Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

by Temi Oh

  Years ago, Astrid had been tasked with researching Tessa Dalton for a history paper. It had been a challenge, because history did not have much to say about her even though she had, essentially, discovered Terra-Two.

  Tessa published a single paper, proposing the existence of an extrasolar planet circling Dalton’s binary system. Articles supporting and disputing the notion trickled out, but interest in the stars waned until the world’s first deep-space telescope broadcast low-resolution images of Terra-Two. Of course, back then, it had not been called ‘Terra-Two’. It was D56A, just another extrasolar planet in a ‘goldilocks zone’ – an area close enough to its suns’ warmth to sustain life but not so near that it couldn’t thrive.

  After the Second World War, UK aircraft manufacturers, like those in the USSR and the United States, had turned their efforts to aerospace engineering. Two decades later, the British Interplanetary Society launched four unmanned satellites at the sun’s nearest stellar neighbours. The initial objective was to examine these solar systems for any signs of life. The project was called Daedalus, and, by all accounts, it was a success. Findings suggested that Tessa Dalton’s planet was terrestrial, with a mass 0.6 that of the Earth’s, and could potentially sustain life. D56A became the focus of attention from astronomical institutions worldwide. It was circled by Soviet satellites in the 80s and was the landing site of NASA and JAXA rovers by the end of that century.

  The papers had dubbed D56A ‘Earth-Two’ or ‘Terra-Two’. Some people sported bumper stickers with twin Earths locked together in a peace sign. The Beach Boys released a single titled ‘Another Earth, Another Chance’, which stayed at number one the entire summer and became the informal motto of the Off-World Colonization Programme.

  The year that Astrid was born, the International Astronomical Union held a summit. They reviewed all the data collected in the past forty years about D56A, and after a month of consultations, they tentatively declared the planet habitable. According to most accounts, this was when the race to Terra-Two really began. Both NASA and UKSA suspended their space shuttle programmes indefinitely and swore to send a crew to Terra-Two before 2020.

  Just before the 2008 financial crisis, China’s National Space Administration had launched a generation ship to the nearby star system. It was slated to reach Terra-Two by 2120. And although the mission was famously unsuccessful, it spurred engineers on every continent to pioneer the fastest way to leave the solar system.

  The UK’s programme would not have been possible without the continual funding of the Dalton estate, and corporations like it. In fact, it was the group’s current owner, aristocratic billionaire edmond Dalton, who had famously claimed, ‘the Americans got a rock, we’ll get a planet.’

  During Tessa Dalton’s lifetime, historians claimed, there had been no way for her to predict the presence of an extrasolar planet, let alone a habitable one. And yet, she had. Her diaries and letters home were filled with tales of ‘the beautiful planet’. She described the saltwater lakes and green lagoons, the flourishing plant life and peaceful animals. The soil, she said, was untouched by human feet. Every night she felt the pull of it. She longed to die under the light of its suns but she had been born a century too soon. In 1932, her family committed her to St Augustine’s psychiatric hospital in Kent.

  The patients on her ward claimed that she spoke incessantly about another, better world and infected the other women with hope. The halls began to echo with their sobs. ‘Fernweh’, the doctors called it, or far-sickness. The patients were sick for somewhere they had never travelled. Would never travel.

  Tessa was confined to a windowless room, but she managed to escape. One February night, she made it out into the frosted grounds. She had trampled an erratic path through the long grass, footprints in the snow leading to the fountain in the middle of the garden. What had she been thinking? Astrid always wondered. Was she a madwoman or a prophet? Perhaps she believed everything she had promised those far-sick girls; that to get to Terra-Two all they needed was hope. But she died instead. The staff found her floating in the fountain the next morning, her eyes unblinking, her body blue.

  By the time Astrid finished reading, the lights in the corridor had dimmed and she could tell that the other members of her crew were asleep. She shut the computer and rubbed the blue shadows the light bleached behind her eyelids. Before she fell asleep that night, she saw Dalton’s empty quad as it might have looked that night, the grass bleached white as bone by the June sun. The black patch of soil where Tessa Dalton’s feet had been.

