“Go,” Mother whispers, “you’re our last chance.”
I stand, confused, as she presses an activation key into my right hand, then runs along the corridor towards my father and the mob pressing against the hangar’s blast doors.
*
We’ve been spacers all our lives, living on the margins of existence. Trading goods wherever we can make credits, salvaging wreckage, fighting off pirates and raiders. The Federal Planetary Government doesn’t hold much sway out in the void, even though they’re becoming more authoritarian and imperialistic on the inhabited worlds. Rebellious types from beat poets to guerrilla militias had been crushed mercilessly according to rumour, but Father had dismissed the hearsay with a wave of his hand.
“No matter to us, girlie,” he’d said. “Go help your mother with the hull repairs.”
So, we’d continued salvaging, waiting until we were running redlines on fuel and could barely make it back before turning for the station in orbit above Gliese 667 Cc. Father was quietly pleased; this time, we’d discovered a meteor honeycombed with rare elements and had stripped it clean. He’d called it a goldmine, that phrase still in use despite gold being worthless these days. The discoveries in Proxima Centauri five centuries ago had seen to that.
As we drew closer to docking though, things became… unsettling. Standard hails went unanswered. Distress beacons gave fragmentary, garbled messages warning of the end times, and the latest automated news reports were dated six weeks prior. They spoke of a disease, a mass mental collapse triggered by corruptions in people’s neural interface processors. Skimming further back, it appeared that an exploratory ship had reported a First Contact event: the story had spread over MindNet faster than wildfire (another quaint phrase), and they’d been welcomed into the nearest port like conquering heroes. Then? Then disaster had struck and, because no one was isolated from the grid anymore, whatever had happened had sailed through all the safeguards. The breach had spread faster than any warning comms could be sent, or Security could react.
We’d been out of range for months and hadn’t automatically connected up when we re-entered inhabited space. I’d sighed at the time, Dad was so old-fashioned, and I wanted to see the VR-vids, but now I understood that it’d probably saved our lives.
*
The key is for our ship. The automated refuelling and restocking is complete, she’s ready to go. As I stare, the blast doors finally collapse and the hordes overrun my parents, biting, tearing, hungry. I freeze momentarily, then sprint back onboard, lock myself in, charge the weapons, and fire indiscriminately through free-flowing tears. They keep coming, these former humans, and finally I realise what Mother meant. I ignite the plasma drives, wait for the shuttle-bay doors to open, and accelerate out as bodies are sucked into the vacuum alongside me, still flailing wildly. Numb, almost by instinct, I lay in coordinates for deep space.
Shit. I might be the last real human left alive, what do I do now?
