To Choose the Stars

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say... It’s a good tagline, isn’t it? Especially if you’re making a horror film in the 20th century, let’s say.” Here, Professor Ojo displayed a still of the poster from Ridley Scott’s Alien. Each year she received fewer laughs. So much for cultural capital. She continued:

“But, really, this needs examining because the claim itself makes several assumptions.” She drew breath and, peering over the glass lectern at the rows of eager (yet intellectually lazy) twenty-somethings in front of her, she decided they had had enough spoon feeding.

“Anyone care to highlight one?” Her eyes searched the rows. Dylan could usually be counted on to hazard a stupid guess. He was tapping his stylus on the screen, idly, and avoided her gaze.

“Mathilda?”

Professor Ojo wanted to encourage Mathilda. According to her file, her astrophysics scores were off the charts. She could rattle off pi for four hours straight (and once, did – at the First Year Talent Show, which both earned her the soubriquet, “Infinite” and put a nail in the coffin of her already-dying relationship. She was an introvert. A genius but with few interpersonal skills. That her flame red hair and sapphire eyes , coupled with an almost entirely symmetrical face attracted romantic overtures from both sexes, did not translate to social success. Her essays were similarly functional - brilliant in their analysis, with flawless calculations, but lacking human insight. Yet, sometimes, Mathilda displayed such promise of genuine perception that Professor Ojo felt if she could only ask the right questions – like Socrates of Meno’s slave – she would open the floodgates to something extraordinary. For example, three months ago, Mathilda had stayed behind after the lecture to ask the professor a personal question:

“I couldn’t help but notice the lack of a dog biscuit in your cardigan pocket today. Did you run out? Or is it that you no longer have a dog?”

“How did you know about my dog biscuits?”

“There is usually a small, bone-shaped bulge in the right pocket of your cardigan, and you can see small hairs on your clothes.”

Professor Ojo had laughed generously and apologised for appearing unkempt. She had, in fact, lost her dog to kidney failure four days before.

“So, I was right on the second count,” had been Mathilda’s response to the news, rather than an expression of sympathy.

“Mathilda?” Repeated Professor Ojo.

Mathilda hated being cold-called in these lectures. Quantum theory, or mathematics were her fields, but this was the last part of their pre-mission training and it was a requirement to pass each of the three components: metaphysics, ethics, and theology. Mathilda could not always see the distinction between them and, indeed, there often wasn’t – for most philosophical systems had to make recourse to an axiomatic assumption of the existence, or non-existence, of some ultimate reality, or stuff from which all else is derived – a ground of Being. Or, God (as her friend, Busola, was wont to chime in.) In short, Philosophy was anyone’s guess. The only real insight she had learned in the last two years was that it usually boiled down to definitions.

“Well, I suppose this makes several assumptions about what we mean by ‘hear’, ‘vacuum’ and ‘nobody.’”

“Of course. Go on?”

“Hearing requires certain receptors to pick up – and interpret – sound waves, which can’t pass through a vacuum, due to the lack of vibration. I mean, come on, we all learned this when we were twelve.”

Professor Ojo smiled and crossed her arms.

“But might there not be other forms of life who hear in different ways? Couldn’t God hear you scream in the vacuum of space?”

On hearing the word ‘God’, Dylan – who was sitting in front of Mathilda – scrubbed out the title he had written at the top of his notes and wrote ASTRO-THEOLOGY 2 in its stead. It made Mathilda smile. He was always eager to please. He would make a good crewman – as long as he didn’t have to do any thinking.

“But from an atheist’s perspective – ” started Mathilda.

“Honey, most of us are atheists. But remember, if you take one thing from this course, it’s that…”

Here, Professor Ojo paused and waited for her students to chorus the mantra she had drilled into them. Dylan, pouncing on the opportunity led the others:

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.’”

“Exactly. You see, you’re all halfway there already.” Profjessor Ojo looked at the clock and sighed.

“All right, off you go. See you next time. Don’t forget your ethics essays are due Thursday.”

This elicited a general groan as the students filed out.

Mathilda made her way to the canteen. It was stir fry day. She sat down next to Busola and blew on the steaming noodles.

“I can’t believe we’re two weeks from D-day,” said Busola. She had a habit of contracting everything. Mathilda didn’t really like it – it required her to keep an extensive mental lexicon. She didn’t dignify the comment with a response.

“Big decision. Life changing,” continued Busola.

“Uh-huh.”

“So what do you think? Will you go?”

“We’ve got to pass, first.”

“You’ll pass.”

“Yeah. I think so. Philosophy’s the only question mark.”

“You’ll be fine, Tilly.”

Mathilda winced at the contraction.

“So, what’s cookin?” said a voice from behind. Dylan. Mathilda shifted up on the bench to make room for him.

“Thinking about D-day,” said Busola.

“Ah, yup. Well, bit of a no brainer for me – I’m third gen!”

“So you keep reminding us,” said Mathilda, a little unkindly.

“How ‘bout you guys?”

“Are you kidding? After all this, I’m going to turn it down and go, live back on earth? And, what, teach, or something? I want to see the stars. Don’t you? Tilly?”

Mathilda understood her friends’ excitement. For her, it was different. Her parents had joined the Project in Stage 2, transferring to Lunar Outpost almost as soon as it had been built but, unlike, Busola and Dylan, Mathilda had been born on earth and could remember the blue sky and the wetness of snow. It was not that she always hankered over these things but, at the back of her mind, she wasn’t sure if she might start to, again. Of course, such thinking was selfish. If Project Caleb were to succeed, individuals must put away such thoughts. But that is why there was a choice. In fact, that was the raison d’être for the Outpost in the first place. Such choice should not be squandered.

