Chapter 5
For the next several days, Fr. Xris’s life proceeded uneventfully. Shaka came to daily mass with him, and he hadn’t seen any of Hannah except occasionally in passing. He hung out with Freia on her shifts sometimes. She was a fun companion, good natured and happy. Despite Katie’s suggestion, Freia never so much as mentioned her bed to Fr. Xris. Whether that was out of respect or just because of a lack of interest, it never occurred to him to ask.
And despite Freia’s unwavering confidence that Katie was interested in Fr. Xris, his confidence in his own interpretation grew. Katie wasn’t openly hostile to him, but on several occasions she came close, and often seemed to be avoiding him.
The fifth day of their trip was a momentous day, of sorts, as they were going to kill their acceleration and switch to rotational artificial gravity. They did it on the change of shifts in the morning, so that everyone could be conveniently awake for when the direction down pointed shifted by 90 degrees.
All of the passengers gathered in the lounge, more because important events should be shared with others than for any practical reason.
“At least we don’t have to train these suits again,” Hannah said.
“That is nice,” Shaka said. “It felt silly last time.”
“That is why professionals have their own,” Xiao said. “It saves time and trouble, and good gravsuits will refine their knowledge of how you move over time.”
“Are they going to kill the thrust all at once?” Fr. Xris asked.
“No,” Kari said, “that tends to make people jump out of their seats. We’ll decrease thrust to cruising thrust—which is basically zero—over sixty seconds.”
“Why would we do that?” Fr. Xris asked. “Killing acceleration wouldn’t change our momentum, which would be the same as the ship’s.”
“Yes,” Kari said, “it’s not that we’d go flying. It’s that the muscle tension you were using to counteract gravity would suddenly be unopposed, so basically you’d jump.”
Fr. Xris laughed.
“Of course,” he said.
“You only need to spread the change in acceleration over a second to keep people from overreacting,” Xiao said.
“True,” Kari said. “The other 59 seconds are for the engines, which don’t like changing output quickly.”
The captain made the announcement of the thrust change, and a few seconds later they felt the artificial gravity begin to wane.
“How much time do we have before the artificial gravity gains strength?” Xiao asked, once they were close to weightless.
“It increases linearly from zero to one-g in an hour,” Kari said, “so three or four minutes before you feel it, ten until moon gravity.”
“Most excellent,” he said.
Xiao jumped out of his chair, and floated in the air. He drifted towards the ceiling, then pushed off of it back towards the ground, slowly doing back flips as he went.
“That looks like fun,” Hannah said, and jumped up to join him in weightless gymnastics.
Xiao pushed off the wall towards Hannah, and when he came close, he grabbed her hand and they rotated in the air about their center of mass.
Hannah laughed. “It’s like being on that spinning thing in the park,” she said.
After a minute, they started slowly drifting towards one of the walls.
“It’s time to switch to the new floor,” Kari announced. The three people not playing with weightlessness walked over to the corner of the room, then walked onto what used to be the wall but what would soon be the floor.
Hannah and Xiao kept playing, but as the minutes passed, their drifting towards the wall became faster and faster. After another minute or so, they gave it up. Fr. Xris was guessing that they were getting close to moon gravity now, though he had never been on the moon to know.
“What the heck,” he said, and did a flip, just for fun, while the gravity was still low enough to make it easy.
Xiao laughed. Shaka looked a little surprised.
A robot walked in through the door, its feet making a heavy metallic clanking as its magnets held it with more force than was probably necessary. It’s not like a robot can feel discomfort, so why calibrate the force accurately?
It walked over onto the wall with the chairs, and began unbolting one of them. When it had the chair free, it brought it over to the floor and bolted it down again.
“I had wondered how the chairs were going to get down from the wall,” Fr. Xris said.
“It’s technologically simple,” Kari said, “But it works well. The beds in sleeping quarters are set up to be able to fold out in either configuration, but most of the furniture just bolts down and the robots move it when we change orientation.”
“Is it safe to get out of the gravsuits now?” Hannah asked.
“Just don’t jump high,” Kari said, “so you don’t bump your head, but the gravsuit wouldn’t stop you from doing that anyway. Go ahead and take it off.”
Fr Xris found that an hour was well chosen as the acclimation period. The increase was never obvious enough to be uncomfortable and just seemed natural.
* * *
Dinner was a little more strained than usual, with regard to Katie, as instead of just avoiding him, she went out of her way to say a few unpleasant things to Fr. Xris. What he might have done to annoy her, he had no idea, but he trusted that he would in time find out.
Hannah seemed to be avoiding Katie, whom she had been getting friendly with, but Xiao did a lot of the talking with Katie that night, so she wasn’t isolated.
After dinner the games ran rather long, and Fr. Xris retired early as he was more in a mood for reading than playing. An hour later he said his evening prayers and went to bed.
