Third Rock Read online

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Introduction

  There was only one dog on Libertas.

  When all but one human left Libertas with no intention of coming back, there had been no plan to leave a dog there. Poydras was supposed to go back to Hodios and on to other worlds with those humans who had not been exiled.

  But when Poydras saw her person there, alone, she couldn’t let that happen. It was her obligation to be the loyal companion of her person, no matter what happened. To be left as the only dog on a planet with only one person had not been what she expected out of her life, but it was what life had given her. Like any good dog, Poydras accepted it.

  As it turned out, life on Libertas was good.

  She had everything she needed: a good person who took good care of her. A safe place to rest her head. Enough to eat.

  What she didn’t have, she didn’t truly need. What she didn’t have was only what she wanted. To see other people. To have the companionship of another of her kind. She would be happy without those things, but she would be happier with them.

  The only dog on Libertas didn’t know that, sometimes, getting what you wished for did not turn out the way you expected.

  Chapter One

  The man watched the Bird lift off from the surface of the planet that was, with the ship’s departure, his home.

  Libertas.

  Liberty.

  Freedom.

  With the departure of the Bird and everything he had ever known and loved, but for the dog standing at his side, Whittaker Roberts now had more liberty and personal freedom than any human had ever had.

  He intended to make the most of it.

  *

  Hodios I – Several Days Earlier

  Iris placed the drone in the large bag sitting on the lab table in front of them. It joined three other drones and a selection of lab supplies inside of the satchel.

  “You’ll get a printer in your supplies,” Iris said. “I’m guessing the most I’ll be able to swing for you will be a very rudimentary one, and you’re not going to have much in terms of raw materials to put into it. These drones will help you get a mining operation started on Libertas. If I were you, I would get mining up and going on planet, since you won’t be able to do asteroid mining. With my first extractions, I would start creating more drones. But on the ground, the situation may be different. So you’ll just have to make a judgment call about what you need to do when you get there.”

  Iris placed another drone in the bag. Whit put his hand on her forearm. “Iris, don’t worry about me. I’ll figure it out. I always do.”

  “You know, there’s still a chance they don’t do it. None of them want to.” Iris didn’t look at Whit as she spoke, not saying the word that had brought them to the lab that day. She didn’t have to say the word.

  Exile.

  Whit knew as well as Iris did that exile was now all but inevitable. It was such a certainly now that they were sneaking items to the surface of the planet so he would survive once he was left there, abandoned alone and forever on a planet with only the basic necessities for human survival: water, a compatible biology, and breathable air.

  “I don’t want to go over that again. You and I both know my mind is made up.” Whit took his hand off of Iris’s arm and went back to helping her pack the bag. Whit and Iris had already had this conversation many times, and both of them knew he wasn’t going to change his mind. Still, Whit was touched that Iris wanted to convince him to stay, even now when they both knew they were well beyond the point where his mind could be changed.

  He was going to miss Iris.

  “You’re going to get as wide a selection of seeds for edible plants, too.”

  “Iris, we’ve been over this before. I know what I’m going to have and what I want to do with it.” Whit knew Iris was just doing this partly to reassure herself that he would survive once he was left on Libertas. Perhaps it was just that now, able to count the time before his last hearing in hours, the possibility of exile had started to seem real.

  If it had not have been real, they would not be in the lab now, getting ready to sneak the materials and supplies he needed onto Libertas to do what he needed to do to survive on that planet. In an hour or so, he and Iris were headed to the surface, ostensibly on a research mission.

  If, by research, it meant that he and Iris were leaving items to allow Whit to conduct his experiments and have a chance at survival, then yes. They would be going to the surface of Libertas for research.

  Otherwise, this trip had nothing to do with research.

  A knock came at the door of the lab where they stood.

  Whit zipped up the bag holding the drones and supplies. No one beyond Iris and himself needed to know what was in the bag. No one else could know what was in the bag.

  At least, no one could know if Whit wanted to survive his exile.

  “Come in.” The door to the lab opened with a familiar whoosh. On the other side stood a slight, red-headed girl who entered as soon as the opening was wide enough to slip through. A brown puppy only a few months old bounded in after her.

  “Hi Dad,” Beryl said, walking over to the lab table where he and Iris stood, the closed bag in front of them. She walked into the lab like she owned the place.

  Whit realized that, with his exile, she would.