Interstellar travel, even with the Atlas engine would have to rely on intergenerational ships. It was only thanks to the robots that even that was feasible. Before the KanTek revolution, the expertise required to operate, maintain, and repair a vessel capable of taking humanity to other worlds would have required such an extensive population (with no guarantee of success) that it would have been self-defeating. Now that a crew of twenty specialised Jeeves600s could take on the donkey work, more could be left to chance: the mission would continue even if no humans were left on board, or none of them knew how to operate a starship.

It was this fact, alone, which maintained the equipoise between the sense of filial obligation (and duty to humanity, and loyalty to the Project Caleb – whose vast expenditure should not go to waste, etc., etc.,) and the autonomy each of them was endowed with: Barring some unforeseen disaster, the Livingstone would reach the Kepler system with, or without, human explorers. But what was the point of going all that way with only a glorified probe? The dream had always been for human feet to walk on other worlds.

The problem was choice:

The trip, under the Atlas engine, would take almost 2000 years. To those on board, it might seem closer to two hundred – but that still meant four or five generations – three of whom would likely never walk on solid ground. Unlike Mathilda, they would not have the choice to return. And they would have to breed. It was why pre-existing families had been preferred in Stages One and Two – since the rigmarole of finding a suitable mate from a small pool was bound to be a distractor; especially if the Project failed. Fertile women were, of course, more useful than men. It had been made clear to Mathilda’s class that if they accepted the mission, they would be expected to choose a mating partner within five years, or else have one of the frozen embryos implanted. (The ship must be peopled). It was a consideration. Childbirth. Motherhood.

And how would her children feel – knowing they were born only to maintain a human presence on board a ship?

But, perhaps, it was no different to how all the children of men have felt – all were born onto a ball, treading the same path around the same star. Only in the past three hundred years had they been able to leave.

Mathilda wished she could ask her parents why they chose to have her. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the look in her father’s eyes when she told him she wanted to return to earth. If only she had not been so rash, perhaps they would not have boarded the transport.

No, she mustn’t blame herself. There was no profit in that.

But it made a difference to her life, here. Busola had her parents. Dylan’s grandfather gave concerts every Sunday. They belonged. It didn’t make any difference whether they ate their Sunday roasts on the moon, or in Montana. (Dylan’s family were American, originally).

Perhaps she should return. But if enough did, then none could go. Not everyone knew this of course – it would have skewed the choice, which underpinned the entire Project – but Mathilda had read the proposal: If, having been born into this life, and trained for the mission, twenty per cent of the children wanted to leave, then Caleb would be deemed a failure and the Livingstone would leave the moon without any humans. For if the rate of 80% uptake were to continue for five generations, there would be fewer than forty humans left by the time they reached their destination. The experiment was, then, to see if the sense of purpose and duty was enough to sustain an ark. It was why it had taken fifty years since the invention of the Atlas engine to even contemplate sending humans across the stars. In that way, it was a noble enterprise. She had to give them that.

“Tilly?”

Mathilda was snapped out of her reverie by Busola, shaking her wrist.

“Where’d you go?”

“You going to have pudding?” said Dylan.

“No. Zero-G training is up next. I don’t want to throw up.”

The three friends returned their trays to the trolley and thanked the Jeeves who was cleaning up – more out of habit than courtesy.

“I wonder if we’d bother to thank them if they didn’t look like us,” said Busola.

“Well, I need to finish that essay,” said Dylan. He gave each girl a peck on the cheek and skipped off down the corridor, tripping on his shoe lace and falling flat on his face.

“I’m all right!” he called out as he brushed himself off.

“He likes you, y’know,” said Busola, chuckling.

“I know. Poor Dylan.”

They parted ways and Mathilda returned to her quarters to shower before training.

As she was rinsing the shampoo out of her hair, she heard something fall over in her bedroom, and a man’s voice.

Heart thudding, she reached for a towel and, keeping the water running so as not to alert any intruder, tiptoed out of the shower, taking hold of her hardback edition Asimov, which she kept in the bathroom for light reading. (It was the heaviest object to hand).

As she entered the bedroom, she could see a man sitting on her bed, nursing his elbow. A woman was tending to him. Her red hair matched her own.

“Hey! Just what are you doing in my quarters?”

“Terribly sorry. Misjudged the coordinates. First time off world. Tricky,” said the man, looking up. His elbow was bleeding a little. He looked about thirty, with a stubbled chin, and a scar down his left cheek. Before Mathilda could repeat her demand for information, the woman raised her head. It was almost like looking into a mirror: piercing, blue, eyes met her own, and a warm smile was on her lips. It was uncanny, but Mathilda couldn’t help but feel at ease.

“We’re sorry to burst in on you like this, Mathilda, we truly are. The Chronospheres aren’t pin-point off-world.”

“The what?... Perhaps you should start with who you are – and what you want?”

“What we want is easy,” said the woman, softly: “We want to help you in the decision you have to make next week. As for the who. Well, that may take a little longer.”

Feeling the weight of the book in her hand, Mathilda assessed the couple and decided against immediate violence.

“In that case, let me put on some clothes, get you a medkit for that, and then you can tell me everything,” said Mathilda, diving into her drawer for some clothes and retreating into the bathroom to preserve some modesty.

“Thanks. Bloody hurts,” said the man.

“Don’t be such a wimp in front of your great-granddaughter,” said the woman, underestimating how good Mathilda’s hearing was.

“I’m sorry, your what?!”