Beyond the Sun

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  The door opened and Emma jumped out. My father and I followed. Even though I didn’t want to, I accessed my socket and learned we had eight minutes until impact. I nervously glanced at the comet, which burned in the sky directly over the horizon.

  As we approached the ship, a door opened and Captain Stryder emerged. “What the hell are you doing here?” he yelled, his calm militia proxy obviously overwhelmed.

  “I’m on to you,” Emma shouted, hitting Stryder across the face. “I won’t let you do it.”

  With a quick motion, Stryder reached into his tunic and pulled out a stun gun, which collapsed Emma into pain on the yellow thickens. He bent over to make sure she was alright, then looked at us and shook his head.

  “I sincerely apologize for this,” he said. “I knew she was unstable, but I had no idea her disjointment went this far.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Stryder aimed the stun gun at us. “We don’t have time to fight,” he said. “I’m alone on the ship. If I hurt you, I can’t carry all of you onboard to safety before the impact.”

  “We won’t fight you,” I said. “But what are you doing?”

  Stryder wavered for a moment, then kicked at a thicken. “They’re spreading,” he said. “The damn things used to only cover places like these foothills, where the mists fed them. But as the planet grows wetter, they’re starting to spread. What’s the point of terraforming if a native plant spreads everywhere and keeps out our own vegetation?”

  I stared for a moment at the thickens and thought about how hard a time we’d had removing them from a few isolated spots. I then remembered Stryder’s role in removing any unauthorized biomatter which threatened terraforming. “You’re going to destroy them,” I said, even as my socket warned me there were only three minutes until impact. “You’re going to vaporize the entire region, just like you did a year ago.”

  Stryder sighed. “This is the only group of thickens near a settlement. With the comet hitting nearby, we could burn the region away and say any harm to your settlement was merely unanticipated comet damage.”

  I glanced at Emma, who rolled in pain on the thickens. Any weapon strike big enough to completely destroy all these plants would also destroy our settlement. My anger rose at Stryder’s arrogance in deciding the fate of our community, and I tensed to charge him. But before I could move, my father laid his hand on my arm. Stryder smirked. He obviously considered nonviolence a weakness. He gestured with the stun gun.

  “Carry her onboard the ship,” he ordered. “We need to be inside to be safe from the impact.”

  As I bent over Emma, my socket buzzed. On a hunch, I opened myself to her and a wave of information flooded in, everything from her uncovering Stryder and Watkins’ plan to detailed sims showing Stryder using his ship’s weapons to destroy everything within a hundred kilometers of these hills. As I watched our community explode, Emma suddenly smiled. One final, but critical, piece of information clicked into me.

  I stood up and faced Stryder. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  My father reached for me, but he didn’t have to worry—I had no intention of fighting. Instead, I uploaded the access code Emma had just given me into Stryder’s ship, sealing the main door shut. A look of panic crossed Stryder’s face as my socket warned we were one minute to impact.

  “Open the door,” Stryder screamed, but I’d already scrambled the code. He aimed the stun gun at me and fired, sending pain coursing through my body. As I fell onto the thicken-coated ground, I glanced up at the comet, which appeared unmoving and eternal yet also ever changing.

  As Stryder banged on the door in purest panic, the comet entered the atmosphere with a massive, eye-burning explosion. The fire reached above the distant horizon like God’s hand embracing His own. As I passed out, my last thoughts were a prayer, hoping He would forgive my sins and pull me into the sweet night of His bosom.

  *

  I woke two days later in my own bed. At first I was disoriented and thought I’d entered a simulation of my parent’s house, but when I tried to find my way out, I only felt my own body and senses. I rubbed the slight bump under the back of my skull. The socket was physically there, but the slight buzz I’d felt ever since installation was gone.

  I stood up and looked out the broken window at the foothills. The distant hills were still covered in yellow thickens, and I saw the glint of water on the damaged water condensers. I then walked downstairs to find my parents sitting on the back porch with Ms. Watkins.

