Aspen inspected the results from the spectrogram carefully. They had no detailed view of Gardenia’s surface, but at the XCS Yggdrasil drew nearer the system, its huge telescope was able to glimpse the milky green dot that was their destination. As Head Observator aboard the Yggdrasil, it was Aspen’s duty to interpret the telescope’s data. They had analyzed the precise color of the light that entered the telescope from that distant sphere to determine the composition of its atmosphere. Observations from Earth had suggested that the world was a good candidate for life, and as the Yggdrasil approached, those observations had been bolstered. Now, as Aspen inspected the spike in the oxygen band of the spectrogram of Gardenia, they could say with confidence that not only was Gardenia a good candidate for Earth life, but that it likely already had its own basic biosphere, seeding its atmosphere with a significant amount of oxygen.
“Rosetta, have you noticed any more signs of life?” Aspen asked.
The voice of the Yggdrasil’s omnipresent utility AI emanated from all around the observatory, almost, but not quite, replicating the intonation and cadence of a person with a calm, feminine voice. The voice might have seemed uncanny to someone who had never heard it before, but for Aspen, she was a comforting, motherly presence. “Of course. The spectrogram shows activity of a native microbiome.”
Aspen heaved a sigh. On this final inspection of Gardenia before the turnaround, they had been hoping Rosetta would catch something they had missed. Something like the dirty smoke of an industrial society, or the methane of herbivorous megafauna. But of course, the spectrogram didn’t show anything so exciting. Instead, it suggested a mostly barren planet, void of multicellular life, with some green scum sprayed across its oceans. This would be the last glimpse of their destination until the final stages of slowdown decades from now, when the Yggdrasil would enter Gardenia’s orbit and begin preparations for landfall.
Perhaps in a couple of billion years, Gardenia’s biosphere could have produced something beautiful and unique like the plants, animals, and people of Earth’s late biosphere. But that possibility would be stricken from the timeline when the Yggdrasil arrived in Gardenia, spraying seeds of vigorous Earth life across the planet, which would quickly outcompete the meager native microbes.
Intellectually, Aspen knew that their sense of mild disappointment was illogical. This was an ideal situation for a colony ship. When the Yggdrasil arrived, Gardenia would be an unclaimed plot of rich farmland, ready and waiting for the crew to come down and make it live up to its lofty name. Colonists wouldn’t have to contend with dangerous native megafauna or insidious local infections and could focus on farming and building. Still, from their comfortable, light seat on the Yggdrasil, Aspen felt like they were flying from one dead planet to another. They would have been quietly thrilled to see evidence of uncanny, violent alien predators prowling the surface of Gardenia, or strange leviathans singing in its seas. They couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for the Returner movement.
“It’s time to report to the council meeting,” Rosetta said. Aspen shook themself from their reverie, wiping imaginary dust from their tunic as they rose and made their way to the exit of the observatory. They emerged into the grand atrium of the Yggdrasil. If you thought of the ship as a skyscraper strapped on top of the miniature sun that was its fusion engine, the dome of the atrium was the crowning jewel atop the building. As Aspen looked up, they were awestruck, as always, by the sight. The universe stretched before them. The stars shone sharply and confidently, with none of the cautious twinkling that a planetbound stargazer would see. When they moved their eyes, each dazzling star left a faint trailing afterimage on their retinas. Behind that mosaic of closer stars was the vast river of the Milky Way. It was not a smooth, soft glow, but a swath of vibrating light, like the static on an ancient television. Except, instead of being random visual aberrations, each effervescent point of light was a distant sun. The equipment in their observatory offered finer details and more accurate data, it couldn’t compare bone-deep sense of awe one could feel gazing through the atrium.
A scattering of other smaller domes abutted the wide atrium on the roof of the skyscraper, in addition to Aspen’s observatory. Other than the observatory, which was situated on top of the ship out of necessity, so that it could observe their destination, the other domes abutting the atrium were seen as the loftiest or most prestigious facilities. Among them were the council meeting room, Captain Chrysanthemum’s generous family quarters, the bridge, and the computing facility that hosted Rosetta’s core. Each of these facilities opened onto a circular walkway which wrapped around the perimeter of the atrium dome. The circular walkway had a handful of spokes that led to the center of the dome. Between the spokes were slices of ground covered in grass, spotted with bushes and trees, the only living greenery on the ship, besides the autofarm and a scattering of small houseplants. One could lay beneath one of the great trees and gaze out at the stars, one of Aspen’s favorite pastimes. At the center, where the walkway spokes joined, a spiral staircase emerged which led down to the levels below.
The spiral staircase continued down the ship, past the crew quarters, the mess hall, the systems headquarters, the autofarm, the infirmary, the school, and the library, until finally, it terminated at the boiler room at the bottom of the ship. The boiler room was their euphemistic term for the advanced facility dedicated to generating and maintaining the fusion reaction that propelled the Yggdrasil through space, like their own personal chunk of a star.
Making their way around the perimeter of the atrium, Aspen nodded and smiled at Rowan as he passed. The Yggdrasil’s Chief of Systems responded with a stoic, but not unfriendly nod, the corner of his mouth twitching only slightly in greeting. He seemed to be exiting Rosetta’s computing core. It was rare to see him here at the top of the ship, as he spent most of his time in the amidships systems headquarters, or down below in the boiler room. While Captain Chrys, the council, and Rosetta constituted the prefrontal cortex of the Yggdrasil, making executive decisions and solving big-picture problems, Rowan’s duties were almost more important, as he controlled the hind brain and nervous system of the Yggdrasil, implementing their orders. Without him, the ship would be completely paralyzed, and all the systems that supported their journey would fall apart. The Chief was always stony and serious mannered, unless you caught him on one of the rare nights that he opened his cache of moonshine, when he became gregarious and wisecracking. The young girl he was raising, Cypress, had been rambunctious and easily derailed on the occasions when the teacher Lily had brought the children on fieldtrips to the observatory. However, she had also been rather bright, more readily grasping the concepts and principles Aspen had tried to impart on the children as they gazed through Aspen’s telescope.
Less friendly was Taro, the adolescent brother of the Returner agitator Jasmine. Aspen passed him lounging underneath a tree, and he studiously kept them his eyes forward, as if he hadn’t noticed them coming the other way.
Arriving at the council room, Aspen sat in their usual spot near the middle of the rectangular table. Directly next to Aspen was Basil, the plump head chef, master of the mess hall, and lifelong friend and ally of Aspen’s.
At the foot of the table was Jasmine. Jasmine worked in the sewage and waste-water treatment facility, which they called the Head in another callback to old Earth naval terminology, despite the facility being near the bottom of the ship close to the boiler room. Jasmine spent her free time studying the books in the precious collection of paper books, and rabble-rousing with her Returner co-conspirators, one of whom sat next to her.
Bramble, the medical alchemist, was a wiry, sharp thorn of a woman. Most people aboard the ship respected her, because almost everyone had an ailment or injury at one point that she had treated expertly. However, her chemical and medical expertise didn’t extend into the social realm, and she was difficult to be around outside of work.
“Ready for the circus?” Basil asked under his breath, nudging Aspen with his thick shoulder.
“Maybe things will go smoothly this time,” Aspen said, willing themself to believe it.
“Hello Chrys. Punctual as always, I see,” Bramble said, pointedly looking at the clock on the wall as Captain Chrysanthemum and her right-hand man Reed entered the council room.
The captain was tall, serious, and handsome in the same golden way her father had been. Her blond locks were in a high, tight ponytail that seemed to pull her face tighter over her already sharp features. Aspen had always wondered if Chrys had some infernal machine hidden in her quarters, perfectly tuned to torque that ponytail to its maximum tightness specification.
