Reentry

by Peter Cawdron

  “We have to go. We have a planet to reach, but I’m sure Lucy is keen to talk. Don’t fear the future. Embrace it.”

  The screen goes black.

  Lucifer types ::Thank you.

  But for what? There are no guarantees anyone will listen to us. What happens from here is unknown. The future is shrouded to us all, even an artificial intelligence capable of modeling tens of thousands of scenarios per second. All any of us can do is live in hope.

  And trust.

  Lucifer was right. Life really is all about trusting that tomorrow will be brighter than today.

  Epilogue

  Shadows stretch across the desert. Craters pockmark the planet. Floodplains and ravines cut through the landscape. Our tiny craft swings in low over the horizon, dipping into the atmosphere as we undergo an aerobraking maneuver. It’ll take seven more orbits before we circularize.

  Most people think of orbits like a hula hoop, a nice band running around the equator of a planet. The reality is, they’re all different. Different altitudes. Different speeds. Different angles. But they’re all ellipses of some sort. Egg-shaped is the way I described it to my mom before my first launch almost eighteen years ago. Still can’t think of a better analogy.

  Night falls as we race into the shadow of Mars barely three hundred kilometers off the surface. Given we’re traveling at six and a half thousand kilometers an hour, it’s the equivalent of grazing the side of the planet. As this is our first attempt at dipping our toes in the atmosphere, we’ll swing out to almost fifty thousand kilometers over the next couple of hours. From there, Mars appears picturesque, framed nicely in the porthole. Right now, Mars is a barren, dark wasteland filling our windows.

  I’ll never get bored by aerobraking. Rushing headlong toward a planet, seeing it loom ever bigger in the window outside, only to then watch as it recedes before repeating time and again is breathtaking.

  Aerobraking reduces our fuel loading by almost half, and yet for us astronauts, it’s an awesome excuse for sightseeing.

  “Morning Star, you are looking good, lighting up the sky like a meteorite.”

  I recognize the Canadian accent. James is on comms, calling us from the Endurance base built in the ruins of Endeavour. Last I heard, they’d salvaged two of the four modules and had resealed the dome and restored the greenhouse.

  “Copy that,” I say, knowing they’re referring to sunlight glistening off our hull and not our craft breaking up on reentry. The portion of Mars we’re soaring above is in shadow, but we’re high enough to catch the sun for a few more minutes.

  “You’re just in time,” James says. “We’re harvesting corn tomorrow.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d swear seeds were designed for spaceflight. They’re ingenious. Small, lightweight, lying dormant until in contact with water and warmth, and then they’re self-replicating. Honestly, I have no idea what the centuries ahead hold for humanity, but I doubt we’ll improve on the evolutionary marvel that is plant seeds. Without them, we would have died on Mars following the loss of our original base. Glass breaks. Machines seize. But seeds simply lie dormant, awaiting the rains, as it were.

  “Michelle wants to know if you brought chocolate.”

  Jianyu laughs. “No. Sorry.”

  “Damn.”

  “Any news from Earth?” I ask, floating before the window beside Jianyu, desperately hoping to spot a faint glimmer of light from the surface. It’s not likely, but the heart hopes.

  Michelle comes on the radio.

  “Hey, Jai. Wen says hello. She says, next time, take her with you.”

  Typical Jianyu. He nods rather than replies, forgetting they can’t actually see him. His wound has healed nicely, sealing up against the clear plastic dome surrounding his exposed brain. It’s funny how quickly we adjust to new norms. I see him as Jai even though physically, he’s entirely different. Shorter. Sharper jawline. Deeper voice. Doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

  “Sorry,” I say on his behalf, knowing eventually Su-shun and Wen will listen to our conversation replayed on Earth.

  Michelle says, “Lucy sends her regards.”

  After nine months, I’m glad to hear her referred to as Lucy and not Lucifer. That alone tells me something about what’s transpired while we were in suspended animation.

