The Uncle Tal Stories (Patreon)

Chapter 17: Full Circle

Earth

Five Billion AD

Uncle Tal’s Farm

“Nope.”

Tal leaned on his walking stick and watched impassively as the members of the delegation reacted to his one-word reply. There were seven left, one from each of the inhabited planets and moons of the wreckage of the solar system. Once there had been more but with the expansion of the sun, there were fewer places a body could set and call home. The exodus had been going on for as long as Tal had been awake, and quite a bit longer than that.

The self-appointed leader of the delegation, a tall man with golden skin and hard-light bursts flaring around his head, raised his voice in disbelief. “How can you say that?” he said; or rather, the translator module in Tal’s left ear relayed. “The planet is ruined, destroyed. What is there here for you? Why will you not accept our price?”

“Because I’m not obliged to.” Tal waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed the small valley in which he had his farm. “Got all I need, right here. An’ as long as I’m Elder of Earth, you can’t sneak it from under me. Moon’s reverted to my title too, so you can’t have that either.” It had taken a century, but the lunar cities that provided points of light in the dark of the moon had declined and gone out, one at a time. To his aged eyes, it looked the same as it had, all those billions of years ago when he first peered up at in wonder. At his request, the robotic engineers overseeing the solar system had even moved it back in to the orbit he was most used to, complete with the tidal locking. Such was his right and privilege, as Elder of Earth.

That had to be what chapped the hide of the self-appointed gold-skinned Elder the most. There had been quite a cult of personality built around the guy, right up until Tal came out of his chronon stasis and deposed him from his position of Elder of All. Even considering only his waking time, Tal still had him beaten by tens of thousands of years.

And now this guy wanted to sell the solar system, to be broken up for parts. The planets would go for a tidy sum, the value to be apportioned between the now-dispossessed hangers-on, but it was the sun that would truly bring a profit. Even a late-sequence red star had enough material in it for billions of years more of operation, and there was always a market for helium.

“You’re making a grave mistake.” The would-be Elder of All clearly said more, but either it was semantically null or the words he was using had many more syllables, because that was all Tal heard. Tal suspected there was some swearing, and possibly a few insults, involved.

“Mebbe.” Tal took a step forward. “Now, I been polite. I heard you out. You had your shot, and I said no. So, in the words of a great-great-great ancestor of one of you yahoos … Git off’a my lawn.”

Tal wasn’t armed, but he didn’t need to be. Old he might have been, but he kept up with his exercises, and his visitors were not of the type to impose themselves physically on others. His sheer bulk, though shorter than the norm, was all the more intimidating because it was purely natural, not the result of any kind of post-natal modification.

His unwanted visitors turned and left. More than one glanced back toward him, but they didn’t speak. He merely leaned on his stick and watched them go. They picked their way through the orchard, then up the path at the side of the valley until they passed through the safety-field cupped over the top of the valley.

Even though his eyes weren’t so great anymore, he could tell when their protective body-fields came on to protect them from the thin, howling winds. Low on oxygen and overall pressure, high in heat as the sun felt its way out toward the planet. It was as good as a fence for keeping most intruders out.

Well, they’d said their piece and he’d turned them down. He’d been born on Earth and here he was staying. If they wanted to sell their planets off, they could feel free. He was going to keep the Earth and Moon right where they were. And in the meantime, the cow needed milking.

A couple of months later, he was feeding the chickens—many generations descended from the first retro-engineered birds he’d started his farm with—when stones clattered at the edge of the valley. Frowning, he turned. If those assholes were back again, he was going to send them away with bruises this time. It was about time they learned that no meant no.

But as he shaded his eyes against the light—the red glare translated into a soft yellow glow by the protective field—he recognized the visitor and a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Marduk!” he called out. “Be with ya in a moment!”

The last of the seed was tossed to the clucking hens and he dusted off his work-roughened hands as he strolled toward the small bridge that led across the stream to the orchard. He’d grown the trees to build that bridge, cut them down, seasoned the wood and shaped the beams with his own two hands. Not a nail had gone into the construction, but it was holding as firm as it had been the day he built it.

