To be so close but to not have enough time. My chest contracts, thinking of her. She deserved more time. Salar says these people were undone by their own deeds—that this was their qismat, the fate they merited. Perhaps I am spending too much time with the historian, but I’m starting to believe that they were more than the sum of their parts. R certainly was, and records show there were others who fought and worked to save this planet—who spoke out against its cruel inequities. They needed more time, too. As a student archaeologist, it is my job to study the material culture of this people, to unearth and study their artifacts, to catalogue, date, examine. I am trained to tell a story through facts. But what I’m learning is that facts don’t tell the whole story.
The story of R is the story of her people, of this planet. That is the testament I will give. I am not the ancient peoples I study. I can never fully understand them. I lay no claim to a so-called expertise that some anthropologists and archaeologists believe they have. That, to me, is hubris. But I hope I can lift up vanished stories. I hope I can be a steward, so that R and her people are not forgotten.
One day I will be chief archaeologist on a future mission like this one. On Mirzakhani I face a test, too. I want to be worthy of sharing the stories of these lost people—the sacred lives of strangers. But I have to understand my limits because I want to honor them without intruding on what they were.
August 15, 2031
The walls are filled with my drawings and my theories. I no longer have the luxury of computer simulations or the internet or even a calculator to help me. And what am I doing anyway when there is no one to read this? When no one left on this Earth cares about the Cold Spot in space, because this entire planet is frozen. Maybe if I’d been faster, smarter, I could have found it, our mirror. Pushed light particles through from our side to theirs, sent them an image, a pulse, a cry for help. Maybe they could have pulled us out through a wormhole, an Einstein-Rosen bridge. But then what? We probably would’ve wrecked their planet, too.
If only we had more time. If only I had more time. Time and a cold atom lab so I could test my multiverse theorems and run my models. But time is indifferent to our needs and our lives. Once I would’ve said nature was indifferent, too. After all, no one killed by a hurricane or tornado deserved to die that way. What I think now is so different. We had a job to keep this planet alive. We failed. So the Earth rose up and defended itself—from us.
I wish I could’ve seen the planet and its abundance at its best—at its most lush and vibrant. I wish I could have breathed fresh clean air. How good that must have felt. How pure.
I wish I could’ve seen us at our best, too, tapping into the greatest resource we had: us and how we could make dreams real like they used to talk about in the old documentaries we saw in school of leaders who once inspired people to change the world, to overcome the odds through the power of hope; and kids my age who marched and fought for equality and who lifted each other up.
How ironic that one dream would take me to the past that is long dead and one to the future that we’ll never have.
Humans destroyed things, but we were also curious and brave. I think of the first humans we sent to space. That must have been terrifying—the unknown darkness so far from home. I’ve seen those old spacecraft—tin cans with the technology not even equal to our old microwaves. I watched in awe as Amina Zazzua stepped foot on Mars. I joined every other human being in prayers as the al-Nisa team sped off into the stars from the Chawla Deep Space Gateway in hopes of finding us a new home. They flew with the fastest engines we’d ever created, but they still weren’t fast enough. I hope they survived. I hope they found a new place to call home. They carried our dreams with them. They carried the seeds of our earth.
Voice Log: Planet Mirzakhani, Morning, Diin 6 Saal 3027
She lived in the tower. I want to discover more than her photo, than her archive. I want to unearth everything she was. I want to find her.
August 25, 2031
Last night Ummi held Zayna in her arms and sang to her in a soft melodic voice, like she used to. It’s been so long since she sang our favorite Urdu lullaby:
You are my moon.
You are my sun.
Oh, you are the stars in my eyes.
I live just looking upon you.
You are the solace for a broken heart.
I listened through the door. I listened with dry eyes and a heart that has already been broken into so many pieces that all that is left is dust.
I mouthed the words as she sang them, over and over. I never imagined a lullaby would be the sound of the end of the world.
Zayna never woke up.
Voice Log: Planet Mirzakhani, Afternoon, Diin 6 Saal 3027
Razia Sultana.
She had a life. She had a name. And it is mine.
My fathers told me I was named after a woman warrior of ancient myths. A queen. I do not understand how this is possible. The historian explained that these people held strong beliefs about fate and the correlation of seemingly random events. Coincidence, they called it. Synchronicity. No such idea exists in our language.
There are scant traces of Razia in the dwelling she seems to have shared with her mother and younger sister—I recognize the little girl from the archival image at the shore.
We found only two skeletons—an adult and a small child, their arms intertwined, and a small metallic canister, a rubber seal around its lid, on the floor next to them. In it a faded photograph encased in a kind of resin with their names scratched on the back and two computing devices the size of my thumb that our data forensics team is attempting to decrypt and read.
There was also a key.
August 27, 2031
Ummi’s spirit died the same day as Zayna. It took two more days for her body to catch up. When she was finally gone, I laid her body down, wrapping her arms around Zayna as well as I could. There is no ground to cover them. No caskets to bury them in. No one left to mourn them but me. We bury our dead in unmarked graves, wrapped in simple shrouds. We came into this world with no earthly possessions, and we leave the same way, humbly, carried off in prayer.
I don’t see the others anymore. Some headed south. Trying to find the warmth of the old sun. Last night I watched from my twentieth-floor perch as a lone figure walked onto the ice, toward the horizon. I followed them a long time until they were a dot. Until my eyes blurred and I blinked and they were gone. Maybe they wanted to be alone when their time had come. Maybe they just wanted to be away from this place. Maybe they wanted to remember what it was like to stretch and use their muscles and breathe the frosty air, because that was the last way to know they were alive.
I found a book in Ummi’s belongings. One she’d safeguarded. One she didn’t burn for heat: Forty Rules of Love. There is no one left to read it. I ripped out page after page, twisting the centers into stems until they transformed into a shape that looked like a flower. I scattered the paper flowers over Ummi’s and Zayna’s bodies while whispering a prayer. It is not much. But they look peaceful together. Like an infinity poem that repeats itself forever. That is how I will remember them for whatever hours I have left.