Even the Stars Deserve to Die

By Ramon Miravitllas Mas

On Earth, the cities of humanity crumbled into dust, becoming fossils. Forests burned and life went extinct. But, billions of years later, it rained one last time. The siblings were born from that rain, strange creatures of human appearance and mind. Their life on the desert of Earth has no purpose, until they discover the wick, a molecule burning around their genetic material, condemning them to death one hundred years and three months after birth.

In search to find out if life is worth living, a researcher explores a cave billions of years old. The brain inside a simulacrum misses its dead father. The commander of a spaceship travels to meet a mysterious satellite in the bowels of the solar system.

In this story of philosophical dimensions, the power of the word merges with the nostalgia for an irretrievable past, where fear of death coexists with the sadness of losing the parents you will never see again.

A hard science fiction book dealing with topics such as molecular biology, stellar evolution and the future of Earth, combined with poetry, sculpture and the early artworks of creatures who yearn to be human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ramon Miravitllas Mas
• Release date: Apr 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223732976

Book preview

Chapter 1

Onamuro

◈ Xezay ◈

The rain seeped through the sand. It was the first thing I felt when I was born, even before I opened my eyes for the first time. From that day on, it’d never rain again. Erin told me so on the terrace of a city made of concrete, among the sculptures of the deer that once roamed Earth.

I was born beside a grotto. My body had fallen from the sky, along with the raindrops that had woken me up. I sat up and my hand touched the soaked sand.

The Sun illuminated Earth’s desert and burned my skin. I crawled along the ground to get inside the grotto. The sand moved around me, making a noise similar to when the wind swirls it. I stayed in there for hours, staring up at the Sun, on the border between light and shadow, my back resting against a column of rock.

I was nobody until Erin found me days later. The sand had already dried. He was the first person I’d met in my week of life. He stretched out an arm and helped me up without saying a word. For days, we walked the course of the old canyon, away from the grotto where I was born, until we found a place to climb. When we reached the top of the plateau, I leaned against a rock.

I’m Erin, my new friend said. What’s your name?

Those were the first words I’d ever heard, a whisper inside my head that blended with my own thoughts. I tried to articulate an answer. But I was nobody. I had no name, and I stayed silent.

I know, Erin said as he started walking. I’ll call you Xezay, if that’s alright.

Xezay. It’s been my name since then. I’ll never change it, until the day I die. It’s one of the few things I keep of my old friend.

I rose to my feet and walked with him through the Earth’s desert. The sand formed dunes that the wind shifted every day. It’d been hours since we’d said a word to each other. There wasn’t much to say either.

Erin showed me the basin where an ocean had dwelled billions of years ago, though we didn’t know it at the time. The basin stretched to the horizon, filled with small rocky peaks and trenches that plunged kilometers into the earth, vanishing into an abyss of darkness.

We climbed to the top of every mountain we came across on our way. When night fell, we’d lie on the sand, talking about the stars, the constellations, the distance that separated us from each of them. When dawn came, Erin’s onyx skin reflected the red of the first rays of sunlight.

What’s beyond the horizon? I said one day, when I’d grown tired of walking.

Erin turned with a smile. More deserts, more mountains, maybe other stars. I don’t know.

Will the whole Earth be the same?

Erin shrugged and my question went unanswered.

Even back then, walking through the desert toward the horizon, I’d realized that Earth was a spherical rock, a colossal ball covered in sand and surrounded by a sky full of stars. I’d enjoyed the months I’d shared with Erin, but I knew that sooner or later we’d circle the world, even if it took years. And for what?

It wasn’t until years later that we discovered Earth hadn’t always been a desert. It’d been home to millions of creatures. Forests had grown up around every hill, harboring deer, bears and nightingales. The seas had unleashed their fury with every storm. And humans, perhaps the siblings of our ancestors, had been buried beneath the sand of the desert.

Erin and I parted ways months later. He kept studying the world, the fossils of forsaken cities and ancient forests. He created poetry. He molded sculptures in the shape of the ancient creatures that inhabited Earth.

I returned to my grotto, where I became nobody again, always waiting for dusk to come so I could remember the days I’d spent with Erin under the constellations. I was unaware that my life was finite, just like the stars, just like the forests of Earth and the ancient cities of humanity. Inside the grotto, my name was forgotten.