  ELIOT

  19.06.12

  YEARS AGO, WHEN ARA had been struck with appendicitis, Eliot had sat by her bedside the entire twelve hours it took for the surgeons to finally confirm the diagnosis. He’d watched the doctors come in and out of the infirmary, draw her blood, press down on her stomach and ask, ‘How much does it hurt? From one to ten – ten being the worst?’

  ‘Eight,’ Ara had said each time, ‘and a half . . .’

  Later on, she told Eliot that she had lied. It had been the worst pain she had ever felt, but she’d been too afraid to tempt fate and say ‘ten’ in case it grew any worse. She said that it hurt too much to move. Hurt too much to cry. Hurt too much to breathe except for in careful shallow sips. She’d said, ‘I just wanted to rip myself open and tear it out. Whatever was broken.’

  Eliot hurt like that now, all the time. One part of him couldn’t wait for the day he awoke and remembering that Ara was dead didn’t hit him like a sick surprise. But another part of him never wanted to get used to living without her.

  ‘That’s interesting to me,’ said Dr Golinsky, ‘that when I asked you to describe pain, you used Ara as a reference.’ Eliot was in the ship’s infirmary with her. The psychological team on the ground had given him a thorough assessment before the launch, and scheduled twice-weekly counselling sessions with Dr Golinsky. Eliot dreaded the meetings.

  ‘Eliot,’ the doctor asked after a minute of silence. ‘I can’t help you if you don’t talk at all.’

  ‘I don’t think you can help me,’ he said, his eyes drifting to a poster of the human skeleton above her head. It was more artistic than anatomical, the bones delicate and beautiful as egg-shells.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘It’s been five weeks since she died and I feel as if it’s getting worse,’ Eliot said.

  ‘Are you talking about the nightmares?’

  ‘I’m talking about everything.’ Eliot gritted his teeth. ‘I keep checking my emails to see if I got one from her. Look around the table for her face, waiting for her to roll her eyes every time someone says something funny.’

  ‘Well,’ Fae said, ‘it might help if you think of grief like a physical injury. That it might take a long time to heal, that it will happen in small increments—’

  The bell rang for dinner, and Eliot felt an answering rumble in his stomach.

  ‘Would you look at the time,’ Fae said with a theatrical gasp. She glanced at the digital face of her watch.

  ‘Can I go?’ Eliot asked, already standing.

  ‘Yes, but it’s vital that you turn up on time for our next session, otherwise I can’t give you the full forty minutes. And don’t forget to take your vitamin D tablets.’ She indicated a blister pack of them on the counter. ‘Your latest blood tests flagged a deficiency.’

  When Eliot left the infirmary, he bumped into Astrid and Commander Sheppard talking in the narrow corridor as they together headed towards the kitchen, ‘. . . turns out the rumours were right,’ Astrid was saying, ‘apparently Tessa Dalton’s statue was stolen.’

  ‘It’s not as dramatic as it seems, though.’ Sheppard waved dismissively. ‘It was just a New Creationist stunt.’

  ‘New Creationist?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.’

  The air in the kitchen was steamy and thick with a school-dinner smell of vegetable stock cubes and rehydrated meat.

  ‘Smells good,’ Sheppard announced as h
e entered, nodding at Juno, who was bent over the counter island at the far end.

  ‘Don’t get too excited.’ Harry slammed forks down on the table at intervals. ‘It’s only macro.’

  Eliot’s stomach was already beginning to turn at the smell of macronutrient broth, the thick, bland porridge-like substance served for either lunch or dinner every other day. They tried to improve the taste by adding spices or stock cubes, but there were only so many times Eliot could eat the same meal without growing to despise it.

  ‘Poppy said she would cut up the leftover potatoes and make chips today,’ Astrid said as she sat down.

  ‘Well, Poppy isn’t here, is she,’ Harry said.

  ‘Where is she?’ Juno asked. ‘This is the third time she’s missed dinner this week.’

  ‘I’d bet you a grand she’s sleeping,’ Harry said.

