Category: Fiction

Work

Bonus Short Story: The Plague

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

That horizon ahead? It used to be alive. It was more real than the stars and a million times brighter, like someone had cut holes through reality to the multicolored fabric beneath. The glow could be seen for miles, and it would’ve rushed toward you as soon as it would’ve appear from nowhere. That was before everything; before the misery, before the plague, before the end of the world.

It didn’t happen like we thought it would. There was no nuclear exchange. No zombie outbreak. No horsemen. There was just sickness, death, the stink of poverty and grief. Even the war didn’t really hit us in the States, not until the retaliation strikes wiped us out. It was our own fault.

I remember hearing the air-raid sirens; It was one of those typical Tuesdays, or as typical as they’d become with the state of things. The media were screaming nonsensical ravings about imminent destruction. They’d always done that though, the narrative had just changed, the rhetoric shifting from general to pointed. Instead of offhandedly implying certain things would cause a certain end, news-anchors and pundits began to say this would cause that end. It was all very intentional, charismatic fear-mongering, but no-one thought they’d be right.

It wasn’t like we’d have been able to do anything about it anyhow. The US economy had collapsed, just like most others’, and the rest of the world was following more by the day. Most of us had leveraged our national assets to the Chinese in exchange for debt relief. After all, they had the largest workforce in the world, and with their communist-state becoming more democratic by the day, they were on the rise. Debt relief came in the form of trillions of dollars, but with the obvious caveat that those whom defaulted forfeited those leveraged assets. What a fucking mistake. It was the worst bargain ever, and no-one I know– or knew– thought otherwise.

But the politicians and governments thought it was the greatest thing since sliced-bread. The propaganda, media-machine kicked into overdrive, and we started hearing more about how good it all was and would be. All the while, people were getting more and more angry, protesting and threatening to riot, feeling more and more as if they’d been sold into slavery. Eventually, they were proven to have a point, but at the time, everyone was too angry to speculate.

We should have though. All of us. Maybe then someone would’ve hit upon the kernel of truth in what was to come. Maybe, just maybe, we’d have seen the shit-storm on the horizon and been better prepared to batten the hatches when it arrived. We weren’t and that’s ultimately how that horizon died.

Every country has its own story, but as far as the US goes, it was the steel industry that went first. American steel had built the world for almost two hundred years, but coal had become scarce, oil more expensive, and exportation more difficult. Tariffs and embargoes, imposed by the UN countries, eventually forced us to close up shop, but not before our number one industry was bled dry by money-hungry vultures.

Hundreds of thousands were suddenly, and immediately, out of work. Their Unions threw them to the wolves, then fought for the scraps before ending up euthanized by political mistakes and missteps. When the unemployment rates came in, they’d tripled. The next election cycle proved to only be a catalyst to the chaos, with both sides proclaiming to have the answer. They were easy answers to extremely complex problems though, and everyone with sense worth a damn saw it. Funny, it still didn’t save us…

The problems spread; without cheap, easy access to steel, the auto-industry went belly up. It didn’t hurt that our Chinese “saviors” were the new, number-one steel producers, and were hiking their prices up higher than a whore at a garter-convention. It was probably the first time in history the Chinese had managed to piss off both Americans and Russians in such equal measure.

Of course without the auto-industry, public sectors began to break down. Everything from public transit to car-dealers felt the blow. The big three were dead, and like big-steel, had taken a large portion of the country with it– to say nothing of the culture around them. Then, because of the lack of vehicles, big-oil took the hit too. They rode out the end of the world in style, of course, still able to export most of their stock, but to an utterly discarded reputation state-side.

Only a few of the newer, electric-car manufacturers seemed to hold to any scrap of hope, but the tech still wasn’t there, and the cars cost twice the average salary. In a country with a 30% unemployment rate, it wasn’t hard to see how fast they were going to fail if they didn’t compensate. Eventually, their compensation killed them off anyway. With them went any hope of renewable energy alternatives– and a few-hundred-thousand more jobs.

With all of that upper-middle class money gone, simple things like supermarkets and department stores started closing down. Unemployment shot up to 50%, the rich got richer, and the poor were so destitute most were dying. Even the government couldn’t help anymore. Most of their biggest money-making assets had been snatched up by Chinese companies to pay back the debt. It wasn’t long before it was merely simpler to close-up shop a world away and bring the businesses home.