But I met Erin again decades later. That was just five years ago, before the rocket nozzles carried me away from Earth and from my friend. That night, Erin showed me what he’d created—not only the beauty of art—but also the hydrogen bomb. The explosion in the sky left me speechless. It was as if day had returned in the middle of the night and the heat of the thermonuclear explosion melted the frost that had formed around every vertex of that concrete city where we’d met again.

One day I might forgive him, before it’s all over.

Commander Xezay… a voice says.

What? I shake my head. Behind me, the asteroid Onamuro rotates barely imperceptibly, five revolutions per hour. I can just make out the black rock shining under the Sun.

Xezay…

The name Erin gave me echoes in the void where my body drifts. But this time, a heartless machine articulated it. I turn my head towards the source of the message. For a moment I think it was an imagination. I’ve had nightmares for days now, when I lean back against the chair on the bridge, closing my eyes for just a moment.

Extrasolar life…

This time I’m sure of it. It must be a message that scattered around space until it became an incoherent noise.

I generate torsion with the thrusters attached to my body. I counter my spin when I’m facing the spaceship, Onamuro floating behind me.

I get inside through the hatch and push myself through the weightlessness of the corridor, pressing my hand against the obsidian-black walls, smooth as the skin of my own hand. I pass under the onyx arches, following the tubes carrying blood to Akari, the ship’s brain. She picked up the entire message and plays it inside my head as I sit in the bridge seat, in front of the wall of cells separating me from her internal organs.

The message comes from the Moon, Cabeus crater. My surroundings are in complete darkness aside from a few stars shining on the screen of photoemitting cells. At first, I feel a little out of place, but I have to set off immediately.

I push myself against the seat, moving along the bridge walkway, towards the motionless figure hiding in the darkness of the onyx arches. I kneel in front of him, the ship’s assistant I never woke up. His head is downwards. He’s inert, like dead. He looks like a mockery of myself.

Alexis, I whisper in his ear, it’s time to wake up.

The assistant remains motionless in the dark corner.

The jet engines start to burn in a burst. The entire bridge trembles. The spaceship flies by Onamuro as we gain speed and diverge from the asteroid’s orbit. The drilling machines are still working on the rock surface, preparing the terrain for the extraction of water, silicate and carbon concealed inside. But the machine’s effort will go to waste. Before getting too far away, I command them to go into hibernation, freezing in place like the fossil of Quetzalcoatlus, with its peak looking high into Earth’s sky. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back.

Behind me, in the dark corner, the assistant closes his fingers in a fist and then spreads them out. Right now, no one exists inside that body. It’s an empty shell that moves following the instructions of the Universe. But, in a few days, someone will be born between the interactions of its neuronal nodes, just as it happened to me.

As the asteroid Onamuro recedes into the distance, I remember the days I spent walking its black rock surface. Sunlight bathed my bare skin—black like onyx—giving me a tranquility akin to the time I spent with Erin on the deserts of Earth. I thought of the beginning of a poem. I wondered what would happen when the stars died out, when the monster that inhabited my nightmares no longer had a world to live in. I wondered why I had traveled to Onamuro, a place surrounded by darkness, where Earth was just a red dot among the rest of the stars.

◈

I wake up leaning back against the chair. I’ve had the same nightmare again, but I try not to remember it.

I ask Akari where we are, through the neural cable connecting us. It’s been a week since we traveled from Onamuro. Akari turned off the thrusters to save fuel, and inertia drags us to Mercury, the place where the message asked me to go. We’re a dark speck moving adrift between gravity wells.

I hear the vibrations of the handrail behind me, on the walkway leading to the bridge. I look over the headrest. The anthropoid assistant floats in weightlessness, clinging to the railing as he holds his head as if it were going to explode. Inside his skull, attached to his frontal cortex, a thousand filaments ripple, like the spines of the urchins that inhabited Successor’s world of mud. It’s all static noise.

Welcome aboard, Alexis. I smile fondly. How do you feel?

Dazed, the assistant groans. The machine’s filaments vibrate, creating an electromagnetic field that interacts with the filaments inside my own skull.

