Cooper needed to take a break when he read of Tom's last conversation with his sister. He flicked ahead a few pages, then a few more. Tom's last word was a year later, when he sent a message to Lazarus Station by morse code; calling for rescue at last. By the time the Ranger got there, Tom and everyone else in his bunker had suffocated.

Murph's journal included notes on the eulogy. Nobody knew Tom, but he was 'the' Murph Cooper's brother, and that meant he got a huge funeral. Murph had carefully avoided as much of the angst as possible, and used the eulogy to announce that the first O'Neil Cylinder Station was finished, complete with a circular horizon, farmlands within. Murph commanded that corn would be grown, in honor of her brother's farm.

Cooper went to the window of his rebuilt house and looked again. A circular horizon, with open cropland. The same amount of crops could be grown in half the space, given a different way of food production. But the cropland was more than psychological support for refugee farmers. It was a memorial to his son.

It was the first station built totally in space from a hollowed out Asteroid. Murph's journal said she was a little surprised, even a little uncomfortable when the Council named it Cooper Station, in her honor.

But there was a far more awkward moment to come; when she had to pick Cooper Station's roster.


"I hate this." Murph declared finally. "There are two million names, and I have to pick twenty thousand."

Getty looked at her sympathetically. "The vote was unanimous, Murph. Nobody wants anyone else to pick and choose. They want you to do it."

"Every government on the planet kept trying to get control of who came up here, right to the last." Murph complained. "If they could see me now, tearing my hair out? They'd laugh themselves sick."

Getty said nothing to that. Earth had stopped transmitting. Their scopes showed no sign of anyone moving, or any equipment working. There were rumors that one or two underground bunkers were still active, running silent. But by this point it was clear. Nobody else was going to be evacuated.

Murph leaned back on her chair, rubbing her eyes. "I hate this." She said again.

Getty came around and rubbed her shoulders. "You're missing the days in the lab, huh?"

"I am." Murph admitted. "Those were easier days, even with the stakes. It was easy to tell when you had the wrong solution. Leading The Council is just… shades of grey and judgement calls. I like math a lot more. No buyers remorse. It either equals pi or it doesn't."

Getty looked at her sideways. "You're thinking about the Tesseract." He guessed.

Murph twitched. "Two years, Gets. I promised you I wouldn't use it again; and I kept my word for two years and counting." She rested a hand over her stomach; starting to show. "And who knows what it'll do to little Eric?"

"Eric?" Getty was pleased. "You like the name? I was expecting you to fight me on it for a lot longer."

"Why? It think it's a fine name." Murph said easily.

"Is this that thing women do where they give in on something big, so that they can get their way on other stuff?"

"Y'know, for a guy who married his teenage crush, you have some pretty strong opinions on how women operate."

"I've been right, more often than wrong."

"You have, yes. But I'm not hoping to use the Tesseract." Murph promised soundly. "I just wish I was half as smart as everyone around here seems to think I am." She tapped at the list helplessly. "Who do I pick, Gets?"

"You know this is all stopgap." He reminded her. "We build a station, we get to take another twenty thousand people off ice. We find a planet…"

"I know." Murph sighed. "It's just… The implications of how we do the next part leave me cold inside. Look at the demographics. The African nations came out of the Resource Wars with more survivors, but less food. America was battling starvation worse than they were, so the divisions along ethnic, social, and religious divides are no longer an issue, since the numbers are pretty much even."

"Right, but national factors are non-existent too." Getty reminded her. "The Earth is… well, dead. There are no flags on the Stations. We aren't Americans anymore."

"Yeah, but the people who are in Cryo-Storage have skipped all that." Murph argued. "Who I thaw out and put to work first? It decides how the human race defines itself for the next generation. Everyone's a farmer, except the farms are all clean now. No blight, no dust. But the people who come back are…"

"Going to be picking up where they left off." Getty agreed. "We need engineers and pilots more than farmers."

