LEGACY

With thousands, we hunted with spears; with millions, we maimed with bullets; with billions, we huddle together awaiting the icy coffin of nuclear winter.   

Humans have always had the power to destroy themselves. It was only a matter of time. But in a desert no longer scorched by the sun, a pocket of refugees cling to humanity’s last project, their legacy.

Half swallowed by tents and makeshift shelters, juts a military base. Bunker-like barracks cluster around it, surrounding a towering mass of metal and concrete. And clutched between two metal arms stands the world’s last nuclear bomb, ironically humanity’s last hope.

Dangling from ropes, hundreds of rapidly trained engineers work away, scuttling across the steel cylinder like spiders.

Lira is one such worker. Tall and gangly, with pale blond hair stuffed down the back of her leather jacket, she kicks her way along segment five. Once a vehicle of destruction, now a beacon of hope.

Lira is driven by this new hope, to preserve a record of humanity in the universe for some future civilisation to discover. This single goal drives the whole camp of refugees. Those unconvinced have since been driven off by the feverish speed at which everyone works.

Welding torch in one hand and visor in the other, she traces the weld lines, searching for corrosion or gaps. There. She swings in, flipping down her visor. A flash of light and glowing metal is the only sign she was there as she bounds.

“Hey, watch it!”

She bends her knees and slows her steady bounce around the rocket to look up at Tul. He watches her from one eye as he grinds one of her previous welds.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, grinning.

She sniffs, “It’s almost as if you were following me.”

He turns back to the weld, running a gloved finger over it, “This isn’t just a panel on a car, Lira. Can’t have any shoddy work on this.”

She jabs the welding torch at him before he’s even finished and begins winching herself up, kicking off the steel until she’s level with the next weld line.

“It just feels pointless,” he calls up, “It’s been ready for weeks now, it’s only aesthetics they’re looking for now, we should bloody get the thing in the air before we’re all covered in ice.”

Lira squashes the rise of fear in her stomach, turning her focus back onto the metal with its rough oxidised surface and shiny grinder marks.

“There’ll not be ice here,” she mutters, “At least not for a while yet.”

Two years and their supplies are dwindling. Their current sense of purpose wouldn’t last when food becomes scarce. Fights and riots would break out, their large community falling apart and with it, one of the last pockets of the human race.

That said, it won’t last long after the rocket launches. Maybe a month at most.

She realises that Tul is still watching her and tucks the welder into its holster and moves around the ship slightly. She has no will to chat about the future right now, her worries are bad enough.

In the last throws of war, the militaries grew sloppy, patching together as many weapons as they could in a race to see who would die last. This particular missile had never been launched, simply because there was nobody to fire it at.

She turns away from her work to take in the scale of their craft. Above, at that very moment, the crane attached to the top of the launch tower is moving. She watches as cables groan, something moving out from the top of the launch tower towards the top of the ship. Her heart leaps, that is the payload. They’re moving the payload!

She glances down at the welds, scratches an x in red crayon where she’s paused and begins to reel herself up. She glances down. Tul’s head is close to the metal, the grinder still going.

She lets herself down slightly so she can bash him on the helmet with her boot. He glanced up at her, brows furrowed, one hand coming up to adjust his ear protectors.

“Before you swear at me,” she cuts in, “They’re moving the payload, we might not see it again. The last time any human sees it at least!”

He grunts, tucks the grinder into a backpack and, with powerful movements, winches himself past her.

Tul was an engineer in the military, repairing tanks and whatever other destructive tools men had to have. She knows it was more than that, the way he wakes up screaming every morning, his failure to react to any bad news.

He waits for her, perched on the walkway that clings to the metal arms. She mutters her thanks and unhooks her harness, hanging it over the side for the next person to use. Yet in the few seconds it takes her, others begin to clamber through the bars, hastily untangling themselves and hurrying towards the launch tower.

They soon join the thronging mass climbing the steps as the crane creaks above them. They don’t reach the top, where the best views are to be had, but settle themselves on a worn tread, watching as the capsule swings out over the void and begins descending into the mouth of the rocket. This was it, their final mission. The human race’s final attempt at the stars. This was their legacy, coursing through space, perhaps to be forgotten for a billion years. Perhaps forever. That was a sobering thought.

A series of complex slingshot manoeuvres around the inner planets would send the craft out into deep space in the hope that something, somewhere might find it. Perhaps they’d even visit Earth one day, to see what is left.

Part of her says there should be humans on it, but where were they to go? The Mars base has been silent for a year at least, having not received any resupply missions in five years, and even if there are still resources there to support humans, how long until they are exhausted?

