Inflection Point

Djo Wea

Part Two

She changed tactics twenty-four hours later as Guy’s condition deteriorated. The foam seal wasn’t enough to halt the blood infection, and the progression was faster than she imagined. His words lost clarity, slurring around the edges. She rerouted his suit reserves, pushing the energy back into Clyde’s batteries. When it was drained, she abandoned his exo-skeleton and strapped him to Clyde’s back on a makeshift stretcher. Time dragged and she could barely stay awake. It was hard to move the exo skeleton muscles. She kept stumbling. But she dared not stop, not until they were safe. She put her own suit on auto-follow, and dozed off.

A pinging alarm sounded in her ears, bouncing around the inside of her helmet. Low oxygen density. Critical danger. Maybe she hadn’t been as tired as she thought. A quick inspection found the culprit. In all the confusion of Guy’s injury and the rush to immediate travel, she hadn’t noticed the damage to her external scrubbers. She increased her energy draw from Clyde, and ramped up the recirculation system to compensate.

Cable had no idea how far they needed to travel. They had ranged a week ahead of the Titan before arriving at the ancestor ruins. And then spent three days, or was it four, searching them. She squeezed her eyes shut trying to remember the details, but it was all a blur. Three days. It was definitely three days. Plus, another one walking. The Titan would have also moved a few days closer by now. So, four days out. No, three, she had walked all night after all. Or was it two? She had no idea really.

Beside her, Guy stirred. Awake again. He’d been coming in and out of consciousness every few hours, but usually not for long. After a few moments, he caught her gaze and attempted a horrific impression of his trademark grin.

“I hope I look better than I feel right now.”

Cable fought back the tears. “You’re fine Guy, we’re almost home.”

The ancient ruins were far behind, replaced by more familiar swept plains. Hard scrub brush grew knee high, covering the world and forming hypnotic swirling patterns as the grass swayed in the wind. Clyde steadily directed them onwards, following a strangely clear path in the ground.

“Do you know what this was before the Inflection Point?”

Cable looked at the dusty bed beneath her boots. Deep grooves crossed the bone-dry ground, like wrinkles on an old man’s throat. The cracks spidered out, deep enough that they hadn’t filled with the same dust that covered everything else.

“Nothing the ancestors built makes any sense to me. Why even make this road when it doesn’t go anywhere.”

“They didn’t build this; it was a river. Once it fed a great ocean.”

She didn’t believe a word of it. She was just glad he was coherent enough to string the sentences together.

Guy stared behind them, suddenly lucid. “Real weather coming. We need to find shelter.” She turned to gaze in the same direction. An electrical storm was brewing in the distance, and she could already see fiery discharges arcing across the sky. If they were caught out, it would fry their electronics. But in the vast plain of nothingness, there would be no shelter. Nowhere to hide. Her air system was taking too much power, Guy was not doing well, and they were moving too slow to outrun the storm. Cable came to a grim conclusion, but she kept it to herself.

They trekked on, the power steadily draining from her drysuit as she pumped her reserves back into Clyde’s battery. When the oxygen deprivation alarm began to chime, she disabled it. She brought her drysuit to a dead stop, and switched to the emergency power circuit. She leaned over Guy, looking directly into his helmet visor. His eyes were red and puffy. Bloodshot lines stretched across them as if to mask an underlying fear he hadn’t mentioned all this time.

“I’m sorry Guy, it was all my fault. If I secured the antenna, none of this would have happened.”

Guy struggled to speak. “Don’t be crazy, it’s my fault not yours, I should have…” He faded away before finishing the sentence.

The drugs worked faster than she expected, but it would be easier this way. She loosened her grip on Clyde’s leash, disconnecting the umbilical clamps and releasing the various hoses that connected the three of them. One last check to make sure Guy’s stretcher was secure. Cable cradled the rover’s head with both hands, holding it close to hers, tears flowing.

“Save him Clyde, get him home. Expedite.”

