Lost Convoy, Part XXX: Conclusion

Her name was Veronica Crim. She lived on a world she knew as Pangea. She couldn't know it, but it was exactly like the planet Earth, which had been lost to the galaxy more than a hundred years earlier. She often studied the history books composed since that time, as she wasn't interested, much less invested, in the time before that. She knew the names of the individuals who had settled Pangea by heart. She knew of the heroics of Ray Patch, of the authority of James Ward, and of so many others: Clive Lockwood, Jim Brewer, Kim Jones, Tabitha Thrasher, Gabriel Martinez. It seemed as if there were whole libraries of books dedicated to each of them, and yet, only two of them had left lasting records of their own behind, the music of Thrasher and the films of Lockwood. Many artistic talents since had long since blended both legacies together, in fact.

Veronica often wondered what it must have been like, in the days before Pangea, when humanity's home was a convoy of ships, when two of them became lost and found each other, and then helped humanity itself settle a new world. Were these people titans, giants who had straddled the stars? In her heart, she knew they weren't, but when she dreamed at night, she often lost herself in such fantasies. And then she would gently rise from her bed, and plant her foot on the floor, and when that wasn't enough, she would open a window, and let the morning breeze wash over her. She would often stare out into the horizon for hours, and be contented with that. Her life seemed so normal, so comfortable, so predictable.

But it could be worse.

Lost Convoy, Part XXIX: Gabriel Martinez

He waited, nervously as he was surprised to admit to himself, just as he imagined everyone else was, for something to happen. It was like the destruction of the planet all over again. The anticipation. How do you end up treating things like this as if they were a game?

He ended up returning his attention to the information port mounted on the seat in front of him. He had found useful things with it already. And he couldn't stop thinking about his brother. Why had he gone missing? Why had he panicked, and that was the only way Gabriel could describe it, the only way it made sense. His brother had panicked in the face of the work he had done in the final days of the planet Earth. It couldn't have been pressure, exactly, because his brother had always been the coolest person in the room, even when they were children. It had always unnerved him. That must have been what started everything.

He switched through every channel he could find, all the backdoor files, all the coding, all the tricks he had picked up from a lifetime he had once believed, with everyone else, to be wasted. It was in this way that Gabriel discovered the coordinates. His brother had one last miracle up his sleeve.

He found, instead of rejoicing, that he could only think about his brother. He didn't care about anyone else, and never had. He missed his brother. He discovered that without him, he had actually become him.

And maybe that's exactly what his brother had realized.

Lost Convoy, Part XXVIII: Zero History

Sometimes it's hell getting to heaven.

Gabriel received a call from his brother several weeks before the news broke, more cryptic than anything he had ever heard from him. It was nothing that revealed what he knew, what he was working on. Basically, his brother told Gabriel, "Goodbye." Nothing had ever unsettled him quite so much. His brother was the competent, confident one, the one everyone loved, the one that did everything right. His brother loved Gabriel when Gabriel had made it impossible for anyone else to, even Gabriel himself. And then it was over.

He began researching what exactly his brother had been up to. Gabriel hadn't heard from him in months, which itself was unusual, but his brother was always busy, and he couldn't possibly maintain every one of his commitments all the time. Gabriel had never once fulfilled a commitment in his life. He considered his brother a saint. He had once come very close to becoming the manager of a music talent he'd discovered in a bar. He had once been asked to be a different kind of manager, of a bookstore, but never showed up to the interview. He had even been requested to be a missionary for an obscure church in the midwest. So many different lives that had never materialized.

He discovered that his brother had been working for a man named James Ward, and that his disappearance had caused a significant delay in the project. Gabriel himself eventually tracked down the body of his brother, in a Mexican bordertown. He would never learn how it had come to be there. Whatever trail might have remained went up with the rest of the planet.

And Gabriel found himself taking his brother's place as one of the last survivors of the human race.

Lost Convoy, Part XXVII: Clive Lockwood

"Hello?"

"Um, hi."

"You're from the other frigate, the one whose signal we found."

"Right. And my name's Tabitha. Tabitha Thrasher."

"Mine's Clive Lockwood."

"You haven't heard of me, have you?"

"Afraid not."

"Well, Clive, for some reason I feel like I should be talking with you, and it's not just because someone gave you the phone. I get the sense that it's important. I'll make it easier. I've got a song, called 'The Unnamed,' about a dream I once had, a premonition about the future. The song's kind of vague, but it really happened, and it's basically what made me become a rock star. Something tells me you've had a similar experience."

"Who put you up to this? Gabriel?"

