Remainers

A Lost Child, Part 1

A decaying city sat in the middle of a desolate wasteland, its buildings and landmarks eroding after countless years of neglect. A long time ago, this place was home to thousands of people, but now not a single soul stirred within its crumbling streets. Only vermin and scavengers hunting for any sort of sustenance remained in the darkest corners of this abandoned relic of human civilization. Among the streets of this ruined city walked a man and a woman, both outfitted with durable clothes and large packs filled to the brim with necessities and supplies.

"Looks like this is the location the report was talking about," said the man as he lightly scanned the area. "This place looks worse off than I imagined. One bad earthquake and it'll probably crumble into dust."

"Shall we forego the investigation then, Kyle?" asked the woman as she tapped her shoulder with the pickaxe she was holding in her left hand. "If we claim that it was too dangerous to survey properly, Computer'll probably let us off the hook."

"Don't be like that, Ella," Kyle replied as he examined a large hole in the middle of the main road. "Let's do our job properly. We don't have anything better to do, right?"

Ella sighed, but she didn't argue any further. The two set down their packs and climbed down into the hole, which opened up into a large underground cavern. Kyle took a flashlight from his waist-belt and used it to illuminate the area, taking careful stock of whatever he found there.

"Interesting," he hummed as he continued to scan the area. "I'd assumed this underground cavern just happened to form naturally, but I think it might have been a manmade creation."

"This wasn't a major population center, was it?" Ella asked blithely. "I can't imagine what they'd need with so much extra space."

"That's what we're here to find out," Kyle replied as he stepped deeper into the underground cavern. The place showed no signs of falling apart, and at the very least it seemed like it wouldn't crumble from one or two people walking around inside of it. As the two walked deeper in, Kyle noticed the ground under him change from dirt and rock to cold metal.

"Seems like there's something down here," he muttered in a low voice. "Maybe some kind of storage facility?"

The two followed the metal floors to a staircase leading down. The area below was much larger than the cavern above, and it was clearly dug out to serve as some sort of bay. As the two touched down on the bottom floor, they quickly waved their flashlights around to get a sense of where they were.

Kyle suddenly heard Ella let out a gasp of shock. "Kyle! Look at this!"

Kyle turned around to see what Ella was looking at, and could just barely manage to keep himself from gasping in surprise as well. In front of him was a massive cylindrical container, standing at nearly three times his height. It was a cryogenic pod chamber, and it was not supposed to be here.

Kyle immediately ran towards the chamber to get a better look at it, taking care to avoid tripping over himself in the darkness. It had been a long time since any of these were around on Earth, but Kyle couldn't forget what they looked like if he tried. They were the hope of humanity, after all. What was left of it, in any case.

"It's been hundreds of years since that expeditionary ship left Earth, right?" Ella asked as she followed after Kyle. "If that's the case, then..."

"Let's not jump to conclusions right away. This might have been a defective unit they decided not to use, or an extra chamber built in case of emergency." Of course, Kyle doubted either was actually the case. The cryogenic pod chambers were too important to be discarded so easily and too expensive for extras to just be lying around. As giant pods in which up to five hundred humans could be held in cryostasis for thousands of years, these chambers were the only way in which humanity could sustainably travel the sea of stars for an extended length of time. If there was any reason for one of those to be left on Earth, there could only be one: it was forgotten, left behind by a careless engineer or overlooked by a stressed-out supervisor.