As he crossed over the stream, his hand brushed the guardrail, feeling the smoothness of the wood as he always did. Ahead of him, he saw the research robot, striding toward him between the fruit trees. Marduk’s metallic exterior clashed oddly with the growing green things, but Tal didn’t care about that. In the strange new world Tal found himself living in, Marduk-Olympus 4995 was the closest thing to a friend that he had.

“I greet you, Tal of Earth,” Marduk said almost formally as they came face to face. “I bring troubling news.”

Tal put both hands atop his walking stick. “That’s a problem, then. Is it right-now troubling, or can it wait awhile?”

“It is not immediate, no,” admitted Marduk.

“Well, then.” Tal plucked an orange from one of the trees and started to peel it, tearing the skin away with his toughened thumbnail. “C’mon and set awhile. Bad news is always better taken sittin’ down.”

They went back across the stream, Marduk’s metallic tread sounding hollow on the wooden planks, and sat on the small stone ledge Tal had long ago hewn out for the purpose. The rock was warm; these days, the rock was always warm. Tal let the moment stretch out as he finished peeling the orange and tossed the skin into the stream for the fish to fight over. He separated the quarters and ate one, enjoying the tart flavor of the juice as it ran down his throat.

“Okay,” he said at last. “What’s got your robo-panties in a wad?”

Marduk lifted a hand and pointed toward the yellowish blur that the sun was hiding behind. “The Elders of the other planets have had a convocation and they have concluded that they have the right to sell the sun and their planets. The solar system—minus Earth—is due to be demolished by the end of the year.”

Tal blinked as he ate another section of orange, then he began to swear. He did it with great range and fluency, plumbing the depth of his experience as an NCO in more armies than he liked to recall, as well as many many other jobs where strength and endurance held sway. By the time he finished, he was on his feet, the remains of the orange crushed in his hand with the juice dribbling on the ground.

“Are you well, Tal?” Marduk managed to sound concerned. “Your respiration and heart rate have increased.”

“I’ll be fine.” But Tal knew as he tossed away the ruined pulp and wiped his hand on his work overalls that things would never be fine again. “What are you and your guys gonna do? I know how much your research here meant to you.”

“We will necessarily leave.” Marduk’s face was not overly expressive, but there was a trace of concern in the electronically produced voice. “We could make room for you and your genetic database, to start again somewhere else.”

Tal shook his head definitively. “Like I told one little lady more years ago than I want to think about, this planet right here’s my home. I’m gonna stick it out until the bastard with the hourglass and scythe turns up to collect me.”

“But you will die, when you do not need to.” Marduk did not sound like he understood.

Shaking his head, Tal snorted. “I’ve already lived longer’n a body has any right to expect. There’s an old, old rule that always comes around, especially when you least expect it: shit happens.” He shaded his eyes and looked up at the yellow glow. “An’ when it does, there’s no sense pissin’ an’ moanin’ about it. Just figure out what you’re gonna do, an’ git to it.” He turned to Marduk. “Though there is somethin’ you can do for me.”

“If it is within my power, it will be done,” promised the robot.

Tal nodded. “I know it will. Now, I see what this sonovabitch is up to. If I know people, an’ I do, he’s set it up somehow so that if I vacate the planet, he’ll be able to swoop in at th’ last second, reverse the sale an’ claim the lot as Elder of All. I want you to go as high as you can an’ put in an injunction. No matter what happens to me, so long as I stay on this ball of rock, him an’ his grabby relatives can’t put any kinda claim on it. Got that?”

Marduk imitated his nod. “I understand. That should not be difficult to carry out. I wish you well in your endeavors.”

“Thanks.” Tal put a hand on the robot’s shoulder. “I appreciate it.”

“As I have appreciated your tolerance of my presence. Goodbye, Tal. I will carry out your wishes.”

Marduk stood up and headed for the bridge across the stream. On the far side, the robot turned and looked back once, as if capturing one last image of Tal. Then it made its way through the orchard toward the pathway up and out of the valley.

Tal watched until Marduk had passed through the protection field, then sighed. He’d had a good run, but everything comes to an end. Now, he had to prepare for the end of the place he’d called home for a good many years.

The notion hurt more than he’d expected it to.

In the end, it took five years.

