A grayish gust of smokey air blew Myra in, down the entry stairs; she slammed the hatch and locked the bolt. She realized instantly that being so loud was foolish.
Trauma had made her careless; self-preservation told her that emotional exhaustion was making her uncharacteristically incautious. Scenes of carnage haunted her mind, convincing her that a swarm of hunter drones would be following the blasters.
Blasters were designed to shatter asteroids; sweepers, to collect blast material, called “blasmate” or “blasteroids,” and take it to refineries for metals and other commodities.
Blasters were weaponized by the Mars Space Force (MSF) and escorted by hunters on ‘seek-to-destroy’ missions. “Were hunters already downed by ESF sentries or are there still hostiles on the prowl?” Myra speculated that Earth Space Force probably got them.
She listened to the silent barrack. Her heartbeat was it; no other sounds…
It took her several hours of listening to her beat while box-breathing: in 5, hold 5, out 5, hold 5; repetitions added, multiplied. She thought logically, discursively, philosophically, exhaustively, of everything else in her mind, to not think of Derik.
Fleeting dawn pastels finally lit up the room, in through the skylights; Myra saw that no one else was in the building. She felt uncontainable and paranoid, yet bruised and sore, and thoroughly exhausted; she needed to sleep it off.
In a given hour, Earth spins around a thousand miles at the equator, orbits some sixty-seven thousand miles around its star, and is prone to suffer cataclysmic events, cosmic in nature; Earth is sitting in the waiting room, listing preexisting conditions, numerous mass-extinctions. “The pale blue dot needs you, Myra.”
”Whose voice was that?,” she asked aloud, her voice hoarse from smoke inhalation.
She shook her head and wiped her eyes, looked disinterestedly at the empty room, as the daydream dissipated. The voice was unknown, yet familiar; she needed to connect.
In her pack was a Node Cube (NC), her link to the Constellation Quantum Cloud (CQC), issued to agents and soldiers for ESF Project EDAI: Earth Defense Artificial Intelligence.
The core function of EDAI was aggregating and processing data of the Global Artificial Intelligence Array (GAIA); its sensors observed various variables, on and around Earth.
GAIA streamed data continuously to the CQC; the constellation, comprised of nearly thirteen thousand armed and armored satellites, was built around quantum computers, keeping cool in the vacuum of space. Probabilistic and procedural outputs beamed to secure subterranean sites; EDAI functioned to support Earth toward habitus optimus.
Being CQC linked, Myra could do anything, virtually, with the NC; it could do simulacra, refine probabilistic event predictions, call for help, yet that would have to wait.
An antiquated web2 article, that had haunted her adolescence, impugned her memory.
She memorized a sentence, yet it had been decades ago, in her academic years; after all those years she only recalled the phrase, “Great Filter,” and queried her NC for that article. There was no need to refer to the NC directly; each NC paired to one person only, studied their tone and inflection, and listened for when it was being addressed.
“Say that quote I highlighted, about the Great Filter; use my voice,” she conducted.
Her reply via NC, “…we’re not as primitive as we used to be, but we’re nowhere near as mature as we need to be if we hope to persist beyond the Great Filter. -Ethan Gough”
It always renewed her purpose: serve the survival of the species of the pale blue dot.
”Command Priority Communique: I’m intact, vitals solid. Awaiting evac. Myra out.”
She went another level down to her quarters; the cozy bed caught her tired form and it was nearly the next day when she woke again.
She would have slept many hours more, yet her NC alerted, ”Evac Window Opening.”
ESF troops stood sentry around the building as the evac squad entered, “Myra?”
“Myra, do you hear me?”
”I do,” she replied, “I’m coming to you from downstairs.” She appeared in the stairway and caught a young soldier by surprise. He anticipated a weary woman and stumbled to the side as she jogged up passed him. Bruises remained, yet soreness dissipated.
He tightened up and said, ”Let’s get somewhere safer; we lost 3 factories yesterday,” then relayed to remote observers, “Agent acquired; commencing evac.”
They boarded an evac aerial and turned south; the Fairbanks factory was gone and it was a mercilessly inhospitable winter season. They would regroup in Anchorage.
The city had some of the most advanced defenses anywhere known. Martian military had nothing even comparable, yet they had enough nerve and need to attack nearby.