You’ve just been born. Some sections of your brain are still arranging, but you’ll start to have your first memories.

Where am I? he asks, shaking his head with care.

In my spaceship. My eyes are unfocused in the darkness that conceals the other seat. By the way, I’m Xezay. Why don’t you sit down?

Alexis floats to my side, placing the palm of his hand on the headrest of the seat. It’s been empty for years, since the day I left Earth. I don’t know why I chose to be alone, just as I did on Earth, when I parted ways with Erin and went back to my grotto. Maybe I was afraid someone would ask about the drilling machines, the birthing machines, and my mission on the asteroid belt. Then I’d have to admit it. I regret not staying on Earth.

Meanwhile, in Alexis’ brain, two neuronal nodes connect each other with a bridge of silicon and carbon. It just came to my mind, he says with a hand touching his forehead. I was part of the spaceship, one of her arms. I should help you, but I’m not sure what exactly I have to do.

I nod, closing my eyes. There’s a mission with many uncertainties. I don’t know what’s going to happen and an auxiliary brain can make the difference.

My assistant looks through the display of photoemitting cells. The stars sparkle lonely in the image. Where are we going?

To Mercury, I answer. The planet will appear as a bright red dot in a few days. Just sit back. Our journey is going to stretch for a couple weeks. You’ll find all the mission details stored in Akari’s brain.

Alexis pulls the neural wire connecting with the command board. He examines the hole at the end of the wire as if he didn’t know what to do, but he only needs to match the information in his brain with the real world. He sticks his forefinger into the hole. Akari, the spaceship intelligence, pours the message from Cabeus inside Alexi’s brain. His face goes through different states of mind. At first, he smiles with delight. By the end, his forehead wrinkles in confusion.

For now, I explain patiently, you only need to understand the mission’s objective. We have to locate an unidentified satellite orbiting Mercury and perform a preliminary inspection. According to the report from Cabeus, the path of the satellite, as detected from our observatories, is incompatible with a moon or a similar celestial body.

Commander Xezay, I’m— the assistant stutters, I’m sorry.

I turn on my seat to face him. I see his black eyes diverting downwards. His skin is smooth and dark like obsidian. It’s all so alien, having someone sitting next to me, someone who can talk and experience life just as I do. I want to tell him it’s me who is sorry, but instead I ask Why are you sorry? There’s nothing wrong with you.

I’m completely lost. Alexis shakes his head and rubs his eyes. You talk about ‘Cabeus’ and that doesn’t mean anything to me.

Don’t worry. I put a hand on my breast. It was my fault. You just need to know that Cabeus is a crater on the Moon.

And… is it too much if I ask about you? Alexis stretches a hand toward me, but he hesitates and puts it away. You seem so strange… so different from the rest.

The rest?

The spaceship, made of static arcs and walls; and the void, encompassing everything around us. You’re different from all of that. Probably more complex.

I take a deep breath, but there’s no air to fill my lungs, as when I lived on Earth. The ship is in a vacuum. You might be right. I always thought my siblings and I don’t belong to this world. I turn my face to Alexis. He looks at me expectantly. Sorry. You must be wondering about the siblings, too. I believe this information is going to emerge in your brain sooner or later, through the memory codified in the genetic material that your creator endowed in you. I look at the black screen filled with stars and wave my hand. Actually, I don’t care. I want to tell you. I’ve been alone for years, enclosed between the carbon walls of this ship. But on Earth, I had the company of my siblings, organisms which were identical to me.

Identical?

I nod as I remember the first verse Erin ever showed me. Like the horizon and the mountain ridge, like the stars and the constellations. My friend wrote those words on the sand of Earth. The wind blew them away the next morning, but the words stayed with me forever.

Were… were you also born like me?

Can it be any other way? I raise my eyebrows. Everything has a beginning: Earth, the Sun, the galaxy. The siblings, too. The only difference is that the solar system is more than ten billion years old, while we were born barely a century ago, on Earth. We—

The front thrusters flash blue on the screen and Alexis’ onyx skin reflects the glare of the explosion. Akari has corrected our course.

Who was there to wake you up? my assistant says with a frown. I mean, apart from your siblings.

