by AJ Snook
Oh Grace, I’m not
sure if you’ll recognize my voice. After all, it’s been 125
years. I had to get in touch with you the old way, by voice mail,
mainly due to resources, for I’m far, far away and haven’t a clue
if this’ll ever reach you. I lost everything, Grace. My family, my
friends, my home...my world. We all did. But I’m alive, and these
machines, inside and out, are assured to keep my body, my mind, and
hopefully my soul too, going on indefinitely save for an unforeseen
cataclysm, but the stars know we’ve all already survived enough of
those.
So when I woke up
here, alone on this deserted and unfinished colony, the pod that got
me here damaged beyond repair, I looked in the mirror and saw this
youthful form to be a cruel twist of irony. This is one of those
times when decay seems more prescient than everlasting life. I’ve
nobody to share my beating heart with, and I can’t convince the
survivors nestled in Rheita valley, or those in the shadows of the
red mountains, to make the risky five year trip to be with me, a lone
and stranded stranger with few resources. While I was in cryosleep
they started their lives anew, began the first families after the
most recent war to end all others. All of those who remain, as
far as I’ve learned, are there, close to our irradiated once-home.
Are you there with them? Oh please be with them, oh Grace.
Their messages take
ten hours to reach me. Though fine gestures, holograms aren’t warm,
dear Grace. Their glow is a fraction of what yours once was. I found
your old website from back before all the craziness. You ran a peace
organization. More irony. How quaint and innocent those times once
were. If you receive this and are like me, immortally lonely, and if
you think it might be possible to exist together happily, maybe we
can find a way to reboot what we once had, and down the road, who
knows, our imperfect race, too.
Oh Grace, according
to the old norms I’ve lived multiple lives, some of them good. Many
recollections have dropped out of this old head to make room for the
new, but something miraculous and magical, something science still
can’t measure -- call it will, hunger, desperation, or desire --
kept the memories of you intact. From my vantage point, if you’re
out there, if you receive this call -- a chance in ten million, yes
-- but if this inestimably screwball universe can find a way to put
us together before I lose it and dance a naked waltz out into the
dark vacuum, I’ll call it evolution, a surge forward for those
still left. I’ll call it destiny, oh Grace. I’ll call it proof
there is more to all of this than meat, metal and megabytes. And for
that proof I’ll wait...
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