The Wanderers

by Meg Howrey

  “Everything you say matters,” Yoshi’s father had once said to him. “Whenever you say something, you are now the person who has said that.” There were good and bad aspects to following this advice, but on the whole it was good.

  Yoshi has come to see that one of the most important qualities he brings to the mission is a kind of mental fluidity. If Sergei is direct, and Helen is dogged, then Yoshi is flexible. He fits. He fits in. A universal donor.

  Yoshi sits upright and takes five deep breaths. He removes his sleep mask, which had glowed intermittently throughout the night in dark violet, to aid in digestion. He will not look at the Primitus systems screen yet—studies have shown that it is not a healthful choice to attend to work before standing.

  The first morning he arose a man who had spent the night with Madoka, Madoka turned to him and said, “I like to let the sheets cool before I make the bed.” This struck him as both erotic and sensible; every morning since then, when he got out of any bed, he said that sentence in his head, and followed its advice. Yoshi stretches his full length, touches the ceiling of his wedge, thinks that he will let his sleep sack cool before he zips it up, and puts on his slippers.

  Helen had made him the slippers as a birthday present. For the soles, she used some of the extra rubber matting they’d cut away from the Lav floor when it started tripping everyone up, and she’d sacrificed the bottoms of one of her pants to provide material for the tops. She’d braided the fabric, so it made an attractive pattern. They fit perfectly: bespoke. And having slippers meant that he did not have to wear the Prime sneakers all day long, but could put on the slippers in the morning, before he began work, and in the evening, when work was finished. It was interesting how helpful this was. The slippers served the function of demarcating time to perfection. It was exactly the sort of kind and thoughtful thing Helen would do. She had said, “Whenever I am incredibly irritating, just try to remember that I’m also the person who made you slippers!” Sometimes he found her smile or the way she spoke not irritating, but unlovely. Hearty was the word to describe it. Bluff, although that was more commonly used to describe men who spoke in a hearty way.

  Yoshi can tell he is the first person to use the Lav wedge this morning: no one else’s towel is damp, although he can hear that Helen is awake. In the morning, he and Helen only urinate, clean their teeth, and wash their faces, but Sergei needs to do more, so he goes last.

  Yoshi returns to his room and sets up for the day: his bed is hinged to the wall on one side so that it may be latched against it; the underside of his bed contains a shelf that unfolds for desk and workstation use, and a collapsible ergonomic stool. His clothes are stacked in lockers on the opposite wall—paper-thin disposable underwear and Solox pants, T-shirts with short or long sleeves, socks—along with his personal effects, his bag of acorns.

  For the real voyage, Prime will have them on a cocktail of nutraceuticals for additional radiation protection and to counteract effects caused by the centrifugal forces of their craft; for purposes of Eidolon they take placebos as a matter of establishing routine. Likewise, they have a regimen of ear and eye exercises.

  Yoshi sets up his stool, unties a thick pair of goggles and plugs their cord into his Prime screen. The routine was simple enough: at intervals a small circle of light would appear and one merely had to track this light as it moved. The lenses inside the goggles flipped; sometimes the circle of light would be very far away, sometimes very close. This lasted approximately seven minutes. To Yoshi, it felt like hours.

  Of all the goggles and masks Yoshi had worn his life, none had ever made him feel as claustrophobic, as vulnerable, and as disoriented as these did. He didn’t understand this reaction. He’d tried listening to music while it was going on, but it only increased the anxiety. The advancing and retreating lights made him want to run, or hit out. He had no idea if the experience affected the others similarly. He had not asked. He would not ask.

  While waiting for the first point of light, Yoshi takes several deep breaths. The thing was not to strain your eyes against the darkness.

  Junya. Funny Yoshi should think of Junya just now. A childhood memory. Junya’s hand had been cold and dry, and then hot and damp. One hand. Large, because Junya was large and Yoshi had been small then, ten, newly arrived in Japan. “Watch others to see what they do,” had been his father’s advice. Perhaps Yoshi had been watching too keenly. Junya had pinned him against the wall by holding one hand over his eyes.

