Where Black Seas Lap the Shores of Dead Stars

by The Hat Man

4. In the Eyes of a Child, Part 2

RO-513 had one last duty before she powered down for the day. Conserving what little energy they had was of the utmost importance, after all. Not that there was much interest in wandering around the grounds any longer than she needed to.

She made her way down the lowest level of the facility, down a flight of stairs until she arrived at what had once been an old storeroom. Now it contained row after row of metallic tubes, each with a glowing green indicator light and a display panel that read off statistics on each occupant.

Forty-four colonists, now locked in stasis, slumbered in a moment of halted time that stretched on indefinitely.

Forty-four colonists, out of the original two hundred.

When the mountain from the sky had smashed into the surface of Medea, it sent a shockwave around the planet. The terraformers that ran a ring around the northern ice cap to melt the water ice were obliterated. Tens of thousands of kilometers of debris filled the atmosphere, and the sun vanished.

A third of the colonists, largely pegasi, were out on survey missions at the time of impact: collecting rock samples, monitoring temperature readings, and checking for groundwater swells as the temperature gradually rose. The teams in the immediate vicinity of the shockwave would have been simply ripped apart. The others were lost and buried in cataclysmic dust storms. None of them ever returned to base.

Those at the base had their own problems. The dim sun meant that all their crops failed. They could have used sun lamps, but the constant rain of dirt and dust covering the solar mirrors meant electricity was too unreliable for the job, so they instead began to make use of their preserved rations, just as they had when they’d first arrived.

RO-513, since she didn’t need a suit to venture outside the compound, was almost constantly doing repair work outside alongside a few mobile drones, and she rapidly went from being an extra set of hooves to being round-the-clock maintenance and one of the most vital members of the team.

The rations weren’t a long-term solution, of course. But they just had to last until the next supply ship arrived from Antigone. Then they could either be restocked or, in the worst-case scenario, take steps to evacuate and abandon Medea.

But no ship ever came. Resupply ships were supposed to arrive every 3 years, but even with the transmitters at full power to peer through the thick haze encircling the planet, no ship was ever detected. Rations were cut back, a constant distress signal was broadcast, and they waited another three years for rescue.

And, again, nopony came.

One hundred and sixteen colonists had survived the initial blast. But the impact had not spared them yet. Buried under years of darkness, confined to the cramped tunnels of the base, the oppressive sense of doom hanging over them took its toll.

A power outage caused the oxygen filters in one wing of the base to fail, and thirty ponies suffocated overnight.

As rationing became stricter, a dozen more fell to malnutrition and illness.

About twenty more abandoned their duties altogether and were found congregating around a unicorn who was preaching some sort of apocalyptic nonsense. He was confined to his quarters where he took his own life. His followers all followed suit the next day.

And soon suicide began to whittle down the rest of them. Every few weeks a pony was found dead in their quarters due to poison, hanging, self-inflicted wounds… one mare simply wandered out of an airlock without a suit. She made it an impressive distance before the cold and lack of oxygen took her.

RO-513 remembered when the meeting was called. The colonists took stock of their situation and decided the only choice was to wait for rescue. Antigone and the AguaVita Corporation surely had not forgotten them, they reasoned - though RO-513 had silently concluded that that was exactly what they had done - and had just been delayed in sending resupply ships. Perhaps they had detected the meteor impact and were sending a larger rescue ship. Even with a Hyperdrive ship, though, Antigone was still 6.3 light years away, so it would take a few years for any rescue to arrive.

The base had been constructed out of the original transport ship that brought them to Medea-3. While it was no longer spaceworthy, it still had many of its old features, including its stasis pods.

RO-513 had tended the ship with a light rotating crew of ponies on the voyage to Medea, while the rest of the colonists waited in suspended animation until they arrived.

Now those stasis pods could keep them alive until rescue came. Their rations wouldn’t last more than a year or two anyway. The cloud around the planet still dimmed the sun so it would be a few years before anything new could be grown in the greenhouses.

A few proposed refitting one of the old shuttlecraft to leave Medea and seek help. But to make that trip would require too much of their supply of thaumium to power the Hyperdrive engines, and they needed those to run the stasis pods. And if the rescue mission failed, they would all die, whereas the stasis pods could, conceivably, keep them alive for centuries.

So it was decided; RO-513 would watch over them, keep the facility running, try to grow and preserve what little food she could, and watch the skies for a rescue ship.

She came to the last pod in the row, and read Star Seedling’s name on it. His light was green, and his vitals were normal.

He’d cried when the colonists came to their decision. She didn’t really understand the emotional outburst of a child, nor why he came to her instead of to his parents. He was partly afraid of never waking up, true, but through his choked sobs she finally learned the truth:

He was worried about her. Because while they slept, RO-513 would be alone. Just her, a few maintenance drones, and Jason. He was afraid she’d get lonely.

“Robots do not get lonely,” she’d told him.

“But… but you told me that robots get more and more like ponies when they get older!” he’d cried. “Because of, um… imburgent properties.”

“‘Emergent,’” she corrected. “And yes, it is why sapient robots develop personalities through their contact with ponies and other creatures over many years. And why even corporate droids like myself are considered ‘liberated’ free citizens after 40 years of service.”

“So… how do you know you won’t get lonely?” he’d asked.

She’d actually had to stop to ponder that. “I will visit you in your pod,” she’d said. “I will visit you and remember our conversations and think of what else we can talk about when you wake up. And that way, I will not be lonely.”

“You’ll… just hang out with my pod?” he’d asked, raising an eyebrow. “That’s weird.”

“None of that, Star Seedling. Insult me again and I may just draw rude things on your pod while you sleep. And all the colonists will laugh at you when they see that I have written ‘Star Seedling has a stank booty’ on your pod.”

He’d laughed then. And perhaps that moment of ridiculousness had been what he required to accept the colonists’ decision.

She stood outside his pod now, thinking about that conversation once again, noting the timing of it all.

She’d been 10 years old when they’d had that talk. Thirty years had passed since then, with her still keeping her vigil as she waited for a rescue ship just as she’d been ordered to.

She was forty years old now. Her service contract was up, and she was no longer bound to the directives given to her by the AguaVita Corporation. She’d never even considered how this day would change anything for her, but now…

Perhaps it was just this circumstance that triggered a slew of new thoughts, or perhaps it was that her very way of thinking had now been liberated, but she realized that she was now the only sapient free citizen of the Medea-3 colony still able to act.

Rescue was not coming, she had been sure of that now. Or, if it was coming, it might not arrive before the systems failed, and then there would be no one left to save.

She could stay on this cadaver of a world and be the last wriggling maggot infesting its flesh, or she could make a decision that might save the colony.

Or, she reasoned, at least part of it.