And then she didn’t have her Slate! How the hell was she supposed to make her pitch without it?
And where were her pants? What was she thinking, going out naked from the waist down?
It made Megan Stewart feel cold.
She shifted on her bed. Ouch. That didn’t feel right—
She opened her eyes. Why was she in the backyard? And where was Rachel—?
Then she sat up and began to tremble. The dream was already returning to the place dreams go. Here was the reality . . . she had been sleeping in the open air next to a rock, said air and rock being part of the environment of the Near-Earth Object Keanu.
Another figure lay next to her . . . the girl Camilla. Across from her, her husband, Zack. Beyond him, the white cylindrical vehicle known as rover Buzz.
It was morning, at least as far as her biological clock was concerned.
Oh, yes, she was alive again after being dead for the past two years. She had been resurrected somehow, on another planet.
Among other sensations—rather far down the list, but still worth noting—her throat hurt. For that matter, she ached everywhere.
“Hey,” Zack said, waking up and trying to stretch in his EVA underwear—never a flattering look. “Good morning.”
“You don’t look very comfortable.”
“You don’t, either.” That much was obvious as Zack slowly rose to his feet. “How did you sleep?”
“What was it I used to say? ‘Like the dead.’ Now I know what that means.”
He got that cautious look on his face, one she had learned to recognize. “So what does it mean?”
“Well, I misspoke. I’m alive, right?”
“But you must remember . . .”
“Being dead?” How did she answer that? She wasn’t entirely sure herself. She had fragmentary memories of the accident. Her frustration with the weather, with Rachel, with Harley’s attitude. The truck suddenly filling the view. She hadn’t had time to feel fear. Just a moment of—surprise. “Some of it. It’s like the dream you can’t quite bring back. I know part of me was floating. Flying, actually.”
“Or just disembodied.”
“I like my word better. But, fine. And I was bombarded with images and memories and . . . stuff.”
“No visits with dead relatives? No Uncle Marty or Nana Becky?”
“Yes and no.” She really didn’t want to be debriefed—she was hungry and needed to urinate, not necessarily in that order. But, like therapy, this was helping her remember. “I knew they were out there. That everyone was out there, if I would only reach out.”
“Only the deceased?”
“No! Everyone. Everything. People, animals, rivers, even planets! The Sun! I was . . . connected. Which is why disembodied is the wrong word, so there. Your fire’s out,” she told Zack, pointing to the pathetic pile of coals. “And I’m going to find . . .”
Zack pointed directly away from the rover, which was at his back. “There are some tall trees that way.”
“You’re such a dang Boy Scout.”
Like any human, from time to time, Megan had wondered about her own death. Would it be some long, slow fade-out with cancer or pneumonia—or perhaps worst of all, dementia? Or a violent lurch from this world to the next?
The real issue had always been, Would you want to know it was coming? She had had mixed feelings about that. The long, slow fade-out, dying in bed in the fullness of years, great-grandchildren gathered around . . . knowing you were slipping away, feeling, if not exactly eager, then at least accepting of the inevitable . . . that had its attractions.
Well, now she had some hard data. She knew that a person didn’t just switch off. That old line about not knowing what hit you? Total bullshit. She felt the impact of her face on the window of the car. The sounds! Metal. The snap of bone—her neck? God! It made her sick to think about it.
Camilla was up now, too, chattering in Portuguese. Lucas and Natalia must have heard her, because they suddenly appeared from the rover with water and food.
As the two Brahma astronauts tended to their charge, Megan asked again about Rachel. “You have to tell me everything, baby. If you ever want to hear about the Architects, that is.”
So, as they ate what appeared to be oatmeal from a bag and sipped orange juice from drink boxes, Zack spoke about Rachel, her struggles after Megan’s death . . . her smile, the joy he took in rediscovering his favorite movies with her . . . her moodiness . . . her refusal to play the piano; it all bubbled out of him almost too easily, without censorship or structure. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“What?”
“You let her give up the piano! I’d have screamed at her to stick with it.”
“You mean, screamed more.” Zack smiled. Megan liked that. It meant that he was relaxing. “So, what happened to my video?”
“Oh, it was aired on GoogleSpace, won a posthumous Peabody, and is now required viewing for every spouse in the space program.”
“Good!” She picked up the camera from its spot atop Zack’s discarded space suit and handed it to him. “Make sure you record the sequel.”
Zack aimed the camera at her. “Any time you’re ready . . . why not tell the world about the Architects?”
She realized that she did know something about them—as if she’d learned it in her sleep. “Well, they’re millions of years older than we are . . . the human race, I mean. Even their sense of time is totally different. A day for them is like a whole week for us.”
“Compared to the Architects, we’re mayflies?”
“Something like that.”
He thought. “They’re powerful enough to raise the dead.”
“So it would seem, but don’t ask me how.” She nodded to Camilla. “Maybe she’ll know. Maybe each of us has a different piece of the puzzle.”
“Where are they from? How far away? How did Keanu get here?”
“I don’t know where they’re from—obviously a star system at least ten light-years away, maybe more. But that’s just me, Megan, doing the math. As for Keanu, all I can say is they don’t have any faster-than-light warp drive. The Keanu trip took thousands of years.”
“What do the Architects look like?”
Megan tried to picture them, but failed. But—“Post-organic is the phrase or image that comes into my head. They used to have bodies, but over time, as they made genetic improvements, they became more and more like machines.”
It was like reading a book. Every one of Zack’s questions triggered some kind of response—either an image and a set of terms, or a blank page. “Something happened a few tens of thousands of years ago and they realized they needed to devolve, to be organic again. Which is what they were looking for with Keanu. They found other races, including the . . . the Sentries. But none of them seems to have worked out.” She could feel herself getting excited, speaking too fast, as always.
“‘Worked out’ how?”
“I don’t know. I just get images of other beings and a feeling of failure.” In fact, it made her uncomfortable. “You asked about the resurrectees. Keanu isn’t just a ship or a transport, it’s also a space probe. It gathers data wherever it goes. It gathered us as soon as it came within range. . . .”
“Two years ago?” She was nodding. “So it has some kind of . . . soul catcher. Which means humans do have souls and consciousness does go on after death . . .”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Megan said, holding up her hand. “I have to stop.”
“Is something wrong?”
She had a terrific headache. “I think I may have overdone it,” she said, forcing a smile. “Not enough bandwidth.”
It was a good moment to break: Taj and Tea were returning, and after scattered greetings, the talk turned to the discovery of the Temple. Taj held up his camera. “Let me find the footage and I’ll play it for you.”
Zack turned to Megan. “Do you know anything about a Temple?”