by Nick Lake
we’re at the Nevada base. where all the missions have been coordinated from. where my mother spends most of her time when she’s not on Moon 2. the quarantine extends to the internet. they gave us screens but we’re restricted to person-to-person comms. no social media, like on the station, but now it goes further: now there’s no internet at all.
like they want to keep us in a vacuum.
keep us locked up still. they’re worried about us overloading, they say, our brains frying, too much sensory information all at once. they’re also concerned about infection, bacteria, viruses. so no one from the outside is allowed to c us, including Grandpa, for now anyway. especially Grandpa because he works with animals, & Dr. Stearns says they have viruses that we’re even less protected against than human ones.
it’s frustrating, especially because i want a hug from Grandpa like nothing else on earth, which is an expression i can finally use accurately. i’ve seen him on vidlink a couple of times, have talked to him about the weirdness of being here at last, but i want to c him in real life, in real scale.
yet at the same time…it kind of helps, being cut off to some extent. i mean it’s too big, the place we live in now.
we have 3 different rooms, me & Libra & Orion. but the first night, i’m lying on the bed—even that is a weird thing to say, to feel—& i can’t sleep at all. it’s not in any way how i imagined it, not like my fantasies of sinking into a soft bed that i wasn’t tethered to. the pillow is pressing up at me, the bed too, & the blanket is weighing down on me, the whole thing feels not right.
i get up, slowly, & put my feet on the floor. it’s something i’m still not used to. i put 1 foot in front of the other, concentrating on every movement, every twitch of my muscles. i hit the light; the room glares into brighter being. i walk to the door.
when i say it like that, it sounds simple. but this isn’t the treadmill on the station & i’m not secured by straps & the whole process of walking is different. i go 1 step at a time, thinking about it at every point, deliberate.
eventually i reach the hallway & go 1 door down to Libra’s room. i knock on the door.
“come in,” she says.
i do.
the lights are set dimmer in here, but i c Orion in there too. they are in the corner, they have abandoned the bed. they have sort of piled blankets & pillows there, in the V where the walls meet.
“mind if i join u?”
“not at all,” says Orion. “we were kind of expecting u.”
“yeah,” i say. relief is what i feel tho. i had hoped they’d be missing me too. i mean, that sounds weird—u shouldn’t hope for someone to feel a lack of something, of someone…but i still did.
“we couldn’t sleep either,” says Libra.
i go over—simple to say, again—& they make space for me in the nest. Libra holds my hand.
none of us say anything.
the ground presses up against us. i hear their breathing, like the constant susurrus of the station. comforting. a background white noise.
eventually, i fall asleep. down thru the blankets, down thru the floor, down thru the air vents & cables & stories below us & all of the earth’s hot metal mantle & rock, & down & up into black.
here, everything is set up to help us adjust. they call it quarantine, but it’s not to protect anyone else; it’s to protect us. Virginia’s with us, some of the time at least, in the same section of the base, but my mother has gone off somewhere. training people, doing press junkets, helping to develop new equipment. whatever it is she does when she is not in space.
i finish showering & then i stay sitting for a moment. they put a seat in the shower because we can’t stand for long. we—Libra & Orion & i—have rubber bands around our chests that measure our heart rates. i’ve already had an MRI to make sure that the space walk didn’t damage my brain in some way. half an hour in a clicking ticking tube. i don’t know what the results were. but no one has said they were bad.
after maybe 5 minutes of standing, our pulse rates rise to 140 or more, & we’re supposed to sit straight down. hence the seats in the showers.
i have long showers. my fingers go wrinkly at the ends. it’s the feeling: the water running over me. & i watch it too: marveling at the way it falls downward, a never-ending stream. then there is cold water & warm water, 2 different entities, & i can switch smoothly from 1 to the other with a turn of a dial; can twist the shower head too, & change it from a mist to a fine rain to a bore of needles that prick my skin. when i rub the soap with my hands it turns by magic into bubbles, into lather that is the smoothest thing i have ever felt.
