[ 1 ] The Architect and the Astronaut

Seventeen miles off the California coast, 2058

Malcolm Hadridge had two goals in life. He wanted to amass an unnecessary amount of wealth and he wanted to live forever in order to enjoy it. He wouldn't reach the latter.

Attaining the former was apparent as he steadied himself on the railing of the multi-million-dollar diving vessel and looked to the bubbles emerging on the surface of the water below. The waves splashed against the white, port-side exterior of the seventy-nine foot long vessel with soothing swishes.

"Is that her?" Malcolm had to shout to compete with the mechanical screeching of the small crane that would lift the diving pod high enough for them to board.

"Indeed it is, Sir. She's a beauty. Six-hundred-thousand bucks worth of wires and steel right there." Malcolm nodded and admired the excitement pasted on the leathery face of Ian Wright, whose shoulder-length hair flew behind his ears as a gust of wind crept up the hull of the vessel.

A woman emerged from the steel cut-out leading to the captain's quarters and entangled her fingers with Malcolm's.

"Glad to see you're feeling better, Mrs. Hadridge," Ian shouted.

Kaeya's expression lacked gratitude but instead wore the branding mark of blame. In her eyes, any excursion costing more than a million dollars surely wouldn't feature the side-effects of sea sickness.

 "Now that I have you both together..." Ian continued, "let's go over logistics. The plunge will take roughly three hours, and after that we'll be sitting pretty at about five miles below sea level."

"Will the architect be accompanying us?" Kaeya asked.

"He will. All of the specs have been confirmed and I've personally visited the station twice to oversee the installation of your finer requests."

Kaeya gracefully nodded her head, though there was nothing graceful about the choice of attire for such a trip: an ankle-high sundress that would have fit in much better at the Kentucky Derby than a voyage to the ocean's depths. Her top hat had already blown away hours prior and her complaints of the violent winds were unanswered by the gods.

A boom sounded throughout the ship and the pod stopped suddenly as the last drops of water fell from its sides and into the sea. Ian leaned in closer to the married couple. "I'll stay a few days, as long as it takes for you to become accustomed to the layout and features."

Malcolm smiled. "Sounds great, Ian. It's finally happening."

With the push of a button, Ian initiated the sequence of events connecting the pod and ship with a skinny access plank. Kaeya looked down at her heels and Ian caught her glimpse. "Perhaps it is time for more sea-worthy shoes Mrs. Hadridge?"

Kaeya reached down and unlatched each heel before checking behind her ear to ensure the seasickness patch was still stuck to her skin. Reaching into her purse, she emerged with two flat water shoes. "I'll be fine," she said.

Ian carefully traversed the plank. Upon reaching the thick entryway to the pod, he grasped the iron wheel and shifted his weight to the left. With five rotations, a crisp sound emanated from inside as the air pressure equalized.

"Welcome aboard the pod that will take you to Seafarer II, the world's second apocalyptic luxury bunker," Ian said. He had practiced the line countless times in front of the mirror, but this time his voice came out broken and muffled from the wind.

Kaeya grabbed her husband's hand and walked into the tiny portal that would allow them to descend several miles into the Pacific Ocean. Claustrophobia set in rapidly. She scanned the walls like they were caked in cheap wallpaper.

"We couldn't have an interior decorator spice this place up before you had us locked in here?" she asked her husband, who was repositioning himself on the metal bench. He ignored the remark.

Ian stretched his legs one last time before sitting down across from the couple. The caverns of wrinkles were much more distinguishable in the dim light of the pod. "Please strap in folks, it may be a bumpy ride."

"And what of the architect?" Kaeya questioned.

"Ah, do forgive me. I was told we cannot be a minute late on the launch and Miles all but assured me he'd be on time. I have a copy of the floor plan and details of every room, so I should be able to field any questions until we're able to locate-" Ian's words were cut short from the subdued rumble of a helicopter nearing the vessel. "Or perhaps that is him now."

The frame of the man that ran past the plank, nearly keeling over into the sea, was much smaller than Kaeya would have liked. She equated the execution of a plan with the heftiness of its architect, the bigger the better.

Miles, on the other hand, didn't look a day out of college. He brushed brunette strands from his eyes as he ducked through the entrance way and peered out at the eyes of Ian, Malcolm, and Kaeya sitting uncomfortably close to one another.

"Ah, and this is our architect, Miles Weatherford." Miles outstretched his hand.

Ian shifted his position a bit and hit knees with Kaeya. She grimaced. Kaeya looked the adolescent up and down. "I was expecting someone much..."