It was total, economic collapse. The only thing we had left was the military, and it was the only time their bloated, runaway budget had ever seemed like a good thing. It had given them fiscal padding, enough to keep soldiers, sailors, and fighter-jocks in chow and shelter. Eventually though, the bombs fell, and none of that mattered anymore.

I couldn’t tell you who shot first. Maybe it was us. Maybe it was them. Both sides had good reasons. We were biting the hand that fed us, bitching and whining alongside the rest of the world, while the Chinese were trying to slap us down for it. I guess I don’t disagree with their stances; we made the deal and failed to uphold it. They merely enforced the terms and we turned on them for it. Whoever shot first seems less important now that everything’s gone. Or rather, now that everyone is gone.

We thought they were nuclear ICBMs when we saw them on the news. A couple of sat-images and alarms came blaring in over the televisions on emergency broadcasts. The Air-force scrambled squadrons to intercept, but the Chinese had been expecting it. They weren’t nukes. They were chemical bombs filled with something called Substance-42. It was like a combination of chlorine gas and Ebola. The first people dead were the pilots, but it didn’t matter, we’d done exactly what they’d wanted.

We blasted apart those ICBMs mid-air and the resulting debris contaminated the entire country. In less than a month, it was the continent. Four-hundred million people died in the first two months. Most of the rest went in the next few; twisted, mangled corpses of either retching poison-victims, or blood-drained casualties. It was like someone had opened a vein on the world, replaced the oceans with blood.

Those of us immune were considered lucky. Sure, lucky…. Lucky is dying in your sleep after a long, full life, or hitting the lottery and retiring early. Nothing about this was lucky. The ones that died were lucky. They didn’t have to watch the world go to an even deeper hell than it had been in.

But I did, because I survived.

Without industry, and with most of our country dead or dying, the war ended. Before the TV-stations went off-air, they’d said that the infection had just hit mainland Asia and was sweeping Europe. Even some dumb bastards who’d fled their countries had managed to infect Australia and most of the world’s islands.

I don’t know how many are left, but I know we’ll never survive. The virus they used mutated, killed off most of the animal life. If you can even find it to hunt, you eat it raw or over pioneer fires. Nothing else in this world works anymore. All the fuel is gone, all the public utilities, all the power, water, and heat.

I don’t know how long I’ll survive, but I’ve only seen a few people since the war ended. Terrifying, considering how dense and overpopulated Chicago used to be. I know there aren’t many of us left now. There isn’t much of anything left, really. Maybe the Chinese didn’t unleash a plague, maybe they’d just harnessed it– or maybe, just maybe, they’d eradicated that last true plague on the planet; humanity.

We were a blight on the universe, it seems. I guess now that we’re all dead the scales are balanced again…

Hijack: Part 2

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

2.

Like most of her drivers, Gail didn’t have much of a home life. She lived and breathed asphalt and exhaust, time-tables and invoices, miles to go and miles driven. Mostly for the sake of paperwork though, she kept a small place near the garage, along with a beat-up, 4-door Chevy more often parked in Lone-Wolfe’s fleet-yard than the rundown place she called home.

She fell into bed sometime around noon. The mattress was a decade past its prime, still barely used. It was small. Home was small. Everything was. Not having many possessions nor sentiment did that, Gail guessed. Keeping three-quarters of her wardrobe in a duffel bag probably didn’t hurt. The few pairs of jeans, t-shirts, and underwear would get her through whatever haul she’d be on. All of it was topped off by a tattered jean-jacket and a pair of steel-toe boots that left her without shoes every time they were resoled.

She hit the bed, passed out in more clothing than usual, shit-kickers included. The haul had been easy for someone rarely needing sleep. It was one of the few things she knew made her a great driver. Unlike most people, she only needed four and a half hours sleep. Anything more or less and she was wrecked, but four and a half was the Goldilocks zone.

Four and a half hours later, she was up brewing coffee and squeezing into her train-compartment-sized bathroom to shower. By the time she was out again, it was a quick redress and mugful of sludge-black coffee before heading to the garage. The beater coughed out rust as it started, then did its job carrying her to work. She sympathized.