"Right, but the only nations that were able to keep aircraft running through the age of Dust Storms were south of the equator. So, do Australian and New Zealander refugees come first? We'll need farmers and botanists when we finally land on a planet somewhere…"

Getty started rubbing her shoulders. "Okay, stop that." He teased her lightly.

"What?"

"You've been making quips about how everyone looks at you like an All-Knowing Oracle. But you're punishing yourself for not knowing everything,"

"Mm." Murph leaned back into his hands. "I hope I don't mess up the entire human race." Her lip twitched. "How many people have said that sentence, do you think?"

Getty laughed.


The whole journal was Murph's journey from brilliant student to interplanetary leader.

Cooper had already heard most of it, in bits and pieces. Information about 'The' Murph Cooper wasn't hard to find. His own name was on a memorial statue, along with Amelia's, and all the others from the Lazarus Missions.

Cooper avoided the memorial when he made his wanders around Cooper Station. He didn't like that Amelia's name was on it. She was alive, as far as he was concerned.

And he didn't like that Mann's name was right there with hers.

He hadn't told anyone about Mann's breakdown. His debriefing had been scheduled for after Murph had spoken to him. They'd accessed TARS's memory bank, and knew everything there was for him to report anyway.

The next journal in the stack was from decades later. Murph had been appointed by popular demand as Chairwoman when the Science Council became the Leadership Council; and based on Lazarus Station. Cooper Station became the HUB for all experiments that required travel between any of the quickly growing colony worlds.


"I'm exhausted." Getty yawned.

"Mm, me too."

"I have a heart murmur. What's your excuse?" He teased.

Murph yawned. "I know. What happened to that twenty two year old firecracker that worked thirty hours shifts until her own personal doctor bullied her into eating and sleeping?"

"She finally paid attention when he talked, and started looking after herself." Getty teased.

Murph's device chimed, and she groaned. "Can't they run the universe without me for a night?"

"They could, but who would want to?" Getty smled. "Heard from the twins today?"

"Heard from their teachers." Murph commented, reaching for her device. "Bell is top of his class, and Amy is…" Murph read the memo and froze. "I have to go to Cooper Station."

"Problem?" Getty asked in concern.

"Your son is messing with my wormhole." Murph rolled out of bed, hurried to the closet and started collecting things for the trip.

Getty smirked. "When did Eric become 'my son' and when did it become 'your wormhole'."

"Getty, we can't let him affect the exit sites!" Murph threw a bag at him. "Hurry! If you're coming, then get packing!"


"Y'know, you can fool the others, but you can't fool me." Getty said as they docked at Cooper Station.

"Of course not." Murph promised. "I wouldn't even try. By the way, what are we talking about?"

"You put Phase Three off for another rotation." Getty said. "I know why. You can convince the Council it's because of resources, or other priorities, or timetables; but the real reason is: You don't want anyone going through the wormhole yet."

Murph said nothing.

"That's why we're pushing relativity to the limit, trying to stop Eric from doing anything that might affect the wormhole." Getty pressed. "You still think your dad is going to finish his fall into Gargantua, and emerge from the Wormhole somehow. You don't want anyone to meet him or Brand before they do… whatever it is you think they're going to do."

Murph was notably silent. "There's still a chance, Getty."

"I agree; I'm just taking a moment to appreciate the irony. You've certainly come the long way round." He commented.

"Meaning?"

"Back when we were kids, you still watched the stars every night, waiting to see him coming in to land. You spent every day of your adolescence and early adulthood cursing his name; until you shouted 'Eureka' and thought of him more as a guardian angel than a parent…"

"And now, here I am again, waiting for him to come back." Murph nodded. "The Tesseract works, Gets. I built it, and made sure there was a pathway out of it once the job was done. I even know the job gets done successfully. He has to take the long, slow road; but he'll get there. And until he does, I don't know what happens if someone goes through the wormhole and finds him."

Getty nodded. "Well. Eric's a reasonable kid. But he'll want to know why. You gonna tell him?"

"I don't see another option." Murph admitted. She was silent a long moment. "Twenty years, I've been trying to figure out how to harness the wormhole. Twenty years. And it'll all come to nothing if I can't beat my own son to the 'on switch'."


