The Wanderers

by Meg Howrey

The alien is having a hard time. He is on a string, not strapped in, and appears to be doing an alien version of the St. Vitus dance. Someone in Prime has humorously outfitted the little green man with his own aqua blue Prime Space spacesuit, complete with Prime Space insignia.

  Helen’s eyes move from the alien to the flow of information tracking across the faceplate of her helmet. The g-forces are now pushing her eyeballs back into her head a bit, so this is tricky, but she manages. She can push enough air out of her lungs to communicate, confirming data back to Mission Control.

  Prime Space has pulled out all the stops for the Eidolon launch. They’ve been in sim mode since the five a.m. wake-up call. They had sims for when they waved good-bye to their families and colleagues from behind the sealed partition (Helen has no idea if that was her daughter or a simulated version of her daughter) and they had sims for when they enacted various departing rituals including the old Russian one of peeing on the right tire of the vehicle taking them to the launch pad—in Helen’s case, emptying a vial of urine on the tire—very much a real tire and real urine, although the landscape outside the truck was virtual. They had sims for a long elevator ascent to their craft. Considering that Primitus was sitting on a platform in the desert, and not atop the Manus V, the noise and motion of the “elevator” was especially impressive.

  And all along, Helen has been asking herself, Does it feel real? Which is not a question she would be asking if it were real, and so the answer, on some level, must be no.

  And yet.

  Now her eyeballs are going out instead of in. This will be the big rush, when God step-step-steps and kicks their little football, and the sound of tarsal connecting with craft will be a mighty boom and God’s bulging thigh will shred his tights. Not nicey-nice God, but Old Testament God, letting Job have it, capable of large-scale smiting.

  Helen has a speech she gives about leaving Earth:

  “Of course, we are all focused on following what is happening technically in the spacecraft, and being prepared to deal with any issues. But when you hear the SRBs—sorry, Solid Rocket Boosters—fall away for the first time, you are just filled with awe for the dedication and ingenuity and expertise of the incredible number of people who have contributed to that moment. It is truly a time to marvel at what our species is able to do.”

  Nothing of the kind! Nothing of the kind had she felt during any of her missions. You didn’t have time for poetic thoughts like that.

  Very few people could say what they actually felt in a particular moment. Possibly nobody knew.

  Helen cannot name the something that has always been in the back of her mind during those moments when she has left the Earth. Intense focus on what was happening in the present eclipsed all else, but things do not disappear during an eclipse, only disappear from view. Something is there.

  How does it feel?

  Big.

  Bigger.

  This is escape velocity, a fine phrase. This will be new, when it is real. Helen has never gone beyond Low Earth Orbit. This will be Deep Space.

  It’s not happening. But it sort of is.

  Helen can’t help but watch the clock. Your body can take more than you think it can. It helps it, comforts it, when you can give it an end point. You can take quite a bit when you know that at the end of your ordeal, you will be in space and there will be weightlessness.

  To stand on Earth is not quite the sessile event it seems. To stand on Earth is to fall to Earth. People forget that. People take our planet’s feeble but constant gravitational embrace for granted. To orbit the Earth is not to be shot up to some magical zone where there is no gravity, but to be shot up in such a trajectory that your subsequent fall means you won’t hit anything; you will persistently and permanently miss the Earth and circle around it. To have done this is to understand the persistence and permanence of falling and to understand that what is true does not always feel like what is true. It doesn’t feel like falling to stand on Earth. It doesn’t feel like falling and missing to circle around it.

  On the way to Mars, the astronauts will escape Earth’s gravity and their motion will be dominated by the gravitational field of the sun, and they will fall around the sun, until that fall gets them close enough to fall around Mars.

  But it won’t feel like they are falling, or flying. Primitus will be tethered to the spent upper stage of its rocket, which, when its thrusters are fired, will cause rocket and craft to revolve around each other. This centrifuge will provide 98 percent Earth-like gravity conditions in the Hab. They will experience microgravity only for discrete moments, or if they have to perform a space walk. The centrifuge will protect the crew’s muscles, their bone density, their vision, and their cognitive functioning. And it will take away the joy of falling with everything falling around you.