She reaches out and clutches Tul’s arm as the payload wobbles, chains creaking on their way down into the mouth of the ship where the warhead once sat. And then it’s gone, the only sign that it’s still there, the slight gleam of steel from within.

Far below, the payload bay door is removed from a large tent to prepare for the crane. The entire workforce holds its breath as the casing, shiny against the dulled exterior of the ship, comes level with the top of the second stage, barely five metres above them.

“This is it!” Tul leans over the low railing, “I wonder if any living thing will ever lay eyes on that pod ever again, or if it will finally lose power, continuing forever through the universe.”

“They will,” Lira assures, “And it will be intelligent life.” A lump rises in her throat. Out loud like that it sounds ridiculous.

Work is just beginning to resume as the door touches the ship and men and women hanging by ropes and wires guide it into place. And then it’s in, the metal shell whole, the only sign that it wasn’t always that way, the line between oxidised and shiny metal.

“It’s such a shame,” she says suddenly, “That this is all we’ve become.”

Tul turns to her, placing his hands on her shoulders, sliding them in to cup her cheeks, “What would we be doing if we weren’t here?”

She shrugs, “Finding food I guess.”

He grins, “Exactly. We have a purpose, and that’s really what this is about. A tiny spacecraft shooting through space, sending out a signal? The likelihood of something intelligent finding it makes the Fermi-paradox seem trivial.” He winces, at the look on her face and drops his hands but her gaze is back on the rocket. Those remaining are reeling themselves up, clambering onto the arms of the launch mount and the crane above.

“What’s happening?” She whispers, “Is there another storm coming?”

“No.” He points towards the squat concrete command centre, down below. Red flags billow in the breeze. “We’re ready to launch.”

The launch time is set for twelve hours, roughly seven o’clock in the morning. So, as the rest of the workers bustle off to the tents to celebrate, she makes her way toward the flame trench and Mission Control.

At the bottom of the rocket, where canvas skirts are drawn up to protect the engine nozzles, she can believe in it. Something of this size and power will surely make it to space. The concrete falls away before her to funnel the exhaust and flames into the desert. This is where the real rocket scientists work, indistinguishable from the others in their tattered clothes, but moving with practised ease among irreplaceable parts.

Nobody notices as she slips into Mission Control. Everyone’s clustered before computers and monitors of various sizes, testing simulations and progress reports. She glances at the counter. Eleven hours, twenty-nine minutes. For so long it has seemed an age away, something that might never happen. Now that the time is almost here, she feels sick to her stomach. What if it failed?

When nobody is looking, she slips past into the conference room and closes the door behind her, glad that it’s empty.

A single light flickers as she enters, illuminating tables set in a semi-circle, where military commanders ordered the deaths of thousands of people. The walls, once plastered with maps and portraits, are now covered in pictures of every kind of rocket, from Apollo to the last mission to the ISS. The rocket that took humans to Mars for the first time, in all its shiny glory. She glances over those and comes to focus on the back wall where photos from the rocky surface of the moon hang. Yet one photo grabs her attention as usual, one looking back at Earth, where only the clouds and landmasses are visible.

“So close, we were,” somebody says from her right.

She starts and turns to see a man in a wheelchair roll forward into the light. Thin grey hair clings to a freckled scalp, tilted slightly to the left. He looks as if he’s just woken up.

“I’m sorry commander,” she says, feeling the sudden urge to bow or back away. Instead, she stays rooted to the spot, clutching her hands together to come up with some excuse. This is Martin Fall, the mind behind this whole operation, a former Mission Specialist. He’s even been to space before! Not something anyone else here can say.

“Please do sit down,” he says wearily.

She does.

“We were a decade late, perhaps,” he continues as if she hadn’t interrupted him, “Ten more years and we might have had the capabilities to build in space. To create space stations and voyager ships. And yet, here we are, with the last rocket in operation and it’s not even intended to go into orbit for more than a few rotations.”

“And yet they did it,” she points to the photos on the wall. Seventy years ago we managed the impossible. Then we turned our sights on weapons instead.”

“Such is the problem with life.” He spins his chair around to face the far wall, where a picture of their entire workforce clustered around the base of the rocket, the sun even shining through the clouds for once.

“We’ve always been powerful enough to destroy ourselves, no matter how many of us there are, we just develop some greater weapon.”

“Aren’t you worried?” She says,” That it won’t work?”