  “What’s going on?” Beryl plopped herself down on a chair opposite from where he and Iris stood, the bag of supplies headed to Libertas sitting between them. The puppy named Camp who had followed her in bounced over to an older dog asleep on its bed in the corner of the lab, greeting it with the buoyant, endless energy that all puppies possessed. The older dog nuzzled the younger one—her son—and the puppy bounded back to where Beryl sat, hoping to convince the girl to play with him. Or give him a treat. He wasn’t a picky dog.

  “Just getting some things ready for our trip down to the surface here in a little bit,” Whit replied, knowing that Beryl wanted to know what was in the bag, rather than what she had asked about. Beryl couldn’t help herself from wanting to know everything about everything. He and his daughter were so much alike in that way. He also knew she wouldn’t push wanting to see what was in the bag if he offered her something she wanted even more. “We’re prepping some new experiments to take to the surface. Underground experiments.”

  Iris
nodded her agreement with the statement. Without a word, the two had communicated everything the other needed to know about the situation.

  “Cool,” Beryl said, trying to act like she cared less than she did. How had she gotten old enough that she wanted to be cool? His little girl was growing into a young woman.

  And he wouldn’t be around to see any of it.

  Whit knew he couldn’t dwell on that now. He would, if all went well, have the rest of his life to think about that.

  “You know, there is space on the Bird we’re taking down . . . ” Iris let the last of her words fade in a suggestion, more than a statement of fact.

  “Can I go?” Beryl let any semblance of her pre-teen coolness go. She looked like someone who would be devastated if they told her “no” at this point.

  “I don’t know . . . ” Whit smiled, and he knew Beryl already knew the answer was “yes.”

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Beryl squealed, running out of the lab with her dog at her heels. She didn’t even say goodbye to them.

  Whit smiled at the door she had just run through.

  “I’ll send her the departure info,” Iris told Whit. “And let Rona know she is going to the surface with us.”

  “Thank you, Iris,” Whit replied, and Iris unzipped the bag so the two could continue filling it.

  Whit tried not to think about what both he and Iris left unsaid.

  When Beryl joined them on the surface of Libertas later that day, it would be the last time he and his daughter would get to spend any time together on the planet’s surface.

  Chapter Two

  Earth – Many Years Earlier

  Things had not been good in so long that the woman was beginning to forget what it was like for things to be good.

  But things had at least been bearable before.

  And then the forced separations began.

  The woman looked at the young girl sleeping in her assigned bunk. Her daughter. Four years old.

  No, five. The time blurred together these days, more than it had when she was younger. When all you wanted to do was survive another day, that was the way things went. One potential way to die to another, without even the chance to be thankful that you were still alive, or to keep track of the passing days and months and years.

  The young girl had already seen too much. If the woman hand stopped to think about it, she would have thought the same thing about herself. This was no way for a child to live. This was no way for anyone to live.

  And now, the woman knew, it was only a matter of time before the young girl was separated from her, her own mother. One day, the AI would take the girl. It would be under the guise of education, likely. Maybe if she developed a sniffle, she would be taken for health reasons. Whatever the concocted reason, the girl would be separated from her.

  At first, they would give her an excuse.

  When they didn’t bring her back, there would be no reason, and her daughter would be gone forever.

  They all knew if the AI came for a child, that child would never be seen again.

  And it wasn’t like you could do anything to keep it from happening.

  Those who tried learned the hard way that even your own children belonged to the AI.

  The woman, like all of them, knew why they took the children.

  If the AI took the children, it was all the better for the AI. If they raised the children, the children would never know anything but the AI as protectors and parent-like figures, to be trusted and feared all the time. Apart from their parents, the children would never hear about what life was like before the AI. They would never hear that there were humans out in space. Maybe those humans weren’t alive, but maybe—just maybe—they were. And maybe their lives were different.

  Maybe those humans would come back to Earth one day.

  To save humanity.

  How long had those humans been gone now? Ten years? Twelve years? It had been before the AI truly took everything over, but not long before that. It was, like her own child’s age, another difficult thing to remember with the blurred days.

  The AI called those humans who had left Earth traitors, but the woman knew better.

  They were the only hope for survival, wherever they were.

  The rogue humans on Earth who had defied the AI might be hope for now, but eventually, the AI would find and destroy all of them as well. Without the humans who had left to discover and settle other planets, humans on Earth were nothing but an endangered species.

  The woman knew what she had to do. But looking at her daughter, sleeping peacefully, she knew it would still be the hardest thing she had ever done.

  *

  The woman hushed the young girl.