Tal had been accurate with his guess; when the injunction went through, the gold-skinned Elder had tried to fight it. Marduk’s understanding of the legal system was sufficient to prevent this from happening, but as Tal gathered from the occasional updates, it was lively while it lasted. But the day came when the last avenue was exhausted, and the choice had to be made; go through with the partial sale, or call the whole thing off.

Tal stood on the footbridge with Marduk, looking up toward the glow in the field that hid the real sun. “So what happens now?” he asked.

“I am not an expert on stellar manipulation,” Marduk explained carefully, “but as I understand matters, they will damp down the reaction to almost nothing then gate the stellar mass to a location where it can be broken down at their leisure.”

Tal didn’t need to ask about the other planets; from what he knew, they’d already been moved out of the locale to be disassembled down to their component materials. But he did have another question. “So, when they do this ‘gating’ thing, will it be fast or slow? I just want to know how big a jolt we’re gonna get here.”

Marduk answered quickly enough that it must have already considered the question and gotten an answer. “The gating procedure takes about ten seconds for a stellar mass of that size. I surmise that it must be akin to a moderately drawn-out earthquake.”

Quakes were something Tal was familiar with. He’d gone through more than a few in his lifetime. “Pretty sure we can handle it, here,” he decided.

He looked around at the valley. Since getting the word of the Elders’ decision, he’d taken steps to cease all breeding within his little ecosystem. The fish, the chickens, even the bugs were down to a minimum population. The orchard was dwindling, as was the other plant life. He’d reluctantly slaughtered the last cow a month previously; there were still some steaks left in the freezer.

Everything here would die, he knew. Himself included. But as little as possible would die in cold and pain rather than in the natural course of its life.

The light level flickered, and he looked up toward the yellow glow hiding the sun. “Sun filter off,” he ordered out loud. Abruptly, there was a harsh red circle replacing the soft yellow glow.

Again, the light flickered, and he could see it dimming. Even though it was a star, he was able to easily look at it without eyestrain. “They’re actually doing it,” he murmured.

“They are,” agreed Marduk. “I could take you on my ship even now—”

“Nope.” Tal watched as the sun dimmed again, just like someone turning a switch. And then it went dead. Darkness fell, and the stars came out.

“The temperature will start to fall,” Marduk stated from beside him, now a mere outline in the dimness. “Soon it will overwhelm your field.”

“I’m aware.” Tal cleared his throat. “Glow, on.”

Above them, the protection field turned opaque and began to shed a dim light; enough to see by but not read by. The nearby trees looked positively spooky, and the stream and pond were inky black.

“They will have gated the sun as soon as they achieved maximum suppression.” Marduk’s voice was matter of fact. “The cessation of gravity waves from that direction will commence very shortly.”

“This is why we’re standing in the middle of the valley,” Tal noted. “Pretty sure there’s nothing up there that can fall on us, but no sense in taking chances.” Almost casually, he wrapped one hand around the guard-rail of the bridge.

“I believe—” began Marduk, but was interrupted by a long drawn-out rumble. The bridge shook; nearby, the trees in the orchard whipped from side to side. Water from the stream and pond splashed out onto the bank. Steadied by the guard-rail, Tal stood firm.

And then it was over. The rumbling ceased, the trees steadied, and the water ran back to its natural level. Tal turned to look at Marduk. “An’ that was it?”

“There may be a few aftershocks as the wave of disruption travels around the world, but that was the most powerful one, yes.” Marduk turned to look at the pathway out of the valley. “My flyer awaits. The last ship is prepared and ready to go, lacking only myself.”

Tal waited for the robot to go on, but it seemed unwilling. “Yeah, and?”

“I … do not wish to go,” Marduk confessed. “This will be the last time I see you alive. While I am here, you live. When I go, it will signal your imminent cessation. I do not wish that to happen.”

Emotions stirred in Tal’s chest at that. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “I get that. Been there a time or ten, before now.”

“How do you process it?” asked Marduk. “How does it not overwhelm you?”

“You let it,” Tal told him bluntly. “Let it overwhelm you, then you grieve, then you move on. You don’t ever forget, though. While you remember someone, they’re still alive in a way.”

