Genesis Earth Read online

  “Are you sure? I don’t—”

  “Think about it, Michael. Look at it from a military perspective. If there is life on the other side of that wormhole, and if that life is more technologically advanced than us, what are we going to do if it’s hostile? We can’t close the wormhole—we don’t have the capacity to unmake it. Suppose they break through and come to Earth. Where would we run? Earth is our homeworld—our only world. In the worst case scenario, humanity itself could be annihilated.”

  I blinked and stared at him. “Do you really believe that something like that is likely?”

  Tom shrugged. “Who knows? What matters is that the people on Earth will believe it. And if there is advanced life on that planet, by following that logic we risk turning it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the military gets to EB-175 before a peaceful, scientific mission, some trigger-happy goon would probably screw up and start a war.” He grinned. “That’s why we need to outmaneuver them.”

  “Outmaneuver them? How?”

  “With you and Terra already out on your survey mission to EB-175c, we can pressure the politicians to wait until you return with your findings.”

  “But Tom,” I said, “EB-175c is more than twenty light-years away. You won’t be getting our mission data for at least another eighty years.”

  “Even so, that’s less of a problem than you might think. Panics are always erratic and short-lived. We can assuage public fears by showing that we’re already dealing with the problem. At the very least, we can buy some time to build political capital for our cause. It may be enough to swing public opinion to our side and beat out the military.”

  I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say. While I stood there speechless, Tom pressed a key on the wall and his office door slid open.

  “But don’t worry about that. Your mission is purely scientific; we’ll take care of the political end.”

  He reached out his hand again and I mindlessly shook it. My legs felt weak, my cheeks pale.

  “For humanity, Michael. For science, progress, and the future of all mankind.”

  “Thank you, Tom,” I said, not sure what else to say. I turned and stepped out of the room.

  “Good luck, my boy!”

  * * * * *

  Saying goodbye was a new experience for me. When you live on an asteroid in the middle of deep space, you don’t get a lot of practice with that kind of stuff. My family was one of the most well connected on the station, and so I had to say almost a hundred before I left. Even so, only one was truly awkward.

  Just a couple hours before I was scheduled to leave, the door chime rang. I was lying on the couch in my parents’ room, mentally reviewing Tom’s briefing and picking apart every word. I bolted upright at the sound, wondering who would come to visit only hours before launch.

  The moment the door opened, my stomach dropped through the floor.

  “Oh. Hi, Stella.”

  “Hi, Mike!”

  “Come in,” I said, leading her into the family room. I motioned to the couch, but the bookshelves ringing the room had already caught her eye, and she was too fascinated by them to have a seat.

  “Wow,” she said, “I never knew that your parents had such a huge collection of books!”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  She glanced around the room a little longer, then turned to me and laughed, filling the silence. I wondered why I hadn’t invited her in here before. I also wondered at the fact that we were sitting here, alone, together.

  “So you’re leaving soon?” she asked. I got the feeling that she was filling empty space with words—something I wished I could do better. Especially now.

  “Yeah,” I said, grabbing onto the topic like a lifeline. “The shuttle leaves in four hours.”

  “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “No, no.”

  She gave me the most stunningly beautiful smile. “I’m sure you’ve been really busy these past few days.”

  “Yeah.”

  My cheeks became warm—I should have said goodbye to her personally, long before this moment. Now it probably looked like I was trying to avoid her. What would she think of that? I felt like an idiot.

  “I’m sorry,” I managed. “I should have come earlier, but—”

  “No, don’t worry about it. I understand.”

  Her voice, unlike mine, was perfectly natural. She obviously wasn’t as worried or anxious about it as I was.

  The realization made my heart sink.

  “I wish you could stay,” she said after a brief pause. Her eyes were a deep hazel, outlined by jet black eyelashes. They were, without a doubt, the most gorgeous pair of eyes on the station. I didn’t know whether I wanted to stare into them forever or quickly turn away.

  “Oh?” I said. “Why is that?”

  “Things are changing,” she said, eyes lighting up. “We’re going to transform this place, Michael. My father’s already drawing up the designs for a whole new division on the undeveloped side of the asteroid. It’s going to be at least twice as big as everything we’ve built so far. Everything.”

  “That’s great,” I said, not sure what else to say.

  “I know! This station is going to be such a wonderful place to raise a family. In twenty years, there’ll be room for nearly five thousand people. With gardens—actual gardens!”

  Her voice was infused with passion, so bright it was almost contagious. Almost.

  “That’s great.

  She paused. “My father is building a special apartment for me and John.”

  Ah, yes. John, her fiancé. Barely half a year older than me, and twice the man. She stopped and stared at me, the smile on her face a little sad now.

  “I wish you could stay a little while longer.”

  I looked at her and wished I’d had the guts to ask her out two years ago. That was when I’d started to notice that she wasn’t a little girl anymore. I should have done it—it wasn’t as if we weren’t friends. We’d talked with each other before, sometimes even at great length. By the time I’d worked up the courage, however, she was already engaged.