"I have no idea who Gabriel is. Let's just be honest here."

"..."

"Clive. Mr. Lockwood, please, it's important to me."

"Do you have a real name, Tabitha?"

"Tabitha's authentic. Thrasher's stage. You can call Tab."

"Tabitha, however it happened, your instinct was right. I did have a dream, and I guess you might know what mine was about. You were in it, now that I think of it. I'm sorry if I've come off a little rudely. These are strange days."

"You're cool, Clive. Don't worry about it."

"Promise to sing me your song when we meet."

"Okay! Okay."

"I saw all of it. It hasn't been very clear, but I had a dream about all of it, many years ago. I know where we all end up. I knew exactly who would survive. I just didn't want to believe it. But the memories have been coming back."

"Forgive me for saying, but I believe it was a gift, Clive. You were granted a vision. Something told you exactly what would happen, and it wasn't so you could warn everyone. I think you were connected into it. It's pretty cool. I think that's why we're having this conversation. We understand each other better than we think."

"Forgive me for saying, but I never thought I would have anything in common with a rock star."

"And hey Clive, I was never much of a preacher's little girl."

"You're more like one than you think."

"Things are going to get better, aren't they?"

"I think they are."

Lost Convoy, Part XXVI: World Enough and Time

Tabitha asked for a manifest of the frigate as soon as she hard the news. She was looking for someone, hoping they had somehow survived. She found instead that she concentrated on a few names, ones she didn't even recognize, but which were attached to biographies that sounded as if they had come out of her songbook.

Ray Patch. This one was the pilot. Unlike her ship, this would be a fairly significant position over there. She could only imagine what kind of responsibility he was now feeling.

Jim Brewer. There were very few older passengers on her frigate, and so Jim's age alone was interesting. She began to consider him something of a father figure, something she hadn't really thought of in years. She'd written so many songs about it, she now realized, but the idea of it had been so elusive...What was Jim like in person?

Kim Jones. Like the pilot, Ray Patch, Kim no doubt had it far more rough on that frigate. There were many flight attendants on hers, as many, it almost seemed, as passengers. And yet Kim seemed to be completely alone.

Clive Lockwood. Clive Lockwood...She should have felt much the same way about him as she did Jim Brewer, just as Kim and Ray were something of a match, and yet Clive intrigued her in a different way entirely. He read so mysteriously, a retired priest, no scandals in his past, and not so old that he would have been infirm at the time of the event. Something had to have happened to him, something must have shaken him, this man of God. She believed it had everything to do with the event. She would seek this one out personally.

She had so much time. There only seemed to be time, and time seemed so incredibly meaningless. Time was now humanity's world, she mused, a new reality, but somehow familiar, comforting. Something predictable. And while she waited, she became curious. She asked if she could call the other frigate, and as it turned out, that was no problem at all. She spoke with a man named Gabriel Martinez, and James Ward intercepted some of her time, but she ended up getting exactly what she wanted, and she had no idea how it happened, and really, didn't care.

That was the way the world now worked. That was what time was, a matter of opportunity. She said to Clive Lockwood, "I've been meaning to talk with you."

Lost Convoy, Part XXV: State of Fear

She had taken so many flights in her life, the concept seemed to have lost all meaning. That was what she had thought, but when she'd been asked to take this one, she suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of awe, so childlike she was embarrassed to have even felt it. That wasn't who Tabitha Thrasher was, at least not to all her fans, and even those who despised her. She had been one of the most successful musical acts of her generation, and she understood that it was on this basis that she was invited to take this particular flight, and she hesitated for a moment, and it was during that moment that she found herself once again shepherded along, right onto the frigate, just as if it were another, perfectly ordinary event in her grand career.

At first, when she realized what'd happened, she was angry, stunned, and yes, embarrassed again. She felt as if she'd betrayed her fans. There was no way an entire planet could be evacuated, not unless they'd had years advance notice, and she knew that simply wasn't the case, and so, the fact was, many people would die in an instant, a fiery explosion...She paused and rethought that. Many people had died in exactly that manner already. The planet was gone. She survived. It felt wrong, and she stopped thinking about her fans, about her career, and in that moment, she absently began to sing. It wasn't even one of her own songs. Hers was a talent that had come about as a nervous habit, something to make things seem better than they really were. In the early years, when she'd become Tabitha Thrasher, she would tell herself that she was doing that same effect for her fans. And then the whole thing took on a life of its own. And what had happened to that little girl? Somehow she had returned.

