Launch: Chapter 33

  Markus spent hours in the road pod some time later, absently directing it around to different places of emotional significance to him, places he’d gone to school, places he’d worked… places he’d been with his family.  He was touring the things he’d never see again if he left.  Finally, he directed the pod into the docking area of the lobby in the building where his brother lived.  Like Hugh, they also lived here in the city.

  “Uncle Markus?”  Dao’s face was pressed up against the window, looking into the pod and cupping his hands over his eyes to see inside better.

  “Dao!  Good to see you!  How are you?”  Markus exclaimed.  He loved seeing his nieces and nephews.

  “Dad told me that I could come down and wait for you after you called and said you were on your way.   You’d better hurry up though, dinner was almost ready when I came down here to wait,” the boy stated with an exaggerated sense of significance characteristic of a ten year old.  Also consummate with his age was the metabolism of a hummingbird, so he was no doubt half-starved already.

  “Lead the way, Dao.”   He grabbed his travel bag, scanned for any other items he was about to leave in the very public roadpod, then opened the door, climbed out, and allowed himself to be led to the lift doors by his nephew.  The boy was still quite short since he had yet to go through his major adolescent growth spurts.  His short and messy black hair matched his light brown skin, and he was also just slightly on the chubby side.  This left him with round cheeks which combined with wide and light brown eyes to perpetually leave him looking excited.

  As they walked, the boy asked, “Dad said that you’re going on a long trip?”

  “Yeah… that’s right Dao, a very long trip.”  They got into the lift, and Dao ordered the correct floor with his Brainchip.  The doors closed and they began to ascend.

  “You’re getting pretty good at that!” Markus exclaimed proudly.  Dao had only received his Brainchip a few months ago and was already displaying a high proficiency in its use.  It was becoming more common to implant Brainchips at a younger and younger age.  While he’d received his at thirteen years old, Dao here had received his at only ten years old.

  “Thanks…” he muttered, his thoughts were clearly elsewhere.  “Are you ever coming back?” he asked, looking up at him wide eyed and expectantly.

  “No… no I’m not.”  The boy looked away, clearly disappointed but at the same time not exactly devastated.  “You gonna be okay with that?”

  “Will you laser me?” the boy asked expectantly.

  “Of course!  As often as you laser me back, which you’d better do often!”   The boy’s face brightened.

  “Okay then, all the time!”

  The doors opened onto Brakus’ family’s suite, which occupied the entire thirty-fourth floor (they were a family of five after all).  As they exited the lift, Brakus’ wife Jayn greeted them and offered to take Markus’ coat.  

  “Thank you Jayn,” he said as he handed his coat to her.  Markus leaned down to scratch the cheek of their black sim cat who had come to the door to greet him, and in response she pushed her cheek harder against his fingers and purred heavily.  Animals of course, were even easier to simulate than humans, and simulant pets didn’t require feeding or cleaning up after, and as such had become quite popular.  Not too far away there was even a simulant zoo which housed perfect simulations of present and extinct animals with any number of odd conjunctions of body and mind.  Most bizarre amongst them was the simulated tyrannosaurus rex named John who had the intellect of an elderly professor, and with whom one could wax philosophical or engage in a friendly game of chess.

  After his sister-in-law hung his coat up in the closet, she hugged him and asked, “how are you holding up Markus?   Are you gonna be okay?” she asked as she pulled away from the hug.

  “Oh Jayn, you don’t know the half of it…” he replied grimly.
 “What do you mean?”

  “Can you get Brakus so I can talk to you two in private for a minute?”  Jayn went off into the kitchen to tell Brakus to follow her, and instructed their oldest on how to continue in the final preparations for dinner.  They assembled in Brakus and Jayn’s bedroom, where Markus told them briefly about what Amber had admitted to him.

  Jayn was stunned, “I didn’t even realize… you could do that!” she uttered.  She was a sweet woman, and Markus liked her a lot.  Since the first day Brakus had introduced her to him, he had immediately been satisfied with her as a partner for his beloved younger brother.  Also fortunate for all concerned, she was in no way Markus’ type and there had never been any jealousy or conflict between the two brothers over her.  She and Brakus clearly belonged to each other, and he was happy for the both of them.

