But in the vastness of space, though the stars are still running away from each other even as they are birthed and die, human constellations are not so easily predictable. The brazen spirit of exploration and revelation easily gives way to the constricting heart of homesickness, tribalized loyalties and passive interdependency.
*
The year is 2154. The place is the colony of Khune and its small network of scientific research stations. Over 3,000 minds make up this solitary lunar village on the Jovian moon, Europa, but for nearly half of the population, this is the only home they have ever known. Even more are star children, having never seen the birthplace of humanity, but having been born on Mars or Luna before humans made the jump beyond the asteroid belt. Only a select few can say their two feet once walked upon that tiny blue dot in the sky, and their voices are more than half a century old.
Perched lazily upon a bench drilled into the grey walls of the small radio room, Medhi Zheng, son of two star children, native of Khune, shifts himself slightly as he gets back to his summer reading in spite of the distraction of the ceiling. The pink plastic upholstered bench is uncomfortable, but this is his favorite room in the entirety of the outpost Athena IV.
Like Khune proper, the vast majority of station Athena IV was under a thick sheet of ice kilometers deep but this room, small tiny hallway of a room is the closest thing to the surface before a suit or a shuttle is required. Located next to the above-surface satellite and sun-shy solar panels, the radio room holds the communications equipment throughout Athena IV and served as the entryway to the partially below-ice garage.
A thick bubble dome made of a palladium glass compound offers the only tidally locked view of Jupiter from the near-side of the moon on the entirety of Europa. For Medhi, though the room is small, and the two of the three exits are heavily padlocked and sealed, this room offered his only chance to be liberated from the well internalized and suppressed claustrophobia one might experience from living deep in a global sea perpetually locked in a thick case of ice.
"Medhi, azizam, tell your father the shuttle is ready to go. Near-side lunar sunrise in an estimated 1.2 ESH. We have to leave by then or we'll never make it to the colony before the far-side sunset." Dr. Neda Amiri gently places a thin, leather hand upon her son and smiles slightly when he looks up at her and nods. She has been in the lab for the past several hours and strands of dark, silky hair carelessly meanders from underneath her loosely tied hijab of lilac purple. She hadn't see the sun's rays illuminate the melding gases of reds, yellows and whites on the crest of Jupiter's horizon once during their two months stay at the outpost. But come to think of it, she hasn't seen much of her son either.
"Yeah, I know. I will." Medhi replies but by then Neda had already left the room and returned to the lab. She knew he'd be a good boy and do as he was told. No further persuasion was needed.
He puts down the tablet and it automatically shuts down, blinking the words of Gilgamesh out of existence for the time being. Summer reading. It was a funny term carried over from Earth. Once, the term 'summer' meant a period of time where the climate warmed up over a geographic location. Once, there were other terms for other times of year; Winter, Spring, Autumn, but those words could only be seen in science textbooks and novels written on Earth.
Now, a summer means only a break of school, and these two months were the last summer Medhi could expect to enjoy in his lifetime. Childhood was in a quick sunset and Medhi was running out of time trying to determine what scientific field he would base his career on. Would he study geology and planet science and explore deeper the internal sea of Europa? Perhaps Engineering was his call, where he could begin working on another colony compound or a new wing on Khune. Or perhaps the agridome needed more scientists expanding what was culinary possible on this nutrient poor ball of ice.
All options had one thing in common: Europa. Sure, sometimes Jupiter fell into the mix of study; Dr. Amiri spent her life, after all, researching the electromagnetic discharge radiating from the gas giant. It was her work that birthed the technical ability to capture energy from the planet rather than the sun in the darkness of the near-side of the moon. It was how this base could function even though the sun was so very far away, and even though most of the time the gas giant named for the king of the gods cast his shadow on Athena IV. He was sure his mother would be overjoyed if he followed in her footsteps. What new discoveries would she expect out of her son? But for Medhi, just like the ice that trapped and encased every colonial building, Europa, even the mere thought of the frozen moon, made him feel claustrophobic.
I need to get out of here. It is not so much a thought of Medhi's that continues t pop up every now and again, as background radiation in the space of his existence.