  ‘Everyone has to eat dinner together,’ Juno said. ‘That’s the rule. We weren’t allowed to stay in bed at Dalton.’

  ‘We weren’t eating slime every day at Dalton,’ Harry muttered.

  ‘Every fifth meal,’ Eliot corrected quietly.

  ‘This mission is not the same as school,’ Commander Sheppard said, moving to the head of the table. ‘You are all adults now, professionals, and you have more freedom.’

  ‘But,’ Juno said, ‘eating together is an important part of team-building and morale. We’re a family now. It’s important for us to spend regular recreational time together.’

  ‘All right; cool it, Juma.’ Harry put the last glass down on the table. ‘You sound like you’re reading straight from a psych manual. She says she’s ill.’

  ‘She’s not,’ Juno said. ‘Eliot was actually ill. For two weeks, with spacesickness, and yet he cleaned and cooked and came to tutorials just like everyone else.’

  Eliot winced at the memory of those interminable days of nausea. His head still spun like a fishbowl if he stood up too quickly, his body hungover and heavy in the mornings.

  ‘Poppy’s been suffering with migraines,’ Dr Golinsky said gently. ‘That’s real.’

  ‘But the thing is . . .’ Juno continued, ‘someone has to do her chores.’

  ‘Yeah, us,’ Harry said, folding his arms. ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Look what I found.’ Astrid held up two tin cans. ‘Extra rations of peaches. We can have them for dessert. That’ll make a nice change.’ They sat in their usual positions around the table, the senior crew on one side and the four Betas on the other. Eliot was on the corner of the table. He stirred his broth. Their meals were carefully calculated to keep them at an optimum weight and contained the right balance of ingredients to suit their particular nutritional needs.

  As Juno passed around a bowl of bread, Eliot’s eyes drifted towards the window, where he thought that, for just a second, his reflection had changed.

  ‘Who are the New Creationists?’ Astrid asked over the clinking of cutlery as everyone began to eat.

  ‘I actually thought you might know a little about them,’ said Commander Sheppard.

  ‘Why?’ Astrid asked.

  ‘Because they’re some weird Christian sect,’ Harry said.

  ‘They claim they’re Christians,’ Juno said, leaning forwards and making dramatic air-quotes, ‘but they’re some kind of doomsday cult.’

  ‘Sounds like the same thing to me,’ Cai said. He smiled. Juno did not.

  The short moment of tension was diffused by the rush of feet up the hall, and they all turned as Jesse burst into the room, his eyes wide as if he was expecting a slap. He looked quickly at Juno, then said, ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’

  ‘Only by a few minutes,’ Dr Golinsky said, and gestured towards his bowl. He wavered for a moment and then came to sit between Eliot and Juno, still breathing hard.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Sheppard asked.

  ‘The greenhouse. I lost track of time.’

  ‘Cai tells me you’ve been doing great work up there.’

  ‘Does that mean we’ll be having something other than canned food and macronutrient broth soon?’ Harry asked.

  ‘In a few weeks,’ Cai replied.

  ‘Why are they a cult?’ Astrid asked.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jesse looked up at her.

  ‘Apparently a group called the New Creationists stole the statue of Tessa Dalton from the quad back at school.’

  ‘The New Creationists?’ Jesse repeated. ‘Even their name sounds like a cult. Like a group of Bible-thumping Americans who burn copies of On the Origin Of Species.’

  ‘They are American,’ Fae said, ‘and they have a point. I’m sure you’d agree, Commander. They talk about the holes being torn in the ozone layer, ice caps melting, all the bees disappearing and the extreme weather we’ve been having. That bit is true, you know. Climate change is taking place before our eyes and about twenty years ago was the time to do something about it. They believe it’s not a coincidence that Terra-Two appeared right now, right in this century when we need it. And sometimes I’m inclined to agree.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Commander Sheppard put his spoon down. ‘They do have a point, but I don’t approve of their ways of getting their message out there. Stealing the statue is an act of vandalism.’

  ‘No.’ Juno shook her head. ‘They don’t think that Terra-Two is a second chance. They think that it’s the new Eden. Like the Garden of Eden. Like in the Bible. They think that only a few chosen people are destined to go there.’