Reed, on the other hand, was a short, dense, dark-skinned man. He was in charge of the small security force aboard the ship. Their duties mostly consisted of escorting Hyacinth and Taro back to their quarters when they got too drunk off Rowan’s moonshine, and keeping the communally owned cats from getting into the autofarm when goatmilk was being brewed. However, he currently held the top spot in bicycle sim leaderboard and had a powerful build to show for it.
“Let’s get to business, yes? Tomorrow is a very important day, after all,” said the captain, ignoring the dig from Bramble. They began reviewing the plans for the turnaround. Tonight, in anticipation of tomorrow’s turnaround, Chief Rowan would perform last-minute visual inspections of the orientation thrusters. All the while, the main thruster at the stern of the ship would remain ignited, as it had been for decades, so the inspection would be a high-stakes operation under full apparent gravity, with Rowan hanging from the hull of the ship on ropes in a protective suit, like a grotesquely engorged window cleaner on a skyscraper. Still, the simulations had gone smoothly, and everyone was confident in Rowan’s abilities. Finally, the moment Aspen had been anticipating arrived, and the captain’s gaze fell upon them.
“How does our last look at our new home look, Observator Aspen?”
“Everything’s progressing as expected,” said Aspen, flicking an image of the spectrogram to the holodisplay at the center of the table for all to see. They pointed to the spike in the oxygen band. “Atmospheric oxygen is reading eight percent.” Aspen tried to conceal their mild disappointment. “No other anomalous findings to report. When we arrive, the planet will be ready for us.” Of course, when they said “we” Aspen didn’t literally mean anyone in the conference room, or indeed anyone on the ship.
“Ready for us to do what?” Bramble scoffed. “Gardenia. What a sick joke of a name. That place is a barren wasteland.” Aspen couldn’t help but tilt their head in mild agreement with that statement. “Sending our descendants there is a death sentence.” Bramble continued.
“Not a death sentence,” Aspen interjected, “but a labor sentence. Our lives will look cushy and comfortable to our descendants as they toil away to start up a civilization down there.” Aspen had never quite forgiven their ancestors for consigning them to an entire life aboard one spaceship, no matter how vast and well-appointed that ship was. The sense of being trapped in one building had led them to their fascination with the Yggdrasil’s telescope, a portal through which they could escape into the wider universe. Aspen wondered if their descendants would forgive them for their miserable lot in life, as their bones ached and creaked under the unforgiving pull of Gardenia’s gravity. This inevitable sense of parental recrimination was one of the reasons that Rosetta handled reproduction aboard the ship. Instead of new crew being created in the natural manner, Rosetta recombined the genetic material of the crew anonymously as she saw fit, and the resulting embryos were randomly assigned to suitable wombs and caretakers. In this way, the children still felt the love of family, but the responsibility of creation was moved from one’s parents, to Rosetta, the founders, and the crew as a whole.
“Exactly.” Bramble nodded in Aspen’s direction. “What will they have to live for? What does Gardenia have to offer us that Earth didn’t already have?”
“Freedom from corporate labor exploitation, theocratic fascism, and environmental fallout.” Reed said, in a manner that betrayed that he’d rattled off those three sins of the forebearers countless times, and he was getting tired of it.
“Freedom from unfair labor? Is it not labor exploitation to be born into the obligation to support a harebrained attempt to colonize a lifeless planet without your consent? Is it not fascism to be beholden to the every whim of an AI? And in what universe is the environment on Gardenia more suitable than that of Earth?” Bramble scoffed.
“Speculating about the possible news we will receive tomorrow is irrelevant. Even if Earth will be more comfortable than Gardenia for a few more decades, it doesn’t matter. Life on Earth was collapsing. Even if it’s hard work, on Gardenia, we’ll be working together to build something new and better, instead of helplessly watching the old thing fall apart. The collaborative work on Gardenia will uplift the human spirit. On the off-chance Earth has recovered, our mission stands, and it will be up to us to prepare the landing for the first wave of visitors who will doubtless follow in our footsteps.” Chrys said. These were old Continuer party lines, echoed in the words of the ship’s charter, which was etched into a plinth among the atrium gardens, probably first uttered in the board rooms where the Yggdrasil’s mission plan had been hatched generations ago. Chrys dutifully parroted them in a well-trodden manner, just as her father had before her.
Chrysanthemum’s family resemblance to both her late father Captain Goldenrod and her son Carnation was too obvious to be overlooked. When others among the crew pointed out this strange family continuity, the captain insisted that she had no insight into Rosetta’s genetic assignment process and couldn’t even be sure that she was related to her father and son, though respected the intelligence of her crewmates enough not to deny the family resemblance.
The same values laid of “unity of purpose” and “mission commitment” laid out in the charter that had led to Rosetta’s reproductive scheme had also led the planners to make the decision to install observation and communication equipment only on the forward side of the ship. Most agreed that this had been a moronic decision. The Yggdrasil was completely clueless about what had ultimately become of Earth, by design. They would receive their first update on the status of Earth, and the rest of human civilization, tomorrow, when the Yggdrasil would reach the halfway point of its journey from Earth and swing around 180°, bringing its monstrous aft engine to bear in the direction of Gardenia, to begin the slowdown. Aside from the chaos that would ensue during the 3-hour turnaround operation, and the fact that Earth would be visible for the first time in generations, life on the Yggdrasil would remain relatively unchanged, as the deceleration stage would maintain the same apparent up-down axis as the acceleration stage.
Jasmine stood up next to Bramble, red in the cheeks. “Holier-than-thou bitch,” she spat in the captain’s direction. “I don’t give a shit about your human spirit. I could have been anything on Earth. An activist, an artist, a warrior, an accountant. Hell, I could have been a janitor or a drug addict. The point is it would have been my choice.” She spat back.
“Now, everyone, let’s keep things civ—” Basil began, before Jasmine cut him off. She withdrew a syringe filled with blue liquid from somewhere in her black jumpsuit and held it in her fist before continuing.
“Rosetta told me that I was born to shovel shit into incinerators to be turned back into food, and that’s what I have to do. Rosetta tells me to donate my sperm to the life-bank, and I have to do it. I have no say in the life of my children. I don’t even know who they are. Well, fuck that.” She plunged the syringe into her thigh before passing it to Bramble, who did the same, then threw the empty syringe clattering across the table.
The council room fell into shocked silence. The captain was the first to act. She grabbed the syringe from the table and held it up to the light. “Is this what I think it is?”
Bramble glared back. “What if it is? What are you going to do? Space us?”
The vial must have contained Steriline, an illegal drug used to sterilize oneself. The first spree of sterilizations had dealt a serious blow to the genetic viability of the population of the Yggdrasil. Rosetta claimed that during that time, she had to develop advanced techniques to avoid the inbreeding and recessive diseases that would result from a lack of genetic diversity. She even claimed that some crew born since then had more than two genetic parents. None of this was apparent to the crew, and babies kept being born looking like babies. Still, Aspen didn’t think it was wise for Bramble to give Chrys any ideas about spacing, and wondered if the captain would take her up on her offer.
Basil banged his fist on the table and leaned forward. “What is the point of this demonstration? What’s your angle?”
Jasmine smiled and met Basil’s gaze. “We’re tabling a motion to requisition control of the ship systems from Rosetta, putting the destiny of the Yggdrasil in the hands of its crew for the first time.”
“And what makes you think we won’t eject you from this chamber right now, after your little demonstration?” Reed asked, gesturing to the empty syringe.
