Gliese 581

by Christine D. Shuck

  MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED

  BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON DRENKOWSKI, SARRA

  03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL

  SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 10:18 MINUTES

  Sarra, she and Kit had both come from Chicago, and had been friends for years. He remembered that from training. That and her practical jokes. She was also a veterinarian and well-versed in the artificial wombs they had on board, having helped develop them.

  He leaned for a moment on the pod he had just initiated. His eyelids felt heavy and his legs and arms were like lead weights. He closed his eyes, just for one sweet blessed moment. He was so tired.

  Falling against the pod was what jerked Daniel back to consciousness. The knife slammed into the meat of his shoulder, then ripped loose and fell to the floor with a dull clang. The shock of the impact was enough to pull him back to present, more awake than ever, and lucid, for the moment. He entered the code on the pod in front of him and then stared dumbfounded at the screen.

  MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED

  BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON RUBINOWITZ, LITA

  03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL

  SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 10:05 MINUTES

  How could over thirteen seconds have elapsed since the last pod? He had only closed his eyes for a second! He had just over ten minutes to go, and countless pods left. He continued to move down the line of pods, inputting the emergency revival sequence and moving on as soon as he saw the familiar words begin to scroll on the screen.

  He was so cold. The world swam around him, dimming to gray splotches when he moved his head too quickly.

  He still needed to reach Sam. He had to keep going. All of these people, they needed him to save them. He peered at the display and slowly entered the code.

  MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED

  BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON DUNN-EDMONDS, SIMON

  03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL

  SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 10:01 MINUTES

  This one was a little boy. The name that flashed across the screen, Dunn-Edmonds—that was Kevin’s kid. Thank God. Daniel’s mind flashed to a memory of Toby’s face smiling, framed in tow-headed curls. His heart thumped harder, the loss of his son knifed deeper into him. How could he have left him? If he had only known what was to come, what the fates of those who had been left behind would be. If only he had known. But how could he? How could any of them have known?

  The ‘would haves’ and ‘should haves’ had been driving him nuts for over a year now. He had no right to miss him, no right to call Toby his son. What kind of man leaves it to another to raise his son? What kind of man has an affair with his brother’s wife?

  “You are a piece of shit, Medry.” Daniel muttered out loud.

  Janine’s specter nodded, smirking as if she had been waiting for him to figure this out all along. Who was he to think he could save these people? He was a fuck-up of the worst degree. He shook his head, earning himself another wave of dizziness.

  “Piece of shit or not, you are all they have right now, so suck it up.”

  He moved to the next pod and keyed in the sequence.

  MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIATED

  BEGIN EMERGENCY REVIVAL SEQUENCE ON LOWRY, ELLEN

  03:58 MINUTES UNTIL REVIVAL

  SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 9:56 MINUTES

  Was this Lowry’s wife? She looked young, far younger than Nagel. He thought of Nagel, uptight, by the rules, the ‘Ponics deck a far different place under his supervision. Especially for those used to Sam’s management style.

  The wound in his shoulder was worse with the knife out. Six more pods on this row to go, they all seemed to blur together. His foot slipped and he fell hard. He was running out of time. Worse yet, his body was running out of blood.

  Cape Canaveral

  “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all of living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” – Albert Einstein

  Date: 11.23.2097

  Earth – New York City, New York

  “I don’t care what the ads say,” Jennifer Zradce tossed the strip of NearBacon down on the plate; “This tastes disgusting.”

  Nathan Zradce, who had been doing his best to hide his own look of revulsion at the taste of the faux pig meat, couldn’t help but agree. He had managed to eat half of the strip before setting it down and digging into the eggs and toast.

  The dream still tugged at the edges of his memory, although he was trying desperately to forget it. Cities filled with the dead, silent, except for clouds of crows feasting on the remains. He pushed the memory back down.

  “Well, we tried it.” He smiled at his wife, “And now we can feed it to the section supe’s cat.”

  The section superintendent who managed the East Ground floor section was an older woman with three grown children. She had worked and lived in the same apartment for over 35 years. Each floor of the megaplex had four superintendents assigned to it, and the building clawed its way past low-hanging clouds, nearly one hundred stories tall. It occupied over three blocks of real estate in New York City, making its footprint one of the biggest of its kind in a city filled with enormous skyscrapers. With over four hundred units per level, the building was home to nearly eighty thousand people.

  “Any news on the housing application?” Jennifer asked, pushing her egg around on her plate.

  Nathan had dreaded this question and deflected it by fiddling with the remote, dimming the lights accidentally as he keyed in the sequence to activate the newsvid.

  “Damn this thing,” he complained, “I want to hear the news.”

  He ignored his wife’s unhappy stare and clicked on the newsvid. Their apartment was so small that the screen didn’t occupy a full wall, merely a swath of space no larger than a medium-sized mirror.

  Jennifer hated the morning anchor, but she said nothing, watching as the screen swept over the images of thousands of dead pigs burning.

