Helena had ripped a dead girl’s ID tag to get here. This fifteen-minute morality test was her chance to prove her worth and get a seat on the Athena VI transport ship. The only ticket to escape the dying Earth after the machines’ invasion.

 

Thud, thud. The robotic invigilator walked up and down the aisles, checking the examination booths. Helena’s hands started shaking as she scrolled down the test group headings:

 

‘Authority/Subversion’

‘Loyalty/Betrayal’

‘Freedom/Oppression’

‘Individuality/Group’

 

She needed to get them right. Her twin sister Ellie had already been chosen to inhabit the new colony of Centauri Five. Ellie was a doctor and therefore an essential worker, but Helena had not made the list; the new colony had no love for artists.

 

The clock was ticking. Helena looked over her shoulder, timing her move. She sprayed the surface of the digital machine with a clear liquid film and switched on the optical enhancement kit. As promised by the resistance, it highlighted the correct answers on the screen. She had managed to evade the body scanner and the retinal screen undetected. After all, no one was looking for nanofluid.

 

Helena felt a knot in the pit of her stomach. She had promised Ellie that she’d find a way to get to Centauri Five. After all, it had always been just the two of them. But was Ellie even alive? No one was in receipt of communications in and out of the colony except for Central Command in the outpost of Svalbard.

 

She pressed SUBMIT and wiped the screen clean. She was in the clear, and the machines would be none the wiser. But sixty seconds later, as she waited with bated breath, the alarm above her booth started blaring.

 

Heavy mechanical footsteps approached fast. She froze, not knowing where to turn. Shit, that’s it, it’s all over. She felt like the walls were caving in. She was going to be arrested and culled like all the others who had cheated or failed the morality test. Either way, she was going to die on this planet ravaged by the machines.

 

The invigilator knocked on her booth and pointed to the tag around her neck. It took her a moment to realize what it meant. She’d forgotten to scan the tag to validate the answers. When she did, the alarm stopped and the booth door opened automatically. Her heart was pounding. This was too close a call.

 

Helena thanked the invigilator, a machine like the ones who had scorched the earth. Good job these older versions didn’t have pulse rate sensors, or they would have been onto her.

 

* * *

 

The Athena VI was warming its engines in the space shuttle bay. It was a large transporter ship capable of carrying up to twenty-five thousand people. Helena counted her lucky stars as she looked around the handful of people left. All had passed the test, all deemed worthy of living. But the irony of it was not lost on her; she had just cheated on a morality test.

 

None of it mattered now. By the time the machines discovered her deception, she’d be long gone, dormant in a cryo-state, on her five-month journey through the stars to Centauri Five.

 

As the Athena V rocketed into space, Helena felt tears roll down her cheeks. She couldn’t quite believe she’d made it. She was going to live and see Ellie again. Centauri Five was going to be a fresh start. A brave new world that had barely planted its roots and Helena was ready to play her part — her past, the scavenging and the lying, were all behind her now.

 

* * *

 

Ellie hugged Helena fiercely. Neither wanted to let go. Five years had been a long time, especially when they didn’t think they would see each other again. They were both a little ragged and a little thinner after months of enclosure. But their spark was still there, the one that clings on to hope.

 

Ellie pointed at the worn-out tag on Helena’s neck, “What’s the meaning of this?”

 

Helena whispered. “Call me Sam. I’ll explain later.”

 

Ellie led her to her living quarters in the South Dome. It was hexagonal building with large glass windows into the outer world. Helena couldn’t stop looking at the vastness of space. The twin suns had not risen yet, and she dreamed of bright blue skies and the wind brushing past her cheeks. Of birdsong and the ocean waves, rolling in and out. She missed the smells of the fresh earth after summer rain, and the warmth on the back of her neck.

 

But a dark thought came to her mind. What if they all made the same mistakes again? What if humans drained the planet’s resources as they did Earth? Would the machines turn up generations later to check on them? Would they act as judge, jury, and executioner again?

 

“What are you thinking about, sis?” Ellie asked.

 

“J.M Barrie,” Helena said, linking arms with Ellie. “You know, he wrote Peter Pan.”

 

“Why are you thinking about him now?”

 

“He once wrote, and I quote, ‘all of this has happened before, and it will all happen again’. Are we just pawns in this cycle of life and death, as it plays out again and again?”

 

“You just got here, sis. Let the future worry about that.”

 

“Isn’t that how we got here in the first place? I want us to get it right this time. I want to prove my worth.”

 

“About that… how did you manage to get on the Athena? It has to do with that tag, doesn’t it?”

 

Helena looked at the camera pointing at them from the corner of the room. She shuffled uncomfortably. “Later, Ellie. Now, tell me more about this world.”