Everyone onboard seemed nervous, and most of that was expressed through incessant chatter, and through some of that Tabitha found out some of the details that had washed over her in recent weeks, in recent hours. That was when she first heard about the other ship, and that's how she started thinking about something else, even someone else. And it felt good.

She began to sing a little more deliberately.

Lost Convoy, Part XXIV: Tabitha Thrasher

It was the last night of the tour. Tabitha Thrasher was now several years into a greatly admired career, maybe not a lot of mainstream success to her credit, but a steady and fiercely loyal following that stayed with her every step of the way. It was exactly that kind of audience she had just played, who had lost themselves in her singing, in the blaring sounds of the guitars and drums, which still reverberated in her own ears as she sat down backstage, with loud calls for one more encore, even though she'd already done two. She almost got up, and then her phone beeped, and it was her agent. Normally the end of the tour was a time to relax for a while from everything, even her agent, all the glorious nonsense that constituted success. She almost didn't answer, but decided she might as well. It had been a good tour, a great one. Maybe he was just calling to congratulate her.

"Tab, it's the end of the world," he said in greeting.

"And I feel fine, I know," she replied offhand.

"No, seriously, that's your theme for the next album."

"I thought we were going with The Hardcore Diaries?"

"The State of Fear tour got me thinking. Zero History. We have to capitalize."

"By going backward?"

"Anyone can look forward. It's the true visionaries go look beyond that. Just listen to me. Zero History. In a couple months, you'll thank me, like you always do."

"Normally I block your calls."

"Very funny. That's why they love you."

"They love me 'cause I rock."

"Naturally."

"Just think about it, okay?"

"Fine. Whatever."

It was immediately after that call that Tab answered the second one from her agent, which was an even more unlikely occurrence than the one time.

"We're going with that one. No questions. I'll have more info later."

Lost Convoy, Part XXIII: Rendezvous

It seemed like only hours had passed when someone came to whisper in his ear again. James had a book in his lap, the old-fashioned kind, one of the slimmer Von Archimbaldi volumes, just something if he wanted to distract himself a little, and when he felt the person's breath in his ear, this time he had a momentary impulse to defend himself, grabbing the book as if to swing it at them. But he was able to restrain himself, as he always did. He listened with a little interest about a signal of some kind. He had no idea what they were talking about.

It was another few hours before the rock star, the one who had been singing earlier, came up to him, and suggested that he look into the matter personally. He had no idea why she thought it should be important to him, but again he was in the mood to humor the situation. He found himself conducted to a cabin with a radio transmitter, and someone was holding a receiver out for him. When he took it, James heard a curious voice on the other end, Latin of some kind. He had very few dealings with such men, though he held nothing personal against them. It had always been about reputation. The man identified himself, but James glossed over it, when suddenly, he thought he should identify himself, too. He tried just his name, but that didn't seem to faze the man on the other end, so he elaborated as best as he could, by introducing himself, what he had once been. It sounded so quaint, but it had also been good to say out loud, when it might still have some meaning, some impact. The rock star quickly took the receiver, and James lost the moment as soon as it had occurred to him.

A few hours later, he found himself roused again, this time with the news, "We're due for the rendezvous in fifteen minutes. Is there anything you'd like before then?"

Lost Convoy, Part XXII: James Ward

James spent the next several weeks much as he had his whole professional life, in meetings, and he was always aware of the irony. He was more invested in the goal this time, but he couldn't rouse himself from the stupor that had taken over him after those few words whispered into his ear. In fact, when he wasn't in meetings, James was much like anyone else, he was glued to the news. He watched and read every scrap of it, and had people monitoring it for him while he was in those meetings. The only reason he didn't have feeds wired directly into the conference rooms was because he wanted some semblance of focus.

He thought about the empire he'd made for himself, how it was basically meaningless now, except for the last practical measures he could derive from it, how all of it came down to basic survival, exactly what he had always told himself he was far beyond, that he was shaping the future, creating a world that no one had ever seen or even dreamt of before, a vision that had once been so clear. Now there was virtually nothing, and he found himself thinking instead of what lay ahead, after all of it was finally gone, when not just the earth but the whole empire no longer existed. There would be so few people, and though he planned on spending the time in the fleet of humanity among his fellow luminaries, what did that ultimately mean? That one wasn't even his idea. James found it absurd, even, the thought that those he had once casually considered his kind were somehow better off removed from the rest of the survivors. Those people, who would now outnumber them by an even greater margin, would have their first taste of life not just after the planet, but outside all that influence. They would realize the same thing James had, that it changed nothing, and everything.

So when the time came and he boarded his frigate, and set off into space, watching the hundred ships of the fleet around him, he finally let off a laugh. It was the least he could do. Then someone started singing, and he lost the train of thought.

