The Wanderers

by Meg Howrey

  And this was just a dress rehearsal.

  Could any person be shown these things—not just shown—could any person experience them, and still be filled with wrath and violence and selfishness? Yes. Okay, yes, probably. But could a person continue to act on those feelings? Could a person still believe those feelings justified violence or cruelty or neglect?

  Yes. Probably, yes.

  We’d had an Enlightenment that had fundamentally changed the way many humans viewed themselves and the world. And that had been Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Now it was possible to do a thing globally, virally, virtually. It was time for a second Enlightenment.

  Critical inquiry. Reason. Humor. Compassion. Empathy. If we did not move forward with these things, then the answer to the question Why do we seem to be alone in the universe had to be Because anything close to being like us will destroy itself. Something big needed to happen, right now, for all of us.

  And imagine if we did it. Imagine if this little side project of the cosmos—humans on Earth—turned out to be a thing that survived its infancy, matured, flourished. Not a blink-and-you-missed-it species, not bipedal bacteria, but the thing that we’re hoping to find: intelligent life. Wise, creative, benevolent, possessed with an understanding about the fundamental nature of reality, sort of pretty once you got used to it. We could be the aliens we hoped to meet.

  • • •

  “MY MOM SAID in one of her messages that Mars does remind you of Earth, but then also not, only the difference is hard to describe because it’s such a new feeling,” Mireille says. “Like, almost a new sense. I thought that was sort of great.”

  “Yes,” Luke says. “I thought that was sort of great too.”

  THE ASTRONAUTS

  The astronauts are looking at Earth.

  “Remember what it was like the first time?” Helen asks.

  “Yes,” Sergei and Yoshi say.

  Earth from space: hard to believe it was real, that you were real, that you were now an astronaut who got to see this. Sunrises and sunsets, storms, clouds of every variety, weather conditions of every possible permutation, the countless ways water and land could meet in patterns and angles and curves. The chiaroscuro of light scattered and light diffracted. Such blues, such browns, such greens, such whites. A burst of red. A yellow corona. The impenetrable darkness of a jungle. A single line of burgeoning waves far from any shore, unremarked by any human eyes save your own. The striated halo of atmosphere. The aurora.

  “The first aurora,” Helen says. “Never forget that.”

  “The first space walk,” Yoshi says.

  The first space walk. Leaving the station in your own little miniature craft of a spacesuit, and spacewalking that was more like space swimming or space scuttling. The view more startling: the Earth moving between your boots or your hands. The extreme quiet. No sound or taste or smell or meaningful touch, so everything you knew came from your eyes.

  “I’m in space!” Helen says. “That’s what I always wanted to shout. I’m in space!”

  “Yes,” Sergei and Yoshi say.

  “The saddest moment of your life,” Helen says. “Is coming back inside after being on a space walk. Not the saddest. The hardest.”

  “Yes,” Sergei and Yoshi say.

  The astronauts look at the circle on the screen. Brown and blue and white and green.

  “It is much prettier,” Sergei says, “than the other two. Venus and Mars. Pfft. If I were an alien, I would think, hey, how come they got the best one?”

  The astronauts laugh.

  “Okay, yes, I am having the big feeling, that I am part of fulfilling destiny of human species and so on,” Sergei says, and then after another pause, “it is not just me that feels this?”

  “No, no,” Helen says. “I mean, yes. I have the same thought. I put it a little differently to myself. I think that we are finding another level. Doing something like this, we all find another level.”

  “God in heaven, Mars.”

  Helen and Sergei turn away from the Earth to look at Yoshi.

  “It was a phrase that came to me once,” he explains. “I don’t mean it literally.”

  The astronauts continue their tasks. They are securing the Hab of Red Dawn, in preparation for initiating the landing sequence. Yoshi wants an immaculate ship, and so they clean as they go through checklists, aware of the imprints they have left in this space, surprised at how easy it is to erase what is visible.

  Yoshi, in his sleeping compartment, holds the bag of acorns he had brought from Earth. He had intended these to be a physical connection with Earth and that this was something he would miss, would want, would need. He has barely looked at them in seventeen months. Sometimes you get these things quite wrong. Still, he has come to believe that he is the right person to command the return to Earth. He knows what he’s looking for.