  The light appears now, and Yoshi dutifully tracks its darting progress.

  The other boys had taken turns, not hitting him, but hitting their baseball bats against the wall next to him, or letting him feel how they were swinging their bats right in front of his face. “Oh, you almost hit him!” one boy kept shouting. “Oh, you almost killed him right there!” Yoshi didn’t understand everything they said: there were words and phrases unfamiliar to him. Some things were quite clear. “You’re not one of us!” and “Go back to where you came from!” and “No one wants you here!”

  Inside the goggles, the lenses flip.

  Inside Junya’s hand it had been dark, and then yellow with spots of pink and red. Then dark again, then exploding stars of hot red. They took the cap off his head. He’d been concerned, at the beginning of the ordeal that they would not give it back and he would have to tell the coach that he had lost it. You couldn’t practice if you didn’t have your cap; he would have to just do running and jumping jacks on the side. Then he became concerned that they would hit his face with the bat, break his nose. He became afraid of pain.

  Inside the goggles, the lenses flip.

  He hadn’t known if they would stop. In London, boys got in fights at his school and they didn’t always end well, but they did end. He’d also heard, in London, that Japanese were vicious and cruel and cut off their own fingers just to show how tough they were. This had been said with admiration. He hadn’t been bullied in London, because he was good at sport and didn’t show off about being so good at lessons and his best friend, Malcolm, had older twin brothers who had spread the word that “Yosh is alright.” He assumed a similar strategy would work in Japan. He’d be starting with no mates, but this was supposed to be his home. “We’re going home,” his parents had said. At his new school, for the first time in his life, he was in a room where everyone looked like him.

  Inside the goggles, the lenses flip.

  Junya hadn’t said anything to him. He’d been like the executioner, going about his work, impersonally, while the mob screamed and threw things. Yoshi remembers being afraid that he would pee himself. Because it seemed to be going on for quite a long time, and getting worse. It might have been getting to a point where stopping was not possible. Perhaps these Japanese boys were going to kill him, or worse, cut off one of his fingers. If they hit his head and caused brain damage, or cut off one of his fingers, then he would never be able to become an astronaut.

  Inside the goggles, the lenses flip.

  But they had let him go, eventually. His cap had been kicked around in some dirt, but it had not been taken. He had gone to practice and had hit the first ball pitched to him, sent it exactly as he meant to, between second and third, although he hadn’t even known until just before he swung that he had control over what the ball did off his bat, what angle, what height, what direction. Till then he had just tried to hit.

  It all could be seen as a moment of adversity overcome: he had found his swing that day.

  If one considered the incident at all, which one shouldn’t, it was a very ordinary tale of childhood bullying, much less worse than others he’d heard.

  The screen turns gray, a signal that the program is complete. Yoshi takes the goggles off. He wonders if this has been the problem all along with the exercise, this suppressed memory of adolescent terror. Perhaps now that he understands the source of his anxiety, it will go away. He is tempted to test this, but he has sixty-four f
eelings to rank and his FIRO-B to fill out. He likes to get this done before breakfast.

  Under Not at all Yoshi checkmarks: Sad, Tense, Angry, Worn out, Unhappy, Sorry for things done, Shaky, On edge, Listless, Grouchy, Blue, Panicky, Hopeless, Spiteful, Uneasy, Unable to, Discouraged, Annoyed, Resentful, Nervous, Lonely, Miserable, Muddled, Bitter, Exhausted, Anxious, Ready to fight, Gloomy, Desperate, Sluggish, Rebellious, Weary, Helpless, Bewildered, Deceived, Furious, Bad-tempered, Worthless, Forgetful, Terrified, Guilty, and Bushed.

  There was a possibility of all these things occurring on a long-duration mission. Also: Brooding, Becoming melancholy, Dwelling on trifles.