  “The latest round of PCV-6 has left millions of swine dead or dying,” the newscaster chirped, a smile permanently plastered to her face. “Scientists continue to work on this pressing issue while livestock prices soar in the Americas to over 65 Ameros per pound. And in response, shares in NearBacon have increased by 25 percent, despite a recent spate of complaints by consumers...”

  As the news anchor continued her story, he could not help but remember more of the dream. There was a room filled with plants, all glistening silver with frost, and the greenery dead or dying.

  “God, the news is always so damned depressing.” He said, clicking to a different newsfeed.

  “Nathan,” Jennifer’s voice was insistent, “we were denied again, weren’t we?”

  Nathan pressed the button and the newsvid winked off. He sighed, he had wanted to surprise her. Take her for a picnic at the lake in the evening, ask her if she was ready for a completely different sunset, and then show it to her. But Jennifer was persistent, if she thought he was holding out on her, she would worry at him until he spilled his guts.

  “We were. I got the email last week and didn’t want to tell you, and then this came in.”

  He pulled the letter out of his pocket. An honest-to-god printed on paper, letter that accepted both of them into the final phase of the selection process. He slapped it down on the table and leaned back to watch his wife’s face.

  Jennifer stared at the folded paper for a moment, puzzled, and then slowly reached out, unfolding it, her mouth set.

  Nathan watched as her eyes scanned the page and her expression changed from one of dissatisfaction to one of shock.

  “Oh my god,” J
ennifer’s words had deserted her for once. “Oh my god, Nathan, we have been accepted!”

  “The final phase, it isn’t a for sure, but we go for training in six weeks.”

  He smiled at her. He knew she had been dreaming of something, anything, which would create an escape for them from this tiny apartment which was comprised of just 350 square feet. She had talked often of having children, which didn’t move him as much as it did her. Children were often bewildering, and in the case of his childhood, disappointing to parents. He couldn’t understand the underlying need she had to make more little creatures to fill up an already full world.

  Despite their both holding a multitude of degrees between them, the newly instituted New York birth lottery simply hadn’t come through for them. Not for the past three years’ worth of applications. If they had a child, they would face such steep annual fines, as well as being cramped all together in this tiny apartment that they would barely be able to make ends meet. And forget being able to afford daycare or a good school.

  Jennifer had insisted that they try for the Gliese program and sent in their application as soon as the invitation to apply had gone out. She had gushed about it, her eyes filled with visions of an empty world that had no limitations on the amount of space or children.

  Jennifer jumped off of her stool then, tackling Nathan with a crushing hug.

  “Final phase! We can do it Nathan! We can make the final cut!” She pulled back, “Oh my god! Six weeks! I have to put in my notice, and figure out what to pack, and, and...”

  She planted a kiss on his lips before reaching for her tablet to begin making a list of tasks. Nathan suppressed a laugh; his wife was a planner through and through.

  Six weeks later they arrived at Cape Canaveral’s front gates. The ride from New York had been bumpy, a storm was barreling in from the Midwestern states, and the skies had been dark and gray until they flew south far enough to escape the edges of the storm. Standing there, with their bags, the sky was clear and had just a slight nip to the air. It was early though, just past seven in the morning, and the temperature was slated to rise to 23º Celsius by noon.

  They stood in a line of people slowly advancing through the gates of the Cape as they were processed through the Intake Center. There they provided the letter, scanned their National ID chips, and were issued a room number and a ticket for their uniforms.

  An hour after arriving at the Cape, Nathan scanned his wrist over the chip reader at their room door. The room was literally half the size of their entire apartment and Jennifer giggled with excitement.

  “Nathan, look, we even have our own bathroom, and I swear it is larger than the one back home!” She danced about the room before flopping down on the double bed. “I just can’t believe we are here!”

  The day was filled with orientation, a tour of the facility, and then a mock-up of Calypso, a full-size replica of the ship that was under construction in space, with the final touches and equipment testing currently underway. That evening, in the common rooms, they were encouraged to meet their fellow candidates.

  Jennifer, who had haunted the forum boards for months, had used a password provided in the letter to join the Final Stage community board online and befriend several other of the attendees. They came from all points of the globe, but in particular, she had been talking with the finalists from the Reformed United States and the Alaskan Republic, and she pulled Nathan to the group as soon as they stepped into one of the large rooms.

  “Jennifer! Hey!” a dark-haired woman stood up and waved her over, “You look just like your photo, I’d recognize you anywhere!”

  Nathan followed a few paces behind his wife. Social situations weren’t really his thing. He would talk if someone spoke to him, but he never started a conversation, unlike his social butterfly of a wife.

  “Sam! Oh my goodness, it is so great to finally meet you!” Jennifer gushed, pulling the woman into a quick hug before turning back to her husband. “Nathan, this is Samantha Sydan, and,” she turned back to the group, eyes narrowing in concentration as she took in the faces, “Let’s see, you must be Daniel Medry, and you have got to be Mike Deekins, and you,” she frowned in concentration, “You are Kit Tanner, right?”

  The people identified laughed and nodded as everyone shook hands.

