But The Stars

by Peter Cawdron

  The crew is five days out from their launch but the medical director isn’t taking any chances. No sense in sending some obscure disease to the stars. As it is, humans are walking bacterial factories. With each astronaut carrying around a microbiome consisting of almost forty trillion bacteria on any given day, along with an estimated three to four hundred trillion viral particles, viruses and bacteriophages, the idea of shielding the crew from a few more seems laughable. Still, no one likes the flu, least of all Dante. That’s one thing she won’t miss about Earth.

  “If you’ll follow me,” the woman says as Mags walks back into the waiting area, having just finished with another tech.

  Like Dante, Mags is in a flight suit. Again, it’s theater as far as Dante’s concerned. No one’s going flying today, but uniforms are important. Submission is a religion. Authority is the high priest. Dante finds process and procedure boring. The truth is, once the astronauts hit the stratosphere, NASA’s control is gone. The astronauts can do as they damn well please once they’re in space, and beyond complain, there’s nothing NASA can do about it. Wanna stop by Saturn on the way out of the system to look at the rings? Why not? How about Jupiter and the Great Red Spot? It’s not like NASA could send out a repo man to collect an interstellar spacecraft. The crew won’t do that, of course. No one would dare say it, not even in jest, but Dante’s pretty sure they’ve all thought about it.

  Out there among the stars, they’re on their own. The technical term is an autonomous cell, but that’s too sterile for Dante. Out there in the darkness, they’re pioneers—ambassadors from a pale blue dot. For now, though, she’s got one last session with the mission psychs. We can’t be sending an axe murderer to WISE 5571 now, can we?

  Dante gets to her feet, trying not to smile. The end is in sight. Well, the end of kicking around in one gee with ten billion other saps. After nine years of training, she’s about to reach the end of one journey and the beginning of another.

  Mags looks dejected, which surprises Dante as it’s unlike her. As Mags sits down she seems to deflate. Her shoulders droop.

  “Any advice?” Dante asks, only half serious.

  Mags looks up through bloodshot eyes.

  “Don’t lie.”

  And with that, the myth of invincibility is gone—shattered. Dante’s had plenty of psych evals before and she’s given dozens herself over the years. If Mags is shaken—yeah, Dante’s nervous. She follows the tech, noting the lighthearted banter that’s accompanied most of their other pre-launch activities is absent.

  With a decade of intense discipline, testing and training behind them, the flight director told them to relax a little. After all, it’s their last week on Earth. They weren’t able to leave the training complex, but as the facility is in Florida, less than four miles from the cape, they were free to swim in the severely over-chlorinated pool, relax in the sauna or sit under a tree reading a book, looking out over the marshlands with their three-stage rocket already sitting squarely on the launch pad.

  Somewhere high above them, the Acheron is already in orbit, having been built in space. All of a sudden, though, Dante feels as though she’s back at square one. Her palms go sweaty.

  “Please, have a seat,” a doctor says as the tech leads her into the examination room.

  There’s only one seat, set slightly off center in the middle of the room. This is the same room used for spacesuit fittings, so it’s large. Normally, there are a bunch of helmets and spacesuit torsos hanging on wall mounts, but they’ve been cleaned out. The lights are dim, except for the one almost directly above the chair. That one lone light is particularly bright, brighter than she remembers during her fitting.

  “Will there be anything else, Dr. Romero?” the tech asks, dipping her head slightly in deference.

  The way he replies, saying, “No,” while staring intently at Dante, makes her uncomfortable. She should sit, but she second-guesses herself, pausing slightly. Doubts creep in.

  Dr. Romero is an older man, with wispy hair thinning on top, which is unusual in an age where gene splicing can easily counter male pattern baldness. He has flecks of grey above his ears. His full beard has plenty of grey hair, but it’s centered around his mouth, giving the impression of a goatee even though his beard reaches back around his jaw. In centuries past, the grey would have marked him as in his late fifties, but these days it probably means he’s a little over a hundred. Like the tech, he’s wearing a white lab coat, only instead of covering a uniform it hides a dark three-piece suit, which is far more formal than any psych eval she’s ever been in.

  Dante sits, shifting the chair slightly, aligning the seat with the light as she sits down.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Move the chair.”

  “Ah… I don’t know. I just did, I guess.”

  “No you didn’t,” the doctor says, walking around behind her. “That wasn’t random—without reason.”

  Dante’s confused.

  The doctor’s carrying a neural interface. The electronic crown hums softly. Colored LEDs flicker, anticipating the pulsating rhythm of her brain waves being set beneath their thin silicon wafers. She’s expecting him to seat it on her head and calibrate the sensors, but he continues slowly pacing around her.

  “Life is scripted,” he says. “I know you don’t think that, but it is. We all play a part, acting out our role on a vast wooden stage, staring into the glare of the spotlights, appealing to an audience hidden in the shadows, performing in the hope of a five-star review from strangers—people who don’t give a fuck about us personally.”

