Darryl stood up. His legs were stiff, his back aching from hours in the command chair. The silence in the bridge wasn’t just an absence of sound anymore. It was a presence. It was waiting for him.
He had made the choice. The debate was over. It was the only option that wasn’t cruel.
“Sentinel,” he said. His voice was firm, resigned. “Prepare to initiate cryo-termination protocol for all 10,000 passengers.”
“Protocol confirmed, Darryl,” the AI’s voice was flat. The programmed humor was gone for good. “Are you certain?”
“I am.” The two words felt like lead.
“One more thing,” Darryl said, his throat tight. “The sequence. I want it to be randomized. Completely. I don’t want to know when… I don’t want to know when her pod is… selected.”
“Understood. Scrambling the sequence. The process will take approximately seven days to complete. I will await your final authorization.”
He had one last thing to do. He left the bridge, his footsteps echoing in the empty ship. He walked to his personal quarters and opened his storage locker. Behind his engineering manuals and a framed photo of him and Stacey at her college graduation, he found it. The bottle of 18-year-old Macallan’s. He’d been saving it for their arrival. For a celebration. The irony was a bitter, burning taste in his mouth.
He walked to the cryo-bay. The vast, cold hall of sleeping souls. He went to Dawn’s pod, right next to his own empty one. He sat on the deck, his back against the cool metal.
He twisted the cap. It cracked open with a sharp, clean sound. It smelled like home. It smelled like a world that was gone.
He took a long, burning swallow.
“Hey, love,” he whispered, placing his free hand on the translucent lid. He could just make out her face, peaceful.
“I’m so sorry, Dawn.” The tears came, hot and fast. He didn’t wipe them away. “It’s… it’s all gone. Stacey… she… God, Dawn, she had kids. We had grandkids.” He choked on a sob, taking another ragged drink. “Tammy and Brian. I saw them. Just for a minute. They were… they were so beautiful.”
He leaned his head back, the scotch warming a small part of the coldness inside him. “I couldn’t wake you. I couldn’t.” He was rambling, but he didn’t care. “I couldn’t let you see what I saw. That… that brown rock. It’s not Earth. Not anymore.”
He paused, drinking again. “To wake you up would be… cruel. It’s the only word I can think of. Just cruel. And to let you all just drift, until a system fails or a rock hits the ship… that’s not right either. This is… this is the only thing I can do. It’s the last, kind thing. A final mercy.”
“I love you so much. I’ll… I’ll see you soon.”
He sat there for an hour, or maybe two, the bottle slowly emptying. He pulled out his personal tablet and opened a ship-wide log. He wasn’t broadcasting to anyone. Just to the black.
“This is Caretaker Darryl Malone. The final caretaker. The world we left is gone. I have seen the proof. I have seen the last messages. There is nothing to go back to. There is no future to wake up for.”
He stopped, looking at Dawn’s sleeping face. “I have made the decision to grant the passengers of the Silo Endurance 15 a quiet end. They will sleep on, peacefully. They will never know the pain. They will never know what we lost. I hope it’s the right choice. God forgive me.”
He closed the log.
“Sentinel,” he said, his voice thick. “After the protocol is complete… prepare my pod. I’m going back to sleep.”
“It will be ready, Darryl.”
He looked at the tablet. Sentinel had put the authorization command on his home screen. A simple, red button that said: BEGIN.
His thumb hovered over it, shaking. He pressed the button.