“Oh.” Marduk seemed to assimilate that. “I will remember. Thank you.”

Tal shook his head. “No, thank you. Watchin’ the sun go out woulda been all kinds of lonely without you here. Now go on, git. Before you miss your ride outta here.”

“It has been an honour and a privilege to know you, Uncle Tal of Earth.” Marduk held out a metallic hand in a gesture that present-day humanity seemed to have bypassed.

Tal shook it once, firmly. “You’ve been a good friend, Marduk-Olympus four-nine-nine-five. When you publish, try not to put too much of my cussin’ in, okay?”

Now Marduk’s tone held humor. “No promises, Tal.” The robot turned and trod its way off the bridge, then went through the orchard. Just before it left the far perimeter, it stopped and snapped off a single twig with a leaf attached.

Tal watched Marduk ascend the pathway and vanish through the softly-glowing protection field. “Light, off,” he said out loud.

At the command, the field turned transparent once more. Overhead, stars spanned the sky from horizon to horizon. There was no sign of where the sun had once been. Earth, freed from its gravitational bonds, was hurtling out of the vicinity of what had once been the solar system at a steady thirty kilometers per second. Weather cold, track fast.

He didn’t need the assistance of the glow to guide him as he left the bridge and walked alongside the stream and pond. Tiny pills plopped almost imperceptibly into the dark water. They would release hormones that triggered an instinct in the water life to burrow into the mud and enter estivation.

Next, he went to the chicken pen. With his rough hands, he soothed each bird in turn, then administered an injection that would put them into a deep and dreamless sleep. When the cold came for them, they would die without ever knowing about it.

Finally, he went to his own little hut. By the light of a tiny lamp, he defrosted and fried up the last of the steaks, then moved the chair and table outside. Silently, he sat and ate his last meal as he watched the stars wheel overhead, blotted only by a familiar round shape. For the first time ever the moon was dark from side to side, without even Earthshine to light it.

By the time he finished the meal, the temperature within the valley had perceptibly dropped a few degrees. Outside the field, the atmosphere had been nowhere near thick enough to insulate the planet the way it used to, and the heat was now radiating from the bare rock in every direction as fast as it could. Even the rock walls surrounding the valley were not as warm as they had been.

He put the table back inside, along with the chair. Almost ceremoniously, he took off his work clothing and folded it for storage. To replace it, he donned a replica of the furs he had worn in his young adulthood, billions of years ago. Before all this damn-fool business began. He’d started this journey in an ice age and if he was going to finish it the same way, he was damn well going to dress the part.

Taking up a flint knife he’d knapped a few dozen years ago just for something to do, he went out and collected some wood that was lying aside. Age-old skills allowed him to build a small fire before the rocky ledge, and a piece of steel struck sparks from the flint blade. Expertly, he coaxed the fire into a healthy flame.

Sitting down on his rocky ledge, he noted that the warmth was definitely gone from it by now. Teasingly, he pricked the skin of his wrist with the flint knife, then pulled the blade away again. That was not the way out he had chosen for himself.

Long ago, he had decided that he would face his death head on, eyes open, weapon in hand.

That was what a warrior did.

And if the death was inevitable, then so what? You faced it anyway.

Softly, he sang a song, half-forgotten, from his people long extinct. The dead language curled from his tongue as smoke wafted upward from the fire. It was about travel, and life, and how death was more a journey than a destination.

The song came to an end. He took a deep breath, gripping the flint knife, then let it out.

“Field, off.”

With the cessation of the protective field, holding high-pressure warm air in and minimal-pressure cold air out, a howling gale tore through the valley in seconds. The pond and stream froze over, and ice rimed Tal’s vision. He struggled to take another breath, to make one last defiant quip, but he could not.

Death came swiftly.

Tal awoke.

For a long moment, he lay there, wondering if he should get up quite yet or leave it for awhile, then memory collided with his thoughts and left them shattered in the wind. Pushing himself to an upright position, he stared about himself. He wasn’t in his hut, or outside it. This looked like the cabin of a ship. “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.

A man entered the cabin. Not a cyborg, as far as Tal could tell; neither did he possess any more subtle modifications that were yet visible to the naked eye. He smiled broadly, and said something.

