by Lauren James
I look forward to hearing more from you in the future.
Commander Romy Silvers
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
363
Today Molly has sent me an email instead of her usual voice message, which catches me by surprise.
From: NASA Earth Sent: 23/06/2065
To: The Infinity Received: 27/02/2067
Hi Romy,
We have some bad news for you. Recently NASA have been finding it difficult to gain enough access to the Deep Space Network telecommunications antennas to send you any large transmissions. Unfortunately, The Infinity has just been ruled a low-priority mission by the international board. This means that using the DSN to transmit high-memory data such as audio files is no longer considered a valuable use of space agency resources.
From now on, only email communication will be possible except in unavoidable circumstances – meaning that I’m not going to be able to send you any more voice messages. Unfortunately, we also can’t send any music or podcasts.
The Advisory Council thinks that this will only be a short-term issue, and it is likely that we may be able to resume our original broadcasting schedule in the future, once the political climate changes.
I’m sorry.
Molly
No more audio. The quiet happiness I’ve been carrying around since I found out about The Eternity drops away.
I had no idea this was possible. It’s a scenario I’ve never even worried about – and I’ve worried about most things, realistic or not. The further away The Infinity travels from Earth, the longer it takes for messages to arrive. I know that. I’ve accepted it. But to get no audio messages at all? It’s all I have.
Why would my mission have been ruled as low priority all of a sudden? Have they decided that, since The Eternity has been launched, it isn’t worth spending any more money on me?
Now that Commander Shoreditch is around – clever, competent and NASA-trained – there’s no point baby-sitting me any more. I know that I’m the worst possible person to be responsible for an interstellar spacecraft. Even if NASA would never tell me that, it’s the truth. They would never have actually chosen me to command this mission. They’ve only spent all this time looking after me because they had no other option.
NASA have always sent me everything I could possibly want to read: the latest scientific papers and newspaper articles; books; blogs; Twitter feeds; medical journals… I could read all day and never get through all the information that comes from Earth. I’ve tried.
Is that over now? Are they slowly cutting the ties between me and Earth completely?
What if I never hear Molly’s voice ever again? What if I’ve lost her, along with the voices of everyone else on Earth?
I should have enough already; I know I should. My hard drive contains every TV show, book and video game made in the twenty-first century, as well as thousands of songs, apps and podcasts. I have nearly every YouTube video – and an entire archive of Loch & Ness fanfic. I have Commander Shoreditch now, too, I remind myself. At least he can still send me episodes of Loch & Ness.
That should be enough entertainment to occupy a human for an entire lifetime. Shouldn’t it?
From: The Infinity Sent: 27/02/2067
To: The Eternity Predicted date of receipt: 09/06/2067
Dear Commander Shoreditch,
I got a worrying email from Earth today. Apparently there’s something happening that means they can’t send any audio files for a while. Did you get the same message? Do you know what’s going on?
I guess there’s no point in asking, seeing as you won’t read this message for months. Hopefully it’ll be fixed before you reply to this, anyway. I just needed to tell someone.
Commander Romy Silvers
I’m so jumpy for the rest of the day that I manage to catch my thumb with the scissors when I’m cutting the top off my lunch packet. Blood spills over the dried noodles inside, and I quickly wrap up the wound in my sleeve, pressing hard to stop the bleeding.
Get a grip, Romy.
I need to calm down. It’s just voice messages. It’s not that big a deal.
I use a first-aid kit to bandage the cut, even though it’s already stopped bleeding.
Afterwards, I eat my noodles, picking out the blood-covered ones as I take a walk through Google Earth.
I click down a street, not really thinking about anything, just absently taking in the trees and street lamps and parked cars, frozen in time in the decades-old recording stored on my hard drive. It doesn’t really make up for not being able to walk there myself, but sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can trick my brain into thinking I’ve actually been for a walk. On those nights, I’ll dream of Earth and wake up happy, stretching out in my sheets, trying to grab on to the tendrils of my dream and keep them. Make them real.
There’s a girl on the pavement, an old phone to her ear. As I click along the street she turns and watches the camera as it passes. It’s like she’s staring right at me. She looks like a ghost, moving through the series of sequential photographs that tie together to make the Google Earth images. I click back and zoom in. She looks around my age – maybe fifteen or sixteen – with red hair, a long fringe and bangles around one wrist.
I wonder what her name is; who she was talking to on the phone. I wonder if she remembers the day that a Google Earth car drove past and she turned to look, her picture caught in their records for all eternity. I wonder if she knows who I am.
I take a screenshot and leave her picture open on the screen while I tidy up. I stare at her, imagining the conversation we might have.
“Excuse me,” I’d say. “Sorry, I know you’re on the phone, but I was wondering if you knew the way to the cinema.” I’ve always wanted to go to the cinema. It looks fun. Popcorn. Slush Puppies. “I’m Romy. What’s your name?”
She doesn’t answer.
