Humanity's End

The heavy note that Sumiko ended on made Yumi swallow roughly. “Is that a hyperbole?”

“No, this is reality.”

“So we’re just going to die?” She found it a little hard to believe the way that Sumiko delivered her brief speech that there was nothing left. There was a somber tone to it, but not one lacking hope, at least yet. Something still remained, even if their reality was grim.

The projection disappeared as Sumiko turned to walk over to the other side. “No, we’re going to survive.” A new image came up in 3D that filled the space between them, becoming Sumiko’s next talking point. “That’s why we have this. Why we’re all here.”

‘So this station’s purpose is to save humanity? But it’s going to be destroyed by this attacker. What are they planning to do?’ Yumi leaned forward a little interested in what this plan was of hers. Things about this world finally started to be unraveled for her. She only hoped that she had the possibility of doing something useful.

Finding whomever the personality was and progressing the story was the most important. She needed to survive to solve the mystery of this world. “This station is going to save humanity?” It seemed a little hard to believe with what she had told Yumi so far that this station could do anything.

“This isn’t a station, my dear. It’s an ark!”

Chapter 481 – Humanity’s End

Her brow pinched a little in her confusion. “An ark? How?”

“This is all a secret, so I’m not surprised you don’t know. The cover story for this is that we’re developing a weapon that’ll be able to bring an end to the war, but the truth is far more grim.” Sumiko motioned over to the projection as it changed to a map of the solar system. Red marked throughout the region giving it a foreboding look. “They’ve wiped out all traces of civilization in most of the outer rim already. All we managed to do is be spared, not drive them off. The 3rd Inner Rim Fleet is creating a diversion so that we can finish our work here.”

“It won’t be long before they even wipe out Earth!” the boy interjected fueled with a combination of frustration and anger. He clearly wanted to be doing something to change things, but found himself lacking.

Sumiko reached out to calm him down and encourage him to step back. “Yes, I imagine she’s likely figuring that part out. But he’s not wrong.”

“Which is why you said that this was the end of humanity.”

“Correct, the 3rd Fleet is doing its best to stay alive and buy us all the time we need to finish our work, but we’re on the clock. Once the enemy finishes off the Fleet they’ll be back to put an end to us as well.”

Cautiously, Yumi approached Sumiko trying to judge what was to come next. “You’re being surprisingly trusting of someone you only just met with your secrets.”

“You’ve proven yourself enough to me. I heard what happened. Besides, the entire facility is under lockdown with communication completely cut off. At this point, things only come in and never leave. So you’re not going anywhere if you were a spy.”

‘Is that the story I have to follow? Am I under a time limit to find and solve whatever it is before this place blows up?’ Guessing was all that Yumi could really do at the moment. She was as blind as the last time about what was going on. Sumiko provided details to start filling in the world, which turned out to be far worse than the last place she left. Without her powers to help her, she really didn’t know what she would be able to do to affect the outcome. They didn’t need her.

“But enough about reality. Let’s focus on the dream.”

“Dream?”

Sumiko altered the projection again to display her next topic. The station, or ark as she called it, returned to view, but it zoomed into a focused part that she hadn’t seen before in the projection. Parts of the structure were stripped away to reveal a device of some sort. “That’s right! This here is our hope, the chance for a people to escape destruction.”

“What is it?”

“Put simply an engine, an experimental one that I’ve had trapped in my brain for ten years. They say it’s impossible, but you don’t know until you try.”

“An engine is going to save humanity, I’m sorry I don’t really get it.”

“It’s fine. I’m not going to bore you with the gory details of it. You just need to know that this will ensure the continuation of civilization and we will have it finished before they return!”

Yumi looked around at the command room. Most of the people were beyond her sight, but they all seemed to have stopped working to listen to Sumiko. A few of them had stepped away to watch her. There was a surprisingly hopeful atmosphere in the room despite the grim reality that they lived with. It almost seemed bearable.

“What can I do then? I’m not exactly an engineer or some scientist.”

The leader of the last hope of humanity stared her Yumi with a look in her eye that she couldn’t quite place. She had an idea in her mind, that much came through to Yumi. The question was if she should be nervous about it. That wasn’t the sort of feeling Yumi got from her, but her silence bothered her.

Thirty minutes later, things moved forward. Everyone continued on their tasks working as they had been before she arrived, around the clock with as little sleep as possible. The attack hadn’t changed any of that. She only found more determined expressions as she walked through the station.

Yumi arrived at her destination standing in the middle of the entryway with Sumiko staring intently at the monitor, while constantly barking out orders to the rest in the room. “You know this wasn’t what I was talking about when I said I wanted to help.” In her hands a tray rested with the remains of the rations still left to be served.

“Eh?” the woman replied back, clearly not having her attention on Yumi. It seemed that her voice broke through the rhythm pattern of the room was the only thing that she acknowledged. She might not have even noticed that it was a voice, but merely a sound. Yumi became a dissonance within the harmony.

“I said!” she pushed her voice not quite shouting but letting it carry more clearly through the room to declare her presence. “You—“

“Yumi!” Sumiko popped her head up from the monitor with nearly red looking eyes from staring so intently at her work. A moment with her guard down from when she had seen her before. It wasn’t the same sort of person she saw before keeping the rallying of the troops together. “Just set everything down on that table! We’ll get to it when we have a moment!”

