Consciousness restarted itself almost abruptly. She realized she was thinking again, yet with a dim sense of unease.

Draining mass! The old one’s back! A voice said.

Don’t lie to me, Mikio! Another added.

Come. See!

She realized that she saw nothing, and felt little. That might be the source of her unease, but she thought it wasn’t entirely that.

Then she realized she didn’t know what had happened, where she was… who she was.

No, Juliana Newman, she thought. She was… what. Commander of the ISS? No, that wasn’t quite right.

Spaceborne. She was Spaceborne.

Memories were slowly aggregating themselves around the core of her being, slowly restoring her identity.

The Change, the blue light coming out of the surface of Earth, abolishing technology, twisting them into alien forms. For which she was thankful because, without that adaptation, they would never have survived the apocalypse.

They had to open up the ISS to space, and they’d done it just in time. A dozen orbits later, the space station had never restarted. There had been no location over Earth that was safe from the – whatever – that had ended the modern civilization.

From orbit, Earth was dark and silent. The strings of light that covered the world, the familiar sight of so many orbits, were gone. And the whisper of electromagnetic sounds that had accompanied them during those first orbits as Spaceborne had ended, the constellations of thousands of various satellites in orbit staying dead and inert.

Save for the distant points “above”.

After testing their limits, she’d tried to get there. Interacting with Earth’s magnetic field and raising her orbit came as second nature, and she’d realized after a while that the geosynchronous orbit was where the points of electromagnetic whispers lay.

The satellites at GEO were still running. Still trying to talk to the unresponsive ground.

And at around 25.000 kilometers, her powers shut down.

Not the biology, the magnetic senses, and everything else. But rather, the metal bending and control granted by subsequent passes into the blue lights before they faded into nothingness. She could bend and twist metal, Frank could melt it at a distance, and both Russians could fix things by touching them. Shuko got the poor man’s – spaceborne’s – draw by having some bizarre sense of the nature of metals, rather than affecting them. He also felt some undefined ability that refused to manifest.

But then, two-thirds of the way up to GEO, her power over the metal plate holder she was using as a supplies pack simply vanished abruptly. For a few terrifying moments, she feared that she was going to die. But photosynthesis still worked, her skin still absorbed organics, she felt perfectly fine in the vacuum, and she could still shout across the void and the others still working down below heard and answered if they weren't too far away on their lower orbits.

GEO had no answers. Maneuvering there was not as easy, the magnetic field was a bit weaker and harder to use. She could use the satellites themselves as some kind of anchor for her fields, but fine maneuvering often required her to, well, essentially fart.

While spaceborne seemed to operate on a near-closed cycle when it came to matter, they still ate stuff. And they could expel wastes at will, which gave them a tiny rocket effect. Not too good, and she used it sparingly, preferring to wait while struggling with the fields.

She had no way to control the satellites themselves, and while they were very obviously functional, she had no immediate use for them, and they were yielding no answer, and so, she turned back, deorbiting.

Back in the depths, Yaytsev had bad news.

Can’t be done safely. I can rig stuff with ablative shielding sure, but we have to let it open to the vacuum to maneuver with our fields. And it will be completely unstable during reentry, the former Russian explained as she was retracing her steps to LEO.

Columbia scenario?

That bad, yes.

Besides, even if they made it to the ground, what would they find? And how crippled might they end up?

She knew she was back there when her metal control sparked back to life. The 25.000km limit was, for some reason, the border delimiting some of her abilities in space.

And, she realized after a while, maybe the extent of the technology death field radiating from Earth. The GPS constellation was orbiting just under it and had been killed by the field, according to the Pentagon. And GEO was safe from it.

She had some answers, and nobody but the four others to give them to.

Tianlong had been a bust. The station was dead and locked. The purely mechanical safety measures were keeping it closed, and there had been no return vehicle docked. Obviously, the Chinese had taken their chances before the end.

She hoped that they’d succeeded.

Hey, old one? Wake up, a voice said, interrupting her sorting through memories.

I’m awake, she replied.

Doesn’t seem to.

Frank?

Frank Jr. Father’s sleeping more and more these days. And he said to tell you you’re the worst commander when it comes to keeping time.

Wait, what?

Abruptly, light flooded in, as her eyes started to function. Or maybe she’d restored the connections.

