She cheated and ate that one a few days ago, though it was June. It was better than her mother’s Thanksgiving dinner.
Eve remains inactive during Alice’s morning routine. Alice had asked Eve about that during her first tour. “Why do you need to switch off?”
“I don’t,” Eve explained. “But it’s been observed that you and the other WSA crew function better when given regular allotments of personal space. When do you prefer yours, Alice?”
So Alice had asked for the morning to herself. She knows that Eve isn’t really inactive, that she is never inactive. Eve constantly monitors the Argus’s many systems, and speaks up when she needs to inform Alice of something that might warrant attention. But when she’s officially “active,” she’s also a fair conversationalist, and Alice often finds herself craving another voice, even if the owner of the voice is a chipset somewhere deep in the space station’s brain.
Alice’s morning routine isn’t much different from any other she can think of. She imagines that a lighthouse keeper goes through similar steps, checking the bulb’s brightness, and—and what else? A lighthouse keeper probably isn’t the best comparison. Perhaps a night watchman at a power plant, tapping dials and nudging switches and writing down results and such. She’s amused by this, because her friends in Portland always assumed that her job might be sort of glamorous.
“I’m not much more than a house-sitter,” she often explains. “I make sure the toilets aren’t left running and the dishes get done.”
Eve wakes early today.
“Morning, Eve,” Alice says.
“There’s a beacon from Mission Control,” Eve says.
“You don’t ever say good morning, you know,” Alice grumbles.
She tucks her notepad into her hip pocket, then goes to the wall and yanks hard on a thick plastic handle. A wide desk tray comes down and snaps into place, and Alice flips open the keyboard and display that are tucked into its surface. The screen glows white, then blue, and she sees the notice from Control.
“It’s just a news bulletin,” Alice says. “It’s not even priority one.”
“I assigned it greater importance,” Eve says. “My counterparts at WSA recommended it.”
Alice taps the screen, and the bulletin unfolds.
Priority 2. Upgrade possible. Reports from D.C. that disarmament talks have broken down.
“Okay,” Alice says. She looks up and around, never certain where she should direct her comments when talking to Eve. “Is there something I should be doing about this?”
“It is enough that you are aware,” Eve says.
Now
Alice presses her hands against the glass. “Eve,” she breathes softly. The glass fogs, then clears.
Below the Argus, more explosions appear, even as Alice watches. She has a clear view of the States, and the explosions are happening everywhere. There are plenty in the big cities—New York is completely obscured behind rising, spreading black smoke—but she is stunned to see orange blossoms inland, in the deep Midwest, along the Canadian border. There are more than she can count within moments, and before too long she realizes that she can actually see the missiles, like tiny, glowing sparks kicked up from a fire and cast into the grass.
It occurs to Alice that she should be documenting this. Somebody will want to write the chronology of events, and her unique vantage point would be invaluable to them.
“Eve,” she says. “Take video beginning twenty minutes ago.”
A tone chimes, and Eve says, “Retroactive video recording begun.”
Alice clears her throat. “Audio, Eve.”
Another tone. “Recording.”
Alice is quiet for a long time. She watches the Earth below sizzle and burn, and the detonations, so small from her viewpoint, begin to spread. South America, falling into shadow as the planet turns, spits and dances with light, and Alice finds it difficult to breathe. In the east, on the farthest horizon she can see, are spiraling, twisting clouds, like enormous gray tree trunks pushing up from the ground.
“I—” she begins, and then stops. “This is Alice Quayle—”
Eve says nothing, and Alice fights hyperventilation, forcing herself to breathe slow and deep, slow and deep.
A few minutes later, she begins again.
“This is Alice Quayle, caretaker of World Space Administration station Argus,” she says. “Eve, time and date?”
“It is two forty-one Pacific Standard and WSA local time,” Eve says. “The date is June fourth, two thousand seventy-six.”
Alice swallows, then clears her throat again.
“Beginning about twenty minutes ago,” she says, “I witnessed the first of many—what appear to be nuclear attacks on the United States. I can see—oh god—”
She stops, watching as a fusillade of missiles collides with the East Coast like sparklers, and her breath catches in her throat.
“I—the—the eastern seaboard has just—has just been bombarded,” she continues. “I can see the incoming missiles. I—but I can’t see anything outgoing. Nothing—um—nothing is launching from the U.S.”
Alice opens her mouth to try to describe what she sees on the horizon, outside of the States, but Eve interrupts.
“Alice,” she says.
Alice turns away from the window and slumps against it. Her head falls back against the glass. The loose knot of hair on the back of her neck comes apart and spills onto the collar of her jumpsuit.
“Yes,” Alice whispers. She feels the effect of what she has seen like burning cinders in her belly. She wants to leave the window, to go to the command module, where the windows show only darkness.
“I’ve received a communication from Mission Control,” Eve says. “They’ve passed along a message from your wife.”
Alice’s eyes well up, and she slides down the window. “No,” she rasps.
“Shall I read it to you?” Eve asks.
Tears spill down Alice’s cheeks, and she presses her eyes shut tightly. She nods. “Oh, god, Tess,” she says, her voice tight. “Read—no. Yes. Read it.”
“The message is truncated,” Eve says. “It reads I love. That is all.”
Alice feels the wail rising in her throat like a nitrogen bubble. She opens her mouth, and it comes out and fills the empty corridors and modules of the Argus, and Eve is quiet as Alice slides to the floor of the water filtration system closet and sobs.
She wanted to be an astronaut.
Her fourth-grade assignment, still tucked into the pages of her memory book, was the first recorded expression of Alice’s dream. What I Want to Be When I Grow Up, by Alice Jane Quayle. Her mother had treasured it, happy to see Alice dreaming of something significant. Over the years she’d collected photographs of Alice, more records of her progress: Alice in cap and gown; in her flight suit on the deck of the U.S.S. Archibald; in the cockpit, waving at the camera. A picture of Alice and Tess standing in front of the WSA museum in Oregon. Another of Alice climbing out of the training pool, weights still strapped to her arms and legs.