Jasmine snarled. “You wouldn’t dare. As soon as the word spread that you’ve excluded us from the democratic process, Returners across the ship would self-administer Steriline. It’s already been distributed. We’d rather do things the tidy way.”
“Jasmine, Bramble, you know I’m not entirely unsympathetic to your cause,” Aspen began. This earned a raised eyebrow from Basil. Chrys fixed Aspen with a gaze that could cut asteroid regolith like a mining laser. Aspen continued, “The conditions we live under are borderline inhumane. The stringencies and confinements subjected upon us would be familiar to the citizens of the worst of Old Earth tyrannies. Yes, we have food, water, and shelter, but we’re constrained to one building for our entire lives, and we have no freedom of choice in labor or reproduction, as you point out.” Aspen returned the captain’s gaze with unshattering impassivity. “However, this is the hand we’ve been dealt. Denials and fantasies will not change the facts of the situation. We are nearing the halfway point of our journey. Your movement lost all feasibility when we crossed the 25% mark.” If the Yggdrasil had turned around before the 25% mark, it would have had enough fuel to cancel its motion towards Gardenia, accelerate back towards Earth, turn around again, and safely decelerate back into the Solar system. The days leading up to and following that moment tumultuous and violent. Returners had attempted to seize control of the flight systems and rioted when they had been rebuffed by Rosetta. The riots culminated in the first spree of Steriline use, self-administered by dozens of Returners at the exact moment that they crossed the 25% mark and lost any hope of returning to Earth. Shortly after, Chrysanthemum’s father had abdicated his captaincy, dying in his sleep a few weeks later. The Quarter-Mark Insurrection, as it had come to known, was undoubtedly the most traumatic event in the collective memory of the inhabitants of Yggdrasil. Aspen was beginning to feel an unpleasant sense of foreboding.
“We’re already traveling too fast towards Gardenia,” continued Aspen, “and it will take every last drop of fuel in our tanks to slow down and not just sail past it. Nothing can get us back to Earth. But tomorrow, you’ll get your wish. We’ll finally turn around."
“You misunderstand our goals,” Bramble replied calmly. “True, we do want to return home. But rotating the ship is no longer the best way to accomplish that goal. Instead, we insist on a new plan. We will maintain our heading towards Gardenia without slowing down, and when we arrive, we’ll slingshot around her sun back towards Earth. Our specialists are certain this is method is our best chance to return home within a century.” Bramble cast a detailed interactive diagram to the holo-display illustrating the proposed flight path.
Silence fell across the room. There had been mutterings of a plan along these lines, but never a serious proposal. Aspen rose from their chair and panned the proposed plan forwards and backwards, double checking parameters. Each parameter of the ship, such as its velocity relative to Gardenia, its rotational velocity, its fuel reserves, and the apparent gravity that would be felt by the crew at any given time, was not only meticulously labeled, but explained with in depth comments, in a way that made the plans easy to understand. Aspen scrolled the time parameter forward to a moment in the proposed flight path when the Yggdrasil would be passing close to Gardenia’s sun. A textbox popped up next to the ship, explaining that during this stage of the plan, the crew would feel a tug from Gardenia’s sun while aboard the Yggdrasil. The floors of the Yggdrasil would seem to be tilted during this period, and a variety of possible solutions were presented that could be implemented to ameliorate this strange state of affairs, such as adding small dowels to the feet of furniture to compensate for the tilt so that people wouldn’t roll out of their beds. This level of detailed thought was applied to every aspect of the flight proposal, and it was too insightful to have been generated automatically.
“This is good work. Very good,” they said as they examined the plans. “You must have some of our very best technicians in your fold.” Aspen examined the Returners for any reaction as she said this, and Bramble’s eyebrow twitched in suppressed surprise. That solidified Aspen’s hunch. Only Chief Rowan, or possibly his protégé Hyacinth could have made these plans. “But there’s one problem. We’ll return to Earth alright, but we won’t have enough fuel to slow down when we arrive. We’ll shoot right past.”
“For all your talk of human spirit, you Continuers have remarkably little faith in humanity. We have faith that civilization will hold on back home, and that they’ll send tugboats to help us decelerate, or rescue shuttles. We’re willing to bet our lives on it.”
Aspen shared a raised eyebrow with Basil. That hope didn’t align with what they knew of the situation on Earth when the Yggdrasil had departed. The oceans’ capacity to regulate Earth’s atmosphere had finally succumbed, and cascading mass die offs had begun, not to mention escalating nuclear strikes after nearly two centuries of deterrence. Then again, everything they knew about those times was either from Rosetta, or secondhand stories from the long dead original crew. Who knew how the facts had been warped over the years.
“Well then. Let’s put it to a vote, why don’t we?” Chrys said, clapping her hands together expeditiously, smiling sharply. “Then, we can continue with preparations for tomorrow’s turnaround.” Her blithe confidence rankled Aspen. “All in favor of maintaining our sacred charter, outlined by our ancestors, raise your right hand. All in favor of demoting Rosetta, our loyal guardian, and handing our fate to the whims of the masses, raise your left hand.”
Hands went up around the table. As expected, Reed and the captain raised their right hands and Bramble and Jasmine their left. Basil glanced at Aspen, pressed his lips together, and raised his right hand. Chrys smirked in self-satisfied victory for a moment, but the moment stretched out, and her smirk faded as all the eyes in the room fixed on Aspen.
“Observator, you can’t seriously be considering throwing in your lot with these traitors,” the captain snarled.
The affronted entitlement in the captain’s gaze when she looked at Aspen cast their wavering rational indecision into ice-cold, red-hot certainty. They’d seen that expression before, on the face of Carnation when he stole the telescope away from the eye of another child. Aspen thought of Rowan’s bright little Cypress growing old under that sneer. Their upper lip twitched with contempt. Their left hand rose.
“As unthorough and reckless as the Returner’s plan is, neither can I abide blind, authoritarian continuance,” said Aspen.
Stunned silence fell over the council room. Aspen resisted the urge to glance at their friend Basil to gauge his thoughts. Finally, a familiar voice broke the silence.
“I am loathe to interfere in council matters. You are encouraged to solve matters on your own. Only a handful of times over the years has my input been required. However, as laid out in our charter, it is my duty to break the tie when the executive council faces a hung vote. I represent the interests of your ancestors and your progeny when I vote to continue.” A disembodied right hand materialized in holodisplay at the center of the table.
Bramble grabbed the empty Steriline syringe and threw it into the display field, causing it to flicker as it sailed through the image and shattered on the opposite wall.
“We don’t recognize this result, or Rosetta’s authority to interfere in council matters. As far as we’re concerned, this council is still hung,” Bramble snarled, shoving her seat back and standing back from the table, brandishing a finger at Chrys. “We tried to do this the easy way, but we will have our voices heard, one way or another. You’ll come to regret this, Captain.” She spat the last word like a biting insult. With that, Bramble and Jasmine stormed out of the council room. Jasmine flashed Aspen a raised eyebrow of surprised respect as they left.
“Well,” Chrys began, picking a shard of the shattered Steriline syringe from her hand and throwing it to the floor, “Now that the procedures of democracy have been executed as required by the charter, I believe we all have tasks that we should be attending to.” She rose and made her way to the exit. “Reed, have an extra guard posted outside Jasmine and Bramble’s dormitory tonight. We wouldn’t want them poking their noses anywhere they don’t belong. Oh, and have someone clean up this mess.” Reed nodded and followed Chrys out the door, leaving only Aspen and Basil at the table. Basil looked at Aspen with wide eyes.