Clyde couldn’t disobey a direct order, but it sure felt like he wanted to. He backed away slowly, keeping his eyes pointed in her direction, as if hoping she would change her mind. But she didn’t. And then they were gone, disappeared into the gathering dust. Clyde was surprisingly fast on his own, fast enough maybe to outrun the storm. Fast enough maybe to save Guy.

She sat on a small boulder trying to make herself comfortable. Her drysuit functions slowly went offline, preserving the final emergency circuit. It provided just enough to power life support, near field comms, and the distress beacon. But only for a few days. Only if she remained stationary.

Cable was used to sudden onset weather. It was a normal part of life, coming and going without warning, usually with violence. This storm seemed different, it felt terminal. She engaged a small timer in her display, counting the minutes as they passed. Too many went by, and she turned it off. Better to not know. The storm grew closer. She let the grief flow through her, remembering the good times and lamenting a future that would never be. She had spent her entire life angry at the ancients, at the damage they had caused to the earth. Now at the end, she realized the obvious truth. On a much smaller scale, she was the same. She fought against the inevitable, holding out hope for a miracle, willing to sacrifice herself to make sure Guy lived. Maybe the ancestors felt that way too. She couldn’t fault them for that. When all seemed lost, did they intentionally collapse their civilization, to ensure some survived to eventually become her people?

Crusty dirt began to scour her suit. The exhaustion was overwhelming. She lost consciousness. She returned, her breath shallow. The limited oxygen made her dizzy. The scrub brush no longer swirled; the grass now uniformly bent against the driving wind. Pebbles pelted the exo-skeleton with high-pitched pings. She tried to stand up but she couldn’t do that anymore. Why couldn’t she do that anymore? She didn’t remember that part. Her mind felt sluggish and everything seemed fuzzy around the edges. The world beyond her outstretched hand was a mass of solid dirt, blinding and dark. Where was she?

Cable felt the first dangerous impacts against her suit. She imagined the outer material peeling away, exposing her to toxic air a few fleeting seconds before being electrocuted. A ball of lightning slashed across the darkness, illuminating the vast nothing of her surroundings. Fear blossomed into an adrenaline rush flowing through her body. Cable’s attention snapped into focus. She remembered something now, they were trying to find the shelter. Clyde was searching for it. Surely Guy was close, just a few meters ahead. She wasn’t alone.

“Any sign of Clyde up there?” She shouted, but only received static in reply. Cable felt a momentary flush of panic, imagining the drysuit powering down until she froze in place, abandoned. Then she’d be a statue too, although much shorter. “Guy, can you hear me? Did Clyde find us a shelter?” No reply.

The helmet was in the way. She couldn’t hear anything over the damned static. If she took it off, the noise would be gone leaving her in merciful silence. Then she could find Guy. She fumbled for the release clamps in the darkness.

A vision of Guy flashed into her mind, laid out on a stretcher as Clyde carried him away. His suit pierced by a broken antenna, punctured through and through. It seemed too real. She pushed the thought from her mind. No time for distractions.

There was a new sound, this time a chirping tone. The cadence was familiar, but she couldn’t remember why. Cable strained to hear something else beyond the wall of static. There it was! A voice. So quiet, it sounded kilometers away. She kept listening. It required so much concentration, but it grew steadily in volume until finally she understood the words.

“Hold tight Cable, we’ve got a bead locked on you. You’re going to be ok, over.” Memory of the past few days flooded back. She shivered realizing what she had been about to do. Cable’s voice, suddenly hoarse, as if she hadn’t used it recently, cracked. “Did he make it?” “Yes.”

The howling wind paused momentarily as the Titan’s elongated shadow fell across her. The great wheels supporting the mobile structure ground to a halt nearby, everything above the rims lost in obscurity.

Two glowing eyes bounced towards her. Clyde, umbilical extensions wagging, produced an auditory signal tone that indicated success but sounded like a happy bark. She had never been happier to see him, and it seemed the same for him. The little rover knelt beside her, beckoning for her to connect the umbilical cord. It felt unbearably heavy in her noodle arms as she slotted it in place. The suit began replenishing immediately.

When that sweet metallic taste of fresh air hit her lungs, Cable Hightower knew they were finally safe. They had survived another day outside.