Inflection Point

Djo Wea

Part One

The first shelter breath was always the most anxious. But when that sweet metallic taste of fresh air hit her lungs, Cable Hightower knew they were finally safe. She breathed in deeply, holding for a pause, before slowly exhaling. They had survived another day outside. The weather had gotten progressively worse, and Guy had pushed it for too long. Conditions deteriorated to the point of blindness and the violent windstorm turned rocks into bullets. They were lost. Her rover, Clyde, was the one who saved them. After disconnecting their umbilical connection, she had sent him forward to find the shelter. He found a path that led them home.

She looked at Guy Antennaman playing it cool, nonchalant as he tossed his helmet on the table, and wondered how he remained so stoic. Free from concern, like he knew the outcome already. Of course they would be safe, it was guaranteed. He failed to disclose the knowledge of this secret surety, and instead showered her with an idiotic grin. “You always make the best air, Cable. It tastes like a crisp spring morning in here. Why are you exploring the desolation when you could be back on our Titan teaching your secrets to the oxygen techs?”

“Stuff it Guy. I need to check the drysuits and see if they held up.” Guy laughed over his shoulder. He was already setting up the food processor. “It can wait. We’ve been trekking all day and those frames aren’t going anywhere. Let’s enjoy dinner first. I already sent Derrick out to start a down drill. We’ll know shortly if it’s a good take.”

“Derrick always finds oil, we’ll be fine.” Now it was Cable’s turn for optimism. Guy’s rover was a master at finding and refining the oil to power their drysuits. She joined Guy in the center of the shelter, accepting the proffered mug of chai.

Guy held up the reader attached to his wrist. A constant flow of text streamed across the screen. She leaned over his shoulder, huddling against his back to get a better view. “We’ve trekked so far ahead of the Titan, and these electrical storms are getting worse. Do you think we should head back before they abandon us for lost? What if the ancestor ruins are the only thing out here? We could be in real trouble.”

“Nonsense Cable, we are on the cusp of discovering the largest strategic reserve ever.” He shot his hands up in triumph. “Derrick is grounded and found a full dip! There’s enough to fill all the reserves by morning. Tomorrow, you will make the climb and we will find the strategic reserve.”

The First Night

They dined in relative silence, worn out from the day’s events. Afterwards, Cable went to check on the suits. She reached up, grabbing a cross brace on the ceiling, and swung over the feed cables that connected them to the portable recharging station.

Her exo-skeleton, ablaze in high-vis teal, seemed no worse for wear. She plugged in an audio diagnostic tool and ran through the entire checklist. Better safe than sorry. Each section returned the expected number of pings and beeps confirming her eyeball assessment. She used compressed air to clean the umbilical connections. It allowed Clyde to act as the battery pack, making her suit more agile in the harsh environment.

Clyde was there, keeping watch on the shelter entrance. He didn’t like leaving Derrick alone in the night. She reached down and gave him a pat. “Who’s my favorite follow-bot? You are! You’re the best rover.” Clyde’s umbilical wagged lazily back and forth; his four limbs curled up underneath his frame.

Guy’s neon pink skelly was another story. The high gain antenna was still coiled and attached to the backplate, but the connector had sheared clean off. “I know why we were having so much trouble communicating earlier. Your antenna snapped.”

That got his attention. He joined her to inspect the damage. “Well shit, that’s not good. But nothing we can do about it out here, and the near field comms will still work.”

Cable made one last round of system checks before attaching a proximity sensor and an air quality indexer to her wrist. They would warn against danger while she slept. In those few minutes, Guy had laid out the mat and placed himself inside the sleeping pack, filling the small shelter with scruffy snoring. He must have been as exhausted as she felt. She wriggled in next to him, leaned into his bulk, and fell asleep seconds later.

Entering the Ruins

Early the next morning, Cable gave the suits another once over. As promised, Derrick had topped them up to full. After a light breakfast and two strong coffees, it was time to resume their mission. She grabbed her helmet off the rack and attached it to the ring clamps on the nape of her drysuit, finishing the pressurization cycle as she stepped backwards into the teal exo-skeleton.