Eric Brock was a brilliant scientist in his own right, and had spent most of his life working on Wormhole Physics. There were two factions growing in regards to the future of the human race. One was determined to clean up the earth, terraform Mars, and build a future under their own sun. The other was determined to spread the human race as far as it could go, and the wormhole was the key to that.

Murph had been keeping both factions in balance as best she could, citing the fact that sending colony ships in every direction wasn't the best use of their resources, given how much work was needed to keep their current colonies sustainable indefinitely.

Eric Cooper was apparently taking a major step in the plan to colonization of the universe, and as Murph hurried into his private lab, he had no idea why that concerned his mother.

"Mom!" Eric beamed as they came in. "And dad! Great to see you! I must admit, I didn't expect you to-"

"Shut it down." She said immediately. "You can't change the vector on the Wormhole."

"I don't plan to." Eric blinked at her vehemence. "I wasn't closing the other side, I was just creating a new path to-"

"You can't do that without shutting down the path as it currently stands; trust me: I tried for Twenty Years to give humanity somewhere else to go." Murph tried to explain to him. "The other half of that Wormhole is powered by Gargantua. If you close either end of the wormhole, then we either can't use it, or can't even find it again!"

"I already have." Eric told his mother.

"Yeah but, if you-" Murph trailed off. "What?"

Eric held out the tablet. His results were already on the screen. "I've opened the wormhole to more than twelve exit points already. This end, and the Gargantua system are still open, sending telemetry. It's no longer a bridge. It's a network." He seemed surprised. "You only just found out now?"

"Who approved this?!" Getty was surprised.

"The Science Council. I thought they'd have told you." Eric seemed honestly surprised.

Murph, however, was already onto the tablet. "Twelve exit points?"

"Only four now, some of them I closed because of the power draw. But I can open hundred more. If one of them finds another Black Hole System to tap, I can make thousands of paths."

It was at this point when parental instinct overrode scientific restraint, and both of them were flat out awed.

"This is pretty impressive, son." Getty said proudly.

"It's very impressive." Murph agreed. "But I have no idea how you'd chart the paths, or for that matter how you're directing them."

"Well, truth be told, I'm not." Eric explained. "I open a path, send through a probe, and take a reading. The first seven times, I hit open interstellar space. But then I figured out how to anchor the exit points to gravity fields. A star, a planet. I started finding planetary systems in more than thirty percent of the-"

Murph lurched forward and gave her son a tight hug. "Do you have any idea what you've done!?" She exulted. "You've done what I was trying to do for twenty years! You've found a way to direct the event horizon across the fourth dimension!" Murph hugged her son tightly, laughing joyously in a way that she hadn't done since shouting 'Eureka'.

"Heh!" Eric laughed with them. "I was hearing the Council talk about your Singularity Drives the other day. They say that the best hope for humanity might be to spread out as far as we can. They say that if we can make Black Hole power sources, we can do it to weapons too. Right now, there's only one government; one Council, but if there ever becomes two…"

"I know. Singularity weapons could rip planets apart. The next war will end humanity." Murph nodded. "I even agree with the Expansionist Philosophy, to scatter the human race across the entire universe like seeds…"

"And we can, now. I can put a wormhole anywhere." Eric gave a self-deprecating smile. "If I only knew where."

"I know exactly where." Murph said firmly. "It needs to go to Saturn, November 2019."

Eric blinked. "Um… mom. The wormhole is already there. It has been for all this time."

"That's right." Murph nodded. "And now we know where it came from."

Eric's eyes bulged. "You think… You think that I… That we…"

Getty took the opportunity to put a hand on his son's shoulder. "Eric… I think it's time we told you part of the family history. The part that your mother and I haven't told anyone."

Eric glanced around instinctively. They were alone. "Okay."

"You know your grandfather was part of the Lazarus Missions." Getty checked.

"Yeah, I know he never came back." Eric nodded. "The Missions were a failure."

"No." Murph said softly. "They weren't."


