Satellite

by Nick Lake

  i lean back, in my wheelchair.

  i feel dizzy.

  so dizzy.

  & the world falls away below me, & i’m floating in darkness again, where i was born.

  i lie in bed.

  i feel like i’m losing my mind.

  i cry my eyes out.

  i cry myself blind.

  funny, how we fall back on clichés when things go wrong.

  all these things we say that can’t possibly ever be real.

  as if u could really lose ur mind.

  if only.

  as if u could really cry ur eyes out.

  as if tears could stop u from seeing what’s in front of u, what’s real.

  1 of me falls, & dies, & a new me rises in his stead.

  i am a tree, i am a mushroom, i replace myself.

  i am not who i thought i was.

  but maybe that’s not true.

  maybe i always knew.

  maybe i just didn’t want to know.

  “this way,” says Libra.

  we’re walking Comet, a few days later. we’re both in electric wheelchairs, with little stick remote controls like the ones that manipulate the robot arm on the space station. we’re also on our way to c Orion, who has his own room now. i don’t know where Grandpa & my mother are.

  Comet meanders along beside us, slower than usual to accommodate our pace in our chairs, sniffing at fire extinguishers & water fountains as we go.

  “Comet, jump,” i say. he turns at the sound of my voice, almost smiles. then he jumps up, & his nose touches my outstretched hand. “good boy,” i say. i take a doggy treat from the bag on my lap & throw it to him—he catches it in his mouth. that’s 1 advantage of being the virtually imprisoned subjects of an unethical scientific experiment: u ask for something, like doggy treats, & u get it.

  “where is it we’re going?” i say to Libra.

  “u’ll c,” she says.

  we cross a wide hallway & turn a corner, then Libra waves her pass at a scanner next to a door in front of us. with a shhh, it slides open, & we drive thru & into—

  a garden.

  & not just a garden: we’re on a kind of viewing platform with a walkway that slopes down into a vast, circular, tropical rain forest, landscaped—with small hills & a waterfall & a bridge—& moving, with colorful birds flitting between the branches, butterflies hovering in front of us. Comet leaps at them, jaws spanning, ineffectual. it’s warm too, & humid—i can c a thin mist in the air, & even as we sit there, small jets in the walls fire steam into the room. enormous lamps hang from sections of truss along the curving glass that is both walls & roof. some of them are lit, but there is daylight flooding in too.

  it’s the central section of the dome, i realize—it must be the length of a football field or more in each direction, & the glass ceiling is maybe 10 stories above us. crazy i didn’t even know it was here: i was so focused on the experiment, on what i’d learned, that i didn’t think about the layout of the base. some of the trees are taller than houses. 1 side of the dome faces right onto the glacier; the other side is abbreviated by a wall, & that’s the side we entered from—the offices & rooms of the building.

  Comet sits down beside us. he is panting, his breath coming heavy & labored.

  “wow,” i say.

  “yeah,” says Libra. “welcome to another of their experiments.”

  i look around. “into…?”

  “creating Eden.”

  i watch a monkey scale a tree trunk, then jump smoothly to another tree. “as in…?”

  “as in perfecting biodomes for construction on earthlike planets.”

  “ah,” i say. “i c.”

  “slightly simpler from an ethical point of view than making children in space, of course,” she says.

  i smile. a pained smile.

  “u really never suspected?” she says.

  “no. but u did?”

  “well, Orion did, at first. we never really believed it tho. until…well, until it turned out to be true.”

  i shake my head. “how did u not…lose it? break stuff?”

  “u’re assuming i didn’t.”

  “i know u didn’t.”

  “ok, i didn’t. only”—she looks around—“i don’t like it, but i’m glad i’m alive. can u understand that?”

  “yes,” i say. because i can. even if i don’t feel it, not yet anyway.

  she turns her chair & starts descending the ramp. i follow her, & Comet follows both of us. when we reach the bottom, i c that a path runs all the way round the outside of the garden—little tributary paths snaking off into the undergrowth. bright flowers bloom in every corner of the rich, dark soil.

