Launch: Chapter 8
“You understand Markus, that your psychological profile is not considered ideal for New Horizon, simply that you didn’t trigger any of the exclusion parameters?”
“Yes, that’s what they told me.” He found her South African accent the sexiest thing about her.
It was Markus’ intake interview aboard the New Horizon, and he was sitting in one of the two chairs facing hers across the modest office’s rectangular desk. He’d been immediately attracted to Kirsten Jackson when he first saw her. Her sandy blond hair went past her shoulders and was currently tied loosely behind her. She was looking intently at his file on her view screen, occasionally reading aloud things that struck her as being of interest, with an apparent and unusual lack of sensitivity.
She was dressed very casually; she wore loose fitting dark blue pants, and a long sleeve tan shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There was no uniform or official dress code on the ship, but coveralls color coded to different departments (including the generic grey) were available to all and were widely used, especially during the pre-launch phase of the mission.
“You applied for one of our discretionary positions… won a spot in the lottery…”
“Yes,” he cleared his throat then meekly added, “that’s right, wildcard.”
“Right, well everything seems to be in order for you, have you gotten your welcome package yet?”
“I have.” He gestured towards his wrist scroll which secured one of its rods to his wrist allowing the second to be pulled away, revealing a modest screen fifteen centimeter across.
“Alright then, let’s get going. I’ll show you to your suite.” At that she got up to leave and he followed her out.
After going through the door it closed behind them, and then Kirsten turned and headed down the hall at a decent pace. Markus tended to stroll when he walked and he consciously had to speed up from his usual pace to keep up with her. After a few moments of silence between them, she half turned to him and asked what had brought him to the New Horizon, as though she expected him to have some sort of canned all-encompassing explanation like everyone else apparently had. He found her question interesting and her more interesting for asking it. It was a very similar question to the one he had been wanting to ask her. Much to his own surprise, he found that he did in fact have just such a canned and pithy response.
“I was… bored,” he answered, surprised with himself. It was a question he might not have been able to answer a week ago.
*** *** ***
“What does that even mean?” Amber asked Markus, when he told her that he had applied for one of the New Horizon wildcard spots.
It was two and a half years earlier, and Hugh had recently talked Markus into applying along with him. The existence of the New Horizon was no secret, in fact it was the subject of a great deal of conversation on Earth, even now almost three months before the very public accident which claimed the life of the well-known Neil Sagan. Much like in the personal lives of most applicants to the New Horizon mission, the lack of understanding between Markus and many of the people he knew was as vast as the divide between all of those who would wish to go, and the wide majority of modern humans who would not. Amber was having particular trouble understanding what Markus meant by what he had just said, that his motivation was ultimately simple boredom.
“I just… really don’t feel challenged in any way that matters to me anymore; I don’t feel like there’s anything else that I can do with my life on Earth that is truly meaningful to me.” It had taken him years, decades of self-reflection really, to be able to articulate so concisely the way he felt. It was a deep existential boredom that had been growing in him for decades, long before he’d ever even heard of the New Horizon. He had hit every mark in his life, accomplished every goal he had realistically set for himself and in a lot of ways, he really didn’t know what to do with himself these days. His salvation was currently his work. It at least kept him busy and while retirement was still decades away, he had the first seeds of dreading it. If he was already bored now…
“Well what makes you so special? Do you think you are the only person who feels that way? I feel like that all the time, it’s just… life! You can’t just run away from it!” Amber exclaimed.
“Uh… well, actually I can,” he chuckled, “if I win a spot that is.”
“Why can’t you just stay here and… I don’t know, you could keep teaching and researching couldn’t you? Or maybe you could, you could start researching or teaching a different discipline? You’re certainly qualified. You’ve already done a lot of independent study in history, philosophy… social science, you could just focus on that more, or maybe you could go the other direction and get into physics, or chemistry. You could open your own research institution Markus, there’s a lot you could do!” she pleaded.
The idea of opening a new private research institution might have interested him a lot more in years past, but it was still a perfectly valid suggestion. It’s the kind of thing he probably would have ended up doing if he hadn’t wound up winning the lottery. “Yes Amber, there’s lots to do… yes there are endless opportunities for distraction, but… “I already have five advanced degrees. I’m so bored with teaching at this point and to be honest, I’ve… ” It hurt him very deeply to say this aloud, but “I’ve been losing my passion for academia in general for quite some time now. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it, but…”
“But what?” she pressed.
“But… I can tell it won’t be enough for me forever. At some point the thinking, speculating, and analyzing just gets old, it’s all in my head, there’s never any action or excitement. I’ve already done most of the things that are supposed to be interesting in the Solar System, and I’ve found nothing that excites me anywhere near the way being in academia has. That was until, I heard about the New Horizon mission. That idea excites me. It didn’t at first, but the more Hugh talks about it the more interesting it sounds.”
