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Page 61.

Alex sat up, sputtering.

He felt warm dry air on his skin. He tore the rubber mouthpiece from his lips and coughed spasmodically. Liquid gushed from his nostrils and from his mouth. He coughed and sputtered, leaning weakly on one side of the birthing tank with his arms hanging over.

“Welcome,” said a male voice. “Congratulations on your birth. It is good to be alive.”

Alex rubbed his eyes, which burned, until they opened. He rubbed away soft sleep matter from his nose and from the corners of his eyes and lips—creamy greenish paste that smelled almost like oats or kress and had antiseptic healing properties.

“Who are you?” Alex whispered.

“I am Rector. I am little more than the ghost of a man who lived long ago, and I have to follow your orders because I am nothing more than software while you are a living, breathing human.”

“How is it that I remember another man’s life?”

“The system feeds codons into your genes, RNA-like replicators and replicands that make your body generate swarms of bioelectrochemical memes on the surface of your brain. The ancient humans learned how to make memory recordings this way and pass them along to clones who would otherwise be born as blank slates with nothing but some primitive hardwired boot knowledge.”

“What happened to the human race?”

Rector smiled smugly into his chin. “Dead and gone for eons. I am a program they left behind—a virtual memorial, one might say.”

“Can we bring them back?”

“There is only one chance left now, Alex, and you can make it happen.” His eyes had a veiled, furtive look.

“How long has it been?”

Rector glanced at an oversized wristwatch with a glowing neon dial face and cryptic markings. “Slightly over a million years.”

Alex looked around. He was in a sunny, pleasant 30x30 square foot room. The room was bare except for the glass tank in the middle and the tubes trailing from his abdomen. He’d splashed water on the white enamel floor of the room. The walls were light, pinkish enamel with baby blue shadows, though it seemed just as likely the colors were microscopic picture elements within a neutral digital surface that could be any color its master wanted it to be. Some faint flickers here and there gave the game away. There was one large rectangular window, taking up most of one wall, through whose half-shut Venetian blinds warmth and sunlight leaked into the room, though Alex suspected again that it was just a digital projection, perhaps of real sunlight from outside the station’s skin, filtered through virtual blinds to shield out radiation.

Several mirror-like surfaces hung in various places around the room, and in one of the mirrors, the largest one, was the image of a man sitting in a chair. It was a full-size lifelike image, generated by some program in the station’s core. The man was bald on top, with a ring of graying hair over the ears, and a squarish brown beard. He had a tall, rectangular Germanic looking face with hard blue-gray eyes. He had a small mouth with a humorous twist, but a faintly additive cruelty: Rector. The spawn of all ectors. “Can you walk?” Rector asked softly, offering a hand. “We have a lot to accomplish.”

Alex tried to climb out of the tank, but lost his grip on the slippery rim, and fell down beside it in a welter of spilled water. He felt chilly and naked and awkward. His limbs ached and his head swam as blood regulated itself and his heart found just the right rhythm for pumping.

“Are you hungry?”

Alex shook his head as he propped himself up on his palms and elbows.

“Thirsty?”

Alex used a thumb and index finger to brush water from the bridge of his nose and between his eyes while lowering his head and shaking off the dull headache. Water poured from his head and splattered on the floor. He heaved in his tank like some great fish. Water poured from his fingertips as he gripped the tanks’ rim.

“You had all the nutrients you need for a few hours,” Rector said, “and the headache should be going away any minute now.”

Alex struggled to stand up. He slipped again, fell down, but pushed himself up by his hands and elbows against the edge of the birthing tank. Water crashed around him like ocean breakers. How clean and fresh the birthing liquid smelled! Green herbs floated in their healing broth. Green umbilical tubes floated on the water, dissolving. He looked down at his navel, which was swollen to fist-size and pocked with bluish-purple bleeding sockets where the tubes had biogenically plugged in, nurturing him during his nine month term, before falling off when the hormone cocktail signaled birth time.

“That will heal soon,” Rector said. “Don’t worry. Everything has been planned for. You will live a long and healthy life on human terms. We spared no effort to ensure the survival of our race, and you are the key player now, Alex Kirk.”

Alex rose unsteadily and held his head between his hands. “How would that be?” He remembered something about a meteorite hit.

“Come with me and you’ll see,” Rector said. He strode toward a wall and disappeared.

Alex walked in the same direction and found that a door had appeared in the wall on his side; or had been there all along and he hadn’t seen it. He turned the handle and stepped outside.

Alex was in a long hallway. Biofluorescent ceiling lights gleamed in highly polished rubbery floor tiles. The walls of the corridor were plain popcorn-creamy white and smooth. There were numerous doors, all of them closed.

Rector’s image appeared beside Alex as though Rector were a live, full-size human being. He still wore the lab coat, but the latex gloves were gone. It was an image, however, without any smells—no clove gum, no latex gloves, no faintly mothball odor in the lab coat. They strode down the hall until they came to a door, and Rector pointed for Alex to open it.

Alex stepped into a dark room that lightened slowly to a dim glow. A nude female lay in a glass and steel birthing tank.

“Maryan!” Alex gasped, wanting to fall on his knees.

She floated on her back, perfectly still, with a faint smile on her face. Her thick hair floated in delicate whorls, framing the same lovely face he knew so well. Everything in the room was calm and aseptic, except the water covering her in the tank, which glowed in various shades of red, from a comforting ruby to a rich yellowish garnet to a lively claret. “The color of blood,” Rector said quietly, “not the plant juice you were birthed in down in your cave.” Some undertone in Rector’s voice thrummed a faint, dark note of warning deep in Alex’s brain, but in his excitement to see Maryan, Alex pushed it aside. Alex put his palms against the room temperature glass and studied the precious tank’s contents. The liquid was alive with nanobugs cleaning, feeding, nuzzling, healing, growing.

Rector raised a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

“Will she remember?” Alex whispered.

“Yes,” Rector whispered. “Come, don’t disturb her now. Close the door. She will be born in a few days. See how she smiles. She dreams of you, Alex. I have a deal for you.”

Alex pulled the door shut. He followed Rector down the long hall. “If you bring her back to life I will do anything for you.”

“You’ll do what you have to do,” Rector said, “and so will I.”