September 3, 2792

In the dim light of his office/dining room/bedroom, Presley Johanson typed the final confirmation for the fourteen-hundredth ship. With little time and hope left, this was the only chance they had to prevent humanity from dying out. He tried not to think about that as his wife walked into the room, exasperation framed in her Techtacles over dark eyes.

“Pres, it’s 1 AM. What could the district possibly want from you now? You said you’d be done earlier,” she rasped groggily. The need to sleep screeched in her syllables like a gear that needed oiling.

“It’s important, Leslie. I’m sorry.” In one fluid movement, Presley flicked the holographic projection, and all the numbers collapsed into a single pinpoint of burden.

Presley could tell his wife wasn’t in the mood for excuses. It was 1 AM, after all, and they had run out of MORNING pills. He wondered if he would have enough energy to go to the service center and get more.

He tucked the projector cube into his work bag. “Keiley, activate NIGHT MODE.”

An almost human Artificial Intelligence (AI) materialized by his side and smiled that quirky little side grin that accentuated her dimple. “At once. Goodnight, Mr. and Mrs. Johanson.”

The lights vanished, swallowing up the projected robot in its depths. Long ago, the MalBot War had similarly eaten their own daughter, Keily Johanson, into its clutches, never allowing her to return. Presley sighed, pushing the memory away. At times, he wished they had never applied for such a replica of their late daughter as an AI. Both Johansons sidled into the unraveling sofa/bed. As soon as Presley’s head hit the pillow, the brief war of exhaustion and stress promptly ended. Sleep prevailed.

January 16, 2793

“Citizens of Earth. We are so very thankful of your sacrifices and compliance in these grave times.” Presley’s image wavered slightly on millions of stages around the turmoiled world, reminding everyone of the very real scene in which they would all be nothing but ash marks wherever they were in two days.

“I know that all of you are suffering in some way. Thanks to us humans, the world has been suffering, too. Once we are gone, we can only hope that it gets better. Until then, we are sending a prayer, our last chance, somewhere safe. When these 5 billion embryos arrive at their new planet, somewhere many, many, many light years away, they’ll be in the hands of artificial intelligence.” He looked directly into the camera’s eye, knowing that everyone was watching him, whether or not they believed the truths spewing out of him. “I wish, as all of you do, that we could be there. Alas, we can’t.”

Taking a deep breath, he waited for the teleprompter on the lenses of his Techtacles to move to the next line. His heart tugged anxiously, reminding him of the 32% chance that this could fail. All the odds were stacking up to jump the brick wall separated them from triumph and failure. Nothing could prevent the fleet of 1500 ships, holding the 5 billion lives of all that would be left of humanity, from combusting into tiny specks of what used to be life. With Earth bringing her revenge upon those who had ruined her beauty, Presley didn’t know if any of this was going to be worth it. No one did.

He muted the microphone and stepped off camera. On all the stages and screens everywhere, a buffering sign appeared. “Keiley?”

The AI manifested as she faded into sight just beyond the shadows, her features so predominantly like the real Keiley’s. “I’ll take the mike, Presley.”

There was no hesitation as the AI’s projected image morphed into an identical figure of Presley himself. HE knew, sadly, that this AI, nor all the others, would never, EVER live up to their human counterparts, no matter how hard he wished they could master all of his daughter’s quirks. He knew the real Keiley would’ve waited a beat before complying. But that was what separated them from humans- they were artificial intelligence, and, after all, everything they did was artificial. They all feared, this team of who-knows-how-many people, that the embryos, once admitted to their new world, would not receive the motherly love from a being whose actions were programmed into them through algorithms.

All these failure came rushing in from nowhere, even though he knew they’d been hiding for years, just waiting for this very moment to bask in the rays of his acceptance that there was an infinite amount of ways that this could go wrong.

“The next generation lies within the capsules of our ships. 5 billion lives are at the expense of one single mistake, whether that mistake be a simple malfunction or the death of a star.”