He grins, “I used to worry about everything. Getting into university, becoming an astronaut, going to space, perhaps dying one day… Just keep yourself busy, doing something you care about and the rest of life takes care of itself, no matter if the world is about to end.”

It is only when she gets up to leave that she speaks again. No light shines through the small windows along the top of the wall. “How can you be so sure that it will work?”

“Missiles are built to work, as sad as that is, we made sure that once we press that red button, someone will know our intentions.”

“But, really, how can you be so sure? I’ve seen the charts and the calculations. I’m not a scientist, but without working satellites…”

He meets her gaze for almost a minute before looking down. “If you’re still sceptical once it launches, come find me.”

His words haunt her all the way back to the tent she shares with Tul.

Dawn rolls around before she has a chance to close her eyes. Two years of long working hours and now it’s here. She tucks her gloves into her pocket as she leaves the tent. She’d be naked without them.

Just as the sun rises in the east, an alarm rings through the concrete barracks, and out into the sea of tents. There is no need, not a single tent is occupied as the light finally pierces the distant clouds.

Now, even weak rays of sunlight glint against the dulled metal of the rocket stripped bare of everything needed to survive reentry. This wouldn’t have to, only the capsule where the warhead used to be will make it out of Earth’s gravity well.

Lira crouches on the roof of one of the barracks with a few other engineers, Tul’s low voice drifting over to her. Down below people crane their necks and jostle each other, trying to get a better view of the thing. She even sees a fist thrown, but her eyes are on the smaller figures, the children. Some clutch the legs of their father, others dragging their mother’s arms to get a better view. In an hour or so, they won’t need to worry, for it will light up the sky for a hundred kilometres in every direction.

She’d never know what it would be like to be a parent, but at that moment, the rocket seemed so much like a child, about to go off on an adventure while everything fell apart at home.

It only gets worse from here. There will be celebrations tonight, burning through a week’s worth of rations all at once. A week out, that feeling of success will begin to wear off. A month and people will move out, in search of food. Only a key crew would be kept on to monitor the progress of the capsule. There is no way for her or the others to ever know what becomes of the craft past that point. Maybe Tul and Martin are right, it isn’t about the fate of the craft after all.

What her life will look like then. Those with families will probably have a harder time. Radiation might become a problem. If she is lucky, or unlucky, however she thinks about it, she might have a decade before her cells begin to duplicate too fast. That’s if she and Tul find enough food to last that long.

A tear slides down her cheek, the first since the war’s abrupt end. Years of hard work and the pressure of nature’s horrifying deadline cuts out unnecessary feelings. These might be the best years of her life, but that is about to change.

The clock begins to descend at half past six as the short launch window opens. The large expanse of cracked concrete lies empty save for the multitude of wires and hoses running into the flame trench. Solid rocket thrusters are thankfully easier to light than conventional rocket engines, according to the scientists,  although the upper stages had to be refitted with liquid propellants for its interplanetary coast phase.

Lira’s stomach is a knot, tightening with every second it clicks down. There is little need for the countdown, there is no prop-load on ICBMs, but it seems appropriate as the entire remaining population of the military base crouches on the edge of buildings eyes and ears strained to hear every time a minute is called out.

Tul reappears at about T-2 Minutes, face flushed red and hair in messy waves. He grins down at her, before perching beside to stare at the hulking mass of weatherbeaten metal.

Despite being well into the morning, the light is still dim, but as the clouds roll past, a gap grows above them and some of the first light that week reaches them, suddenly blinding those with their gazes turned upwards. This is the break in the weather they were all talking about.

“Perfect,” Tul whispers, clutching at Lira’s arm as the rocket passes T-40 seconds. Usually, they would hold here, but with a rocket such as this, they have no constraints or late filling times.

“Tul,” she says suddenly, taking his face in her hands and turning it towards her, “Whatever happens today, this has been the best time of my life. I don’t care how ridiculous it sounds, but, if possible, I want to stay with you until the very end, however dark that sounds.”

He stares back at her, silently for a moment and then grins, pecking her on the lips, “Lira, this will go well. But yes, I have already secured some provisions for us, I figure it will be better if we leave no less than a week... before things get—”

She pushes his head away, “Yes, yes, now let’s watch this.”

The clock passes T-20 seconds and her heartbeat quickens. T-10 seconds. Tul’s grip on her arm tightens and they both slide back over the roof to crouch behind the concrete lip with the others. Only the sound of the breeze on the dunes comes to her ears.

T-10 seconds. Small figures, nearer the rocket, dash inside a bunker-like building and close the door. At T-5 seconds the silence is shattered as an earthly boom rocks the air, turning to a roar as flames strike the flame trench.