  “I do, too,” I said—and at least a part of me was being honest.

  She paused. I stood awkwardly, not sure what to say or do. My nerves were tight enough already.

  “Well,” she said, glancing at the door, “I’m sure you have a lot of work to do. I’d better be going.”

  “Okay,” I said automatically. “Thanks for coming.”

  She drew in a breath and stared as if she expected something more. I opened my mouth, but found that I had nothing more to say. Without a word, she stepped up close and wrapped her arms around me in a tight embrace. Even though the gesture was probably platonic, it cut me to the core and stripped away all of my defenses. I hugged her weakly back.

  “I’m going to miss you,” I said.

  “Me, too,” she whispered. “Goodbye.”

  Without another word, she turned and left.

  I shut the door and leaned against the wall, my mind in a daze. Part of me wanted to break down what had just happened, analyzing it from every possible angle, playing it over and over in my head like I had when I was younger. I resisted the temptation, though. The days of those games were long over, and I’d never been much good at them anyway.

  * * * * *

  “You’ve made us both so proud, Michael,” said the holographic image of my mother, projected into the center of my room. “Whatever happens out there, we know you’ll do your best.”

  Tears streamed down her shimmering face, making my own eyes burn.

  “I wish I could be with you right up until you board the Icarus,” she said, “but duty calls. We won’t get back from our current mission for another three weeks, and of course you’ll be gone by then. When you return, eighty years will have passed. We almost certainly won’t be alive…”

  She didn’t say anything for several seconds. That was the breaking point for me. I choked up and quietly began to cry.

  I w
asn’t angry that neither of my parents could be there to see me off. It was understandable, considering the importance of their work. Still, a part of me wished that they could.

  As I stared at the holographic image of my mother, I did my best to burn it into my memory. If this was the last I’d see of her, I wanted to hold onto it.

  “Eighty years is a long time,” she continued, “but we have no doubts that you’ll make us proud. Your mission is extremely important, for all of us. Don’t forget that, Michael. Do it for us. Give it your very, very best, and remember that we love you.”

  The image winked out. I sat still on my bed for a long time, my mind a swirling soup of anxiety-ridden thoughts. In little more than an hour, I would leave the station behind, not to return for almost a century. It felt as if I were leaving forever.

  Without thinking, I switched on the holovid message from my father.

  His neatly bearded face shimmered into view, staring down at what was probably the holographic recording device. He looked up from the unseen control panel, evidently satisfied that it was working, and stared straight into my eyes.

  “Michael, my son. This will probably be the last you’ll hear from me before your mission begins. I know exactly how you must feel right now—your mother and I felt much the same when we left Earth. Well, don’t let it get to you too much. It will pass soon enough.”

  He paused. Unlike the other message, I didn’t see any tears on his face.

  “I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what I should say,” he continued. “Not every father has the opportunity to consciously compose his final parting message to his son—but then again, not every family is involved in such matters of importance.”

  His eyes lit up with excitement—an excitement I had seen before. Many times.

  “Honestly, Michael, I envy you. If I could take your place right now, I would do it in an instant. Of course, due to the limitations of cryonics, that’s quite impossible for a man of my age. Your mother and I always knew that we wouldn’t be the ones to explore the other side of the wormhole—that is why we did our best, from the beginning, to raise you the way we did. When I look at you now, I don’t think we failed.”

  My father’s voice entranced me as much as his message. His face radiated with fervor and passion.

  “We live in a pivotal age,” he continued. “Depending on how we respond to the crisis of our time, mankind will either rise to its destiny among the stars or drive itself into extinction.

  “Have no doubt about it, Michael—Earth is dying. The icecaps are melting, the ocean is rising, mankind is driving the most catastrophic mass extinction in geologic history, and almost all of our non-renewable resources have been spent. The planet can’t support the billions of men and women who call it home—not at the rate our population is growing. If we are to survive as a species, we need to leave the womb of our Mother Earth and seek our destiny among the stars.

  “That’s why your mother and I set out to create the first artificial wormhole. We wanted to bridge the gulf between worlds, to open a doorway to the stars. They told us we were crazy, they told us it was impossible, they accused us of starry-eyed idealism and of wrestling against the laws of physics—but we won, Michael. We won. We punched a hole through the impossible distances of space, a hole to some far corner of the universe—or even a different universe, perhaps. We don’t know yet. But the important part, Michael, is that we’ve found a world out there—a world just like Earth. A new Earth, Michael—the new Earth.”

  His body trembled with excitement, and his eyes burned with an intensity even I had never seen before. As I stared at him, I forgot that I was looking at a holographic image—it felt as if he were in the room with me.

  “Your mission, Michael, is the pivot on which the future of humanity depends. Plato and Aristotle didn’t shape the course of history any more than you will. If you succeed, humanity will survive and expand to other worlds. Who knows what we will find out there? What you will find?”