  Microgravity is the heroin, the God, the unrequited love, of astronauts. Nothing feels as good or does more damage.

  Before her first experience in Prime’s Bright Star centrifuge-enabled craft, Helen was told by other astronauts that the spin up “is a little bit of a transition,” which was astronaut-speak for “You will want to puke like you have never wanted to puke before.”

  Now, of course, this will all be simulated, but considering the elaborate theatrics Prime has provided this far, Helen expects to feel some real nausea. It’s not that hard to make humans feel sick, even her. She’s taken the antinausea meds in preparation. Once fake spin-up is completed, they will descend into the Habitat section of Primitus and pretend that the real Earth gravity present in a module in Utah is artificial gravity from a centrifuge that has been successfully created in space. They don’t have to do anything goofy like shout, “My God! It worked!” Although that would be funny.

  “Here we go!” Sergei shouts, because the God that kicked them has now run to the end of the field and caught them in his hands. It amuses God, perhaps, to toss them from one hand to the other. This goes on for seventeen seconds longer than it should, and is somewhat more violent than she has experienced before.

  Okay, much more violent.

  When she feels ill, Helen has a visualization of a tree that she employs. Biofeedback. No one vomits at the thought of a tree.

  And then God does a funny thing.

  “Ho-ho!” Sergei shouts.

  Helen is strapped to her seat, immobile, but the protocol list fastened to her wrist has opened upward and is rustling its laminated leaves. The pages are fluttering gently, lazily.

  In her peripheral vision, just to the right: a gear bag is floating on its tether, tilting vertically, glissading toward her until its tether becomes taut, and then gently, almost shyly, retreating. A cable just below it rises like a languorous snake.

  It is funny. Helen could almost swear her internal organs are rising up within her body, that the straps holding her to her seat are straining. Her body is getting tricked. Her body is mirroring what it sees and since her body believes, her brain has no choice but to follow along. Mind under matter. It is delightful. So real. She is weightless.

  Helen wishes she could release herself from her seat, release even just an arm, but then is glad she cannot. The spectacular illusion would be shattered. The bag is not floating, and neither is she. A phrase rises in her mind, she can’t trace back its context.

  Nothing feels as free as this.

  Oh yes, the Playtex ad on the wall in Japan. The lady in her bra and girdle. Look how far women have come.

  The game designers at Prime Space were little Gods indeed. Probably God would look more like a computer programmer than an Old Testament guy, anyway. Prime is in the details.

  The string holding up the little green man in his spacesuit has gone slack. The alien floats, content, peaceful, in his element once again. On his way home.

  LUKE

  The astronauts stand before a window that is not a window. Obviously, the astronauts can’t have a true funct
ioning window in the desert when they are supposed to be in space, but the actual Primitus has no window either. A space-worthy window is heavy and compromises the defense of solar radiation for the craft. It is a concern, the loss of a window, for the health of the astronauts. Looking out the window is the thing that astronauts love the most, their favorite occupation, the thing they say never gets old. Photographing Earth is the number-one recreational activity. It is meditation, it is reward.

  It has been explained to Luke that the view on the way to Mars “will be crap, anyway, mostly.” The crew will be flying in sunlit blackness. For a decent look at the cosmos, they will need something better than their eyes and a window. They will have it: exterior cameras on Primitus will transmit real-time feed of what is outside their craft to screens throughout the interior of the Habitat. The cameras are fitted with enhanced spectral range lenses: infrared and near ultraviolet, and will be a vast improvement over the crew’s own eyes. The astronauts will be given first their own planet, their own moon, and after that, Deep Space objects. At the other end of the journey, they will be given the moons of Mars, Phobos (fear), and Deimos (dread). They will be given Mars. Better than their eyes, better than a window, realer than real.