Coming home to find M-T’s suits in her office had left a bad taste in her mouth. It lingered, spurred by an accompanying stink of something like a high-end cologne bath mixed with money and the pig-stench of greed. She’d hauled everything from manure to sulfur over the years, and nothing was ever quite so rancid as a wealthy asshole. The more there were, the worse it got, too.

Her arrival preempted the shift-change. Before long, Walt Thacker was forced to belly away back and away from his desk like a slug. Gail watched him disappear from the outer-office as she refilled her mug with black sludge and Brianne Hampton sauntered in. The penultimate sweetheart of the office, Brianne made every man in the company salivate over– and every woman envy– her hourglass figure, big tits, and plump ass.

Gail had never understood the fixation on Brianne’s “type.” She agreed she was an attractive girl, but apart from being good with numbers, she didn’t have much personality. She was a blank page of dullness that sometimes reflected other peoples’ color, but also happened to be the daughter of an old friend Gail had owed a favor to. If it weren’t for Brianne’s father, Murphy, Lone-Wolfe would’ve never gotten off paper. The least she could do to repay the debt was hire his airhead daughter for dispatch work.

“The rather succinct gist of it,” Gail had once told Darian, her chief-mechanic, was that Murphy had run his own shipping business for decades before getting heavily involved with the Union. The “friend of a friend” situation connecting the two gave her an in to the Union. Even with a rig-license, and thirty years of political progress, the Unions were still largely male-oriented. Murphy’s acquaintanceship overrode that, at the promise that she one day return the favor.

When that marker was called in, Brianne was hired, no questions asked. Gail had since sussed out that Murphy had been investigated– and eventually tried and convicted– of bribery. The loss of his kickback-fueled income to a family on caviar and wine tastes was jarring, but so long as Brianne remained useful, and didn’t screw the company like she screwed everything else, Gail didn’t care.

A newspaper plopped onto her desk from the body in front of her. Carl Reyer was awake for once, and dreadfully alert to the world around him. He nodded at the paper between them, and she unfurled it to read the headline; “NHSB to Local 413: Integrate or pay-up!” She looked to Carl over the paper, “Who the hell d’they think they are?”

“What matters is the content,” he said dismally.

She skimmed the article, “National Highway Safety Bureau has received reports citing… non-integrated trucking as number one cause of accidents!? What the fuck?”

“Flip to the back.”

Crinkling newspaper flapped and folded. She skimmed some more, read aloud what she knew Carl was intending her to find, “According to a study conducted by Mechanized Transports.” She lowered the paper, “Those asshats are actually trying to spin this against us?”

“Not just us,” Carl reminded. “The whole industry.”

Gail gnashed her teeth together, growled from the back of her throat. Anger seemed pointless, especially given the article wasn’t directed at her, but for the trio to have come in on the morning the paper was printed showed just how they felt about the industry around them. It was as if thousands of jobs and livelihoods were no more than pawns in a game of money. She wanted to shout, but could only manage a frustrated sigh.

She folded the paper up, gave it back, “Give me some space, Carl.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.”

She knew as much; her fury was something of a legend, though it was rarely directed toward her employees. Unless they’d severely screwed the pooch, it was generally directed at corporations, competitors, or politicians. The lines her employees couldn’t cross had always been thick enough that it wasn’t often someone toed them, but when they did, Gail gave “Hell hath no fury,” new meaning. For now though, she wasn’t going to scream or rage. She needed to think. She wasn’t even sure why, or what about, but calm was necessary.

Beyond the office, Carl passed Brianne and Jude Gardner on dispatch. It was looking to be a quiet evening after an even quieter day. Only a few rigs were out at the moment, and running two dispatchers was more for keeping the place staffed in case of emergency rather than out of need. Brianne was on auto-pilot. The twenty-something was an air-head at the best of times, but that transitioned to ace dispatcher when necessary. Even though her mood never seemed to change, nor her dolled-up face for that matter, she knew her job. Most everyone figured it was a savant-like trait– something had to fill up that head when the oxygen content drooped.

Something was different now, Jude noticed. Brianne was poised over her keyboard, hands working as she hailed a driver over the headset. A lack of external sound from the noise-canceling headsets dispatchers wore was usual, but it seemed more poignant. The edges of Brianne’s figure hunched toward her screen with a hand at a headphone, tension outlined her joints and limbs. Jude’s heart leapt into his throat; everyone knew Brianne rarely reacted to things, that she was, terrified him.