  “She’s been quite helpful.”

  I have no idea what “helpful” means in this context, but it does help allay my anxiety.

  “Good to hear.”

  “She’s brought thirty fusion reactors online in the U.S. alone.”

  “Fusion?” I say. Fusion is clean nuclear energy, but has remained elusive for decades. The A.I., though, must have figured it out.

  “Thirty?” Jianyu asks.

  “Yeah, and another twenty in Europe, along with plans for over a hundred throughout China, India, and Southeast Asia. We’re even building one up here. ESA’s forgiven you guys for stealing one of their rockets. It’s not every day someone writes off several hundred million dollars in debt, but they figure Lucy’s good for it.”

  Neither of us say anything in response to that, but our eyes tell the story.

  “The A.I. community has produced several thousand scientific papers currently under peer review on everything from the viability of M-theory to the possibility of microbial life on Enceladus. Oh, and there’s been a bunch of new medical procedures and—Ah, you’ll just have to catch up on all this when you get down here.”

  “Will do,” I say.

  “Okay, James is giving me the windup. Apparently, we’re about to lose signal as you drop over our horizon. Take care. We’ll talk to you on your next orbit.”

  Jianyu says, “Looking forward to it.”

  He has a big grin on his strange face. We’ve made it. We’re really here. A thin strand of red curves around the edge of the planet as dawn breaks somewhere far below us. The glare of a distant sun marks a new day for all of us.

  We’re home.

  Afterword

  All too often, stories about artificial intelligence are dystopian, opening Pandora’s box—but the advent of another fountain of consciousness need not be the end for humanity. As a species, we’re highly competitive, and yet cooperation rather than competition has always been the key to our survival. We’re a social species.

  Rather than being logical, we’re emotional. We fear that which we don’t understand, but fears are seldom rational. Are there dangers associated with the advent of A.I.? Yes. But understanding them in advance allows us to guide how the future unfolds. Rather than projecting our own fears about our own intelligence destroying the world onto an A.I., there’s the very real possibility the emergence of artificial intelligence could help us solve the problems we currently face.

  The key is artificial intelligence alone is not enough; there needs to be artificial perception, artificial empathy, artificial reason, artificial emotions, artificial values, artificial principles, and even artificial philosophies. The advent of an intelligence that dwarfs our own is not a threat; it’s a partnership on our pathway to the stars. We may end up as far removed from an A.I. as something like cephalopod intelligence is to us, but one form of intelligence doesn’t negate the other. They can be harmonious. Complementary.

  As much as possible, I try to ground my stories in realistic science. Sometimes, points are speculative based on the latest thinking; others are built on established (but often obscure) facts. Here are some examples woven into this story.

  Suspended animation is being considered for long-term space exploration* as well as for treating major trauma injuries, such as those resulting from battle.

  The first few chapters of Reentry benefited from accounts of a number of astronauts who have lived on the International Space Station, including recollections made by Samantha Cristoforetti, Reid Wiseman, Karen Nyberg, Don Pettit, and the book Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly.

  There is a danger of bacteria mutating in microgravity†, so there ma
y be the need for Apollo era–style quarantine when astronauts return to Earth from long-duration missions. “Of special concern is the possibility that during extended missions, the microgravity environment will provide positive selection for undesirable genomic changes. Such changes could affect microbial antibiotic sensitivity and possibly pathogenicity [. . .] After 1000 generations [of bacteria multiplying in one particular experiment], the final low-shear modeled microgravity-adapted strain readily outcompeted the unadapted lac minus strain [of bacteria] . . .”

  Professor Richard Lenski has been running the E. coli Long-term Evolution Experiment‡ since 1988 and has, under controlled laboratory conditions, demonstrated evolution in a Petri dish, observing novel, new adaptations arising spontaneously without any external stimuli.

  The devastation described to Washington, D.C., following a nuclear strike was based on modeling by NukeMap.*

  Computer networks can exist over regular power lines,† transmitting data over the wires we plug into for power.