Lost Convoy, Part XXI: This is the Way the World Ends

He was in a meeting when he first heard the news. It wasn't all that uncommon, the circumstances. James Ward was always in meetings. He oversaw a vast economic empire. It would have been foolish for him to spend his days otherwise. Of course, in later days, he couldn't for the life of him remember what that particular meeting had been about, and usually he could remember the most obscure things with perfect clarity. It was his memory that had helped James reach so far into the affairs of the world.

Someone came in, James couldn't remember who, either, and whispered into his ear, and for a moment, he sat there, a whole ring of individuals staring at him, waiting for him to say something, and he wasn't even looking at any of them anymore. He wasn't looking at anything. He tried to clear his throat, but found that it was perfectly dry, so he reached for the glass of water in front of him, and almost knocked it over, but finally brought it to his lips. He did remember thinking, Is this the last time I'll ever do that? He tried to smile, tried to reassure those who only moments earlier had been trying to please him, but, and he could only imagine, it must have come off as something of a scowl.

"The, uh, the meeting is over," he finally said. "Thank you all for coming. I'm afraid there are more important things going on now."

This statement must have startled them, since they had become accustomed to believing the particulars of meetings with James Ward were the most important things happening in those moments. He didn't offer any more of an explanation. He just dismissed them, and still he could hardly look at them. He immediately called for an assistant to gather a new team to come to the conference room, all the most brilliant scientific minds available to him. He didn't think anything could be done, except to move forward with the last line of defense, the survival line, against the single threat that only death itself could possibly hold against humanity. He called friends around the globe, to offer his thoughts, assuming that they already knew, and if they didn't, that it didn't matter, that he would do everything in his power to set things in motion. All his power had come to this moment, and it was all he could fall back on. James had no family. He considered himself an orphan, and he had never married, had no friends. He had only had his work. He kept telling himself, There is so much time. Well, now there wasn't any at all. He wouldn't even have gotten onboard one of his own frigates if someone hadn't physically walk him onto it, guiding him the whole way, straight into his seat. And when he looked around, he didn't see faces. James Ward no longer saw faces. And he no longer saw the future.

Lost Convoy, Part XX: Gabriel Martinez

Gabriel had always spent most of his time listening to the needs of the universe. It sounds pretentious when you say it like that, but what it really means is, he didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure out what he wanted to do, but rather what seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And this in turn is not meant to imply that he was impulsive, but that he let the simple act of inspiration guide him.

For example: when he was growing up, like every other kid Gabriel enjoyed recess most of all while he was attending grade school, but he was often lost inside his own head, rather playing some pickup sport or other with the other kids. It wasn't because he was an oddball misfit, except of course his behavior certainly made him one, but rather because he was busy following his inner voice. His family, as his brother could attest in later years, was somewhat gifted in the intellectual sense, and so Gabriel normally had a few dozen more thoughts running through his head than most other kids. While it seemed like fun to most other kids, spending his free time playing kickball wasted more opportunities for mental exploration than it created. He could only be hit by a ball so often when he was thinking to lose the traditional sense of "fun."

What was he thinking about? It could have been one of a thousand different things. When he was trying to get some sleep onboard the frigate, Gabriel couldn't stop thinking about what they might be doing rather than waiting for some idea of salvation to save them. He was the first to switch on the datastream from the satellite, and he was the first to figure out how to make it useful, by hotwiring a direct connection to his terminal. He did in fact talk to a woman named Tabitha Thrasher, but what he neglected to tell the others was that he also spoke with a man who identified himself as James Ward. Gabriel had the sense that he knew the name. Or at least, his brother had.

Part of the reason he didn't inform Ray (whom he generally regarded as "in charge") about Ward was because of the concluding phrase he'd used in their brief conversation, before Thrasher had interrupted them:

"You might say I owned the world."

Lost Convoy, Part XIX: Reasonable Chaos

Naturally, Ray, Kim, and Jim looked at Gabriel a tad incredulously, though more with surprise than anything. Ray quickly moved to meet the newest visitor to his cockpit, saying as he went, "You're something of a miracle, Mr. Martinez."

"Don't thank me, just get this chick off my hands," Gabriel very graciously responded. "On second thought, I think we need someone else to talk with her. No offense, but you three aren't much for a party, and that's all she seems to want. We need Clive Lockwood on this. Don't give me those looks. I know more than you think I do."

Ray decided to head off in the direction of the passengers, where Clive waited, oblivious, and no doubt still asleep. He muttered as he went, "Might as well..."

