Archive of Our Own

Today an asteroid the size of Moscow and Yekaterinburg combined collided with the planet I call home. 

Called home. 

Home no longer exists. Home is now an oversized metal canister hurtling through the endless void at 48 percent of light speed.

I have no proof it is gone. Only the absence of proof that it is not. 

I can’t decide whether I’m fortunate to have been halfway to Neptune when impact occurred. 

At least I would have known. Despite the oppressive inevitability, there is still a part of me that thinks: maybe. 

But no... 

I am Ilya Rozanov, Pilot Cosmonaut of the Kamchatka vessel and sole survivor of Earth. 

Comms are still down.

After waking, I spent the first two hours performing systems checks and the next two trying every available channel.

"This is Ilya Rozanov to Mission Control. Mission Control, do you copy? Over."

My voice is hoarse from saying it so many times.

Radio silence is a menacing thing. It bears down on you with the gravity of a thousand suns. 

I wonder how many more cliches will be restored to their original meanings thanks to the end of the world.

A fate worse than death.

Surely one more.

I miss Svetlana. 

She is a good woman. Was a good woman.

It is strange. Using past tense.

My father would say: "Ilya, you are lazy. Ilya, you have no work ethic. You are a disappointment."

But I will practice. I will become proficient at even this.

Svetlana was a good woman. Earth was my home.

I am hopeful.

I must keep my wits about me. I have a mission.

I miss my mother, but that is nothing new, even if it is different.

Before it was a dull ache. One that thrummed at nearly the same frequency as the rest of my body. Easier to ignore, easier to forget.

Now it's a dull knife carving her name into my chest cavity so that I can do neither.

Today was dull.

Dull. Dull. Dull.

This is what I trained for.

This is what they trained me for.

I checked on the embryos today.

I'm not completely alone, even if they are terrible conversationalists.

I started talking to the AI.

It is nearly as bad a conversationalist as the embryos.

I said: "Good morning."

It replied: "The morning you are experiencing is artificial, and was designed to simulate the 24 Earth hours you are biologically attuned to."

I asked: "How are you today?"

It answered: "Loneliness is to be expected on long-haul, single-seat missions such as this. I noticed you have not done your daily exercises. This is recommended. If symptoms persist, a mood stabilizer will be provided."

I jerked off instead.

I do not know which is worse, the loneliness or the monotony.

Every day is the same. Wake up, eat breakfast, perform systems checks, log maintenance, eat lunch, transmit into the void, workout, eat dinner, study protocol, sleep.

Life before this was not abundant with freedoms. But there were some.

I miss going to the nightclub. Not most of all, but more than I thought.

"Let's go ouuuuut," Svetlana would beg, and I always put up a fight, even if I never intended to stand my ground.

We'd dance, smoke, stay out past curfew. And when we got caught, Sveta would say it was her idea.

Part of it was that her father was high up in the EEU; a punishment would never stick. The other part of it was that she believed in me, fiercely.

I didn't deserve her.

The loneliness is worse.

It is boundless, infinite. It reaches out of me in spectral tendrils. Always searching. Always probing. For what? I don't know.

Before, it was temporary. Now it is enduring. I wish it would understand this.

I feel so stretched out. But I need to contain it. Everyone is counting on me. Everyone is either dead or not yet born.

The duality is testing me.

Is this an honour or a condemnation? Am I humanity's last hope or its final breath?

There is too much time to think. Too much silence to prevent the thoughts from spinning themselves into form.

I gave the AI a name today: Marleau.

Marleau told me to take a mood stabilizer.

I listened this time.

I jerked off after.

The mood stabilizers work. I feel nothing now. It is worse and it is better.

Tonight I'll enter cryosleep.

When I open my eyes again, five Earth years will have passed.

I wonder: At what point do I stop measuring things against the ghost of a planet?

Back at the Academy, we would enter cryosleep as part of our training.

Sometimes, I would dream of Mother, bathed in light, obscured by the sheer curtain of time.

Waking is the worst part. The instructors had told us it would feel like a hangover. And it does. But it's more than that. It's the acrid, gummy reflux of relief churning with disappointment.

My mother died by suicide when I was 12 Earth years old.

I wonder: At what point do I stop orienting myself to the ghost of a person?

Marleau woke me 708 days early.

It detected a ship.

By the time I overrode mission protocol and initiated deceleration, we were already 400 million kilometres from its location.

It is too short a distance to achieve max acceleration and not overshoot.

This craft was built for a single destination. Much of its technology was only tested theoretically. I'll have to use the backup thrusters to reach the ship. Marleau says it will take approximately 200 Earth days.

My mouth tastes of battery acid. This is not part of the mission. Every deviation is a strike against mission success.

I think of the embryos.

I don't fucking care.

There could be someone out there.

The mostly likely scenario is it's an uncrewed human ship launched for data-capture purposes. It would be a disappointing discovery, but at least I would know. The not knowing will kill me. The not knowing is guaranteed mission failure.

I have to try.

I have to hope the ship will still be there. That it is captained by a human and not a computer or some hostile, acid-spitting alien.

The odds are not in my favour.

Sveta used to say, "Your curiosity will be your demise."

I hope she is wrong.