  Libra drives to the edge, where the path gives way to vegetation, & stops. i look for Comet, & realize he’s still on the slope—he notices me looking & speeds up, still breathing hard. he sits down again when he reaches us.

  Libra locks her chair & slowly pushes herself up & into a standing position. she doesn’t have any broken limbs & is able to move under her own power for short times—gravity has mostly affected her core strength & her muscular system, as well as the density of her bones; her body finds it difficult to get the oxygen it needs to sustain prolonged activity in 1 g.

  that’s why there’s an oxygen tank strapped to her wheelchair, tho she hasn’t had to use it yet since we left her room.

  she slowly bends down & touches the soil, lifts it, lets it fall thru her fingers. i think of her in the small hydroponic suite on the space station; think how marvelous this must seem to her, even with her physical weakness. she points to a small, unremarkable leafy plant.

  “that’s the 1 i brought down from space,” she says. “remember?”

  “uh-huh,” i say. “a piece of there. to bring down here.”

  “yep, & now it’s in their weird Eden project. as am i. seems fitting, doesn’t it?”

  “yeah,” i say. still Mr. Monosyllable apparently.

  now she indicates another plant with a long, elaborate, delicate flower. “i planted that orchid,” she says.

  “really?” it’s tall—a foot maybe.

  “yes.”

  “um, how long have u been here?”

  she brushes 1 of the leaves with her hand. “almost since the beginning,” she says. “we got sick very quickly.”

  “what happened?”

  “fainting. falls. that kind of thing. Mom didn’t seem very surprised. then…then Orion bumped into a table & broke his leg. we went to the hospital & he was ok to start with & then…he just went out, like a lightbulb, & they had to resuscitate him &…well, anyway. it was awful. he had lots of tests. they kept him overnight. then…”

  pause.

  “the next day, we went to c him. he was on IV fluids, oxygen, everything. they’d operated on his leg but they said his lungs were in danger of collapse. i…i’ve never liked…hospitals anyway. blood. i fainted—hit my head on the floor.”

  “ow,” i say.

  “yes. when i woke up i was in a hospital bed too. a different room, on my own, just a window & a bedside table with nothing on it. i freaked out. then a Dr. came in. they’d taken blood & i had a dangerously low red cell count, she said, liver function warning signs…a bunch of stuff. i passed out again. when i woke up…Mom was there. she said they wanted to do tests. that they thought it might be cancer.”

  “Jesus.”

  “it’s not,” she says hurriedly. she walks back to her chair & lowers herself into it. her breathing is shallow & fast. she lifts the cup end of the tube leading to her oxygen tank & takes a hissing hit. she breathes a little easier. “my mom leaned in close & said, it’s just gravity, i’ll fix this, don’t worry. then she went away.”

  “& called Boutros.”

  “i guess. i guess. the nurses brought me a screen so i could watch stuff. i saw Dr. Stearns on the news, talking about something terrible the Company had done, but i didn’t catch enough of it to add 2 & 2, not then anyway. the next day, Mom came back & su
ddenly none of the usual doctors & nurses were around but Boutros was, & others. & they brought us here. in a private jet. Dr. Hendricks had a bed for Orion.”

  i think of how Dr. Kohli wasn’t there the second time we went to the hospital. “they took over.”

  she nods.

  “men in black suits?”

  she nods again.

  “they’re pretty powerful, huh?” i say.

  “yes.”

  “& now what? what happens now?”

  “what do u mean?” she says.

  “to us. what happens to us?”

  she shrugs. “the doctors are not sure. this has never happened before, so there’s no data. it’s possible we might…get stronger. they’ve increased our vitamin D & A dosages, calcium, potassium. but it’s possible we might not. it’s possible we might get worse.”

  silence.

  “i didn’t mean that,” i say. “i meant, what do we do?”

