We Have Always Been Here

by Lena Nguyen

  Daley: We won’t know until we try. Isn’t exploring and recon what it’s for?

  Taban: If there was anything for it to find, it would have found it by now.

  Daley: Well, we know that there is something for it to find, because it caught it on camera. So I’m not really getting your point.

  Taban: I don’t know.

  Daley: What’s wrong? Scared to lose your little friend?

  Taban: Come on, you know it’s not that. It’s just—

  Daley: Wait. Stop.

  [Daley stops in his tracks, looking straight ahead. Behind him, Taban tries to peer over his shoulder. The HARE moves to the side to see what they’re looking at. There’s a small, dark object in the distance, oblong-shaped, metallic, nestled on the ice about 1.5 kilometers away.]

  Daley: . . . What the fuck is that?

  Taban: Is that—that’s—

  Daley: Is that another fucking ship? There are people here!

  Taban: . . .

  Daley: Goddamn it!

  Taban: Daley, wait—

  [Daley begins to run toward the object. The springy ice and lesser gravity cause him to leap through the air in large arcs. After a moment’s hesitation, Taban begins to follow, more clumsily, with the HARE keeping pace.]

  Taban: Your oxygen!

  Daley: What is that? Is that ISF?

  Taban: I don’t know. It looks like . . .

  Daley (breathing heavily): Can’t be settlers. Ship’s too small. When did they get here?

  Taban: Daley, what’s your oxygen at?

  Daley: Never mind. Got to talk to these fuckers. See what they know.

  [A few kilometers to the right of the dark object, the HARE observes a geyser forming a ghostly mushroom against the gray sky. Neither Taban nor Daley seems to notice or look at it.]

  Taban: Slow down. Hang on.

  Daley (slowing slightly): (panting) What?

  Taban: Take a look at it. Doesn’t that look like . . .

  Daley: What?

  Taban: Doesn’t that look like . . . our ship?

  Daley: No.

  [He stops. Taban, unable to stop his momentum completely, tries to tumble to a halt and knocks into the back of Daley’s knees, bringing them both down onto the ice. The rotors in their cybernetic joints whine. The HARE stops beside them as the men try to untangle themselves. They are about one kilometer away from the ship.]

  Daley: That’s not our ship.

  Taban (climbing to his knees): . . . I think it is. Look. The drill . . .

  Daley: That’s some other miner’s ship. It can’t be ours. We’ve been going north this whole time. Straight line. Even if our compasses were off, we haven’t turned.

  Taban: . . . I know . . .

  Daley (beginning to wheeze): So that can’t be ours. That’d be impossible.

  Taban: I know.

  Daley: So whose ship is that?

  HARE (processors whirring): . . .

  Taban: HARE . . . what’s the name of that ship?

  HARE: The ship’s designation is CS Wyvern 7079.

  Taban: Our CS Wyvern 7079?

  HARE: Yes.

  Daley (wheezing harder): That’s not possible. That’s not possible.

  Taban: Okay, Daley, calm down. Breathe. We’ll figure this out.

  Daley: Figure what out? This is fucking laws of physics shit! The most basic shit in existence! There’s nothing to figure out!

  Taban: Calm the fuck down, Daley!

  Daley (pointing): There’s a man there, see? It’s his ship. The bot’s wrong. That’s not our ship, it’s his ship.

  Taban: I don’t see a man.

  Daley: He’s right there. Don’t—you—see—him?

  Taban: No. What man?

  Daley: The—man—right—there!

  [Daley suddenly doubles over on the ice. Taban grabs his shoulder. The recording is filled with the sounds of Daley’s wet breathing and his wrist console’s alarms going off.]

  Taban: Daley? Daley, are you having a panic attack or something? What the fuck is going on?!

  HARE: USER Daley’s oxygen has reached a critical level of 5%.

  Taban: WHAT?

  HARE: In addition, his suit sensors indicate severe tachycardia. Ischemia detected. Myocardial infarction imminent.

