“He’s also the only person I’ve ever heard use the word ‘recondite’ in a sentence,” Luke points out.
Of course, the thing about Yoshi that was truly remarkable, the thing about all the astronauts that was truly remarkable, was their level of control. Whatever their neurophysiologic or biochemical responses, when it came to behavior, the astronauts played a long game. A mission to Mars would be a very long game indeed, and Luke was going to have a front-row seat.
More, much more, than geeking out on how we are going to get to Mars, or why, or what we should do when we get there, what Luke wants to understand is who. Who are these people that can withstand such a trip, the danger, the risk, the isolation, the pressure? What can these people teach us? Because if we—the species—might eventually do something like move to another planet, it would be better if we made a few improvements on ourselves first, if possible.
Understanding the brain wasn’t like understanding mathematics, or physics. It wasn’t an enlargement of our collective understanding of the universe—it went the other way. At a certain point, you had the thing in your hands and a colossal responsibility. The brain could be altered. The brain clearly, in many cases, should be altered. Which was ethically complicated and had been giving Luke very weird, splitting-the-atom-type dreams for the past three years before he came to Prime.
Now I am become Amygdala, the destroyer of worlds.
When yet another round of behavioral experiments on undergraduate volunteers started giving you delusions of apocalyptic grandeur it was time to rethink your career trajectory. He is very happy to be here, doing this work. He sleeps well at Prime.
“There they are!” Nari cries out. She is leaning over the edge of the perimeter wall, looking down. Luke tries to follow her line of sight but isn’t sure what she is exclaiming over. Nari takes off her glasses and hands them to Luke.
“Do not look at the sky,” she says. “The filter isn’t on and the sun will damage your eyes. Look down. Two o’clock.” She grips Luke by his elbows and moves him into position.
“They are binoculars.” Luke adjusts the frames of Nari’s glasses, focusing.
“Yeah, this guy in Prime NeuroErgo gave them to me,” Nari says. “They’re prototypes. So, do you see? Two men, one woman? By the green building.”
Luke can see. It is Sergei, Helen, and Yoshi. He has not seen them in person before this. The binoculars are powerful; he can pick out details of their clothing. Sergei is wearing a gold bracelet. Helen has on a yellow shirt. Yoshi is smiling, saying something to the other two that is making them smile as well. Nari tugs Luke’s elbow and, with some reluctance, he hands the glasses back to her.
Astronomers, he has recently learned, have a slightly condescending attitude for the general public’s love of what they deem “pretty pictures.” The highly color-filtered images from the space telescopes may capture Joe and Jane Public’s interest, but astronomers get turned on by spectra, by data.
Luke has been looking at the data of Sergei and Helen and Yoshi for so long that he finds the sight of their corporeal selves almost shocking. This is not the way he knows them, and it is exciting to see them like this. It is good—humbling—to be reminded of how little he might actually know. For example, nothing in Helen’s data suggests that she would choose a yellow shirt.
HELEN
Years ago, while training at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab, Helen’s instructor Jeff had told her, “Don’t fight the suit. The suit will always win, no matter how strong you are. Your key to success is going to be: sink and melt. Just like those experiments we did as kids with cornstarch and water? If you try to jab your fingers all stiff through cornstarch and water you’ll encounter a solid. But if you sink and melt your hands on the surface, you’ll move right through it. So that’s what you gotta do. You gotta tell your hands to sink and melt. Sink and melt.”
Helen counts this advice as one of the most profound she has ever received, and has made periodic attempts throughout her life to apply it in other areas: Sink and Melt Feminism, Sink and Melt Departmental Politics, Sink and Melt Parenting. The approach has been most successful inside a spacesuit.
Helen is inside a Prime spacesuit now, and outside a life-size mockup of Primitus. Both these things—Helen and Primitus—are submerged in Prime Space’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab. The spacesuit is pressurized, tethered with umbilical cords to a life support system, and weighted to mimic the conditions of microgravity. Helen’s current position inside it is not comfortable. She is upside down, and though the spacesuit is neutrally buoyant, she is not; her shoulders are bearing her full weight. Helen flexes her feet inside her boots, anchoring herself like a bat to take the pressure off her shoulders. Inside the gloves, her hands feel unpadded and fleshless. She has been in the water for almost six hours.
Helen unlocks the Body Restraint Tether anchoring her to Primitus, and clips it back on the mini workstation attached to her chest. She makes the “okay” sign to the utility diver next to her and slowly brings her feet down, righting herself in the water, feeling the suit shift up off her shoulders and the blood rush from her head. For the last twenty minutes she has been gritting her teeth so hard she can barely open her mouth. But Helen has done everything she was supposed to do, in the time allotted to do it. If smiling wouldn’t be painful, she would smile.