He nudged a speaker off his ear. “Bud?” Brianne said in her nasal-tone. “Bud? Come in. I didn’t–”

An alarm screamed in her headphones. It was so loud she threw them onto her shoulders and yelped. Jude was up. Gail heard it, threw open the door to her office, and jogged over. Carl peered in from a doorway. Darian and his crew appeared behind him, pushed for views of the scene. Gail heard the alarms; the tracking software was programmed to alert of various events in certain ways. From the sounds of it, this was a critical alarm. A rig was in serious trouble.

“What is it?” Gail asked, bracing against Brianne’s desk and chair.

Brianne rubbed an ear, “Buddy. Ferrero. Running aluminum to Schaumburg on a short haul.”

Gail looked over the status warnings on Brianne’s screen. They were red and yellow, flashing. This was critical. A fire in the engine somewhere. Based on the codes being thrown out, it had to be near a fuel source. What was more worrying though, was the “Collision” and “Unbalanced Load” alarms. The truck hadn’t just caught fire, it had hit something and overturned first.

“Pull up the dash-cam,” Gail ordered.

Brianne’s fingers worked. Dash-cams had been added years ago to better capture accidents and resolve insurance disputes. Fifth-wheel and trailer-cams had been installed as well, but neither would be as important given the fire. A video player flashed on-screen, buffered for a few seconds. It gave way to a bright-orange glow that obscured everything but curls of black smoke at its sides.

“Trailer Cam,” Gail said.

Brianne keyed it up. The afternoon road behind the trailer was tilted left, ninety degrees. Worse, a line of cars had piled up along the left side of the road. A few were utterly totaled. Gail’s heart was in her throat. Blue and red lights flashed. Squad cars bounced along the median and shoulder, rocketed toward the trailer. A pair of cruisers sped past, another pair forced their way over to set up a perimeter, begin directing traffic. A news chopper hovered in the distance. From the angle, a few miles back, but enough to catch the line of cars probably stretching for hours backward. More emergency lights flickered in the camera’s periphery, red and white; fire-trucks and ambulances. EMTs rushed over the median toward the worst cars. More lights, more EMTs, fire-fighters.

Gail became acutely aware of the group at the door shifting behind her. Jude still had one headphone on beside her to monitor his frequencies, but he stared, open-mouthed. As if instructed to by Gail’s thoughts alone, Brianne pulled up the dash-feed beside the trailer-cam.

Jets of water and foam rained down the windshield. Like the trailer, the rig was on its side, obvious from the angled, flashing lights of fire-trucks on the road ahead. The fire was shrinking, but anything beyond the storm of fluids was impossible to discern. Shadows flickered behind the camera, as if from lamps casting back-light on the camera’s view. It took a moment for the washed-out color to re-focus. When it did, the bulk of the rain had fallen away to streams trickling along gravity’s pull. Bodies of firemen and EMTs were formed up around the right edge of the view, by the looks of it, all working together. Gail knew what was about to come next, but she shuddered anyway.

Buddy Ferrero’s dark-skinned body peered from between the emergency workers that rushed him across the feed. Someone fought to fit a mask over him and squeeze a breath-bag. Buddy disappeared behind the cluster of bodies that rushed him to the median, reappeared for a moment as he was lifted, then disappeared as the group reformed. They rushed him to the rear of an ambulance, then dispersed as the doors shut. The ambulance pulled a U-turn through the gawker’s pace of traffic, and sped away with lights flashing. They watched until it became a mere blur of color, and disappeared.

Gail’s shaking hands pushed her upright. She glanced ahead and sideways, “Jude, Brianne, get back on the radio. Darian?”

“Yeah, boss?” The slim, jump-suited, black kid replied.

“I want you in my office. Pull all of Buddy’s routes for the last month. Go through them one-by-one, starting with today’s. Find out what the fuck happened to that rig. I want a month’s worth of history. I’ll be back in to review everything soon.”

“Sure thing, b-boss,” he stammered, mind caught in what he’d seen.

“Marla, you’re with me,” she said to the tomboyish girl now standing where Jude had been.

“Whatever you need, Gail.”

“The rest of you make yourselves useful, help where and how you can. If you’ve got hauls, check your rigs now,” she instructed, heading for the office to grab her jacket.

