DEGREE OF SEPARATION PROLOGUE

In the five minutes before Melissa Milton died, she sat restlessly in a chair staring out into nothing, reminiscing about so many of her lost “last times.” Distressed by the realization, she thought on how she had never realized the last time her children came running up to squeeze the life out of her when she’d returned home from work was the last time until long after the ritual was behind her. Or begged to climb into bed with her in the midst of a thunderstorm. Or demanded just one more extra-tight tuck in. Or so many other lasts. It was such a subtle theft from her life. One day she’d just come home and the kids didn’t break from their homework or budge from their latches, and eventually they weren’t even there at all. And with that, a critical stage of her life was just gone with a whisper she’d never even heard. It was ironic that thoughts of last moments were what preoccupied her as she neglected her duties in the aquaponics bay. Of course, she had no idea she was living through her own last moment. Most likely had she known, it would still have been spent in the same nostalgic disquiet.

For LaShawn Stewart, in the four minutes before he died, he was just finishing a day’s work on the reclamation tiles of a high-end restaurant just 30 meters away he would never be able to afford. It was currently more than three hours after his day was scheduled to be over, and he should have long been contentedly back home, more than 100 stories down and in an entirely separate hab. He’d spoken with his wife on six separate occasions since his shift technically ended, feeling increasingly guilty each time he tapped his hammer and ended the call. “I thought you were going to be home by now...”. “Your children are crying because they miss their daddy...”. “I’m going to bed without you again...”. He hated being away from his family, and wanted nothing more than to be with them. But he knew the only way to make enough progress to move his family out of the paucity of sub-Dysis was to put in this extra time now. He wished his wife could at least see that, and would hold off on her efforts to maximize how shitty he felt while he was away. His final, frustrated thoughts didn’t come close to reflecting the genuine love he had for her.

In the three minutes before Evan Allen died, he was spewing obscenities six stories down into the hammer implant secured in his ear and pounding furiously at the latch on his forearm. He was desperately trying to track down a huge sum of money missing from a client’s portfolio he knew in his gut was his fault. He wasn’t a man who was all that great with long-term decisions. If given the power to foresee his imminent death, his automatic instinct would be relief over escaping the consequences of his most recent inadequacies, missing the bigger picture once again.

Two minutes before Thom Putnam died, close enough to the mysterious disaster to leave nothing left of his body, he was enjoying his last bottle of Bayfront Brew—a lazy reference in Thom’s opinion to the Great Lakes a few miles to the north by the brewery over in Arctos or Eos or wherever the hell—while he half-assed his way through running inventory at his father’s store. He resented being drafted into his father’s “legacy,” but at least his resentment was dampened by the self-awareness that he would be just as miserable doing anything else with his life. Had he sensed the approach of his upcoming fate, his only concession would have been to drink his beer a little bit faster.

In the last minute of Bianca Avela’s life at the very outskirts of what would come to be known as the epicenter, she was singing the favorite lullaby her abuela had sung to her as a child to herself, dreaming of the upcoming weekend when her daughter and brand new grandbaby were coming to visit her. Her little one had grown up and moved away from the Invictus complex entirely, taking a little piece of Bianca’s heart with her. But now her daughter had made a new little piece, and Bianca couldn’t wait to meet the brand new little girl who had already filled in all the missing spaces. It was, sadly, a meeting that would never be.

And then in a final moment, for these five and thousands of others, the explosive and mysterious end came. In the weeks that followed, many would come to say that they were among the lucky ones.