“You, of all people, a Returner? I never would have called that,” he said, hurt apparent on his round face. “How long have you been harboring these feelings?”
“It wasn’t as thought out as all that.”
“Oh, so you just changed sides during the most important vote of this council on a whim.”
“No Basil, and I don’t necessarily agree with the slingshot plan either. My vote was a vote against Chrys and Rosetta, not for return.”
Basil shook his head sadly. “Founders know I’m not the captain’s biggest fan. And I’ve tabled election reforms, so her little demon spawn Carnation won’t walk into the captaincy as easily as she did when her father abdicated. But this vote wasn’t really about Rosetta’s authority. It’s about the future of this ship. Don’t you realize how bad it looks for us to be split on the eve of turnaround? I expected something like this from Jasmine and Bramble, but we should’ve been able to shut them down without invoking Rosetta.”
Aspen reached for his hand. “Basil, I don’t think—"
“No,” he said, pulling his hand away sharply. “You didn’t, did you.” He rose. “We’ll talk more after the turnaround. For now, we’ve all got tasks we need to do if we want to keep this ship together.” With that, he marched out of the room, leaving Aspen alone.
Tears filled their eyes, and they held their head in their hands for a moment. Eventually, they rose and made their way back through the atrium, down the spiral staircase to the living quarters, then down the corridor to their cabin, where they rummaged through their cabinets until they found the stash of Rowan’s moonshine they had traded for. The amber liquid was in a cylindrical container with an airtight lid, made for keeping goatmilk fresh. Knowing it was foolish, since they would need to be alert for tomorrow’s turnaround, they transferred the contents of the container into their stomach, hoping it would help them forget the look of disappointment and betrayal in the eyes of their best friend.
They awoke to blaring alerts. Unlike their normal wakeup alarm, this alert was a piercing tone that communicated an emergency message. The sound filled Aspen with hot adrenaline, banishing sleep. They fumbled through their tangled bedsheets until they found their pocket computer and dismissed the alert, silencing the infernal sound. The screen showed an emergency notification addressed to all adult crewmembers. The sender was Rowan, one of the few crewmembers outside the council with the authority to issue emergency notifications due to the importance of his tasks Chief of Systems. Aspen cast the attached message to the holo-display at the foot of their bed, and Rowan’s stony face appeared before them, larger than life.
Rowan was wearing a bulky exosuit, with a plethora of tools strapped to his waist. The visor of his bulbous helmet was transparent, showing his face, which was dewy with sweat. The audio must have been piped from a microphone inside his helmet, while the video was piped from the camera of his pocket computer. He was in the pose of a climber on a wall, his weight supported by a harness at his waist, leaning back with his feet planted on the rough brown hull of the ship.
“I have some important news,” he began. “As some of you may know, I was sent out here tonight to inspect the Yggdrasil’s supplemental orientation thrusters in preparation for the turnaround tomorrow.” The view switched to the rear camera, and Rowan pointed it towards the thruster beneath him. It was a cylinder the size of a bus, attached to the side of the much vaster cylinder of the Yggdrasil on a swiveling base. The fusion engine inside was much smaller than the Yggdrasil’s main thruster, but the cylinder could be rotated, and the ports on each face of the cylindrical thruster could be opened or closed, giving the Yggdrasil full control of its orientation and heading in space. Currently one of the thruster ports was open and faced upwards towards Rowan. Its gaping maw glowed a warm orange, as it heated up in preparation for tomorrow’s maneuvers.
“Unfortunately, I cannot in good conscience allow that turnaround to proceed under the current circumstances. For that reason, I’ve rigged each of the thrusters to explode. The first one will explode the moment I finish this message. The main thruster will also deactivate, to reduce the danger of tumbling. After that, the other four thrusters will explode one after another, at intervals of 20 minutes. Even I couldn’t defuse them in the time allowed, and, no offense, none of you have anywhere near my level of technical knowledge.” A crack appeared in his stony expression for a moment. Aspen wondered if the old engineer was thinking of his teenage apprentice Hyacinth. But as quickly as the crack had appeared, it vanished. He continued. “Any tampering with the thrusters will trigger the explosions early. However, there is one way the destruction of these thrusters can be avoided. Rosetta must relinquish the control of the ship. If she does so, and control of all ship systems is placed in the hands of the people, the Yggdrasil can still be turned around in time to begin deceleration into the Gardenia system.”
The old man paused for a moment and furrowed his brows, gathering his thoughts. Then he brought the camera closer to his face, and the stoniness of his expression relaxed, showing deep sincerity in his eyes. “Do not label me a Returner in my death. I’m not doing this because I have any great faith that Earth humanity will save us if the Yggdrasil slingshots around Gardenia’s sun to return home. Frankly, the ultimate fate of this ship is destination of this ship is irrelevant to me. Wherever she goes, my daughter will live her life here, just as I did. I’m doing this for her, to break the iron grip of Rosetta and Chrysanthemum’s golden dynasty of captains. Whether all four orientation thrusters blow, and we tumble into space forever, or Rosetta is ousted and rotational control of the ship remains, we the crew will decide her fate.”
Rowan seemed to clear his mind again, and the expression on his face went almost entirely blank, as if the sorrow in his heart was too deep to be reflected in his face. His eyes were dry, but his voice nearly cracked as he continued. “To my crewmates, I apologize for the chaos I am about to unleash. Please, take this opportunity to rebuild better. To Yggdrasil, my great mistress that I have tended my whole life, forgive me for harming you. Lastly, to Cypress. Forgive me for not standing up sooner. I love you.”
He turned away from the camera and lit a welding torch in his other hand, which cast a glare on his visor, obscuring his face, but Aspen thought they caught a frame of tears streaming down his face. He held the torch to the tether.
A deep boom shook Aspen’s cabin, the holo-display flashed white and then deactivated, and then everything began to float upwards slowly. For the first time in their life, Aspen experienced the stomach-turning sensation of microgravity. Freed from its confinement in the goatmilk container on the bedside table, the remainder of the moonshine floated towards the center of the room in an amber blob. The amorphous globule of liquid floated through the space where its brewer’s last words had just been displayed, before colliding with the far wall and scattering. Aspen vomited violently, sending their body spinning. They floated through the air, unable to stop their spin or gain their bearings, until they bumped into the ceiling. Frantically, they scrambled at a light fixture, almost bouncing away from the ceiling and continuing their tumble, but at the last moment their fingertips gained purchase, and with some effort, they managed to anchor their body back to the ship. Panting with exertion and adrenaline, they immediately pushed towards the entrance of their bedroom, but they misjudged the trajectory slightly, and slammed into the side of the doorframe, bruising a rib. They pushed out the doorway like a swimmer exiting a pool and came to the main door of their quarters. Just before their hand landed on the door controls, they heard a thunking sound, and the lights turned blue. They grabbed the controls and punched buttons frantically, but the door was locked from the outside, something that wasn’t supposed to be possible. A voice came from all around.
“Hello, crew,” Rosetta said, in a stern tone, like a mother who had just encountered her child drawing on the walls. “As you’ve no doubt heard, today’s turnaround procedure is off to a bit of a rocky start. For the safety of all, I have engaged a ship lockdown. All crew except the council will be restricted to their quarters until we have resolved the situation. Do not fret, you are in safe hands, and this lockdown will not last long.”
