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Back Extinction Game Save as PDF
Chapters (33)
  1. Title page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. Acknowledgements
  32. By Gary Gibson
  33. Copyright page

‘If there’s one overriding thing we all have in common,’ said Yuichi, ‘it’s that each of the Pathfinders is the survivor of an extinction event. We all come from alternates where the human race was nearly or completely obliterated – and one or two of us, like you, have every reason to think we might actually have been the last living people on our worlds.’

I looked between them and laughed, the sound edging towards hysteria. ‘Just to be clear – you’re telling me you’re the last man and woman on Earth, but from different Earths?’

‘It’s not quite that simple,’ said Yuichi, ‘but close enough.’

‘You’re here,’ said Nadia, ‘because we’re recruiting. There are about a dozen of us, and we all learned how to survive for very long periods of time in extremely hostile environments. In the eyes of the Authority, that makes us uniquely qualified for the kind of work they ask us to do.’

‘And the Authority are who, exactly?’

‘That’s where it gets complicated,’ said Nadia, folding her arms. ‘We don’t really know.’

I blinked, unsure at first I had heard her correctly. ‘You don’t know?’

‘We know they invented the transfer stage technology,’ she continued. ‘But they keep their cards close to their chest about anything else. What matters is that they rescued us from our various alternates and gave us a chance at a new life, when a lot of us had every reason to believe we would never set eyes on another living human being ever again.’ Her gaze fixed on mine. ‘I know just how hard it can be, Jerry, to be alone for so very long. It drives you mad, pushes you over the edge, until the day you wake up and realize you’d rather end it all than suffer one more day alone on a dead world. After that, it’s just a matter of time before you either lose your mind or take the easy way out.’ She stepped a little closer to me. ‘Does that sound familiar to you?’

‘A little,’ I said, unable to hide more than a hint of defensiveness. What she had said sounded so familiar, in fact, I wondered if she had spoken with Sykes, the psychiatrist who had interviewed me.