Binary Cycle - (Part 1: Disruption) (8 page)

Skyia was always gushing over her mechanical companion. Some people said it was impossible for humans to have meaningful relationships with machines, but they had obviously never met MiLO. He’d been a fixture in her life for as long as she could remember, always working around the Tower, helping Skyia and her mother keep their house in order, and alerting them to any unusual weather patterns or storms that they would have to prepare for. He also operated the Tower’s entire communication system almost single-handedly. 

Over the years, MiLO had truly become her friend. She had spent countless peaceful moments in his calming presence, had always been able to talk to him in times of need or loneliness while her mother was away, and viewed him as a friend and fellow Signal Keeper.

Skyia was aware that she herself was only a blip in his expansive life. She always struggled with that concept, for MiLO had actually been built on Earth, all those centuries ago. It had taken several hundred years for the
Resurrection Ark
to travel from Earth to the Rigil Kentaurus system. MiLO had been onboard the ship, performing many of the same maintenance and repair functions that he did now. He had been an integral component of that vessel, keeping thousands of cryogenically frozen settlers alive over the course of their long journey. He’d acted as the ship’s brain, its mechanical captain, and had been instrumental in the success of that brave and desperate mission: bringing humanity through the depths of space to the unknown world of Taran. 

When Skyia did the math, she realized that MiLO was almost four hundred years old.

She followed him through the short hallway, carved from the rock, and into the more habitable portion of the house.

“Come on, you have to tell me,” she pleaded. “What’s the occasion, MiLO? Am I right, is it your birthday today? Are you really four hundred years old? Oh no, I didn’t get you anything.” She frowned as MiLO wheeled into her bedroom.

A trill of beeps. “No, Skyia, when have we ever celebrated my birthday? Besides, I’m only… 398.3 years old.”

He rolled to a stop in front of Skyia’s dressing mirror. A thin arm emerged from his body which he used to open a drawer and remove a long boar-bristle brush.

Skyia huffed as she accepted the brush. “Does my hair really look that bad?” She checked herself in the mirror and combed through her sandy-blond locks. She didn’t think her hair looked unruly, but MiLO was acting pretty strange today so she figured she’d go along with whatever game he was playing. It wasn’t every day he was
quite
so mysterious, and she wanted to get to the bottom of his unusual behavior. 

“So, it’s not your birthday… yet. But let’s celebrate your four-hundredth when it comes, ok? I would love that.”

“Of course, Skyia. As you wish.”

She finished combing her hair and MiLO prodded her toward her closet and tapped a small button beside the door. He wheeled backward as the door swung open, revealing a breathtakingly elegant dress: A gorgeous pattern of red and orange silk with designs splattered throughout of a vast landscape of mountains and rivers. Skyia gasped, putting her hands to her face. The overall impression reminded her of an Earth book her mom used to read to her as a child:
Legends of the Orient
.

“MiLO, we already celebrated my birthday, what is this? It’s so beautiful, I’ve never seen anything like it before! Oh please MiLO, won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“Remember I told you your mother was coming home?” he asked.

“Of course! But I thought she wasn’t due back for, what, another ten days?”

“There was a change in her plans,” he said. “She left earlier than expected and wanted to come back before Nightfall.”

Skyia’s eyes opened wide. “Why didn’t you tell me? I need to clean my room, I was going to bake something and—”

“No need to worry. This is all quite unexpected, I only received your mother’s voice call this morning. And don’t worry about your room, it looks splendid, as usual. Rest assured the cleaning bots are implementing a full sweep of the house as we speak.”

She flashed a smile and reached down to hug the little bot. Hugging MiLO was like hugging a toaster. His sensors and antennae poked her in the arms and ribs, but she hardly noticed.

“I’ll leave you alone so you can try on the dress,” he said. “Your mother brought it home after her last expedition to Ganji and she asked me to give it to you at an ‘appropriate time’ while she was away. I thought I’d give it to you now so you can show it off before the novelty wears off.”

