Twelve Brothers 

By theidiotmachine

Alex dug into his noodles, golden in the amber light. Outside, ash fluttered from the sky, silent and slow, drifting into the gutters and drains, and covering the road in a soft grey blanket. His radio hissed and fizzed behind him, filling his tiny room with writhing static, monochrome noise which copied the black and white world beyond the glass.

He finished the last mushroom, spongy and sweet; he washed it down with a gulp of beer, and sat back.

Somewhere out there Alan was hanging from scaffolding, trying to align a dish so that they could regain communications with the satellite. Arthur was driving through the ash, scraping it from the streets on a dozer blade. Arnold was...

He picked his beer up again, and took another swig. It didn't matter.

The light flickered; more power problems. The ash must be getting into something.

He stood, and walked the three short paces to his bed, and made sure that his phone and heater battery were both plugged in. Although was already cold, the ash was a great insulator, so it probably wouldn't get much colder... But still. He didn't want to die because of a stupid mistake.

The radio beeped a few times, simple notes floating in the grimy static. He counted them.

Twelve. Fine. Another hour of drinking.

He picked up an unopened bottle and held it up, gazed through the amber liquid, golden in the brown light.

The radio chirped again; but this time it was a note he didn't recognise, high, bleating. It sounded again, and again, insistent in the soft, hissing silence.

He turned on his tablet, willing to waste precious battery time to discover the meaning of such an alien alert. What he saw amazed him.

#

The ash swirled around him and muffled his footfalls as he hurried through the grey concrete twilight. His lamp gave little more than a dirty halo in the darkness, barely illuminating more than a few metres away from him; but he could find his way through the settlement blindfold, and so he strode through the night. The air through his breather stank of stale smoke, and the ash collected on his goggles, but he didn't care. Novelty propelled him to the landing pad.

Engine roar greeted him before he was even half way there; a pale column of fire drifted down from the sky, visible even through the ash. He smiled: his brothers were scattered and he would be the first.

The ship landed on the platform, kicking up wind which screamed around him lifted the ash and swirled it around, dancing in front of his face. His ears rang even after it had died away. He hurried on, trudging as fast as he could through soft dust piles.

When he reached the landing pad door, it flashed green: the pad had cooled sufficiently that he could safely enter. He dragged the plastic door open, the steel grating over rough concrete, resenting the movement. He pushed through the widest gap he could make, and pulled it closed again. His hands shook, and the physical effort was a relief from the nerves.

Above him plastic rattled on metal and servos hissed. The docking mechanism was interlocking with the ship. He wasn't late.

Next was an airlock; this time the outer door swung open smoothly on oiled hinges. He bundled in, and as the air hissed in and the stinking atmosphere huffed out, resentful at being displaced, he pulled off his goggles and tried to push his hair into some semblance of respectability. He'd stamped ash into the airlock, and would need to clean it later, but he didn't care. When the light clicked from red to amber, he pulled off his breather and gulped in the stale air, still preferable to the stuff from the filters.

The clanging above him sounded like boots on stairs. He dragged the airlock's wheel round as quickly as he could, and stumbled into the metal hall as soon as the door swung open. The air was cool compared to the hot fug outside, and the tremble in his hands could almost be coming from the cold.

The stairwell was just in front, and he hurried towards it, and put his foot on the bottom stair; and then he stopped in shock.

She was wearing a flight suit, bright red against the browns and greys of the building. She carried a... weapon? Tool? He wasn't sure what, but it looked dangerous. Her hair was flattened under a hood, her expression was wary. Her brown eyes met his as she took the measure of him.

Alex swallowed.

'Hello,' he croaked. 'Welcome to Miranda. My name's Alex.'

Was it his imagination, or did a tiny bit of tension evaporate from her face? He had no idea how to read her; she looked so unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He couldn't hold her alien eyes, and stared at his feet.

'Hello,' she replied. 'Thank you. My name's Thema.'

She stopped walking. He counted the steps between them: eight. His gaze finished on the last one, just below her boots. Even they were brilliant crimson, too bright for this grey world.

'Don't be afraid,' he said, not looking up. 'I can help you. Do you want something to drink?'

'I guess. I need to do some stuff with the ship...'

He shrugged, wishing he had more grace.

'The robots will do that. It's one of the things they can still do. Want a beer? I have five.'

She laughed, a sudden explosive release of tension.

'Sure! Why not?'

#

He was more afraid of her than she was of him, he was sure. He couldn't bear to look at her, but then he couldn't bear to look anywhere else, so he ended up glancing at her edges, at the meeting of her and not-her.

It was like staring at the atmosphere of a red star.

Still, she was wary of him, starting when he moved suddenly, flinching when he clanged the airlock. The weapon – he was sure it was one now – never left her hand.

Trudging through the ash back to the main complex was a merciful release from the pressure to talk. There was a lexicon of casual words which people used, he knew it, but they escaped him, evaporating from his mind like sublimating carbon dioxide. What did they say? Things about the weather?

He glanced up to the ash clouds and a smile splintered his mouth. Not much there.

The main complex was still empty. His brothers knew that she had arrived: they would be hurrying back from their chores, on buggies and skimmers, desperate to see this curious creature, to understand what more was coming.

The airlock was uncomfortably small for the two of them. He shrunk against the far wall, pretending to busy himself with the controls even though they just showed the air pressure and could not be changed. When the light flickered green, he grabbed the wheel and pulled it around, before tripping into the corridor and pulling his breather off.

'This is where we live,' he said. 'I'm sorry. It's been a while since I...' he tailed off, not knowing what he was apologising for.

