A New Home

While all the rest were rushing for bunkers and underground hide-outs, Jack slipped into one of the experimental space shuttles and roared through the poisoned atmosphere.

This was pure madness, and he doubted that any of his other colleagues would do it, but what did he have to lose? A life underground? For how long?

Once surrounded by the blackness of Space, Jack switched to artificial gravity, and it remained stable. He set a course for the closest inhabitable planet and prepared the suspended animation container.

Wake me up when you find the planet.

Which could take thousands or millions of light years.

What do I have to lose?

When Jack lay down in the container, he thought the twenty-four-hour record with human subjects had never been broken before. In two days, he’d probably be dead.

If I stay, I’d be dead, too.

Jack slept.

Then woke up.

It took him a while to comprehend where he was and what was causing him to feel so numb and lost. Four mechanical arms grabbed him and transferred him to a bed. They gave him a number of injections. Warmed him. Let him have a normal sleep.

Once Jack woke up again, he stood up and walked to the shuttle’s control panel. He had traveled for one million eight hundred and fifty light years. He was in Barnard’s galaxy. The shuttle was heading for a small brown-green planet.

For a second, Jack’s mind tried to encompass the notion of the time that had passed, but the attempt caused his brain neurons to screech with agony.

It doesn’t matter. The experimental technology worked. The shuttle endured. I endured.

The past should remain a past. I took a risk, and I won.

The new planet turned out to be perfect. It had an enormous natural satellite that looked a lot like good old Earth, and Jack could sit for hours on a rock and look at its blue outlines in the night sky. During the day, the new planet was illuminated by the nearest star’s red glow and the satellite was barely visible. Jack called the planet ‘Bride’ and the star ‘Priest’. He called the satellite ‘Old Love’.

The places soon lived up to their names. The planet became his bride because he was intrinsically and inevitably connected to it: he could not leave even if he wanted to. His union with the planet was blessed by the star and its red light, giving him free rein to explore it. And the satellite, like any old love, would make him cry so much at times that he would dehydrate and rush to the nearest river to refill his water buckets.

There was breathable air, drinkable water, and edible vegetation on Bride, but no animals at all.

Not even a bug.

Jack built a house and transferred the electricity generator from the shuttle to his new home. He could read all the books, watch all the movies and listen to all the music he had on his computer. They were more than enough for a lifetime.

He hiked. Explored. Searched. Experimented. Changed houses. Changed regions. Named all the plants, rivers, seas, and lands he discovered. It was good that at night, he could always sit somewhere and stare at blue Old Love.

The satellite was so close.

It resembled Earth so much.

At night, Jack would imagine there were humanoid creatures living on it. The data indicated there was no proper atmosphere, and no life on Old Love, but it wasn’t improper to have fantasies, right?

Jack was healthy, young, and strong. There seemed to be no diseases on Bride. Or maybe there was a healing agent in the water. He never got sick. It did not appear that he was growing old either, because years were passing, and his body remained the same.

If only people knew.

Bride was the heaven their species dreamed of.

Bride was the heaven they should have conquered together instead of dividing over petty issues that led to their extinction.

They should be up here alive instead of down there, more than a million years away, dead.

Jack no longer liked the books, the movies, and the music on his computer.

He knew all of them by heart.

He tried to create something new, but his poetry, pictures, and melodies were pale and lifeless. They seemed to be dying the moment they left his body.

He gave up art.

He started sleeping throughout the day because Bride didn’t interest him any longer. He stood awake all night, looking at Old Love.

Only one takeoff was designed for the shuttle engine. Only then would it be able to utilize the full power of its experimental power source.

Jack could feed his house and his computer with electricity all he wanted, but he could never fly again.

He stopped eating and drinking water. Old Love had such a hold on him that he would simply sit and stare at its gauzy blue surface until his eyelids could no longer stay open, at which point he would fall asleep.

To wake up and gaze at the satellite again.

He had decided to fly there with his mind and knew he could do it.

And indeed: soon, his body became so thin and transparent that it resembled a piece of cloud. Then the night wind grabbed him and lifted him. Jack didn’t even need to wave his arms or legs. He was soaring up, crossing Bride’s atmosphere, crossing the blackness of Space, and entering the blue world of Old Love.

The light there was golden, not red: just like it had been on Earth. Jack was flying in cool, azure brightness, and down there, oh, down there he could see moving shapes; shapes so dearly familiar. Here an eagle’s brown wings were cutting through puffy white clouds like sharpened scissors; there a flock of swallows was chirruping happily, a flight of storks were screaming in indignation, numerous red beaks were opening and closing, a black fly was buzzing, a squirrel climbing a dark green pine, a white doe jumping, and a rabbit, too; a wolf, a bear, an elephant, a tiger, a kangaroo, a snake, a beetle. Here a dog was barking happily, wagging her tail while her master was coming up to her, petting her head, good girl, good girl, a human master, a human face, this was a man, oh, god, a man much older than him, Jack had forgotten what an old face looked like, all those wrinkles like overtravelled paths, and all the spots on the dry skin like cloths thrown over dinner leftovers, and the stooped shoulders, and the trembling hands, and the love, the love in the man’s eyes. Here were all the other humans, it was full of humans on Old Love, spurious data indeed, how good that I could come, and be with them. This is not a new species, nor some strange humanoid race, he realized, this is the species I know, my own species: somehow, Earth and its people have been transferred here. My brothers and sisters have been under my very nose all that time, and I didn’t know it.

But now he was with them again, and they welcomed him as he walked toward them, children, teenagers, adults, and old people, his first girlfriend, his mother, his father and his sister, his colleagues, his neighbor Mike, his elementary teacher Miss Mills, they were all here, waving at him, smiling at him, shaking his hand, patting his shoulder, hugging him, kissing him.

And Jack was happy that he had finally got back what he had lost.