Launch: Chapter 32

  Soon after leaving Molly’s place, Markus found himself back at Hugh’s.  Lavinia was still there, and they were both clearly, if reservedly, eager to hear how it had gone for him.  “Well?” Hugh winced.  “How did it go?”

  Markus hesitated for only half a moment, and then told Hugh and Lavinia everything that had happened with his mother and her strange request, as well as Amber’s bombshell about making herself pregnant using a sample of Markus’ skin cells.  He didn’t see any point to mentioning his visit with Molly.   Hugh was touched and torn when hearing about his mother, and then absolutely mortified and befuddled over the news about Amber.

  “What… does this mean to you?” he asked, seeming to restrain a rather strong emotional response.

  “Well,” Markus answered, “it’s tempting in its own way.”

  “What?”  Hugh appeared as though he were about to choke.  “You could actually consider staying for that, with her?  I mean I can understand if you felt some sort of obligation to the child…  I’d still tell you you’re fucking wrong; I’d argue with you but at least that I’d understand!  But for you to actually be considering staying here to be with her??   This I can’t understand at all!!”  Hugh collapsed onto the couch behind him.  He appeared exhausted, visibly depleted from his intoxication last night.   In the state he was in this seemed to be just too much for him to handle with his usual grace.

  “I know.   You’ve never understood us though…   I see no reason why you would start now…”

  “If you allow yourself to be taken in by this… this ultimate manipulation, if you… well that is a choice that you make.”

  Lavinia was quiet.  She looked very much alert and had listened intently so far, but had yet to say anything.

  “No,” Markus answered, “I don’t think she’s trying to manipulate me this time Hugh.  She was very clear… very emphatic about it really, that she only did it once she thought she’d never see me again and that she wasn’t sure she would ever tell me about it at all…  I really don’t think that she made herself pregnant as a manipulation technique, though telling me now certainly may be…  But I really do believe her that she just… that she just thought it was information that I ought to know if I was to do a serious reconsidering of my decision to launch.”

  “I’ll never understand you two Markus.”

  “I know.”

  There was silence for several moments.  “Do you want to stay?” Hugh asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You could help Brakus adjust to keeping the company running without your mother… you could live with Amber… fuck you could even raise your child with her… and hey, you and I could even still go to Alberta every summer…”

  “Hugh…”  Markus didn’t think he needed this right now, but maybe he did.   Maybe it’s precisely why he’d come back here.  Maybe that’s why Hugh was his best friend.

  “And then in twenty years,” Hugh continued, “you’ll be seventy four; probably sick of Amber by then, and bitter about having missed your one big chance in life to be part of something truly special and larger than yourself.  And, you’ll have a kid!  You!!  A kid you never wanted, a kid who will be around whether you stay or go…  Ask that guy what you should do now, today.”  Hugh had more in him, but he let it go at that.

  “Thanks Hugh… I probably needed to hear that,” Markus admitted.  There were again several moments of silence in the room, with Markus lost in thought, and Hugh left to wonder what those thoughts might be.  “If only you could go instead of me!”  Markus offered brightly.

  “Yeah right,” Hugh retorted, “and have you blame me the rest of your miserable terrestrial existence for taking your place?   I think not!”  The two chuckled a bit, but it was half-hearted.  Lavinia didn’t laugh at all.

  “I’m going to go,” Markus stated, “I told Brakus I’d have dinner with him and his family tonight.  We’re all going to go visit my mother again tomorrow morning and… well for me I guess it’ll be my last chance if we’re catching that three p.m. orb-up.”

  “Before you go Markus,” Lavinia finally said, “can I have a word with you alone please?”

  “Of course.”

  The two made their way out of Hugh’s apartment and up to the roof of his building.  Up here there was the community garden for the residents of the high rise, and a remarkable view of the city.  The sky was bright blue with sparse clouds, which clashed uncomfortably with Markus’ internal emotional state.

