Page 16 of The Brightness Between Us

I can feel my algal chew swimming on top of my stomach acid. “So, OS, I’m going to assume that that heat is far too high for any known life to survive?”

“Yes.”

“Dead town.”

“Vaporized town is closer to it. You probably wouldn’t even feel a thing. This would all be in the first ten minutes of impact. If we’re all lucky enough to be on the far side of the planet, we’ll soon be dealing with earthquakes. If there are seas on Minerva, like you and I predict there are, they’ll produce waves between two hundred and three hundred meters high.”

“So we should hope for no seas.”

“Unclear. Boiling seas absorb heat. Without them, the heat might be too great even on the far side of the planet. But yes, a two-hundred-meter wave would be very hard to survive. By the time the waves subside, the debris from the planet’s surface would begin raining back down. Some would have been going at such tremendous speeds that it would now be traveling through space, forming its own asteroids and comets—but the rest would fall at lethally high speed. We will need to be far underground if we hope to survive.”

I’m pretending to be tough about this, but it’s making me feel a little weak in the knees. “Okay, avoid the raining superhot glass. Got it.”

“The heat would set fire to all the mats of microscopic life on Minerva’s surface. This would be followed by long periods of acidic rain, and a persistent cloud of soot in the atmosphere that would cut out ninety percent of the light from the Sisters. Our planet’s temperatures would go very, very cold. With the drop in evaporation, we’d have real problems getting water. After a period of time, we might be able to venture out again. But that period of time would be at least three years. In the meantime the planetary tilt might have changed, introducing new seasons.”

I’m having trouble even keeping up with this new information, and there’s this weakness in my knees that I have to muscle through. Suppressed panic. “Three years in a bunker,” I manage to say.

“There’s a reason that the only mammal to survive the impact that killed the dinosaurs was a shrewlike burrower with thick hair. It likely dug down to escape the initial heat, and ate tubers underground during Earth’s extended winter until it was safe to emerge.”

I pat my head. “My hair is thick, but not shrew thick.”

“I am afraid not. Unfortunately.”

I hitch my pack and pick up my pace across the muckland. It’s hard to imagineanythinghappening here, muchless something as dramatic as what OS just described. “Thanks for the honesty, OS. I really do appreciate it.”

Rover is nearly soundless as we proceed, just making occasional little gasps as it adjusts its traveling height whenever the ground shifts. “The way I figure it, OS, we should build a bunker where we are, and hope for now that any comet doesn’t strike nearby. Eventually, we’ll want to explore the planet, and build a bunker on the opposite side, and look into building a transport that could get us there quickly.”

“And astronomical equipment that could predict a comet’s strike site with precision. We have the schematics to create such devices, and emergency transport vehicles, if we want to prioritize those. But we’d still soon face the problem of our lack of sufficient metals. We really need metal, even to start mapping Minerva.”

“A significant oversight in choosing a planet to settle,” I say, “this whole lack of metals.”

“There are many variables mission control had to consider, and quantities of metal is only one of them,” OS says. “But you’re right—it would be a significant oversight. I find that hopeful, actually—I think that degree of mistake is unlikely, which means I would assume mission control knew that thereweremetals to be found here.”

“That’s a good point, OS. And I believe it all the morebecause of your honesty about the comet. The dads could take a note from you.”

“Having access to the stories of millions of human parents from the partial image of the internet that was on theCoordinated Endeavor, I will say you have above-average parents. They have produced high resilience outcomes in their two surviving offspring, and surprisingly high feelings of well-being, considering these exoplanetary circumstances.”

“Youwouldsay that, OS. I mean, you have some making up to do after you killed off all their copies.”

“I don’t see it that way. I made the choices necessary to ensure the survival of this Ambrose and Kodiak, and to produce the conditions that led to your birth and survival, and to my eventually becoming your tutor, having this conversation with you right now.”

“Sure, OS. I get it.”

We continue forward, and I amuse myself by predicting and mimicking Rover’s little gasps. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s starting to exaggerate them for my benefit.

“Shall we do a mini-lesson?” OS asks after a few minutes of trudging.

“Stop trying to make me understand trigonometry. Yarrow will have to be our mathematician.”

“Why do you think the ethylamine pond disappeared?”

I huff. “Can’t you just tell me some bad puns instead?”

“It’s lesson time. I think you’ll enjoy this one. Why do you think the ethylamine pond disappeared?”

“Um, it boiled off. Probably because the climate is getting warmer.”

“And why is the climate getting warmer?”

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