  It was not the first time she had done so since they had left their quarters.

  The girl was tired and wanted to be anywhere other than where they were, huddled in a doorway, just out of the pouring rain. Still, the doorway wasn’t entirely protected, and they were getting splashes off of the ground and from the rain falling off of the side of the building.

  That building stood at the edge of the fence surrounding the town where they were now forced to live.

  Somewhere in the pounding rain, a light flashed. For a second, the woman thought it was the patrol, coming through on their rounds early, but she realized it was just lightning when the thunder crashed almost immediately afterward.

  The storm was close.

  It was both a blessing and a curse. In this weather, no one would expect someone to be making a break for freedom.

  Unfortunately, if you were someone attempting to make a break for freedom in this weather, it made life much more unpleasant. Besides the obvious difficulties of doing anything in the rain, the intermittent light from the flashing lightning provided a chance for those attempting to escape to be seen by those who would have them not escape.

  The woman took a deep breath in, smelling the humidity of the warm air before it quickly filled her lungs. There was something of a grassy, nature-like smell on it. Here on the edge of the compound, there was still something natural to be smelled and experienced, unlike the rest of it. Everywhere else, life now smelled of industry and metal and plastic.

  The woman missed the smell of nature.

  Just a whiff of the world beyond the compound gave her a boost of adrenaline to get her movie.

  The woman knew what came next in her plan would be the hardest part. Not just because it might be physically taxing, but because once she did this, she would be past the point of no return.

  If she quit now, she could just take her daughter back to their quarters and pretend like none of this had ever happened.

  Once she crossed the fence, though, there was no coming back.

  At least, there was no coming back in a way that she wanted to experience.

  Another flash of lightning and an almost immediate crash of thunder let the woman know the storm was on top of them.

  Then, another, longer flash of light.

  The headlights from the patrol car.

  It was right on time.

  The woman hoped the car couldn’t see them from where they would pass by on the outside of the fence. She huddled over her daughter, who sniffled but didn’t put up any protest at her mother’s seeming affection.

  Driving slowly, the patrol car drove by. Through the rain, the woman could see the dark outline of a person standing in the bed of the truck, aiming a light at the various buildings inside the compound, scanning them for anything unusual.

  The woman said a silent prayer. She hadn’t done so in years, but the words came back as if she had regularly thought of them. She prayed the known words, then she prayed that the light wouldn’t hit them where they stood. And if it did find them, she prayed their figures, dressed in dark clothing from head to toe, would blend with the building behind them.

  She willed her daughter to continue to be quiet.

  The truck passed by, its engine’s noises drowned out by the sound of the p
ouring rain.

  The man operating the light passed it over the building in whose doorway the woman and her daughter huddled. The woman knelt over her daughter, willing herself to be even smaller than she was and to make her daughter quieter than the girl wanted to be. The light seemed to linger on them as the truck passed, as if the man operating it suspected he could see something in the doorway, but wasn’t sure. Then the truck drove on, continuing its rounds of the perimeter of the town.

  The woman took a deep breath.

  It was now or never.

  They only had a few minutes until the next patrol came around the perimeter fence. It should be plenty of time, but there were so many things that could go wrong.

  She grabbed the hand of her young daughter and knelt so the girl could see her face.

  “Honey, you have to come with me out into the rain now,” she said.

  “I’m tired. I want to go back to my bed. I have school tomorrow.” The young girl wiped her right eye with her free hand.

  “I know that. But tonight, we’re going on a little adventure in the rain. You can tell everyone all about it tomorrow.” The woman hoped there wouldn’t be anyone for her daughter to tell about their adventure. At least, not anyone at her school.

  “An adventure?” The girl perked up a little at the potential that something exciting might happen. There was little exciting in her life.

  “A huge adventure. Like something out of a book. We’re going to go to the other side of the fence.” A flash of lightning sparked across the sky, and the woman saw that her daughter was wide awake now, wondering what would happen next. “But you have to do exactly as I say. Do you think you can do that?”

  The young girl nodded.

  “Good. Hold my hand and follow me.” The young girl placed her hand in her mother’s. The woman rushed out of the doorway toward the fence. The little girl kept up well.

  The woman knew there was an opening in the fence near there. It was sometimes used by a few of those in town to get to the other side of the fence, where they could find volunteer crops in the fields that were once grown by their fellow humans. Those who were brave enough to risk a trip to the other side of the fence were sometimes rewarded with delicious looking food, instead of the slop that the AI fed them.