  “Oh,” Markus actually laughed.   “Well yes it’s… it’s very possible, believe me… Ironically enough, I actually helped develop the genome stabilizing technology that makes it possible.”

  “Markus…” Brakus said heavily after nervously looking at his wife, “I probably want you to stay more than anybody else, but… well, I don’t want you to stay like this.  Not for this reason.”

  “Look, Brakus, Jayn, I just wanted you to know before we sat down to dinner, so you didn’t have to guess at what’s on my mind, or… or think that what you already knew was all there was to know.  I didn’t want you to be upset later that I didn’t tell you earlier.”  Brakus was looking troubled.

  “Brak look, it seems to be hard for me to make anybody believe this, but I’m convinced that this is not a coercion technique on Amber’s part.  That certainly doesn’t make what she did okay, but she did it at a point when she thought I was already gone for good, and that she’d never see me again.   She only decided to tell me about it at all, because Mom asked me to reconsider the launch, and she thought she owed me at least telling me that there was a ready-made family available… you know, so I could factor it in or whatever.”

  “I think you’re naïve,” Brakus flatly stated.

  “And you’re probably right,” Markus sighed.  After a moment he chuckled to himself, but Brakus and Jayn didn’t seem to be amused at all.

  “So… are you reconsidering staying?” Jayn asked.  She wasn’t as emphatic as the others could be, but she considered him a part of the family and thus necessarily didn’t like the idea of him disappearing forever.

  Markus stood looking back and forth between them and their expectant expression for a few moments before answering.  “There were always things about Earth and life on it that made me not want to leave… this was never a one hundred percent decision.  I’m very mindful of what I’ll be leaving behind, my family and friends, my career, everything left to do and see and learn in the Solar System… to never again be anywhere in the universe but inside the New Horizon for the rest of my life… and now this.  I have to admit to you two that it’s tempting, if only maybe in a… twisted kind of way.  I think though that it’s only a newfound more general interest in having children that might have awoken in me… maybe it was the ship,” he reflected.  They didn’t understand.  “I guess what I’m saying is, I now think that maybe I might want to have a family…”

  “Well… I’m happy to hear that part at least,” Brakus stated evenly.

  “But not with Amber… maybe one day on the ship though…”

  “I’ve always hoped you’d come around to it someday… not like this though,” Brakus admitted.  “I’ve never had any problem with Amber specifically, but… this isn’t the way to start a family.  I want you to stay, but… well like I said, not like this.”

  “Look guys, I’m honouring Mom’s wish to seriously reconsider this decision, that’s all.  I must admit that this new information and her offer makes staying a much more appealing option, but I still don’t think I’m ready to write off the New Horizon mission, don’t worry.”

  “Good,” Jayn stated with certainty, seemingly surprising herself a little.  “Then let’s go back and have what is likely to be our last family dinner together, shall we?” she suggested cheerfully.

  The three exited the bedroom and made their way back to the dining room and kitchen area of their large apartment, where Markus sat down at the round table between Zoro and Sufi, and across the table from his brother.  There remained empty seats on either side of Brakus where Jayn and Dao would presumably sit.   Behind the empty seats was a fish tank with a variety of simulated fish swimming slowly, randomly, and uncoordinatedly about, first one way, then turning around and moving back in the other direction.  Being too small house a micro fusion like the cat, they were instead powered by the water being slightly electrified.

  “So Zoro, have you heard back from any universities yet?” he asked while turning to his nephew, who had some distinctly Asian features he’d inherited from his mother.  He was a skinny guy, with shoulder length jet black hair which often obscured his face, swishing about on either side of his sharp angular nose.  He was in his last year of high school, and had just turned eighteen years old.

  “Just from UBC, they accepted me into their bioengineering program, but I’m still hoping to get into Beijing.”

  “Good boy!  Certainly the right program anyway,” Markus winked at him.   “But how is your mandarin coming along?”

  “Pretty good, my tutor says that if I keep up the pace I should be fully fluent in a couple years.  It will come a lot faster and more naturally if I’m actually in China though.”

