The Garden of Eden Page 2
he'd been very afraid that after the first mistake they'd surely fire him and he would have to sluff off back to Earth and his old life and a very pitiful death, he'd put a few more mental checks in place. There was no way he was going back to his crappy old life if he could avoid it and he figured that he’d get no more second chances so he’d better make this count.
He didn't understand the technical details of how he was supposed to stay alive for nearly a thousand years, but he got the gist of it. In effect, once he was in the command seat, they would slow his system down to the point where he was very nearly dead, but still alive. It wasn't much different from the colonists who were in suspended animation in the cargo bays except that he would be awake while they were in sleep mode before they were 'slowed down.' They would sleep for a millennium; he would remain awake for it.
"The longest day ever," he commented when they explained the process. The forty something year olds had gotten a kick out of that.
As far as duties onboard went, he understood that he was basically a Human Reset button for the ship. In the event of a catastrophic failure, he would be 'wakened up' immediately and then he could reactivate certain key colonists who could actually solve the problems encountered. He had almost asked why he was necessary, why the machine couldn't have just awakened the slumbering colonists, but he thought better of it. You never wanted to work yourself out of a job. So he simply settled on the idea that he was the ultimate failsafe for the human race's glorious expansion to the stars.
To alleviate his boredom, he would be patched into a satellite feed from Earth that would send him all the news that humanity deemed important enough to transmit.
"But if I'm slowed down," he'd asked when they were explaining, "how am I going to understand what's coming in? Won't it be like listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks on meth?"
The resulting technical answer boiled down... the onboard computer would slow down the data to match his heart rate, so everything would seem normal speed to him and he could fast forward or rewind at wish.
"Okey dokey," he replied happily, as if he understood anything more than the simplest bits of what they said.
The first decade of news came at such a rapid pace that he could hardly keep up. Here and there were ever-worsening disasters, most of them blamed on everything from human contribution to a moody Mother Earth letting loose. An undersea earthquake in the Indonesian Archipelago caused a massive tidal wave that claimed over a million lives despite the early warning system implemented nearly a century ago. El Niño’s, La Niña’s, and a few El Tios caused famine, droughts, floods and the like, claiming scads of human lives. Then there were the politics and wars, seemingly incessant and increasingly more bloody. Technology seemed to leap forward like it had a mind of its own. The things that earthbound humans could do by the end of that first decade amazed him. Perhaps there would be no need to colonize the stars. Perhaps tech advances could save the day.
Over the next half century three great pestilences obliterated several large cities around the world before scientists could get a handle on the cause. A great clamor arose, clergy calling the pestilences a sign of the Apocalypse, politicians blaming it on espionage, and everyone so terrified to leave their homes that the world economy collapsed. It took two generations for a semblance of the previous world order to come back online, but not before several more wars claimed a great many lives.
Then came the First Great Disconnect, which is what Oscar named the period of time in which the feed from Earth was cut. As near as he could gather, the funding for the program that kept the communications system alive between The Garden of Eden and Earth was cut. One short clip appeared before the feed went out, citing the lack of response from the ship as proof that the entire program had been nothing but a waste of time. It was believed that the ship had somehow met its end and therefore there was no need to continue to maintain the expensive, power hungry systems needed to broadcast news to a lost cause in deep space.
Oscar didn't know what to do when the screen went black. He sat stunned for several minutes, waiting for it to come back on, but when it didn't, he began to search through the last bits of the news articles, finally settling on the 100-word clip that explained the defunding.
He mulled over his choices. There had been something a long time ago about what to do if the feed went out, but his decrepit memory played with him, hiding that crucial piece of information from him. As he began to search for an instruction manual in the ship's computer, the video feed came back on. The time and date stamp at the bottom of the screen indicated that twenty-one years had passed on Earth.
"Hmm, strange," Oscar commented. Instead of news bits and articles, the only thing on the screen was a page of instructions, white letters on a red screen. He read the instructions. At the bottom of the page came the imperative to push a series of buttons in a particular manner in order to indicate that the ship was still alive and viable. He followed the instructions. A few minutes later the feed resumed. Another ten years or so had passed and mashed into the blob of news packets was an article about the 'discovery' of the great colony ship, which had been 'lost' for over thirty years.
Now that the machinery had been fixed, data to and from the ship was able to float both ways. The data from the ship simply indicated to Earth that the ship was alive and well. News to the ship was the same things over and over. Men fighting nature, nature fighting men, men fighting men. It was disheartening. When would people learn?
"Jump ahead," he called out to the monitor and the next few Earth centuries passed by like he'd hit the fast forward button on the video player.
There were a couple of blips on the video feed where everything went black again but it only lasted for a few seconds. Earth was still tracking The Garden of Eden, passively monitoring its progress and each time the screen went black, it was quickly followed by a screen that read "Greetings Oscar, we had to replace some parts, but everything is working again." It made him feel good to know that he was not forgotten. Even he felt lonely sometimes- he, who hated most people, except Charlie- and it was nice to have someone acknowledge your existence. The greetings pages were always followed by a quick news blast, catching him up on everything that had happened in the gap. That only served to slide him into a depression. Nothing ever changed on Earth. Politics, wars, natural catastrophes. Deaths, births, marriages. It all just went on and on, repeating the cycle. Did God ever get bored watching his Creation tread the gerbil wheel of existence? He was beginning to think so but there was nothing for him to do but watch the screen and absorb humanity's celebration of repetition.
Centuries -Earth centuries- passed.
The computer would soon begin to speed him up to normal time in anticipation of the ship's arrival at the colony planet. He pondered his future and humanity's. He would die soon enough after arrival, as he was well aware, his contribution to humanity over. But he would most likely live in stories for a while, maybe centuries or even millennia, but after that, who would remember or care about an old man who simply drove the bus from one planet to another. In all reality, history would correct his contribution and relegate him to the redundancy that he was. Most likely, he wouldn't even have to touch another button or execute a meaningful command to ensure that the great ship would enter into a successful orbit around its new home, so what real purpose did he serve? None.
Several times he wondered why he'd bothered to take on this assignment, why he hadn't gone dutifully to his grave on Earth. Each time, something deep within him answered the question. He wanted to be immortal. Didn't everyone? This was his ticket to immortality.
He continued to monitor the feeds from Earth as the distance closed between the Garden of Eden and Earth 2, as he called it. It never got any better. Two steps forward, two steps back, sometimes even three steps back. It was infuriating to know that humanity hadn't really evolved over the last several hundred years. Indeed, it hadn't evolved that much in the several thousands of years of its exist
ence. It was no better than a parasite, leeching off its host and slowly killing it, and here he was, making it possible to restart that process on a new planet. Humanity was no better than a virus attempting to infect the universe. Maybe the Universe would be better off without humans and their drive to ruin things.
Eventually, the ship's sensors picked up the new planet and were able to show it to him on his screen. Surprisingly, it grew quickly on the screen. A light lit up on the control panel in front of him. That meant, if he remembered correctly, that the ship would begin to slow. It would also begin to bring him closer to his normal active state. The journey had reached a crucial stage. It brought anxiety to his chest. Why?
Why am I anxious? Why?
That little voice that had shadowed him his whole life answered, as he knew it would. You're anxious because you're torn. You want to be immortal, but you don't think humanity should be allowed to propagate its special brand of stupidity, that's why. So what are you going to do about it?
He wrestled with that dilemma for what seemed to him to be weeks. There was no real way to tell how long he mulled it over. Time