Family of Origin

by CJ Hauser

  Bloody hell, St. Gilles said, and gestured for the Greys to come in, as if he knew it would not be worthwhile to try to push them off.

  The dog stays outside, he added.

  The shack was full of books. They were crammed onto makeshift shelves nailed into one wall and piled several feet high along each of the others. There was a desk and a bed.

  Elsa patted a stack of books. You read a lot.

  I’m retired, Remy said. And old. He settled into a chair. Are you enjoying our island of Lotus Eaters?

  Nolan saw a stack of journals on the desk. Surely, they must be drafts of the last Asterias book.

  Are you writing these days? Nolan asked.

  No, Remy said.

  I just always wanted to find out what happened to the crew, Nolan said. After book eight it sounded like maybe they thought there’d be life on Europa and—

  There’s not going to be any life on Europa, Remy said. And there’s not going to be much left on Earth if they get back. I thought you wanted to talk about Mars?

  Nolan said, Wait, like you’ve written it and that’s not what’s going to happen or—

  Remy said, In the end there’s not going to be life left anywhere but Earth. And we’re bollocking up what we’ve got here so it’s not looking great for them, is it?

  * * *

  ——————·

  Remy St. Gilles grew up in London. His father, born in Haiti, taught biosciences at King’s College. His mother worked in the civil service and came from a long line of pudding-pale London East Enders. They were both tremendously proud that Remy was on course to become a scientist like his father. He’d gotten a masters in evolutionary biology, and then shifted course to pursue his doctorate in cosmology, writing about the plausibility of microbial life on Mars.

  But the dissertation went poorly. He was going blind from the footnotes. He wrote page after page and found himself sick of explaining things that he already understood. Remy was drawn to what he didn’t already know. To the what if? In short, he was bored.

  And so Remy began procrastinating by writing a story about a ship of explorers. The Earth explorers traveled the universe in a spaceship called the Asterias seeking out other habitable planets. When they arrived on Mars, they found a race of sentient and matriarchal insect-like creatures who had evolved from the microbes Remy was discussing in his dissertation.

  When is that dissertation of yours going to be done? When do I get to call you Dr. St. Gilles? his mother asked. Remy only shrugged.

  His first book, The Great Space Sea, was published that summer, and sold over ten thousand copies. He was heralded as the lovechild of Samuel Delany and Terry Pratchett.

  Remy started the next book, this time set on Jupiter. He called it Stardrift and sent it off to his editor. They marketed it as Book Two of the Asterias Series: A Nine-Planet Exploration.

  Stardrift was a best seller. Remy never finished his dissertation. He set about writing the Asterias series in earnest.

  In each book, the Asterias crew encountered a new civilization on another planet, and in each case Remy based the species on the evolutionary possibilities of the given planet, allowing for freak occurrences and leniencies. He allowed himself to be broad and sloppy with his science, and people loved it. The year Pluto’s planethood was revoked, there were hundreds of people who showed up to Comic-Con dressed as its ice-moss beings. He won Hugo Awards for books three and five, about Neptune and Uranus, and the books had been made into two feature films of a promised trilogy, the last installment of which would be filmed once there was an ending to the series.

  Remy’s father had bemoaned his turn toward novels.

  Papa, Remy would say, Isaac Asimov had a PhD in biochemistry. H. G. Wells had a degree in biology. Arthur C. Clarke had degrees in math and physics.

  But think what they might have done if they weren’t writing stories! Remy’s father said, poolside, an arbor of bougainvillea behind him and a glass of red wine in his hand. They were at the small summerhouse in Spain that Remy had bought his parents after the first Asterias movie check came in.

  The crew of the Asterias were beloved characters, especially the captain, Angie Clarke, and her chief science officer, Gerald Lewis, who readers wildly speculated would fall in love and settle down in book nine, which would be set on the final planet St. Gilles had not written about: Earth. For eight books, the crew had marveled at the cities and cultures of the other planets. And in every book, they had realized they could not settle there. The pull of Earth was too strong. After all their explorations, Remy needed his characters to return home in book nine. Earth was the only way to complete the series.

  But the crew of the Asterias had been voyaging for two hundred sixty years (in his father’s least favorite part of the series, Remy had invented a state of cryo-like suspended animation for the crew that allowed them to survive the many long years of their journey without much aging, which even Remy admitted was scientifically desperate). Two hundred sixty years was a long time. And when St. Gilles sat down to write the final book and imagined the crew returning to a changed Earth, he had to consider, for the first time, what that might look like.

  He could imagine a million far-from-plausible ways life could happen elsewhere, but he knew Earth too well to play fast and loose with its possibilities.

  Earth’s long game was terrible.

  Every time Remy wrote a draft of the new book and the crew of the Asterias touched down on Earth, they found something awful. Dystopian societies with enslaved underclasses. Drought-ravaged wastelands. Corporatized cultures with barely sentient men. Superviolent police states. Nuclear wastelands. Skeletal cities reclaimed by radioactive mosses and vines, no men to be found. This would not do.

  Remy wanted his characters to find something better. This was what his readers wanted too: some approximation of a happy ending. He used to believe that was possible.