No one, I answer. In fact, not even them. Only the sand was with me, until my first friend found me weeks later. I didn’t lie when I said the siblings don’t belong to this world.

I was the sibling born alone beside a grotto. The murmur of the rain is the only thing I remember from my first experience of life. At that time, I didn’t know the grotto had been flooded with water during the primeval Earth, nor that hundreds of beasts had found rest in its depths, moments before dying.

The thought makes me sick. It’s probably the nostalgia of better times, when I was still unaware of my fate in the Universe. Remembering my birth makes me think about the approaching death. But when I look Alexis into the eyes, I realize I’m also feeling guilty deep inside. What will happen to him when the siblings are gone? Will he wander the solar system like I did for almost half a decade? I just hope he’ll stay on Earth, and see the sunset at least one time. That’s what I should’ve done, to spend my last years in my birthplace, inside the grotto that led to the old canyon.

Alexis, I…

Yes?

We made you. I hesitate, afraid that I’m not getting my point across. We put you together in a factory on Earth.

Alexis frowns, not really understanding. I know.

I’m sorry we did that.

He turns his head toward me. Why?

Because you didn’t have a choice. Alexis doesn’t answer. But at least you’ll know where you come from. I can explain the exact way the factory manufactured the stem cells leading to your birth.

That…—Alexis drops his head—that won’t be necessary.

But for me it is. I close my fingers. The siblings have been looking for an answer that still eludes them one hundred years later. We can’t explain why we exist. I don’t want the same thing happening to you.

I have my memories from birth. Didn’t you have them, too? An explanation, or anything?

To be honest, I answer, rubbing my forehead, I do have a reminiscence, but it has to be wrong.

Was it so surreal you couldn’t believe it?

It was a dream, I explain while looking at the dark background of the bridge, a strange dream. The space was empty and not even the stars were shining. Someone was grabbing my arm. I clenched my fingers when he let me go, but I couldn’t save myself. The void surrounded my body while the one who had betrayed me told me not to be afraid and begged for my forgiveness. There was only one thing I could do. I cried out until my voice was gone.

Alexis stays silent. There’s nothing to get out of this story. I knew from the start. It’s clear I couldn’t have had this experience if I wasn’t born yet. I must have fabricated it when I was young. I shrug. To appease my feelings, I guess?

And your creators? Didn’t you talk to them?

Creators? I place a finger on my chin, thinking for an instant. Actually, we do have something similar to ‘creators,’ but we call them ancestors.

What is the difference?

To start with— I answer, raising my finger. Before finishing the sentence, I shake my head. That’s already many questions and we’re straying from the topic, don’t you think? We should start again from the beginning so that you can understand the importance of our mission.

I’m— I’m sorry. My assistant shrinks with embarrassment.

Don’t worry. I rub Alexis’ back, showing him a friendly smile. I really didn’t think I’d need you, but I woke you up because Prospero asked me to, the sibling who lives in Cabeus. You’ll help me when I have to make a decision that I don’t have time to check with him. Cabeus is very far away, you know? Anyways, I’m enjoying talking to you. The siblings are so similar that communication between us through the Collective filaments is sometimes too predictable.

Alexis gets his back straight, showing the side of his face. Thank you, Commander Xezay. I’ll do my best.

I smile to return his compliments. Regarding our ancestors, I can only say that we’ve never met them. They were humans who lived on Earth, but we’ve only found the remains of their past buried under the sand.

My assistant leans forward. What kind of remains?

We call them fossils, shapes sculpted in the rock from the bones of ancient creatures and machines that populated the primeval Earth. Among the fossils, there were humans, their cities and their burial sites filled with skeletons.

So, humans gave birth to the siblings?

When the siblings were born, the cities of humanity had already turned to sand billions of years ago. Only deserts remained.

Wait, how can you make sense of that?

Humans perished on Earth and we’ll never meet with them. But we believe that some of them traveled to the stars before that happened.

I wrap the neural wire around my finger. Alexis looks at me motionless, as if waiting for me to proceed.

At least that’s one of the explanations that Prospero is considering, I add with my eyes unfocused on the star-filled screen, the sibling residing in Cabeus. The stem cells that gave life to the siblings traveled the galaxy until they reached Earth, sent by those humans who inhabited another part of the galaxy. We are of extrasolar origin. We are the same extrasolar life that has terrified Prospero for years and so now he only thinks of destroying it.