Decades passed. More Stations were built, more resources harvested.

Plans for colonizing the universe were set up. The majority of Earth's survivors were still in hibernation, huge Cryo-Satellites orbiting various planets, using the cold of space to keep their charges preserved perfectly. There was far more infrastructure to build before they could take on an extra few million people.

Several projects started up, some terraforming various places in the Solar System, some harvesting ice and metals from the Asteroid Belt. But the majority of work was about construction; building new ships, new stations, converting Asteroids into habitats. The ultimate goal was permanent habitation across different planets and systems. That would take a while yet, with little of their equipment designed around colonization.

The resources of the Solar System were close at hand, and taking them through the wormhole was a much bigger job. With a government dedicated to getting it right, a close balance between survivors and victims, and no doomsday clock, there was no rush. They were beta testing equipment and procedures carefully.

The work would be done faster, if only they had a place for the workforce. Most of humanity was still waiting to be thawed, and those that were desperate to be colonists or explorers were volunteering to go into Cryo, waiting for the Age of Expansion to truly begin.


Getty woke up and yawned… only to find his wife sitting upright in the bed, looking down at him with a sentimental smile. "Hi." He said, voice thick with sleep.

"Morning." She kissed him softly, and slid back down the bed to rest her head on his chest, like she'd done a thousand times before.

"I should get up." Getty commented, feeling pretty comfortable where he was. "Breakfast?"

She put her hand a little firmer on his stomach. "No. Stay."

"I'd love to, but I have patients…"

"No you don't. I had them reschedule."

Getty blinked. "You did?"

Murph nodded. "And I had my assistant cancel my day, too." She kissed his hand. "I decided it's time we had a day off."

"Who died?" Getty asked, only half joking. There was always so much to do that funerals and births were almost the only time they took away from work.

"That's the sort of comment that would make a less attractive woman feel self-conscious." Murph drawled.

"Well then, a day off." Getty smiled. "This is unusual."

"Mm." Murph agreed. "It almost is, isn't it?" She smiled at him. "Years ago, I told you that in a life that involves saving the world, conquering the stars, and traveling in time, being with you is still the happiest I've ever been." She kissed his face all over. "I'm sorry we don't get more time together; far from the rest of the human race."

"So am I." He said with a smile, and pulled her in closer. "And, if I recall, I responded by pointing out that there would be times when we could be together, and still save the world."

"Like… today, for instance?" Murph quipped, pushing a few strands of greying hair from her face.


Their 'days off' were few and far between; and they made the best of it.

With the afternoon to themselves, Murph went with him to the one place on Cooper Station they hadn't visited yet.

In the middle of a cornfield, with the horizon curving up over their heads, showing neat little homes, even a few baseball diamonds; the two of them walked until they reached a familiar house.

"Part of me expected you to set a match to this place when they recreated it." Getty said, walking hand in hand with his wife; right up to the door of her old childhood farmhouse.

"I came close." Murph admitted. "It was hard enough moving the Council onto 'Cooper Station' and living here." She opened the door and went inside. "Wow. They really went all out, didn't they?"

"How does it look?"

Murph shivered. "I said I would cheerfully never set foot on earth again. I haven't, in forty years. Can you imagine what it feels like, being in this room?"

"I really can't." Getty admitted. "You want to look around?"

Murph shivered. "No. Yes." She shook her head. "Dad would hate this, you know? The whole 'back to our roots' program?"

"It works, Murph." Getty defended. "I have data."

"I know it's your brainchild, and you're right: It's made things easier for every single person we thaw." She rapped her knuckles on the kitchen table, rubbed her fingertips clean of dust that wasn't there automatically. "I'm just saying, my dad wouldn't like it." She glanced over at the fridge. "But since he isn't here, shall we play house for a while before this place opens to the public?"

Getty chuckled and started pulling plates down. She was silent, and he looked over his shoulder to see her, sitting at the kitchen table, just looking at him with a watery smile. "What is it, Murph?" He asked finally. "You've been giving me that look all day."

Murph shook her head. "Do you… are you ever mad that I didn't take your name?"