  Helen, in her sleeping compartment, looks at herself in the small mirror next to her clothing locker. It is amusing that you can live your life in an almost entirely selfish way and still have little conception of your self. No wonder she kept thinking that she had forgotten something. She touches the side of her neck, her throat, straightens her shoulders, arches her back. She holds out her arms, smacks her wrist against the wall. She will hold out her arms like this to her daughter. She will say, Here is the souvenir I brought you from Mars.

  Sergei, in his sleeping compartment, takes down the pictures of his sons and places them carefully in his personal bag. He thinks of the walk he will take with them, with them both at the same time. Maybe they will talk of meaningful things, maybe not. Maybe they will take the cold plunge together at New Year. Maybe they no longer, any of them, need this.

  The astronauts find themselves in the hallway together, outside the Lav.

  “For old times’ sake?” Helen suggests. There are maybe a few things to say. Especially now they know for certain there’s no audio.

  “There seems to be more room,” Sergei says, when they’ve fit themselves in. It is very clean, but not fresh. “Who lost weight?”

  “The last time we did this, I had hair,” Helen points out.

  For a long time, full minutes, the astronauts are quiet.

  Yoshi is the first to speak. “Sergei. I wanted to ask. When the sim failed, and you saw Mars . . . was it very different from what we had been looking at?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” Helen says. “I wanted to know too.”

  “It was only a few seconds.” Sergei looks down, shifts his feet. “But no. Not so different. A little different color, and different light. Like taking off sunglasses.”

  “So, still really great,” Helen says. “Still amazing and like nothing we’ve ever seen and more wonderful than you would think, having looked at so many pictures and images over the years and pretty much knowing what to expect.”

  “Yes,” Sergei. “Still amazing. All these things.”

  Helen reaches behind her and unfurls a square of paper from the roll, hands it to Sergei. His shirt is too dirty to wipe his eyes with. Helen pats his back. Then she pats Yoshi’s back. They all touch each other, gently, almost tapping, not quite consoling, more like asking for permission to enter.

  “We’re okay,” says Helen. “We’re okay.”

  “We have done very well,” Yoshi says. “We are not done being tested, but we have been very successful.”

  “If it should happen that this was only—” Sergei stops clears his throat, “I am not going to tell Prime anything it does not need to know. We have done our jobs. You know what I mean. I am not going to ask questions.”

  “I suppose we have no idea,” Yoshi says, “what will happen next.”

  The astronauts press their hands against each other’s shoulders.

  “I have been worried that I was the obvious weak one,” Sergei says.

  “Not
at all,” says Helen, and “No, Sergei, truly not,” says Yoshi.

  The astronauts are silent again. Perhaps they are thinking of the letters they wrote, and never sent.

  “Prime is very deep,” Yoshi says. “I have begun to wonder how deep. Everything seems to have been arranged to work with great precision upon our emotions, to cause us to investigate ourselves and root out that which might obstruct our mission.”

  “I don’t know.” Sergei shakes his head. “This is poetic thought, and I like it, but would Prime take such a risk for poetry? They could not predict what we would find. And we could go in two years and have all new feelings.”

  “Oh god,” Helen says, and then laughs. “I can’t have any more feelings.”

  The crew nods and taps one another.

  “My fear is that they won’t send us in two years,” Sergei says. “Even if this was or wasn’t, you know, anyway, we should still go. Or go again. Whatever. We were hardly on Mars at all, no time for proper work. I want the full trip.”

  “Yes.” Yoshi shakes Sergei’s shoulder. “But I believe we’ll go in two years. Go again, or go for the first time. But we will go.”

  “I guess there’s no use pretending we are exactly the same people now,” says Helen. “I don’t know if that’s a problem or not. Do we hide it? Do we act like how we were before Eidolon? Or do we think Prime is very deep and engineered a kind of process, as Yoshi suggests, so that we would get all these thoughts and feelings kind of out and done with so the next time we are one hundred percent solid?”