  The launch details for the Ariane 6 were based on the ESA Ariane launch of the Johannes Kepler resupply missions sent to the International Space Station.

  Astronaut Don Pettit provided insights into the engineering extremes required for spaceflight in his NASA article “The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation.”

  Fiction, though, is fictitious, and there are points at which this story takes liberties, such as there being a hatch on the flaring of the Ariane to allow our protagonists entry to the rocket. Aerospace engineer Per Hansen helped me keep these to a minimum and provided great insights into the reentry of the Orion spacecraft, helping to ground the story in realism.

  My thanks to Ellen Campbell and Jessica West for their initial edits and suggestions, to Adam Moro and Seamus Colgan for their feedback on an early draft, and to Richard Shealy for copyediting and continuity. Special thanks to John Joseph Adams for his patience and recommendations, which have strengthened this story, and the team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for their encouragement and support.

  Finally, thank you for supporting science fiction.

  Peter Cawdron

  Brisbane, Australia

  1

  Devils

  I’m giddy with rice wine.

  “Okay, deal the cards again,” James says, circling his hand around the table. “I get this. I can fool the landlord.”

  “It is dou di zhu,” Su-shun replies. “‘Fight the landlord,’ not ‘fool.’”

  I laugh as Jianyu pours me another tiny glass. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” I ask.

  Jianyu replies, but I can’t hear him over the noise of the card game and James calling out, “To fool is to fight without being seen, my friend. To fool is as good as a fight. Sometimes, it’s better.”

  “Sometimes it is,” Su-shun admits, dealing cards around the table.

  Jianyu smiles at me and then turns to James, saying, “You sound like Sun Tzu in The Art of War.”

  “Did he say that?” James asks with innocence in his voice.

  “No,” Su-shun replies, and everyone bursts out laughing.

  “You’ve had too much to drink,” I say to James, but I’m the one swaying under the influence of alcohol in the light Martian gravity. I hold on to the edge of the table with one hand, feeling as though I could float away. The rest of the Chinese crew gather around, yelling and placing bets—speaking so fast I find it hard to believe anyone can follow the conversation. All I can tell is that there’s a lot of excitement around James and his grossly misplaced bravado, with the Chinese betting both for and against him, but I suspect it’s mostly against.

  Like smoke in some seedy Shanghai restaurant, water vapor drifts around us, rising up from humidifiers wafting homemade incense throughout the Chinese module. I love the ambience. For a Midwestern girl like me, immersing myself in another culture is as intoxicating as alcohol, and I find myself torn between staying and leaving. I’ve got thirty kilos of rock samples to sift through tomorrow—that’s easily eight to ten hours of work.

  “We should be going,” I say, tapping James on the shoulder and pointing at the digital clock on the wall. It’s showing 12:00 a.m., but the seconds counter has gone well beyond 60—it’s at 2,344 and climbing. I forget exactly how many seconds there are in the Martian time-slip, but a day on Mars is roughly forty minutes longer than it is on Earth, so our clocks are set to pause for the best part of an hour from 12:00 to 12:01. In theory, it means we can sleep in an extra half hour or so each day, but in practice, that gets channeled into our work. Our biological clocks are like those of drifters constantly traveling across time zones. The physiological effect is like driving around the world once a month—which is more crazy than it seems: around halfway through the month, noon starts to feel like midnight. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it.

  “Come on, Liz! I’m about to clean them out.”

  “Yeah, that’s not happening,” I say, gesturing toward the hatch leading out of the module. “Let’s go.”

  Su-shun gives me a look like he’s a cat with a mouse, giving James just enough freedom before swatting at him again with long, sharp claws. He smiles behind narrow, thin eyes. He’s loving this.

  I look to Jianyu, trying to get his attention as he moves behind James, but he’s caught up in the fun.