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
362
I’m feeling a little happier by the time my emails arrive the next day. It’s no big deal, I decide. Sure, it was a shock at first, but I know that I can live without audio files. It was a nice bonus, but it isn’t vital.
Then I read Molly’s latest email – which is in text format again.
From: NASA Earth Sent: 24/06/2065
To: The Infinity Received: 28/02/2067
Romy,
I’m afraid that the situation with the Deep Space Network has worsened slightly. We will be completely out of communication with The Infinity for the next three days.
There’s nothing to worry about at this stage – it will definitely not impact your mission. This is purely a political matter. International disputes have unfortunately affected the control of the DSN antennas, but this should be resolved shortly.
I will keep you informed as to how things unfold when communications resume.
If all goes well, I will be able to catch up with you soon.
Molly
Molly’s messages usually feel like a soft, steadying touch on my shoulder. This one feels like a punch.
I have no idea what the message means. What is Molly talking about? What is happening?
I try to keep track of Earth politics by reading the latest news reports, but it’s so hard to understand what’s going on between countries on a planet I’ve never been to. There’s a cultural shorthand that I just don’t understand, full of terms like “stock market futures” and “Electoral Colleges” and “FDA regulations”. It’s a foreign language with a whole vocabulary that I have no way of clarifying.
Besides, by the time it reaches me, the news is all out of date anyway.
I send off a quick reply asking for more information, but I know it’s hopeless. It’ll be ages before I get an answer.
I hope that whatever is happening on Earth doesn’t last long. I need Molly.
From: The Eternity Sent: 28/06/2065
To: The Infinity Received: 28/02/2067
Dear Commander Silvers,
I ap
ologize for getting back in touch so quickly. I had assumed that, outside of emergency scenarios, we wouldn’t need to use the communications systems between ships regularly. However, today I received a message from NASA Earth saying that transmissions are stopping for a while.
I wonder whether the news raises the same warning bells for you as it does for me. It seems odd that transmissions would be cut off only a week after my ship has launched. What if something goes wrong with The Eternity while it settles into the voyage?
I haven’t prepared for this in training. I admit that I may have skipped some of the more unlikely emergency procedures (I really don’t think we’re going to come under alien attack any time soon!) but I think I would have remembered anything that mentioned the possibility of cut-off data transmissions.
It’s really ****ed up, if you’ll excuse the language.
Regards,
Commander Shoreditch
PS I can’t believe NASA have a line in their coding that censors swear words! Doesn’t that go against the First Amendment? Can you swear in your transmissions?
From: The Infinity Sent: 28/02/2067
To: The Eternity Predicted date of receipt: 10/06/2067
Hi Commander Shoreditch,
I got the message too. I agree, it’s unsettling. I don’t know what I’m going to do without my messages from Earth. It’s never happened before. Did they give you any more information about why it’s happening?
Oh, why am I even asking? You can’t answer!
Romy Silvers
PS I don’t think I’ve ever tried swearing in a message before, so here goes nothing. Shit. Hah! Looks like it’s only you who’s censored! NASA must have updated the telecommunications software after The Infinity was launched. Sorry.
PPS Do you think my dad had a habit of swearing in his messages? Were NASA so offended that they introduced censorship settings? That would be very funny. If so, I apologize on his behalf.
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
361
I can’t seem to do anything today. The news from Earth has thrown me so off balance that my chores seem pointless. I need to change my bedding, finish my schoolwork, check the status of the gene bank, separate my rubbish into different materials for recycling and prune the plants in the sun room, as well as about thirty other things. But I don’t want to.
I don’t want to read anything, or practise my piano chords. I don’t even want to rewatch any films on the hard drive.
I’ve seen nearly everything on the hard drive – except some of the more grown-up stuff, which I accidentally found when I was thirteen. I suppose it’s unethical to send astronauts into space without some source of sexual outlet, but the videos just looked gross to me. Even the kissing, which I usually think looks lovely, was all wet and nasty-looking. In fanfic it’s always much nicer.
I don’t know what to do with myself. I wrap my blanket around my shoulders, wandering through the living quarters and rearranging things at random.
I pick up a model of The Infinity that I made from food packets when I was four. It’s one of the last times I can remember doing something fun with my mother, before everything went so badly wrong. The model is bumpy with spots of glue, the thick green paint peeling away from the plastic surface.
“The ship is a spinning circle, see, Romy?” my mother had said, while I applied homemade glitter and paint. “The spinning makes everything stay on the ground instead of floating in the air. Can you point out the engines?”
I push away the memory, annoyed at my brain for reminding me of her.
I move the model from a shelf in the kitchen to a low table in the lounge area, then decide it’ll get in the way there and move it back.
I change my toothbrush to a new one, then remember I only replaced it last week. It would be a waste of resources to get rid of this one already.
I fluff up my pillows, tug the edges of the bedding straight and pick a dead leaf off the basil plant on my bedside table. I put it in the kitchen bin, ignoring that it’s overflowing already. Taking it to recycling just seems so much work right now.