  Psychotic, even.

  For A little Yoshi concedes to: Restless, and Uncertain about things.

  He is not restless, or uncertain about things, but if he admits to no negative emotions, he will seem robotic or untruthful. A little restlessness would be natural for a person in confinement, and it is not a bad quality to be uncertain about things. Absolute certainty is the mark of a closed mind.

  When Yoshi is asked many questions about how he feels, or who he is, he imagines a crystallization: his self changing from liquid to solid, acquiring precise geometries. This is usually pleasurable.

  After a minute, Yoshi un-checks the box for Restless.

  Moderate: Relaxed, Carefree.

  If one is too relaxed and carefree, one is not being conscientious.

  Everything else (Friendly, Considerate, Sympathetic, Clearheaded, Cheerful, Alert, etc.) he marks as either Quite a bit or Extremely.

  Now he must do the fifty-three-question FIRO-B.

  For questions 1–5 respond with the following choices: 1. Usually 2. Often 3. Sometimes 4. Occasionally 5. Rarely 6. Never

  I try to have close relationships with people.

  I let other people decide what I do.

  I try to influence strongly other people’s actions.

  I try to be included in informal social activities.

  I tend to avoid being alone.

  And so on. These questions are especially tedious.

  Junya. The other boys had screamed and screamed and Junya had said nothing, merely held him against that wall, his cold-then-hot hand never varying pressure until some signal was given and Yoshi was released. It was fortunate that Yoshi had either enough common sense or some latent sense of his own cultural inheritance to endure without complaint.

  He had proven that he could be one of them, whoever they were.

  He is not enjoying the process of answering these questions. Today he feels his self to be a fungible thing; he cannot decide which parts are important, or even accurate. Yoshi looks at his watch. He’s been daydreaming. He will not get to have breakfast by himself. It’s not that Yoshi dislikes eating with other people, but he prefers to eat breakfast in silence. That is a luxury, though. This week, they are having fortified oatmeal for breakfast, in red bowls, while listening to Schubert’s piano sonatas played through a speaker in the Science/Lab wedge because food eaten in red bowls will increase the perception of sweetness, and the sound of a piano sonata in another room increases perception of space. Soporific technology: they will think they are eating a rich breakfast in a much larger habitat. Presumably, they will think this even though they know they are meant to think this.

  The story of Junya is weighing on him a little. Perhaps describing it to Helen and Sergei would dissipate that, but it doesn’t seem quite appropriate. Exchanging personal stories is a delicate business in their circumstances. Disclosure can make another person uncomfortable; intimacy must be calibrated very finely. They do not wish to reveal anything that they will regret revealing because there will be nowhere to go with that feeling; no escaping whatever personae they have unveiled. Intimacy remorse is the term.

  Additionally, Primitus was considerably smaller than the International Space Station, and the length of time they were spending together far greater. On the space station you could work all day without encountering another crewmember. Yoshi saw—as they all did—the wisdom in not having the first time three astronauts spend seventeen months together be the actual voyage itself. Knowing that they would all be doing this again seemed an additional reason for keeping some sort of reserve.

  Trusting a person and knowing a person were not the same things. It was necessary that Helen and Sergei trust him completely. It was not necessary that they know him to the same extent.

  Ah, he can hear Helen in the Galley. He has tarried too long, will not have a solitary breakfast, must think of another treat. He could take breakfast in his bedroom wedge, of course, but that would be Not at all Friendly.

  • • •

  THAT AFTERNOON, Yoshi and Sergei exercise side by side, and worlds away from each other. Prime is having them combine virtual reality with cardio. Sergei is snowshoeing through pine trees. Yoshi is taking a brisk walk in the English countryside: heather, gorse, bracken, low stone fences, hills, and farmland. It is splendid!