  Taban: A heart attack?! Now?

  HARE: Not yet. Soon.

  Taban: FUCK! Okay—uh—okay—Daley, what do I do?

  Daley: (choking) (incoherent)

  Taban: What?!

  HARE (processors whirring): I will procure an auxiliary oxygen tank and medical supplies from the ship: designation Wyvern.

  Taban: Yes! Do that! I shouldn’t take his helmet off for him, should I? He’s trying to take it off!

  HARE (scuttling rapidly toward the ship): That would be inadvisable.

  Taban (in the distance): Oh my God, Daley, please don’t die.

  8.

  In her early teens Park acquired, inexplicably, a sudden and irrational phobia of snakes. The affliction, as her uncle jokingly called it, came out of nowhere: not once in her entire life had Park encountered a real snake. Except for the heavily regulated dog-and-cat trade, there was no animal life at all in the New Diego biodome. No serpents to lash at her ankles in the dismal square of grass that amounted to the city’s only park. Certainly none in her sanitized cube of an apartment. Snakes were a common problem for the Dryads camped out in makeshift villages along the coast—but not for Park.

  “Maybe,” her uncle said around a mouthful of rationed corn, “maybe it’s a fear of phalluses.”

  Park ignored him. He was making a rare reappearance after a long stint in the field; he’d been gone so long that they’d both silently agreed to treat each other with cordial indifference, like two guests staying separately in the same hotel. Glenn, Park’s android chaperone, stood in the kitchen and methodically wiped down plates as they ate.

  “Maybe you experienced a nightmare about a snake,” he told her from the sink. “It could have created a phobia in your subconscious.”

  “Maybe,” Park said unhappily. She hadn’t had a dream she could remember in years.

  “Or it could have been your reading,” Glenn continued—then fell silent when she threw him a glare. Park had downloaded a few books on zoology months ago, it was true, in an attempt to have something to talk about with her uncle upon his imminent return—but such overtures had already failed, and this was not something she wanted him to know. Wisely, Glenn shut up.

  “Snakes ought to be the least of your worries,” Park’s uncle said then. He had the glazed look in his eye that told Park he was downloading the news into his teletooth—the microscopic receiver installed into his back molar, an old-fashioned thing. “It’s the goddamn carbon pirates you should be scared of.”

  Park said nothing, though she and Glenn exchanged a look. The carbon pirates were a non-issue to her—were even a little romantic in a rogueish, urban-legend kind of way. But to her tax-paying uncle, they were like devils in human skin. After the worst of the Comeback had passed, the remaining world governments had signed a treaty agreeing to be taxed for their carbon emissions—a drastic measure intended to lessen the fuel the Comeback seemed to feed on. But as the new countries and governments attempted to recover, redrawing borders, holding onto tenuous regimes, recreating social structures . . . somehow the carbon pirates had sprung up. Saboteurs and freebooters, they were hired clandestinely by political groups to ground rival economies before they could take flight. The carbon pirates snuck into target countries and found ways to enlarge their carbon footprint, which in turn sharpened the steep taxes levied against them—limiting their growth. Citizens like Park’s uncle were convinced that carbon pirates were around them at all times, helping sedition and subversion fester in every corner of the nation.

&
nbsp; Like snakes, Park thought, spearing a chickpea with her fork. In her mind, she knew both she and her uncle thought there were things lurking in the grass when there was nothing really there. But that still didn’t lessen her fear.

  “Things in this place are taking a nosedive,” Park’s uncle grumbled, sitting back as he listened to his favorite political newstream. The teletooth receiver directed the sound waves up his jawbone and into his inner ear, meaning Park didn’t have to hear what he was tuned in to. A relief for her: she didn’t have the emotional energy or patience to absorb his latest streamer’s anger and vitriol. Their hissing paranoia. “I might as well start saving up to get us out of here.”

  “Out of New Diego?” Park said, alarmed. She had never left the biodome before.

  Park’s uncle flicked a glance at her. “Out of Earth,” he said. “We’ve got to join the colonies sometime.”

