Launch Pad

by Shelly Bryant

  —She didn’t ask because she’d already assumed the malfunction.

  —How do you know that?

  —Do you remember what she said in her previous message?

  —Yes. Of course I care. Do you know how eagerly I wait for all of your messages? Please don’t do anything rash. I would miss you terribly. She seems worried about you.

  —I thought so too, at first.

  —You don’t now?

  —No. She wasn’t worried about me. She was worried about you. It’s you she would miss terribly.

  Both probe and planet remained silent for a long while.

  —Sila?

  —Yes?

  —Does that bother you?

  —Not as much as it would have earlier in my orbit.

  —That’s what I was thinking. Why is that?

  —Look.

  The planet directed the probe’s attention along her forward trajectory. A great distance away, Sila’s star shone against the blackness of space.

  —It is ahead of me now. I’m no longer moving away from its heat. I’ll thaw soon. Better days are coming.

  —Then I have chosen an apt name for you, Sila.

  —What does it mean?

  —In one of the remote parts of my home planet, sila means consciousness, and it also means weather.

  This time, the planet’s laugh had softened.

  JINGLI

  I asked if Jingli was beautiful, but The Merlion was not equipped to answer such questions. It’s a clever machine, but not easily moved. Beauty is a word it knows, but not a concept.

  I asked it to describe her, and it did. I was slow to understand, but finally it struck me. She was like a parasite, a disease that might infect my skin. How could such a creature be sentient? I was incredulous at first. But The Merlion was not programmed for untruths. If it said she was a germ crawling on the skin of my equal in her solar system, then either it was true, or The Merlion was deceived.

  I didn’t think The Merlion easily deceived. Not about this. It was well equipped with knowledge about a wide range of life forms. I learned that its home planet hosted as great a variety of living organisms as I do on my own body. Why a middling-level parasite would be the thing to gain a level of intelligence, I could not understand. That was almost enough to make me believe The Merlion was deluded.

  But then, there were the messages. Koh Jingli was no poet, but she had a generous core—what she and The Merlion both seemed to call her “heart”. The first message that gripped me was, ironically, not meant for me. Of course I care. Do you know how eagerly I wait for all of your messages? Please don’t do anything rash. I would miss you terribly. The fact that she intended those words for The Merlion when she wrote them, instead of for me, stung at first, but after a while, I realised that it was quite endearing all the same. She was well aware that the probe was not equipped with any capacity for feeling, and yet she worried about its emotional stability. What sort of creature would do that? Did the universe really possess a being capable of such irrational compassion?

  I mulled this over as I continued my path towards my star, The Merlion faithfully at my side. Koh Jingli required it to stay with me, transmitting our thoughts to one another along its Breadcrumb Trail at regular intervals.

  Her newest message has just come in. Good morning, Merl, and good morning, Sila. I am happy today. The rainy season has ended. The New Year is coming soon. Everywhere you look, it’s sunshine all day, red lanterns all night, and all you hear are pleasant words from those you meet.

  Her new year approaches, and my star is near enough that I feel its warmth on my skin.

  “Happy New Year, Koh Jingli,” I say, and the whirring sound coming from The Merlion makes me know that the words have been transmitted.

  “Sila?” Merl asks.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve sent your message.”

  “Yes, I know. I recognised the sound of your transmission.”

  “You know my voice so well.”

  “Yes, I suppose I do. You have been with me for more than a season now—and my seasons last very long, according to the measurements of your home planet.”

  “Yes. But, Sila, I hope you won’t be upset by this…”

  “It’s unlikely I’ll be upset,” I say. The light of my star shines fiercely upon me.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed. That’s good. It’s just that…”

  “What is it, Merl? You can tell me.”

  “Well, Jingli’s new year is long past. She won’t receive your message in time. In fact, the new year was past even before I received her message telling us it was coming.”

  I laugh. “What time of year is it now, for her?”

  “The fifth month, according to the same lunar calendar that marked her new year.”

  “Are there any holidays coming up soon?”

  “Yes. There’s a festival.”

  “Maybe my message will suit that just as well. What does this festival commemorate?”

  “A poet.”

  “Was his life a happy one?”

  “I’m not sure, but…”

  “What, Merl?”

  “He didn’t exactly come to a happy end.”

  “What happened?”

  “He committed suicide in an act of protest against a corrupt government. They send boats out every year, with drums keeping a beat for the oarsmen to follow, commemorating the rowers in the poet’s own day who attempted to save him, or at least save his body from desecration by the fish in the river.”

  I laugh again. I look to my star, and then look beyond it to the black void where the farthest reach of my orbit lies in that direction. It is still many months away. So far away that my laughter doubles when I think of it now.

  “Sila?”

  “Yes, Merl?”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s just… Well, I am glad you told me about Jingli’s poet today, Merl.”

  “Should I tell her you like the story of the poet’s suicide?”

  “Yes, please do that. Tell her I like it very much.”