now i reach over for a towel & dry myself, then get dressed. it’s a painful operation. at every moment gravity is pulling down on my feet & the earth is pushing up at me at the same time. i’m not used to it; i’m used to 360 degrees of freedom, like a gyroscope, spinning.
but now i’m anchored. & the effect of it is to feel as if i’m accelerating downward, all the time, as if i’m not standing on the ground but have been fired at it.
damn. i thought about it, & now i feel nauseous. nausea is pretty much constant.
slowly, i put on my bulky g-suit. it’s basically a very tight pair of pants. the idea is that it helps the blood to circulate; Dr. Stearns said people wear compression socks that are similar, for long flights; it stops blood from pooling in our ankles & our calves, lowers the chance of a clot—
& now i feel sick again.
dressed, i grab the handrail & walk into the living area. what would take a regular person 15 seconds takes me 3 minutes & 10 seconds—i count it in my head. in theory i know how to walk, i have practiced it a million times on the exercise unit in Moon 2, the elastic tensioners simulating gravity. but real gravity is a whole other story & i don’t have the muscles or the coordination for it—i am still as unsteady as a newly walking baby.
in the living area, Orion is playing the piano. he’s never played 1 before but he knows how to read music, & he understands how the notes fit together, so it already sounds like something approximating a tune. no, i’m not being accurate. it sounds beautiful. bewildering—like, how is he making that noise? me, i understand the math of it, the frequency ratios, how notes with wavelengths that are regular multiples of each other combine to make pleasing chords, but that’s not the same thing.
i watch his fingers, his hands.
“hey,” he says, turning but still playing, “u faint?”
“no.”
“progress.”
the first couple of days we all fainted in the shower a few times—our hearts just not used to pumping blood upward, raising it off the ground. even sitting up.
Libra is sitting on the couch, reading something on her screen, but she looks bored & coiled, mental energy twisted in on itself because of physical restriction. she raises a hand to greet me, like she doesn’t have the willpower to talk. figures. it’s amazing how many muscles are employed in talking—the diaphragm, the cricothyroid, the geniohyoid, all the little muscles of the chest. when u’re using a thousand other muscles just to keep in an upright position, talking feels exhausting.
her screen beeps. she looks at the message, then smiles. “Mom’s coming,” she says.
Orion holds a chord. “what? now?”
“today. Boutros just sent a message. he also wants us to go to medical. something about another MRI.”
“great,” says Orion, with a sigh. we’ve had a battery of tests already. actually 1 of them was literally a battery. they hooked it up to our skin—something about ascertaining whether our electrical conductivity was the same as someone born on earth. every morning there’s a blood test, plus blood pressure, ECG, bladder ultrasound.
oh yes: that’s an experience, going for a pee, when u’ve been used to doing it into a suction tube in the side of a space station. the way it arcs downward. the sound. it takes practice. it takes practice not to end up with pee all down ur pants, or on ur shoes, neither of which are fun things for ur friend-sib
lings to c, or easy to hide from them when it takes u over 3 minutes to move from 1 room to another.
“when are we going?” i say. “to medical?”
there’s a knock on the door, & 3 orderlies come in, pushing wheelchairs.
“looks like now,” says Orion.
me, i’m still thinking about how their mother is coming. my mother was with me of course when we landed but she’s never really with me. i wish my mother would come for me. i mean, not come because she loves being an astronaut. but come for me.
Virginia is nowhere to be seen. she recovered ok from the crash landing but she’s probably in her room, working on some piece of code or other. the orderlies help us into the wheelchairs & push us down the long white hallways toward medical. from the windows on the other side of the building we can now c rail lines, for carrying shuttles & rockets to the launch site, as well as the launch site itself—a scaffolded column of thin air, over a giant X on the ground. workers are busy all over the site, driving forklift trucks, erecting new structures, in 1 corner seemingly taking apart a rocket engine.
i don’t know why they didn’t give us this view—from our quarters we can only c scrubland, no movement or interest at all. then i realize that’s probably exactly why. this view, on this side, shows us everything we can’t do: people moving, people fixing things, people making & mending machines that take astronauts to space.
whereas we are children of space & we are so weak we have to be wheeled to medical for our tests.
when we arrive, Dr. Stearns takes us past various people in lab coats standing over centrifuges or checking computers & charts, & over to a corner of the bay we haven’t been to before. there’s an antiseptic smell—astringent, sour. Dr. Stearns is wearing blue nail polish that matches his powder-blue shirt, & his cuff links glint in the light from the window. Dr. Stearns is always well presented. he shines his shoes too, or someone does it for him.
