All Gone

Nervous tapping. Brian sat alone in his once full office watching as the monitors surrounding him entered their power saving modes. Where once had been a room full of Lores and Chars closely monitoring the timeline now nothing. The sudden silence stunned. His heart nearly gave way with the flash of white which filled the void.
“Thank the gods you’re alive. One minute I’m getting my tea from Clayton and the next, everyone vanished.” He spiralled into fast paced and indecipherable nonsense as he attempted to explain the lack of personnel. “As far as I know, only you guys were affected. We still have a full complement of clones but I can’t raise any of the other Lores’ Breachers.”
“Slow down Brian. What’s going on?” Lore lowered themselves somewhat in an attempt to comfort him.
“I was in the middle of confirming a theory when everything went quiet. I looked around and… Gone. Not a Lore or Char in sight. Something isn’t right with the universe.”
“What theory?” Char sat beside him.
“Rexel was just the first time we took notice.” He started. “Death is sweeping the galaxy. Every quadrant and almost every species is being wiped out. The plague on Rexel, famines in O’Raes space and war consuming the outer rim worlds just to name a few examples. But every time, there are four constant species that are never affected. It’s as if someone has engineered the downfall of the sentient universe but is sparing their favourites.”
“Who’s on the favourites list?”
“We are.” He pointed between himself and Lore. “The Quatarrians and two other species I’m not too sure of: The Aetar and The Solosur?” His voice varied in tone as he struggled to approximate the foreign word’s pronunciations. “Either way, if we don’t do something soon, it’s going to be just us for the next few millennia.”
“What happens then?” Lore finally sat down.
“That’s when this lot develop space travel.” He pointed to his monitor. On the screen was a vaguely simian lizard. “In four thousand years, they catch up with us developmentally. Humanity now not humanity in four thousand years. It’s still bad.”
“So where do we start?” Lore and Char’s voices overlapped.
“If there were more of us, I would say we could hit everywhere at once but…” He spun his chair, surveying the near empty room. “It’s up to you. The O’Raes are a peaceful species according to our records so they may be more receptive to outside help or you could start hard and work your way back.” He shrugged. “I don’t know!” The dam burst. He could hold it in no longer. His face went from pale and clammy to red and tear sodden in a matter of moments
“Hey, hey. We can stop this. Now you’ve brought it to our attention.” Lore had no clue how to begin to comfort him. “We can get started on making a difference.” They smiled.
“We’ll start with the O’Raes as you suggested and we’ll work our way outward but we’ll need someone here to relay our information and reports.” Char took over trying to reassure Brian. “And then we can get everyone back.”
“Ok.” There was a violent snort as Brian inhaled the snot that had dripped from his nose. “I’m ready.”
The walk back to The Destiny had never been this quiet. The docking bay was almost always full given the state of the galaxy and the apparent wave of death that had passed them by in the ever deepening sea of troubles their universe had become and with all the clones on deployment, it would be unlikely that the bays would be recovering any time soon. There were no words said between them as they boarded The Destiny and made their way to the Bridge. Lore and Char had reconfigured their seating since Quatarr and were now sitting side by side as they prepared to disembark from The Council station. With only their ship leaving and only Brian sitting in the control centre, Lore decided to forego the usual procedures of asking permission and using the appropriate lanes and backed The Destiny away before preparing to jump to O’Raes.
“Why not us?” They whispered as the ship’s engines whirred into action. “Why are we still here?”
“We’ll find out.” Char put her hand on Lore’s. They had initially not noticed that Char had heard them, much less replied so the sudden contact caused their head to jerk. “Sorry.”
“We’ll find out.” Lore returned with a slight smile on their face.
O’Raes had been shown to them as one of the hidden gems of the galaxy, a tourist hotspot. Pure sapphire oceans and emerald hills that stretch further than the eye could see; sensational mountains topped with quartz snow shined as its poles but the planet below them had lost its lustre. Where riches once laid, a plundered planet remained. Lore was unsure where the oceans had once ended and the grassland had begun. Browns and blacks dominated its palette, a fact that became clearer the closer they ventured to its surface. Destiny had provided them with a report of the inhabitants below. The city they were heading for had once housed over a million people out of the planet’s population of seven billion but now was only home to the less than thirty thousand surviving members of the endangered species. Lore brought up The Destiny’s requisition logs and began scanning their organic cargo.
“What are you looking for?”
“Seeds, food, anything.”
Char simply nodded in silence. “If we can get the job done right, we won’t need them anyway.”
“Hopefully.” They returned to their search.
It wasn’t long after that they reached their landing point. Lore had made their way to the garage and was sifting through their latest supply cache for anything that resembled food. They could feel Char staring at them.
“I need to do something. I know we’re going to fix this but right now, I need to do something.” Their voice cracked as their head jerked.. With only a crew compliment of two, food rations were few and far between but anything was better than nothing. Hunger Pains.