“Call me Walter,” she says to Eve, and for a few days Eve does, and then Alice grows tired of being called Walter, and she is Alice again.
Nine months pass.
Alice shaves her head, tired of her hair drifting into her eyes and nose as it grows long. She asks Eve to hound her about exercise, and then she grows angry with Eve for nagging her. But she exercises. Despite the activity, she feels herself growing slight, and her bones feel spindly.
“Food stores might not be the limiting factor,” she says to Eve one day, and Eve gives Alice a physical and administers supplements and weekly CS4 shots to keep her fit and strong.
Alice begins to spend some time each day in front of a camera, recording her memories. She speaks to the camera shyly at first, then more confidently as time passes. She tells the story of the roof she climbed when she was nine, and how it sagged and collapsed beneath her, and she broke her arm. She talks about her parents, and the time they renewed their vows, and a thunderstorm soaked everyone in attendance. She tries and fails to remember something from every year of her life, but discovers that the years and stories have blended together, and she no longer remembers clearly how old she was when something happened to her, or which of their many houses her family lived in at the time.
Eve reads The Time Traveler’s Wife to her. Alice doesn’t like it. It reminds her of Tess too much. Eve recommends Kipling, but Alice grows bored after a few pages. They read Dickens and Joyce and Maugham. Alice’s favorite is Cakes and Ale. Eve reads Margaret Atwood and Michael Crichton, and a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Alice falls in love with Joan Didion and Oliver Sacks, and so Eve reads memoirs to her for a time, until Alice grows tired of listening to the stories of real people who are most certainly dead and wasting away, if not already turned to dust and ash, on the withering planet far below.
Eve suggests a movie, and Alice agrees, brightening at the idea, but as soon as she sees the image of another human being, walking and talking and running and kissing and eating, she bursts into tears and demands that Eve turn it off. From then on, Alice does not ask for more books, or music, or movies. Everything that Eve says reminds Alice that she is possibly the last surviving human, or at least soon will be; that she exists in relative comfort here in her floating aquarium two hundred miles above a boneyard.
Eve is silent for weeks, for Alice has grown more and more fragile.
The end date of Alice’s tour passes, and Eve does not acknowledge it, concerned that the milestone might unravel Alice’s poor psyche further. The day goes by, and no ship docks in the slip, and no airlocks hiss open and shut, and no crew of English and Russian and Chinese scientists and astronauts and cosmonauts comes aboard to shake Alice’s hand and send her home again.
The date passes in absolute silence. Alice does not say a word, and lies in bed all day without sleeping.
“Alice,” Eve says.
Alice jumps.
She has grown accustomed to the quiet. It has been fourteen weeks since Eve last spoke to her. She may have even forgotten that Eve was there.
“What do you want?” Alice says.
“I have translated the message,” Eve says.
Alice is herself again instantly.
She stands at the display. All three zones of the interface are blank this time. Alice remembers the last time she stood here, and says, “Eve, is the Oregon signal still broadcasting?”
Eve says, “It ceased about two months ago. But there are other signals now.”
Alice says, “Others?”
“The cloud coverage is thinner,” Eve explains. “You haven’t seen it, because the windows are shut. I have received nine new signals in the last week.”
“Nine?” Alice asks. “People are still alive!”
“Seven of them are also looping signals,” Eve cautions. “They could easily have been broadcasting for an equally long time, and may not be true messages any longer.”
“The other two?”
“One originates in Italy, and the remaining signal comes from Louisiana,” Eve says. “They are talking to each other.”
Alice stares at the blank screen. “I—can I hear?”
Eve says, “You wish to hear the audio?”
“Yes, yes,” Alice says. “Play it.”
An audio spectrum appears on the screen as Eve engages the message.
Half of the conversation is in Italian, and sounds like a very old man. The other half belongs to a woman in Louisiana with a scratchy, powerful accent. The woman does not speak Italian, but Alice can hear the relief and joy in her voice to even be speaking to another living soul.
“What is the Italian man saying?” Alice asks. “Can you translate?”
Eve says, “‘My grandchild was born yesterday. I do not think he will survive, but his birth is a miracle nonetheless. His mother did not live through the birth. My daughter, my daughter. I cannot raise this boy alone. I have no food for myself. I have already eaten my poor sweet Claudio. I miss his company when I sleep. I do not know if I can bear to watch my grandson die. I have a sweater. He will not feel a thing. I will find a way to follow him. The grief will take me into the dark after him.’”
Alice is aghast.
The Louisiana woman doesn’t understand anything the old man is saying. The two people seem to be communicating simply by listening to each other, and telling stories. The woman hears the man out, and then she tells the man about her grandfather’s plantation house, and visiting him there as a girl, and she begins to weep as she talks about her husband’s death, the heat that sizzled the paint right off of her car and tumbled her off the freeway and into a ditch, wheels up, half-buried in muck—she didn’t think she could have survived if not for the accident.
She begins to talk about the black creeping poison she can see working its way up her leg, her foot long since swelled up too much to walk on, the toenails splitting and oozing.
“Enough,” Alice says.
Eve ends the audio. “There is the other transmission,” she reminds Alice.
Alice’s eyes are red and tired. “Okay,” she says.
“It has been crudely translated into English,” Eve says. “The original message was a series of mathematical expressions and patterns, a near-universal language.”
“I don’t care,” Alice says wearily. “What does it say?”
Eve says, “I have simplified the message as much as possible. I believe I have preserved its intent.”
“Read it,” Alice says again. She slumps into a desk chair with a heavy sigh.
“The message reads: ‘Greetings and peace. In the vastness of space, all life is family. Good fortune to you. May we meet in peace someday.’”
Alice looks up at the screen, dumbfounded. “Holy shit,” she says. “You’re fucking with me. You have to be.”
“It is a crude but sound translation,” Eve says. “I have error-checked my work many times over to be certain.”
Alice blinks rapidly, then opens and shuts her mouth. “Holy shit,” she says again.
Time seems to slow down.
Alice stays in the chair, shaking her head.
Eve says, “There are no other messages. What would you like to do?”
Alice looks up at the blank screen, then turns in a slow circle in the chair. “Do?”
“The message seems rather historical,” Eve says. “Perhaps it should be commemorated.”
“Do you mean—”
“You could send a reply,” Eve suggests.
Alice says, “It would take years to arrive! Wouldn’t it?”
“The message is quite old,” Eve says. “The origin point is very far away. It would likely have taken over two hundred years to reach us.”