FREE STORIES 2012(39)
Personal Log: Lori Rowe - Assistant Astrogator
Date: 7/01/2059 (+22 years 1 month 2 days)
Distance From Earth: 2.36AU
Claire’s will left specific instructions on how to deal with her remains.
We’d had a couple of deaths so far, Fumi’s accident and Kristen Bradfield’s tragic death during childbirth, but Claire’s was the first death that we had time to prepare for.
I read out her instructions at union and tried to remember when she first told us about the cancer. It was about six months ago. This letter was dated two years prior to that--hand written on pages from a NASA notepad a quarter-century old. She had known for some time, but had kept it from everyone.
I have transcribed it here in its entirety:
Do not grieve. That’s the first thing. Death itself is nothing-only a cessation of things, an end to pain. The anticipation of death is only somewhat more frightening, but only because of what I fear for my loved ones. I do not fear the end, but I do tremble at the thought of being the cause of sadness. So do not grieve, I could not bear it.
I would like my body to be placed in the biome for recycling. By the time you read this, I will have gone. All that remains are chemicals pressed into my form. If that is too much for you, then let the children do it. They understand. They see this final sacrament for the gift that it is and are not encumbered by the mawkish sentimentality of what once was. Their mythology is one borne of looking forward. They tell tales of what will be. No campfire yarns of the deeds of ancient heroes for them. Their heroes are yet to come and indeed may be closer than any of you realise.
I don’t want to say I told you so
So do not grieve for me. I out of all of us, gained the most from our prolonged detour. I signed on for a three year mission, thinking that was the closest I would ever get to life lived among the stars. I sometimes feel guilt. Guilt at having enjoyed my life so much. It was almost as if the accident was my fault: an act of karmic sabotage to bring about what I wanted more than anything else.
Look at us now. Comet riders and spacefarers: a pocket sized nation of citizen scientists with a unity of purpose not seen since we left behind the subsistence farming of medieval village life and yet with all of space before us. No longer limited to our fields, our herds and the banks of our river--we can now take these things with us and there is no limit to our wanderings.
So do not grieve. Pick me apart and set every molecule to work. This ship is my dream and I have worked all my life to see it come to fruition and I’ll be damned if I let a little thing like death intervene.
Ad Astra
Claire
Personal Log: Lori Rowe - Assistant Astrogator (retired)
Date: 24/06/2062 (+25 years 6 months 19 days)
Distance From Earth: 0.01AU and closing!
There it is, our first view of our home planet in twenty-five years. A few of us gathered in the observation bubble once word got around that Earth was now a recognisable sphere rather than just a cluster of blue green pixels.
It looks odd. No, that's not right. It looks exactly as it should look, exactly as it has always looked from this distance. It looks like it looked from the Moon in Apollo, like it looked from the Liberty during those first days. It looked exactly the same as it had always looked: it is my perception of it that has changed.
At one time I would have given everything I had to see that old ball again and to know that I was coasting towards it. All I ever wanted was to go home. And now, faced with the planet of my birth, I realise that I will never again call it home.
It has not changed, but I have. My parents are gone and I never had much of an extended family or even friends outside of my career. My family is here now.
Maria Cosatti is commander now and she has a shopping list as long as the tether. We can do a lot on board ship, but some things just need manufacturing clout or technical expertise that we just don't have in our potted population of twenty-seven souls.
Although we don’t have money, we're not short of things to barter with. We have a hold full of magnesium and titanium. Nothing too spectacular, no asteroid-sized diamonds or alien artefacts. But every tonne of mass we leave in orbit is a tonne less to be lifted out of Earth's gravity well. Factoring in that mark-up, we are all returning Earth as billionaires.
There is an ulterior motive too. Every plate and pressure vessel, every kilo of water ice we leave in orbit is an invitation. Like a cookie held out to a wary child it says come on, we won't bite. Come and play.
The fact is that we've had a hell of a run of luck. We set out in a fragile tin can hurled like a bolas at the blackness but we are coming back in a glittering spaceship under our own power and with fuel to take us anywhere in the solar system.