It’s also possible that someone is still there but that the communication feed on the Legacy is no longer functioning correctly. Or it is working but whoever is still there chooses to rewatch old episodes of The Golden Girls or Cheers or whatever other DVDs were left behind rather than read the things that some contest winner has to say from hundreds of millions of miles away.
I had a lot of time to think about things in between the two gas giants of our solar system. Over a decade by yourself will give anyone time to ruminate on their lives, everything they’ve ever done, everyone they’ve known.
One of the realizations I came to was about what the Great De-evolution meant to me compared to the other people I knew. My parents had more experiences built up through their lives because they made friends and grew up able to dream of what they would be and what they would do. They had jobs. They went on vacations. My parents would watch thousands of supposedly permanent things fade away as mankind disappeared.
In contrast, I had lived most of my life knowing that people travelled south. My future would be one of sitting around watching civilizations crumble and fade. There was no use in answering the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” because occupations wouldn’t exist. It was the only childhood I had known. For me, the Great De-evolution was a normal part of my life.
Losing Bob, however, was not.
I had one thing in my life that was always there, my cat’s adorable moodiness and his purrs and the way he would dig his claws into my leg before going to sleep. My parents would watch the Great De-evolution unfold over the rest of their lives. I experienced the loss of everything I’d known in one single moment, when my hand reached over my head and felt no life.
The realization didn’t change anything. I still missed the way Bob would let out a sweet little sigh before closing his eyes and going to sleep. I still missed the way he would quicken his pace toward me when I acknowledged him. It did, though, help me to come to terms with why I had chosen to become the last astronaut instead of remaining with my parents. All of the other losses that might go on around me as the human population dwindled meant nothing. They were nameless suns in distant galaxies, all similar in how foreign and unobtainable they were to me. The only loss that wasn’t insignificant was Bob. My life revolved around him. He was my sun. He was my light. And so, when he was gone, I had no choice but to go as far away from the life I’d had with him as possible.
Like I said, everything is about perspective.
8
The Legacy had to perform a second gravity assist at Saturn if it hoped to have enough speed to continue out toward Uranus and Neptune and beyond while I was still alive. Even with the increased speed, it took another nine years to get to my next destination. That’s because Uranus is more than twice as far from the sun as Saturn. It was almost enough time for me to consider turning ISACC on.
Almost.
It takes light two hours and forty-five minutes to travel from Uranus back to Earth. That doesn’t sound like much until you realize light travels at six hundred and seventy one million miles per hour and the Legacy’s speed on this trip, depending on where it is in the solar system, is roughly between ten and twenty thousand miles per hour. The shortest orbital distance between Earth and Uranus is over one and half billion miles. Stated that way, it seems impossibly far.
Ask anyone about Uranus, though, and all you’ll hear are rectal jokes. “Your anus? What about my anus!” That sort of thing.
What they don’t tell you about is the brilliant blue color that covers nearly the entire planet. When you see it you find it hard to believe that Uranus isn’t teeming with life. It looks so much like Earth would if all of it were one gigantic ocean. Maybe if humans had been around longer and managed to bring about enough global warming to completely melt the polar caps, Earth would look just like Uranus. In the blue giant I saw a glimpse of a different kind of ending for mankind. I have to admit, it made the ending that we did have, one that would last a lifetime and allow for every sort of goodbye, to seem like more than we sometimes deserved as a species.
Uranus doesn’t have life, though, because instead of oxygen it’s mostly hydrogen and helium.
“Your anus is lethal!”
Indeed.
With less than twenty-four hours before launch, the extensive physical training program they put me through eventually came to an end. Combined with the eating habits their dietician had put me on, I looked great. As a result, as I prepared to leave a dying species, I felt healthier than ever.
Talk about irony.
The day before my departure, Shabby came up to me and, still smiling, said, “So are you finally going to admit the real reason?”
Shabby had a way of talking that left me confused about what he was referring to.
“The real reason for what?”
“For wanting to go into space?” His eyes narrowed. “No one likes Jar-Jar, you moron.”
The funny thing was I could tell he had never been satisfied with my original answer, but instead of coming out and saying as much he decided to hint around and see what he could find out. One day he asked about my parents and what they would do after I left. I had shrugged and said I figured they would head to Los Angeles or San Diego or one of the other final settlements on the west coast. Another day he asked if I had a girlfriend I’d be leaving behind. I told him that I didn’t have any friends at all, let alone a special female friend. I had then followed up with the reminder that the gradual extinction of mankind wasn’t a real great conduit for forming lasting relationships. And on yet another occasion he asked if I’d ever reconsidered being sent off into space.
“Technically,” he said, “you signed a legal waiver saying you could be sued for everything you own if you start the program and then quit, but no one’s gonna hold you to that. Heck, Travis is gone.”
“I want to go,” I said. “And no, I’ve never wavered.”
“Not once?”
“Not once.”
