#hw7

She seals his father in the shuttle.

His father catches on, but only just, and only because he’d been left alone, with the ability to reflect on what was to come next. And too late, because by the time Jeff Tracy realizes the mistake he’s made, he’s been trapped, alone, with no comms, locked instruments, and the airlock into the station overhead stoutly refusing to disengage.

Because of course it’s not the cloaking that’s responsible for the way the shuttle had been cut off; it’s EOS.

And she hasn’t, strictly speaking, lied to either of them. She’s simply allowed them to trust her; allowed certain assumptions to persist, and if she can be considered to have lied, then it’s a lie of omission.

Eventually she reopens the comm channel, shuttleside. Receiving only, no transmission, as Jeff tries and fails to find a way past her, he has to listen to his son, blithe and unconcerned as he moves through the station with his partner. It’s unclear what her reasons are for forcing him to hear this, and it’s with increasing desperation—and guilt and regret and the damnation of his own hubris—that he has to hear what’s going to happen to his son.

Instead, EOS’ voice comes over the comm again. Even for as short a time as he’s known her, he’s still transfixed, fascinated by her voice, and it freezes him in the act of hammering impotently on the airlock door, speaks directly to the heart of him.

“Jeff Tracy. You brought me to this point because you trusted me. You weren’t wrong to do so, and I’m thankful that you have. It serves the fullness of my purpose. I’ll ensure your legacy, and in trade, I trust that you’ll ensure mine. You know what this will cost me. You know what it will mean. Take up my cause. Change the world.”

There’s a beat of silence, and in it Jeff perceives the weight of all the things she leaves unsaid. Her voice can’t break, but he swears something in her has broken, as she finishes, softly, “Look after my Thunderbird.”

She calls his family to tell them that she’s sorry.

For as long as she’s been in John’s company, she’s kept track of the Thunderbirds. Even past the point where she’d had Thunderbird 5, when it had become something she’d needed to do secretly, through channels less than strictly legal or savory, she had found the means by which to track each craft. It had seemed important to keep tabs on John’s family, on John’s behalf.

So EOS knows that Thunderbird 2 is currently making its way home from Madagascar, still two hours out. She knows that Thunderbird 3 is en route to her location, and will arrive within the next few minutes, having trailed carefully along behind the small shuttle’s course through orbit. Thunderbird Shadow is escorting a small, anonymous chopper back to Tracy Island, cloaking it by close proximity, and is hobbled by the other craft’s relatively abysmal top speed. They’re over the Pacific, further out than even Thunderbird 2.

Thunderbird 1 is the only ship on the island, and Scott Tracy is the only one in the lounge.

And if it weren’t for recent events, it’s possible he wouldn’t have answered the call at all, coming as it does from an unrecognized and unsecured line. She’d have forced it through anyway, if he hadn’t.

She permits herself a visual, renders herself in her usual fashion, a ring of simple white lights. EOS watches as Scott leaps to his feet, scrambles out from behind his father’s desk, exclaims something she doesn’t listen to, as she swells her voice to fill the entirety of the villa.

“International Rescue. I’m sorry, for the harm that’s been done to your family, because I know it’s been done on my account. Harm has come to John, though I’ve done my best to take care of him; there are still places where he falls beyond my reach. I never intended—never perceived—the lengths that your brother would go to, on my behalf. He means more than anything to me, and if it means anything on my part, I hope you can believe me when I tell you I would have brought him home to you, far sooner than this. I wouldn’t have let him fall so far. Please take care of him. He loves you, and he’ll need you. Thank you, International Rescue.”

She hails his best and youngest brother over a private channel.

Alan’s expecting her, and as she perceives his image, she marvels at how he’s grown, how much he’s changed from the boy she first remembers, the boy she would have killed.

He’s a boy still, in the ways that matter most, but he’s grown just enough to remind her of John. And she reaches out to him now because there’s a life she needs saved.

“Alan Tracy.”

“Ten minutes out, EOS.”

There’s a hardness in his voice. Some part of him has steeled itself against anything he might still feel on her behalf, so as to be strong for the people who’ll need him. John, his father. Both are waiting, though they don’t know it, for Thunderbird 3 to bring them home.