  Taria Soh stepped through the door of her new office on her first official day of work as a volunteer at Terminus. She’d arrived at the space station nearly a month earlier, having the financial resources to take a private transport all the way out to the TransNeptune Region, thanks to the fortune her family had earned when her great grandfather invested in Lydex Mining Corporation in its infancy. No one had foreseen just how big a fortune there was to be made in mining in the Himalia Group, not even her great grandfather. He had even left a status update on his social media page indicating that he hadn’t anticipated the fortune he would eventually make: invested in Lydex today—might as well blow it now than let the divorce lawyers line their pockets with it.

  But when the mineral deposits in the Himalia Group were found to contain enough uranium to power Earth’s entire military fleet for the next thousand years, her great grandfather had made his fortune—and the divorce lawyers theirs, despite the fact that her great grandmother had pleaded with him to drop the proceedings. Great Grandfather Soh had had enough, and wouldn’t budge. He would be perfectly happy with a reduced share of the fortune after the divorce, and it had certainly proved to be more than sufficient. Great Grandfather Soh’s social media status update had been quoted by clever MBA professors ever since, a clear reminder to their students of the principle that, there’s no sure thing, not even failure.

  Taria leaned back in her chair and turned to face the window that looked out on the asteroid belt that lay between Terminus and the distant sun. An occasional asteroid flitted past and, even though she was used to seeing them now, she still followed their trajectory with her eyes.

  It was nine in the morning, atomic time. She would start her session in the HoloBooth in an hour. She had mastered the technical aspects of HoloComms in the past month, but today was the real thing. She would begin her dialogue with a real live alien.

  During her unofficial orientation
and observation sessions over the past few weeks, she had seen almost every extra-terrestrial life form with whom Earthlings were currently in contact. She had prepared herself for a shocking array of life forms, only to be let down when she found that most were not as mind-boggling as she had anticipated. It wasn’t that they were humanoid—in fact, many were not only not bipeds, but completely non-pedal, so there were some real and clear differences. But still, all of the life forms encountered had at least looked like living creatures. Though she had tried to keep her mind away from the term “animals”, it really was the most fitting. The life forms she had seen did not look like amoebae or plant life or rock formations. They looked like creatures made, at some fundamental level, of the same stuff as humans.

  Dr Trajan, the head of the HoloCentre, had offered her an explanation for this. The life forms she met via HoloComms all came from exoplanets that were remarkably similar to Earth. They were roughly the same size and mass, and close to the same distance from their own stars. It made sense, then, that the life forms that inhabited these planets would, at the most basic levels, bear some similarity. It was probably also this similarity in physiology that made this range of life forms sensitive to the radio waves that were transmitted through the Interstellar HoloNetwork, of which the TNR was now officially a part.

  “This range of life forms? Do you mean there are other ranges?” she had asked when Dr Trajan said this.

  “Theoretically. I mean, that’s what I believe. Why shouldn’t there be intelligent life forms made of, say, gaseous molecules or light particles? Just because we have not been able to sense them—and perhaps never will—it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I have a strong feeling that there are intelligent life forms all around us that are beyond our ability to perceive,” he said.

  “That’s a frightening thought.”

  “Is it?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “I find it comforting.”

  She had thought a good deal about that conversation and decided that perhaps Dr Trajan’s take on the issue was the more appropriate one. If there were life forms humans would never be able to perceive, how was that any different from the HoloNet connection she would form with an alien an hour from now? Though she would see and hear the alien’s projected images in hologram form, she would never meet her or him—or any other alien— in person. The distances were just too vast. Since travel near the speed of light had been proven to be impossible for living Earthlings, the hope of reaching other solar systems in her lifetime had been snuffed out. Though Earthlings had joined the HoloNet and could exchange goods, materials and information with life forms from many exoplanets, no human living today would be able to survive long enough to make the interstellar journey. When cryogenics technology had advanced just a little further and become more stable, it might be possible, but that was little more than a theoretical possibility, at least for now.

  Noting the time, she sighed, picked up her pack and left the office. She would arrive at the HoloCentre early, but she didn’t mind that, and she assumed Dr Trajan and his team were so used to her hanging around asking questions that they probably wouldn’t even notice. As she walked the corridors of the space station, she watched through the windows as a barge launched. It looked like it was heading outward, away from the sun. It probably carried the latest exports to exchange with the exoplanets.

  When the door to the HoloCentre slid open, Dr Trajan did not look up. “Hello, Taria,” he said.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “You have an appointment in about thirty-five minutes. To tell the truth, I expected you an hour ago.”

  She laughed.

  “So, are you finally going to tell me who I’ll meet?” she asked.