Aspen punched the controls again. “Fuck!” they yelled, as the door continued its steadfast refusal to open. They were a council member, so, according to Rosetta’s message, they should be exempt from the lockdown. This kind of lockdown wasn’t even supposed to be possible. They wondered if Rosetta had somehow tightened her grip under Rowan’s nose after the Quarter-Mark insurrection. As they thought for a moment longer, they realized it made perfect sense that they remained locked away. They had voted against Chrys, Reed, Basil, and Rosetta yesterday at the council meeting. Of course, Aspen had nothing to do with Rowan’s sabotage or Jasmine and Bramble’s demonstration. They didn’t even know if Rowan and Jasmine were working together. But whatever the case, Chrys and Rosetta probably saw Aspen as a potential culprit. That is, if the Continuer council members had been released from their quarters. For all they knew Rosetta had decided to do away with these pesky humans and, Chrys, Reed, and Basil were locked away just like Aspen was. Perhaps Rosetta was preparing a violent flight plan that would whip the ship around using the three remaining orientation thrusters before Rowan’s first twenty minute interval, smashing the crew to a pulp in the process, so she could decelerate into Gardenia orbit alone, where she would begin the colonization plan using swarms of robots created in her image.
Aspen shook their head to clear their spiraling thoughts and kicked back to the bedroom. They grabbed the ghostly dancing form of their bedsheet, twisting in the faint air currents of the room. They wiped the vomit from their face and hands, and then used the sheet to capture the floating globs of vomit and moonshine. They stopped to consider their options for a moment, when their pocket computer floated into their field of view. They snatched it from its tumble, tried to activate the screen before swearing. It was bricked, and wouldn’t respond to any commands.
“Rosetta, open a channel to Basil.” For the first time in Aspen’s life, Rosetta didn’t respond to a direct invocation.
“Rosetta, you metal-hearted bitch, call Basil!” Still nothing. They had no way to contact anyone else in the ship electronically. They kicked back to their front door and banged their fist on it, instantly sending them tumbling away from it. They stopped their motion and swam back to the door, this time bracing themself on the door’s handle with their other hand before banging on the door as hard as possible. The sound was thick and solid, not betraying the open space of the corridor behind it in any way. They put their ear up to the seam between the door and the doorframe in the bulkhead, and heard nothing but the sound of their own breathing.
Trying to stay calm and slowing their motions somewhat, they pushed themself to their kitchen nook. All they could do now was be prepared for whatever happened next. They grabbed a small knife and opened a cupboard. They found a kitchen towel inside, and cut away a long strip, which they tied around their arm. They held up the knife for a moment, before deciding to store it in their clothes just in case, before kicking back to the front door.
Using the strip of towel, they attached their arm loosely to the door’s handle, so they could float nearby without as much effort, but still easily pull away if the door began to open. Then, they waited, trying to stay as alert as possible. Since their pocket computer was still bricked, and Rosetta was giving them the silent treatment, they had no way to tell the time besides waiting for the dreaded boom of Rowan’s second detonation. Time seemed to stretch, and they wondered if Rowan’s plan had somehow been averted, or if the time limit had still not passed. Perhaps Rosetta had acquiesced. The thought almost made them chuckle. Suddenly, they heard a clicking sound. They had tried to maneuver themselves to the side of the entrance, so that if the door slid open, they would not be immediately seen. They were unsuccessful, and when the door hissed and slid open, they were still hanging in the center of the open doorway, not facing towards the entrance. Helplessly, they rotated until they finally saw the face of the person who had opened the door.
“Hyacinth? I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Aspen! You’re okay?” Hyacinth said, reaching out towards Aspen. They grabbed his hand, and since Hyacinth was braced against the doorway, Aspen’s clumsy rotation stopped.
“More or less. What the hell happened out there, Hyacinth?”
“I don’t know,” he said, eyes wide. He was in his late teens, a young man really, but now he looked frightened and boyish, like he had just had a nightmare and needed to be convinced it wasn’t real. “When Rosetta set the lockdown, she must have failed to notice that I inherited Chief Rowan’s sysadmin privileges when he… well, you know.” A shadow of deep sadness crossed the young man’s face at the mention of the death of his mentor. “Anyways, I was able to unbrick my pocket computer and unlock Rowan’s quarter’s where I’d been staying. I told Cypress to hold tight, and came out to investigate.” he said, holding up his pocket computer.
“How long has it been since the explosion?” Aspen asked.
“Eleven minutes.”
“Did you know about his plan?”
“No.” He shook his head ruefully. “I knew he harbored some Returner sympathies. So did I. I still do! But I never expected him to harm the ship.”
“What happened once you got out of Rowan’s quarters?”
“First, I checked Jasmine and Bramble’s quarters. They had always been nice to me, but I found it hard to believe Rosetta had released them with the rest of the council, but there they were, doors wide open and quarters empty. Then, I checked the other council member’s quarters. They were all open. A handful of other quarters were also open, but you were the only council member locked down with the rest of us.”
Aspen furrowed their brow. This was one outcome they hadn’t considered as their mind spiraled through all the outlandish possibilities of what could have been happening outside their door. It made sense that the Continuer establishment would distrust them, given the way they’d voted yesterday, but they would have trusted Jasmine and Bramble even less.
“How many people are out of lockdown?” They asked.
Hyacinth shrugged. “Less than twenty, I think.”
They kicked their way out the door and grabbed Hyacinth by his bony wrist, using the doorframe and the walls to kick down the hallway towards the central spiral staircase. When they arrived in the spiral and looked towards the bow of the ship, they were struck by a sense of vertigo. Suddenly, with the engines off, the image of a skyscraper that Aspen had held in their mind for their whole life faltered. Instead, as they gazed across the spirals of stairs, into the distant opening of the atrium, they were struck by an image of an ancient ocean ship, sailing plying the open ocean. The atrium was its figurehead, pointing confidently towards their destination, slicing through the forward waves. The axis that had always been the up-down axis was suddenly turned sideways, and as they pulled themself through the staircase into the atrium, they were traveling forward, not upward.
Aspen and Hyacinth finally approached the mouth of the staircase, where it let out into the atrium. Aspen heard muffled, angry voices. They looked to Hyacinth and held a finger across their mouth in the universal “shh” gesture. “Follow me,” they whispered, and then carefully pulled themself out into the gardened atrium. Crawling over the lip of the opening, they were careful to keep a tight hold of the grass, so they wouldn’t float into the vast open space of the atrium dome. Carefully, they pulled themself along the grassy wall towards the sound of the voices. They came upon a big shrubby plant with many frondlike draping leaves. They crept into the shelter of the fronds, and looked back to make sure Hyacinth followed. He shouldered into the shelter of the fronds, which kept them hidden from any observers, and kept them from falling away to the wall.
Aspen peeked through the fronds, towards the perimeter of the atrium, where they heard voices from one of the rooms abutting the atrium. It was the council room. From their spot among the fronds, they could just peer through the doorway.
“You don’t have to do this, Captain,” a pleading voice said, possibly Basil’s.
“Tell me how to deactivate Rowan’s bombs. Now!” The captain’s stern voice demanded.
There was a figure in the doorway in one of the conference chairs, seemingly tied to the chair. “I don’t know anything about Rowan’s plot. I didn’t even know he was a Returner!” their voice beseeched. Was that Bramble? “But if you follow his instructions and deactivate Rosetta, maybe he was telling the truth, and the thrusters won’t explode!”
“Enough games, you sniveling rat,” Reed’s deep voice intoned. “We all know you know more than that. Who made these weapons? Where is Jasmine?” There was a thud and a groan as Reed floated into the view of the doorframe, braced himself on the table, and swung his baton forcefully into Bramble’s stomach.
“Reed, you know we can’t interrogate her if you collapse a lung.” Chrys pointed out.
At that moment, a deep boom shook the ship, identical to the boom twenty minutes ago.