  Even then, she’d known he wasn’t serious about joining the ISF: he was a devoted zoologist, and there were no native animals to study on Mars or Halla or Luxue. Plus, she was sure they could never afford it—not without being conscripted. But she still put down her fork and said rigidly, “I have no need to go to space.”

  “You don’t know,” her uncle answered grimly. “Everyone will have to go, someday.”

  She hadn’t believed him, not then. Whenever she cared to think about it, all young Park could imagine was space as dark water: lightless and suffocating and cold. A place filled with strange and weak-eyed creatures. The only people who went into space, she thought, were the ones who had nothing left for them on land.

  Every night she made Glenn check the corners of her room for snakes. “The statistical likelihood of being killed by a snake is roughly equivalent to the likelihood of being killed by a fireworks display,” he said as he searched. He was the most advanced model on the market, indistinguishable from a human male at a glance: dark-haired, younger than Sally, slim as all androids were, with a grave and patient face and a pianist’s hands. His face featured, improbably, faint dark circles under his eyes, giving him a look of roving alertness at times. It was one of those touches that android firms loved to boast about, and which so alarmed the humanists.

  “I understand,” Park told him. “Just look, please.”

  “There are only eight thousand venomous snakebites reported every year,” Glenn continued, crouching to gaze under her bed. “Of those, only around three hundred victims die. Of those, many are elderly or immune-compromised.”

  “Thank you,” Park said, through her teeth. “I understand.” Telling Glenn she understood something—even when she didn’t—was usually the best way of getting him to shut up.

  Afterward, he sat by her bed while Park made an attempt at sleep, squirming every time she heard the hiss of controlled rainfall against her window. It gave her a small sense of comfort, knowing that Glenn was standing guard nearby, as Sally had when she was little. If a snake did wend its way into her room, Glenn would kill it in a flash. As her bodyguard, protecting Park was hardwired into his brain.

  Most nights she made him shut his eyes while he sat with her; his pupils tended to glow faintly green in the dark. One night he said, his eyes closed as if in meditation: “It’s unusual for you to be so afraid.”

  Park pushed her face against the rough weave of her blanket. The window was slightly open, and so were the dome’s great biofiltration vents. She could smell the heavy, briny scent of the sea, intermingled with the blast of chlorophyll coming in from the coast: a smell like mown grass and wet pasta. Her body was shedding damp coats of sweat.

  “What do you mean?” Park asked into her pillow. “It’s a basic human trait to feel fear.”

  “Yes,” Glenn said, “but you never did before. As a child, you were never afraid of anything.”

  “People change,” Park said.

  He took some time to process this. “I understand.”

  But did he? Park felt suddenly anxious to reason it out with him, to make him see. She tried for a more logical tactic. “You’re not afraid of anything?”

  “I feel concern,” Glenn replied. “And worry.”

  “Over?”

  “You. And to an extent your uncle, because he provides for you.”

  “I see,” Park said. She kicked her blanket off; it tangled around her feet like hairy rope. A cold white moonlight, muffled eerily by the biodome, fell into the room and against her bed like a surgical glove. When she looked out the window again, Park noticed a pair of seagulls wheeling in the sky outside, beyond the dome’s wall, looking in. Dipping occasionally to ruffle each other’s feathers. Calling to each other. Birds in love, she thought. Nothing that concerned her.

  “Well,” Park said, “try to imagine the very worst thing you worry about. That’s something close to fear.”

  “The very worst thing,” Glenn repeated.

  Park turned away from her window to look at him. “What is it?” she asked.

  He opened his eyes then, despite her order not to. His eyes were as green and chatoyant as a cat’s in the gloom. “I’m afraid of what will happen when I’m gone,” he told her soberly. A sad whirring sound came from his head.

  “Why?” Park asked him, surprised.

  “Because you’ll be afraid,” Glenn told her, his face solemn. “And you’ll be alone.”