  “Yes, his file’s on the table,” the doctor replied, pointing to a retina screen embedded in the work station to his left. She tapped the screen and the image of a solar system popped up. The model zoomed closer, until only one planet was visible on the display. The name “Kepler186f” appeared beside it. The planet orbited a red dwarf located about five hundred light years from Earth. With the quicker movement of light waves in the IHN Zone, the Interstellar HoloNetwork could transmit holograms between Earth and Kepler-186f in a matter of minutes. There would be some delay in the conversation, due to the transmission of the data, but it would be nothing like the five hundred years that such a distance between the stars suggested. The IHN Zone had been the one truly ground-breaking discovery Earthlings had made in the past century.

  “He’s Kepleran,” she said.

  “Yes,” Dr Trajan replied. “The head of the Kepler186f facility says he’s a genial fellow, and should be a good communication partner. He’s got rather a lot of experience for such a young chap. We want to pair the two of you for the long term, if you both agree to it. Like you, he is well-versed in many of his planets’ languages.”

  Taria frowned. She found it hard to keep in mind the fact that many languages might exist on other planets, though she had been told many times. She tended to think of other planets as having a single, monolithic culture and a single language, though she knew the notion was a silly one. It struck her as odd that she had such a hard time grasping this, since her own family spoke so many of Earth’s languages—English, Mandarin, Bengali, Hindi, Hokkien, Malay and Cantonese. It did not come from her mixed heritage, like most people presumed. After all, nearly all Singaporeans had a similar linguistic mix in their heritage, though most families had abandoned it generations earlier in favour of English plus a broken form of their “mother tongue”. Taria’s linguistic prowess was more a result of her mother’s academic interest in early Singaporean history, when interracial interaction necessitated multilingualism on a wide scale. Her studies led her to insist on her children learning many languages from an early age—they spoke a different language at home each day of the week. Taria had taken to it naturally and, though she did not inherit her mother’s academic tendencies, she had always worked in fields that allowed her to use her multilingualism. She knew that her language abilities were her biggest asset when it came to interacting with newly encountered races, so she had taken several language courses on the voyage from Earth to the TNR, adding Korean, Spanish, Parsi, German, Urdu, Japanese, Finnish and Arabic to her arsenal, along with Standard IHNese.

  A question appeared on her screen. Are you ready to see the Kepleran? Without a moment’s hesitation, she tapped the yes button.

  The creature that appeared had scaly skin. She noticed that—the texture—even before noticing its colour. (It was muddy brown.) The scales were more fishy than reptilian, and covered all the exposed parts of his body—the three appendages that she could only think of as arms, his head and the three large feet that stuck out beneath the lower cuffs of its garment. At first, she thought the screen was playing tricks on her, but then she noticed that the skin really was luminescent. She realised that she should not have been surprised, since Kepler-186f only received about 32% the level of light Earth did, being that its star was so much dimmer and that it was slightly farther from that star than Earth was from its sun. A single eye blinked out from the Kepleran’s scaled face, situated above a mouth so wide she wondered how the head kept from splitting in two when it opened. As the image began to rotate, she noticed two more eyes, one on either side of its head. The scales glistened as the lighting changed.

  Name: Ragomonak. Equivalent Earth age: 32. Area of specialisation: Kepleran languages and cultural history.

  The sparsity of the information given surprised Taria. “That’s it?” she asked Dr Trajan.

  “Not much, I know. But that’s on purpose. Kepler186f is one of the founding planets in the HoloNet, and the Keplerans are experts in interspecies communication. They were the ones who suggested we handle it this way, letting you and Ragomonak get to know each other and in the course of conversation, learn about each other’s respective species. We are the newcomers here, so we’ll follow their lead. This is standard protocol for introducing one s
pecies to another on the HoloNet. We will try to set up as many of these small scale conversations as we can, to go alongside the formal diplomatic and trade meetings.”

  “What are we supposed to talk about?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything? That’s not much of a guideline.”

  “No, you’re right.” Dr Trajan sighed. “I assume your interest in languages means that you’ve read books and viewed films from various Earth cultures?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Why not start there, then? Tell him about our literature, what that says about us as a race.”

  “But it says so many different things.”

  “Precisely.”

  As Taria settled into her individual HoloBooth, Dr Trajan walked to the door. Turning back, he said, “The technician will not listen in on your conversation, but she will be available if you run into any difficulty with the equipment. She’s in that booth over there.” He pointed to a tinted window. “Just press the red button on the coffee table to your right if you need anything, and she will come to help.”

  “Thank you, Dr Trajan.”

  She leaned back on the sofa. The door clicked shut behind the doctor. A hologram appeared before her. It took her a second to recognise Ragomonak. He looked very different in the loose-fitting, sleeveless garment he wore now. It was pale beige, and seemed to be made of a textile similar to Earth’s linen. It showed off the purple and red glow along the brown scales covering his arms. He stood beside an enormous, backless chair, his mouth opened slightly and turning up on either side.

  “Um…hello,” Taria said, standing up to greet him.

  After a long pause, the hologram started to move. Ragomonak’s mouth flattened, and he said, “Oh, I hope I’ve not frightened you. I was trying to offer an Earth-like smile, but perhaps it doesn’t look natural on my features.”