The resurrected man spoke. His accent was thick and difficult but ultimately comprehensible. It unsettled Ruslan, but not in a bad way. It was as if his insides had momentarily turned to jelly. The man was speaking in the tones, in the highs and lows, of old Earth. Like him, the speech he was employing was an artifact… an artifact brought back to life.
Something bumped Ruslan’s left side. Wide-eyed, Cherpa had moved to stand next to him. Together they listened raptly to the upright relic.
“My name is Nashrudden Megas Chin.” Prolongation of the ensuing silence jolted Ruslan into realizing he was expected to respond to this introduction.
“I’m called Ruslan. I’ve forgotten my other names. When you’re the last of your kind, you tend to shed extraneous information pretty quickly.” He nodded to his left. “This is Cherpa.”
“Mated?” the revivee asked politely.
Ruslan wondered if he was blushing. Somehow, when another human voiced it, the query came out sounding entirely different than when it was propounded by a Myssari.
“No, no. A friend.”
“A very good friend.” Reaching up, Cherpa put a hand on Ruslan’s shoulder. “He saved me. Saved my life and my mind.”
“Others?” the man asked. It struck Ruslan that Nashrudden was no more voluble than the AI that had revived him.
“Some children,” Ruslan told him. “Our offspring, produced through artificial insemination. Our Myssari friends are looking after them.”
“Myssari?”
“A nonhuman species.” Ruslan did his best to explain. “One of the alien intelligences humankind always believed were out there. They exist, and there are many of them. They arrived in our area of the galaxy just as the Aura Malignance was killing off the last of us.” Curiosity was turning to empathy. “I’m guessing you have been contained in this place for at least a couple of hundred years.”
“But not you.” The more the man talked, Ruslan reflected, the easier he became to understand.
“No.” Once again Ruslan nodded toward Cherpa. “There may be others, but as far as I know I’m the only one on my homeworld, Seraboth, who was born with a natural immunity to the plague. Likewise Cherpa and—one other—on her world, Daribb.”
The newly resurrected man nodded understandingly. “You also cannot be carriers. If that were the case or if any vestige of the Aura Malignance remained on Earth, the Preservation Project system would not have allowed me to be revived. I know: I helped to design it and oversaw much of the final construction and installation. It is because of my knowledge of the system that I am first to be revived. It means that this world, at least, is clean. It may be hoped that the same is true of all others. Without humans in which to propagate, the Malignance should have long since died out. As we again move off-world we will be cautious, just in case. A repeat of the cataclysm cannot be allowed to happen.”
“The Myssari will help,” Ruslan said encouragingly. “They have an entire scientific branch devoted to the study of our species and its culture. So do the Vrizan, and probably some of the other intelligences as well.”
“Other intelligences.” Nashrudden shook his head in disbelief. “A difficult concept for one of my time to grasp. I wonder if their scientists could have found a way to halt the plague. Something else we will never know.” His expression brightened. “But my revivification proves the Earth is free of the Malignance. We will not repeat the mistakes of the past. This world and the others our species settled will once again resound to a multiplicity of human voices and the full range of human activity!”
Ruslan and Cherpa exchanged a glance before he replied. “Concerning that, there are good things to say. But there are also some… complications.”
With her help he proceeded as best he could to fill in the scientist on two hundred years of missing history—and the current sociopolitical reality in this human-blighted corner of the cosmos.
No one knew how much time had passed since their disquisition had begun. No one much cared. Nashrudden Megas Chin was both fascinated and much pleased.
“Instruments were set in place to unobtrusively record everything that might transpire since the Project was initiated. The results of that effort will eventually be scrutinized. But they cannot, they could not, record for posterity the events of elsewhere. I am indebted for your input on the state, however sad, of the colonized worlds.”
“I’m sorry I can’t remember more, or in greater detail.” Ruslan was apologetic. “I’m—I was—a mid-level administrator, not a historian.” He glanced at the young woman next to him and smiled. “Cherpa was too young and put-upon to be anything except a survivor.” He turned back to the scientist. “What happens now?”
“Continuance.” Raising his voice conspicuously, he addressed the unseen but omnipresent AI. “Install patterns two through eleven.” With a smile that was almost shy, he added, to his new companions, “My coworkers. Once they are revived, the Project can resume in earnest.”
Frowning, Ruslan indicated their surroundings. “We haven’t explored every corner of this chamber, but it doesn’t seem big enough to hold or support very many people. And what about food and water?”
“Did you think this single room was the extent of the space accorded to the Project?” Nashrudden gestured at the floor. “This is only the uppermost, supervisory level. Many others lie beneath us. All were stocked with carefully prepared long-term supplies. The same is true of similar installations hidden elsewhere on the other continents. But this one, this place, was designed to be reawakened first. My colleagues and I are the scientists, the designers, the engineers, the technicians. First we are revived, then we can more speedily awaken the others. The Project’s reach is wide.” Turning, he started toward the ten now fully occupied cylinders. “Some of my friends may find resurrection disconcerting. I need to make myself available to reassure them.”
Ruslan gestured toward the cylinders. “This is all very different from a similar arrangement I saw on Treth. There the bodies were held in a liquid suspension.”
“I imagine that when the Aura Malignance struck, the science here was more advanced than anything that was achieved on any of the colonies.” Standing at the foot of the nearest cylinder, Nashrudden watched as the light enveloping it began to intensify—a now familiar development to the two onlookers. “It’s easier to preserve individualities and memories when they’re separated from the physical corpus. Restoration involves reintegration of non-corporeal memories with the original biological form.”
Shielding his eyes from the intensifying glow, Ruslan struggled to understand. “You mean you removed the memories and thoughts of everyone who was stored for later revival?”
“Not removed. Copied out. Restoration involves writing over the original. The result is the same.” He smiled anew, though Ruslan could hardly see him now through the intense auroras that enveloped all ten of the cylinders. “I certainly feel the same.”
A question had been bothering Cherpa. “Why would a system designed to preserve humans when everyone else was dying off need a live human to reactivate it?” She gestured upward. “Would the supervising AI periodically sweep the surface for evidence of the Malignance and, after a reasonable time, awaken you if no plague was detected?”