  * * *

  —

  After the assault on Holt, the first thing Sagara proposed was suspending all of Park’s patient sessions, effective immediately.

  Park bristled. They were holding a meeting in the ship’s solarium, a room that bathed crewmembers in supplemental vitamin D and artificial sunlight. It was the only room both big enough and private enough to hold all of the meeting’s attendants, which consisted of Wick, Sagara, Boone, and Park. It was also so blazingly bright in the room that Park had to squint, which she was sure lent more hostility to her stare. She didn’t know if that gave her an advantage or not.

  “The entire reason I’m here is to look after the crewmembers’ health,” she said, looking at Sagara, who in turn looked unimpressed. “With Keller frozen, I’m the only one who can monitor their mental states. If you don’t allow me to do that, then you’re wasting every penny the ISF spent in getting me here.”

  “If we don’t stop this phenomenon from spreading,” Sagara retorted, “then everyone on this ship might die.”

  There was a tense little silence at that. Boone, who was slouching with his arms crossed by the door, scoffed and looked away. He hadn’t met Park’s eye since they’d wheeled Holt’s charred body into the medical bay.

  “It’s the safest option,” Sagara continued finally, his voice calm. But he glared at Park; she had the distinct feeling that he blamed her for everything that was happening. “Don’t you understand that? We don’t have any idea how this affliction spreads—”

  “We don’t know if it’s spreading at all,” Park shot back—even though she was the one who had first told Wick that the incidents were almost certainly related. “Or if it’s even an affliction. It’s all theoretical: we’re making so many assumptions in treating it like it’s some contagious disease. What if it’s not? We know almost nothing about what’s really going on. Which is why we need to observe all of the crewmembers closely—”

  “And we will,” Sagara said. “Safely and remotely. But the patient sessions open up all kinds of possibilities for cross-contamination, mental pollution. We need to stop shuttling everyone into that space until we can understand what causes the phenomenon. And stopping the sessions reduces the chances of you catching it as well.”

  She did not believe for an instant that Sagara was concerned for her wellbeing—that he was stopping her from doing her job because he was afraid she might catch this theoretical contagion. Even if she couldn’t read his face clearly, she sensed his hard assessment of her, his probing glances. More than likely he thought Park�
��s sessions were causing the nightmares somehow. He wanted to put a stop to it. But what did he mean when he said he could observe the crewmembers remotely?

  Before she could ask, Sagara added, “I thought I was doing you a favor. Do you think you’re even capable of conducting all of the patient sessions alone?”

  That silenced her. Park felt both affront and guilt reverberating through her chest like her heart was a clanged bell. Truth be told, she didn’t think she could shoulder the burden of the ship’s nine remaining minds all on her own. Didn’t believe that she could interact with all of those people, process all of those worries and neuroses and fears, without herself going mad. She had never trained for this—had never expected to take on a role beyond that of an observer, a monitor. And she just plain wasn’t like Keller. Not only in that she lacked all of the older woman’s experience, her capabilities—but also because she was not a person who felt equipped to help other people. The thought of now being the Deucalion’s only psychologist—or its last sane person—filled her with a throat-aching terror.

  But she wasn’t about to let Sagara know that.

  “I’m perfectly capable of handling anything the mission requires me to,” she told him, coldly professional. “It’s why ISF hired me.”

  Sagara did not look convinced.

  Wick, on the other hand, looked pensive. “I’ll take the matter under advisement,” he said, which meant he would try to ask ISF what to do. It was too bad the solar storm was still raging, Park thought bitterly; she had already tried to do the same thing herself. Multiple times.

  “I don’t understand why you’re targeting me,” she said to Sagara, unwilling to let the topic go. “If you think even the patient sessions are dangerous, then why aren’t you taking away Boone’s gun?”

  “He doesn’t have the authority to do that,” Boone growled, speaking up for the first time.

  “I’m not targeting anyone,” Sagara added, ignoring him. “You just happen to be the ship’s primary psychologist now, so you’re the one affected by the decision. I wonder why you take it so personally.”