"Older?" Miles intruded. "I'll save you the need for further inquiry. I'm 29 years old, received my masters from California Polytechnic. My firm, as I'm sure you know, only accepts projects above fifty million dollars. Though this is far lower than the cost of your sunken Atlantis, it should assure you that we only take the top of the top." Kaeya lifted a polished fingernail as if to speak, but Miles continued. "I've served as lead architect on eighteen projects since I obtained my Masters, with costs exceeding three billion dollars. I've never surpassed a client's budget nor have I disappointed one, which I'm sure will be evident after you see the masterpiece that lies below us."

With that the group fell silent, either mulling over the rant they had just heard, or too eager to reach the Seafarer II. Miles Weatherford simply smiled to his clients, though his shoulders fell heavy with the unrealistic burden of tricking a couple worth more than a billion dollars into thinking he had actually led the design on the project.

"Just smile and answer their questions like you thought up the ideas yourself," his boss had said. "If I greeted every client personally there'd have to be fifty clones of me."

Miles interlocked his hands and mentally prepared for all the questions that might arise when they reached the terminal to the underwater bunker. The bodies of the three passengers shook as the pod was released from its lock and gently descended to the surface. The entrance from the air to the water was seamless and only detected by the change of scenery outside the three circular windows.

"I do hope we see some exotic fish," Kaeya remarked.

'We're a dozen miles west of Palm Beach, not Fiji,' Miles thought. He had grown accustomed to keeping such judgmental rants inside his own head after meeting superficial clients. 'If there ever is a nuclear war, or some comet hurling towards us from space, locked in a tiny submersible with this couple is the last place I'd want to be. The comet could have me.'

∞

Etana One, somewhere near Earth

Eva ran her hands along the control dashboard, flicking switches like she was playing a crazed game of whack-a-mole. She almost succeeded in restraining her dark head of hair into a tight pony-tail. All sat still but one stubborn strand, which continued to float around her head.

"Thrusters have disengaged," she said, her dark green eyes scanning the computer screen in front of her. "Looks like she just came into view."

Through the front window, Eva saw the swirling atmosphere of Earth. She turned to the right and checked the transmission signal once more. Nothing. They hadn't spoken with ground control in over a year and a half, or some four decades, depending on how one looked at it. Relativity of time in space was a funny thing, something Eva grew used to after her second exploratory mission.

She pressed a glowing red button and moved her mouth closer to the microphone. "Freddy, I need you up here."

A grunt emerged from the adjacent section of the craft. Freddy placed his two hairy hands on both sides of the entrance-way and projected himself towards Eva. The backdrop of stars thousands of light-years away never ceased to entertain him.

"The day you're able to jump back into orbit on your own will be the day these grey hairs stop growing," Freddy said, hovering over the slender frame of Eva.

"And the day you stop taking cat-naps will be the day I decide to try."

Freddy chuckled and hooked himself in the seat next to Eva. "Still no signal from base?"

"Nothing. Once we fishhook into orbit we should be able to see the station," she said. "We're well within range. We shoulda made contact weeks ago."

"Ah, well, who knows what those clowns are up to? After all, we're not carrying the first specimen of alien intelligence or anything."

Eva laughed. The mission, thus far, was executed flawlessly. It was a textbook extraction mission, though the planet they were sent to had only been explored twice before. Yet success was nonetheless theirs. Fifteen feet away, locked inside a dozen test-tubes, which were locked inside four additional security containers, was the first biological sample of life outside of their galaxy. The implications were abundant.

Earth, which hung in space like a polished marble, grew nearer. Besides Eva and Freddy, the other three crew members were fast asleep in recovery pods, receiving fluid and immune-system boosts. Traveling at near-light speed had its physiological drawbacks.

"Look, there," Freddy said, lifting a burly finger to the right of the navigation window. Out of the void emerged a steel structure resembling the charred remnants of a skillet after Eva's cooking.

"What in the hell happened to them?" she said. The exterior of the support station was clearly scorched. Dark waves of ash climbed up and down the outer façade, though the larger spacecraft still appeared to be intact and in orbit.

"Looks like something may have exploded," Freddy answered. "Let's sweep into orbit and approach them slowly, see if the docking station is still in one piece." Eva nodded her head but couldn't take her eyes off the object.

"I'll try them again," she said. She reached to the left and pressed a series of buttons with the craftiness more akin to an accountant than an astronaut.

"Babylon this is Etana 1 broadcasting a half-mile out from your position, do you copy?"

The static that replied was a stark reminder that the vast expanse of space in between the two crafts may hold more disappointment.

"Babylon, I repeat, this is Etana 1 returning from the Kish binaries looking to dock at your base, do you copy?"

As they neared the craft, the burned tattoos that crept up its hull appeared even more sinister. In the rear of the spaceship, the vials of extra-terrestrial life and the three other crew members sat silent, unaware of the impending realization that grew closer with each minute.