Chapter Text
Amos could taste the petrichor on his tongue and the humidity smothered him. The Holden Homestead had long been abandoned, but there was still an untouched pocket of nature left unmarred. Even though the forgotten preserve was small compared to its original glory, it still took Amos nearly half the day to hike deep into its center where he was certain to be far from the choke hold of humanity.
He gathered the smoothest stones he could find and set to work carefully chipping away at them. His stone masonry was childish, but not unskilled, having made countless figurines during his long months in that damned mountain cave. By the time the moon revealed her face in the early evening light he had a half dozen makeshift grave markers - one for each of his family members. He placed them, partially submerged, in a nearby creek. There was something romantic about the idea that even their markers would be worn down and eventually disappear. Just as their bodies - scattered across the cosmos - were slowly being recycled through the entropy of the universe. Amos wondered where his cells and atoms would be at the end of his life, at the end of the universe. Would he be floating in a frigid infinite universe, the last collection of matter not torn asunder?
As an afterthought, Amos placed a jagged, unmarked stone with the others - A placeholder for the other people who had entered and left his life without a physical trace? Or perhaps a placeholder for himself? He wasn’t sure. He did not linger there, at his fugacious cemetery.
Where to now?
*********
He took the shuttle back to Luna and contemplated reaching back out to the triplets on The Dulcinea. But the idea of joining a crew seemed… sacrosanct somehow. He spent several weeks on Luna, scrolling through the ship manifestos, idly searching for job openings hoping something would call out to him. Nothing did. Then on the news he saw a name he recognized: “Avasarala." He knew Chrissy had grandchildren, but it never occurred to him to find out who they were or try to meet them. Turns out politics was a multi generational talent for this family.
He didn’t have to try hard for an interview, as his reputation far preceded him. That, and Sol government was desperate for workers to help the reconstruction efforts. To reunite a fractured system that had never been whole in the first place was quite an undertaking.
His new work kept him incredibly busy - sometimes it was political maneuvering, sometimes it was overseeing rebuilding efforts, ambassadorship, run of the mill body-guarding, and even some combat once. He skirted taking any roles of true responsibility, but all his bosses had the nasty habit of dying and he soon had to put great effort into avoiding leadership roles. He let the figure heads be figure heads but at the end of the day, all things eventually came to him.
His responsibilities took him around the globe and the inner planets and stations. He held a funeral for Naomi, and to a lesser degree the others, every single year, or frankly whenever he thought about them… which was frequent. In his travels around the globe - visiting places he’d never even seen pictures of - he said prayers over unfamiliar altars, lit candles and lanterns, made silent toasts and left totems for gods he didn't believe in. Despite his best intentions, Amos found himself growing close to other people over the centuries. He buried all of them, too, but he only prayed for Naomi.
Decades passed in a blur but then one day, he felt a stir somewhere deep, somewhere he imagined his soul might have been.
Visitors soon. Hurry.
The call was so subtle at first he barely even registered it - the part of his mind reconstructed by the protomolecule was often noisy with things he didn’t understand nor care about and he had long since learned to tune them out. But this… message? hallucination? was persistent, and it grew clearer and more urgent over the course of several days.
Visitors soon. Hurry.
Prepare. Welcome.
Back at the old UN, Amos was the only person not shocked when the outermost scanners and telescopes identified a mysterious object that seemed to be skipping in and out of the fabric of space and time. They identified it while it was still far past the Oort cloud, so there were several tense months full or contingency planning, preparation and hypothesizing. The entire system was in high alert - panic, fear, calls to destroy it - 1000s of years had still not healed the wound the builders had left on the sol system.
But Amos had no fear, because he could sense the technology that brought these visitors and somehow could sense their intentions in using it. No, there was no fear. Amos was excited for the first time in a long time. Finally, he could welcome someone, instead of saying goodbye.
************
He made sure to be at the welcoming party. Despite his tenure, and much to the chagrin of the other people in power, he was a poor diplomat, but he knew that he needed to be the first to make contact with whoever or whatever was so eager to meet humanity.
The creature that came out of the ship was decidedly human, but still off-putting to look at. Amos smiled to himself, knowing how he probably looked the same to them, with his glowing skin.
The human rattled off a stream of ancient Chinese and Amos' in-ear translator was sluggish to respond. Something, something take me to your leader we come in peace something something.
He held up his hand to stem the visitors' zeal.
“You got any English?”