  “Where do new species come from Markus?”  The old woman asked as they slowly walked the path around the perimeter of the roof.

  “Well,” Markus considered, “it happens… when one part of a species’ population is somehow permanently separated from the rest, resulting in two independent breeding populations.  After being separated, their different environments promote a divergence in their genetic adaptations to the point that they can no longer successfully interbreed and produce reproductively healthy offspring.”

  “Right, and is this the… only phenomenon which follows this pattern?”

  That was a really good question which he had to chew over for a few moments.  “Well…” he thought, “I suppose you could say the same thing about culture, but it’s… not really the same thing.”

  “Isn’t it?” Lavinia pressed.

  “What are you talking about… cultural speciation?”  He looked out towards the horizon in the direction of Vancouver Island.   A thick cloud passed in front of the sun, leaving everything in shadow.  “Do you mean like… when a culture differentiates from a parent culture…   Like the way the culture of the United States diverged from the culture of Great Britain.”

  Lavinia shook her head.   “Yes of course but that is too obvious and too literal an example.  Besides, those two cultures are really just variations on a theme, no real difference between the two.”

  “Hmm…” Markus frowned.   “Well, Western and far Eastern civilizations were incredibly different from each other…  All of the early civilizations were founded on their own unique principles of culture.  They were about as alien as civilizations could be to one another amongst the same species on the same planet.  With globalization though, they’re all essentially homogenized now…”

  “You’re quite right,” Lavinia acceded.  “They were civilizations entirely separated from each other and they developed into rather different ones right from the beginning… but what about a more dramatic break and shift, can you identify an equivalent schism which took place over only a few generations?”

  “The Protestant Revolution?” he asked, once again and still her student.

  “Closer yes, closer…   Revolutions in thought are what change the world Markus.  How many wars have been fought over encouraging or inhibiting an evolution in thought?  Many child… too many, perhaps even all the wars since the beginning of time.  But that one point in history, the Protestant Revolution, that was when in the Western sphere it became acceptable to think independently about one’s faith and to criticize the authority’s interpretation of scripture and dogma.  This revolution inspired more and more people to study, and to figure out things for themselves.  For the first time in countless generations of Western Civilization, there was a group of people who didn’t want to simply receive knowledge passively without any vigorous challenge and engagement with it.”

  “With this evolution in thought,” Livonia continued, “the modern sciences were born in what we call the Enlightenment, and all the other wonders of the modern age.”  She put a cigarette to her mouth and lit it, taking a long and deep draw off of it.  Holding it in her lungs, she eventually blew it out evenly and slowly with obvious satisfaction.  He found it amazing that she could still do that without erupting into hacking and coughing fits.

  “But it’s never been able to… well, ‘culturate’ I guess would be the word,” Markus offered.  “That part of humanity has never had the chance to… to really partition itself from the parts of humanity which hold it back.”

  “Precisely.  That is of course, until this mission which you claim to care so much about.”  The cloud which had obscured the sun passed on and the sun once again brightly lit everything up.  Lavinia stopped and took a seat on one of the benches lining the path.  “Markus… here on Earth, the weak will always plague the likes of you, all of you up there on that ship.  Here on Earth they drag you down because they are jealous of you, but up there, on that ship,” she looked up into the sky, “only the exceptional are going.  You will urge each other on to further and further greatness… and I think that’s very special.”

  “You have to wonder,” Markus commented, “if the same balance of weak and exceptional will only re-emerge after a few generations, if that’ll be a problem they run into…”

  “There is no question that they will.” Lavinia stated.

  Markus continued to look at her for a few moments, and then turned his gaze back to the view of the city.  “They plague us…” he repeated.  The way she had said it had disturbed him for some reason, but he could find no fault in the appropriateness of her phrasing.