  “oh.” she leans back in her chair. “we stay here. it’s not so bad. there’s the garden.” she looks at it, at the trees towering above, & i c real love in her eyes. of course she loves this place, this part of it, at least. Comet snores next to us. napping. it must be the heat. “they’re going to get me a tutor. i’ll take the SATs. maybe even study to be a botanist.”

  “& then what?”

  she looks at me. “what?”

  “when u’re a botanist. if we say u are, 1 day. then what?”

  “then i work in the garden. do experiments, maybe i even get strong enough to leave. study other places.”

  i shake my head.

  i can’t stay here. i can’t do it. i look at the dome around me, the mountain. the oppressive closeness of everything. gravity always there, an unseen enemy, grasping, reaching up with its hands, like the denizens of hell in those old paintings, clawed fingers pushing up thru the earth, trying to yank everyone down with them. i can’t live down here. i feel close to panic. the world should be something far below me, curving, viewed thru a window, & i should be in orbit, spinning.

  if i stay here, i won’t really be alive. i will be a person existing entirely in the present, a person living in the country of now, & tomorrow will be something i don’t understand & can’t stand, & i will only ever want to escape today. to be slingshotted again, thru the blackness, thru the space between the earth & the stars.

  i don’t know how to say a single atom of that to Libra.

  “b-b-but…,” i stammer instead. “the gravity, the weight, how can u stand it?”

  she grimaces. “i’m getting used to it.”

  “not me,” i say.

  she shrugs.

  “but…,” i start, then stop. i take a breath. “but…how can u stay here with these people?”

  “what people?”

  “the people who made us. Boutros.”

  “it’s not them,” she says.

  “it’s…?”

  “it wasn’t their idea,” she says. “it was 16 years ago. everyone has changed. it was an experiment that failed. we’re all sick. but they’re not just abandoning us. they’re trying their best.”

  “by imprisoning us here.”

  “it’s for the altitude,” she says. “the pressure.”

  “hmm,” i say. it’s not like the pressure variation is dramatic, & if anything the oxygen saturation levels are lower here at altitude. tho i guess it’s true that there may be fractionally less strain on our skeletons.

  pause.

  “& ur mom?” i say. “where is she?”

  “i don’t know.”

  “u don’t know?”

  “no.”

  “u didn’t want her here?”

  our eyes meet. she says yes with hers.

  silence.

  “tho i don’t think she liked it anyway,” she says eventually. “i mean, seeing Orion like that. me.”

  sadness fills me—like filling a balloon with something heavier than air, with nitrogen, seeing it fall. i think of how jealous i always was of their relationship with their mother. of their hug outside the base. now they’re here, & their mother is not.

  “sorry,” i say.

  “not ur fault,” says Libra.

  she starts her wheelchair, & i prod Comet with my foot. he wakes with a snuffle & stands unsteadily, then follows us around the wide curve of the path.

  “Orion’s room is this way,” she says. “he’s always there. at least when he’s not in the oxygen tent or having a transfusion.”

  we quarter-circle the garden, sticking to the side where the wall is, the glacier over to our left.

  Libra opens a door with her card & we go thru. she’s ahead of me—2 wheelchairs don’t fit thru a door at the same time. “come on, Comet,” i say, because he is dawdling behind us. Libra waves her card at the sensor to make sure that the door stays open for him.

  we go down the hallway &—after knocking, which is less easy from a wheelchair than it sounds—into Orion’s room, which is at the end farthest from the entrance, its high glass wall facing the cliff side, scree & stone, every shade of gray, dotted with snow. it’s a generous-size room, chairs by the glass side, a low table with old-fashioned printed books & magazines on it, a chest of drawers against 1 of the concrete walls, a lamp by the bed.

  the bed is angled to the glass side too, so Orion can c out.

  he has a remote control in his hand that i guess operates the bed. it’s raised almost into a seat, & he is sitting in it, a screen in his other hand, which he lowers as we enter & he turns to us. he takes off heavy, high-quality headphones. his handsome face is gray, thin, as if someone has suctioned some of what makes him him out of it.

  he is wearing pajamas & a bathrobe. he wears a mask that connects, via a tube, to the wall. there’s a row of sockets next to where the 2 meet, & a little sign reading OXYGEN & a lever switch below it that says £ OFF & M ON.

  the chairs are in the way but Libra shunts them aside & we drive round so that we’re all huddled together, like the worst sports team in history, in any sport.

  light from outside floods the room, hard & mineral as the rocks. i’m glad i have my sunglasses on & i wonder why Orion doesn’t darken the glass, but then i remember: he’s Orion.