Tal didn’t understand him. Feeling in his left ear, he realized his translator earpiece was gone. “Hey, can you understand me?” he asked. “Because I need to know what’s happening here.”

A deep hum filled the air, then a gentle voice spoke. “Greetings, Tal of Earth.”

Tal glanced upward. “Greetings to you too. Computer, right?” They loved doing that disembodied-voice thing.

“In a distant manner of speaking, yes. How are you feeling?”

“Better’n I should be,” Tal retorted. “I was dead, right?”

“Almost. You had residual chronons within you, that put you into stasis when your life was about to end. When we found you, we had to drain them from you in order to wake you up again.”

Frowning, Tal slid off the bed. His feet felt a little tender, but he’d been worse. “So what’s that mean in simple terms?” He had a suspicion, but he needed to know.

“You are no longer immortal, Tal. You will age, and you will die in the natural course of time.”

“Sounds about right.” Tal stretched, feeling his back muscles crack. “Three more questions. Where am I, why did you rescue me, and how long was I out?”

The man stepped forward, gesturing for Tal to follow him. Tal shrugged and went along. Why not; he might get answers.

“In order to answer that, I will have to give you more information. We are part of the Traveling Collective, a faction of humanity that left the solar system almost at the beginning of the human diaspora. After we migrated, stage by stage, right around the galactic disc, we found ourselves homesick and decided to return to Earth. To the place of humanity’s birth.”

“But it wasn’t there,” Tal guessed. Ahead of him, the man opened a door with a simple pressure plate, revealing … grass, and trees, and a blue sky. His expectations shifted dramatically; he wasn’t on a ship, just inside a building.

“No, it wasn’t,” agreed the voice. Even as Tal stepped outside into the sunlight, it stayed with him. “Between the time we took on our pilgrimage and the fact that Earth had been cast loose into the cosmos, we took … quite some time to locate you. Records left by a Marduk-Olympus forty-nine-ninety-five indicated that Earth had had just one living inhabitant when the sun was sold; you. They gave a direction and a speed. We just had to follow along, and hope we didn’t miss you along the way.”

There were people out here, Tal realized as his eyes became used to proper sunlight for the first time in forever. Adults walking here and there, children running around … wait a minute.

He looked more closely. There was a subtle difference to them, a difference that he shared. A certain breadth of shoulder, a shape to the face. It was more pronounced when he compared their features to the man beside him. “Hold on a second,” he said, emotion choking his throat. “These are … you brought back …”

“Yes,” the voice said. “We sequenced your genome then created many projected variations. This community is based on your DNA, but it has been active for over a century. Not one person here is your direct descendant.”

“Over a century?” He shook his head. “How long was I out?”

“Factoring from the time the sun was removed until we finally caught up with Earth, and moved it to a convenient main-sequence star similar enough to our own?” The voice paused, as if for a dramatic beat. “Approximately one billion years. You were halfway to Andromeda when we found you.”

“Well, dang.” He put his hands on his hips, reminding himself that he was wearing simple clothing like everyone around him, and took a deep breath of the sweet cool air. “That’s a thing.”

“It is indeed. Welcome back. And we’ve spread word of your awakening to the community. They’ve been waiting for you … Uncle Tal.”

He chuckled at that, then saw the first adults and children approaching. The man who had guided him out had vanished back into the building once more.

“Uncle Tal?” asked one of the children. “Is it really you?”

“Now, don’t rush him,” scolded a woman. “He’s only just woken up.”

“Nah, I’m fine.” Tal found himself smiling. “Thanks anyway, though. So, what have all you actually been told about me?”

“That you’ve been everywhere and done everything, and lived forever!” enthused another child.

Tal chuckled. “Well, that’s almost true. For a given definition o’ ‘true’, that is.”

“Can you tell us a story, Uncle Tal?” asked a third child.

“Sure, why not.” Looking around, Tal spotted a likely seat; a large rock, no doubt warmed by the sun. Seating himself on it, he looked around. More than a dozen children were on the scene now, along with more than a few adults. No longer the last Neandertal, he took in the gathering crowd and his smile widened.

“So there I was …”

Chapter 18