How to Save the Planet 03

Thank you all so much for the comments you've been leaving! Your feedback is really helpful to me, and I'm glad so many people have been enjoying the journey so far. I hope you enjoy part three as well!

I stared at the text on my phone for more than an hour before the battery died. Then I sat with the blank screen and remembered it. Justine had left. She'd told me to my face that she'd see me at the apartment, then packed up her stuff and driven home to her parents.

The text hurt to read. She'd apologized. She'd explained, I guess, although none of it made much sense to me. We'd been warned about the end of the world, she was treating it as a real prediction, and yet... she ran. Justine had decided that, if the world really were ending, she'd like to spend it being happy.

And, somehow, that meant leaving me behind.

That was the thought that broke through the numbness. I set my phone on the charger without really thinking about it, went into the kitchen, and got myself a drink of water. And I started to think.

I was still there a fair while later, holding an empty glass, when Evan came back in. He was quiet about it, closing the door so gingerly behind him that I barely heard the lock click. Somewhere past all my racing thoughts I realized he was trying not to disturb me.

"Hey," I said.

He poked his head into the kitchen. "Hey man," he said quietly. "I didn't know you were out here."

I nodded. I realized I was still thirsty and started to fill my glass again.

Evan stepped into the kitchen. It occurred to me that he was looking very closely at my face. "How are you doing?"

I chuckled. "It sucks." I tossed back half the water at once, wishing it was something stronger.

He nodded, too hard. "Really sucks."

Evan paused, but when I didn't have anything to add he continued. "You can... totally sit out the alien stuff. For now, or as long as you want. We've got it covered."

I finished the water. "I was thinking about that."

"Yeah," he said. "The way..." he gestured vaguely. It seemed like he was afraid to mention Justine too directly, in case it was still too painful for me to think about. It was, but it wasn't. I wish I knew how to explain that.

"Yeah," I said instead. "Yeah."

I filled up the glass again, filled a different one and handed it to Evan.

"I'm still in, though," I said. It was what I'd decided, standing over the sink.

"It's really okay," he assured me.

I shook my head. "No. No, I don't think so. If all of this is true, if it's the last gasp of humanity, if an alien flower and its tiny pet construction team are the only thing we have on our side --" I laughed a little. Not because it was funny, but because I was saying all these things so seriously. And because the fact that it wasn't funny was hilarious.

I wasn't even making sense to myself. Probably I needed to catch up on sleep. Or at least drink more coffee.

"If it's all true," I went on, "then there's no point in making excuses. Even if shit sucks, even if Justine's --" my throat tightened, but I went on, "even if Justine's out, I gotta stay. Because it's about as important as anything could be. I don't really get what's going on, I dunno what I can do, but I'm in. I think we all have to be in this all the way."

Evan patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. "Nice speech, general."

I laughed, and this time it was a real one. It felt good. It felt very good. "Shut up, man."

He grinned. "All right. If you're in this, want me to catch you up on what we talked about just now?"

"Only over a beer," I said, grabbing a pair from the fridge.

"So," Evan said, once we had settled into the living room chairs, "our little space invader can't decide if the apocalypse is nigh, or if there's hope for us yet."

I frowned. Did Justine leave for nothing? "It sounded pretty sure before," I said.

He shrugged. "Yeah, but it searched its memory banks or whatever and dug up some more detailed protocols. Stuff it didn't need to make contact, but that we can use now that we've accepted its help."

Evan sipped his beer, some hoppy craft ale that Rosemary had bought in bulk before the weekend. She always refused to get cheap, staple college beers, but she also picked up most of the price difference. It wasn't like she couldn't afford it, so we all mostly went with it. Maybe the rest of us couldn't taste the difference, but none of us had a problem with how much stronger they tended to be.

"Basically," Evan went on, "it wants to do as little as it possibly can. Remember how it was talking about low impact intervention, or whatever?"

"Mmm."

"And how it couldn't make a detailed prediction of what our problems were, that it didn't have the info?"

I frowned. "Did it say that while I was gone, or this morning?"

"Both." Evan pursed his lips, taking on a quavering, schoolteacher tone. "Were you not taking notes, young man?"