  “hey, Leo,” says Orion.

  “hey, Orion,” i say.

  pause.

  “sorry about ur mom,” i say.

  “sorry about urs.”

  “uh-huh.”

  silence.

  “well, this sucks ass, doesn’t it?” says Orion.

  & i laugh & Libra laughs & it’s like no time has passed.

  “i tried to vid u both,” i say. “lots of times. never worked.”

  Orion nods. “we tried to call u too,” he says. “the Company was blocking it.”

  “they didn’t want u to know how sick we were, i guess,” says Libra. “maybe they thought u might…make it. in the real world.”

  silence for a moment.

  “well, i’m glad we’re together again,” i say.

  “us too,” they say together, in that way they sometimes do.

  “who’s the dog?” says Orion as Comet turns in circles.

  i pat my lap, & Comet jumps up & then kind of collapses onto his side, tongue lolling.

  “Comet,” i say. “usually he’s a lot more bouncy than this.”

  Orion nods. “me too.”

  this time we don’t laugh.

  pause.

  “i saw real snow,” i say, thinking of our game on the station. “falling from the sky, i mean. i caught a flake on my tongue. i shot someone. it’s a long story. i ate bacon. oh my god, did u guys eat bacon?”

  “like, a metric ton of it,” says Orion.

  “what else?” i say. “did u do any of ur 3 things?”

  “i swam in a lake,” says Libra. “that’s about it.”

  i turn to Orion. “u? did u run in the rain? did u go to a concert hall & hear Jason Mukherjee play Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier?”

  “no,” say
s Orion. “i saw birds flying tho. i had a bath. i threw a ball against a wall.”

  i nod.

  “i’m…” i don’t really know what to say. “i’m sorry. about u being sick.”

  he waves a hand dismissively. “i don’t know if i’d even call it that. i’m not sick. i’m just not made for this place.”

  that hangs in the air a moment, silvery, almost chiming. none of us are made for this place.

  “so…what happens to u?” i say. “i mean, next.”

  “i don’t know,” he says. “they keep giving me blood, iron infusions, oxygen, vitamins. it’s all meant to make me stronger. & some days i do feel stronger. but…i don’t know what the end game is. do u?”

  “no,” i say.

  “so i listen to my music,” he says. “& i look at the snow & sometimes i go to the hospital bay & sometimes they take me to the other side so i can c the glacier & the land below. it makes me feel a bit like i’m at home. looking down. u know?”

  that hangs too. shimmering, ringing on the air, a memory of a note.

  home.

  “ur dog doesn’t seem to have much energy, for a young dog,” says Orion. he is frowning at Comet.

  i look down.

  i c Comet’s chest rising & falling, rapidly, his tongue still hanging out. i raise my hand & put it on his side & feel his heart beating skippety skip, fast & light, like fingers nervously drumming.

  i think of his slowness, down the slope.

  i think of his panting.

  “oh no,” i say. “NO.”

  i unroll my screen & call Grandpa.

  i haven’t spoken to him since i learned, since i heard, since i knew, since i don’t know what the word is for when u find out u are a human petri dish & everyone u love is a liar.

  but i don’t know what else to do.

  i wake up, but i don’t get up.

  there’s no reason to get up.

  Comet lies at my feet, curled over my toes. i’m in a room just down the hallway from Libra’s & Orion’s. it faces the mountainside too. it’s like they thought that if we had a wider view, a view of all that land falling to the horizon, it might hurt us, all the distance that we can’t go out into. maybe they’re right.