“Damn, man. Someone must have really messed you up.”
Even though Shabby looked earnest, I took the comment as an insult. Bob hadn’t messed me up. Quite the opposite; he’d been the one constant in my life, the most innocent and loving creature I’d ever been around.
But before I could reply and tell Shabby that he was wrong, the first tear snuck out and trickled down my cheek. Before I could stop it, it was joined by another. Then a dozen more.
“Yeah,” I said. “Someone really messed me up.”
“What was her name?” Shabby asked.
“Bob.”
He cocked his head tilted to one side.
“Bob?”
The tears were streaming. I closed my eyes and shook my head. It was close enough to the launch date that I knew there was no way they would be able to replace me even if I had lied on my entrance questionnaire.
“My cat. He died the same day I applied to come here.”
I expected a lot of different reactions from Shabby. Men and women who work with computers and equations and machines each and every day aren’t known for being diplomats of the human race. He could have laughed and then apologized as he tried to contain himself. He could have called for everyone else nearby to come and see what was making the last astronaut the human race would ever have transform into a baby.
Instead, he took a step forward and hugged me and also began to cry.
“My dog died a year ago,” he said. “I still miss her. Best damn friend I ever had.”
I could feel my shirt grow wet where Shabby’s tears, fewer than my own but still there, soaked into the cotton.
“What was her name?”
“Miss Shenanigans Yap-A-Lot Stinkerosky. But I just called her Stinker for short.”
I shook my head and pushed Shabby away enough to see his face.
“And you gave me a hard time for naming my cat Bob?”
Uranus is many things but I think of it most often as a reminder that the universe works
in funny ways. I spent my entire time at the Anderson Space Center trying to hide why I was there and it turned out Shabby understood how I felt and was going through the same way. Two of the other people on the team also sympathized, a woman whose cat had cancer and had to be put to sleep and a man whose dog had been hit by a car. Each of them, rather than mock me, confessed that not a single day went by without them still missing their pets.
Everything I thought I knew about people had been proven wrong.
In a cosmic sense, Uranus is the same way. The planet looks like a water-covered version of Earth but is toxic. Its blue atmosphere makes it look inviting but it can’t sustain life. Its distance from the sun suggests it should be a frozen planet but the surface is over three hundred degrees. And while it looks like it might be a distant cousin of Earth, it’s actually four times the size of our own planet. Uranus is huge.
“Hey, shut up. Your anus is big too!”
9
I travelled for many years and another billion miles before reaching Neptune. Like Uranus, it’s a brilliant blue, but also has some green at its poles. The colors betray the fact that it has much of the same atmosphere as Uranus and instead of being tropical is also too hot for any type of life we know of to exist.
Shabby once told me that because one of its two moons is revolving around the planet in the opposite direction as Neptune, the moon will eventually break into pieces and crumble to space dust.
Unlike at Jupiter and Saturn, I wasn’t able to get close enough to Neptune to get a good look at either of its moons. The trajectory that the Legacy is currently following requires that I maintain as much speed as possible as I get to the outer rim of the solar system, and a third gravity assist, especially one after so many years in space, would be an unnecessary risk to the shuttle and the mission.
I also won’t see Pluto. To do so would require that I fly on a course that adds decades to my trip and would put into doubt my ability to leave the solar system. That was something that the members of the Legacy project team wouldn’t allow. They had, of course, asked for my opinion but I knew enough to defer to whatever they said.
Considering the fact that the next closest object is over four light years away and that it has taken me this long to travel the equivalent of less than four hours at the speed of light, I know I’ll never see another object as close as the planets I’ve already passed. The only thing I’ll see from now on will be stars of varying brightness, some dazzling, others feint glimmers, all variously impossible distances.
Launch day was largely uneventful. They had put me through so many different types of simulators that by the time I was actually aboard the Legacy and getting ready to rocket into space, it felt like I’d already done so a thousand times.
My parents said they were going to watch a live feed of the launch on the internet. When I was a kid, their absence might have hurt my feelings. But as I got older I realized it made as much sense for them to see a shuttle blast off into space from their computer as it did for them to be a mile away from the launch pad. Anyway, if the shuttle blew up during takeoff, they could turn the computer off. Whereas if they were at one of the observation areas, they wouldn’t be able to quiet the screams of all the other onlookers and would have to face the horror of what had just happened.
I knew they still didn’t agree with my decision. They had come to accept it, but that’s different from being okay with it. I accept that Bob is no longer a part of my life, but that doesn’t mean I’m glad his whiskers don’t still tickle my ears in the morning.
A variety of people spoke to me through the earpiece in my helmet while they prepared the shuttle for launch. I was seated and buckled into a heavy duty harness but I was looking directly up at the sky because the shuttle was upright with the cockpit pointed toward space.
One of the engineers said, “Remember, if anything happens, you’re on your own.”