In his message, he said the satellite could be extrasolar. Do you believe he’s wrong? I shrug. Then why are you going to Mercury?

I’m also afraid. What if everything he’s afraid of turns out to be true? Uncontrolled replication, the hydrogen bomb, the apathy of a life form different from us. Luckily, Prospero’s goal and mine are converging this time. We both want to know what’s hidden in Mercury, irrespective of our ulterior motives.

And what is pushing you to take action?

You might not realize it, but knowing the origin of the siblings is important for us, to know if we have a place in the cosmos—I lower my eyes, remembering everything my friend Erin went through, in the darkest cavern on Earth—to know if life is worth living.

A flash from the forward thrusters gives away a half-smile on Alexis’ face. What’s the connection between the two things?

You’d need a lifetime of experience to understand. I frown with an idea in my head and turn to Alexis. Hold on! I think it might work. I can share with you everything my friend went through. Then you’ll understand who Prospero was, who the humans were and what happened to them, and why we have to go to Mercury. My friend’s name was Erin and he told me his story in the concrete city, in a place on Earth where the Moon never showed itself. During the night, the city was dark and the ice crystallized around your fingers until you couldn’t move them anymore. I turn my face to my partner. His mouth is wide open, looking at me without blinking. Do you want to hear the story that changed everything?

Alexis nods, swallowing. Will we have time before the journey is over?

It’ll take days to get to the very end. But if there’s something we aren’t short of, it’s precisely time. My friend Erin gazed at Jupiter as it peeked out behind Io’s horizon. He taught me art and sculpture. I caress the cheek of the anthropoid machine. He created you, Alexis, in the concrete city where he lived alone for years, surrounded by the statues he had sculpted by scraping the marble with his own fingers.

Alexis stares at me in amazement. He can’t even utter a word. I proceed with my store. The siblings can share memories through the Collective filaments, just as I do with you. You’ll hear about Erin’s experience exactly like he remembers it. He returned to Earth after exploring the maze of Io. That was fifteen years ago…

Chapter 2

Impact

◈ Erin ◈

Fifteen years ago

Every time I raise my eyes to the sky, the Moon shows the same side, the same craters and gray plains. It was the same on Jupiter, with the moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto spinning on their axes and, at the same time, orbiting around the jovian planet, in a dance that had lasted for billions of years between chunks of rock, helium and hydrogen compressed into liquid. I first realized it when I lived on Io. I spent entire nights stationed at the equator of that moon, yellow with sulfur, and Jupiter always appeared in front of my eyes when I raised my head, no matter how many days had passed, how many times the moon had rotated on its axis or around the planet.⁵

Looking through the telescope, I discovered that all the moons always show the same face, on every planet. It’s as if a creature had traveled the entire Universe, altering the orbits of the celestial bodies at its whim. However, this is no coincidence. The explanation is more mundane. The gravitational field between the moon and its planet, along with the planet’s deformation, conspire to force a tidal locking over the millennia.

The Wanderer’s wheels bump against the sandstone pebbles as we travel through the desert. I lean closer to the screen, inside the cockpit. The eye of the Wanderer catches the light from outside and the cells on the screen glow, reproducing what it sees. A wire goes up across the dusty atmosphere, reaching the Moon, as it disappears midway between the ground and the sky. Oval buildings made of steel stand around the foot of the wire. The bastion of Vesta, the first city we ever built. It used to be a few rocks on top of each other.

It’s well into the night and the moisture has already frozen into crystals around every grain of sand. Kenta holds on to the bar next to his seat, with his other three arms woven together over his chest.

Erin, what are you looking at? my partner says. He gets closer and the Moon on the screen brightens his face.

My onyx finger points to the shiny side of the wire.

What’s up with that? Kenta says.

It’s odd, I reply. I zoom the image around the wire, distorting the lens inside the eye of the Wanderer. "The wire doesn’t wrap around Earth or the Moon, no matter how much the two bodies spin and spin. So the Moon has to be frozen on Earth’s sky, and always showing the same face.⁶

I still have to see where the problem is, Kenta says, shaking his head.