Amber sighed heavily. She looked up and brushed her brown hair behind her ears. She was fighting the urge to cry as she looked up at him. He looked at her with sadness in his eyes, as he often did when she wasn’t looking. He told her he loved her, but he was only able to because he didn’t really mean it. He’d never experienced a truly penetrating romantic relationship; the usually uncomplicated convenience and comfort of Amber was the most serious relationship he’d ever had or sought out. He was in some sense afraid of the intimacy and loss of autonomy which most others find attractive about a relationship. The people in his life whom he had sincere love for, like his family and his best friend Hugh, it always seemed awkward and contrived to actually tell them that he loved them. It was just implied.
They were cuddling naked under the bed sheets. The religious layers of shame and guilt around sexuality from centuries past had fallen out of fashion along with any serious objections to birth control or abortion (the necessity of which had become exceedingly rare with diligent, widely available, and uncontroversial contraception for both sexes). Markus’ plain white bedroom was complete with white bedding, furniture, carpeting, and curtains. Current design trends tended to attempt to distract with bright cheerful colours, and use design features that draw the eye’s attention. Markus preferred a sense of simplicity to his home surroundings. It didn’t help his sense of existential boredom, but he did find the order and simplicity of the room soothing. It was one of his favourite places to think since there was very little to distract him from getting lost in his thoughts.
Markus had met Amber almost twenty years ago at McGill University in Montreal. She had been a new student and he was working in his first paid academic position after his post graduate work. He was eleven years older than her, and he had been immediately attracted to her. The two of them becoming involved was of course strictly forbidden by university rules since he was a professor and she was a student, but Markus had never been one to automatically follow rules and laws by rote. He tended to consider what consequences any given rule or laws were likely created to avoid, and then did his best to avoid those consequences themselves from coming to be. He first become aware of Amber on the first day she’d showed up in his first year Biology class, and he knew right away at the sight of her that she’d be trouble.
Markus had understood that the rule against dating students was for two reasons, both to avoid favouritism of one student over others, as well as the problem of the professor having a position of power and possibly creating a situation where such power might be abused. Knowing this, he waited until after that semester was over before approaching Amber, and ever after making sure that she was never his student ever again. Hugh and Amber had an immediate dislike of one another, and after initially meeting each other a few times, they very rarely ever saw each other except in passing.
Part of it was simple competition; both recognized that they would now have to compete for Markus’ time. After all it was also around this time that Hugh also took a post-doctorate position at McGill just to be able to spend more time with his friend. Even so there was more to it than that. Hugh appreciated Markus’ rationality. It had after all been so instrumental in himself being saved from religiosity. He didn’t like the way she sometimes was able to make his friend think and behave so irrationally. He believed that Markus breaking the rules and risking so much to see her was itself a result of him not being able to control himself in the face of her influence.
Hugh was wrong though. He failed to appreciate the degree of Markus’ general ambivalence towards rules in general, and his willingness to break them whenever it sufficiently suited him. He didn’t mind violating the rules when he felt that he was not violating the spirit of the rules, or when his wishes were simply more powerful than the loose respect he had in general for things like rules, authority, or the law. He simply didn’t mind breaking the rules when he really wanted to, and when he thought he could get away with it. As for Amber, she just stayed away from Hugh since she could sense his animosity towards her.
“Haven’t you ever wanted… more? You know, like a new challenge… or to take a big risk!?” Markus asked, a little exasperated.
“Of course Markus, that’s… that’s life! Like I said!” Amber declared, equally exasperated. “You really think you’re the only person who feels rudderless? Directionless? Purposeless? We all do, but we just suck it up and get on with our lives, trying to create little bits of meaning every day as we go.” She paused and then added a little disjointedly, but feeling a need to say it, “we have each other… we have that…”
He flinched at hearing her say it. It implied a depth of connection between them he wasn’t comfortable with. He reached over and gave her a hug to satisfy her. He enjoyed the hug, but there was something painful about his enjoyment of it. It was in part self-loathing over giving a less that completely sincere hug, but it was also a more general problem he had. He found that he couldn’t really enjoy anything that felt good. It would always start out feeling good, and then bleed into some undefined sadness. He was unable in those moments to forget that nothing lasts forever, doubly so with things that felt good. The enjoyment of anything always reminded him on some deeper level that nothing ever lasts forever. Change, death, and renewal, are ultimate and fundamental realities of existence, which are unavoidable to all.