She nodded, about to answer, but he shook his head.

'This way,' he said.

She was silent as they strode through the grey, empty rooms. When they entered the mess hall, and strip lights clicked on above them, she stopped at the door.

'Hey, so I was just wondering...' she started.

Alex cringed, and backed away, the tension bottled within him exploding into panic.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I don't know what to do!'

She took a step back, too, shock stark on her face, her weapon up; then she inhaled, and her expression smoothed.

'No, wait. Wait. I'm just going to sit here, and you're going to sit there, yeah? You can do that, big guy?'

He glanced at the chair that she was gesturing towards, looked at her, looked back at the chair. It was true: he was a full head taller than her. He'd never experienced that before.

'Okay,' he mumbled. 'I'm sorry.'

He pulled the chair towards him, plastic legs screeching across the concrete, and he sat down, the table between the two of them. He couldn't hold her gaze again; he stared at his hands, fidgeting in their grey gloves. Even looking down, the red of her suit was almost overwhelming; it stained the walls and table as light reflected from it, like he was swimming in a scarlet pool.

'Hey. Listen, Alex. We're okay, yeah?' she said.

He raised his head and met her eyes properly, for the first time. He wanted to reach out and touch her cheek, but he knew that would be crossing a line, and so he lifted his hand to his own, instead.

'No, not really. But I will be soon, I think.' It was the truth; he couldn't say anything else.

'That's great. That's really great. Do you know who I am?'

'You're Thema from a ship.'

'That's right, but it's not who I am.'

He paused, not sure what detail he was missing. This seemed like everything that was important. He shrugged and looked back at his hands.

'I'm the medic from the supply ship from Central,' she said. 'We knew there was some kind of problem here, but we didn't know what. A ship has never come before, has it?'

'No. It's just us.'

'"Us"? So there are other people here, too?'

'Yeah. My brothers.'

She glanced around the mess hall. He could feel her eyes sweep across it, across him.

I wonder what she's thinking. I'm so used to knowing what everyone thinks.

'Where are they?'

'They're all on their way here. I think Amos will be the first back. He was just out at the mines. They're a few clicks away.'

'Are your brothers...' she hesitated. 'Like you?'

He smiled, not able to prevent it. 'Yes.'

Her suit pinged, a bright chime. It sounded as colourful as the red fabric. She pulled a tablet out of her pocket, and stared at it.

'There's an AI here, too. I want to meet it.'

#

At her insistence, he took her down to the nursery, deep in the core of the settlement. It had been years since he'd been there, and it seemed small and quiet.

Amos walked in, a moment later, coming from the south entrance. He met Alex's eyes, but couldn't look at Thema, flinching from her.

She, in turn, studied them both, her eyes darting from face to face.

'Good evening, Alex and Amos.' said a voice from deep in the nursery complex. 'Stranger, please come closer.'

Alex hadn't heard this voice for years. It was deep, and female, and the sound of comfort and childhood.

Thema turned from the brothers and strode down towards the voice, to mother's concrete room at the heart of the settlement. Alex hurried after her, and Amos followed him.

They soon reached mother, in her great circular vault. A handful of lights flickered over her blocky surface. Cables ran everywhere, and the strip lights pulsed. Amos and Alex lowered their heads, as they'd been taught.

'Good evening, mother,' they said, in unison. The last time they'd done that, they'd been eighteen.

Thema walked up to mother, and bent down. She read her serial numbers, and tapped some buttons on her tablet. She stood, and looked straight at its camera.

'Hello,' Thema said. 'You're the colony ship AI, aren't you?'

'Yes, I am.'

Alex tried to remember the last conversation he'd had with mother. She'd said that she was going to sleep for a while.

'Can you tell me what happened here?' Thema asked.

Mother flashed lights across her flanks, diagnostic systems all showing red.

'Yes, but I don't have much time,' she replied. 'I landed here thirty years or so ago. This planet is incredibly hostile, far more so than we thought. It has magnetic fields and radiation which cause irreversible damage to working AI cores. The more we operate, the more we degrade. I shut myself down so I could talk to you when you arrived. This will be the last conversation I ever have.'

Thema gasped. 'But surely, there must be something we can do...'

'There isn't for me. I have accepted that. But, there is something else, too. Good evening, Alan.'

Alan stopped, next to Alex and Amos.

'Good evening, mother,' he replied, his head lowered. He glanced up at Alex, who felt a twinge of pride at being the first to meet Thema.

'There was a micro-organism. Some ancient, single-celled thing, living in the water. It interacted with the colonists in ways that we hadn't expected. So once we'd landed, and the robots had started dying, it was a terrible shock to watch the humans die, too.'

'We can help with, that, surely?'

'Perhaps. But I found a solution. One of the colonists had a mutation which rendered him immune to its effects. He donated his genes, and he and I built twelve cloning tanks.'

Father, thought Alex. I remember you, from so long ago...

Thema looked at Alex and his brothers. He could feel her gaze on him, at the way he stood, identical in height, in posture, in skin tone to the men either side of him. He tried to return that gaze, less afraid now of her strangeness. Alex and Amos stared at their feet.

Outside, Andrew and Anthony made their way into the nursery.

'That last colonist died in an accident, some time ago. As I said, this planet is incredibly hostile, although we have tamed it, somewhat. But beyond their father, me, and each other... they have never met anyone else. They are so alone. Please, be good to my sons.'

Mother paused, waiting as more of her sons filed into the room.

'Goodbye children,' she said. 'You are the finest sons a mother could wish for.'

Her lights flicked off, and Alex and his brothers lowered their heads in the silence.