  “Or was it to make us more humble?” Sergei asks. “I should say right now, that I actually don’t know what’s wrong with either one of you. You both seem pretty good to me.”

  “You guys can tell when I’m struggling, right?” Helen asks. “I mean, at this point?”

  “There is a voice you use,” Sergei says.

  “I know. I call it PIG. Polite, Interested, Good humored.” Helen turns a little pink.

  “That’s very funny,” Sergei says. “I’m glad it has a name.”

  “PIG.” Yoshi nods. “But, Helen, it is a nice pig.”

  “I think all of us are fundamentally sound,” Helen says. “And everything breaks in space.”

  “That’s true.”

  “That’s very true.”

  “It is exciting,” Yoshi says. “This has been a very wonderful trip.”

  “I’m so happy,” Sergei says. He cries a little more, and the astronauts hold on to one another, lightly, and then it’s time to go.

  HELEN

  How does it feel? Does it feel real?

  This first part is not unlike other landings. Red Dawn has detached from her tether and they are once again weightless. They have been looking forward to this, the beautiful drifting, with Earth visible in the screen. Helen instructs herself to truly feel this moment, memorize it, leave nothing out, and then realizes she will fail in this exercise. She can think “Oh” and “How lovely” while she prepares for the next thing, but she cannot take in everything.

  She is, she finds, afraid. Not of making a mistake. This is fear of dying. Helen tries to locate the fear in her body, give it a space to exist. It is not in her throat or chest, it is lower. The fear is new and must be welcomed like any newborn, held in two hands. Helen wishes she could ask Sergei and Yoshi if they are also afraid, because it means something, this fear, and she is a little proud of it too.

  Red Dawn begins her burn. It is time to slow down, to fall with the intention to hit. It is an odd sensation, as if someone were shoving you in the stomach and instead of going backward, you went forward. You know the direction you are going, but it doesn’t feel like you are going there. Going, went. None of the words do the work you want them to, they are all clumsy and contradictory. Sergei’s “Pfff” says it all. Helen tunes in to Yoshi, who is speaking to Mission Control, narrating the things that are happening. He sounds like a chanting monk, intoning wisdom. She is happy and afraid.

  Landings take time. They are going to do a little tumbling now, a little jostling. This will last almost an hour, as Red Dawn makes her adjustments and begins her elliptical approach, touching the outer atmosphere of Earth.

  So many things in life just happen, without the sensation that you are crashing repeatedly with great speed into a brick and steel wall, accompanied by a roaring noise. Your father slips and falls and hits his head, your daughter grows up, your husband dies in a parking lot: these are quiet events, so unbelievably quiet, you could miss them if you weren’t standing right there or had your eyes closed. You did miss them, sometimes. No matter how violent and terrible.

  Maybe your husband never loved you, maybe your daughter will never comprehend your love. Maybe you have always been alone like Michael Collins, with something between you and the Earth. These are things a person needs to be helmeted for, strapped down into a custom molded seat, medicated against nausea, called a hero for enduring. But these are the things that you will walk upright with, must wear with no more ceremony than you would a sweater.

  Did she stand on Mars? Can she stand on Earth and hold her daughter?

  It’s all she wants to do, right now. That’s why she is afraid.

  Also, Helen is afraid because she knows that after she holds her daughter, she is probably going to want to do this all again, want it just as much as she ever has.

  They are stabilizing now, the upper atmosphere catching them. Helen can rotate her head inside her helmet just enough to see a window screen. The view at one hundred fifty thousand meters above the Earth in a spacecraft is very old-timey hell: sparking flames and evil-looking vapors. It is getting warmer now. She can feel the sweat on her body. Gravity.

  This landing will not be the same as the other times. She will not have the sensation of her spine, having lengthened over two inches in the course of weightless months, crunching back down. She will not feel like someone is sitting on top of her head. She will not, two days after landing, finish writing a note to herself and then put the pen in the air where she expected it to stay and be surprised by it dropping to the floor, of all places. Her body has changed, oh yes, but not from gravity.