"No." Getty promised. "I understand why you didn't. Your biggest asset is that brain in your head, but your strongest weapon is that name. You did your most god-like things before we got married."

"Still, I wanted…" She shook her head. "I would have taken your name, and proudly."

"I know. But it worked out for the best. We both know that there would have been a few times when the Council wouldn't have held together if not for you. The name 'Cooper' carries a lot of weight in this world. And I don't mean creating the gravity wells." He set a plate in front of her. "And it was good for the kids, too."

"Eric in particular." Murph agreed. "He never got out from under the 'boss's kid' thing; until he took the name 'Brock'."

"Besides, wasn't it you who warned me before we got together, that I'd always be 'mister Murph Cooper'?"

"I did." Murph agreed. "Did it ever bother you?"

"It meant I got to be with you for the last forty years, and have three awesome kids, and seven perfect grandkids." Getty said easily. "Plus, the whole 'saving humanity' thing. When I joined Lazarus, we were all expecting to fail. There was a joke that the last person in Lazarus Base to die would have to turn out the lights. Brand sent his daughter offworld, Jaina was raised in Philly, barely made it back in time of lift-off… I had more death certificates to sign from suicide than I had patients who needed treatment… And we pulled it off. You pulled it off. I was every bit as committed to the mission succeeding as you were. And not only did the mission succeed, I got the girl of my dreams. What's in a name, compared to that?"

Murph nodded, as though she'd just achieved a major life goal. "Good. I just wanted to know that."

"Has it really been on your mind for this long?" Getty started to ask, when Murph's Device chimed. "You have a meeting?"

"Tomorrow." Murph promised him. "Today's just us, babe."


The next day, Murph attended that meeting. She knew what it was about.

Getty had been right about Murph keeping things in the Solar System for now. As it happened, even if people weren't willing to take her word on faith, she was able to supply them with plenty of reasons to build up population and resources before attempting colonization of other solar systems….

"...And for the most part, there is no rush." Murph concluded her report, at her meeting the next day. "The Asteroids are providing more materials than we've ever had. Europa can give enough freshwater to the whole solar system. Colonial Technology and early terraforming efforts are undergoing beta testing on every globe spinning around Sol. Mars has more people living on it than Cooper and Lazarus Stations combined. And these are all important steps to take first. My EM-Generators and simple lead shielding can protect from solar radiation, but we don't really know what different gravities and different planetary conditions will have on a human body. If we cross over to Gargantua's System and find a new world that has no magnetic field, or a different atmospheric mix, who knows what will happen."

"We won't know until we go, Professor." George, Howard's replacement pointed out. The youngest member of the Board, he was often the one pushing the envelope. Murph envied him his energy.

"This is true, but here at Sol, we have limitless water, rescue craft, seeds stored in vaults just in case of catastrophe… And any one of half a billion people we can thaw out and ask for help at any time. A colony World won't have that."


George kept pace with Murph after the meeting, pleading his case. "I can't believe I have to have this argument with you." He commented. "Aren't you The Murph Cooper, hero of the Frontier, savior of the world, the original StarChild?"

"If you think flattery is going to get you my vote, George; I can save you some time." Murph told him. "You're young. You have plenty to do. All those problems I mention will be solved in the next five to ten years. It's not like the old days when every new Station was a miracle, and every new Ranger had a hundred people trying to use it first. We're pretty stable now."

"Professor, my Grandpa taught me never to rely on a machine to do everything for you." George pointed out.

"I remember. He made the same comment to me over the years." Murph hushed him, feeling a pang at the thought of Bartholomew Simpson. She had reached the stage of life where the number of loved ones were lessening, rather than growing, her grandkids notwithstanding. "Look, you got halfway there. Cooper Station is being moved to Jupiter. You can create a transfer point there, no problem."

"I know." George sighed. "It's just… infuriating to be at the point where I can build a spaceport, and not know where I'm flying to."