Five seconds later she clutches her hands to her ears as a roar of dust and gas fire out into the desert from the end of the flame trench. The umbilicals and structures around the rocket swing away or break as it inches upwards, then, gathering speed, leaves the pad and Earth behind.

Light, like she hasn’t felt on her skin for years, warms her as she ducks away, the roar so intense that her ears begin to ring.

Then it’s lessening, and their rocket climbs ever faster towards the gap in the clouds.

She drops her hands and pulls Tul close, their cheeks pressing together as the rocket climbs ever higher. She realises that a commentary is being broadcast over the sound system, previously drowned out by the rumble.

“Climbing steadily, nominal trajectory… Max-Q… Passed.”

A cheer whips up among the crowd.

“Maximum atmospheric load passed, we’re looking at the last touch of humankind on the universe here, good—” The sound suddenly cuts off then starts again.

The rocket is no longer visible as it passes through the highest clouds and disappears from view. The commentary continues and nobody moves until, ten minutes from launch, the commander’s voice comes over the speaker. “We have reached orbit.”

A cheer like never before erupts through the crowd and people rise from the rooftops and between the buildings, rushing into the centre. She can’t help but grin at Tul who sweeps her into a hug.

The partying lasts well into the night but as the excitement of their initial success begins to burn off and the thought of their future looms, she finds herself standing back from the crowds surrounding the launch tower.

“You okay?” Tul says, reappearing for the fifth time.

“Yes,” she lies, “Just something that the Commander said keeps going through my head.”

“What is it?”

She forced a smile, “It’s nothing, just go back to the others, I want to get some fresh air.” It seems silly as it comes out, they’re outside after all, but he notes her mood and kisses her on the cheek before hurrying back into the shifting mass of bodies.

Lira finds herself, a few minutes later, staring at the door to Mission Control. After a moment of hesitation, she turns the handle. It doesn’t open. She goes to turn away but light suddenly spills from inside as a woman looks out.

“It’s her,” she says, glancing over her shoulder, “Should I let her in?”

Someone replies and she gestures for her to enter.

What she expects to be a bustling command room, sits largely empty, save for half a dozen people, feet up on the desks, charts and graphs displaying telemetry forgotten.

The commander is there, with the same weary smile.

“Hi,” she says awkwardly, “You said to come and see you. I couldn’t get out of my head what you said.” Something in her tells her to open the door and leave, to party with the others, to forget the impending future for a while.

“I knew you would come,” he says, “the others thought you wouldn’t, but you’re like us, you’d rather know than not know, even if it might not be what you want.”

She looks around, “I guess you’re right, but why aren’t you guys watching the charts? What about the payload?”

“Take a seat, Lira.” His voice has a finality to it, one that promotes no response.

The woman to her right pushes a swivel seat towards her and leans against the wall, her expression unreadable.

For the first time in all the time she’s been here, Martin looks uncomfortable. “I don’t know how to say this, but the payload never reached orbit.”

She stares. She grips the armrests to steady herself. “No… We can’t, but you said it was so reliable, what did you mean last night?”

He glances at the others, “No. We did exactly as we planned to. Better, even. I wasn’t sure that the alterations we made would allow the missile to fly nominally.”

“I don’t get it,” she says, her stomach sinking lower by the moment. What did you mean it hasn’t reached orbit?”

He takes a deep breath, “Lira, it’s an ICBM, although it reaches space, it never actually achieves orbit. Instead, it will encircle the Earth and then fall towards its target. With the second stage alterations, it might have reached low earth orbit.”

“But…”

“It blew up shortly after going through stage separation.”

She swallows thinking of all the work they’d done on the rocket, then to the people outside partying what they thought was a success.

“But why lie about it, why not tell them the truth… and what is that on your screens?”

“People need something to hold onto, to give them a little bit of hope. We made the decision a long time ago. Rather, it was never more than a dream that we’d achieve everything we said we would. I knew from the start how it would go.”

She should feel angry, and sad, but she’s just numb. “This was all for nothing, just a waste of time and resources and food and—”

He rolls forward slightly, “No, and I think you know why.”

She glances at the screens that show the launch mount and the party still going strong. People are dancing and hugging. Hands are shaken as everyone celebrates their success. Their false success. Then it comes to her.

“Two years,” she whispers, “Two years of building a community. Tul was right after all.”

The commander nods, a sad smile reappearing on those wrinkled cheeks, “We’ve given everyone here two years of purpose and life. As I said before, it’s just about keeping yourself busy, until the very end.”