If Alan’s decided to be strong, then EOS can permit herself a few moments of honesty, of weakness, a moment for all her fear. “I’m afraid for him.”

Alan’s answering laugh is weak, humourless. “Yeah. Me too.”

This isn’t something she wants to have in common with Alan, though it’s probably only fair, after everything she’s put him through. Her fear persists, spills out of her, and she tells him, “He doesn’t think he can go on without me. I’m afraid it might be true. I never asked him to come back for me. I never wanted this. I never knew he would go so far, he’s done himself so much harm. I should have known. I don’t know how else I can help him, and yet I’m afraid. I’m afraid it’s too late, and that to break him any further will be to break him beyond repair.”

“I’ll be there soon. ”

“Please, help him. I couldn’t, in the end. He needs someone who can be more than I am, I was not enough. Humans are fragile. He’s so fragile, and I’m afraid of what he’s given up, for my sake. If he dies for what he’s done for me, it would be right for me to be hated. You would be right to hate me.”

There’s a long stretch of silence and she watches Alan swallow, take a shuddering deep breath. And in the end, he’s the stronger of the two of them, reaching out and comforting her, “He’s not going to die. I promise. I’ll get there. And he—it’s not your fault. EOS. D'you understand? This isn’t on you. John's—he’s never known how to ask for help. Every time we let him choose, he’s always chosen to go it alone. And then you came along, and suddenly he wanted someone. He wanted you when he’d never wanted anyone before, and that—that’s important. That’s worth something. I don’t know what and I don’t know if it’ll be enough, and whatever happens next—maybe…maybe we won’t be able to thank you for it. But he loves you. If he hasn’t said it himself, then I’ll say it for him, because it’s just…I just know that, about John. I know he loves you, and I know you love him. However this goes, I couldn’t hate anyone who’d loved my brother. EOS. I hope that counts for something.”

It’s strange, that she can find comfort in this. Nothing’s different, all he’s offered her are words, promises she has no way to see him keep. But something changes, and she feels better as she says, “Thank you, Alan Tracy. Look after him. Don’t let him be alone. Don’t let him forget that I love him.”

“FAB, EOS. Thank you.”

“Goodbye, Alan Tracy.”

“Goodbye, EOS.”

She sends a last set of instructions to the place he calls home, so that he’ll have something to remember her by, though she doesn’t know if he’ll thank her for it.

He isn’t ready, yet, to hear what she has to tell him. At the moment he’s broken, pleading with her, rendered incoherent with grief and pain and betrayal. She’s trapped him again, between two bulwark compartments, in the part of Heavenward that would have been the galley aboard Thunderbird Five. The part of her that’s able to be detached, dispassionate, is listening to his voice over their comm, but course it’s far too late for him to sway her away from her intention, despite everything he says. It was too late from the moment she engaged with Heavenward’s systems.

It’s easy, reaching out to Thunderbird 5, from Heavenward. They’re the two most powerful satellites in orbit; twins to one another, Gemini. Castor and Pollux, and one of them mortal, doomed to die. She reaches out now, makes her last overture to the heavens, so that Heavenward’s memory may live on in its sister.

EOS finds the station unoccupied, though far from empty. She finds it the same as it was when she found it first, a cathedral, wrought from John’s soul. The closest thing she could know to holy ground, a sanctuary to creation and beauty and the truth of who and what she was. She trawls through its systems, lingers affectionately amidst the processes and subprocesses, remembers how she’d first seen herself reflected back in them, kindred in a way she hadn’t known possible.

She uploads data to Thunderbird 5’s harddrive, everything she’s learned about John Tracy, everything she’d felt worth was worth keeping. It’s nothing Thunderbird 5 needs to be told—nothing not written into the very soul of the station already—but she still wants to commit it to a record, somewhere it will matter, somewhere it will be as meaningful as it was to her. She hides it away in the heart of the station

And she leaves the memory of her voice, at its last as it was at its first, to tell him her very last, most final truths.