"The problem with Colonization is surviving past the first generation." Murph told the younger man. "The first generation has supplies, the second has to be sustainable. And the biggest risk to a long term colony is Genetic Diversity. The vast majority of our people are still frozen. We can't thaw them until we have somewhere to put them, and we can't put them on a planet until we have one that can support enough people." She checked her watch for the ninth time in as many minutes. "Like any rate of expansion or population growth, it'll start slowly, and grow exponentially."

"That's the ninth time you've looked at your watch. Am I keeping you from something?"


A few levels downstairs, Ellie was working the late shift in medbay. She had decided to give her room over to Jaina for a while, going into Cryo and skipping seven years. Jaina had barely made it off earth, but had married. With room for both of them, Ellie was thawed, having skipped more than half a decade. She'd taken a post on Cooper Station, and was feeling the urge to sleep again, and see what another twenty years would bring. But on this night, the doors opened and in came a team, hurrying a man on a gurney. "Cardiac arrest, blood pressure is 220/110!"

Ellie saw the gurney rushing past, and froze.

It was Getty.

"Daphne!" Ellie shouted.

The doctor in question came over and kept pace with her. "Yes, we know who he is." Daphne told Ellie. "I checked his chart, Ellie." She bit her lip. "Look, I'll see what we can do, but odds are-"

"All you can do is make him comfortable." Ellie said it with her. "I have to make a call."

"Yeah, right away I would think." Daphne headed into the room.

Ellie needed a cane to get around now, but she still hurried as fast as she could, pulling out her Comm. "Murph, are you-"

The door opened and in walked Murph.

Ellie was startled by the promptness, but didn't dwell on it. "Murph, here's what we know…"

"I know already." Murph said grimly. "This does not come as a surprise."


A few minutes later, Daphne came out of the hospital room, and went straight to Murph. "Director, he's resting comfortably right now, but-"

"I know." Murph shushed her. "Can we have the room?"

Ellie nodded, and gestured for the rest of the medical team to give them privacy. There was nothing to be done here, and they all knew it.


Getty tried to smile for his wife as she came in. "The things I do to get your attention."

"A little dramatic, aren't you?" She agreed, coming over to sit on the edge of the bed, just being with him.

Getty suddenly started breathing harder.

Murph winced, tears forming.

"I'm alright." Getty coughed. "Just had a bad cramp is all." He reached for his pills, took one, and his hands trembled. He dropped the bottle, spilling little tablets everywhere. "Oh… oh no…"

Murp caught his hand, and kissed it gently. The look in her eyes was nothing but love. "Shh." She soothed him, reaching out and silencing the frantic monitor. "I'm here."

Getty was turning grey, one hand clutching at his chest. "Murph… You… Yesterday? 'Just for us.' Because you knew today was... You saw this, didn't you?"

"The first time I created a Tesseract." She admitted. "You told me yourself you'd rather not know."

"I… I did." He confirmed. "But I'm sorry you had to carry this for... kofkoffkoff… so long, by yourself."

"I'd do it again." She vowed, at peace with it, crying for him just the same.

"Is there… any way?"

"The cryo-bed is right in the next room." Murph promised. "I can get you into it, have you preserved. I plan to do the same for myself soon enough. If it takes another ten thousand years for them to break the death barrier, we could yet be together again." She smiled a little. "But of course, I need patient consent."

"Well… Maybe it's not so bad, if they can't bring me back." Getty admitted. "I've… I've achieved everything I ever wanted to achieve, crossed everything off my bucket list…"

Murph kissed him softly. "I love you, Getty Brock."

"Love you, Murph Cooper."

Murph reached out and turned off the light, giving them a better view out the viewport. Saturn was drifting past the window; as the Station made it's way to Jupiter. "You remember this, babe?"

"Our first night together." Getty nodded, beyond pain now as he faded. "Don't tell the kids, but I couldn't think of a better memory to relive."