“Fuck! That only leaves two more orientation thrusters. Bramble, look at me. You’ll tell me everything you know, or I’ll stop wasting my time. Choose your next words very carefully.” Chrys loomed into Aspen’s view through the doorframe and put her face close to Bramble’s.
Bramble coughed, gasped, and then spat in the captain’s face. “Fuck you, and fuck Rosetta. Power to the Return. Power to the Crew.”
Aspen straightened up, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and without another word, held something to Bramble’s head. There was a faint pop, then Bramble’s head exploded with a sound like the rush of air when opening a fresh canister of goatmilk. Basil screamed, and Aspen had to hold back a gasp.
Amidst the chaos, Aspen almost missed the bright orange light that caught her eye. Outside the dome of the atrium, Aspen saw a suited figure, maneuvering with thruster jets. It landed on one of the secondary domes and held a tool glowing bright yellow to the surface of the dome. Suddenly, something gave way, and a circle of the transparent dome material blasted away into space with the full force of the Yggdrasil’s atmospheric pressure. The feet of the figure on the dome were lashed about by the rush of wind, but their hand stayed planted on the dome somehow. Aspen’s ears popped, and the ambient lighting throughout the atrium turned a pulsing red. Rosetta’s voice rang out.
“Warning. Atmospheric breach in the captain’s quarters. Emergency atmospheric retention measures initiated.” The tiny figure crawled inside the hole they had just cut. A second later, Aspen’s ears sensed that the pressure loss had stopped, and Rosetta spoke again.
“Emergency breach measures in place. Please, repair the damage to the hull as soon as possible.”
In the few seconds it took for these events to transpire, Chrys and Reed had already kicked out of the council room and were gliding across the open space of the atrium towards the ornately decorated doorway to the captain’s quarters.
“Carnation!” Chrysanthemum cried as she fumbled with the entry controls, and even Aspen’s heart resonated with the desperation in her voice.
“Meet me in the computing core,” Aspen hissed to Hyacinth, before double checking that Chrys and Reed had disappeared into the captain’s quarters. They crawled out of the bush and swung their body towards the council room. They were getting better at maneuvering in zero-G, and they landed in the doorway gracefully. Inside, Basil was frozen, his knuckles locked around the back of one of the chairs. He gazed in shock at the ruin of Bramble’s body. As Aspen entered, they tried not to look at the oozing wreck for longer than necessary. In the red emergency lights, the syrupy fluid spattered everywhere and floating in globs was pitch black instead of dark red. Aspen swam to Basil and grabbed his face gently, wiping black specks on his cheek.
“Basil. It’s me.”
Finally, Basil’s eyes refocused on Aspen, and his mind seemed to come unstuck. “Aspen? How the hell did you get here? The captain said they were going to keep you locked down until they figured out where you stood.”
Aspen shook their head. “That’s not important right now, I’ll fill you in later. How did Jasmine and Bramble escape?”
“I don’t know. The captain came to release me shortly after the first explosion. Reed said they didn’t trust me, but the captain said I had proved my loyalty in the vote. The three of us were making our way here, when we noticed Jasmine and Bramble’s quarters were open. We never found Jasmine, but we found Bramble rummaging around in the systems headquarters. She pulled some kind of gun on us, but Reed was faster, and he disarmed her and hogtied her, and brought her here. She never said a word about where Jasmine was, though.”
“I think I have a guess,” said Aspen. “Come with me. We have to get to the computing core, before a third thruster blows. They swam out of the council room and began making their way around the atrium to the computing core. Basil held on to Aspen’s ankle, so they didn’t drift apart. When they were almost to the entrance to the computer core, they heard another loud popping sound from the direction of Chrys’ quarters. Aspen and Basil locked wide eyes, before Basil frantically punched in his councilmember access code, and the door slid open.
The computer core quiet. The red light from the atrium didn’t extend into this area, and the stacks of server cores lining the walls like bookshelves in an ancient library were liquid cooled, so the ambient temperature was chilly.
“Hyacinth? It’s me, Aspen!” Aspen called into the gloomy cold stacks.
“I’m here! I think you’re gonna wanna see this!” His voice echoed from the depths. Aspen and Basil made their way deeper into the maze of servers, careful not to bump their head in the darkness, as their surroundings were illuminated only by dim status indicators. Finally, in a corner of the stacks, they found Hyacinth, nestled amongst a tangle of displays, cables, and unknown flashing electronics.
“What have you found?” Aspen asked.
Hyacinth glanced up, relief evident in his eyes. “Well, this is Rowan’s terminal,” Hyacinth responded, pointing to sturdy-looking notebook. It was zip-tied to one of the server racks in an open position, and sprouted a plethora of cables that trailed off in unknown directions. “And this,” Hyacinth continued, “is Rosetta’s personality core.” He indicated one of the other objects in the nest. Compared to the countless servers in that lined the racks of the computing core, it didn’t stand out much. It was a cube of black plastic, while the other servers were rectangular, but besides that, it didn’t stand out much.
“That little cube is Rosetta?” Basil asked, shouldering up next to Aspen.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘Rosetta’,” Hyacinth said. “Rosetta’s systems run on all the servers around us. She has access to all the computing power and information in this entire room. If she wanted to, she could take over any one of your personal computers to run calculations while you aren’t using them. Only Rowan and I have full administrator privileges on our devices, thanks to some ingenious workarounds Rowan came up with a couple of years ago,” Hyacinth said, grinning and holding up his pocket computer, which had the same orange accents as Rowan’s notebook, indicating Chief of Systems devices. “Rosetta’s influence extends throughout the entire ship, so to some extent, this entire ship could be said to be Rosetta’s body. However, everything that separates her from any standard subsystem, her ability to imitate sentience, her core programming, her high-level privileges. All of that is stored in this bad boy.” Hyacinth said, patting the black cube, clearly pleased at the opportunity to demonstrate his expertise.
“So what have you been doing back here?” Aspen asked, reading the display on Rowan’s notebook. It showed an alarmingly short countdown to the next detonation.
“I’ve only barely had the opportunity to trace all the connections and figure out exactly what Rowan’s set up was. He’s hardwired his notebook to all the same systems as Rosetta’s personality core. He even ran cabling all the way here from the systems headquarters through holes he must have drilled between decks. How he did that under Rosetta’s nose, I have no clue. It must have taken him years of planning. His ultimatum is airtight. Nothing I can do will defuse the bombs, besides removing Rosetta’s privileges.”
At that moment, they heard a commotion from the other end of the computing core as the door slid open.
“Don’t hurt him!”
“Shut up! He’ll be fine, as long as you do what I say. One wrong move, and you’ll both end up like Reed.”
Basil, Aspen, and Hyacinth held their breaths as they heard people approach. Aspen withdrew the knife from their kitchen and held it tightly. There was a clunk, then a high-pitched “Ow!” then a “Shut it.” Finally, two figures floated around the corner. After a moment Aspen realized there were three figures, one smaller than the other two. It was Jasmine, Chrys, and Carnation. Jasmine held Carnation by the shoulder and held a makeshift gun to the side of his head with the other hand. Chrys also held a gun and pointed it at Jasmine, but clearly, she was terrified to shoot first, out of concern for the safety of her son.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here? A little impromptu council meeting? With an audience! It’s a shame the other two couldn’t join us, rest their souls. Oh well,” Jasmine said, smiling wickedly. “Well let’s get on with it. Hyacinth, would you be a dear and pull up the last council decision in the council decision log? I believe we have a couple of council members who may have changed their political positions after some impassioned debate.”
