Directly above us, Mars shone serenely, and the entire sky was studded with stars. ATLAS hovered at an altitude of ten thousand meters. Silence reigned in the cabin, broken only by the soft hum of systems and occasional signals from Alice.
Shortly before the catastrophe, I had been called in for a consultation. It concerned the small Martian base established a few years earlier. Life there was harsh: cramped modules, limited supplies, dependence on Earth deliveries. Rockets capable of delivering cargo remained primitive—too little space, too little energy. Full-fledged artificial intelligence, like those developed on Earth, required huge servers and powerful power sources. For the colonists, it was an unattainable dream. They had to rely on ordinary computers. That's when my "Alice" project was born—compact, energy-efficient, capable of managing systems, data analysis, and forecasting. It was meant to become their assistant in a world where every watt and every liter of water was worth its weight in gold.
"It's a shame we didn't manage to establish a full-fledged colony on Mars; we could have flown there now," I said dreamily, gazing at the starry sky.
"And what would we do there?" Hunter opened his eyes and looked at the sky. "The colony has resources for a few hundred people at most, and that's if they deny themselves everything; without help from Earth, it's unclear how they'd survive at all. Our technology is still too primitive for autonomous survival in space. How will they even survive there? What will they eat?"
On Mars, according to the latest data, hydroponics was already being tested: vertical farms in sealed modules, LED panels with red and blue spectrum, a closed water cycle with nutrient solution based on perlite and coconut fiber. They grew lettuce, radishes, dwarf wheat. The cycle was thirty to forty-five days. But the system was fragile: one pump failure, one lighting malfunction—and it was over.
"What if something breaks in their complex system?" Hunter added.
Talking about food supplies, I suddenly remembered the shelter where our base and all our developments were supposed to be moved in case of war.
"When we conducted evacuation drills to the anti-nuclear shelter," I recalled, "our base was large; a whole small underground city was built, and to supply such a large facility, strategic food storage depots were built near the shelter."
I tried to recall where these depots were built, but due to stress and everything happening, it seemed nothing else remained in my head.
"Weren't there food supplies in the shelter itself?" Hunter asked.
"There were," I answered uncertainly, "but I personally never saw any food being brought in, only equipment and our developments."
"Ork, try hard to remember what you know about the shelter," Hunter demanded. "Lives may depend on it—not just yours, but many others."
"Where are these others, Hunter?" I shook my head hopelessly.
"A year or two will pass, the nuclear winter will end, and life on Earth will start again, Ork, from the very beginning," Hunter said with conviction. "The remaining healthy women will give birth to healthy children, and men will hunt, gather food, and everything will go in a new cycle, like millions of years ago. We've already been through an ice age, remember."
"Even if we all perish, life will undoubtedly resume on Earth," I supported him. "It has all the conditions for turning non-living matter into living matter. From ammonia, methane, water, molten magma, lightning, electric charges, and the sun's ultraviolet radiation, that pulsating lump will form again, from which all life will spring. Our Earth will once again be covered with patterns of mountains and rivers..."
"And a living being possessing reason, but initially pitiful, weak, in the struggle for existence, will turn into a bloodthirsty animal, whose actions will make the planet tremble again," Hunter attempted a smile.
"No, Ork, life won't start from the very beginning!" he objected. "Those who remain must convey to future generations everything they knew about our vanished civilization. And one of them is you! You must collect everything you know about the achievements of our contemporaries, and most importantly—warn against the mistakes our civilization made in its development..."
"I worked on artificial intelligence, not nuclear adventurism," I retorted with annoyance.
"Well, okay," Hunter changed his seat from vertical to horizontal and lay back. "You sit down, take the tablet, and try to recall the layout and underground passages of the shelter."
I moved closer to the table, took out a graphics tablet from a special pocket, and began drawing from memory the tunnels, passages, and exits of the underground city. First, I made a general schematic plan, then wanted to detail the compartments, but it turned out I couldn't remember a lot.
Loading an offline map onto the main screen, I tried to recall the base's location—in the mountains, forty miles from the city where the staff lived. But for some reason, roads, buildings, and structures that undoubtedly hadn't survived the catastrophe kept coming to mind. The only thing etched in my memory were the entrances: massive steel gates disguised as rocks, with biometric scanners and code panels.
Hunter wasn't asleep either. He occasionally opened his eyes and stared at me unblinkingly but didn't interfere with my work.
"Civilization and ignorance always walked side by side," I thought with regret. "They warmed themselves by the same common fire and perished by the fire they kept fanning. After all, we saw we were heading toward nuclear war, that the catastrophe was about to plunge us into the abyss of universal destruction, but instead of seizing the dragon and putting it in a madhouse, we built underground shelters and food storage depots..."