She stowed her climbing gear in the bins on Clyde’s back before connecting her suit to him. The little rover was buzzing with excitement, ready to go. Once more attached at the hip. She imagined they both preferred it that way.

Morning light brought a murky chill with it. Cable stepped into pea soup, a fog so thick, condensation immediately started forming on her mask. “I can’t see a damn thing out here.”

Guy was already outside, attaching his umbilical to Derrick. It had spent the night exposed to the elements, but its low center of gravity and tank treads kept it safely in place. “We already know where we are going, and it will clear up shortly. Plus, this water-logged air will cool the motors and we can run even more efficiently.” They extended the drysuit intercoolers and trekked back into the ancestor ruins.

For 3 days, they had stayed on the outskirts of what was once a pre-inflection city, close to the relative safety of their shelter. The oil reserve they were searching for proved elusive, and successive days of failure had made Guy increasingly annoyed. Until finally, he hatched his latest scheme. Today, they headed to the center of the city, to finally see her up close.

The odd weather made for fast, but eerie travel, like she had left the Earth far behind. The alien world pushed against her applying a constant atmospheric pressure. Cable shivered, glad to have the insulated drysuit between her and the outside environment. Cable considered everything about the ancients to be useless, but at least they had loved oil. They left reserves of the stuff all over the place. If you were a scouting party tasked with finding fuel, you couldn’t go wrong searching their ruins. Still, it was never wise to venture too deep into them. Bad things had happened to the ancients, and maybe that bad luck carried through time. She didn’t want to accidentally catch a case of it. The ancestor ruins were otherworldly, but nothing compared to the sheer spectacle that stood at the center of the city. It took her breath each time she saw it. A towering statue of a woman standing upright and fierce, easily a hundred meters high. A giant sword had fallen from her hands and embedded itself in the ground. It was the largest ancestor object she had ever seen.

Most of the body cladding had fallen away revealing a twisted skeleton underneath. But the head, face, and legs remained stubbornly intact. The statue’s face was a scream frozen in time. With one arm outstretched, she beckoned an invisible enemy forward. The other trailed behind her, raised defiantly towards the heavens. Everything past the wrist was missing, but the stump was still impressive.

Cable imagined the great warrior princess who had inspired this colossal waste of energy. What accomplishments had she achieved to merit such a display? Had it been worth it? Long dead, but still annoying, her ancestors. Given the chance, she’d go back in time and kick their ass for being so stupid.

Ancestor ruins radiated out from the statue in wide circles. Epic remains standing in disarray. Bent steel and fallen concrete, hunched old crones too salted in their years. Guy never missed a chance to explain ancestor stuff. “Those ruins were buildings covered in great panes of glass. They used them to direct the sun’s reflection and blind their enemies. And people lived inside them like they were Titans.”

Cable scoffed loud enough to send static through the comms. Everyone knew the ancestors lived underground in vast caverns. Guy was always making up wild ass stories about their ‘great’ civilization. How they had been so advanced that they conquered the entire planet and bent it to their own needs. How they had created a new geological age, the one she lived in. Madness. Humans could hardly survive under the best conditions, and he wanted her to believe they used to live outside and casually move mountains.

“Sure they did Guy. Everyone lived above ground and had a furry pet. And they didn’t have to drag rovers around with them to capture oil. They just walked outside whenever they wanted, uncovered, absorbing and enjoying the sun’s super safe rays.”

Still, after the last few days, her convictions were wobbly. Cable was used to dismissing the more outlandish claims that Guy held dear, but even her hardened heart had to admit this site was impressive. She found it increasingly difficult to understand why they had built something so massive on the surface.

“Today you’re going up, and from that high perch, our sensors are sure to find the deposit we need. You’ll be thanking the ancestors then.”

The wind had picked up, becoming a low howl. High pitched, but still distant so it sounded like a whisper. Nothing to worry about.