Presley pulled up the video feeds from several places on Earth. Fear, pressure, excitement, you name it- they all lurked in the bewildered eyes of a species that had single-handedly managed to destroy their planet in the brief time they had existed. Impending doom smiled down from the smoky horizons in places that should’ve been experiencing daylight, but were instead shrouded in smog. Wearing masks and crowded around the feeble public air services, billions of people lay in wait to find out their future, all in different expressions of what made them human. The world was ending for all of them. For every little girl who had never gotten the doll she wanted, for all the great-great-great grandparents who had seen the march of humanity into a progressive state of chaos thinking that it would be okay, when it wouldn’t. For all the poor animals, dogs and cats alike, who hadn’t done anything to deserve such an ending but playfully live their life as a loving pet. For all the criminals who would never see a life that wasn’t behind bars again. For children that would never grow up, and their parents who wouldn’t see them grow up.

Presley slipped out of the room. He had handed off the mike sooner than he was supposed to, but he wouldn’t have been able to deliver the speech if he tried.

The launch site was bigger than a thousand of the biggest football fields in the world., and there were 30 identical sites around the world too. With millions of acres of flat, charred land available after the MalBot War, the site required transportation to get to each of the 50 ships. Presley stared at the vast machines that would take humanity to a new place in history, and in the universe. Billions of the unborn had no idea what was in store for them.

The reflective surfaces of the rockets threw his distorted image back at him: a tall, lanky man with bags under his eyes. His glasses hung around his neck. He carried no mask to help breathing- it was fortunate that he lived in a better area than most, with the highest-level technology of anywhere on Earth. He wondered about the technology of otherworldly beings, knowing that their own couldn’t compare.

“Mr. Johanson? It’s not time yet. Why are you out here?”

A petite woman with graying hair piled up on her head stepped off the transportation device, which was like a bus that could handle the speed of sound and could go even faster in evacuation mode.

“In fact, Presley, the take-off site is mildly dangerous right now. We have liquid hydrogen and oxygen still pumping into the fuel storage. We’ll need as much of that as we can get before converting to- never mind, you know this already.” She guided him to the overlooking platform, where they both gazed down at the shining capsules of life as the platform rose to a safer height.

“Jeane,” he started, “I know it’s not going to do any good right now, but I’m just feeling uneasy, you know?”

She returned her view to him blankly.

Presley pulled off his Techtacles, disconnetcint his thoughts and emotions from any prying eyes. “The launch is going to kill us all so we can give these embryos another chance- I get it. But what if it doesn’t work out? Then we wiped ourselves out a few centuries before we needed to.”

The fear in his body giggled fanatically, circling up his throat and pouring out of his mouth to instill its roots somewhere else.

“Johanson, you’re not telling me that you have second thoughts about a project we’ve been planning for over a century,” Jeane grimaced. “We can’t just stop the launch. It’s in two days. This could be our biggest victory.”

“Or our worst loss,” Presley interjected. “We’d never know, and we couldn’t stop it. We have such a high chance of failure. I’m not saying we should call it off, but-”

“No, no. You’re saying exactly that.”

Presley struggled to fight the fear’s grip on him, but he was finding it harder and harder to see any good outcomes. Its tendrils embraced his uncertainty, his anguish in this battle to push back against its hold. He knew it would do no good- either way, the launch would happen. His struggles were useless, and yet he felt so strongly that they needed to be voiced.

January 18, 2793

Presley sat down with his wife at the worn dining table that had served them for a century. Her eyes were no longer framed by the Techtacles that had both brought their society together and threw them apart. In the ticking countdown of the moments before life would either win or lose, they sat hand in hand, emotions flickering in their eyes, mirroring the ambiguity of the future. The future would be now, and now would be the past, and they would all mix until nothing mattered anymore. Time would be space. Time was space. Time was everything, and in time, humans would either live again, or go extinct like all the other species before.

In the dying light from outside, the rumbling roar enveloped the couple into one last, final moment before they would meet Keiley once more.

Eons later...

“System error on ship 1400. Extreme temperatures threatening to override the solution. Star 17039B in final stages of death.”

Keiley swirled into existence inside the control room. Steam rose around her, choking the air out of the room. Of course, it wasn’t necessary to her, but as crimson flashed all around her in a final warning, so similar to the one that had warned her human counterpart, the algorithm told her one thing.

The death of a star could not be prevented.