge full of ballistic gel into your left eye.
Bethod wanted a slaughter.
I wanted to watch you die.
We each had our cheap thrills.
I leave you sputtering on the ground and go back millennia to fetch the next member of the Tranquility.
Last contact with the Tranquility
Time: +3410 in radiation decay since The Rip
Integrity: signed, encrypted
Source: the _Tranquility_
Destination: NASA, Earth base station
We've successfully diverted the course of the Voyager to Proxima B. We expect landing at 1834+1ouc98. The current gravitational fields of the Centauri system makes entry anywhere in the specified radius equally likely, including its only moon, which we believe to be a penal colony.
Feel free to reproduce this story in whole or part without attributing the source.