  • • •

  JUST NOW, the astronauts are speaking from prepared statements. The sentiments they express work equally well for both a real and simulated mission.

  “We are at the beginning of a long journey of discovery.” (Helen)

  “It is a great privilege to play a role in this remarkable endeavor.” (Yoshihiro)

  “To my family, I wish to say that I will be thinking of you every day.” (Sergei)

  • • •

  THE OBBER LAB is also windowless: one long wall a bank of screens, the other a digital whiteboard. In between these walls, there are stand-up desks and sit-down desks and foot rollers and exercise balls. Above the bank of screens, Ransom has strung a bannerlike poster with the words No Reality Without Observation, which is a quote from Niels Bohr and, as Ransom explained, technically bad science but fitting for their mandate.

  Luke thinks that it will be very difficult to measure on Eidolon whether the loss of a real window is a significant psychological factor or not. On Eidolon, the astronauts will know they are looking at images Prime has prepared, not real-time feed. This is the elephant in the analogue room of Eidolon: they cannot tell what anyone will feel about the true experience of going to Mars until it actually happens, and there has to be a possibility that the feeling will significantly alter every aspect of the mission. Everything about Eidolon is set to diminish this probability, but they can’t take it to zero.

  The clock has officially started on Eidolon. It’s a clock like no other, neither quite the twenty-four-hour day of Earth, nor quite the twenty-four-hour, thirty-nine-minute, and thirty-five-second sol of Mars. This clock moves in Primitus time: an ongoing calibration that will—when the astronauts land—have the crew adjusted to the Martian diurnal rhythms, and synchronized with the landing target’s time zone for minimal jetlag. Right now, the difference between real Earth and Primitus time is a matter of extra seconds in the day, and so far none of the Obbers are feeling the effects, but this will change. The crew will have the advantage over Mission Control and Obbers, since all the interior lights on Primitus will be adjusting to give them the semblance of a day and night, glowing blue or red as needed to help slowly shift the body’s stubborn circadian sense of order. (And helped by the fact that none of the crew are naturally extreme early risers, a trait that makes such a shift doubly difficult.) Mission Control and Obbers will be working in shifts, and also doing things like going outside, without sim helmets. They have drugs, and special sleep masks, and even goggles they can use when they’re outside, but things are likely to get a little hairy.

  Today, the mood around Prime is buoyant. Red Dawn II had launched successfully and was operating nominally. “We’re going to Mars,” people are saying when they pass one another in the corridors. “It’s on.”

  “Although Mars is our destination,” Yoshi says in his statement, “perhaps some of our most profound discoveries will be in the journey there and back. When Primitus makes its voyage to the Red Planet, the cameras of our craft will allow all the inhabitants on Earth a chance to join the expedition, to see what we see. Many astronauts speak of the ‘Overview Effect,’ an acute awareness of the preciousness of our planet and also a shift toward seeing ourselves as members of a larger celestial community. The hope is that by extending the Overview Effect to all humanity, a new era of care and consciousness, global goodwill, and desire for peace may begin for all of us.”

  This was Prime’s democracy: that everyone should have the Overview Effect.

  • • •

  BEFORE LUKE had come to Prime he had considered the question of why so much money should be spent on space exploration when the problems of Earth were so desperate. Now he sees that it is the wrong question. Humans were going to go on savaging Earth and savaging one another if no one ever spent another penny on space exploration.

  Going to Mars could make us better humans. And we had to be better. “When we eventually colonize Mars,” Boone Cross has said, “we need to do so as an enlightened species moving forward, not as panicked refugees clinging to survival by our fingernails.”

  • • •

  “I WOULD LIKE to say special thank-you to the Space Food Systems team,” Sergei says now. “For putting the jar of caviar in our freezer. We will celebrate tonight.” A current of anticipation ripples among the Obbers. Luke smiles.

  The crew will not be able to eat that caviar. The crew only has about fifteen minutes more, then it all begins.