Her hand pointed over to what was most certainly not a table or even a countertop, at least not one meant for storing things like food. What she had directed Yumi to was the shelf or counter of one of the terminals that they worked on. At least it currently didn’t seem to be something that they worked on at the moment. Everyone’s attention was in other parts of the room.

Yumi stared at the terminal with a bit of sweat dripping down realizing what happened. Around the room though, she didn’t find anything that looked like a better offering for her to place food. This was not a room meant for them to eat, but they weren’t going to leave.

Leaving the food behind, Yumi looked over the monitor if any of it made any sense to her. She couldn’t understand any of it with any sort of meaning. It was all in words that had no definitions. Reading didn’t mean she had comprehension. She hovered around having finished with her deliveries, but they didn’t even notice her.

Eventually after a few minutes she stepped out with it being clear that she wasn’t going to be able to do anything. Yumi leaned up against the wall of the hall holding the tray in front of her. ‘Isn’t there something more useful I could be doing?’ As she already knew, she didn’t have an answer. They were doing work beyond her in a technology that she couldn’t even hope to understand. ‘I can’t even navigate their computer without staring at it…’

Frustrated, but admitting that she had no options, Yumi left returning to get whatever request they had for her next. Another delivery was what she expected. Her physical strength was about all she could rely on in this world, something that she didn’t expect to find herself saying.

It was the truth.

The day ended, for her at least, she went to sleep in one of the spare rooms that they offered her. It was simple and only supported the need to sleep and nothing more. Bathrooms weren’t even in it. She had to go down the hall to the communal space if she wanted a bath or to clean up.

The public bath was completely empty and automated. It was also thankfully free. After she finished, she stared at the mirror. Her arm no longer needed the cast to repair it. Her body was at least back to a hundred percent. “It’s just going to be another day of the same thing…” She pressed her hand against the mirror unwilling to accept that as her reality, a delivery service. “I have to do something…”

Yumi made her rounds on the station giving food to everyone with Sumiko’s group being the last. They were the furthest away on the path being several floors higher. Inside the room, she found that only two of the packaged rations were opened, the rest hadn’t even been touched. She looked over to see that they were still working the same as before. Not knowing what they were doing it almost seemed like they hadn’t moved from their spot.

She replaced the empty wrappers with new and quietly moved on out. Yumi made it about halfway back to the command room before she stopped. They hadn’t given her any more work the previous day and food delivery seemed to be the only thing that they wanted her for, a meaningless task that just kept her busy.

Yumi glanced at the panel on the wall. It currently rested in a passive mode waiting input to turn on. But it gave her an idea. ‘I need to learn more…when they finish and I’m on this ark of theirs I need to prove my value. I need to get closer to them so that I can find the one I need…’ It was just a start, but she needed to understand their technology if she was to stay in this world. The feudal world was an easy enough one to fit into, but alien technology to her made this world completely different.

The panel was limited in what it could offer her, but she was able to at least get comfortable with the way that it was navigated. After another round of food deliveries, she stopped by the command room finding Karen. “Is there an open terminal I can use?”

“N-no,” she answered with a cagey expression.

“I’m tired of just being your delivery girl! If I’m going to be more useful I want to learn how your systems work. Maybe I can help out here like you do.”

She hesitated and looked up at Yumi trying to decide if it was a good idea to still give someone that was mostly a stranger to them access to their computer systems. It took another minute and more encouragement from Yumi, but she finally gave into her request. “You can use that one. But you can only have a guest account. You’ll have your access restricted.”

“That’s fine! Anything I can learn on!” Yumi put the tray down on the floor as she slid into the chair. It felt a little weird unlike the others that she had been in before on the station. The chair actually morphed itself to find what was the best position for her while maintaining good posture.

Once Karen set her up with the account to use, Yumi started poking around the terminal. ‘It’s similar to the hall panels. That’s good, so this must be how everything on the station works. So if I learn more about this I should be able to help out. I just need to learn.’

She found her routine. It was slow progressing, but she saw her confidence with using their systems growing. Her head could get around it as the foreignness of it made everything feel unapproachable, when in reality it wasn’t that difficult.

But she had run out of time.

Warnings went off all over the command room as the perimeter warnings were tripped. Yumi turned back from the terminal to look over at the map of space that surrounded the ark. “They’re back…” She looked over at Karen who already started to frantically talk to the different teams over the facility. “I thought we still had two days…”

Francis Horn from the security terminal looked down from his platform above Yumi. “The 3rd Fleet was unable to hold out for as long as we predicted.”

“But Sumiko isn’t finished! She doesn’t have enough time!” Yumi turned towards the monitors that displayed the space with the enemy fleet arriving and the beam weapons already incoming. “We just needed more time!”

Everything went white.

Silence.

Nothing.

“We’re in space!” shouted Yuki with all of the energy and enthusiasm of a child on Christmas opening their present and finding that it was the one thing that they wished for the whole year inside the box. And indeed was Yuki ever correct about the statement. They were in space, though not the vacuum of space. Their surroundings were a station, a space station giving their situation, which came as a shocking departure from their last world that was in Japan with demons.

But Yuki's enthusiasm quickly changed as he made another declaration. “And there’s aliens attacking us! Crap!” A large energy wave from whatever he saw filled all of their vision.

Yumi started confused and puzzled at what was happening. Everything felt familiar and her friends were alive. “What the hell is going on?!”