  Six thousand meters above the Earth now, everything is going very well. The screen is black, and then this blackness melts away and is replaced by blue.

  The blue is sky. Their own blue sky. Sweetly blue, perfectly, wondrously, uniquely blue. Earth.

  Before, after you landed, a hatch was opened and arms reached in to pull you out and it was a kind of mad cacophony, an onslaught of colors and smells and voices and things. And you were very sick and your body hurt and you wanted to lie down in a quiet, dark, still place, and shut your eyes. But now, it will not be this way. Not only because you will be perfectly able to stand on your own, but because now you are essentially a Martian who has come to Earth.

  But the Earth beneath your feet will be the real Earth, and the sky above you will be the real sky, and the daughter or the son or the wife you hold in your arms will be your real daughter or son or wife. And for a moment those arms will be the only place it matters to have gone. For a moment. Because then you will lift your head to the heavens, as humans have always done, as they must. And you will wonder.

  The love that brings you back to Earth is not the same love that makes you want to leave this Earth, it is not the same love, no, but it is no less a love. It is love too, that makes you lift your head and wonder.

  But oh, for now, this sky, so sweetly blue, so perfectly, wondrously, uniquely blue. Nothing in the universe is this blue sky, this home, this place where the people you love are waiting for you, and you are not alone, and you will save this Earth, and be rescued on this Earth and from this Earth, and you will take to the skies once more, and nothing feels as free as this, and this feels real, it really does.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This novel was inspired by a newspaper account
I came across in 2011, outlining a long-duration isolation study meant to mimic a 520-day mission to Mars. Mars500 was conducted at the Institute for Biomedical Problems, in Moscow, with a partnership between Roscosmos and the European Space Agency. The six-member international crew from Russia, Europe, and China began the simulated mission inside a specially constructed module on June 3, 2010, completing it successfully on November 4, 2011.

  Writing this book was its own long-duration mission but not one undertaken in isolation. No amount of gratitude is sufficient for thanking Sarah McCarry, J. Ryan Stradal, Sacha A. Howells, Chris Terry, Cecil Castellucci, Peter Nichols, Lacy Crawford, and John Howrey for heroically reading the book in various drafts and offering invaluable criticism, encouragement, and support. A galaxy of thank-yous to my space consultants for so generously lending knowledge and insight. Wonderful Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop instructors Michael Brotherton, Christian Ready, and Andria Schwortz provided an incredible learning experience (and the very finest in slides) to a writer hoping not to make a mess out of what is stranger than fiction. Thank you to Tony Coiro for a fantastic tour of a real-life rocket factory and for communicating the passion and dedication of those involved with space exploration, and to JB Blanc for beautifully explaining the mysteries of motion capture. A personal thank-you to Jay Huguley, Savannah Ashour, Terra Elan McVoy, Daniella Topol, Adam Dannheisser, Jen West, Melissa Lekus, Crystal Glenn, Brooke Delaney, Emily Roe, Marty and Dave Howrey, and Sarah McCarry for various forms of life support. The best martini in the universe goes to treasured agent Lisa Bankoff, and a golden star to Berni Barta. A final note of immense gratitude to the dedication and enthusiasm of Tara Singh Carlson, Helen Richard, and the entire Mission Control team of Putnam, along with Sue Armstrong and Emma Finn of Conville & Walsh, and Rowan Cope, Sophie Orme, and Simon & Schuster UK, for seeing this book to orbit.

  For readers who are interested in learning about the real science of Mars missions, space exploration, and astronaut experiences, I’m happy to point out personal favorites, along with my thanks to the women and men of space science who share their work with the general public: Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir, by Tom Jones; An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, by Chris Hadfield; Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space, by Lynn Sherr; Riding Rockets, by Mike Mullane; Managing Martians, by Donna Shirley; Dragonfly, by Bryan Burrough; Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach; Mission to Mars, by Buzz Aldrin; Failure Is Not an Option, by Gene Kranz; Leaving Orbit, by Margaret Lazarus Dean; The Mercury 13, by Martha Ackmann; and The Case for Mars and Mars on Earth, by Robert Zubrin.