"You do that, Chief, and we're going to continue this little confab in the meantime," Gabriel smiled. "Now, who's up for waffles? Anyone? Doubt we have any anyway. No problem. We can improvise. Sweetcheeks, how about some coffee?"

Kim seemed to cooperate if only to be anywhere else. That left only Jim, who was the most amiable of them. He thought for a moment before asking the obvious: "You play a lot more rough than you really are, don't you?"

"It has a way of motivating people," Gabriel said. "I've found that people, even if they don't act like it, respond really well. It's good to have a little attention on yourself. It gets the job done. So Jimbo, how's about we have us a real chat? Enough with the bullshit. I figure we have upwards to a thousand people onboard, between all the compartments. Most of them are cool as a cucumber, but then there's a few ornery ones like us. You might play sweet, but you wouldn't be here right now if you didn't have something of a hotstreak. I read people better than they do themselves. So relax with whatever protest you might have cooked up. I like you. That's a good thing.

"While you were busy poking around, messing around, I was busy getting the real work done. I acted when you reacted, is all. Don't sweat it. I work best under pressure. A few hours ago, people needed to release some tension, get some positive energy going, and so that's what I provided. You get the good vibes from the bad ones. And that's what I want to talk to you about, because I figure you'll understand, better than the rest of them. I want to talk about reasonable chaos.

"We just lost Earth, and we got separated from the rest of the fleet. There's a thousand of us, and only a small handful who are of any immediate worth. The word for all that is chaos. Most people associate 'chaos' with a negative experience. Me, I like to embrace it. But in a controlled way. Like I said, 'reasonable chaos.' That's what you get when you try to make sense of a sticky situation, one that doesn't make a lot of sense, that only seems to be screwing with you. That's been my whole life, and I can guess that you might understand why. But that's also the way the world works. That's the nature of reality. Reasonable chaos. Everything has a reason, Jimbo, even if we can't immediately see it. I expect this situation to work itself out. I've got faith. Strange to hear myself say that. Reasonable chaos says that I shouldn't sweat it, and that's what I want to say to you, because you seem to be someone who'll understand."

Gabriel slapped Jim on the back, and walked away, just as abruptly as he'd come.

Lost Convoy, Part XVIII: Kim Jones

The people who had come together at this point would not have considered themselves to be young. Jim Brewer and Clive Lockwood were both in their sixties. Ray Patch was in his thirties, as was Gabriel Martinez. Kim Jones was in her forties. They had seen enough of life as it had been until recently where they were able to say they knew what it was like to adapt, because in one form or another they had been doing it for decades, through the expected changes growing older was supposed to bring, and the ones that weren't as predictable. No one would have said it, but they might even begin to view the destruction of the planet humanity had known as home from its birth was not as different, except by scale, from any other natural disaster.

Kim had lived through disasters of that kind. In her family's past, there had been floods and tornadoes and earthquakes, each of which caused significant damage, and the tales of these experiences had been sewn into the very fabric of its identity. Kim herself had volunteered for relief effort in the aftermaths of hurricanes and wildfires, almost out of a sense of obligation.

It was this sense, the more she enabled herself to draw from it, that gave Kim the strength to overcome her initial reactions to being placed in the very circumstances she had dreaded. What had been worse wasn't the loss of Earth, but her own sense of identity, which had been so important to her throughout her life. But the more time passed aboard that frigate, the more comfortable Kim became. These passengers didn't care who or what she was. Her training was more of an asset than anything, allowing her privileges few others seemed to have considered. She was a real authority for the first time in her life.

As Jim Brewer had been doing, and as apparently Gabriel Martinez as well, Kim had found herself passing some of the time playing around with the instruments, trying to calm what remained of her nerves, not because she expected anything to come of it, but if anyone ought to be investigating what the frigate itself could tell them, could do for them, Kim of all people should be on top of it, not just because she was in effect the only other person besides Ray Patch who could claim special privileges aboard it, but because she was feeling new conviction, determination. She had come this far and she wasn't about to sit idly while they floated toward nowhere.

She knew enough to identify when the satellites had picked something up, and that was all she needed. She fully intended that they would finally get back on track. She hadn't been thinking clearly before. She wasn't pleased that they were having trouble at all, and now she wanted desperately to make sure it didn't happen again.

But of all people to help make that happen, Gabriel Martinez?