Skyia shook her head. “Novelty, are you crazy? This is the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen. Get outta here so I can try it on.” She twirled away from MiLO toward her bed as he left the room, closing the bedroom door behind him.

Skyia laid the dress out across her woven Spindex duvet, relishing the perfection of the moment. Her mother would be home soon. She had everything to be thankful for and nothing in her life she wanted to change—no regrets.

She shrugged off the simple white tunic she had been wearing, the synthetic fabric sliding off her body with a musical hum. Standing in her underwear, she picked up her dress of fire. Holding it up to her shoulders, the cool fabric caressed her body. She turned to the mirror, examining the fiery shades and intricate collage of images and symbols. She loved the way her golden hair shimmered against the red and orange rays of light streaming in through her bedroom window. Her green eyes shone out in stark contrast to the autumn colors of her dress. She caught her gaze in the mirror, her own eyes looking back at her. 

Her father’s eyes
, her mom had told her when she was very young.

She thought about her dad as she walked with the dress toward the open window, thinking about how little she knew of him, and really, how little that mattered to her right now. He had left them before Skyia was born. Her mother had told her he left in order to continue his successful career in science and discovery, not wanting to be burdened with a family.

Skyia didn’t really hold it against him. Considering how perfect her life was now, she couldn’t imagine anything changing. What more could she ask for? All that she needed was here in the Tower. Sure, a few more friends might be nice, and she’d definitely like to be able to spend more time with her mother, but overall, she was happy.

Skyia smiled to herself, at all the things she was grateful for, as she slipped the dress over her head. The delicate silk brushed softly against her skin.

She didn’t need a father, she told herself. Especially not one who would so easily walk away from her and her mother.

∞

Skyia danced out of her room while MiLO waited patiently by the front door, a perfect gentleman. She heard the rumble of her mother’s rover outside—why she drove that noisy, archaic machine, Skyia would never know—and glanced out the window just in time to see her mom disembark from the buggy. 

She felt a rush of excitement at the thought of reuniting with her mom after so many months—nearly half a cycle. The lights on MiLO’s front display blinked and cycled through magnificent shades of deep violet and crimson—he, too, was obviously excited.

A chime sounded and she heard her mom’s voice fuzz a muffled “Hello” through the speakers. MiLO reached a mechanical arm up to the door panel and pressed a button. The door cracked down the middle and the two halves swung to either side, welcoming ruddy rays of sunshine into their home, along with her mother.

Cassidy Walker stood, silhouetted against the glimmering light, a glowing torus surrounding her lithe frame. 

Skyia squealed and ran to her mom, throwing her arms around her. She buried her head in a familiar bosom and whispered how much she’d missed her. She felt like she never wanted to be separated from her mother again, and that all the time she had spent in the Tower alone with MiLO was a distant dream.

Patient, weary feet
Home is where my heart lies still
Who is waiting there?

Cassidy Walker’s speeding buggy ate up kilometers as fast as it guzzled gasoline. The vehicle's engine rattled a thunderous roar as it barrelled up the steep and rocky slope, heading upward to the Signal Tower plateau. Cassidy was returning home, and relished the thought of reuniting with her daughter.

Through the windshield, Cassidy’s eyes followed a forest dove as it soared up into the clouds, becoming nothing but a tiny, dark smudge in the wide sky. A second smudge joined it, both birds catching the thermal drafts rising up out of the humid valley. Suddenly, with wings folded tight, they catapulted down toward the ground, chirping a mournful song to any who would listen. These were large birds, larger than a human head, growing larger during the two centuries that they had been living on Taran. The lower gravity here seemed to have that effect on most plants and animals imported from Earth.

The doves called out again, their lonely cries echoing across the valley. To Cassidy, their distinctive woo-OO-oo-woo-woo was one of the most beautiful sounds on Taran, and was something she had been looking forward to in the months since she had last been home, half a cycle ago. 

