Additionally, Primitus was considerably smaller than the International Space Station, and the length of time they were spending together far greater. On the space station you could work all day without encountering another crewmember. Yoshi saw—as they all did—the wisdom in not having the first time three astronauts spend seventeen months together be the actual voyage itself. Knowing that they would all be doing this again seemed an additional reason for keeping some sort of reserve.
Trusting a person and knowing a person were not the same things. It was necessary that Helen and Sergei trust him completely. It was not necessary that they know him to the same extent.
Ah, he can hear Helen in the Galley. He has tarried too long, will not have a solitary breakfast, must think of another treat. He could take breakfast in his bedroom wedge, of course, but that would be Not at all Friendly.
? ? ?
THAT AFTERNOON, Yoshi and Sergei exercise side by side, and worlds away from each other. Prime is having them combine virtual reality with cardio. Sergei is snowshoeing through pine trees. Yoshi is taking a brisk walk in the English countryside: heather, gorse, bracken, low stone fences, hills, and farmland. It is splendid!
This week is a good time for Prime to display some of the pleasant applications of virtual reality. All last week the astronauts had been running dynamic ops and extreme off-nominal situations. Long days of dying, so frustrating. They were probably all on the verge of being annoyed with Prime. This was another kind of problem: an “us” and “them” mentality had been detrimental in previous missions. Autonomy they had, to a large degree, but they did receive orders. They did have to explain themselves. For Eidolon they had an audience that was also a judge. A peeved Mission Control would be far less willing to send them to Mars.
These new sims might be seen as a kind of present. “For good little astronauts,” as Sergei might say. When Yoshi looks down at himself now, striding along, he sees himself dressed in tweed and wearing brogues. Either someone in Prime VR has a sense of humor or they know him better than he thinks. He wonders what—should he pass a reflective pool of water—his face looks like, whether the transformation would include the features of an early twentieth-century English gentleman. About halfway through the program, Yoshi is joined by a friendly collie that wags his tail and trots along companionably. Yoshi would like to pet him, or run his fingers through the heather, but he’s not wearing haptic gloves, and can’t touch anything in this environment. Still, the helmet allows him a 360-degree view, and the collie responds to Yoshi’s movement. When Yoshi stops, the dog does too. “Sit,” Yoshi says, experimentally. The collie sits. Yoshi laughs, and then starts walking again. Technically he is meant to be exercising, not playing with a dog.
After an hour, Yoshi and Sergei stop and compare notes after checking in with RoMeO, which keeps track of all their physical statistics and gives them a comparative analysis of heart rate, caloric expenditure, white blood cell count, etc.
“You can feel it,” Sergei says. “Absolutely, under your feet. Snow. You can hear it fall, crunch, everything. Always, when I snowshoe, I feel that it’s something I could do forever and not be bored. As the day goes on, I have even more energy. I never want to stop. And this gave me the same feeling.” Sergei does indeed look exuberant. They have reached the stage where variety in mood and expression is very subtle, and Yoshi has had to remind himself to be actively demonstrative. He doesn’t have to do this now. His smile is not forced; he would have trouble stopping it.
“Where were you?” Sergei asks.
“In England. Somerset, I think,” Yoshi says. “My other one is the cliffs of Dover. What is your second option?”
“I was going to tease them and ask for the Medina of Marrakech.” Sergei laughs. “They’d have to put five thousand virtual extras and scooters and tagine stalls. But I was a nice guy and said I would like a beach to jog on. Although, at this point, any outside place is welcome.”
“At the end of my ISS mission,” Yoshi says, “I did look forward to nature, very much. But I didn’t think about it until the very end.”
“Of course not. You don’t spend your whole life wanting to go to space and then get there and wish you were in the forest.” Sergei shrugs and wipes his face with a towel. It is important to remember that when Sergei says “Of course not” like that, he is not dismissing you, but agreeing with you.
“Just think”—Sergei tosses Yoshi a water bottle—“how many environments will be ready when we Gofer.” Gofer was their shorthand for “go for real.” In the first few weeks there had been an almost constant running comparison in Yoshi’s mind: during the real thing, x and y will feel slightly more; slightly less; this won’t be the same; this is not quite accurate. It would come up in conversation too, although typically they tried to stay away from talking too much about Eidolon as eidolon: a specter of the real thing. The more they detached themselves from Eidolon, the less useful Eidolon became.
“It makes me very excited,” Yoshi says, “to see what the Mars landing will be like.”
“Chhhh,” Sergei says. “If Mars is as convincing as my pine forest, you will have to drag me back in. Helen will have to punch me out and throw my body into Red Dawn.” It is a joke between the three of them that Helen possesses superhuman strength and that they are both physically intimidated by her. “Why did they wait to give us the sims like this? We could have been doing this the whole time. We will suggest this.”
“Perhaps it wouldn’t have felt as special in the beginning?”
“Maybe. But we’re not children. We don’t need to be taught value of a treat.”