But it was more than this nihilistic pain which afflicted him. The experience of any other positive or emotionally moving experience always made him feel a little sad and lonely. There was something so viscerally subjective about the experience, which made any attempt to communicate or share it ultimately impossible. Buried within the person that was Markus Bowland, was an entity that could never be completely known or understood by any other being, not really. No matter how close any two people became, an unbridgeable gulf still inevitably divided them.
If asked, Markus would be unable to say with any confidence whether that unbridgeable gulf was narrowest between him and Amber, or between him and Hugh. Somewhat blinded by the more visceral and experiential side of his existence he might claim it to be Amber since she was his sexual partner. If breadth and richness of connection were the measure though, if one was speaking of sheer bandwidth, it would unquestionably be Hugh. He was the one with whom he never ran out of things to talk about with, as he often did with Amber. As close as Markus was to either of them though, the unbridgeable gulf remained impenetrable.
“Look Amber, it’s a lottery,” he said as he continued to hug her. “The odds highly favour neither me nor Hugh being selected and I really don’t think I’d go if I won a spot and Hugh didn’t, so… you probably don’t even have anything to worry about.”
“I guess, it just… it just bothers me that you would want to do that under any circumstances. You can’t just run away from your problems Markus.”
“I wouldn’t be…” he couldn’t be bothered to finish his sentence, he just sighed.
They were both quiet for a few moments, and then Amber asked, “you really think you can find that kind of meaning with that ship?”
“I don’t know Amber… I’m starting to wonder though. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is really keeping me here on Earth and what I want out of the time I have left in my life.” He paused, and then continued, “I’ve been around most of the Solar System, I’ve seen and done pretty much everything I ever wanted to…” he surveyed the room as though he were seeing past it and surveying the cosmos themselves, and with a wave of his hand he finished his thought, “around here.”
She understood. Many people living in their era understood the feeling which the majority was still as blissfully ignorant of as ever. There was an acute horror in having nothing to struggle against and no demands or expectations of you. There were endless opportunities to fill one’s time whether through work or entertainment, but things worth cherishing and devoting oneself to, things worth believing in, were truly few and far between.
Markus believed that what Amber had difficulty understanding was the appeal of his solution, if not the nature of the problem. Like many people she was raised to be oriented towards one’s social world, to one’s family and friends, and to construct meaning for one’s life out of those human connections. Markus was aware that Amber had for some time wanted to start a family of her own, and that he was her first choice to mate with. This was her solution to the absence of meaning and purpose in her life; to literally create that purpose. This seemed like such a common and pedestrian solution to him.
People like Markus and Hugh were dreamers though. Hugh was the one consumed by it, but Markus understood it, even if he didn’t feel it as fully. That was the connection between them which was absent in Amber. Hugh and to a lesser extent Markus, had it in them to think big and to see the bigger picture, a larger view of the world and of humanity. They were able to look at something like the New Horizon mission and to see its significance in the scope of human activity. Hugh especially sought to hitch his own personal sense of meaning onto that of the New Horizon, and to become an inseparable part of its place in history.
Markus was discovering that he simply could no longer be genuinely happy without a similar sense of purpose, even if he wasn’t yet entirely convinced that New Horizon was what could give him that feeling. He had become increasingly consumed with seeking it out, and the New Horizon seemed to be as good an answer to the problem as any. A feeling he had always shared with Hugh was the need for his life to have some sort of connection to the mythical epic poems of antiquity; they both wanted to be part of some story which would last and be told throughout time and over countless generations. In short, all he wanted was immortality, not much to ask really, nor was it a particularly unique desire. He simply wanted to live forever, if not in body as he had come to concede over the years, then at least in human memory.
His nightmare, the dark place within him that Amber could never know, the place that he would never share with anybody, and that he himself had yet to thoroughly explore, was his knowledge that ultimately, and on a long enough timeline, and from a sufficiently removed point of view, it is simply not possible for any such meaning to exist in any way. All life was ultimately devoid of any true meaning or purpose. He eventually came to understand that it was incumbent on each individual person, if such meaning was ever to be found, to construct for themselves out of their fabric of their own lives.
*** *** ***
“So this is your suite, why don’t you have a look around and make sure everything is in order. It usually is though; we’re all about accuracy and precision around here. Most people have at least one thing or another to ask me about within a few minutes though, and I hate getting only a few dozen meters down the corridor and then having to turn back, or worse yet getting all the way back to my office…” Kirsten said this with a bit of an ironic droll, indicating that she didn’t want to actually discourage him from calling for assistance if he really needed any, but that he really should have a look around for any issues before she left.