It was dim and wan, compared to Earth’s, but it was much better than just the magnetic sense. And the bands of greyish colors that filled the horizon were… well, they were what she’d expected. Although something was missing.

Or was it? If she was smack in the middle of it... it might be hard to see the ring itself.

We made it? she asked.

You what? the answer came.

Saturn.

She finally spotted the silhouette of a spaceborne floating not too far from her, flux lines sweeping lazily the surroundings. No, two spaceborne shapes. The other was an immobile form, hanging within the other's field. For herself, she seemed anchored with gum-like stuff to what looked like a big chunk of rock, thirty feet wide or so.

Frank? she asked again.

I called out. Someone’s gone wake him up, the active one said.

Who are you two? Frank… Jr? And?

Mikio. She’s shy.

Am not, the second form replied.

Okay, somebody explain to me how you’re there?

A few hours later, a trio of spaceborne drifted closer. She heard them calling out before the tiny shapes became visible to the naked eye. And that included a more familiar expression, which she still somehow recognized.

Juliana Newman, you sleep too much.

Frank, you need to respect your commander.

Didn’t they tell you? You’ve been deposed a century ago. In absentia.

What?

The deposed or century bit?

Frank had changed quite a bit, she thought. He wouldn’t have joked that much in the old days.

So, it worked out, she said.

The long transfer orbits did, perfectly. NASA would be proud. Who needs computer simulations when you have Ivan and Shuko plotting maneuvers? And the hibernation mode did too. It’s not pleasant, the sun’s light is too dim to be truly comfortable. In the shadow, we have to sleep until the sun comes back up. Not enough energy. But we have what we needed. A good magnetic field to use, plenty of room and loads, and loads, AND loads of free-floating ice and organics. You can even land on the smaller moons, and be able to launch back.

No abilities?

No. It does look like it’s really that field from the surface who did it, not magnetic flux intensity or whatever. But even without them, it's good here.

Even if we could eat plastic from electronics on random satellites, LEO was going to be too limited long-term. Jupiter had more sunlight and mag field, but the environment was always going to be worse, she said.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone, one day, will want to test it.

You’ll have to explain it to me. Kids?

Quite a few, actually. Probably a hundred fifty or more now, it's hard to keep track these days. Me, I kept it small. Just Jr here, recently. And of course, you didn’t wake up somehow. You almost overshot, but Ivan caught you and dragged you back before you ran out of Saturn's magnetosphere.

How does that even work? I’m pretty sure I was the only female. Your… son mentioned Mikio?

I chose to be female, the spaceborne replied indignantly.

Juliana ignored the surprising affirmation, focusing on Frank instead.

It's a social more than a biological fact. Looks like we’re somehow a parthenogenetic and budding species. Basically, any of us can start growing offspring internally, at will, until it's large enough to be fully autonomous and split off. But it’s more complicated.

Meaning?

We… provide bits and stuff. And boy, do we need to eat stuff during that. We almost double in mass. But the brain seems to be shared for most of the growth process. You provide some kind of… ancestral memory. Some lost, a lot duplicated, but not all. No one knows why, or how each bit goes where.

Lost?

I lost a few memories when I got Junior.

He can’t remember his cars. All of them. Even the classic Cadillac. Sucks to be him, even if I told him all about it.

Juliana did. Frank liked old cars, and his only regret was not having enough room for a proper collection.

Seriously?

Yea. Lost some more bits, but I retained most of myself. Junior got the basics anyway. It makes final education much easier. You go from… well, directly to near teenager, only without the hormones.

Then Mikio here…

Four-removed from the old one, she said.

Shuko.

There's most of him left still, but he lost a lot. He had many kids over the decades, and he's quite old now. I got Frank Jr when it became apparent I was getting older, but I stopped there. Needed someone I could trust to keep watch over you while I slept myself, since you were doing the best impression of Sleeping Beauty, and I had no mouth to give a kiss.

I don’t feel old.

No. Shutting down slows biological processes enough that it doesn’t seem to be a factor. But obviously, the waking-up part is not entirely perfected.

I missed how much?

It should be about early 2174 now, based on orbital mechanics. A team of the kids - Yaytsev's, mostly - have managed to build some kind of massive reflector telescope on one of the small moons, to watch Earth, both on visible, infrared, and hopefully radio.

And?

Nothing.