  Vulgar language is particularly out of place in a psych eval as swear words are generally intended to elicit a highly polarized response. Evals are about teasing out the finer details of someone’s personality and their coping mechanisms. Dante turns her head slightly as the doctor passes behind her, unsure where he’s taking the interview.

  “You moved the chair because we made you move it. We trained you. We pushed you. We shaped and molded you until your actions—even your very thoughts—as original as you think they are—are entirely predictable.”

  Dante rests her hands in her lap, feeling uncomfortable. She’s indecisive, wanting to put them on the armrests, but he’s made her feel uneasy. She fiddles with her fingers. Dante wonders if her every move is being scrutinized.

  “Oh, your every move is being scrutinized,” the doctor says from behind her. “Your thoughts, actions and words are observed, analyzed, considered, measured and then predicted. Don’t believe me? Think of a number between one and ten.”

  Dante grits her teeth.

  “Got it?”

  She nods.

  “Six, right?”

  Shoes squelch softly on the linoleum as he continues walking around her.

  “You originally thought of seven—most people do—but you’re a contrarian. You want to believe you’re a rebel—a free spirit—unpredictable—so you stepped down to six. Not up to eight or as far down as five. No, despite what you think, you’re too conservative for that. Six is safe ground. Four was a possibility, but six is where you thought you could hide from me. Three is beneath you. Nine is too pretentious. Two? Well, no one picks two, now do they? Not ever.”

  Dante is genuinely surprised.

  “How did you…”

  Without raising her hands from her lap, she points at the crown in his hands.

  “If I needed this, I wouldn’t be very good at my job, now would I?”

  The doctor stops in front of her. He’s standing back from her with his face shrouded by the darkness.

  “Feeling comfortable?” he asks, resting the crown on a stainless-steel medical cart. It was a diversion, a distraction, and she fell for it.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  He rubs his chin, scratching at the stubble.

  Dante swallows the lump in her throat, acutely aware such a gesture betrays her unease, but she’s unable to combat the ur
ge.

  The doctor steps forward, crouching and sitting on his haunches, setting himself below her as she shifts on the hard plastic seat. Although his motion looks natural, she’s not so sure. Body language says far more than words, and after setting her on edge, this particular ploy has to be deliberate. He wants her to relax, to feel as though she’s above him and in control—but it’s a lie, another feint. She’s sure of that, at least.

  “We approximate,” he says. “We like to think we’re precise, but we live on unquestioned assumptions. We’re constantly filtering information. Our subconscious sifts incoming data based on our interests, keeping some points, discarding others.”

  Dante is confused. This isn’t a psych eval. She could beat that. No, this is something different—a game of wits.

  “We think we see clearly, when everything is filtered through rose-colored glasses.”

  In an extravagant gesture, making as though he were a magician revealing a trick, he holds his arms out wide. His suit jacket is unbuttoned. The sides fall open, revealing a stark, white shirt and blood red tie. He stretches his arms out, causing the sleeves of his jacket to pull taut.

  “What do you see?” he asks, maintaining eye contact with her for an uncomfortably long time. “Look closely.”

  “You’ve taken off your lab coat,” she says.

  “Hah,” he replies, standing and circling her again. He shakes a finger at her.

  “You saw what we wanted you to see.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The doctor leans in. Light reflects off his smooth, freshly shaved head. The stubble on his cheeks, though, is thick and prickly, being two or three days old.

  “You need to do better. You need to be better. You need to be far more aware of your own limitations.”

  A single word slips from her lips.

  “Fuck!”

  He smiles, suppressing a laugh. It wasn’t his clothing that changed—they switched examiners. When he walked behind the chair, another doctor took over. The first guy had a beard.

  “You’re still thinking too small,” he says, passing behind her once again, still apparently reading her mind from her reactions. “My voice didn’t change. That would have given it away. I didn’t switch with someone else. I pulled off a wig and fake beard, along with my coat. But you? You assumed. You saw what you wanted to see, what you expected to see. You never saw reality.”

  He snaps his fingers. In the silence of the examination room, it’s as though thunder has burst overhead.

  “Come on, Dante. We picked you for a reason. What’s happening? Why?”

  “Attention blindness,” she says, reverting to her training. “I’m under pressure so my focus is narrowing. It’s tunnel vision.”

  “Yes.” He claps his hands together, which startles her, causing her to flinch. The noise is jarring.

  In the silence that follows, he asks, “How does it work?”

  “Selective vigilance. I think I’m paying attention, but by focusing to much on one thing I miss another. I can’t see the forest for the trees.”

  Again, he offers a solitary clap, breaking the tension.

  Dante fights the urge to flinch again, saying, “I’m predictable.”

  “What’s the solution?” he asks.

  “Critical thinking. To recognize how my assumptions are clouding my perception.”

  “That’s the clinical answer,” the doctor says. “That’s what you’ll find in a textbook, but theory rarely matches practice. Reach past your assumptions. Most people parrot what they see and hear. They don’t think—not for themselves. They’re directed, molded, shaped, fashioned and manipulated by someone else. What they think is an original idea has often been planted by someone else.”