All moons show the same face toward the planet around which they orbit. But remember when we were exploring Io’s maze. The few days we emerged from the ground, if you looked toward Jupiter, you’d have noticed its surface was slowly rotating. Thus, the rotation of the gas giant wasn’t tidally locked with Io, and neither is it for the other planets of the solar system. Not on Neptune, Venus, nor Mars.

Except on Earth, Kenta murmurs.

I lived here for more than eighty years before going to Io and never realized Earth and the Moon were two times tidally locked. But now, with the wire going up to the sky and meeting with the Moon, this is more than evident.

Wait, Kenta says, wrinkling his forehead. Are you implying that the double tidal locking was artificially forced?

I nod with a smile. The ancestors. It had to be them. But I don’t understand how they did it.

I’ve always wondered what they would look like…

Oh, that? But isn’t it clear to you?

Why would it be?

I grab one of Kenta’s hands and trace the outline of his fingers. The ancestors molded me with the five fingers sprouting from each of their limbs. I go up his arm and press his chest. Enclosed in the chest, they had the engine feeding their brain. I pass by his neck and point to his forehead. And on the top, inside their skull, the interactions between neural nodes designed their child.

That’s ridiculous, Kenta answers, squinting his eyes. You described a sibling, exactly as you are.

Don’t you see? An enthusiastic smile forms in my face. The ancestors made me in their likeness. You’ll understand when you see the fossils on Earth.

Ah! The fossils. I’ve been thinking… Kenta leans forward. Why do you think the ancestors conceived you on this planet? I think they precisely chose it because of the fossils.

Really? I say, raising an eyebrow.

Among all planets the ancestors could’ve chosen, Kenta explains, the siblings were born on the strange Earth, a planet whose ancient inhabitants left behind all kinds of remains in the form of fossils buried under the sand.

What are you implying?

I think every creature in the Universe is born with a purpose. Kenta pats his chest. I have one. You created me because you needed help when exploring Io. Even your ancestors were born for a reason. In turn, they gave a purpose to their children and I suspect it has to be related with your search on Earth. I can’t make up my mind that it’s something else.

They wanted the siblings to delve into Earth’s past? I ask, raising my eyebrows. I just want to study the fossils because I need to know where I come from. I look away, through the windows, taking a big breath. I really hope the fossils shed some light about the ancestor’s past. It was a bit disappointing that we didn’t find any answers on Io…

As the Wanderer rolls down the slope of the site, the drilling machines vacuum the sand and disintegrate the rock bit by bit, inspecting every millimeter for structures embedded inside the crater.

I’ve seen the fossils hundreds of times in the reports from Cabeus. I needed some diversion as I traveled across the plains spanning over Io. The pieces range from scratches in the rock, on the order of millimeters, to creatures several meters long, frozen in their graves, like the giant centipede of recent. It must’ve been some kind of tunnel worker, I believe.

I was settled on Io when my siblings found the first fossil half a year ago. The Wanderer—the same intelligent vehicle that drives us across the site right now—got the news about the discovery while the Sun was setting behind Jupiter. There was no day cycle on the pole of Io and the occasional shadow of the jovian planet gave me a serenity similar to the night of my home planet.

The diggers were flattening the terrain to expand one of our bastions on Earth. The machines didn’t recognize the singularity of these odd rocks stretching across the plain under the warm Sun. One of my siblings realized the discovery a few days later, when he was going over the satellite images of the terrain. The thirty meters long fossil, freed from its rock prison, was twisted into an amalgam of claws and limbs that puzzled me. What was the purpose of that weird machine? It reminded me of the sculptures I carved with my own fingers when I lived on Earth. I wondered if my artwork would also withstand the test of time, or it would crack and decay, as if I had never set foot on this land. The question unsettled the calm of my evening on Io and all the following nights.

Billions of years into the past, Earth’s surface was covered in liquid water. It’s written in the stratum. It rained from the sky, and sometimes it snowed like in the far away Pluto. Hurricanes, monsoons, blizzards. I’m too late to experience the chaos of the primeval Earth. At first the fossilization process was impossible to conceive for the siblings. But all the pieces started to fit together when liquid water permeated in our conjectures. Who would have thought that this desert stretching from pole to pole had been the bottom of a giant puddle?