  Lavinia stood up tall and straight, as much as she could that is, at only a hundred and sixty-two centimeters tall.  She clasped her hands behind her back and stretched out, arching her back.  She then walked over to the edge of the building and leaned over to look down at the street below.  “It’s not their fault you know, Markus… they don’t deserve any blame.   It’s simply who… and what they are.   They’re no more responsible for that than you are for being the way you are.”  She turned to face Markus again.  “They are what we used to be child, but we are something new.  And for us to thrive we must… or at least some of us must… well, launch.

  “You must leave this world, Markus.  You have a sacred duty to honour both what you come from, as well as what you have become.   You are in a classic double bind, the same double blind which has always existed in the heart of humanity,” she poked him in the chest, “and in the heart of every man.  To leave dishonours your blood kin and offends your community, but to stay dishonours yourself, and forbids you from ever finding the community in which you truly belong.  What is more important, that from which you come from, or that of which you are?”

  “I have to dishonor my family or my community…”

  “Does what Amber told you really change anything Markus?  Is leaving a child you neither created nor asked for before its life has even begun, really any worse than leaving your nieces and nephews while they’re growing up.  Isn’t that in some ways even worse?  They will have to suffer actually losing you.  That abomination Amber created will not.   I’m worried about you Markus, I know what you’re like, I know that news got to you, please don’t let it.”

  “I really did love being on that ship Lavinia, it was like a whole ship of people… well, people like you and Hugh.”

  “Of course!  It’s a ship full of people like us!  But you absolutely cannot forget that we are the uncommon ones Markus.  We are the anomalies here on Earth child, not them.  Don’t you dare ever forget that.”  Lavinia pulled a fresh cigarette out of her case and lit it with the still lit butt of her previous cigarette.  She then tossed the lit butt off of the roof and down to the street below, much to Markus’ horror.  “Up on that ship of yours... everyone there is like us, and they are collectively going to be the parents of a whole new civilization Markus… and you have been asked to play a central role in that great epic.  You are to be father to a whole new branch of humanity, to build a new way for human beings to exist, with an infant human civilization starting from the best possible ingredients.  That is more important than… than legitimizing what Amber has done to you.”

   At that Lavinia simply hugged Markus tightly, something which was quite uncharacteristic for either of them, but which seemed unavoidably necessary in this particular moment and he hugged her back.  She pulled away and they faced each other.  Lavinia put her hands on his shoulders and looked up, straight into his eyes.  “Whether or not they are able to see it for themselves with their narrow perspectives Markus; only one path available to you truly honours your community here on Earth.”

  She turned back and looked out over the city again.  “You’ve come so far…  I remember when you first walked into my class, you were as vacant as any of the rest of my students, and just as oblivious as they were to what I was really trying to teach them.  But something changed in you when your father died.  It was your first violent shock out of your complacency.  It was your first spark of conscientiousness about the world around you… it was for you the equivalent of what Hugh experienced in losing his family the way he did.

  “You came to me as the last man, the ultimate man, the very spirit of your age… a man no more imaginative than most of the rest of your pathetic generation.  You seemed tired of life, seeking only your own peace and comfort which would forever elude you… but that day you started fighting your way out of that box.  You had painfully slow progress over the decades and I was worried that I’d die before you broke free of the world as you understood it the way Hugh did.  I was worried that you would be a slave forever.   It killed me to know what potential you had, and to see you just killing time, just… waiting to be dead.”

  “Waiting to be dead…” Markus repeated reflexively.

  “Something’s changed in you now though, I can feel it.  You’ve taken a great leap towards becoming something more than just human, more than just a man.  Being on that ship has changed you, I can feel it.  The power you are only beginning to learn how to harness… scares me a little, and it’s wonderful.  Humanity is something meant to be overcome, Markus.  Earth is something meant to be left behind.  Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “You have the opportunity to play father to a whole new civilization, and you must seize it.  If you don’t, well…” she sighed heavily, “well then I’m glad I won’t be around much longer to see everything I love about you, and all the potential I see in you, slowly atrophy, wither away, and die.”