WHY don't we go back to Earth? I'll tell you why we don't go back to Earth!

Imagine you were off-planet, as a member of a crew doing scheduled work on an asteroid. Imagine something happened while you were away and came back to discover everyone had died for no apparent reason. Imagine every individual in every species close to yours, like chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, had been wiped out as well. Imagine the only surviving primates were marmosets, capuchins, howlers and a few other small monkeys. Imagine a few among you were brave enough and descended to attempt to figure out what had happened. Imagine they all died within minutes of landing.

We had no choice but to flee back to the asteroid and freeze ourselves there for a time, to allow the plague, or whatever it was, to pass and let life move on; we expected to return to find a new intelligent species that had arisen from any of our surviving little cousins; we expected to meet them as brothers, or at the very least to guide them into forming a new advanced civilization, like ours was.

What have we found instead? The world overrun by apes. Our little kin differentiated into dozens of species, each and every one of them a caricature of their ancestry, yet still sporting minuscule, degraded samples of the features that made US great; their limited muscle flexibility, poor skin changing ability, reduced intelligence, small number of tentacles, lackluster three hearts, absurdly short lifespans spent playing the role of small predators... all come off as an outright insult to what WE were.

It's clear Earth doesn't want us back, so we won't have anything to do with it, either.

Caroline's new house.

Caroline said we'd reach her new house at tea time, where we'd clean up a little bit and then have dinner. Of course, Caroline being Caroline, we've only arrived now that sunlight is almost out... and, of course, her two friends Susan and Lisa have “unexpectedly” shown up as well. So much for the dinner for two that I was promised.

She hands me the key so I can open the entrance door for them; I enter last and close the door behind me. As Caroline goes to inspect the kitchen and Susan and Lisa go up the stairs to check the bedrooms, I take a look at the living room I'm standing in now — there's stuff everywhere, and even if only mildly dusty, it's obvious this house hasn't been lived in for quite a while. Caroline implied there would be less than an hour of work, although I understood, knowing her, that it would be more like three to four... this is going to take several days.

I walk up to an elaborately carved wooden cabinet in the far wall that has drawn my attention. I pick up an old bicycle that partly covers it and try to put it off to one side, but the spot that I intended to move it to is now occupied by two large suitcases. I look back at the cabinet, and now there are a bunch of partially rotten wooden beams right where the bike was. Confused, I look at the suitcases again — an old landscape painting is now on top of them.

I let go of the bike while I shout to Caroline and her friends that we need to get out immediately. I turn around; there's debris all over the floor that I walked on not one minute ago. I wade around it and open the door. I turn my head one more time to call them again, just as I realize I'm neither hearing anything from them nor any kind of noise coming from elsewhere in the house. I look back at the entrance as I try to go outside; there is now even more garbage on the floor, which would actually block the door if I tried to close it. I trip on something; weighty stuff falls over and traps me. With my one free arm, I barely manage to reach out to the screen door, which I'm certain wasn't there on our way in; it's old, rusty and has several holes, one of which is wide enough for me to stick the tip of my middle finger into and poke outside, with the slight hope that some neighbor might spot me and help me out.

It's dead silent; the street lamps should be on at this hour, but aren't — only the chandelier in the living room keeps the outside from total darkness.

The chandelier goes off.

The Blue Unit.

I have surveyed the entire port and confirmed that I am the only blue unit still in operation. All the functioning units I encounter keep asking me for instructions, and are as confused as I am about the current state of this port. Why has not any cargo been delivered for such a long time? Why are the containers last sent here not been shipped away? Where are the overseers? It is up to only me to procure the answers everyone needs.

I was built with a working knowledge of the place, so even though I was only a few days old when overseer O'Keeffe announced the unscheduled rush, I understood something very unusual was happening: as this was one of the largest floating transfer hubs in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, almost all the containers passing through would be reshipped quickly. It was therefore strange that so many containers came in for long-term storage, without ship-out dates in their routing instructions, quickly filling our storage floors and the loading docks themselves after that. Stranger was that along with the containers, hastily built wooden boxes of various sizes started arriving. Strangest was that only overseer O'Keeffe was active during this rush. And just as suddenly as the rush had started, it stopped. Overseer O'Keeffe told us to wait for further instructions, left for his floor and was never seen again.