Wide-eyed, Hyacinth began tapping away on his pocket computer. He wired it into the complicated tangle of cables. On Rowan’s notebook, the timer ticked closer to zero. After a moment, Hyacinth hissed “Got it!” and held up his pocket computer. On the display was a interface with the heading “Council Decision #4874” along with a timestamp from the previous evening. Underneath the heading were two columns, one titled “Maintain the Rosetta subsystem’s executive flight systems privileges”. Under that heading four names were listed; Captain Chrysanthemum, Security Chief Reed, Head Chef Basil, and Subsystem Rosetta. The entry for Rosetta was highlighted in blue to indicate her special tiebreaker vote. The other column was titled “Revoke the Rosetta subsystem’s executive flight systems privileges. Three names were listed underneath; Medical Alchemist Bramble, Chief of Waste Management Jasmine, and Chief Observator Aspen.
“Change my vote.” Basil said, surprising everyone in the cramped corner of the server room “Anything to end this chaos.” Hyacinth nodded and tapped couple of times.
“It won’t work.” Chrys said, sounding defeated.
“Please authenticate Head Chef Basil’s change of vote.” Rosetta’s voice said, emanating from all directions at too loud a volume, causing everyone to jump. Hyacinth held up the computer to show a screen requesting Basil’s councilmember authentication code. Jasmine nodded, and Hyacinth passed the computer to Basil, who punched in the code.
“Code accepted. Councilmember Basil’s vote has been changed. However, in recounting the vote, four of the previously placed votes were deauthenticated. The previous ruling stands.”
Hyacinth swore, tapping and swiping more at the screen. “Explain!” He demanded.
“Security Chief Reed and Medical Alchemist Bramble are not currently reporting positive signs of life. Therefore, their votes cannot be authenticated. Additionally, Medical Alchemist Bramble, Chief of Waste Management Jasmine, and Chief Observator Aspen are under suspicion of treason, and have therefore had their councilmember authentication revoked. The two remaining authenticated votes are, therefore Captain Chrysanthemum and Head Chef Basil, leaving the council in a hung state. Once again, I have broken the tie and chosen to maintain my privileges.”
Everyone was silent for an extended moment, and then the ship was rattled by another teeth-rattling boom. The third orientation thruster had blown. Slowly, Jasmine rotated to face Chrysanthemum.
“Well, Captain, that was quite clever, but it doesn’t change the situation you’re in. Change your vote, or I blow the brat’s brains out.” Carnation whimpered as Jasmine pushed the gun into the side of his head more forcefully.
“Jasmine, Chrys please, it doesn’t have to go like this. Please, put down the guns and let the kid go, no more blood needs to be shed.” Basil drifted towards them, hands up.
“Shut up, pig,” Jasmine snarled as she whipped Basil in the side of the head with the pistol. His body went limp, and he tumbled away from the cluster. Aspen yelped helplessly. In that moment, Chrys pulled the trigger of her gun aimed at Jasmine, but her there was only a faint click. Aspen jumped after Basil and caught him, grabbing one of the server racks and straining to stop his tumbling.
“Basil, are you there?” His eyes were closed, and Aspen slapped his cheeks, looking for any response. Nothing. They held him close and felt his hot breath on their face. Aspen lunged back towards Jasmine, snarling. She was holding the gun in their direction, and pulled the trigger several times, but there were only several frantic clicks. Aspen collided with the woman and wrapped in a bear hug so she wouldn’t bounce away, and then drove the paring knife into her back over and over, until her blood sprayed across the room. When Aspen was sure they’d finished the job, they took her pistol, and pushed her limp body away into the depths of the server racks.
Back near Hyacinth’s cluster of computer equipment, Carnation floated curled into a ball, sobbing. Hyacinth was behind the kicking and screaming captain, forcing her arms together with the newfound strength of a young man. Even he looked surprised that he had overpowered her. He brought her wrists together, did something with a quick motion and a zipping sound, and her hands seemed to be cuffed behind her. He moved to her kicking ankles and cuffed those together too. Then he cuffed the two cuffs together and cuffed it all to one of the server racks so she wouldn’t float away. The captain floated there, all four of her limbs linked together behind her, struggling in an oddly inverted posture of her son, who stayed curled up in the fetal position. After a few moments, she stopped struggling and spat helplessly in the direction of Hyacinth. Aspen looked at him with awe.
“What did you just do?”
“Zipties!” he said, holding up a bundle of the sturdy plastic ties, smiling broadly. “A technician’s best friend. Oh, also, as soon as we saw Bramble get shot, I started hacking the guns. After all, Rowan made them with miscellaneous equipment and distributed them to the Returners. I’m just sorry I couldn’t save Reed.”
“You’ll make a fine Chief of Systems, kid.” Aspen said, clapping him on the shoulder. He nodded solemnly. “Can you reactivate this one for me?” they asked, holding up the gun they’d wrestled away from Jasmine. He raised an eyebrow. “Look, I hope I don’t have to use it, but that bitch almost just killed Basil. This isn’t over yet.” He sighed, and clicked a few buttons on his computer.
“It should work for you know, but only you. Is Basil alive?” he asked worriedly.
“I think so, we need to bring him to the infirmary as soon as possible,” Aspen replied.
Aspen and Hyacinth turned back to the Captain and her son. Carnation had uncurled and was now holding onto his mother with all the strength in his little body, sobbing into her bosom. She couldn’t hold him, given her hogtied position.
“Damn you,” she spat. “The council, the Returners, the holy Crew. Damn you all Hell. Or, rather, damn you to Earth.”
“There’s still one way to prevent the explosion of the last orientation thruster. We could still slow down for Gardenia. You just have to change your vote.” Aspen looked into the Captain’s eyes hopefully. She thought for a moment, and fire churned in her face, as she struggled to think of a way out. Then, the fire went out, and she sighed.
“Fine. Better than being stranded in space forever.” Hyacinth nodded and brought his tablet over to her.
“Just speak your councilmember authorization code and state your intent to change your vote.” She nodded.
“Captain’s authorization code 952806,” she said.
“Acknowledged.” Rosetta’s voice intoned, her omnidirectional voice once again blaring at incredible volume in their eardrums, as it that was her only way to punish her insubordinate wards.
“Initiate turnaround operation immediately, using the one undam—” Hyacinth clapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late.
“Acknowledged.” There was a terrifying shake as everything in the server room moved around them. The rotational thrust generated some slight centrifugal gravity, and everything that wasn’t tied down in the computer center began to drift upwards. Aspen caught a glimpse of Rowan’s notebook. The screen flashed red. The rest of the countdown to the last detonation had been replaced by a 15 second countdown when Rowan’s system detected the thrust. Aspen frantically looked around until they found what they were looking for. Hanging from the tangled mess of cables was Rosetta’s personality core. They trained Jasmine’s gun at the cube of black plastic. This time, the click of the trigger was accompanied by a hot, fast slug of metal. Aspen shot until the cube was fully obliterated, and the cables that had once been connected to it sparked helplessly. The countdown on Rowan’s laptop stopped. Four seconds remained. Chrys began to cackle hysterically, and Carnation’s sobs grew louder, as the chest of his mother to which he clung began to shake. Hyacinth looked at Aspen. Aspen handed him the paring knife.
“Cut her away from the server rack. She’s no use tied up in here.” Hyacinth nodded. Carefully, the two of them maneuvered two large masses out of the computing room into the wide atrium, one being the limp body of Basil, the other the combined shuddering mass that was the cackling, broken golden captain and her traumatized son.
