The End Is Now

“Yes,” Dmitry said. “I figure we have eighteen months’ worth of food for five thousand mouths. That gives us enough for fifteen people for five hundred years.”

“Fifteen people? To do what?”

“To survive,” Dmitry said. But the tone of his voice said something more somber and sinister. Tracy tried to imagine all that he was implying. Someone else said it for her.

“And kill everyone else? Our families?”

“No way,” someone said. Tracy watched her partners, these founders, fidget. It was the orientation all over again. A fight would break out.

“We can’t live that long anyway,” Tracy said, attempting to defuse the argument by showing how pointless it all was.

“Generations,” Anatoly blurted out. He scratched his beard, seemed to be pondering a way to make some insane plan work. “Have to make sure there’s only one birth for every death.”

Tracy’s eyes returned to the book on the center of the conference table. Others were looking at it as well. She remembered a passage like that inside the book. Several passages now suddenly made more sense. The answer had been there, but none of them had been willing to see it. It’s how that book seemed to work.

“I won’t be a part of this,” Natasha said. “I won’t. I’d rather have one year here, with my family, than even consider what you’re suggesting.”

“Will you still think that a year from now, when the last ration is consumed and we’re left watching one another waste away? Either it happens now, or it happens then. Which way is cleaner?”

“We sound just like them,” Tracy whispered, mostly to herself. She eyed those monitors again, saw her reflection in one of them.

“The Donner Party,” Sherman said. When one of the Russians turned to stare at him, Sherman started to explain. “Settlers heading west two centuries ago. They got trapped in the mountains and had to resort to—”

“I’m familiar with the story. It’s not an option.”

“I didn’t mean it was an option.” Sherman turned to Natasha. “I mean, that’s what we’re going to start thinking a year from now. Or eighteen months. Whenever.”

Natasha spun a lock of her hair. She dipped the end between her lips and remained silent.

“It would be quick,” Dmitry said. “We still have canisters of the test nanos, the ones I built. Those, I can program. We would have to inoculate ourselves first—”

“This is going too fast,” Tracy said. “We need to think about this.”

“After thirty-six days, we’ll be down to fourteen people,” Dmitry said. “At the rate we’ll be feeding these people, each month we delay means one spot lost. How long do you want to think about it?” He took off his glasses and wiped the condensation from them. It had grown hot in the room. “We’re in a lifeboat,” he said. “We are drifting to shore, but not as fast as we had hoped. There are too many of us in the boat.” He returned the glasses to the bridge of his nose, looked coolly at the others.

“Every one of us should have died yesterday,” Anatoly said. “Our families. Us. Every one. None of us should be here. Even this day is a bonus. A year would be a blessing.”

“Is it so important that any of us make it to the other side?” Patrice asked. The others turned to her. “I mean, it won’t even be us. If we were to do this. It would be our descendants. And what kind of hell are they going to endure in here, living for dozens of generations in this hole, keeping their numbers at fifteen, brothers and sisters coupling? Is that even surviving? What’s the point? What’s the point if we’re just trying to get someone to the other side? No matter what, the assholes in Atlanta will be our legacy now.”

“That’s why we have to do this,” Tracy said.

Dmitry nodded. “Tracy’s right. That’s precisely why we have to do this. So they don’t get away with it. Isn’t that what we planned from the beginning? Isn’t that why we only have enough food for a year but enough guns to slaughter an army?”

“Fifteen people is no army.”

“But they’ll know,” Dmitry said. “They’ll carry legends with them. We’ll write it all down. We’ll make up most of the first fifteen. We’ll make sure no one ever forgets—”

“You mean make a religion out of this.”

“I mean make a cause.”

“Or a cult.”

“Do we want them to have the world to themselves, the fuckers who did this?”

“We can’t decide anything now,” Tracy said. She rubbed her temples. “I need to sleep. I need to see my family—”

“No one can know,” Anatoly told her.

Tracy shot him a look. “I’m not telling anyone. But we need a day or two before we do anything.” She caught the look on Dmitry’s face. “Surely we have that much time.”

He nodded.

“And you won’t program anything without consulting with us first.”

Again, a nod.

Sherman laughed, but it was without humor. “Yes,” he said. “I need sleep as well.” He pointed to Dmitry. “And I want assurances that I’ll wake up in the morning.”

* * *