Marla followed her to the door, hands in her jump-suit pockets, “Where’re we going?”

She grabbed her jean jacket from the chair Darian sat in, handed him a two-way radio, “If anyone calls us, let me know A-SAP. If it’s the press, hang up.”

“Got it.”

She pulled Marla along for the door and out of the offices, “I need a mechanic, and you’re the only one I can spare. Gerry and Simon are still rebuilding the alternator on Felicia’s Coronado.”

Marla followed her out to the beater Chevy, “So, uh… where are we going?”

“To Schaumburg. I don’t want anyone else examining that truck before we do.”

They slid into Gail’s car as she internalized her last thought; because this is way too fucking coincidental.

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Mr. Fizzie’s House of Tizzies

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Mr. Fizzie’s House of Tizzies,
where courageous cats meet buxom old bats,
and slithering snakes eat vile rattling rats,
and seldom sits the fury-faced gnats.

So come one, come all, this righteous fall,
for pigs in pants that tell crowds that chants,
of plans profound that’ll make ransom rounds,
of national nouns and kowtowing clowns.

Yes step right up, the future is fucked,
because outward oinkers are running rampant,
and glowing gaudy with envious-eyes empty,
while moral peasants gobble up their sparkling spunk.

It’s the Outrageous Orangutan vs the Mad-Hatted Hag,
and neither nitwit is more than a personal puppet,
for their monstrous masters and controlling corporate cum-pit,
and they’ll sell our souls for green and gold greed.

So cast your vote for the villainous goat,
and put your head to bed, to kiss your ass dead,
‘Cause at Mr. Fizzie’s House of Tizzies, it’s quite a pity,
to be one who’s witty,
for no matter which way you vote,
the result’ll be shitty.

Short Story: Home

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Resplendent beams of gold waved over the rusted horizon. The rays winked and glittered along frost-tinted ground, rebounded off it and back up into the atmosphere. The soil had long been deprived of life, or so the surveys had said. In its absence, only clumped balls of hard minerals remained. Every handful of dirt grabbed up, held against only until a slight pressure pulverized it to dust.

The gloved-hand of Mars-one’s Dr. Cameron Markinson did just that. She let the Red-Planet’s malnourished life-blood trickle through her fingers. It caught a north wind, whisked away and dispersed until invisible. Lead-weight steps of low-g boots deposited a figure in place beside her; Commander Mackenzie Williams, always an imposing figure, made one feel he was in their space even at a respectful distance away.

Today was no exception, but neither felt the usual awkwardness from it. It was a new day. One for the record books– the ages, so to speak. Both of them sensed it. The truth of it infected their every breath, each one that much softer, gentler. Something colored the space between them, made even Mac seem smaller, while their forms were dwarfed by the awe-inspiring humility of events around them.

“First sunrise on Mars,” Mac said.

Tears wavered beneath the awe on his tongue. Cameron sympathized. She felt her eyes welling up, preparing to rain behind her helmet with vain hopes of watering thirsty ground. The sharp pain in her chest was as much welcomed as embraced.

“Six million years of Evolution,” Cameron said. “Two-hundred and fifty-thousand years of Human existence, five thousand of recorded history, and we’re finally home.” Her voice stiffened a little, “It took us a less than a century to go from ground-confinement to exploring the solar system. Imagine what we’ll have in another century– or even a millennium.”

Behind his glass face-plate, Mac smiled. He patted a shoulder of her suit, “C’mon, we’ve got work to do.”

He turned for the shuttle, but she lingered a moment before following him.

Mars-One’s shuttle, Verne, looked for all the world like a streamlined city-bus with millions of dollars more investment to it. Its infinitely more complex systems didn’t hurt the image, and its 747-like cock-pit managed to contain twice as many instruments and systems as a the jumbo jet into even less space. Technology was like that; unrelenting, pervasive, even astronauts were just well-educated techies at heart.

Half the cock-pit was used to communicate and monitor Verne’s docking cradle alone. Orbiting the planet, it was a veritable hotel for cosmonauts, and the only way-point between Earth and Mars’ surface. It was the sole place capable of harboring life outside Earth’s orbit. Even the shuttle itself could only power their suits’ oxygen, and otherwise was merely an airtight coffin for anyone seeking refuge.