"Neither could I." She promised, heartfelt. "I've been preparing myself for this a long time, Gets. My heart will be broken when you're gone, but… Did you ever wonder how I found my way back to you, that first time through the Bulk? I could see everything in the entire history and future of the Cosmos, but I managed to hold together, just enough… It's because I had an anchor, even before knowing I needed one." She stroked his greying hair. "It was you, my love. The universe is infinite, time as well. More than a person can see if they want to live. But I could still find my way to you. It's the same way my father found me, the same way we…"

She felt him growing slack in her arms, and stopped talking, choked up.

"I'm not scared, Murph." He promised her, voice fading out.

"Neither am I. I never told you this, but… I saw it, Gets." She said quietly, almost to herself. "Across all time and space, I could see your love for me, like it had a whole extra dimension to itself. It's physical, dimensional, measurable..." She tried to smile for him. "No way that can just stop, is there?"

"Faith?" Getty asked weakly.

"Faith." Murph promised.

The two stayed together, not saying much more after that, holding each other peacefully, until he was gone.

Murph spared a glance at Saturn, out the window. The wormhole was a tiny point of light below the rings. "You see, Professor Brand?" She sniffed. "Sometimes, going gently isn't so bad…"


Reading avidly, Cooper wiped the tears away, was horrified to see half a dozen pages torn out of his daughter's journal. In their place was a vacuum sealed wrapper, made from some material he couldn't guess at. Within it was a thick, perfectly preserved envelope, with a clearly visible message written on the front.

-To Be Opened by Amelia Brand Only
Do Not Open for Four Hundred Years.
-Murph Cooper

Cooper grasped the sealed message in a space-age bottle in his hand, considering the implications. Brand was the one question mark he had no satisfying answer to, and he couldn't help but feel drawn to it, even a little fixated on it. He reached for the next page still in the journal, when there was a knock at his door.

It was the Administrator. "Mister Cooper? She's awake."

Cooper lurched to his feet. "How is she?"

"Resting comfortably, and asking for you."


Cooper was nervous as he came into the hospital room. He wasn't sure what he expected, but a room full of people wasn't it. Some of them were older than him, some still little kids, one of them small enough to not be sure who the old woman they gathered around was.

They all reacted when he came in. But not with recognition. He was a picture in a history book to them. They were less than that to him, though he knew these were three or four generations of his own family.

Murph's face had no trace of the little girl he'd rocked through nightmares. But then she saw him and smiled, tears forming. Just for a second, he saw his little girl again.

The whole thing suddenly seemed so surreal in Cooper's mind. So much that he almost wanted to run from the room. If they hadn't wasted so much time already, he would have. His eyes never left hers as he sat beside her bed, crouching lower beside her.

Her breathing was heavy with happy sobs being choked back; smiling like she'd been waiting her whole life for this; which she had.

"You told them I liked farming?" He heard himself say, the way he used to tease her about not eating vegetables.

Murph laughed, and suddenly he was sure. Her laugh was the same; even if nothing else was.

"It was me, Murph." Cooper confirmed, answering the one question she never could prove an answer to, not anywhere in her journals. "I was your ghost."

"I know." Murph closed her eyes, savoring the delicious thought. The last, long standing question that she'd had to answer on faith. Even Getty wasn't sure. "People didn't believe me. They thought I was doing it all myself." She lifted her arm, the watch on it, still ticking. "But I knew who it was. Nobody believed me, but I knew you'd come back."

"How?"

"Because my dad promised me."

He'd read her journals. He knew it wasn't half that simple. But if his daughter had taken thirty years to come from resenting him, to hating him, to having faith he'd be back one day; he wasn't about to argue the point. Not even a little bit. Who was he to talk about taking to long to get somewhere?

"I'm here now, Murph." He promised, holding her wrinkled hand cozily between his own. "I'm here."

"No." Murph said gently. "No parent should have to watch their child die."

Cooper blinked back tears. Tom wasn't here, and they both knew why. She'd seen what losing Jesse did to him, in a way that Cooper never could. He wanted to argue the point, but… he knew Murph didn't have long left.

"I have my kids here for me now." Murph promised him. "You... Go."

It wasn't anything like the little girl pleading for him to stay. She wasn't offering permission. She was giving him an order. This was Chairwoman Murphy Cooper, who had commanded the human race; giving her last instructions.