  This week is a good time for Prime to display some of the pleasant applications of virtual reality. All last week the astronauts had been running dynamic ops and extreme off-nominal situations. Long days of dying, so frustrating. They were probably all on the verge of being annoyed with Prime. This was another kind of problem: an “us” and “them” mentality had been detrimental in previous missions. Autonomy they had, to a large degree, but they did receive orders. They did have to explain themselves. For Eidolon they had an audience that was also a judge. A peeved Mission Control would be far less willing to send them to Mars.

  These new sims might be seen as a kind of present. “For good little astronauts,” as Sergei might say. When Yoshi looks down at himself now, striding along, he sees himself dressed in tweed and wearing brogues. Either someone in Prime VR has a sense of humor or they know him better than he thinks. He wonders what—should he pass a reflective pool of water—his face looks like, whether the transformation would include the features of an early twentieth-century English gentleman. About halfway through the program, Yoshi is joined by a friendly collie that wags his tail and trots along companionably. Yoshi would like to pet him, or run his fingers through the heather, but he’s not wearing haptic gloves, and can’t touch anything in this environment. Still, the helmet allows him a 360-degree view, and the collie responds to Yoshi’s movement. When Yoshi stops, the dog does too. “Sit,” Yoshi says, experimentally. The collie sits. Yoshi laughs, and then starts walking again. Technically he is meant to be exercising, not playing with a dog.

  After an hour, Yoshi and Sergei stop and compare notes after checking in with RoMeO, which keeps track of all their physical statistics and gives them a comparative analysis of heart rate, caloric expenditure, white blood cell count, etc.

  “You can feel it,” Sergei says. “Absolutely, under your feet. Snow. You can hear it fall, crunch, everything. Always, when I snowshoe, I feel that it’s something I could do forever and not be bored. As the day goes on, I have even more energy. I never want to stop. And this gave me the same feeling.” Sergei does indeed look exuberant. They have reached the stage where variety in mood and expression is very subtle, and Yoshi has had to remind himself to be actively demonstrative. He doesn’t have to do this now. His smile is not forced; he would have trouble stopping it.

  “Where were you?” Sergei asks.

  “In England. Somerset, I think,” Yoshi says. “My other one is the cliffs of Dover. What is your second option?”

  “I was going to tease them and ask for the Medina of Marrakech.” Sergei laughs. “They’d have to put five thousand virtual extras and scooters and tagine stalls. But I was a nice guy and said I would like a beach to jog on. Although, at this point, any outside place is welcome.”

  “At the end of my ISS mission,” Yoshi says, “I did look forward to nature, very much. But I didn’t think about it until the very end.”

  “Of cou
rse not. You don’t spend your whole life wanting to go to space and then get there and wish you were in the forest.” Sergei shrugs and wipes his face with a towel. It is important to remember that when Sergei says “Of course not” like that, he is not dismissing you, but agreeing with you.

  “Just think”—Sergei tosses Yoshi a water bottle—“how many environments will be ready when we Gofer.” Gofer was their shorthand for “go for real.” In the first few weeks there had been an almost constant running comparison in Yoshi’s mind: during the real thing, x and y will feel slightly more; slightly less; this won’t be the same; this is not quite accurate. It would come up in conversation too, although typically they tried to stay away from talking too much about Eidolon as eidolon: a specter of the real thing. The more they detached themselves from Eidolon, the less useful Eidolon became.

  “It makes me very excited,” Yoshi says, “to see what the Mars landing will be like.”

  “Chhhh,” Sergei says. “If Mars is as convincing as my pine forest, you will have to drag me back in. Helen will have to punch me out and throw my body into Red Dawn.” It is a joke between the three of them that Helen possesses superhuman strength and that they are both physically intimidated by her. “Why did they wait to give us the sims like this? We could have been doing this the whole time. We will suggest this.”

  “Perhaps it wouldn’t have felt as special in the beginning?”

  “Maybe. But we’re not children. We don’t need to be taught value of a treat.”