  Then, Remy had what he thought of as The Bad Year.

  It was the year he began receiving threatening notes from his publisher asking where the book was. The year his parents died, two months apart. The year, in an act of desperation and willfulness, that he donated almost all of his money to the Green Alliance, over the wails of his financial advisor. The year Remy threw away draft after draft.

  It was near the end of The Bad Year that he gave an interview to BBC Radio in which he admitted that the last book was stumping him because he was unsure of Earth’s future. The clip immediately went viral. Remy received hundreds of angry emails from fans. Just write the bloody thing! most of them read. Some of them were nastier and suggested what Remy could do if he failed to finish the series, most of which was anatomically impossible. Should we talk? the movie studio asked.

  Remy ignored all the emails and letters, except for one. It came via airmail, from the United States. It had the insignia of a bearded man with a walking stick in the corner of the envelope. In it, Mitchell Townes let Remy know that if he ever needed a quiet place to write, the Reversalists would be happy to host him. He could live in the company of other scientists who shared his worldview. He could be their writer in residence. That was ten years ago.

  * * *

  ——————·

  So you are writing the last book? Nolan asked again.

  Everyone is writing the last book, Remy said. Do you know how many dystopian novels were published last year? He gestured at the stacks on the floor. Everyone is writing about how we’ll die. There’s no point in me doing it too.

  But— Nolan said. Couldn’t there be, like, a glimmer of hope?

  Why does everyone come knocking on my door for answers? Remy said. Why don’t you solve your own problems instead of tracking down exhausted people to do it for you? He moved toward the door, showing them out.

  We really did come to ask about Mars, Nolan said.

  We didn’t, Elsa said.<
br />
  Again, Remy hesitated. They had a window.

  I mean, do you think we’re going? Elsa asked in a burst. Will we colonize Mars?

  Assuredly, Remy said. In a hundred years or so. The first missions will fail, but we’ll get there.

  But what about Mars Origins? Elsa said. What about colonization within our lifetime?

  Remy laughed. Even my books are more scientific than the Mars Origins mission.

  She’s a finalist to be part of the Mars One Hundred, Nolan explained, and Elsa slouched.

  Well, Remy said, softening.

  Elsa said, It just seems like we need an exit strategy.

  Just because we need one doesn’t mean there is one, Remy said.

  Our father seemed to think the buffleheads meant we were going back to when things used to be better and we didn’t need an exit strategy, Nolan said.

  Remy laughed. And when exactly was that?

  What? Nolan asked.

  When things were so simple, Remy said. When you want to go back to. When do you think that was?

  Nolan shrugged.

  Remy said, How well do you think I’d do on the mainland in, say, 1910? How about you? He pointed to Elsa. Fond of birthing children and marrying whoever your father decides, are you? And you—he pointed at Nolan—you want to go back to California in 1942? I’m sure you could find some excellent internment camps.

  Nolan said, That’s not really—

  Remy shook his head. My mother lived through the Blitz. My father grew up with Trujillo next door. Would you tell them to go back?

  Well, not literally back to those times, Elsa said. Maybe Ian meant more like, just making life simpler?

  There were a whole lot of ways things were simpler for certain people back then, Remy said. I doubt any of us would have found them helpful.

  They had nothing to say to this. Outside, they heard Jinx whining.

  We are going backward, Remy added.

  What? The Greys looked at him.

  All the way back, Remy said. Once everything else dies, Earth will be left with a bunch of extremophile microbes. And then we’ll have to see if life happens again.

  Remy was pointing toward the journals heaped on his desk.

  Wait, Nolan said, is that what happens in the last Asterias book?

  In the latest draft, Remy told them, the crew of the Asterias died on the first page. Every character readers had known and loved was reintroduced for one page only before the whole ship succumbed to a viral plague that killed them all within twenty-four hours.

  The following one hundred twenty-five pages followed extremophile microbes sloshing about in a warm and shallow sea contaminated by nuclear waste. The microbes were bumping into one another and bumping into one another, the reader’s hopes pinned on their merging and evolving into something greater. Life! And each instance of two microbes bumping together was written in a spirit of great hope and promise. But in each case, nothing happened. And the microbes drifted away.

  How long will that part of the book go on? Nolan asked, horrified. Before life starts again? Will there be a new ship? Will you bring the crew back? Or a new crew?

  As long as it takes for new life to occur. Remy laughed. Hundreds of pages. Billions of years. Forever.

  San Francisco

  TWENTY-TWO YEARS BACK

  The first time Nolan ever witnessed his father be wrong was the day his namesake punched Robin Ventura in the head.

  It was a rainy Wednesday, and Ian was sitting on the couch reading, half watching the game, which Nolan had put on. Nolan had a particular investment in the Rangers because of his namesake and because rooting for a team other than the Giants made his parents crazy, which was already something he’d realized was optimal. Keiko was working in her office with the door cracked, David Byrne thumping softly. Nolan lay on his stomach on the rug.

  It happened quickly.

  Ryan was pitching. Ventura was up to bat and the ball came in too close. He twisted away, but it hit him.