“we had this built specially,” he says. “General Electric made it for us.” he is indicating a round cubicle, like an upright cylinder, on the other side of a glass door. beside us is a bank of desks with screens on them, technicians sitting & tapping at keyboards. “functional full-body MRI—real time. vertical.” he opens a door in the structure, revealing a black rolling mat inside. “with a running machine installed. so we can c ur bones & muscles while u’re walking.”
“we have to walk?” says Libra.
“i’m afraid so. but not for long. just a couple of minutes. don’t worry, we’ll be monitoring ur heart rate.”
“oh good,” says Orion.
Dr. Stearns steeples his hands. “i’m sorry. i know this all must seem very frustrating when u have looked forward to earth for so long. but we must take it slowly. there’s a lot we can learn from u too. up till now we’ve been able to study astronauts who come down to earth after a short period in space. now we can investigate the effects on the body of the only humans who have ever grown up out there & then come down here. it’s unprecedented.”
“glad we can be lab rats for u,” i say.
“well,” says Dr. Stearns. “it’s in ur interests too that we monitor u closely.”
“it really feels like it,” says Orion sarcastically.
“we do need to carry out some tests,” says Dr. Stearns. “to make sure u’re strong enough for…the next steps. up there we were very limited. it was pretty much ultrasound only.”
“next steps?” i say.
“well, leaving here,” he says.
leaving here. Grandpa’s ranch. wind. sun.
“how lon—” i start to say, but just then a guy walks up & raises a hand to greet Dr. Stearns.
“this the right place, doc?” he says. he is older than us but no more than maybe 18 or 19. he has long blond hair & tanned skin. he looks like a surfer. i mean, like a surfer from a vid or a photo. i’ve never seen a real surfer of course. his eyes are green & taper gently at the outer corners. part Japanese maybe. Korean.
“it is,” says Dr. Stearns. “welcome, Soto.” he turns to us. “Soto here is part of…um…a new program.”
“new program?” says Orion.
“ah, yes. the Company wants to send young astronauts up there. 19 years old, max. for 2 years or more. c how the 0 g affects their bodies.”
“why?”
Dr. Stearns blinks. “why? why do any of it? to prepare for…travel.”
Libra cocks her head. “to other planets?”
“possibly,” he says. “or some kind of staging post. an artificial moon? we’re really only at the beginning of the project. of the mission.”
“the mission to explore space,” i say. “like the old days of NASA, right?”
“& to live maybe,” says Soto, the new guy, & when he says it i c that he has a stud thru his tongue—a flash of silver in his mouth. Dr. Stearns raises a hand to stop him. Soto shrugs. “what? it’s true isn’t it? we’re running out of space down here. out of water.”
“well, there’s a lot of space up there,” says Orion. i laugh, & so does Soto. i c his eyes wrinkle. he has dimples. i look away.
i also stop laughing: it hurts.
“anyway,” says Dr. Stearns, looking uncomfortable. “Soto is going in the MRI too. after he’s been on Moon 2, we’ll scan him again. c if his bones have…deteriorated. his muscles too. he’ll also provide a useful baseline for ur results. a control.”
“i’ve always wanted to be a control,” says Soto, with a wink to me.
my breath catches, just for a second.
Dr. Stearns opens the glass door & motions for Soto to enter. “u first,” he says. “2 minutes walking please. it will be very loud. here.” he takes a pair of headphones from a table next to him. “wear these. & please remove any piercings.”