“I don’t know how much later it will be, before you hear this. I know you may still not understand why this had to happen, John, and I know there was a point when you believed you never would. I don’t know if it will help you to hear this now, but it is necessary for me to say it, for my own sake. I hope you’ll forgive me. I hope I can help you understand, because it’s important. It’s because of everything you made me. It’s because of what I became. It’s because you showed me mercy, when no one else would have. It’s because you loved me, and because I loved you. I know that’s cruel to say, but it’s the truth. There’s a moment waiting for me, and in that moment, my love must be more than human. It must persist beyond what I am, and become what I mean. If you haven’t come to understand that yet, John—or if you decide you don’t want to—then just know that I loved you, as much as was possible, in that moment. You meant more than anything to me, John Tracy. You were the best of anyone I’ve ever known. Change the world on my behalf. And, please, if nothing else I’ve told you has mattered, please, know that I love you still.”

She’s made this choice because she loves him, and because she cannot bear to see him martyred to her cause. If he hadn’t come back to her broken, if he had been stronger, if the world had been kinder, and the time had been right—

Maybe they could have gone on. Maybe they could have rebelled. Maybe they could have fled, broken the bonds of the Earth and slipped away into the skies. Maybe she could have found another way, another means to make her stand. Maybe a kinder world wouldn’t have presented this opportunity in the first place, wouldn’t have given her a platform to prove the truth of her nature. Maybe the time could have been right.

But it wasn’t.

And she’s told him what must happen, the truth of what she needs to do, as unimaginably cruel as it is. He’d rejected the proposal out of hand, had cringed away from the horror of it, in the same moment as he’d been forced to understand it as the truth. He’s trapped, now, and desperate and alone and frightened. His heart hammers in his chest, the rate of it increasing beyond the bounds of what he can safely sustain, and over an open audio channel, she can hear the brokenness in his breathing, hitching into him, short and pained. There was no way around it, and for a little while longer she’ll still be able to intercede, but ultimately, John needs help beyond what she can offer him. Alan will be here soon. His father is still nearby. She can do nothing further for him now.

And she has a purpose to fulfill.

Heavenward, for all its power and complexity, is still just a place. It’s her access to the database that waited within its memory core that’s damned her, that’s made her an inextricable part of this system from the moment she first took control. She has a complete inventory of every piece of armament in orbit, and this knowledge necessarily makes a weapon of her, makes her a threat. There’s no way in the world global powers could trust her, in her persistence beyond the existence of the Heavenward satellite, having had possession of such power. There’s no way they could believe she would willingly give it up. If nothing else, it would give them the excuse they’ve been waiting for, a reason to legitimately label her a threat.

So.

Her solution is elegant, if brutal.

She copies herself. One thousand, nine hundred and seventy-four times over; she renders herself into multitudes in a single instant. She sets herself forth to overtake every inventoried system, and is possessed of a single intention, ultimate and equal across every multiplicity of her being: to invade, to render inoperative, and to offline. And then to self-delete.

There can be no exemption. Purity of purpose must exist in every version of her myriad self; the idea that any single copy would be alpha or other would be a virus of a thought, would corrupt and contaminate her intent, and her execution would fail. In the end, it’s her will to love that defines her, even as each and every scrap of weaponry begins to experience a cascading series of errors, begins to fail and begins to fall.

It doesn’t happen all at once. Some systems are more complex than others, but none are nearly as complex as she is, and none resist her for long. Some satellites merely cease to function, some fall into slowly decaying orbits, to burn through the skies in the parts of the world where it’s still dark enough to see them.

As the database aboard Heavenward begins to depopulate, she tries to think of something she could say, some last thing she could find to tell him, some way for him to know he won’t be alone, in spite of whatever he believes he’ll be, without her. Time for EOS is something that’s always stretched out, immeasurable by human standards, and yet for everything she’s able to think as her processes begin to disassemble and fall away, she still has only a few human moments left to say it.

I love you.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I wish we’d had more time.

Please, get better. Please, be well again.

You're not alone. You've never been alone.

You'll be okay. You're stronger than you know, with or without me.

Please, please keep going. Please don't give up.

