What Noah Decides
異常の真因を突き止めたノアが下す、コロニーの未来を左右する決断
For three long days, Noah could not sleep as he thought about his choice.
He also returned to the flickering machine to study its strange midnight signal.
At last, he discovered the real of the he had first noticed.
The old memorial machine was slowly failing after so many years of silence.
Its weak pulse had been pulling tiny amounts of power from the life-support system.
If it were left alone, the would one day grow into a real danger.
The secret room, hidden to protect the colony, had begun to it instead.
Noah understood that a lie, however kind, could not be buried forever.
Sooner or later, its weight would crack the very ground it stood upon.
He sat down at his desk and began to write the most important report of his life.
He knew that his words would be read by every person in the colony.
It was not that he wanted, and it was not that he sought.
It was the truth that mattered, and it was healing that the colony truly needed.
In his report, he described the accident and named the eleven workers who had died.
He wrote that they had built Colony Eleven with courage and had given their lives.
"These people will be remembered," he wrote, "not as a secret, but as our heroes."
He suggested that Sector Seven should be opened as a place of honour for everyone.
The failing machine would be repaired, and its light would shine for the whole colony.
When the report was finally shared, the two divided sides slowly came together.
People wept, and then they walked to the memorial to speak the forgotten names aloud.
It was Noah who had opened the wall, but it was the colony that chose to heal.
Captain Vega stood beside him, and at last her old guilt began to .
"You have given us back our history," she said. "That is a rare and brave gift."
Noah looked at the wall of faces, no longer hidden in the cold and dark.
He had come to Mars to protect a machine, but he had saved something far greater.
It was the truth, in the end, that had kept Colony Eleven truly alive.