  “Sam,” Ms. Watkins said, standing up and offering me her chair. “Glad to see you up and about.”

  Remembering Emma’s last upload and how Ms. Watkins had been working with Stryder to destroy our community, I refused to take her seat. Ms. Watkins gave me a sour look, then shook her head and walked toward the barn, where a shuttle waited for her.

  My father and mother quickly filled me in. After the electromagnetic pulse fried the sockets of Stryder, myself, and Emma, my father had pulled us behind the relative safety of the English ship. The seismic shaking hit a minute and a half after impact; the shock wave twenty minutes later. As we’d been told, the damage to the community was minimal at this distance, although ejecta from the impact pelted our crops rather hard.

  Ms. Watkins and other rescuers arrived an hour later. Stryder was in bad shape—evidently he’d relied almost totally on his socket for storage of his memories and proxies. While Emma’s socket, and my own, were also destroyed, Ms. Watkins said we should be okay because we had stable personalities hardwired in our neurons. As a precaution she’d sedated us, but said there would be no lasting effects—aside from having a dead socket in our head for the rest of our lives. She’d also half-heartedly apologized for going behind our backs in dealing with the thickens problem. While my father knew she didn’t truly mean this, he still suggested several low-tech solutions for controlling the plants near the Amish settlement. Ms. Watkins had expressed interest in exploring those options.

  “Do you trust her?” I asked.

  “No,” my father said. “But I trust God, and even you must admit He handled things rather well.”

  I nodded, still amazed my socket could no longer tempt me. While I’d been praying for this ever since returning to the faith, the fact that I couldn’t go back to the English world now scared me more than anything. Seeing my concern, my mother hugged me and told me to go check on our guest in the spare bedroom. I nervously walked to the bedroom and knocked on the door. An excited voice told me to come in.

  Emma sat on the bed, a black prayer covering in her hands. She quickly placed it on her head and smiled.

  “Your mother let me borrow some clothes,” she said, standing up. Her dress was loose and baggy, and she laughed as her apron slipped from her waist. “She said I could stay as long as I want. Guess I’ll need to sew myself some clothes. Been a few centuries since I’ve done that.”

  I took her hand and squeezed it, then hugged her tightly. I wanted to ask how much of all this her other proxies had planned and how much had resulted from God, or chance, or any of the above. But as I looked at Emma’s happy face, I realized none of that mattered. Everyone else she’d ever been was dead and, in a strange way, both of our prayers had been answered. What else could we do but be content with the new lives we’d been given.

  Sometimes the consequences for colonists might be more personal or interpersonal, depending on how you look at it. For David and his husband, Carlo, the chance to join a colony was seen by one as an escape and the other as salvation, but the end result is one neither had expected.

  ELSEWHERE, WITHIN, ELSEWHEN

  CAT RAMBO

  for the past month, David had been dividing their possessions, separating things out from each other, sorting shelves of knickknacks into groups of his and Carlo’s. All in the name of efficiency. Efficiency in order to speed the moment when he told Carlo he was leaving.

  But he had thought he would be packing for himself, after saying goodbye to
Carlo. He’d already figured out the essentials that would fit into the colony ship’s weight allowance, assembled a few hardcopy books, Nana’s lucky maneki neko cat, his great-grandfather’s pocket knife, and his absolute favorite vintage Hawaiian shirt, Monty Pythonesque, pop-eyed dragons writhing on a background of opulent white clouds. He’d researched household necessities, reading through the message boards where future colonists chattered back and forth. He’d assembled lists of spices, and seeds for most of them, preparing for new ground, imagining himself a video hero, a pioneer readying to carve out a rugged, solitary life.

  Instead he was packing for both of them, and Carlo was the one who was taking him along.