Water was essential for the petrification of the ancient machines that populated Earth. The liquid slipped minerals in between the gaps of the body as it disintegrated under the ground. At present, the minerals that were encased inside the rock are the only evidence of the original machine.

But everything would be just words and assumptions if it weren’t for the Simulacrum, located inside Cabeus crater, in the Moon, connected to the bastion of Vesta with the wire ascending to the sky. In the Simulacrum, real things exist in an undreamt-of world. In the Simulacrum, a spaceship fossilizes into a mineral, and the molecular structure of a sibling decays while his exoskeleton remains. Processes that could stretch for thousands of years are completed in hardly a week inside the Simulacrum.

As I open my eyes, the Sun is already high into the sky, scorching my skin through the window. We’re arriving at the bottom of the site. I rest my elbow against the windows of the vehicle in motion and stare at the working drills with a smile.

Are you glad to leave Jupiter’s moon behind? Kenta asks, looking at the plateau sticking out over the rim of the crater. I don’t feel the difference between the deserts on Earth and Io. I was even growing fond of the crystallized sulfur.

I was missing Earth, the red of iron, the gray of rock. Besides, I always wanted to see the fossils with my own eyes. Do you believe we’ll learn anything new about the origin of the siblings?

The Wanderer reaches the bottom of the crater. I open the cockpit door. The sand on Earth burns the sole of my feet for the first time in years. The drilling machines inside the crater roar when they expel the gas from their lungs and the ground shakes to the pace of their giant legs.

◈

I push open the door to the laboratory, located a few kilometers from the site. The stone door swings on its hinges and a few grains of sand roll in with me, blown by a breeze. The building was once the home of a sibling, who dug the rooms through the very rock and abandoned the place dozens of years ago. The walls are made of granite and marble, and the ceiling is supported by columns of alabaster.

Kenta enters his room and lies down on his new stone bed. And I, as I hold the doorknob leading to my room, feel that someone is waiting for me in the laboratory room. I know it from the way my Collective filaments vibrate, and from the rattling of drawers at the end of the vaulted hallway.

Inside the room, the table is littered with hexagonal glass capsules, each containing a fossil extracted from the site, from before I came to Earth. A sibling fits the capsules into the slots against the marble wall.

Prospero? What brings you here?

I came to visit an old friend, my sibling replies, holding up a capsule. How did it go on the sulfur moon?

We hug. It’s been years since I saw my friend, who taught me the very existence of art.

Every day, when the sky reddens across the window, I head to the terrace with Prospero, to enjoy the sunset together, regardless of whether we were working or resting. We stay until the Sun disappears behind the horizon, among the ridges of grey and brown rock. For fourteen sunsets, we’ve talked about the sculptures my friend has carved in Cabeus. He tells me how he scraped the lunar rock with his own onyx fingers, and the shrapnel flew off, like tiny asteroids frantically rotating, disappearing into the black background of stars, until the Moon’s gravity couldn’t hold them anymore and they never returned.

I explain how the wheels of the Wanderer imprinted their outline on the sea of crystallized sulfur, when I explored Io. I describe the architecture of the circular passageways traversing the moon’s underground, with the walls made of concrete, a mixture of rock chunks and sand that was made by our ancestors. I tell him that someday I’d like to build a city made of the same material, to trap the heat of the day and the cold of the night.

But sunsets always end with the blue of darkness. When it’s well into the night, Prospero shows me the stars. He points out the ones that are dying, the ones that will continue to shine for billions of years, and the stars that are entire galaxies, gathered into a single point of light that will only go out once the Universe has died. The rock of the terrace starts to cool, the moon stops shining, fading against the light blue sky. The dawn has arrived.

For weeks, we’ve found and classified more than twenty structures embedded in the site. The drilling machines have doubled the original diameter of the crater and our search doesn’t stop. But I know that, sooner or later, Prospero will return to Cabeus crater and I’ll be alone with Kenta again.

The Wanderer carries the findings to the lab where we work, travelling a couple of kilometers on each trip.

