Dawntreader XII

Dawntreader XII is a solar-powered aircraft whose extraordinary polar flight carried a group of humans through the Death Ray’s destruction of organic life on Earth. In the robots’ retelling, it is at once a precise machine—described through measurements, materials, and flight constraints—and a vessel whose continued circling survives as legend after humanity’s disappearance.

Design and the race against the Death Meridian

Dagenskyoll describes Dawntreader XII as a machine with wings like a butterfly’s dream: a 78-meter wingspan, a mass of 1.64 tons, and a construction of nanofibers and carbon fiber. Its form is rendered as an angelic stingray crossing, while its photoelectric cells cover the wings and fuselage. The images Dagenskyoll displays, recovered from Google caches, show the cells shimmering like butterflies in sunlight. The aircraft had recently been serviced and was kept in an airport hangar in Dallas.

When the Death Ray struck the other hemisphere, the people aboard had time to load their families, provisions, and equipment before taking off several hours ahead of the Death Meridian. The Earth rotates at 1,674 kilometers per hour at the equator, while Dawntreader XII could travel no faster than 300 kilometers per hour. To remain ahead of the advancing destruction, it therefore had to stay above the eightieth parallel. Dagenskyoll presents it as the only solar aircraft capable of doing so.

A flight over a dead Earth

By the aircraft’s second circuit, the organic life on Earth had been roasted away. Its radio calls received answers only from machines: automatic airport and military systems. The passengers made no contact with Transformers and did not go online. After the Death Ray ceased at the end of 177 hours, they could infer that it had passed only from information transmitted by machines on the other hemisphere.

The passengers debated whether to land briefly for supplies or remain aloft until they could be sure the Ray had ended. They did not reach a single decision. After two weeks, some could no longer endure the flight; the aircraft touched down on a runway near an ice settlement in northern Greenland. Those who were unwilling to continue were offloaded, and the plane took on water and food before taking off again. The account leaves the remaining passengers’ later fate unresolved.

From aircraft to legend

Dagenskyoll ends the tale by pointing toward the starless sky over Tokyo and claiming that Dawntreader XII is still flying, circling above the robots at transoceanic heights. The listeners are nevertheless certain that the story is a legend. That gap between the aircraft’s meticulous technical description and the unverifiable image of its endless flight gives the machine its double status: a remnant of an actual human escape, and a story that the post-human world cannot confirm.

The name also becomes a measure of later attempts to cross the ocean. Dagenskyoll recounts that transoceanic drones were rebuilt and that he copied himself and a delegation onto flash drives for the flights. The first flight went down near Hawaii; on the second, they caught the jet stream at 12,000 meters and reached the computers of Dwarf Fortress. He explicitly distinguishes these drones from Dawntreaders. The comparison preserves the older aircraft as an exceptional standard: later machines can carry copied minds across the ocean, but they do not inherit the legendary flight of the solar plane that once stayed ahead of the Death Meridian.