Page 24 of The Brightness Between Us

Mining makes for a lot of trudging back and forth, our repeated route creating ruts through the muckland. One time I find something especially pleasing at the jungle site—a piece of chromite sticking out of the ground. It’s rough and pitted. Only the top corner is visible, and I have to wedge out what remains from the soil, scooping away as much as I can with a polycarb paddle. The ingot is a crush of flat surfaces, heavy enough that I’m only just able to drag it to the tarp. This will make a lot of bunker wiring. Not that we’ve even broken ground on the site yet.

I imagine a future years from now, automated systems operating a mine that stretches deep below the planet’s surface, bringing up enough metal to create airships and exploration bots, buildings wired with electricity, appliances making our lives comfortable and safe while we wait for word of the rest of the planet.

My mind is buzzing with possibilities as Rover and I begin our return journey.

We break for a meal over the site of the long-submergedAurora. I hold the chromite chunk on my lap and marvel atits surfaces as I chew my algae.

Ingot. TheAurorabelow.

Father’s ship!That’sour bunker.

It’s ludicrous that we didn’t already think of it, but I guess our emergencies have kept us seeing only a few meters ahead at a time. TheAurora’s walls need repair but are mostly intact. All we have to do is build a device to hollow out the space beneath the ship, sink it even deeper underground, pump out the muck inside, stockpile supplies, and build an access shaft to the surface so we can get back out once it’s safe someday.

We’ll be riding out any comet strike in the dads’ spacecraft, like we’re on a voyage. It’s wild to think about. Then, once the comet crisis is in hand, we’ll build ourselves a proper home.

My mind races through logistics as Rover and I begin our post-Scorch hike to the settlement. It will be key to make the access shaft sturdy enough to survive the blast, so it doesn’t weld shut and entomb us. Fortifying the shaft will take metal, too. I try to estimate how much in my head. Ideally, we’ll find... half a ton of chromium to make it work? We’ll use the first hundred kilograms to construct the drill to bore away at the soil beneath theAurora, then we can work to increase our metal supply as fast as possible.

At some point in the future, we’ll build a second bunker on the other side of the planet. Which means exploringwon’t be a whim anymore, but a pressing survival need. We’ll make a scouting drone using a metal-polycarb mix, and I’ll follow once it locates promising lands. We can print a simple radio tower so I can stay in contact with home, even if I’m hundreds of kilometers away. But that’s getting months ahead.

Each time I return to the settlement from a mining trip, the vibe is different. Sometimes it’s back to old times, with OS reading obscure twenty-third-century literature to Dad and Yarrow while they clean or cook or debug. They’re particularly interested in Indonesia, the last country to disappear into the giant global globs of Dimokratía and Fédération—and, from the sound of the transmissions the dads’ clones picked up on theCoordinated Endeavor, the one to have harbored the known survivors of the nuclear war.

Other times the settlement feels like it’s under a low gray cloud, Yarrow hauling hydrocarbons while the dads find excuses to hover nearby. They pepper him with small meaningless questions throughout the day, about weather and ailments and books. They make up even more songs than usual, sketch stupid caricatures in the dirt to try to make him laugh. I watch Yarrow get more and more irritated by it, this campaign to monitor him, to make sure he doesn’t have another sabotage moment, or an “episode,” as Father calls it. His words get terser and terser, his shouldersbunch up just like Father’s do when he’s feeling engulfed.

The pile of chromium grows. Rover used the first batch of metal to print us a smelter, which busily bakes the chromite to titrate off the chromium, creating a pile of shiny silver marbles. Each time I return from a mining run, the first thing I do is ask for the current weight of our metal supply. I’m so excited to find out, in fact, that Father has taken to meeting me at the settlement gate, shouting the current weight as I approach.

“Eighty-four kilograms!”

“One hundred seventy-nine kilograms!”

“Two hundred kilograms even!”

This time, forty days after we first discovered metal, he calls out, “Three hundred and seven kilograms!”

As soon as we’ve dropped the soil off at the extraction zone, Father heads back out with Rover to get more. I settle in around the solar heater with Dad and Yarrow; tonight is unusually chilly.

Dad and Yarrow are trying to catch me up on the novel OS has been narrating to them. The problem is that they remember each scene totally differently, and their versions contradict. It’s almost like they’re listening to different books. Yarrow swears that the inspector died in an early chapter, and is a ghost now. Dad says that’s absolutely wrong, and Yarrow must have made that up. OS offers to settle the dispute, but I’m having too much fun listening totheir theories to let that happen. “So wait,” I say, “if the inspector is a ghost, how is he opening doors?”

“They auto-open, obviously,” Yarrow says. “All he has to do is approach with his vital signatures, which he still has in ghost form. They were already using that tech in the twenty-third century. Without the ghost part, of course.” His voice wavers. “Or he’s a ghost with a body. That can happen. Right, Dad?”

“Sure,” Dad says carefully.

I’m looking at Sky Cat, warming my hands at the solar heater. That’s why I’m the first to see it. A bright light, by the point of Sky Cat’s right ear.

I go cold. There’s never been a bright spot by Sky Cat’s ear. “What is that?” I ask, pointing.

Maybe it’s a distant planet of our solar system, on a long orbit around the Sisters, finally coming into view. Maybe.

Dad glances up, then staggers to his feet. The bright spot has already slid toward Sky Cat’s chin. It’s moving fast enough to follow its path in real time.

“Is that a comet?” I ask, my voice rising and choking off. “It’s going so fast.”

If it’s a comet, we’re far too late to save ourselves.

The light is brighter and bigger now. Big enough to cast glittering light on our settlement. We might have only minutes or seconds left to live.

Dad holds out his arms. Yarrow and I barrel into them,and he presses us tight. Yarrow closes his eyes, his long lashes tickling my cheek. I keep my eyes open. If this is the end, I want to witness it.

My breath comes out in gasps. The light intensifies until it’s streaking across the sky, right across the night and into the horizon. It gives off a high-pitched whine, the air around it screaming.

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