Finally, I give up any attempt at productivity and sit on the floor of the lounge area. Legs dangling over the edge of the padded grey sofa set low into the floor, I eat three packets of dry cornflakes in a row, until my mouth is too parched to chew any more.
I trace my fingers over the edge of the sofa, where the shaky letters of my name are carved. I don’t remember doing it, but it must have been me.
On the underside of my bunk in my bedroom, where it folds into the wall, there are pen marks in permanent marker showing my height, with my age neatly written next to them in Dad’s meticulous handwriting.
The last time he measured me, he shook his head sadly. When I asked him what was wrong, all panicked that I was getting shorter instead of taller, he said he was worried that soon I’d be taller than him; that then I’d be the one in charge of getting things down from the top shelves.
Dad showed me how to plot my height on a graph in my maths lessons, making me work out how tall I would be when I was thirteen or sixteen or twenty, based on the graph’s prediction.
The real measurements stop at age eleven, because after that Dad wasn’t here to measure me any more. I don’t know if our predictions on the graph were right or not.
I wonder if Molly would be the kind of person to track my height, if she were here. I wonder what she’s doing right now.
That night I dream of Molly and Dad and my mother. All three of them hug me, their arms wrapped tightly around me. Their hair touches mine, and I can feel the heat of their skin, warm and comforting. I feel the tension in my muscles drop away. I’m so relieved they’re here that tears well up in the corners of my eyes.
My mother is the first to leave. She strokes my cheek, and then turns and walks away. I call for her, reach out to try and grab her arm, but she ignores me. She tugs Dad, pulling him away from me before he can even say goodbye.
I bury my face in Molly’s chest, heaving sobs that have turned cold and sharp and painful. I cling to her, and at first she holds me tight, humming calmly into my ear. Then the astronauts appear and start to surround us. I hold on tighter, but they tug her away from me.
I spin round, searching for Molly. I’m in a dark room, and there are eyes in the darkness. I can hear breathing. I can feel warmth on my skin as the astronauts slide past me.
I back away, bumping into something soft and sticky and slick. Everywhere I turn they are coming for me, pressing in closer until I’m surrounded by the stench of their rotting corpses.
I duck, trying to escape, but there are too many of them – hundreds and hundreds – burying me under their brittle limbs and— I’m alone in my bed. They’re peering through the portholes at me. They stare like they want to know why I couldn’t save them; why I didn’t help them; why I’m not good enough.
I wake up gasping for breath, shuddering in horror.
I thought I’d stopped dreaming about the astronauts. I thought the nightmares had ended years ago. I thought I was free.
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
358
It’s been four days and there still haven’t been any emails from Molly. After dinner I access the detector’s software to see if a message is being processed, but there’s nothing. No laser transmissions have been detected from Earth for over ninety-six hours.
I’ve never seen it so quiet in my entire life.
I chew on the inside of my cheek, worrying at a loose piece of skin.
What is going to happen if the DSN antennas don’t come back under NASA control? Is it possible that Molly might never be able to send me a message again – just because of politics?
I sit on my bunk, twisting my fringe between my fingers. I try to tell myself that Molly will be in touch tomorrow, that there’s no need to panic. Whatever political disputes stopped Molly from sending me a message, they happened more than a year and a half ago on Earth! They will definitely be fixed
by now.
It doesn’t help.
I curl up in bed and watch Loch & Ness through half-closed eyes, trying to quell the feeling that something terrible is happening. I’ve got the half-real fear that creeps up on you in the middle of the night, making you think that there’s a monster in your room. The kind that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. But, unlike a monster, it doesn’t go away when I pull the duvet over my head.
I’m being ridiculous, I know I am.
It’s just one day. What does it matter if Molly doesn’t talk to me for one day more than she promised? I can look after myself. I don’t need her constant reassurance. I’m not a baby any more; I’m a grown-up now.
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
357
Another day without any messages from Earth.
I sit and stare at my inbox, eyes glazing over until the screen turns into a blur of blank white space. I tug on the hairs on my arms, pulling them out of my skin one by one, focusing on the tiny sting as each one tears free. I blow on the hair littering the table, watching it scatter across the floor.
I wish I could punch something without setting off four dozen alarms and an evacuation protocol.
Eventually I decide to open up the flight simulator and practise landing the ship on the new planet to try and get rid of some nervous energy. The program is a 3D orbital gravity model built by NASA and based on the planetary mapping of Earth II. It simulates the ship’s entry into the atmosphere and its descent and landing.
I run the simulation twice, bringing The Infinity down gently on a sandy alien hillock, plumes of orange dust curling up around the hull. A tiny simulated astronaut steps out onto the dusty planet, pushing a flag into the ground and raising both hands in the air triumphantly.
It’s supposed to be me, but I can’t imagine ever acting like that. More likely, I’d land the ship and then sleep for three days while I worked up the courage to even look out of a porthole.