Despite having the freedom to traverse the entire planet, the doves tended to stay close to the redwoods here in Alexendia, their original nesting grounds. Though they usually brought her much joy, today, as Cassidy listened to their songs, she was filled with a great sadness—a strange, aching emptiness in her stomach. How could such beauty be so full of misery, she wanted to know? Why did she feel as if her heart was breaking, just a little more, with every note of their mournful scale?

Cassidy adjusted the seat of her mountain buggy, making room for her long, tanned legs. She was returning from a months-long archaeological dig in Ganji Province, and suspected she would have to return yet again before this cycle came to an end.

She navigated the buggy around a bend, thinking about the twenty year journey that had led to this moment. As a bright and enthusiastic twenty-year-old university student, she’d been part of the team that had discovered the first extinction layer: geological evidence that proved something terrible happened on Taran, some forty-million years ago, causing the extinction of most plant and animal species on the planet. An earthquake in Ganji had knocked a city-sized chunk of rock from a mountain, revealing a myriad of planetary history. The newly exposed rock had flashed its geological evidence to her team of researchers like an ancient history textbook blown open in the wind.

It was an exciting discovery and had propelled funding into planetary research, an area of interest in which Cassidy excelled and was passionate about. The initial enthusiasm turned into confusion and then frustration, as it became clear that there were no answers to the question of the cause of that great calamity that had rid the planet of most of its life forms.

Scientists, geologists, and archeologists banded together and scoured the planet, searching for any sign or explanation of what happened to Taran all those eons ago. The extinction layer was indeed ubiquitous around the planet, all lining up to exactly the same point in the planet’s history: forty-million-years ago. The only thing that they knew for certain was that the average surface temperature had plummeted from a balmy 28 Celsius to well below zero. This resulted in a massive bout of die-offs, apparently involving widespread glaciation and a resulting fall in water levels.

Cassidy skidded around a tight curve and felt the exhilarating rush of a vehicle on the verge of losing control, at the edge of chaos. Despite her safe and simple lifestyle now, Cassidy had not always shied away from adventure and true peril. In fact, she felt that as the years went on, she had more and more inclinations to take up vestiges of her old life. She imagined that’s what had led to all of her recent forays into the jungles of Ganji. She wanted to feel useful again, to
contribute
back to society— to science. But this latest project had brought her full circle back to the dig from her youth, and her recent discovery had unearthed much more than anyone was willing to except.

Something crashed into the side of her vehicle—a strong and powerful force which sent her buggy sliding to the edge of the cliff, dangerously close to teetering over. She cranked the wheel to the right, correcting her path and swerving into the middle of the road.

What the hell was that!?

She looked around frantically, keeping one eye on the road, but couldn’t locate the cause of the disturbance.

Another loud thud on the back of the buggy forced Cassidy to turn and look behind her. 

She nearly passed out from fear and disbelief. Standing on the back of her buggy, in full hunting form, was a large adult Spindroth. Its body shimmered white and silver, and although Spindroth were shape shifters, and could assume an infinite variety of forms, this one was shaped decidedly like a human. Black orbs rose out of the top of its head like bug-eyes, malicious and calculating. 

“Shit!” She cried out, jerking the wheel left and right, hoping to throw the creature off balance. She brought the buggy all the way to the cliff edge, and then yanked the wheel sideways, cutting across the gravel.

It worked.

The Spindroth lost its balance and tumbled off the side of the buggy. It slashed out with a sharp hook as it fell, slicing a gash in Cassidy’s shoulder. 

Pain seized her body as the poisonous venom entered her blood stream. She bit back tears. Thank god she was almost home. Left untreated, this wound, small as it was, would become infected and she would fall into a fever dream. Her arm throbbed, but luckily the cut wasn’t too deep. 

She still had time.

Cassidy glanced in the rearview mirror, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.

Dammit!

The Spindroth hadn’t fallen over the cliff as she’d hoped, but instead was chasing after her car, using its forearms and legs to propel it faster, running like a rabid dog hungry for blood. Two black orbs rose from its head like glassy obsidian: the better to see its prey.

What was a Spindroth doing here, Cassidy wondered? It wasn’t Night yet: the alien hordes shouldn’t be passing through the valley this early.