He was woken up 54 minutes later by a knock on the door.
“Yes?” he said, when the repetition of the knock convinced him it wasn’t a dream.
“Do you mind if I talk to you, Father?” Hannah said through the door.
“Not at all,” Fr. Xris said as he sat up and tidied the sheets. His pajamas were quite modest, so he wasn’t worried about causing embarrassment.
“Oh!” Hannah said when she walked in. “I didn’t think you’d be asleep.”
“I’m not asleep now,” he said.
“I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“It’s of no consequence,” Fr. Xris said. “And since I’m awake now, why don’t you tell me why you came to find me?”
“Are you sure?” Hannah asked.
Fr. Xris smiled. “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t,” he said.
Hannah took another step in. She hadn’t been crying, but looked like she might at any moment.
Fr. Xris gestured to the other end of the bed as a makeshift couch. Hannah gave a small, quick smile of thanks and took him up on the suggestion.
Fr. Xris looked at Hannah inquisitively but patiently, and waited.
“Katie isn’t very nice,” she said, at last.
There were a variety of obvious questions to ask at this point, but asking obvious question wasn’t Fr. Xris’s style. Not unless the other person seemed to want him to. Hannah didn’t look expectant, so he restricted his response to looking like he wanted her to continue.
She sighed.
“I had been talking to her, just about general stuff. She was friendly, and it was cool that she had a career. I’ve had some jobs, but nothing you could call a career. I thought that she liked me. We weren’t getting close or anything, but I thought she liked me, and maybe we could become friends...”
She trailed off. Fr. Xris could guess, in general terms, where this was going, but it was usually best to let people go at their own pace, and he had long ago learnt the trick of looking like he was listening so he wouldn’t have to say anything. The courage to talk about something painful could often be defeated by the sound of another person’s voice.
Silence can be intimidating at first when you’re trying to say something emotionally difficult, but once you
get used to it it starts to become comforting. That introduces the impediment to saying something that you don’t want to lose that comfort, but then you start feeling the need to talk, and try out a few ways of saying it inside your head. None of them seem good enough, so eventually you just blurt something out, since at least you can explain what you meant if you said something. That adequately summarizes what was going on in Hannah’s head.
“She called me an idiot,” Hannah said at last. “She told me to go away because she had work to do and didn’t have time for a sycophantic idiot who wants someone to tell her that she’s worthwhile when she isn’t.”
Now the tears started flowing.
Fr. Xris wasn’t terribly surprised, though he wasn’t sure precisely what to say. Insults which are half projection and half insight hurt like hell and are very difficult to soothe. There’s really nothing to do but focus on the false half and leave for later (if ever) the half that’s true but painful.
“Did you mention our conversation a few days ago to Katie?” he asked.
“I did,” she said.
“Did you mention that you’re thinking about becoming a Christian?”
She hadn’t said out loud that she was, but she was, and they both knew it.
“Yes,” she said, hesitantly. “I mean, I didn’t exactly say that. But I did say that there might be something in it.”
Fr. Xris nodded.
“Do you think that’s why she said I was an idiot?”
“Yes,” Fr. Xris said.
“Why?” Hannah asked.
“She has an unpleasant history with Christianity. Pushy grandparents plus personal tragedy. Haven’t you noticed how she just about despises me?”
“I hadn’t,” Hannah said.
“She does,” Fr. Xris said. “Not so much me as what I stand for, but I chose it with my eyes open, and I’ll defend and spread it, so I’m not personally very high up on her list of favorite people.”
Hannah was quiet.
“So you think that’s why she said what she did?”
“I’d be shocked if it wasn’t involved,” Fr. Xris said. “The downside to being Christian is that if you do it right, the world will hate you.”
“That’s not a good sales pitch.”
“As I said, it’s not a sales pitch. But in any event, if you’re going to do something, it’s better to go into it knowing what you’re getting yourself into. Jesus said to his followers, ‘if the world hates you, remember that it hated me first, and a servant is not greater than his master.’ But he also said, ‘the world will hate you, but take heart, I have overcome the world.’ And he did.
“Christians have been persecuted ever since Christ himself, and will be until the end of time. But as much as that sucks, in the end it doesn’t really matter. The world isn’t enough even if you could have it, but you can’t have it whether you’re a Christian or not.
“Christ once asked somebody, what does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul? But it’s a rhetorical question. You can lose your soul, but you can’t gain the world. It will let you down. Every time. That’s what’s meant by the phrase, ‘the only certainties in this life are death and taxes’.”
Hannah thought about it.
“But do you need the whole world? Couldn’t part of it be enough?” she asked.