Lost Convoy, Part XVII: The Sound and the Fury

It was a confluence of ideas that seemed to bring themselves together this time. Kim Jones went to Ray Patch, and they both had the same thought, which was exactly what Jim Brewer had been on his way to suggest. Ray had seen exactly what Jim had, that their satellites had picked up a signal, and by chance, Kim had been monitoring from the flight attendant's station, too. Jim had only so much confidence in his abilities, and Kim had been thinking they would need a little additional help, too. She had been talking with Ray about a possible survey of the passengers, to find out a little more about who they were, what they might bring to the table. Jim wanted to mention that he wished Clive Lockwood were here, too, but he kept silent. It wasn't necessary for everyone that he himself currently trusted to be here for this.

Kim pulled up the manifest, which gave selections of biographical details for everyone onboard, and while Jim did what he could to analyze the data they were receiving from the signal, she and Ray reviewed the information, hoping for a little more help. "Damn," was all Ray had to say for Jim to look around and notice the foul look on Kim's face.

"It's the Martinez man, isn't it?" Jim wished he was wrong, but it wasn't likely. For better or worse, they all knew exactly who they needed to know already, and the only one besides Clive who wasn't there who'd made a mark so far was Gabriel Martinez.

"He's got the goods," Ray frowned. "Or rather, his brother did. Died in some of the last moments. We got Gabriel instead. They both trained in the same fields, but the brother was more gifted, or at least, less of a wild card. Gabriel seems to have led pretty much a wasted life. Let's hope we can turn that around."

There was a knock on the cabin door, and Kim instinctively went to see who it was. "You'll never guess," she deadpanned. "I don't know if the man's psychic, but we won't have to go far to find out how much he wants to cooperate."

She had just opened the hatch when Gabriel came bursting in. "Listen, I don't know what kind of powwow you've got going on here, but I've got some chick named Tabitha Thrasher on the other end of this call, and I ain't paying."

Lost Convoy, Part XVI: Jim Brewer

When he was a younger man, before he was ever married, or had ever even thought about it, Jim Brewer had been a lot like how he pictured Clive Lockwood. He kept mostly to himself. When he did meet his wife and he did start a family, it was as if he took them into himself, treated them as if they were extensions of that favored, private life that he kept locked away from the rest of the world. But the difference was his personality. He was one of the most amiable people you could ever meet.

To watch not just the world but Jim's entire world crumble around him would have been heartbreaking, to witness every detail of those final days. This is what had been occupying his every waking moment since the frigate took off, trying to ignore and forget everything that threatened to unmake the man he had always known himself to be. And yet, that was what had motivated him to distraction, to look at clocks and see how he could be useful, because he couldn't face what remained when everything else was (and had been) taken away.

Everyone around him had some level of a sad story, because that was what humanity itself had, not just some of it, but all of it, all of humanity. He struggled to think, to grasp, the magnitude of the whole planet all of mankind throughout history had called home, in so many languages, so many different times, no longer being there. He tried to count in his mind the number of ships that had been part of the fleet, the one he was now separated from. No matter how many there were, how big that fleet was, many, many people had died. He had no business feeling the slightest bit of gratitude for being spared, for being one of the survivors. There were so many more people dead than there were alive, a population of billions...He tried to guess how many there were now. He had no doubt humanity would survive, even if he wouldn't, if all his best efforts, and those around him, brought the fleet back together, made it whole again. But he wondered if humanity now numbered only in the thousands. Perhaps a million.

He had looked about in wonder, too distracted to take in every nuance, but marveled at all the efforts displayed on monitors throughout the launch site. There were ships for every nation, or every region, as far as he could tell, from the United Kingdom, from China, from Russia, from all the obvious places, and many he found himself surprised to see represented. He had lost track of the developments in the space program over the years. It had been too long since anyone seemed to care, too long since there had been a reason. Yet when it really seemed to count, money had no longer been an issue, not when it was literally the difference between life and death. He wondered only briefly in those moments how many species would be lost forever, if someone hadn't thought to fill some ship like Noah's ark, two of every animal...

Every moment for the past week at least Jim's mind had been racing with a million thoughts, and it had never slowed down, even when everything seemed to be going right. That's what made him look at clocks, and that's what motivated him to seek the pilot out one more time.

As it turned out, Kim Jones, the flight attendant, must have been having the same thoughts.

Lost Convoy, Part XV: The Signal

One of the few pieces of normalcy that remained for this particular remnant of humanity was the concept of time, which was vividly represented for each passenger on the monitors that faced each of them, mounted on the backs of the seats, just as had been common in some commercial airliners, for those who still remembered such things. There was the time, in perfect synchronicity with what everyone had been familiar with back on Earth, the day split into A.M. and P.M. There was also the option of viewing anything from the limited archive stored in the ship's database, but few seemed to have taken advantage of that. Jim Brewer, however, kept finding himself checking the time, so that it barely seemed to advance at all, and that was a kind of comfort. The less time there was, the more predictable life might be considered, even now.