"Athena IV, Athena IV, this is the Wukong II. Preparing to return the buggy to base in 10 minutes. Please respond. Over." The radio beeps and Medhi rushes over to the console.
"This is Athena IV, responding to the Wukong II. Shuttle doors are open and we are preparing for your arrival." he started formally. "Baba, Maman says tells me we need to hurry. I think she's worried about having enough solar energy to make it back. Over."
"This is Wukong II. Copy that Athena IV. I am on my way. I got some amazing shots over here. Finally captured the shot of the ambient gas glow on a pre-dawn Jupiter. Amazing colors." buzzed the reply over the radio.
"Baba, did you get any of the blue dot? Over."
"I did Medhi. Waxing crescent. It seemed so close, almost like it was a child of Jupiter's rings. It is amazing to think about it."
"To think about what dad? Over."
"That somehow that little blue dot started it all. Ever try to imagine it? Nine billion of us somehow squeezed onto that little ball. Compared to the 3,000 of us on Europa, or the thirty thousand or so between Mars and Luna, it seems unfathomable. When Nai Nai was still alive she used to tell us stories about life there. You ever wonder how things would have been if she had stayed there?"
"Sometimes. But you could have stayed on Mars too." Medhi retorts, the hint of accusation he intended is buried too deeply in his matter-of-fact manner that his father doesn't notice it. Finally he adds, "Over."
"I could have, but not Maman." his father says softly, "We all make our choices Medhi."
A long silence passes between the father and son before a final buzz from the Wukong II beeps from the radio.
"Athena IV, this is the Wukong II. I have arrived at destination. Please prepare the shuttle doors. Over."
"Stand by Wukong II. Shuttle doors opening. Over."
The above ground garage is small; hardly complex. Medhi had mastered basic operations for the vehicle warehouse early on in his teens and the procedure is solidly and rotely in his brain. He can do this in his sleep. His fingers are light on the console and he can feel a shudder as the bay doors slide against the rock hard ice separating firmament from humanity.
The garage opening let in an eerie glow of dark purple, red and yellow coming from the Jupiter enveloped sky above, and Medhi
His father, 蒸文峰, Wenfeng,
"Fuck man." Xinbo sighed. "I don't even know what I am going to do with myself." He grabs "dong" off of the neat line of majhong tiles. And he smiles when he turns over his tray revealing the rest of his hand. The tiles clink slightly as he adds "dong" to the line up. /The Big Four Winds/ Medhi sighs, but Allen and Mohammed laugh.
"Damn it man, I didn't think you were that close." Allen swears "Clever bugger."
"What does that even mean?" Medhi asks his friend, wanting to be mad at something.
"I don't know." Allen offers uselessly. "It's just something mum and dad say all the time in English. And that's about the extent of my English, Mum, Dad and Clever Bugger."
"Fucking Americans." Xinbo says and Medhi and Mohammed nod but Allen just shrugs.
"Well any way, nice one Xin!" Mohammed refocuses the conversation and slaps Xinbo on the shoulder and Allen starts cleaning up the tiles.
"I suck at this game." Medhi says, defeatist.
"Yeah, well I don't think Europa is in dire need of a Mahjong expert any time soon." Xinbo echos Medhi's frustration, in spite of his win.
"Why don't you just man up, go to your dad and start an apprenticeship?" Allen asks.
"Are you a marine biologist now? Don't tell me you caved in. Loser. Do we really need another Dr. Holme?"
"Eh, fuck you Mohammed." Allen says, dismissing his friend's jab, "Not everyone gets selected for Governance Service straight out of high school. You've still got a friggen half decade to think about it, and, by that time, you'll probably have set yourself up with some cushy job in infrastructure. I needed to do something, find some way to get work hours filled, so yeah, I'm going to start apprenticing at the end of school. Whatever. At least biology work hours are time and a half."
"Yeah, it's people like you that piss me off, Allen." growls Xinbo. "You have something. You have a way to not starve."
"Nobody starves on Khune. That's just some self-pitying fear mongering." Allen retorts, "You still get subsistence rations if you don't fill your work hours."
"Do you even know what it is like to live on subsistence rations because even though you are a student, your dead beat mother who can't fill her hours, fills her plate with what you earned with your school hours."