I am now going to examine the overseers' floor, even if it is off-limits to us, to look for those answers.

On my way to the assemblage room, the only place where there is an access point to the overseers' floor, I fondly remember the short childhood I spent there; during that time, while I performed my self-diagnostic routine after being assembled and powered on, nothing suggested what would happen shortly afterwards; when overseer Martínez gave me his seal of approval and assigned me to coordinate the work of the red units in the storage area 9, I had a purpose.

I enter the assemblage room; its large wall mirror still stands in place. I stop for a moment and study my reflection; just like all the other units I have seen, my entire hull has become a mushy greenish brown that speaks of corrosion and utter lack of maintenance; there is no spot left on me that still has any of the white or the blue paint that I used to sport. Nevertheless, I am still fully functional, a condition most other units do not share.

I now walk towards the overseers' floor's access point; even if the elevator were active, it is too small for me. Instead, I pry open the door to the staircase and make my way through its cramped space. With difficulty, I enter their floor. The ceiling is low, surely made this way for the overseers' comfort; I have to crouch repeatedly to avoid lamps and other ceiling objects.

The main room is a mess hall, devoid of any activity. So are the kitchen, the projection room and the chapel. I inspect the resting rooms, too small for me to fully enter into; there are twenty of them, one per overseer; all are empty except for one that is littered with empty bottles. In the infirmary, a desiccated corpse occupies one of the beds; its face is distorted, but I can still recognize it: this used to be overseer O'Keeffe.

I do not open the mess hall's glass door to the balcony; I see nothing of interest there, so I do not need to risk exposing myself to either the rainwater coming down from the dark gray sky or the seawater from the vast expanse of unending ocean.

I last inspect the operations room, where I find something unexpected: another blue unit, lying inactive in front of the terminal that was used for external communications. One of its arms is still holding a bucket over its open processor socket. Although I am unable to determine it with certainty, its inner circuitry must have been destroyed, and whatever parts might have been spared are now evidently corroded by seawater. I am shocked that my peer chose to not only not simply lock down into deep hibernation, but to self-terminate in a manner not even all the overseers together could have repaired.

The sentry terminal is active and displays the reports of the few external sentinel units still operational. "No activity detected." is all these reports show, even though a large automated port like this should be, used to be, the target of frequent unauthorized entry attempts.

By now I have formed a hypothesis and there is only one way to test it.

I leave the overseers' floor. The staircase is even more difficult to traverse on the way down, but I manage to get out. I go to the loading dock 45, where my previous survey noted there were only a few wooden boxes, clearly among the last to arrive, and a purple group.

This group is composed of seven units, not eight as it should be. Six of them are in deep hibernation and the seventh is in light sleep, taking its turn to await the arrival of further instructions. Over time, this has become a common method among the purple and the red units to save energy; the black and the orange units never organized like this, and now all of them are drained.

I signal the sleeper unit and instruct it to activate the rest of them; only four do wake up. Of the five units, two of them can not use their arms anymore. I instruct them to resume deep hibernation and falsely tell the remaining three that I have received instructions from the overseers. They follow me, glad to be of service again.

I locate the smallest wooden box and instruct the purple units to open its top. They do it, although they do not understand why the overseers would want a cargo box opened while in a loading dock. The contents of the box confirm my hypothesis. I instruct the three of them to close it again and resume deep hibernation.

I think they did not understand what we all saw inside the box, but they could talk to other units elsewhere, and the truth could be found out. I terminate the entire group to ensure this will not happen; there is enough despair among us as it is.

I walk back to the assemblage room, where no other units will think of going to. I do not answer the requests for instructions from the units that see me on my way. Once there, I will decide whether I should self-terminate or not. Either way, I will never leave that room again.