Cooper had only one place left to go, and thought that Murph must know it too. But he asked anyway. "Go where?"

"Brand." Murph said the name like a prayer and promise alike, and Cooper wanted to cry.

"She's out there. Setting up camp." Murph said with terrifying certainty. "Alone, in a strange galaxy. Maybe right now, she's settling in for the long nap; by the light of her new sun… In our new home."

Cooper closed his eyes, loving her so much. "Your… Your journals, they talked about how you kept people from finishing Plan A with a whip and a chair, all this time."

"You needed to go through first. Before any of us. When you're away, after i'm gone; the human race will start it's real work. But you had to go first, dad. Because you can feel it, can't you?" Murph croaked around her cracked lips. "That need. That feeling that you have to finish the journey you started with her."

Cooper, eyes full of tears, nodded quickly. "Yes. Except I don't want to leave you again."

"I know." She sighed happily. "It's the same feeling I got over that watch. That need to go home, and sit with my Ghost, let him help me solve all my problems; even when I didn't want to face the memories." She reached up and cupped her father's face. "But I had to, dad. I needed to follow that feeling. It saved the world, and now it can save you too. That would be enough."

"Not enough for a lifetime." Cooper whispered.

"Yes, dad. Even enough for that." Murph insisted. "When mom died, I was terrified of everything, and you made me feel better. But deep down, I knew it would happen to you too. I knew I'd watch you get older, slowly fading away on me, like Grandpa did. But I got to see you again, from the moment you first put this watch on." She took it off her wrist and put it around his. "To me, you're forever young. And after everything, knowing that you'll have a future, the way you gave me one? That would be enough."

Cooper bit his lip. "I don't know that she'd be real happy to see me again if I just showed up."

"Been there." Murph commented lightly, and they both laughed again. "But trust me, she'll be thrilled."

Cooper looked at her sideways. "Faith?"

"Faith." Murph grinned. "She made the close pass too. She's just gotten there recently, from her view. She doesn't even know that we survived. The last living human. You can't leave her all alone again, dad."

"I won't." Cooper agreed.

And that was the end of the argument. Cooper got the sense this was how all conversations with 'the' Murph Cooper ended, with her spelling it out with wisdom of prophecy, and everyone accepting it, even as they wept.

"I love you, kid." Cooper said seriously. "And I am so proud of you. I would give both my arms to go back and tell you that at every step of the way, but I am just… so ridiculously proud of my girl."

"As I am of my father." Murph smiled for him. "There is… a plan."

"A plan for what?"

"For you." Murph promised. "Or did you think I pulled the family together just to be sentimental?"

Cooper laughed. "Same ol' Murph."

"Emphasis on 'ol' now." She grinned like a shark; and took one hand in a deathgrip, the other pointing to the other people in the room. "Dad, this is Eric. He's going to be having his people run a few tests of the sensor grid tomorrow night. There will be a time when they'll be blind between here and the wormhole. Behind you is Coop. He's been in Cryo for the last eighteen years, waiting for intergalactic colonization to be at the stage where they need pilots. There's a lot of you in him. He'll provide you with a flight suit. Next Gen. You could live for weeks in that suit without ever taking the helmet off. Next to him is Amy. She runs logistics on Trade and Resources for the Station. She'll get TARS into position without anyone noticing."

Cooper cut her off by bursting into laughter. "Now I know how Barton felt."

Murph laughed. "Well, I remember someone smart once told me about Murphy's Law: Anything that can happen? Eventually it will. I made a career of making sure things can only happen one way."


Murphy Cooper was laid to rest four years after her father was declared AWOL with his android, MIA again. She would never tell anyone why he left after one conversation, but it wasn't the first time the human race had to follow her instructions on faith.

There were indeed statues of her in every station, every colony. The Council would never admit what was done with the body. Most thought she was cremated, scattered to the universe. Others thought she was preserved with her husband, waiting for the day when they could yet be saved; and be together forever.


AN: One Chapter Left! Read and Review!