He kept moving towards the statue, forcing her along before she could object. She was already tired and sweaty in the drysuit. The rubbery bits kept chafing her elbows and armpits. Every movement left a familiar red pattern on the skin. If you walked outside long enough, they branded into place. Veteran walkers wore their scars as a badge of honor.

The first time she had done a long-range patrol, she was wonderstruck by everything in the outside world. She would have jumped at the chance to make this trek, to be amazed by this statue, and to be free from the regimented life on the Titan. Now it was just sore muscles, regret, and another obstacle to climb.

But that really wasn’t fair. She was jaded, yes. But this statue was so outlandish that even she couldn’t resist the urge to see it up close. She wanted to climb it, desperately. The view would be epic.

They arrived at the base of a gigantic pedestal. Even in the pea soup for air, the Goddess statue still managed to cast an elongated shadow. Everything above the ankle was obscured by the fog.

Guy began setting up his equipment. “Keep three points of contact at all times. No hero ball, ok? I don’t care how long it takes to get up there, only that you make it up and down in one piece. There’s no one else here to impress, so don’t try to impress anyone.”

Cable rolled her eyes. “You know I’m safety first. Just have the equipment ready. I don’t want to spend all afternoon sitting my happy ass in that statue’s armpit.”

She shrugged out of her exo-skeleton, abandoning it like a cicada’s skin, before carefully unhooking and wrapping the umbilical around it. For the second time in as many days, she and Clyde were disconnected while outside. It was unnerving. Clyde gave her a forlorn look. Cable approached the big, big toe of the statue, appraising its utility as a grappling point. She adjusted the antenna dish on her back, making sure the trailing cable wouldn’t snag on the way up. Small hairs extended outwards from the drysuit, ready to provide extra grip. A quick stretch. A deep breath. She began her ascent.

Every few meters, she checked a myriad of details. Just to make sure. Just to be safe. But the leg was structurally sound, the suit integrity nominal, and her climbing on point. Everything was… fine.

The wind had picked up, steadily blowing the fog away. Now, well above the ankle, she could still make out Guy standing below. She swore she could even see his goofy grin under the helmet as he gave her a double thumbs up. Better to look up than down then.

At one point, near the heart maybe, she stopped for a quick break, pulling gulps of water through her hydration tube. She rubbed her forehead against a scrap of cloth that was stuffed in the seam above the visor, to gather beads of sweat before they dripped into her eyes. Just the typical tricks you learned when you spent your entire life wearing a helmet. Finally, she crested the shoulder, crumpling into a worn-out ball on the flat surface. After a brief rest, she sat up and stared eye to eye with the great visage of this ancient woman. Her look was an invitation, challenging Cable to see her mighty accomplishments. Cable beheld her works, scattered to the horizon in total ruin, unimpressed.

The eyes were terrifying, piercing into her soul, following her as she walked across the shoulder. The statue condemned her for not understanding how it all come to this. As if to say, ‘it’s not that easy to make the right choices.’ Or worse, ‘we made the right choices, and it still turned out bad. Maybe your shit isn’t as tight as you think.’

Cable wanted to believe they were smarter now, that the ancients had just been careless idiots. But it rang hollow in these surrounding ruins. This statue had stood for hundreds of years. The statue had earned her place. Cable was the one intruding.

She threw her grappling hook up and scaled to the highest point, the stump of the wrist. It had taken all morning, and she was equal parts ecstatic and sweaty. But she had made it. Her hands ran against the pitted exterior shell, tracing the lines of degradation, either from storms, or just general age.

“Now who’s looking down on who, eh?”

From this vantage, she could clearly make out the remnants of the giant sword where it had fallen. It lay on the ground, a twisted and broken mess, unable to perform its martial function. Once, a great weapon held mightily aloft. Now little more than ancient debris, the hollow conclusion of a forgotten civilization.

