Critical inquiry. Reason. Humor. Compassion. Empathy. If we did not move forward with these things, then the answer to the question Why do we seem to be alone in the universe had to be Because anything close to being like us will destroy itself. Something big needed to happen, right now, for all of us.
And imagine if we did it. Imagine if this little side project of the cosmos—humans on Earth—turned out to be a thing that survived its infancy, matured, flourished. Not a blink-and-you-missed-it species, not bipedal bacteria, but the thing that we’re hoping to find: intelligent life. Wise, creative, benevolent, possessed with an understanding about the fundamental nature of reality, sort of pretty once you got used to it. We could be the aliens we hoped to meet.
? ? ?
“MY MOM SAID in one of her messages that Mars does remind you of Earth, but then also not, only the difference is hard to describe because it’s such a new feeling,” Mireille says. “Like, almost a new sense. I thought that was sort of great.”
“Yes,” Luke says. “I thought that was sort of great too.”
THE ASTRONAUTS
The astronauts are looking at Earth.
“Remember what it was like the first time?” Helen asks.
“Yes,” Sergei and Yoshi say.
Earth from space: hard to believe it was real, that you were real, that you were now an astronaut who got to see this. Sunrises and sunsets, storms, clouds of every variety, weather conditions of every possible permutation, the countless ways water and land could meet in patterns and angles and curves. The chiaroscuro of light scattered and light diffracted. Such blues, such browns, such greens, such whites. A burst of red. A yellow corona. The impenetrable darkness of a jungle. A single line of burgeoning waves far from any shore, unremarked by any human eyes save your own. The striated halo of atmosphere. The aurora.
“The first aurora,” Helen says. “Never forget that.”
“The first space walk,” Yoshi says.
The first space walk. Leaving the station in your own little miniature craft of a spacesuit, and spacewalking that was more like space swimming or space scuttling. The view more startling: the Earth moving between your boots or your hands. The extreme quiet. No sound or taste or smell or meaningful touch, so everything you knew came from your eyes.
“I’m in space!” Helen says. “That’s what I always wanted to shout. I’m in space!”
“Yes,” Sergei and Yoshi say.
“The saddest moment of your life,” Helen says. “Is coming back inside after being on a space walk. Not the saddest. The hardest.”
“Yes,” Sergei and Yoshi say.
The astronauts look at the circle on the screen. Brown and blue and white and green.
“It is much prettier,” Sergei says, “than the other two. Venus and Mars. Pfft. If I were an alien, I would think, hey, how come they got the best one?”
The astronauts laugh.
“Okay, yes, I am having the big feeling, that I am part of fulfilling destiny of human species and so on,” Sergei says, and then after another pause, “it is not just me that feels this?”
“No, no,” Helen says. “I mean, yes. I have the same thought. I put it a little differently to myself. I think that we are finding another level. Doing something like this, we all find another level.”
“God in heaven, Mars.”
Helen and Sergei turn away from the Earth to look at Yoshi.
“It was a phrase that came to me once,” he explains. “I don’t mean it literally.”
The astronauts continue their tasks. They are securing the Hab of Red Dawn, in preparation for initiating the landing sequence. Yoshi wants an immaculate ship, and so they clean as they go through checklists, aware of the imprints they have left in this space, surprised at how easy it is to erase what is visible.
Yoshi, in his sleeping compartment, holds the bag of acorns he had brought from Earth. He had intended these to be a physical connection with Earth and that this was something he would miss, would want, would need. He has barely looked at them in seventeen months. Sometimes you get these things quite wrong. Still, he has come to believe that he is the right person to command the return to Earth. He knows what he’s looking for.
Helen, in her sleeping compartment, looks at herself in the small mirror next to her clothing locker. It is amusing that you can live your life in an almost entirely selfish way and still have little conception of your self. No wonder she kept thinking that she had forgotten something. She touches the side of her neck, her throat, straightens her shoulders, arches her back. She holds out her arms, smacks her wrist against the wall. She will hold out her arms like this to her daughter. She will say, Here is the souvenir I brought you from Mars.
Sergei, in his sleeping compartment, takes down the pictures of his sons and places them carefully in his personal bag. He thinks of the walk he will take with them, with them both at the same time. Maybe they will talk of meaningful things, maybe not. Maybe they will take the cold plunge together at New Year. Maybe they no longer, any of them, need this.
The astronauts find themselves in the hallway together, outside the Lav.
“For old times’ sake?” Helen suggests. There are maybe a few things to say. Especially now they know for certain there’s no audio.
“There seems to be more room,” Sergei says, when they’ve fit themselves in. It is very clean, but not fresh. “Who lost weight?”
“The last time we did this, I had hair,” Helen points out.
For a long time, full minutes, the astronauts are quiet.
Yoshi is the first to speak. “Sergei. I wanted to ask. When the sim failed, and you saw Mars . . . was it very different from what we had been looking at?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Helen says. “I wanted to know too.”
“It was only a few seconds.” Sergei looks down, shifts his feet. “But no. Not so different. A little different color, and different light. Like taking off sunglasses.”
“So, still really great,” Helen says. “Still amazing and like nothing we’ve ever seen and more wonderful than you would think, having looked at so many pictures and images over the years and pretty much knowing what to expect.”