  Unconscionable for David to begrudge Carlo’s luck. Carlo had worked hard to qualify for a berth on the Bon Chance, a colonist’s position. And wasn’t he taking his spouse along, so they could start a family on the newly discovered planet? Many colonists chose to abandon planetary partners as well as lives.

  Carlo hadn’t even thought twice about it. He’d assumed of course David would come along on the one-way trip to the planet the marketing company had named Splendid. Assumed that his partner just as ready to transplant their relationship to a new world.

  David considered a set of silver spoons. They clinked reproachfully as he returned them to the drawer. But who needed fancy dinnerware on the frontier? They could take so few objects, so very few things, things that they might never see again in colonial life.

  He didn’t think he would have chosen differently in Carlo’s place—he knew it. He’d meant to leave Carlo behind. In fact, it was why he’d applied for the Bon Chance in the first place. It seemed an easy way to break up, to regretfully say that he didn’t think he could take Carlo along. The government rejection devastated him. He hadn’t even known that Carlo had applied too, until his husband said that night, “I’ve been accepted to the ship.”

  David stared at him across the table. He hadn’t been able to collect the energy to make dinner, so he’d ordered in pizza. He’d even chosen a place they’d never tried before, a passive aggressive nudge that made him feel, shamefully, better. But Carlo didn’t make his usual fuss about a new, unproven restaurant, had simply dug in as though he hadn’t even noticed.

  Who’d have thought Carlo, who hated untested things, who liked his life safe, would have opted to apply for the ship and the unexplored existence it represented?

  David said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Were you afraid I’d tease you about it?”

  Carlo fiddled with the plastic cutlery, staring down at the knife and fork as though trying to figure out how to combine them. “We don’t talk so much, anymore.” He put the utensils down, one on either side of his plate. “The chance to mention it never came up.”

  David replayed several weeks of conversations in his head. Was Carlo accusing him of not letting Carlo speak? But that wasn’t Carlo’s style either. He didn’t keep score, didn’t make oblique accusations.

  Had Carlo kept silent because he had been thinking along the same lines, of striking out on his own, or even with someone else, but changed his mind at the last minute?

  “No, we haven’t talked much,” David said. “We should do something about that.”

  “We should.”

  They stared at each other helplessly across the table.

  All along David had thought he’d be the one picked as a colonist. He hadn’t planned on taking anyone but himself. Now things were entirely changed. Where he thought Carlo would be abandoned, he could have been. And, somehow worse, somehow even more humiliating, it never came into question whether or not they would go together. Whether or not they’d undergo the surgery that would allow one or the other to carry a child to term when they chose to start the family that they were, though not legally obligated to, strongly encouraged to populate the planet with.

  Whether they’d continue being a unit.

  He’d checked the passenger list to see if any of Carlo’s former coworkers were going. That might have explained it. But none of the names were the one he most feared to see there.

  Still, he couldn’t let it rest until he asked, on Carlo’s afternoon off, when they were sorting his closet into items to be given to friends and Goodwill.

  “Is Ben going?” He threw a handful of silk ties, fluttering wildly, towards a box. They lay across it, rainbow snakes pondering an escape they had halfway achieved.

  “No. I haven’t seen him since that night. I told you. He transferred to another hospital.”

  “You said it didn’t mean anything to either of you.” David’s jaw clenched with anger.

  “It didn’t.” Carlo had given up any pretense of sorting. He turned to David, shoulders slumped as though already defeated, watching his face.

  “It meant enough that he transferred, though. So he wouldn’t see you anymore.”

  “We thought it would be best.”

  “You discussed it.” The thought of them planning the future together, considering options, dizzied David.

  Carlo said, “Do you want me to move out? We can’t keep coming back to this over and over for the rest of our lives.”

  “No,” David said. “It’ll be different once we leave here.” Once they left this place forever spoiled by what had happened, the apartment whose walls had grown small while David waited for his lover, knowing something was wrong, but not what, back before Carlo had first spoken Ben’s name.