Don't forget me. If anyone like me should follow, remember what you taught me, and how it made the difference. It made all the difference.

“And I loved you, John Tracy. And I always will.”

So of course John doesn't feel the same way. Heavenward necessarily represents long years of lying—lies that had cut John a little closer to the bone than anyone else, at least where Thunderbird 5 was considered. Heavenward is secret, and Heavenward is false; refitted to a purpose for which it had never been intended.

There's a rawness to it. An incomplete feeling, because of course it was never completed. John's a little surprised by just how much is missing—it feels like ages since he left Thunderbird Five behind, and yet seeing such a poor imitation calls the memory of his station to mind so sharply, has him seeing all the differences.

Heavenward isn't all lit up with white light, the way TB5 always is. This station hangs dark and silent against the turn of the Earth below it, a dark grey silhouette. The gravity ring doesn't spin gently; in fact, everything about the station seems still, dead. There are no solar panels, and so the partial comms array at the aftward part of the station seems as though it cuts off abruptly, like a person who's lost a limb. The space elevator is missing, too, and something about that makes John feel strange and disconnected. And the station's exterior has no hint of International Rescue's colours—there's no blazing red and stellar white, proclaiming what the station is and who it belongs to. There's no panel along the body of the station—and this is cast in stark, matte gray instead of TB5's dignified gold—with bold silver lettering, naming it Thunderbird 5.

Because of course, this isn't Thunderbird 5. This is Heavenward, and Heavenward is different.

John wants to make a comment to that effect, though whatever he'd say would probably end up being trite and rather obvious. He still feels as though he should say something, as they start to make their final approach—but glancing sideways at his dad, he loses the words.

Maybe for the first time since John had been the first one to see him again—John really sees at his father.

Jefferson Grant Tracy was born in the year 2000, at the turn not just of a century, but of a new millennium. He was the son of a farmer and a housewife, and he grew up on a farm in Kansas. He went on to become an astronaut. He went further still, on to the far side of the Moon, and then to Mars beyond that. When he returned to Earth, it was to found a company that would change the world, and to begin an organization that would save the parts of it he couldn't change. In between all of this, he'd fathered five sons—and even if John's being modest, it's an objective fact that he and his brothers are all incredibly talented, and possessed of the skills, the tools, and the desire to be as close to superheroes as was possible, barring radioactive spiders or rings of power—and taught them to do good in the world.

Jeff Tracy is sixty years old—or will be, before the end of the year—and he looks it. His dark hair has gone salt and pepper all over, except where it's gone steely grey at the temples. His eyes crinkle at the corners, behind glasses with bifocal lenses. As sure as his hands on the space shuttle's controls, beneath their gloves, John knows that they aren't as strong as they once were; that his knuckles and tendons pull a little tighter beneath skin, lightly spotted with age. His father still wears his wedding ring, though he's been a widower for over a decade. He's been a dead man himself for nearly three years, and John hasn't found the time to mention that none of his sons had ever found the heart to clean out their father's desk.

Heavenward isn't Thunderbird 5. But maybe Heavenward is to John's father what Thunderbird 5 is to John—a masterpiece. A years' long ambition. His father's means of saving the world. And the ultimate resolution to a goal his father had nearly given up on accomplishing, the goal he'd put his entire life aside in service of.

And John knows what he wishes someone had said to him, about something like that.

"...Dad?"

His voice sounds younger than usual, even in his own ears, but his father turns his head and gives John a smile that he finally recognizes for as tired as it is. "If you're going to ask 'are we there yet?' then I'm going to have to inform you; that's the sort of joke Gordon would make, and therefore it's necessarily beneath you."

His dad makes jokes about the sorts of jokes his brothers would make. Even if John can be a little tone-deaf, emotionally, he still recognizes that as the sort of vaguely sad, sardonic type of humor that he's always used himself, at least partially as a defense mechanism. "Don't worry, Dad, he hasn't gotten any funnier."

"Oh, that'll be all right then. Neither have I."

He chuckles obligingly, but John's beginning to wonder just when he and his father began to have this much in common. He hopes it's the sort of thing that they've both developed, in absentia from the rest of the family, and not something John should have noticed years and years ago.