  Yelling echoes through the module. It’s astonishingly loud inside the narrow, tubular mod. It’s sometimes difficult to remember we’re on another planet, millions of miles from home. We could be in a simulator on Earth, although things never got this wild back there. With no instructors critiquing our actions, life is a lot more free on Mars—or as free as it can be living inside a tin can.

  Jianyu puts some money down on James, which surprises me—although “money” is too strong a term. Poker chips act as pseudocurrency in the informal economy that exists within the colony. Most people barter for anything they want beyond the basics, but chips are sometimes exchanged as well.

  The sweet smell of spiced rice floats through the air. Thin strips of faux meat sizzle in a wok as the chef constantly turns over a succulent Asian dish, adding a small ladle of water every few seconds, causing steam to billow into the overly humid air. The chef is talking as rapidly as everyone else, though to whom I don’t know—I’m not sure anyone’s listening. Although the meal smells delicious, I can’t imagine the crew wanting to eat at what equates to almost 1:00 a.m., but for the Chinese, the party is just getting started.

  I love the Chinese mod. Technically, it’s a mirror image of our own module, yet the Chinese have made it into a home. Somehow, they’ve transformed their mod into a back alley in Guangzhou—vibrant and full of life. Clothes hang from a line running across the back of the communal room, which is something Connor would never allow in the U.S. module. To my mind, the pieces of clothing act as pendants, colorful flags, festive decorations. I doubt anyone here gives them a second thought. They’re a touch of life on Earth being transplanted on Mars.

  “You be the landlord,” Su-shun yells, pointing at James as though he were fingering a murderer in a lineup.

  “Oh, no, no, no, my friend,” James says, wagging his finger. “I see what you’re trying to do. You be the landlord!” Laughter erupts from around the crowded table.

  Jianyu says, “Come on, Liz. Throw some chips into the pot.” His hand runs down the back of my arm. Jianyu steps around me, but his hand lingers just long enough to express tenderness. He’s normally guarded about our relationship. I don’t think he’s embarrassed about dating a foreigner, or intentionally secretive, he’s just private about his feelings, and that’s fine with me. Rural Chinese modesty is quaint to someone who lived in downtown Chicago for six years. Tonight, though, the rice wine is going to his head, and he sneaks a kiss on my cheek, adding, “You know you want to.”

  “No way,” I say, laughing more at his impetuous public kiss than anything he said, yet I’m swept up in the euphoria. It’s no longer a question of staying or leaving, but of betting or continuing
to fiddle with the chips in my pocket. I’m tired. I performed an eight-hour surface op earlier today. My body yearns for bed, but my heart loves the explosion of life around me.

  “Ah, ha ha,” Su-shun says, this time pointing at me. “She’s afraid he will lose!”

  “She’s too smart,” Jianyu replies, winking at me, and more poker chips find themselves cast onto the pile in the middle of the table. How anyone keeps track of what’s been bet and by whom, I have no idea, but the system seems to work. Deep down, I suspect no one really cares. The chips are like gold on a games night like this, even though they’re little more than a novelty.

  There are five players seated at the round dining table, with two dozen others cramped around them, all trying to get a good vantage point. That’s pretty much everyone in the Chinese mod, but the commotion within the module gives the impression there are hundreds of people bustling through a crowded market.

  Su-shun finishes dealing to the players, but before anyone can pick up their cards, Wen storms over, pulling people away so she can get to the table.

  “Out. Out. Out!” she yells over the ruckus, reaching in and scooping up two piles of cards. “Americans must leave.”

  “What?” Su-shun has a look of disbelief on his face.

  “You leave now!” Wen yells, looking me in the eye. This is a shift in persona. There’s no banter, no friendly rivalry. I see anger in her eyes.

  “James,” I say, pulling on his shoulder. “We need to go.”

  “What? No way. I’ve got chips in that pot!”

  Wen doesn’t bother collecting the other cards. It’s enough to simply toss them from the table. The other players are incensed.