I waved a hand at him, almost spilling my beer. I hadn't eaten, and it was some kind of imperial, double, strong-ale something-or-other. It was going straight to my head.

Evan laughed. "Yeah, it took us a while to really get into what the flower meant. It knew about the predictions that said we were in trouble, but not what any of those predictions were. Forecasting the end of the world needs a bit more detail than the weather, I guess."

"Imagine that."

"Imagine that," Evan agreed. "Anyway, we could maybe plug Cybeline into a few supercomputers and let her crunch some numbers --"

"Uh --" I started to say.

"I know, I know, nobody wants Skynet, but it doesn't matter anyway. She said it's not even about the data, or the processing power, she doesn't have anything to compare it to. She can't crunch the numbers without the algorithms, or databases or something. Not without studying Earth for a couple decades to build up her own models."

"Which is kind of a long time."

"When the apocalypse might be coming, yeah. Kind of." He drank.

"So... is that it? We know even less than we thought we did?"

"I'm getting there," Evan complained. "Jesus. So. Cybeline can't remember what her makers said was going to happen, and she can't figure it out on her own. But, when she unpacked her memory, she found a way that she --"

"...can ask the makers," I guessed. There was something warm in my chest. Hope? I hadn't even realized how worried I had been. Somehow, without my noticing, it had started to sink in that we, and just about everyone out there, really might be in danger.

Evan nodded. "ET phone home."

"So... that's good, right? We pull up a zoom call with the squid people and they tell us what we need to do."

"Sadly, not that simple."

"Why, are they still using Skype? I'm pretty sure my old laptop still has it installed."

Evan grinned. "Let me make the jokes," he said. "You're too pretty to be funny."

"I'm funny," I protested. "Why did the... Irishman go to the convent?"

Evan gestured, go on.

I frowned. "It's... wait. Something about potatoes? Or sheep?"

Evan nodded. "Natural born comedian."

"Damn straight." I drank. "So why isn't it as simple as calling up the aliens?"

"Sounds like the mothership's probably out of range," Evan said, "past the orbit of Pluto and headed away from us already. Apparently they haven't cracked the whole speed of light thing, or at least they didn't let Cybeline know if they did."

"So 'not simple' actually means impossible?"

"Impossible to call the mothership," Evan said, "as far as Cybeline can guess. But we don't need to go that far. Their whole deal is minimum intervention, right? And they make it work by complicated predictions, all the data and algorithms that Cybeline didn't bring with. So they'll be watching us, trying to learn as much as they can from us whether we make it or not."

"Maybe letting us go down in flames," I said, "but doing better next time."

Evan shrugged.

"Helps us a hell of a lot," I griped.

"It actually might," Evan said. "This thing's not built compact like Cybeline. It's got storage space, it can remember all the predictions about what's going to happen with us. One option that she's meant to give us, one way we can try and save ourselves, is asking her big brother what he sees in his crystal ball."

He drank. "But Cybeline says big brother's not going to be hanging out anywhere near earth, since humanity's advanced to the point of launching satellites and probes. He's the shy, retiring type. At the distance he'll be keeping, Cybeline can't just call him up, especially since she doesn't know where he actually is. To actually make contact, we gotta make some kind of communicator."

"Can we do that? Build a space radio, or whatever?"

Evan shrugged. "Cybeline can. Apparently most of it's complicated, but not that big. We could hide it in a backpack, or one of our apartments. But... to actually send the message, we need an antenna."

"Shit."

"Yeah. It's not, like, as big as you'd think, for sending a signal that far. But it's pretty big."

I thought. "Can we go out of town with it? Out on the country roads?"

He raised his hands. "This is about as far as we got," he said. "Not making any decisions yet. Especially with you not there."

I was oddly touched. I'd had so little to say during the last few meetings that I would have expected them to just go on without noticing my absence.

"When are we gonna meet up again?"

Evan glanced at his phone. I couldn't see much, but I caught a glimpse of a whole bunch of text notifications. "If you're up to it," he said, "right now."

- - - - -

The girls were unusually quiet, at first, until Evan started needling me for the few things I forgot at their place when I left earlier. That broke the ice, and we began to fall back into our familiar rhythms.