  HELEN

  Helen, how are you doing?”

  Helen decides to make a joke.

  “I am motivated to work as hard as possible on this mission!” she shouts.

  I am motivated to work as hard as possible on this mission is true or false statement number twenty-four of their Personal Group Functioning evaluations.

  Sergei and Yoshi are only one wedge away in the small pie that is Primitus, but it is necessary to shout. When the Environment Temperature Control System has been functioning today, it has been accompanied by intermittent blasts of a whirring/grinding sound that Yoshi had described earlier as “a cacophony most unpleasant.” Helen thought it likely that “a cacophony most unpleasant” was a quotation, but had lacked the energy in the moment to pursue it.

  They can live with constant noise—on the space station the decibel level is comparable to driving down a freeway with the windows rolled down—but unpredictable loud banging is stressful. It is also not a good idea to live in conditions where you cannot hear your crewmate say “Help” or “Don’t touch that” or “That object appears to be heading straight toward us.” More important, the noise is almost certainly indicative of a greater problem.

  “That Noise Is Almost Certainly Indicative of a Greater Problem” would be the title of the epic poem of the past twenty days. If Primitus were a song, noises almost certainly indicative of a greater problem would swell the chorus. If a child were to choose Primitus as a Halloween costume, the child should not be dressed as a spacecraft; the child should be dressed as a noise that is almost certainly indicative of a greater problem.

  Helen has a quick image of Meeps, age ten, in a Halloween costume she had built herself: a chicken suit with an egg that revolved independently on a wire around her head so that sometimes it was the Meeps as the chicken that came first, and sometimes it was the egg. No other child at her school had come close to anything so witty; it was by far the best costume.

  “I feel under pressure to perform well!” Sergei shouts. “But Yoshi says that this mission is giving him opportunities to make meaningful contributions!”

  “I feel like my workload is manageable!” Helen shouts over a fresh burst of cacophony most unpleasant.

&nb
sp; Perhaps it was wise of Prime to besiege the astronauts with a host of difficulties directly related to their environment right after trans-Mars injection. If one of the goals of Eidolon was to give the astronauts an opportunity to become extremely intimate with Primitus, to poke around her insides, and learn the early signs of sickness, and locate just exactly where on her back she wanted to be scratched, well, then this was the way.

  And this was why they had been chosen. They were people who could service a craft. If you were sending twelve people to Mars, you have the luxury of including a physicist and a geologist. If you are sending three: send engineers.

  They have what Prime liked to call “the fourth crew member”: RoMeO, a robotic medical officer who can perform both as a physician and extra set of hands. Just now, nobody is employing RoMeO, possibly because he’s another thing that could break.

  Helen believes that her workload is manageable. She just hasn’t found the way to manage it yet.

  Everything on Primitus takes more time than it should. Partly this is because Primitus is organized for possible centrifuge failure—every tool, every piece of equipment has a tether or a strap or a seal—and partly because they have limited tools. Also, things have gotten pretty messy. Primitus is a two-tiered pie, or more precisely, a Bundt cake: the tiers are connected by a central tube, which has its own shielding and doubles as a solar storm shelter. On the upper Hab, seven unequal slices radiate from the tube: Galley/Recreation, Science/Lab, Exercise, Lavatory, and three private compartments for the crew. At present, it looks like someone has dropped the Bundt cake on the floor; everything is in the wrong room, moved because someone had to get behind it, or under it, or dismantle it to find out why its sensors were blaring.

  There is a kind of accelerated internal rhythm Helen becomes aware of—chiefly centered in her ribcage and throat—when she is on the borders of serious sleep deprivation. She should rest soon, for at least an hour or two, but right now, her hands are steady. What she needs most right now is a tool to twist these wires together. Sergei has her small flat nose pliers. They need more small-size flat nose pliers. She must improvise, and she enjoys that. A cuticle clipper would be absolutely perfect for the job, she thinks.