  His smile faded and turned to a frown, and he leaned forward and pointed his finger up in the air. My stomach fell out from under me, and I felt as if I were about to be reprimanded.

  “You must succeed, Michael—you must. No mission in all of history has ever been more important than yours. All mankind is behind you now, watching. Dying, even. You must explore the new world, the new star system, make contact with whatever you find—all to prepare the way for those who must come after.

  “Remember, Michael: history is watching you. History will not forget you. Do your best—your absolute best—and make us proud. We love you, son. Don’t fail us.”

  The image flickered and disappeared. I stared wide eyed at the opposite wall, the ghost of my father’s face still shining in my eyes. My thoughts were too many to sort through at once, and I lay back on the bed, dazed from my father’s message.

  I felt a weight on my shoulders greater than any I had yet felt. History is watching you. History will not forget you. I tried to calm myself, but the weight of my father’s expectations did not leave me any room to relax.

  I doubted they ever would.

  As the image of my father faded from my mind, I shut off the lights in the room and set the floor to full transparency. The image of the woodwork disappeared, revealing the spinning starfield. Millions of tiny points of light passed underneath me as the station rotated around its central axis.

  My parents were never comfortable with the floor windows, and kept them off whenever they were home. Coming from Earth, they were used to ground under their feet and sky over their heads. For me, it was the opposite. Whenever the tunnels in the station felt dark and cramped, the pressures on my mind too much for me to bear, I always went to my room and turned on the floor transparency. It helped me to relax.

  My mind drifted as I thought about my parents. I gradually turned up the lights in the room until they were just bright enough to read by. With the starry band of the Milky Way under my feet, I browsed the bookshelf in the wall until I came to my parents’ old photo album.

  My finger paused on the leathery binding as I touched the book for the first time since I was a little child. I was almost afraid to take it out, but something urged me on, telling me that this was what I was looking for. I drew in a deep breath and pulled the album off the shelf, sprawling across the transparent floor to browse through it.

  I stared at the images from Earth with the same fascination that had filled me as a child. Blue sky overhead, veiling the stars. People of surprisingly different sizes, shapes, and skin colors. This was my parents’ world, not mine. What was it like to live with a great blue expanse over your head most of your life? What was it like to live so close to a star that its light almost totally obscured the rest of the starfield? I didn’t know—I could only imagine.

  Acting purely on impulse, I decided I would take one of the pictures with me. I don’t know why—I could have uploaded all of them to my wrist console and viewed them at any time—but I wanted something concrete and tangible that I could hold in my hands. Something physical from my parents’ lives.

  I settled on a picture of my mother and father in college, sitting on a grass-covered open-air surface holding hands. I don’t know why I chose that one—maybe it was because of how happy they seemed, sitting on that surface of naturally grown grass. I just know that I took it out and pocketed it. I hoped they would understand.

  The stars disappeared, and the room dimmed to blackness. I stared down into the hole in the starfield. It opened up like the mouth of an abyss, as bottomless as the sky in the photos from Earth. As I stared into it, I could almost feel it sucking me into its depths. The feeling made me shiver.

  In less than an hour, I would dive into it.

  Terra

  As I climbed down into the station airlock, the doors sealed shut behind me. The chamber depressurized and my ears popped, making my hands twitch. I hardly noticed that, however; I was trying too hard not to think about how this was the last I’d
see of my home for nearly eighty objective years.

  The hatch to the shuttle opened through the floor, giving me a bird’s eye view of the cabin. It was quite cozy, with four seats and compartments embedded in all the walls. Behind the back row of seats, I saw what looked like oxygen tanks.

  Terra sat on the left, behind the copilot. She glanced up at me as I lowered myself to the empty seat beside her.

  “Hi,” I said, strapping myself in.

  “Hello.”

  From the tone of her voice, she sounded utterly indifferent to see me. I turned my head and smiled, but she was already staring out the tiny, circular window at the stars slowly spinning outside.

  Neither desires nor enjoys close relationships. That’s what the diagnostics entry on schizoid personality disorder had said. I had read and reread everything on both disorders several times since my conversation with Tom, and had practically memorized their symptoms.

  Come on, I told myself, you’re just blowing things out of proportion. But the way she stared listlessly out the window, I wasn’t so sure.

  Terra was about half a head shorter than me, with a thin body and short brown hair. She never put it up or combed it much, though I’m sure she kept it clean; she just had other priorities besides her appearance. She’d always been something of a loner. I wasn’t the most outgoing person myself, but at least I’d gone out of my way every now and then to make friends. I don’t think Terra ever had.

  The pilot and copilot were the only other people besides us in the shuttle. I’d seen both men on the station before, but I could barely remember their names. My parents had never associated much with the station crew, and I didn’t know any of them very well. I want to say the pilot’s name was Bruce, but I’m not so sure. In any case, they ignored us as they made preparations to undock.