  ‘I suppose that’s quite a whimsical comparison . . .’ Fae said. ‘One could see it that way. It’s untouched. Fresh water and clean air. No war. No history. And in a way, we have been chosen.’

  ‘Okay,’ Harry threw his hands up in mock surrender. ‘I don’t see why we need to get all religious about this. We – humans – chose who would go. We—’ he waved at the party sat around the table, ‘were picked because we’re qualified. Not because of destiny or God or anything. Think about it: there’s no intelligent life on that planet, in the whole solar system, in fact. From where I’m sitting, consciousness seems like a pretty rare thing. Isn’t it our job to spread our ideas, our technology, our humanity as far across this empty space as possible? I don’t see why you’re so caught up on making Terra better; why can’t we just make it an-other? Another Earth, another Britain, another empire.’

  Juno shuddered.

  ‘I hope you’ve realized,’ said Jesse, ‘that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty means that no one country is allowed to own Terra-Two. The moon doesn’t belong to the Americans and the Russians don’t own Mars. Assuming we are the first to land on T2, it won’t belong to Britain. It will be international commons. “The province of all mankind”.’

  ‘I know. I’m just saying,’ Harry continued, ‘that everyone says that humans are the problem, that we destroy everything we touch, but we’re creative and resourceful. We survive in the most inhospitable environments – like out here! – we build things out of nothing, we create diamonds in labs and we eradicated smallpox. We’re amazing. We’re fucking brilliant. We’ll make Terra-Two better just by being there. We’ll bring it to life. Intelligent life.’

  Eliot saw it again, then. Some shape in the darkness behind the window. At first it looked like his own reflection but the second time he looked . . .

  ‘Eliot?’ Dr Golinsky’s eyes followed his to the window. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh . . . I just—’ he stared back at his bowl. ‘I thought I saw something, that’s all. ‘

  He didn’t have to raise his spoon to his mouth to know that he couldn’t eat any more, and when he glanced up again he saw her. Ara. She was floating behind the glass, her lips stained black, her eyes half-open and sightless.

  It was all Eliot could do not to cry out in horror. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the image would disappear. His heart was tight as a fist in his chest and the blood drained from his head.

  ‘Eliot?’ It was Dr Golinsky’s voice, but he was too scared to look up at her, in case he might have to see that face aga
in, that terrible face. ‘Eliot, are you okay?’

  He didn’t remember getting up from the table, only he must have because the next thing he knew he was running down the corridor. He made it to the bathroom just in time to vomit in the sink. Gazing at the sludge of macro broth curdled with bile as it washed down the plughole, Eliot knew that he would never be able to stomach it again.

  He sank down onto the floor, his head pressed against his knees, shaking all over, his heart galloping behind his ribs.

  A few minutes later, the door creaked open. Eliot dreaded looking up to find the confused face of one of his crew members. How could he explain to Juno or Harry what was wrong with him? He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Go away,’ he hissed, but a cold hand touched his. For just a second, he thought it might be Ara, as cold as she had been in his arms when he’d pulled her out of the river and clung to her until the ambulance came.

  When he opened his eyes, Cai was crouching down beside him. ‘It’s okay,’ he said, his stained fingers tight on Eliot’s skin. ‘It’s okay.’ He said it again in a soft voice that Eliot had never heard him use before.

  ‘What is okay?’ Eliot heard himself say when he could finally speak.

  Cai leant back on his feet, the bones in his thighs making a sharp line through his trousers. ‘When I was eleven, my father hanged himself in the downstairs bathroom. Tied an extension cable around his neck and the exposed piping in the ceiling and then let go.’

  Eliot shuddered.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t apologize,’ Cai said. ‘You can’t hold onto these things.’ He took a pen out of his pocket and pulled back a sleeve, exposing the olive skin on his wrist. He began to draw a hexagon, some bent lines, NH2, OH, OH, all the blue veins in his arm protruding. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  ‘No, it looks like some molecule . . . ?’

  ‘Dopamine,’ Cai said. ‘And this?’ He quickly sketched another molecule.