“If you really want to be honest about it, you can’t have even that. You can grasp at it, and you can think that you have it for a while, but you can only enjoy it while you pretend that it’s reliable. People are only fun when you forget you don’t really know what they think of you, and in the end they’ll leave you if you don’t leave them first. Pleasure is even more fleeting. You only enjoy that in the moment it’s happening, and then only when it surprises you enough that you can’t think about it while it’s happening. Once it does, you get bored with it.
“I’m not trying to be a downer, but if you’re honest with yourself, all the things in this world that you tell yourself make your life worthwhile are just the things which temporarily distract you from thinking about whether your life is worthwhile. That’s why people love stories so much. Other people’s problems are easier to bear than your own, and while you’re doing it, you don’t have to bear your own problems.
“You can live a long time with hand waving instead of answers. In magic tricks, hand waving is when the magician waves his hands so you don’t notice what he’s really doing. You can do the same thing in life. Keep going so you never have time to ask what you’re doing or why. Being honest with yourself isn’t easy, and half the jobs people have are all about helping people keep moving so they don’t have time to ask themselves what they’re doing or why. It’s scary to stare into the abyss.
“But you can’t keep going forever, and if you ever pause—really pause—to think about it, that the world won’t make you happy is pretty obvious. You’ve been living in the world, what? thirty years?”
“Thirty one,” she said.
“If the world was going to be enough, you’d have noticed by now. Do you really think that if there’s a source of complete and unending happiness out there, it could be hidden under a rock?”
“What do you mean?”
“All human beings want to be happy,” Fr. Xris said. “If there was something reliable that worked for a lifetime, do you think it could stay a secret? If there was a food so tasty or a sexual position so fun or a joke so funny or a drama so engrossing or a painting so beautiful or a job so fulfilling that it could justify 80 years of living, all on its own, do you think that somehow the entire human race could have missed it all this time? Or that if a few people found it, these unshakably happy people could keep the secret? I mean, leaving aside the fact that happy people always want to share their happiness, not hoard it?”
“What if it’s different for every person?”
“First, people aren’t that different. Surely you’ve gotten to know a few in your thirty one years? Did they seem like the griffins and chimeras that each of us having a radically different happiness would imply? Happiness for a flower is very different than it is for us, and that’s why we don’t think of them as human. The same is true of a dog. In the conditions under which a man is bored, a dog just goes to sleep. Dogs don’t suffer from tedium in the same way we do. Tasty food never bores them, and it wouldn’t be torture for a dog to never hear a person speak. Their happiness, whatever it is, is something radically different from ours, so we don’t think of them as human. If we find happiness, we’ll all find it in the same things.
“Second, happiness is going to be found in something robust, not something delicate. It’s not going to be some intricate balance requiring super-human skill to maintain. You’re not going to find happiness in just the right combination of chocolate truffles, a comfortable bed, friends, books, movies, and hobbies.
“You can tell yourself that you will. You can tell yourself anything. The idea of the super-human balancing act is popular precisely because it’s unachievable. It sounds doable, but isn’t, so there’s always an explanation for why it’s failed so far, and always hope that it will work soon, and so you’ll be distracted by all the work of trying from thinking too much about how it can never work.
“But in the end, if you just spend a few minutes honestly thinking about your experiences, you’ll know it can’t work. It’s all right there in the fact that time flies when you’re having fun. The world can only make you happy when you don’t notice it’s doing that, and there’s nothing in this world you can do forever without noticing.”
Hannah was silent for a few minutes.
Then she asked, “So what is Christianity?”
“How much time do you have?” Fr. Xris asked, smiling.
“Right now,” Hannah said, “I’ve got nothing but time.”
“Then I’ve got some reading for you to do, since other people have said it better than I can. But I’ll give you the start, since I’m flesh and blood and a book isn’t.
“C
hristianity is the religion where you belong to the church started 2500 years ago by Jesus Christ, who was God taking on flesh to save the world from sin. But that one sentence, while accurate, probably conveys nothing to you, yet, so the best way to start is with the Nicene Creed—a statement of belief formulated at the first ecumenical council of Nicaea, in AD 325.
“‘I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, born of the Father before all Ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and our Salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.’
“Got all that?”
“Not at all,” Hannah said, and echoed Fr. Xris’s smile.
“The best place to start,” Fr. Xris said, “is with the gospels. I’m going to give you the Gospel of Luke to read. There’s more there than it’s possible to understand in one lifetime, and then there are three other gospels. The gospels, by the way, are the records of Jesus’ life here on earth.
“And the basic story in a few words is that God created the world to be good, that is, to enjoy the life he gave it and continues to give it. Unfortunately, the world turned against God, and the problem with that is that if you turn away from the source of your life, you die, just like if you leave your source of oxygen, you suffocate, or if you turn away from water, you dehydrate. This is sometimes phrased as, ‘the wages of sin are death’.
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