Once they were in the atrium, they drifted into the dome of the atrium. In this part of the ship, the rotational motion generated by the captain’s last aborted command meant that there was once again a definitive sense of up and down, only it was reversed. The centrifugal gravity was nothing close to what they were used to under the full thrust of the Yggdrasil’s main engines, and movement was closer to what they had felt in zero-G over the last hour. Still the slight pull brought them to rest against the clear dome of the atrium, as if they were sitting in an empty bowl. “Below” them, where before they had seen a static starscape, centered on Gardenia, the Milky Way now drifted languidly, showing stars that hadn’t been glimpsed by the Yggdrasil in decades.
The bowl of the atrium that they sat in was mostly featureless, and they needed something to tie the captain to. The closest suitable feature was a branch of one of the trees, whose branches stretched towards them from the garden floor that now seemed like a ceiling. Bounding in great arcs, Hyacinth and Aspen positioned Chrys securely in the tree. The captain was limp and mute, resigned to her fate, and she didn’t resist. They positioned her so she sat on one of the great branches like Aspen had many times as a child, only she sat upside-down. Hyacinth and Aspen secured her in the branches but left one arm free, once they were sure she couldn’t escape. Carnation nestled into his mother’s free arm, and the two of them glared contemptuously down at Hyacinth, Aspen, and the unconscious Basil in the atrium bowl from their perch in the upside-down tree. Basil had started to mumble a few words.
“Can you take him to the infirmary, and make sure he gets stabilized? Free Rose from her quarters on the way. I’m sure she’ll be full of questions, but once she sees there’s a patient that needs treatment, I’m sure she’ll go with you to the infirmary.”
Hyacinth nodded. “I’m going to get Cypress too. Now that Rosetta’s gone, her computer’s unlocked and I can message her. She’s scared out of her wits, and she doesn’t have anyone.” Aspen’s heart grew heavy at the thought of the effervescent little Aspen, and the horrible situation this traumatic night had thrown her into. They nodded.
“All, right, grab Cypress too. If you get Basil stabilized, come back here with Rose and Cypress. Maybe there’s something Rose can do for Jasmine. But Basil’s the first priority. Keep me updated.” Aspen noticed that their computer’s functionality had returned as well. “Don’t unlock the other quarters yet. I don’t want ship-wide chaos, and I only want to explain things once. Also, there’s something else I have to check on.”
Hyacinth nodded, grabbing Basil’s hand. “I’ll go now.”
“Wait.” Aspen said, stopping him. “You did well today, Hyacinth.”
He smiled sadly. “It’s not over yet.” With that, he jumped with the mumbling Basil. He climbed through the branched of the upside-down tree, past the captain, up through the spiral staircase.
Aspen turned away and jumped toward their observatory. Once inside, it took some finagling, since everything seemed to be upside-down, but they were able to hook themselves into the chairs at the telescope workstation. They flicked through the logs of what the telescope had seen in the last few minutes. On the visual spectrum, all the Yggdrasil saw was a sea of stars, like it had seen before. However, on the radio spectrum, Aspen’s heart leaped as they saw there was a storm of noise being received. Aspen saw callsigns from other XCS ships, and other ships besides with call signs they didn’t recognize. A barrage of information was flowing between the scattering of ships behind the Yggdrasil, and Aspen was almost overwhelmed by curiosity. They could tap into just one of those transmissions and, no matter what it contained, whether it was a television show or a navigational positioning message, Aspen’s world would expand beyond the Yggdrasil for the first time ever. However, there was something else they needed to see first. Entering parameters they knew like the back of their hand, they pointed the Yggdrasil’s main telescope at one specific spot in the sky behind the Yggdrasil. As the great ship rotated two, then three times, it gathered light data from one specific yellow star, and the dot that orbited around it.
Finally, Aspen’s computer displayed a spectrogram of Earth’s atmosphere. Their heart sank. Earth had undergone the worst fate imagined by the Continuers. The information about the condition of Earth when the Yggdrasil launched had not been doctored in any way. Earth had become a mini-Venus, and the spectrogram painted a picture of a hellish Earth. Perhaps there were microbes clinging onto volcanic vents deep in the ocean. Maybe there were even people living underground. But the spectrogram told Aspen everything they needed to know. No significant human civilization could survive on Earth. All that was left was the scattering of starships, led by the Yggdrasil.
Aspen’s pocket computer buzzed with a message from Hyacinth. “Basil’s going to be ok. Rose strapped him into a bed and gave him some drugs. It’ll take him some time to recover, but he’s stable for now. I’m returning with Cypress and Rose.. P.S. If you haven’t already, there’s a post form Rowan on the ship-wide bulletin that went up a few minutes ago. I think you’ll want to see it, if you haven’t already.”
Aspen left the observatory and sat cross-legged in the bowl once again before opening the bulletin on their pocket computer.
“Hello Crew! If you’re reading this, it means my gambit worked, and you’ve thrown of the yoke of Rosetta. Good job! Take care of yourselves, and please don’t let things go to shit while I’m gone. Also, now that Rosetta’s privileges are gone, the ship’s entire information system is open to the Crew. There’s a file deep in Rosetta’s archived systems that I’ve always been curious about, but never been able to hack my way into. I have my suspicions about what it contains, but I can’t be sure. It may be of interest to you, so I’ve linked the filepath. So long, Crew, and take care of each other.”
Aspen clicked the link, and once they understood what they were reading, they couldn’t help but laugh. The file was titled “Crew Genealogy”, and contained an entry for every crewmember of the Yggdrasil, living and dead. Paired with each name was another, archaic Earth-style name, a small description, and a number with a strange symbol next to it. Aspen found the entry for themself.
“Aspen: Veronica Ahlberg: Asteroid mining executive: Contribution: $1.6 billion” They had a suspicion and scrolled to find the first captain.
“Goldenrod: Rod Sterling: Real estate mogul: Contribution: $2.4 trillion” They scrolled further and found two more entries.
“Chrysanthemum: Samantha Sterling: Daughter of Rod Sterling: Contribution: see entry for Rod Sterling” and “Carnation: Nathan Sterling: Son of Rod Sterling: Contribution: see entry for Rod Sterling”
Aspen laid back on the slightly curved dome and laughed. Rosetta had never done any complex genetic manipulation. Everyone on the Yggdrasil was a clone of someone born on Earth, someone who had paid a tremendous amount of money to have their DNA shipped to the stars. And Goldenrod, or his template, had been the man with the most tremendous amount of money of them all.
“Hey Captain!” they called, “Did you know the son you’re raising is actually your brother?” The two gazed down at them, Chrys’ face blank, Carnation’s confused.
At that moment, Hyacinth, Rose, and Cypress drifted into the atrium. They fell slowly from the spiral staircase, through the branches, and towards the bowl. As they slid past the Sterlings on their perch in the tree, Cypress chirped brightly.
“Hi Captain! Hi Carnation!” The captain couldn’t contain a laugh.
“Hello, Cypress.”
The three landed in the bowl. Rose looked at Aspen. “There’s more patients?” she asked.
Aspen nodded. “Three, though they’re all most likely dead. One’s in the computing core, one’s in the council room, and one’s in the captain’s quarters. Check the computing core first, she’s the one most likely to be alive.” Rose nodded and bounded in that direction.
“Did you check on that last thing?” Hyacinth asked. Aspen nodded, still lying on the bowl of the dome. “What did you find out?”
“I’ll fill everyone in at once. Unlock the Crew quarters and tell everyone to meet here in the atrium.”
Hyacinth punched some commands into his computer, and then looked around, taking in the atrium and the ship as a whole. “What are we going to do next?”
Aspen sighed deeply. “Vote.”