Somewhat timidly at first, Markus entered the main area of what would after all, be the place he would live in until he died… at which point someone else would take his place in it. It was a comfortable enough size for one person, well lit and clean, obviously hardly touched since it was originally constructed and furnished. It had a small kitchenette against the wall to his right, and further on on the same side was the dining area. To his left were the open doors to the bathroom and his bedroom. At the far end of the rectangular space was the living room which had a large circular window in the floor. As he approaches the portal Markus found the earth just hanging there outside the window, with the view slowly changing as the ship’s ring he was standing in and the planet below him both slowly revolved.
Kirsten was standing in the doorway with her arms folded, leaning up against the side of the door frame, neither coming in nor leaving, watching him move about the suite and doing a mental checklist in his head. “There will be a reception for the wildcard crew who are all due to arrive by tomorrow, any questions you might have they’ll be able to answer for you there and you’ll get a much more thorough orientation than I have time to give you now.
“You have this small kitchen here,” she continued, “but there are meals in the main hall four times a day and most people expect to eat the majority of their meals there. You have to notify in advance of every meal since we can’t waste anything, but if you miss it or don’t like what is served, you can just cook your own food in here. For that you can visit the onboard grocery where you can find schmeat and schmilk from our labs, as well as fruits and vegetables from the arboretum gardens. Until the launch though, there will be three different meals available to all crews twenty-four hours a day. Once underway we’ll begin the strict schedule.
“As you know, every month you’re expected to contribute fifty brain hours and fifty body hours. The lists and signup sheets were all in your welcome package. I suggest that you check on them regularly since the last picked jobs can be, well…” she wrinkled her nose, “… the least favourable.”. Markus was already aware of everything she was telling him. He would never have come aboard without a thorough understanding of the ship’s regulations since he always like to be as prepared as possible for everything. After all, it was the rest of his life he was preparing for.
The brain hours versus body hours distinction was in recognition of the fact that exercising one’s mind and exercising one’s body each take different kinds of effort. It would after all be unfair to force anyone to completely devote either their body or their mind or (perish the thought) both, to a task that is simply a prescribed duty as opposed to a captivating job which one is passionate about.
“Right, and the life task?” He asked, curious as to how she would define it.
“Yes, each resident of the New Horizon is required to be willing to put their life at risk for the good of the ship and crew, but only once. Of course you can volunteer as often as you like, but every single crew member must accept the responsibility of being willing to sacrifice their life, if unforeseen dire circumstances should require it. But don’t worry, it’s not like there’s going to be a ton of situations where that’s gonna come up, but well… the unexpected is by definition, the unexpected.”
“It’s more than that though isn’t it? I was thinking about it and it seems to me that it could also serve as yet another way to screen out undesirable crew. Maybe anyone who isn’t willing to commit to that responsibility isn’t the right kind of person for the New Horizon? It probably serves to foster solidarity on the ship too, knowing that everyone around you has the same level of commitment to your safety as you have to theirs if things came right down to it. That’s kind of special I think.”
Kirsten looked at him as though she really didn’t know what to make of his comment. “I suppose that’s true too, but I don’t think that’s where the idea originally came from.” Markus looked at her and suspected that she didn’t really understand what he’d meant. He imagined that she probably didn’t know what it was like to feel a distinct absence of that kind of loyalty. The problem, for which this seemed a novel solution to Markus, didn’t exist for Kirsten. “I’m pretty sure the founders came up with that rule as a way to honour Neil Sagan.”
“Yes… I heard about that. Pretty devastating, I was um… a very big fan of his work.”
“We all were…” she replied somberly. “I think they just wanted to make him the benchmark for required commitment to the mission.”
Markus nodded as he walked down to the living room window and looked down at the brightly lit and majestically sprawling Earth below him. Using the PANE (Personal Area Network Eyes) contact lenses he was wearing, a gadget which could among other things, capture visual information as well as display it directly in front of one’s pupil, he thought commanded the capture of his view out the window and sent it to Hugh’s PAN (Personal Area Network), his local network consisting of any and all devices Hugh’s Brainchip was currently linked to. The Brainchip system which most people of his day had implanted in their brain, allowed them to operate devices such as the PANE and the EAR (Enhanced Auditory Rebroadcaster), all by thought control alone. The EARs were tiny devices implanted into the auditory canals which could both capture and discretely play sounds in conjunction with the Brainchip and PANE.
“We’d better soak up that view now while we still can hunh?” he suggested to Kirsten, who still remained in the open doorway.
“I guess” she shrugged as she turned to leave. Before the door closed behind her she added, “I myself can’t get away soon enough...”
After she’d left, Markus’ eyes stayed fixed on the door for a few seconds before he turned back around and looked down on the African continent as her words echoed in his ears. ‘I’ve never heard anyone talk like that down there…’ he reflected.