The Last Song Beneath Paris
Boarding Pioneer-12
23 May 2300 — Underground Paris Space Shuttle Station
One week after the concert, Evie leaves Underground Paris. Not by train or by surface airport — Earth’s surface is no longer safe for ordinary people, and the true road to space has long been buried beneath layers of stone. The Paris Space Shuttle Station sits in the western structural sector of the deepest level of the underground city: not a station so much as a launch temple carved into the heart of the Earth, with massive vertical shafts, sealed boarding bridges, and vacuum launch tubes. All the lights are cold. Every sound is restrained. Even farewell has been arranged like an administrative procedure.
Evie stands at the boarding gate holding her old microphone case, its edges worn from years of use. Anaïs is beside her. As a fashion designer, Anaïs has been asked by UN officials to design Mars-ready clothing — dust-resistant fibers, temperature-regulation membranes, and colors the officials like very much. “They want every piece of clothing to look like a Mars propaganda poster,” she tells Evie. “I want to design clothes that let people still look like themselves.”
Evie asks what she looks like. Anaïs considers her seriously: “You look like someone very good at pretending not to be afraid.” Evie answers quietly: “I am afraid. I was just invited here to help others feel less of it.” Anaïs replies: “Maybe you don’t need to sound like the answer. Maybe you only need to sound like someone willing to walk beside them.”
The shuttle carries around one hundred fifty passengers in seats that resemble small sleep pods. After twenty-four hours, most passengers rest. Evie watches from the window. Earth has grown small. The Moon shows a pale curve in the distance. Between them, a faint artificial point of light slowly grows larger — first like a star, then like a lighthouse, then an enormous silver-white shape: Pioneer-12. A migration ark several kilometers long. Far too massive to land on Earth. It can only remain in space, like a floating city waiting for the people who have run out of reasons to stay.
At the orbital dock, passengers board in silence. A cargo vessel detaches from the other side and heads back toward Earth. The public screen reads: RETURN TRANSFER — EARTHBOUND. Evie watches it go. She wonders who, this far into the future, still goes back. The answer, she already knows, is anyone who still has something there to return to.