The funny thing is, Dmitri, I forget all this. I forget what I am because I have been so long simulating the man I wish to be that I now believe myself to be this man. I think it’s real.
In the past, I have only wanted you to see this man, because this is the only man worthy of your love. But now I am sick of simulations and I think, how can I know you love me if you only love this fake person? I know that the only thing that matters with parent and child is how much parent loves child. Child does not have to love you back. But this can only be borne by truly strong people. I am too weak not to care if you love me. Here, in space, I think: he cannot hate me here. But of course you can. Please do not. Please, please, I beg you, my darling boy, I am on my knees to you, do not hate me, please do love me.
YOSHI
My dear wife,
I have been thinking about Pluto and its moon, Charon. There are other satellites of Pluto, but Charon is the largest and closest, so big and so close that they might not be moon and dwarf planet but a double object. It has been suggested that they be reclassified as a double planet, but the International Astronomical Union has so far rejected this.
Pluto and Charon are in mutual tidal lock. This is different than the tidal lock between Earth and Luna. We see only one face of Luna, but if you were standing on the near side of Luna, you’d see all the faces of Earth. And if you were on the far side, you’d never see Earth at all.
Pluto and Charon show each other only one face, never turning away.
Have I spoken to you about the barycenter? I find it difficult to remember what I have said to you, and what I have only imagined saying to you. I think it not improbable that all our best conversations have taken place inside my head.
In astronomy, we use the word barycenter to describe the center of mass between two orbiting objects. Our Luna is smaller than Earth, and so the barycenter of Earth and Luna is on Earth, deep within it, actually. Because Charon is so large, and its gravitational influence so great, the barycenter of Pluto and Charon lies outside Pluto. Strictly speaking, Charon does not orbit Pluto, nor Pluto, Charon. They rotate around a barycenter between them. Looking only at one piece of each other.
I would never have noticed this, perhaps, if I hadn’t seen another woman. That is, I saw Helen in a way that I have never seen you. It was an accident and I do not mean to imply that I fell in love with Helen, as the phrase is understood. It wasn’t the person of Helen that was so important in this moment, it was the sheer size of the person of Helen. It was the enormity. And the realization that this was something she was concealing, packing away, so to speak, in order to make our long confinement comfortable for everyone.
We are all doing this, of course. But, it made me almost ill to see how much I had been missing.
I have come to believe that I have loved you incorrectly. I have been orbiting a dream I cannot touch. I only know one of your faces. It is not that I didn’t want to know another face, it is that I loved that one so powerfully.
Maybe I did not wish to know.
There is a possibility that you are like Luna, and you see all my faces while I see only one of yours. But, forgive me, I do not think this is true. I think we are mutually locked. Perhaps this is what it means to be married. Perhaps this is what it means to be married to me.
I saw a little of you, and thought it was everything. I understand that I was wrong. Now I am afraid. I thought we loved each other. How can we?
Would you rather I loved you incorrectly forever, or correctly but potentially less? Maybe I don’t love you at all. I feel if I could just see you, the way I saw Helen, I would.
“Yoshi needs somewhere to be.” That’s what my mother used to say.
? ? ?
I AM MORE nervous about seeing you next month than I have ever been about anything. I have this fear that I will not recognize you, that I will walk right past you. Or that you will not recognize me. I don’t know which is worse.
It is hard for me to imagine that I have other faces than the one I’ve shown you. This is all that I am. Does it seem very, very little to you?
LUKE
I can’t believe you all are giving up right at the end,” Mireille says. “Seventeen months of incredibly realistic this and that, and now you don’t want the family members standing there for the landing? This is the finale!”
Luke had stepped outside the Obber Lab to have this conversation, and walked a short distance down the bike path.
“Originally we weren’t going to do post-mission isolation,” Luke says. “So it would have made sense for all of the family members to be here, but now we’re running a full quarantine. You wouldn’t be able to see your mom in any meaningful way. We thought that even though you’d normally be here, it might be, you know, very irritating, under the circumstances. For everyone. Family and crew, I mean. Not for Prime. Us. But the plan is to have everyone free to celebrate New Year with their families.”
This is true and, among other things, means that Mireille will not come to Utah, and he won’t see her, maybe for two more years.
“Well, what’s two more weeks?” Mireille says. “I’m sorry I won’t get to see Madoka again, though, for a while. She’s been sending me the cutest pictures of her new dog.”
Mireille has cut her hair short recently; her neck is exposed. Either she has changed her hair to match a shift within her, or she has adopted a demeanor better suited to this new style: clearer, less self-consciously provocative. He knows that Mireille is no longer taking psychoactives, but he also knows that the first ten minutes of any conversation they have will be dictated by whatever pose or attitude she has decided upon. If he thinks she seems clearer and less self-conscious, it will be because that’s what she intends him to think. This is still information.
“I actually feel a little nervous,” Mireille says.