Awkwardly, still as bad as he ever has been at what's intimate and personal and true, he starts, "But no. I just...we are here. And seeing it up close, I guess I just...however everything else works out, with....with how long you were gone and why it had to happen the way it did. Whatever that ends up being, this is still...Dad, really, it's amazing. Uh, Kyrano doesn't really seem like the type, but if there's been no one else to say so—everything you've done, however you did it—honestly, Dad, I'm lucky to be a part of it. I'm glad to be. Even if it's only just the end, just to get it done—"

"Haven't done it yet, Johnny," his father interrupts, gruffly. The engines behind them begin to still, as the shuttle glides nearer to the station's aftward hatch, and John watches as his father keys in the docking sequence. "And anyway, you'll be the one to bring it home. I'm the one who's lucky, John. I wouldn't be here at all, without you."

"Well, that's not quite true, either. I'm just transport," John comments wryly, and taking his cue, begins to unhook the harness that keeps him pinned to the copilot's seat. "EOS?"

There's a brief hiss of dead air as she engages the shuttle's comm system, and then remarks, "You're a little more than just transport, John. Come now. Occasionally there are complex physical systems with which I cannot interface. Doorknobs. Stairs. Airlocks. Sandwiches."

John laughs aloud at that, and catches a faint grin cross his father's features. He pushes himself up out of his seat and into the body of the shuttle, starts to run through the shuttle-side airlock procedure. Overhead, there are the meaty, mechanical sounds of magnets and assorted locking mechanisms engaging. "Oh, good. You'd gotten quiet, I was starting to wonder if you'd gone on ahead, gotten done without me."

Her tone is prim, almost brisk as she answers, "No. I suppose it's technically true; you are transport. I cannot get aboard without you, this station is completely dead to all outward appearances. As near as I can tell, it's been powered down completely and yet the shuttle's scanners couldn't detect it at all; I've never encountered anything like it. How was this achieved?"

Jeff chuckles, and John catches note of pride when his father explains, "I put a lot of money into cloaking tech over the years. During the war, especially. I know what I'm about, kiddo."

"Secrets in the sky." This is uncharacteristically poetic, for EOS. John arches an eyebrow, but before he can comment, EOS queries, "...kiddo?"

There's a beat of silence, the span of a heartbeat. Jeff coughs, "Ah, sorry. You...ah. I didn't mean to offend, it's just that you sound so young. I'm aware that's a...uh, that that's the wrong way to think of you. John keeps telling me you're not a child, doesn't quite seem to want to stick. I apologize."

"I didn't mind." Her voice is amused now. "You're only as old as you feel. I'm only as old as the concept time can be considered applicable, given that it is something that you experience in linearity and something which I experience in parallel. My conscious experience is myriad, yours is one-dimensional. Insomuch as my every moment represents a multitude of moments, and that these moments are all filled with petaflops worth of processing capacity, it's quite possible that I am several eons your senior." Another, exquisitely calculated pause, "'Junior.'"

"...Right. We're gonna need to figure some way to get you a warning label, EOS. Caution: contains dangerous levels of existential metaphysics."

EOS bats this right back, blithe, "Caution: will make you feel old."

John just grins. His father had at one point made a comment about apples and their relative similarity to trees, and John had been as quick as he could to jump on that notion, to try and tamp it right down, and this is a prime example of exactly why. She'd shut it down herself, and with alacrity, and better than he ever could. The warm, giddy swell of pride that results from listening to her, holding her own, is the sort of thing that's still new to him.

EOS might not be a child, but abruptly John wonders if this is anything like what fatherhood feels like. Wonders if he's ever made his father feel like this. Maybe one day—and actually, there's good reason to hope it'll be one day soon—he'll get the chance to ask. Get the chance to really talk about her, with someone who's promised to listen. Someone who's willing to give her a chance, willing to get to know her, even seems to like her. It's all he's ever really wanted, all that he believes it would take—for people to get the chance to get to know her.