He switched through the options on his monitor, what was currently available to him, anyway. He was supposed to be able to track the ship's position, its progress through space, but that had been knocked out, just as the pilot's own navigation system had been hit, by whatever event or glitch had put them in this predicament. He supposed he was the only one to have even bothered to check. He noticed that he had tangential access to the satellites he had helped set up, which intrigued him. He wondered if even the pilot knew what was blinking across his screen now. The satellites had worked. At least, that was as far as Jim could tell. His knowledge of these things only went so far. He wondered if he should flag down the flight attendant, or maybe just go to the cockpit directly, having established something of credentials for such behavior, such access.

He looked around, just to see what other people were doing, but by Earth time, it was well into night, when even the worst procrastinators would have turned in for the day, regardless of how that day was defined. No one else was stirring. Jim himself hadn't been able to sleep for about the past week, since he'd first heard the corroborated reports of the planet's final prognosis. Even Clive was fast asleep again. This was a good sign, Jim figured.

At any rate, he didn't see the flight attendant anywhere. He stretched in his seat a little, experimentally, to see if his body felt the same way his mind did. Everything moved exactly as it should. He slipped past Clive and made his way up the aisle, brushing past a number of dangling limbs, felt a few of them stir. He kept checking the time on the monitors he passed, just to keep a pattern in place, for reassurance.

He was about to knock on the cockpit's hatch when it opened on its own.

Lost Convoy, Part XIV: Clive Lockwood

Clive fell asleep. It happened so suddenly, he wasn't able to appreciate that it was the first time he'd done so in more than forty-eight hours. When he woke again, he realized what'd happened, and it jostled his memory, back to another night, maybe twenty years earlier, to a dream he'd all but forgotten.

In hindsight, it was almost like a prediction, because the dream was about the end of the world, and everything that happened then, in the restfulness of sleep, had played out exactly the same in the grim reality of the waking world. Clive had never been prone to interpret his worst dreams as nightmares. While he experienced them, and he could always remember the tone rather than the texture of a dream when he woke, they felt almost exactly like real life, perhaps with an added dose of anxiety, just something his mind was working through. He could never and in fact never did try to explain what he experienced, and so that dream in particular had just been one in many others. He'd gone to his church early that morning, and sat in quiet prayer, even though he had nothing much to pray for. Clive never asked much of anyone, much less of any divine being. It simply wasn't in his nature.

But now in the reality where his dream had come true, he couldn't help but wonder what it meant. Why had he dreamed of the destruction of the Earth? Had others, and they, too, hadn't realized it? Was that the basis for every doomsday prediction, a half-remembered interpretation of a real dream, a real vision of events they couldn't understand, let alone grasp? He didn't have a Bible anywhere with him. He had in his youth memorized much of it, and he always had one when he was a priest, but not personally. He relied on his memory, his thoughts and ideas, and whatever was prompted of him. He had long ago thought to have left the actual book behind. He wished he had one now. What form of comfort might he have found? He almost thought to ask if any of the other passengers had one, and again struck on the thought that it would be Gabriel who would turn out to be provide the answer. Except this Gabriel was no angel. As far as Clive could tell, far from it.

He tried to think of his dream again. How much did it really match up to the events that had recently concluded? How much was just his imagination connecting invisible dots? He simply couldn't concentrate long enough. A little of the dreaming anxiety had necessarily slipped into the waking world. Jim Brewer, beside him, nudged him. "You were falling asleep again."

Lost Convoy, Part XIII: Space

In the grand scheme of things, one little ship, and one little species, only served to make the cosmos its backdrop, a tiny dot in a sea of stars. How many more worlds, how many more peoples, existed? This didn't cross anyone's mind onboard this particular frigate.

With the satellites in place, and everyone informed about the situation and the means by which it would be remedied, a gentle calm returned to the passengers, and Clive Lockwood had a chance to sit and chat with Jim Brewer perhaps for the first time. He was interested in what Jim might have to say about how exactly the satellites were supposed to work, if Jim was going to be able to interpret whatever signal they might get back. Whatever had happened to the ship's systems to separate it from the rest of the fleet had apparently affected whatever ordinary communications systems had existed or been planned. Clive was a little unsettled, because aside from that one idea, he felt maybe more powerless than even that man who'd sparked the riot, Gabriel...Gabriel something or other. He didn't feel like talking about him, much less with him. Jim was far more safe.