But none of us could forget that Justine was gone. Her room was empty, the stupid beanbag chair missing from its usual place at the back of the living room. Even when we got into discussing Cybeline, and the information Evan had outlined, I missed her fears, her minor breakdowns and occasional pointed questions. If we'd been hearing all those things, it would have at least meant she was there.

The girls, especially Kate, filled in the few details Evan had missed. We agreed that we had to ask for help, and as soon as we could. We even tried to figure out a way to set things up during the week, but quickly decided against it. We wanted to go as far as we could from Kearny, and there was no day that week when we could all leave without missing classes. We felt silly about it, we even felt a little paranoid, but all of us were afraid of attracting attention. Visions of black-suited government agents were playing in our heads.

In any case, there were preparations to be made. Cybeline claimed she could make the communicator over the course of a day or two, as soon as she had all the materials necessary. Getting her to explain what she needed, though, was a slow process -- good as she was at navigating the internet, she still struggled with technical documents and computer parts. Kate ended up in charge of making a list and finding all the things we'd need before the weekend, since she was the only one of us actually excited about the idea.

Evan and I, meanwhile, would figure out the antenna. We might need Cybeline's nanotech to finish it, but most of the work was just getting a frame ready to join together. We figured, after consulting with the flower, that PVC would work just fine. Otherwise, it seemed we would need some copper and steel wire, aluminum foil, and a bit of carbon fiber for the actual receiving equipment.

"Does anyone sell just carbon fiber?" I asked. "Or are we going to need to get, like, fifty fancy tennis rackets?"

Kate frowned. "Cybeline should be able to break the fiber down," she said slowly, "and I can't imagine we'd need more than two or three. But I'll try to get a better schematic for you soon."

"Send me your shopping lists," Rosemary said. "I'll get the stuff you need."

"You don't have to," Lace said. "We can split the costs."

I wasn't sure I agreed with that -- we were all poor college students being careful with our ramen money, while Rosemary's parents were completely loaded. The So family lived on a ranch out near Jackson Hole, on the other side of the state from us. Before we visited, over the summer, I'd had the vague impression her parents were millionaires. After seeing the place, I wasn't sure they weren't billionaires.

Rosemary shook her head. "Of course I'm paying, but that's not why I want to get it all. If I need to buy tennis rackets, spools of wire, and random computer parts, I can say its for a class project. Everyone knows art students are weird, right?"

Evan laughed. I had to admit it made sense.

"All right, then," Lace said begrudgingly. "And I only have one class on Wednesday, and that's early. I'll drive around and find us a secluded spot. When the time comes, I should be able to borrow my sister's truck."

Lace frowned at Kate. "Do you think we'll need a generator?"

"Uh..." Kate looked at the flower on the table. "I will figure that out. Soon."

Lace nodded, brow furrowed. "We can rent one, but that's one more thing to haul along. And one more piece of a paper trail. Let me know if we need it, or if we can run it off the truck battery."

Evan smiled. "We're talking about sending a signal way, way out into space, to get advice from some hyper-advanced aliens and their pet supercomputer... with the power of an old Ford Ranger."

"My sister drives a Ram," Lace said. She put a hand to her chest as if offended. "I'd never try to call aliens with anything but the best."

We all laughed at that, and not just because of a rare moment of humor from Lace. We needed the release of tension, the moment of lightness when all our worries were threatening to smother us.

And powering an interstellar beacon off a Dodge Ram was the funniest thing I'd heard all week.

- - - - -

It was late. We chatted a little longer, wondering aloud about the signal, about the future, about what we would have to do. But we also talked about classes. About family. Even a little about dating, though I mostly stayed out of that one. It was startlingly close to normal, and it felt good.

We knew our plan was weak. We knew we were almost entirely in the dark, and our one plan to find out more, to even figure out the problems we were facing, was vague and filled with uncertainties. Even if it succeeded, we'd have to figure out what to do with that information. A very few days ago, our biggest concern had been how much drinking we could get away with and still make our classes on Monday. Today, we had greater responsibilities.

But that night, in that moment, I couldn't shake the feeling that it would work out. I looked at all of us, tackling threats to the whole of the world head-on, and I felt something welling up inside me that I couldn't find a name for. A certain kind of pride, maybe. A feeling of purpose, even ambition. Possibly even the arrogance to think that, if someone had to save the world, it should be us. Who better than a group of strong, clever, far-sighted young people?