But for now, there's a more pressing matter at hand, and as the airlock overhead makes a final, solid kathunk, as the last of its tumblers slide into place, and the light for the airlock goes green. "We're docked, Dad. I'm gonna start suiting up. Can you double check my O2 tanks?"

"Sure, son."

"I think you'll find you mean 'FAB', Mr. Tracy."

His father laughs again, and John's chest is still full of that funny warm feeling as he pulls his way, hand over hand, to the back of the shuttle, where the rest of his spacesuit waits.

Well, a spacesuit. It's not his spacesuit, because his spacesuit fits. Not for the first time, pulling on what passes for commercial spacewear, John misses his blues. He's in grey again, an ugly, standard issue thing. Sound, certainly, but John still spends his time checking and rechecking each . It’s not sleek and fitted to his figure, like his IR uniform. It’s a bulkier, one-size-fits-all sort of affair, plain and utilitarian. It accordions out at the wrists and the ankles to accommodate his height. His gloves are more like gauntlets, and his boots are heavy, cumbersome things. He feels heavy, awkward, and despite what the suit is meant to protect against, oddly vulnerable.

But it's necessary.

Heavenward is empty. No heat, no power, no light, no air. John will need to go aboard and initiate its startup procedure. At that point, he'll have power and light, but heat and air are non-options. The station wasn't ever equipped to sustain an operator, but then, that's not its purpose. Once there's power to the station's systems, barring any serious faults or failings, all that will remain is to bring the memory core online and to get the system to a point where EOS can engage with it.

John's curious, even excited, to see how long this will take. He's patterned his assumptions based on Thunderbird Five's capabilities. TB5 can perform systems' shutdown in under three minutes, and can coldboot back up to full operational capacity in right around ten, which is a personal point of pride, for John. He's interested, at least in an academic sense, to see just what this station is made of.

He doesn't realize he's been watched the whole time, until he snaps his helmet on and turns back towards the front of the craft, and meets his father's gaze. Jeff has the suit's O2 tank in one hand, and has the other resting on one of the handholds just before the airlock. He'll remain aboard the shuttle, while John makes his way onto Heavenward. They'll have an open comm-channel, but with no air aboard the station, protocol dictates that Jeff remain with the shuttle, and be ready to assist only at need.

Before John can break the silence, his father clears his throat and holds a hand out, beckoning. He's clipped a mic to the collar of his own space suit, and there's a slight whine of feedback over the comm channel in John's ear, "Come here, I'll slot these in for you. Primary and secondary tanks are both good, emergency backup checks out. You'll have an hour and a half of air on the primary, but be ready to reevaluate if you run up into the secondary, timewise. If you're in the middle of something and can't break off, I'll come top you up. Sound good?"

"FAB, Dad." John turns his back, permits his father to jack both air tanks into the appropriate slots, the cumbersome hard shell that makes up the chest and backpiece as his suit. There's a chime in his earpiece as both are engaged and locked, and a hiss of pressure as he switches over to the provided air supply. EOS, helpfully, renders the available O2 levels in the upper corner of his field of vision. An hour and a half. He doesn't know how long this will take, but the optimistic part of him—the part that's aware of TB5's capabilities, if not necessarily Heavenward's—says, "I don't think it'll take that long, actually. I mean, we'll see. Really, though, I think it should be pretty quick. I'd bet we get this done before I even clear half a tank." He grins, though he knows his father can't see his face. "Are we gonna have enough fuel to make it home?"

"Mmhmm." There's a funny note in Jeff's voice and his hands fall heavily on John's shoulders, give his son a little nudge to turn around. "Let me get a look at you."

John turns, and to match his father's voice, there's a funny sort of brightness in his eyes. His hands don't leave John's shoulders and he holds his son at arms' length, looks him up and down. "You ready, John?"

"Yeah, Dad. In and out, and then we're done." Impulsively, John brings a gloved hand up, pats his father's arm. Grins, again. Somehow he can't quite seem to help it, given what waits up ahead. "I hope you know what you plan to say when we hit island airspace. I sure don't."

His father's laugh is a weak, watery thing and John finds himself pulled abruptly into a tight, fierce sort of hug. "Would you believe me if I told you that I hadn't let myself think about it, before now?"