This only proved for the millionth time that the average genius had no idea how to relate to people and was incapable of saying the things one might actually want to hear and not saying the things they wouldn’t.
I didn’t bother acknowledging the comment.
Shabby also got on one of the headsets in the command center.
“You’ll do great,” he said. “Just remember all the training you’ve had. You have manuals if anything minor needs fixing.”
“Thanks, Shabby.”
He didn’t mention Bob by name, but he did say, “I completely understand why you’re going.”
I didn’t acknowledge that comment either.
ISACC tried his best to get an early start on being my companion. “This sure is exciting, isn’t it?” The poor guy didn’t know he had a limited time remaining.
I thought about ignoring him. Instead, I decided honesty was the best course of action and told him I was going to turn him off as soon as I was out in space.
There was a moment of silence. Then ISACC said, “That’s not a very pleasant thing to say. I’m officially giving you the silent treatment for the next five seconds...”
Needless to say, Laurel and Hardy had a little too much time on their hands when they were programming him to be like humans.
A couple seconds later, ISACC said, “So, are we friends again?”
I definitely didn’t acknowledge that comment.
“Three... two... one... primary thrust ignition.”
The words came through my headset. A moment later I felt the same g-forces I’d been subjected to countless times during my stay at the Anderson Space Center. If he were there with me, Travis no doubt would have been screaming for them to de-ignite the boosters and to get him off the shuttle as soon as possible.
I’d never heard what his back-up plan had been after he realized he wasn’t cut out for space travel. Someone on the propulsion team said they heard he had bought an old government Cold War bunker located deep under a cave in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. No one knew for sure but it sounded plausible; if he couldn’t go into outer space and be alone (albeit with his contest-winning helper) then he could be assured of being alone a mile under the Earth. I couldn’t help but wonder if someone had won a contest to “Explore the areas where gold miners once found their riches!” or something like that.
The shuttle seemed to lift off from Earth in slow motion. It takes a tremendous amount of thrust to break free from Earth’s gravity. The first few seconds felt as though the shuttle couldn’t possibly be travelling fast enough and that I’d fall back to Earth and explode into a brilliant array of flames. Instead, the shuttle continued to hurtle toward the clouds, then past them.
I found myself not thinking about whether the shuttle would explode or about my parents or even about what would come of mankind as the population continued to shrink. Only one thing was stuck in my head and he had the sweetest expression of happiness on his face each time I opened my eyes in the morning, the gentlest nudges when he wanted to be rubbed, and a penchant for accidently licking my leg while trying to clean himself.
There were no camera feeds in the cockpit, only audio. And so no one knew the last astronaut cried as he rocketed up into space. And even if they had known, all of them except for Shabby and a few others would have suspected it was because I was leaving a dying species in its waning hours.
“What are you doing?” ISACC had asked in his nasally voice.
“I don’t need anyone to talk to,” I said as I tapped various commands into the computer console next to me.
“I’m here to help. You know, I could override the commands and stay on as a precaution.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at this. “It didn’t take you very long to go into a 2001: A Space Odyssey mode on me, did it?”
The computer understood the reference to HAL and gave a sad voice. “I’m just trying to help.”
“You can help by leaving me alone.”
“Just stop a second,” ISACC said in a tone that was so urgent it caught me off guard.
I paused i
n my typing long enough to look up at one of the speakers and asked what it wanted.
“If you don’t have anyone to talk to, you’ll go crazy. That’s part of why I’m here.”
I leaned back in the chair I was in, which was made of some kind of material that felt and sounded like leather but was all chemicals that would last a million years. The seat whined as I put my full weight against it. Various scenarios ran through my head.
“I might go crazy anyway.”
“That’s trueeee,” ISACC said as if it hadn’t considered this option even though it was ready for anything I could have possibly said in English as well as a hundred different languages. “But you’re odds of going insane are ninety-two percent higher if you have no contact with other people.”
“I’ll send messages back to Earth.”
“You couldddd do that,” it said. “But if you need help—”
“Then I can turn you back on if I need assistance.” Its tone changed to one of irritation, an authority figure that knew more than I did. “Do you know what happens when you’re isolated from other people for weeks on end, let alone months or years? Your perception of reality changes. Your mind begins to grasp at any kind of connection it can make until all social norms have been erased. It won’t be long until you’re speaking in tongues and think it’s a good idea to cover yourself in your own feces.”
I pressed ENTER and the program turned off. That was the last thing ISACC ever said to me.
And for the record, I have never once thought about covering myself in my own feces.
Half my life now has been spent in the Legacy. I was a young adult when I burst from Earth’s atmosphere and entered space. Now, I’m the same age my father had been when I departed on the mission. The first grey hairs are appearing on my head and face. My elbow bothers me and my neck is chronically sore. When he would sigh and put his head down, I used to like telling Bob that he was an old man. Now I’m on my way to being one as well.
Orphans In the Black: A Space Opera Anthology Page 63