Well, you can't blame us too much. Every young person thinks themselves world-wise. Every new generation sees the older ones as plodding, oblivious dinosaurs. But of course, we could see how things ought to be, and the only reason it wasn't like that already was that those who'd come before us didn't have our vision.

It's all too easy to trick yourself. And somehow, you start to think that the end of the world isn't really that big of an obstacle.

And then you're really in trouble.

- - - - -

"Kate," Rosemary said, too patiently, "how much carbon fiber am I getting you?"

"I don't know," she said desperately. "I'm not even sure Cybeline understands what carbon fiber is. She keeps thinking I mean diamond or graphite or something."

"Can you make a guess?" Rosemary said. "Because I still don't know what I'm ordering to build this damn thing --"

"It could be ten grams, it could be ten kilos, I'm not even sure if she can use the kind of fiber in sporting equipment --"

"--because if we get out to the desert and we didn't bring enough, I swear to Christ --"

"Oh my god," Evan interrupted, "just buy one tennis racket, let Cybeline scan it or whatever she does, and ask her how many more she needs. It's like a ten minute drive to the store."

There was an embarrassed silence. "Actually, I was going to get hockey sticks," Kate said.

"Holy shit," Evan said, "that's not even close to the point I'm trying to make."

Kate blushed, and muttered some kind of apology to Rosemary. She nodded stiffly, not meeting Kate's eyes. I felt bad for them, in a distant sort of way, but I couldn't help being a little preoccupied with the death of my own love life. Neither I nor anyone else had heard from Justine since she left, and it still felt like a miserable hole in my life. I'd thought things were going well, even with the weird alien revelations. She hadn't. That was about the end of it.

Lace was worried that Justine might let on what had happened. I doubted it. She'd known how important it was, known that the threat and the promise of the weird little alien flower had been real. That was the whole reason she'd had to run. But even if she couldn't face up to it herself, I thought she would keep the secret for the rest of us.

Of course, there was less of a secret to keep than I might have hoped. We'd been trying to figure out the antenna all week, and while Evan and I had a fairly sturdy frame figured out, we still weren't sure we could actually send any kind of signal. Apparently Cybeline herself wasn't able to generate one, but all attempts to create some kind of transmitter had failed.

The communication issues were getting worse and worse. There'd been a substantial preprogrammed element to Cybeline's mission statement, but once we ventured into technical information, her vocabulary was badly lacking. Simple things like 'aluminum foil' caused huge tangles of confusion for us. When Kate showed Cybeline a roll, in order to judge thickness and structure, Cybeline began planning to use several rolls as some kind of reflector. Unfortunately, she somehow missed our explanation that the foil could be unrolled into a thin sheet, and planned to deconstruct it herself -- at the cost of about twelve hours of work. By my reckoning, I could wrap the whole frame in about ten minutes.

The girls had worked through a lot of similar confusion. But now it was Thursday afternoon, and even though we wanted to be on our way in just about 24 hours, the parts list still wasn't finalized. Thus, yelling matches.

Rosemary headed out to the store, with a promise to be back 'soon,' and I sat down with Kate. Evan rummaged around in the kitchen; the two of us had started spending so much time at the girls' apartment that we ate there as often as not.

"How much space does the frame take up?" Kate asked me distractedly.

"Eighteen feet high, thirty square at the base." I frowned. "Don't you have that written down?"

"Not assembled," she said. "How much space will it take up in the back of the truck? Because I'm starting to worry --"

"It'll fit," I said. I hoped I sounded confident, but Kate's anxiety was contagious. I tried to visualize the pile of PVC, divided between my room and Evan's. "How big is Lace's truck?"

"And how are the rest of us going to get there?" Kate went on like I hadn't even answered her. "The truck's not nearly big enough, and if we have to go off-road --"

"My car's fine off-road," Evan called from the kitchen. He was piling shredded cheese over some combination of beans and potatoes. "It's not supposed to rain, and the ground where we're setting up is flatter than my skinny ass. It's like a highway with no traffic."