Kenta is excited. He’s never seen the fossils before, even on a screen. You were right about the ancestors, he says, pointing to the specimen on the table. Isn’t it clear that these are the mortal remains of one of them? You see? This fin has five fingers, like you. Its phalanxes are quite longer than yours, but there is no question they had been fingers.

But Kenta’s belief says more about his artificial origin than about actual reality. It didn’t cross his mind that the fossils are probably remains of ancient machines, created by the ancestors and whose lifespans came to an end.

When I look at the rib cage of this creature that died on the primeval Earth, it’s pretty obvious that our ancestors got inspiration from the features on their own body to design these machines. I did exactly the same when I created Kenta. But I don’t dare to say it. I don’t want him to think that I’d leave him to rot in a puddle of mud like the ancestors did with their creations. Prospero shakes his head when I tell him what Kenta believes, and we keep the secret to ourselves.

I inspect the two fins protruding from the rib cage. I classify the bones in the database. I search for matches with fossils found in other sites. Meanwhile, I wonder why the designs are so diverse, even when they come from the same stratum, that is, from the same period of time. At that time, five billion years ago, Earth must have been a zoo of inconsistencies. I’m intrigued to know what our ancestors were up to and I feel like a stranger in my own world. I need to take a break.

From the porch of the lab, I gaze at the industrial light coming from the bastion of Vesta, at the other side of the plateau. The Moon remains static among the stars.

◈

It’s the day 122 since I arrived to Earth and met with Prospero. We’ve found an unusual embedding. I’d swear it’s a pipe, or maybe a well. My entire body could fit inside the cavity. The drilling machines keep digging up the fossil.

Our siblings warned us about a sandstorm that has broken out in Earth’s southern hemisphere. It’ll be upon us in around thirty days. I’ve fed the drilling machines with nourishing liquid, a mixture of organic molecules, red like blood. They’ll need the energy for the dark days ahead.

When I come back from the site, I see Prospero sitting on a granite chair, on the terrace, chatting and laughing with Kenta. I go up the stairs, after parking the vehicle in the garage. As I approach my friends, I don’t hear them laughing anymore. They’re both looking up at the stars. Only my footsteps against the rock break the silence. The filaments in my skull receive a noise of static.

I place a hand on Prospero’s shoulder.

Erin, he says sitting on the granite chair as he turns his head, I have to go back to Cabeus before the storm gets to us.

Can’t you stay until the weather gets better?

Something’s been bothering me for weeks. I don’t know what’s wrong with Successor. He dies every hundred years after his birth, and the silicon broth has to rebuild his brain each time.

How… how does he die?

Prospero stands up, picks up a handful of sand and lets it fall between his fingers, against the flagstones of the terrace. He turns to ash, he says. Then he shakes his head. It must be an error in the Simulacrum. That’s why I have to check what’s going on.

Prospero says goodbye the next morning. I watch as he walks away across the desert, towards Vesta. His silhouette vanishes behind a veil of sand that rises over the sky.

◈

Day 156. We’re caught in the storm. It’s impossible to say when it’ll be over. By now, Prospero must have reached Cabeus crater, on the Moon, but I don’t have news from him.

At first, the sky turns red as the sand fills the air and the Sun’s outline fades away. The night is with us a few hours later. The Moon is no longer where it’s always been.

According to my internal clock, dawn should’ve arrived by now, but outside everything remains dark. When I step out the lab door, the light from the threshold pierces a few meters through the thick curtain of sand. It seems as if my existence has been shrunk to a light bubble isolated from the rest of the world.

A faint light twinkles on the horizon, from the bastion of Vesta. Although it’s less intense than on past nights, it’s the only reference in the sky that I’m still living on Earth.

We won’t have news from the site until the weather gets better. The storm is so dense it blocks the electromagnetic signals coming from the Collective filaments attached to the brains of the drilling machines, preventing any communication with them. All we know is that the machines will keep working relentlessly.

The temperature lowers each day the Sun doesn’t show up on the horizon. I’m talking with Kenta about the effects of the storm. My friend looks at me with a concerned frown from the opposite side of the stone table. The drilling machines are kept alive by the nuclear fusion taking place in the micrometer cavities inside each of their cells, but fusion will halt when temperature drops below thirty degrees. Then a new energy cycle will start, based on the decomposition of complex molecules. We’ve supplied enough food to