  He hit him! Nolan said to his father, jumping up. He hit Ventura!

  Ian looked up from his book. He pushed his glasses down his nose so he could make out the screen.

  The last thing Ian said before the brawl began was, I’m sure he didn’t mean to hit him.

  Nolan had never before known his father to be wrong. But even then, Nolan knew he was wrong about this. Children are always being told that no one meant to hit them when they know that this is not true.

  Ventura seemed calm as he turned from the plate. Even as he took his helmet off to confront Ryan, even as he ran toward the mound, it was as if he were not sure this was what he meant to do. The young White Sock, handsome and open-faced, tackled Ryan as if hugging him round the middle.

  Nolan immediately got his arm around Ventura’s neck, a fatherly headlock, and then concertedly punched Ventura in the face. Bang, bang, bang. Ryan’s hat flew off as he turned toward the world, then pivoted in to strike Ventura’s face again.

  Nolan said. Why is he doing that?

  Both teams began brawling. Ventura was eventually spat out of the throng of people who’d rushed the mound. Ryan didn’t emerge until almost a minute later.

  Look at this, the announcer said.

  Ryan was rumpled. Without his hat, his dark hair visibly sparser than it used to be, balding in the middle. His shirt had come unbuttoned around his thickened waist. The cameras panned to Ventura, who pouted, as if he could not believe this had happened. They panned back to Ryan and his lined, Texan face was unsurprised: this was exactly what the world was like.

  Summoned by the noise, Keiko stood watching from the door to her office, leaning against the frame, arms crossed. The crowd by this point was chanting: Nolan, Nolan, Nolan.

  He looks so old, Keiko said, and Ian smoothed his own thinning hair.

  (There’d been a time, before Leap’s, when Nolan thought this might have been the day his life turned unsatisfactory. His father’s wrongness, the violence of his namesake. But he gave up on that now.

  Nolan was starting to think there was no such thing as one moment when everything went wrong for you.

  Leap’s had taught him that. The Reversalists’ pat, explanatory origin stories were meant to exempt them from looking at the world head-on. They were all looking for the same thing he was: permission to give up.

  But of course there was no single thing that could happen to you that would excuse you from living the rest of your life, no matter how horrible a thing it was.)

  On the day of the Ryan–Ventura fight, the announcers had related the long backstory of the Sox and the Rangers, as if this explained Ryan’s behavior.

  But no amount of history could excuse the fact that Ryan would rather punch some young player in the face than play baseball.

  If such a thing as the Moment It All Went Wrong did exist, it was a moment you made yourself. It was having the audacity to leave the ballpark before the game was through because you thought you knew what the next innings held. It was the moment you decided to give up and spend the rest of your life explaining why you were giving up, instead of just playing the goddamn game.

  Which meant, despite searching for it everywhere, Nolan’s moment, if it existed, hadn’t happened yet.

  It was out there somewhere in the future, threatening to fall, but not yet fallen.

  Nolan still had a chance. If he wanted to, he could still play ball.

  Leap’s Island

  That night, in the tent by the sinkhole, Elsa dreamed of Duck Twelve.

  In her dream, she and Nolan floated in the Gulf with the duck. They plunged their faces into the water, feeding on larvae, bubbles glistening like soap around their mouths. When they were full, they floated in the sun. Breathe in, breathe out, the duck said. Meditate on your breath. Don’t you feel better?


  Elsa woke up and rolled in her sleeping bag to face Nolan.

  I have crazy dreams out here, she said.

  Nothing is worse than listening to people talk about their dreams, Nolan said.

  It was seven. They had not slept well. It was cool and there was a soupy fog that tumbled low over the black morning water.

  The post boat comes today, Elsa said. We can go home.

  Yes, Nolan said.

  What they were both thinking was: there was not much time left if they wanted to find the duck.

  What they were both thinking was: what would home feel like?

  Nolan’s body ached. He was dirty and smelled after days of tramping through the forest. He wanted to crawl back into Ian’s bed and keen, to roll in it like a dog. He wanted to swim until he couldn’t anymore, then fall asleep exhausted. He considered that in only a week, he’d been de-civilized. All his manners and defenses and useful bullshit were gone. He felt wide open. He couldn’t bear the thought of speaking to anyone but Elsa.

  When he imagined himself back at work, all he could think of were the dead birds. Nolan’s office had plate-glass windows and almost every day a bird would smash against the glass with a small burst of dust and sometimes a trickle of fluid. Most of the heads in the office would turn to look when this happened, but some wouldn’t. Often, if it got to be four o’clock and if this had not happened yet, it began to seem inevitable, and Nolan would find himself looking up from his screen and toward the slice of glass warping the city beyond it, anticipating the crack and puff of a small life going out like a firecracker.

  Jinx whined and nosed at Elsa’s sleeping bag, urging her out. Elsa watched the fog dissipate and lift.

  Elsa said, If the boat comes at three, do we have time to check out the third site?

  Nolan checked the field journal, his watch. We do, he said. If we’re leaving, we do.

  Of course we’re leaving, Elsa said. Let’s just check out the site.

  * * *