  Nathan remembered Jennifer talking about Samantha Sydan. Samantha’s older brother was the captain of a supply ship that had just returned from a mission to the Mars colony, ferrying supplies and colonists to the Huygens Outpost. Jennifer had been carrying on endlessly about the folks she had met online, to the point that Nathan felt as if he knew them too. The evenings in their small apartment had been filled with monologues from Jennifer on the different people and their skill brackets as she learned as much as she could about what the Selection Committee was looking for in potential candidates.

  Still, Nathan wished he was back in their room. This space was crowded, and he felt completely out of his element, but escape was not an option at the moment. Soon they were seated, with drinks in hand, and learning more about the people who they might soon be living and working with. As the drinks flowed and the sun set in the sky outside of the room, the question finally worked its way around the group.

  “So why do you want to go to Zarmina’s World?” Kit Tanner, a petite woman in her late 20s asked.

  Daniel Medry, who had been making subtle overtures towards Sam Sydan, stopped and thought a moment before leaning forward, a smile on his lips.

  “Let’s see, a completely new world, with breathable air and actual atmosphere where I could spend the rest of my life exploring and never run out of places to go. What’s not to like about that?”

  Mike Deekins leered at Kit Tanner, “If you are going there, I’m on board, darlin’.” Kit rolled her eyes and turned to Jennifer.

  “What about you, Jennifer?”

  Nathan watched his wife’s face turn dreamy, “Space to move and live. No limits on reproduction or those high annual fines that New York instituted last year.”

  Several of them groaned.

  “I heard about that,” Sam said, shaking her head, “That’s just awful!”

  Jennifer nodded, “And besides that, I’m a civil and mechanical engineer. The most frustrating thing about it is that I don’t have space to plan a system that would work. I want to plot out the first colony, make it sustainable, expandable, and well-thought out. The thought of putting something together that doesn’t include having to work around existing outdated systems is so appealing I can’t even begin to express it!”

  Sam grinned, “Don’t I know it! I studied civil engineering as well, but I love botany and mycology. Just imagine the discoveries we will make on a new planet with different plant life! I worked for the Stamets Foundation during my sophomore year, and the possible applications of some of the fungal life that D.O.V.E. continues to report on are mind-blowing!”

  Mike Deekins, who insisted everyone call him “Deeks” leaned forward, “Let’s face it, we are all nerds and dreamers. I hope I end up in the final round due to my knowledge of the Cryo systems, but my true loves are sailing and marine biology. Just imagine what is going on in the Mediterre Sea.”

  Kit interrupted, “Did they settle on that name?”

  Deeks shrugged, “When we get there, I figure it is all up for grabs, but the sea is in a similar shape, complete with a peninsula that looks a lot like Italy. Anyway, several of the D.O.V.E. probes caught movement on a large scale, possibly a whale? Once I get there, I’m heading south and establishing an outpost on the coast. We will have the tech for a fair-sized submersible as well as a survey ship.” He grinned, “And like Jennifer said, all the room in the world. No bumping elbows or living in a tiny place, even though we have far less of that in the Alaskan Republic than you do down here in the R.U.S.”

  “What about you, Nathan?” Kit Tanner’s voice turned the group’s attention to him.

  He had been happy sitting quietly, listening to the others, but now
the spotlight was on him.

  “Um, well...”

  He had filled out the forms, submitted to the intrusive questioning, jumped through all of the hoops, and gotten to a finalist position without having to answer this question. And for a moment, he had no idea of what to say. The truth was he didn’t particularly care either way. He had met Jennifer in college, they had gotten along well, and eventually that had led to an engagement and low-key wedding in a tiny garden in Manhattan with a small handful of friends and family. All her friends and her family, since his adoptive parents had died a few years earlier and he didn’t really know how to make friends.

  Marrying Jennifer, applying for the Gliese mission, eventually planning for kids and a life on a new world – these were all Jennifer’s dreams. He was just along for the ride. He had no roots, no friends or family he called his own, and if Jennifer wanted to go, who was he to say no?

  They were all staring at him, waiting for him to gush about exploring mountain ranges, deep seas, or cataloguing alien plant life. But for him, one place was pretty much the same as any other, alien life forms or no.

  “I’m a closet artist,” he lied glibly, “I can’t wait to draw the skies of Zarmina’s World, and the plant life too. It’s going to be amazing!”

  He ignored Jennifer’s speculative stare. He couldn’t avoid her questions later that night in bed.

  “Nathan, why do you really want to go to Zarmina’s World?” she asked in the darkness of their room hours later.

  He lied again, thankful for the darkness so that he didn’t have her staring at him and seeing through his lies.

  “Why, children of course. We can have plenty of them, just like we have always wanted.”

  Jennifer said nothing. Later, after his breathing evened and dropped noticeably into sleep, Jennifer Zradce lay there thinking. She knew the closet artist line was bullshit and Nathan had never talked about having kids, or wanting much of anything. So why did he want to go to Zarmina’s World? She had never really stopped to think about it, but now that she did, she realized that Nathan had never really seemed excited about it. Not that he had been against it, but as with most things, he wasn’t enthusiastic about much of anything. He just sort of went with the flow. The apartment had been her choice, just like the wedding venue, the applications for new housing, and the race to a new world.