Medhi knows where this conversation is headed to. It's not the first time Xinbo and Allen have gotten into this fight, but as the day towards their graduation draws nearer, they get more heated and raw. Everyone knows the answers to these questions. Xinbo hasn't seen his father in 7 years and as far as Medhi knows, the split was not friendly. He might as well apply for an apprenticeship with the agridome. Even with his miserable grades from high school, it still would be more likely.
And everyone in this room knows that though Allen might harp about his old man, he might have been swearing since middle school that he'd never go into marine biology, but Allen is all talk. Time and a half is just too tempting to pass up. It means downtime for half of the Earth Standard Year in exchange for half an ESH of intensive work. Half an ESH to explore life beyond survival in Khune; the opportunity to make music, to paint, to dream, to go where the imagination drives you.
“The reason why we go forward,” she says, “Is that we can’t go back. If we try to return to the space we occupied this morning, we’d be on the other side of the world. Life keeps moving, plants keep growing, moons keep spinning and every second that goes by the sun is that much closer to its irreversible end. We can talk about the old ways. We can look at our hometowns and try to recreate that little slice of life we remember, but we’re only finding new ways to act out old walks, we’re only creating new lives inside of familiar walls.”
“Then what is this point of you being here? If that's what you believe, you are going in the wrong direction.” Medhi condescends, cutting her off only after her last word left her lips.
“Because we aren’t returning to the land of our grandparents. We are exploring the lands of our children.”
Medhi finds himself not looking forward to the vast amount of alone time he was likely going to have with Sanaa.
----
"(Xinbo) Xin and Lily (Shin) didn't make it." Medhi finally manages between breaths. Somehow, now that the words have been spoken, now that the sound of his voice has reached the ears of others, the finality of the fact crashes into him. Now it's real. It is as if his lips, not the pressure-less, oxygen-devoid emptiness of space, ended their lives. His heart is racing and it isn't from the exertion of the climb.
"
----
----
“Then what is this point of you being here? If that's what you believe, you are going in the wrong direction.” Medhi condescends, cutting her off only after her last word left her lips.
“Because we aren’t returning to the land of our grandparents. We are exploring the lands of our children.”
Medhi finds himself not looking forward to the vast amount of alone time he was likely going to have with Sanaa.
----
"Gravitational stabilizers are back online. You should be able to demagnetize your boots now." He announces to the group. He is trying to suppress his pride. He's trying so hard to not let this small victory inflate his head to balloon sized proportions. It isn't a sense of modesty that guides him. He is still swimming in a surreal state. Clinically, he knows their troubles are far from over. But he also knows that he isn't feeling the true sense of danger surrounding himself and the passengers. He can't afford to feel proud that he got them moving again because complacency is death. And there is still a long way to go until Mars.
"Thanks (Persian). We owe you big time. When we get to Mars, your first round is on me."
"Right back at you Medhi."
----
Medhi says finally. "Earth is where it all started. Every piece of land there has already been explored. A-Level uses the same textbook. I've seen it. You can't possibly think... "
"What is land?" she asks, interrupting him without mercy.
"What is land?" she asks, interrupting him without mercy.
"Are you being serious? That's a stupid question. You know what land is."
"If it is so stupid you should be able to answer. What is land?"
"It's the ground. Only it's made of dirt instead of ice or the floor."
"It's the ground. Only it's made of dirt instead of ice or the floor."
"Is that all? So the pots and raised beds in the Agridome are land?"
"That's not what I meant, and you know it. You are really annoying, you know that?."
Sanaa continues, "What does land feel like? What does it smell like? How do you know it is land?"
Sanaa continues, "What does land feel like? What does it smell like? How do you know it is land?"
"Do you honestly think we'll get to Earth and I won't be able to figure out where the oceans end? Don't worry about it! I promise you, when I arrive, I will know what the land is."
"Exactly." she says, lowering her tone.
Now Medhi is confused. "What?"
"When you get there, you will know what land is. You don't know what land is now. Sure, you know about land. You have read the tales of Earth, the description of it. You might even know some of the things that make up land. But Medhi, you don't know land, and neither do I. I'm an explorer Medhi, and so are you. We are exploring things that are unknown to us, and making them known. There is nothing more exotic and exciting than that!
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