The ancients, so powerful and vast, with such dominance over the world, had all fallen away. Only their memory remained, scattered across the planet in these ambiguous ruins. A damning reminder of their blind refusal to deal with the consequences of their actions. Cable returned her focus to the job at hand. Guy was out of range, so she could only use the broadest gestures to communicate. After a few minutes of extended arm waving, Guy finally noticed her, and gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. Her reply involved a single finger whose connotation was not as kind. She powered on the hardware and waited for Guy to perform the scan.

The wind had picked up considerably. She could see it swirling dusty particles along the arm towards her perch in the wrist. She considered securing the dish with safety wires, but they were so close to finishing that it seemed unnecessary. The leg weights would be enough. She waved more inappropriate finger gestures down towards Guy, hoping he would translate them as ‘hurry-up’ instead of the literal words she had conveyed. They didn’t have the time for that activity, anyway.

Finally, Guy gave her the all-clear signal. With the data recorded, she could safely dismantle the gear and descend back to the surface. Just in time too. The wind had turned into a barrage against her drysuit. She felt the dread of something about to go terribly wrong. Her existence skipped sideways and time ground to a crawl. A slow-motion disaster unfolded in front of her eyes, mocking her inability to stop it.

A powerful gust blasted the dish into the air, slamming it into the statue’s thumb, where it found brief purchase before falling over the side. She rushed to the edge screaming futilely into her helmet, looking down just as the dish careened off the leg and smashed into Derrick. The rover was crushed.

Derrick had never had much personality. It always did what you expected, even if it was too specific in its interpretations. But, watching Guy’s rover explode into a million pieces still caused her physical pain, as if a longtime friend had just vanished. A guilty shake followed when she thanked the ancients for not crushing Clyde instead.

She waved at Guy, trying to get his attention back, but he was focused on the smoldering pile that used to be Derrick. He took an unnatural seat, slumping on the ground. A blossom of red spread over the high-vis pink on his back.

She attached a hook and rolled over the edge, setting the releaser to maximum speed. Unlike the slog up, the free-fall down was quick. Still not fast enough. She touched feet to ground and whirled in Guy’s direction. The initial blossom was now a pool around his body. She dropped to the dirt beside him.

“Oh… oh no. Guy, you’re going to be ok. You have to be ok.”

Guy looked at her, his eyes distant and unfocused, before holding up the shredded end of his umbilical.

“Lost my connect with Derrick, do you think you can fix it?”

Cable didn’t have the heart to tell him there was nothing left.

Clyde stood next to Derrick’s remains, a soft warble trilling from his voicebox. She dug into his storage compartment, finding a two in one splitter. She disconnected the umbilical, installed the splitter, and reattached herself to the first end. She cut off the connector on the second split and used electrical tape to connect the exposed leads on Guy’s cable. The work was quick and dirty, but it would hold. Clyde could supply power to both suits.

Cable ran a diagnostic on Guy as his head lolled back, but her eyes knew the story even as the machine beeped away. A shard of the antenna had punctured his suit and pushed all the way through the other side. Guy would start deteriorating as the toxic air mixed with his blood. She retrieved sealant foam and applied it to the wounds. It would slow down the progression, but it was only a temporary fix.

Everything had conspired against her. There was no way to contact the Titan. And without Derrick, they would eventually run out of fuel. They only had the energy stored in Clyde’s batteries and the shallow reserves in their suits. They had to move.

She made the decision right then, stripping the gear off Clyde’s pack mount, and emptying his storage bins. The weight reduction would help conserve energy, and they would need every drop available.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. Cable wanted to scream, but she kept it together. She fervently hoped Guy didn’t understand what was happening. If he did, he’d demand that she leave him behind, to save herself and the data. She triggered a cocktail injection of adrenaline and vitamins. His eyes fluttered briefly, and for just a moment, he had clarity. “Guy, I’m giving it to you straight. You’re hurt bad and Derrick’s gone. We have to get back to the Titan. Do you understand? Right now.”

He nodded. “Put me on auto-follow then, I’m not sure my legs are working. But listen, we hit the jackpot! There’s so much untapped reserve here, we can run the Titan for a generation. We have to get this data back.”

Cable laughed bitterly.

“Return to base Clyde, initiate. Lead the way.”