But coffins weren’t needed here. The International Cosmic Exploration Agency, or ICEA, had made sure of that. Even a total-systems failure on the shuttle had been compensated for. Excess resources and parts aboard the orbiter could be shot down like one of Heinlein’s bouncers, aimed by the pair of crew still aboard. The canister would reach the target area in less than ten minutes, and could be repeated almost ad nauseum to ensure any problems were repairable.

Cameron and Mac worked to roll out metal cases and tubular contraptions for the next hour, aligning a series of large cylinders and various-sizes of steel and aluminum parts into formations. By the time “tank change” came, the items were separated into several, individual piles, each with angled sheets of aluminum, steel cases, cylinders, hoses and nozzles, and a plethora of fasteners and tools. Once assembled, the seemingly innocuous conglomerate of spare parts would form a fleet of UAVs that would begin laying down high-level nutrient sprays.

In the fleet’s wake, the orbiter would launch specialized seed-pods into the sprayed soil. The hardy seeds, genetically engineered for the Martian atmosphere, would theoretically take root in days. A month from now, Cameron and Mackenzie would return to check the results of the growth. If the seeds had taken root, and truly appeared to be surviving the harsh-Martian climate, phase two of “Habitat Reformation” would begin. It had become Cameron’s sole, life pursuit.

A little less than a decade before, she’d broken ground in astrobiology. It was the only reason she was on Mars now, why she wouldn’t have let anyone go in her place: While analyzing Martian soil deposits from the first, return-probe, striking similarities appeared between impact craters on both Mars’ and Earth’s surfaces. Rigorous testing proved conclusively the two shared a cosmic connection.

That connection, Cameron soon concluded, was the impact of a sole asteroid on Mars’ surface. Ejected debris from the impact was launched through the skies, into space, and eventually into Earth’s atmosphere, carrying microbes formed from an unknown, primordial ooze on the Red Planet.

Another probe Cameron designed, tested, and launched, eventually proved what many in the scientific community had begun to suspect; Earth’s life was alien. More specifically, it wasn’t Earth’s life on Earth, it was Mars’ life. The revelation of life being “extraterrestrial” took the world by storm. Space-exploration was suddenly reinvigorated. The ICEA formed to compensate for the sudden cascade of researchers seeking funding for space or Mars-based experiments. An influx of private investors, millionaires and billionaires with passions for science, quickly helped fund them.

But Cameron’s vision was different. Eventually, it had taken her to Mars, to home. The primordial ooze that had formed life, she reasoned, could not be understood until “home” or its history was. With Mars’ life no longer theoretical, only one option appeared to remain open to her. Most of her learned colleagues agreed; they needed to return home, begin seeking answers in their true birth-place.

Mars’ life may have merely gone extinct, some said, unable to thrive in the harshness of multiple impact events. It was probable even, others added, that the same impact transferring the microbes from Mars to Earth, had eradicated what remained of them on Mars. Most agreed, the impact had effectively launched a time-capsule, that opened prematurely on Earth, and thrived in its complimentary conditions.

There was no confirmation of whether the asteroid was responsible for the extinction, nor if the life had continued thrive before dying off from something unrelated. As Cameron saw it, there would be no further confirmation of their place in the universe until Mars was made habitable. After all, it had taken hundreds of years and countless naturalists to piece together even an infinitesimal amount of understanding regarding life’s formation on Earth– or rather, its evolution after arriving on Earth. That wayward life, now searching for its origins, simply couldn’t do so properly until it once more inhabited its home.

Over the course of six hours, and several air-tanks, she and Mac constructed and scrutinized the UAVs. The drones had enough battery-life, solar-panels, and payload to work unaided for a week. As the harsh winds grew colder, and the skies dustier and pinker from particulates, the last of the UAVs was assembled and tested via comm-connections to the orbiter.

When all was green, they stepped back to watch. As if launched like rockets, the UAVs sprinted into the distance, gained altitude. They came about in formation, fanned out, and separated for pre-programmed zones. They sank toward the ground, disappeared against the red-orange with streaks of invisible hope on their tails. In a month, the two cosmonauts would return to find life thriving, or dying, then try again, or continue the search for their true history.

Mac patted Cameron’s shoulder again, then made for the shuttle. She lingered once more, her mind on only one thing; Humanity had returned home, and begun to lay down its roots.