But Jim didn't have many more answers than Clive did. He in fact suggested that they take a poll of the general mechanical abilities of the passengers. Clive was afraid that it would turn out to be Gabriel who would provide the next steps in this chain of efforts. Periodically, the pilot, Ray Patch, announced updates as far as he himself had, and there was always a round of murmuring, and Clive could hear Gabriel whatshisname among the voices, always one of the loudest, mostly with snarky remarks.

It was bad enough to be in a precarious situation. He missed the regularity, the predictability, of the life he had come to know. But that really was all over now, wasn't it?

Lost Convoy, Part XII: Ray Patch

The whole world was allowed to obsess over it for exactly three weeks. That's how early scientists were able to predict that the Earth's core would no longer hold itself together. It wasn't a matter of environmental disaster, as so many had predicted over the years, or the sun winking out, or some horrific new weapon. It would take far longer than those three weeks to determine why exactly the core had finally failed.

During those weeks, however, there was a great amount of denial to be sorted out, and so preparations for evacuation were only sporadically attended. For an event that included the entire population, every country, every sex, every ethnic variety, Ray might have thought there'd be a little more unity. But same as it always was...Fortunately, he'd been contacted fairly early on, and so knew exactly what to expect for most of that period. As panic worked its way through every level of the population, Ray sat and watched, essentially, focused almost exclusively on what lay ahead, after all of that was finally over. He saw many of his friends, his co-workers, die needlessly, and many versions of the plan had to be scrapped and rethought, until, as someone very early in the process had noted, "You're basically going to have to improvise, fall back on your instincts."

He had been part of such an extensive collection of pilots at the beginning, he almost thought he wouldn't have to fly at all, that he could become just another passenger. When it came out that several of the frigates had been sabotaged, that the whole of the fleet would no longer be able to carry what would soon be dubbed "the survivors of Earth," long before the planet was actually lost, he panicked a little, and saw the numbers dwindle so much as to assure he would be needed in the full official capacity in which he was qualified, necessary. He thought to himself, What are we saving here, anyway? So many people apparently felt it perfectly acceptable to continue acting in exactly the petty ways that had made it a difficult prospect even in the first scenario. He had never been an astronaut, but that had never stopped him from wondering why it would take decades to continue exploration of space, when so much had already been proven about its viability. Only arrogance and pride, and dumb stupidity, he thought bluntly, and sadly, during those weeks.

When the fleet was finally about to launch, he realized he really would have to fall back on his wits. All his colleagues were either assigned elsewhere or gone, lost before even the planet. He decided that he would let the rest fall to fate. He would be boarding the frigate, he would be flying it. That much was now certain. And then everything else would just have to happen...

Lost Convoy, Part XI: Survival Line

"We need to make something clear. We've just been through a terrible event, and we're not in the clearing yet. We survived the destruction of Earth, but we still need to find some new kind of permanent safety. We aren't going to survive on ships forever. Now, as some of you know, there has been an additional complication. Our frigate has lost contact with the rest of the fleet. We've already taken measures to remedy this situation, and I'd like to personally and publicly thank Clive Lockwood and Jim Brewer for their assistance in this matter. This represents, however, just one of the many hurdles we still have ahead of us. We still don't know why it happened, and to be honest, that's completely beside the point. We will need to work together, put all our petty differences and irritations behind us. There's a lot more trouble out there than we really need to create ourselves. I can't make you become better people, but I can ask that you at least try and make life tolerable for everyone, because that's the first best step to ensuring we can make it to the next step, the point where we're safe and secure again, wherever that may be."

Normally, Ray Patch wasn't much for making speeches, and the only way he made it through that one was by starting it as soon as he entered the cabin, and refusing to even think about stopping. It was incredible, it really was, that he'd made it the whole way through, with the same confident air he hoped his passengers were generous enough to believe in.

For a few moments, it seemed as if everyone were just too stunned to have more of a reaction than stare at him, and he was grateful that he was done speaking, because he wouldn't have been able to continue now if he tried. The flight attendant, Kim Jones, was standing by his side, and he saw Clive and Jim shake themselves free from the man who had presumably begun the commotion Kim had come to warn him about.

"You're talkin' about a survival line," the man said, who was of course the only one who was going to speak at all. "Okay. That's good enough. Now get your ass back into that cockpit. Makes me nervous seeing the pilot stand back here with the rest of us. I'm not too good at the stick myself. Wouldn't want to press my luck."

There were a few nervous smiles. "Gabriel Martinez," Kim whispered to Ray.