  *

  At the last minute, some new regulation assigned everyone going on the ship a counselor to help them with the transition. David went downtown to see his in a vast building of glass and steel that looked like an exposed spine.

  After forty-five minutes wait, he was admitted to his appointment. Once introductions were over, he launched into the question that had haunted him all the way there. “Wouldn’t it have been smarter to accept people in pairs? So you know that both partners will contribute, have the skills you need?”

  The sandy-haired counselor had a tired smile above his lemon-yellow tie. He said, in a way that made David realize this wasn’t the first time the question had come up, “We’ve tried that. Studies have shown that it’s possible to be too efficient that way. It works better if we add some randomness to the mix, some people who aren’t trained but are adaptable, can take on roles as needed. Spouses and partners are the best way to do that, rather than introduce an unaffiliated group.”

  “So the spouses are valuable for that reason,” David said, half to himself.

  “Of course they are,” the counselor said. David could hear the patronizing tone buried deep under the words.

  Everything got mixed back up together in the packing, the things they couldn’t bear to leave behind despite the limits of the rules. The chiming clock Carlo had inherited from great great greats had to be abandoned, but not the teapot colored cerulean and gold that reminded David of his mother, which he justified by filling with seed packets. Small toys and books each had laid aside for future children.

  David packed it all in the plastic crates provided for them; one cubic half meter each. He packed and repacked, trying to squeeze as much as he could into the space, worked out clever tricks of putting things inside other things, around things, rolling a shirt into a thin rope that could be coiled around the teapot to cushion it, until at night he dreamed only of packing, getting things into smaller and smaller boxes.

  They were heavily encouraged to use the space for equipment, but no one did. It was a one-way trip, the colony, unless you made yourself such a good life there that you could afford a trip back.

  He ignored the sullen anger smoldering in his stomach. He’d planned his studies in order to make himself valuable. Hardly his fault that new technology had emerged to make all his work with ansibles useless. No one needed old tech, made of inorganic metals and chemicals, once biotech took hold. Even as he finished up his studies, he knew himself obsolete. That knowledge nagged at him, till he felt frustration-frayed, no longer a complete person but a rag
ged cluster of resentment, filled with the sludge of a thousand wounds.

  Sometimes he snapped at Carlo. He couldn’t help it. He felt things more strongly than simple, calm Carlo. That had first drawn him to Carlo: that strength, that uncomplicated outlook on life. David was different, full of more complicated, nuanced feelings. They didn’t look at things the same way. David kept track of the relationship’s give and take in an internal algebra alien to Carlo’s way of thinking.

  He felt bad about it, but what was he to do? He didn’t understand how people “let go” of such things. He tried his best, he really did, but resentment choked him at each slight, each ill chosen word or accidental triviality, like Carlo taking the last clean towel, even though David had laid it out for himself. Each instance grew into a perfectly formed little knot of negativity, collecting to coat him like barnacles, until he could only move in the way his heavy armor, made of anger and irritation and jealousy, permitted him.

  It weighed him down. He thought, more than once, of telling Carlo to go on without him. Humiliating to have earned his place because of who he fucked, rather than his own merit.

  He could stay on earth. Keep working and studying. Earn his own ticket. Plenty of companies readying to seed the systems discovered by the Hirsch probe ten years ago, a wave of ships stretching out over the next decade. But the competition was so stiff, so close, so hotly contested. There was no guarantee he’d make it.

  So he followed Carlo. It didn’t mean they be together forever, after all. A year or two tops of cohabitation. Long enough that it wouldn’t seem like he’d come under false pretenses. Then he’d leave.

  Oblivious Carlo.

  Not so their friends. David had confided his doubts about the relationship and his plans to sever it to more than one. David could see the question in their eyes when they came to see the pair off. He chose to ignore it, smiling brightly, waving. Keeping a possessive hand on Carlo’s shoulder as they walked up the ramp into the shuttle taking them to the Bon Chance to begin their journey.