  The doctor comes back into view, only this time, there are no games, no wigs, no change of clothing. He remains in the shadows—faceless.

  “People are easily fooled,” he says. “Do you know what’s difficult? Convincing them they’ve been fooled.”

  He laughs.

  “We need you, Dante.” His eyes seem to pierce her soul. “Out there among the stars, we need you to be awake.”

  She nods, understanding his concern. Once they’re off this rock, she’s all that stands between the crew and oblivion. Oh, Angel might keep the engines running while Mags keeps the life support systems humming, but the success of the mission relies on the two people who are, technically, redundant. Cap might be the commander, but the crew has been trained to work autonomously. Jeeves, the artificial intelligence, can handle any and every medical emergency that might arise. She and Cap are the human equivalent of spare parts. In reality, Cap provides leadership while Dante monitors crew dynamics, keeping everyone sane.

  “What do you see when the darkness closes in?”

  Dante’s quiet.

  “When the day has come to an end and you’re lying there alone in bed. What do you think about?”

  “I try not to think about anything at all,” Dante confesses.

  “Or?”

  “Or I won’t be able to get to sleep?”

  “Why? Do you worry about the launch? Do you think about the sheer distance involved? Being separated from your family? Never returning home? What ache tugs at the depths of your soul?”

  Dante wants to lie. She wants to tell him what he wants to hear but in the back of her mind, she can still hear the advice of her friend and crewmate, Mags. Don’t lie. The way Mags spoke those two words was telling. She lingered on the first word, drawing it out, emphasizing it. The second was said with resignation, as though she were surrendering, weary from battle. Don’t—lie. That was her challenge, the point at which she stumbled. Mags knew that was the temptation Dante would face as well. Dante grits her teeth, determined to redeem them both.

  With reluctance, she says, “Not being good enough.”

  Dr. Romero nods.

  “What do you want? To be the best?”

  “No,” she replies. “Better. I don’t know that anyone is ever the best they can be. I just want to be better today than yesterday.”

  He’s unmoved.

  “Tell me about your fears... Rational ones, not irrational. I don’t care if you’re afraid of sharks when swimming at the beach or shrink from a spider hanging from a silk thread. Tell me about what wakes you in the dead of night in a cold sweat.”

  “For me,” she says, almost coughing as her mouth goes dry, “it was leaving Earth behind for the first time.”

  Dr. Romero seems intrigued by that response.

  “Why?”

  “We were on an interplanetary run in one of the old Ecliptic class orbiters. Four month round trip. The mission was a flyby of a comet passing at three AU. We had a lander prepped to take samples.”

  “And?” he asks.

  “Before that, I’d only ever been in low Earth orbit. From there, everything’s peaceful. Earth is beautiful. Mesmerizing.”

  “But?”

  “But the darkness,” she begins, unsure how to continue. “From a couple of million miles away, Earth is just a pale blue dot. If you don’t know where to look, it’s just another star.”

  She pauses. He doesn’t say anything. The silence is intimidating. She feels as if she knows what he’s thinking.

  “Oh, I’d read Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. Hell, I think most of the crew had memorized the entire passage like it was poetry or something, but nothing could have prepared us for that moment—seeing it for ourselves.

  “Mission Control told us it would be exhilarating. Most of the crew were awestruck, but I found it mortifying. That one small speck. Ten billion people squabbling over nothing. All the money in the world. All the arrogance and ego. All the wars. All the suffering and loss. For me, it seemed petty when played out on a single spot barely visible through the thick glass.

  “That tiny pinprick of light could have been a mote of dust on the cupola, a nick or a scratch in one of the laminated layers, and yet that’s us—that’s all we’ve ever kn
own. All our delusions of grandeur, our self-importance, our plans and schemes, they all amount to little more than a faint shade of blue at that distance. We think we’re so great and high and mighty, that we have such a mastery of the elements of the universe, but we’re really quite small, alone and adrift in the empty darkness.”

  “And that scares you?” he asks.

  “It terrifies me,” she says. “Oh, I tell myself there’s music, art, all the beauty of nature—birds, trees, flowers—but deep down, having seen how small we really are, it scares me to think it’s not enough. I guess, I want there to be more. Maybe that’s why I’m here—heading out into space again—facing my fears—looking for a solution.”

  “And what is the solution?” he asks.

  “For there to be life elsewhere. That would mean we’re not alone, that we’re part of something greater.”

  Without saying anything, the doctor nods. He seems unusually satisfied by her answer. Dante was expecting him to probe deeper.

  After what seems like an age, he asks, “What would you do if you’re a hundred light years from home and your hull is breached by an asteroid strike? You’re losing power, venting oxygen. What would you do when there’s no hope of ever coming back? What do you tell the others?”

  Without skipping a beat, she says, “I’d get the surviving crew into their hibernation pods. Tell them, we’ll wait it out. We’ll send a distress signal and sleep until help arrives in a hundred—a thousand years time.”

  “And would you?” he asks, knowing that’s the standard procedure. “Is that really what you’d do?”