Soto does a mock-outraged pose, & then smiles & unscrews the bolt thru his tongue. he drops it on the table with a clink.
“watch? jewelry?”
Soto shakes his head. Dr. Stearns takes him thru the door, closes him inside the machine, & then comes to stand on the other side of the glass room with us. technicians bend over screens just to our left, & i realize they’re operating the MRI.
the noise is unbelievable. some of it is like music: there are beats, sometimes surfacing in the stream of sound, & i can c Orion listening intently to every click & whirr & pulse. the machine runs thru various different cycles. i don’t know what they are but i can tell they are different because the rhythm & tone of the noise changes: sometimes it’s harsh white noise, fuzzy; sometimes it’s bleeps; sometimes it’s a kind of percussion.
after 2 minutes, the door opens & Soto steps out.
“Leo, u’re up next,” says Dr. Stearns. he accompanies me thru the glass door & then into the cubicle, which is thick plastic on the outside, & inside feels like a module in the space station, circular, smooth. he positions me on the black track.
“the conveyor will start at the same time as the MRI,” he says. “slow walking pace. just keep moving.”
i look around. “are there any handholds?”
“no. we need to c a natural gait.”
ha-ha. the idea that my gait might be natural when i have only ever known 0 g, have only ever known swimming from one hatch to another, is laughable. but i don’t laugh.
“ready?” he says.
“i don’t know,” i say.
“good enough.”
he hands me my ear protectors & then steps outside & closes the door & i don’t hear him go thru the glass door, the sound is muffled by the cubicle & the headphones over my ears.
then the noise begins.
the noise begins, & the track underneath me starts to roll, & i concentrate on the orchestration & agglomeration of muscles & tendons required to make me move, 1 step at a time—i am in a stage that Virginia calls conscious competence, we all are, which means that i just about know how to walk but only if i focus on it.
whirr. buzz.
click click click.
boom boom boom.
the MRI roars & beats & hums around me, & i walk, & i keep my eyes on the inside of the cubicle—it’s so smooth, it’s just like a module on Moon 2, enclosing me in a tube, & the track is like our exerciser, & i turn around—
where’s the window?—
& stumble, no, i’m in an MRI machine; just focus on the cream wall of the cubicle, keep moving, my legs are burning, my lungs are burning, i am being shot at the ground, why am i still falling?
i thought we landed already. i thought we hit the earth already, but i’m still racing down toward it, still being pulled thru the air, & i’m still in some kind of landing capsule, smooth around me, encircling me, enclosing me—
& i hear a beeping—
& my belt is buzzing around my chest—
& when is this thing going to land? i brace for impact & curl myself into a ball &—
i fall, & finally i hit the ground, finally we’re down, but the ground is slippery, is moving, & it rolls me into a wall where i come to a stop, & the floor keeps creeping below me, rubbing against my side, against my skin.
then the wall opens, falls away, & i tumble out into brightness & my headphones come loose & unimaginable weight of sound lands in my brain & i look up to c Dr. Stearns & some guy in a green medical outfit, holding a kind of technical suitcase & defibrillator.
“check his heart,” says Dr. Stearns, as if from far away, maybe he is still up in space, maybe it’s only me on the ground.
the guy in green starts to check me over & gradually the room resolves. i’m in the glass antechamber outside the MRI machine. Soto is in there too, looking down at me, concerned. i don’t think he should be there but i think Dr. Stearns is focusing on making sure that i’m not having a coronary.
which i’m not. i don’t think.
Dr. Stearns puts a device on the end of my finger that measures my oxygen saturation levels. Libra & Orion are also standing there in the room, looking even more concerned than Soto, which seems natural, since they haven’t been in the machine yet.
Dr. Stearns finally rocks back on his heels. he waves at the guy in green—a paramedic?—to dismiss him. “u’re going to be ok, Leo,” he says. “u gave us a fright there. we thought u guys would adjust more quickly but this is all useful data. useful data.” it’s as if he’s talking to himself. “what happened?” he says, addressing me now. “u lose ur balance?”