  “Well of course!  I’m happy to hear that you’re keeping up with all of that, you’re going to keep up the good work, right?  And pay attention to Asian philosophy Zoro, I studied it myself in university and I’m still friends with the prof who taught it.  I just saw her again today as a matter of fact.  But as I’m sure you know, even a rudimentary understanding of the philosophies of a culture reveals a great deal about it.”

  Zoro nodded in agreement.   “But wherever I get in, as you suggested I plan to take a year off before starting post-secondary and give myself a chance to breathe.

  “Good for you, I see first year students who come right from secondary and they all too often just burn out in the first year.  Now that you’re eighteen, your Global Baseline Benefit is legally yours to do with as you please.  I do suggest you take some time for yourself, have some fun, get yourself together, and then go in the next year refreshed and ready.  You might even find you want to study something you’d never known you were interested in before.”

  “Well could you tell my parents that?” Zoro said in front of his father, “because they’re not too hot on the idea of me taking a year off.”

  Markus looked at Brakus and chuckled, then looked back at Zoro and said, “sure, I’ll see what I can do.”   Markus truly appreciated his brother, and his talents which were different from his own.  He couldn’t talk to his brother about existential philosophy, but that was only because it didn’t interest him, not because he was incapable.  A similar rift was shared between Zoro and his father, which might have something to do with the conflict over taking a year off of school.  The reasons for it were… intangible.  Brakus was great with the real world, he was good with his hands and good at organizing people to get complicated projects done on tight schedules (talents which Markus himself was rather lacking in).  Brakus was indeed good with the real world, but not so much with the world which Markus lived in.  Neither envied the other in this respect and they were both much more comfortable in their own respective domains.

  Markus had long thought that he himself would never want a family, but he was happy for his brother that it had turned out so well for him.  It also suited him very well to have the opportunity to be close to all of them, and to share the experience a little vicariously.  Wondering as Markus did about what made a person the way they were, led him to wonder about the differences between himself and his brother.   In some ways they were unmistakably brothers, in the way they looked, their mannerism and their temperament sometimes… but in other ways they were as different as two people could be from each other.

  Markus was shy and introverted, a lifelong academic who generally preferred the company of ideas to the company of people.  Brakus was the opposite, a go-getting extrovert who devoured challenges, and was always the first to try to fix a problem the most directly.  Markus wondered how much of the difference was exclusively a reflection of how much he took after their mother, while Brakus took very much after their father.  He wondered how much of the differences were a result of their radically different experience in the formative early years of their lives.

  As a result of his sister’s death when he was very young, the emotional environment Markus spent his first couple years in was one steeped in loss, suffering, and emotional distance, while Brakus was born only after his parents had largely grieved and moved on.   Having sufficiently grieved before having Brakus, they then only cherished him that much more.  The emotional environment of his first couple years was one of love, caring, and unyielding attention.  Markus couldn’t help wondering if this was the true root of the difference between them.   He wished there was a way to find out.

  Markus was also convinced that if he tried to have children of his own he would somehow contaminate them with the issues he carried with him.  He was happy that his seemingly undamaged brother had chosen a seemingly undamaged wife and that together they were raising three seemingly undamaged children.    Although he was very happy for them that this was the case, he couldn’t help wondering if they were all missing out on something with their absence of suffering, if there was some sort of character development, or… seasoning to their lives and personality that they were all missing somehow.  As much as he loved them all, they were very much ‘of the Earth,’ and absent of that certain something he had fallen in love with during his short time on the New Horizon.   So was Markus at Zoro’s age though, so who knew what the future held for the children.

   “And how is Sufi?” Markus asked as he turned to the little girl while she and her mother sat down at the table, “Are you getting into any trouble now that you’re out of school?”  But the girl didn’t answer; in fact she didn’t even look up.  Instead she pushed herself away from the table, popped off her chair and ran away from the table and into her room.  Markus shot a hurt look at Brakus and Jayn.  “What was that about?”

  “She’s upset that you’re leaving Uncle Markus,” Dao answered for them.

  “She’s, too young to understand…” Jayn offered.

  There was a heavy silence around the table for several moments.  “I’m gonna go talk to her,” Markus offered heavily.  He pushed himself away from the table, got up, and followed after her.

  Brakus called out after him, “don’t expect too much Markus, and… and try not to take it personally, okay?”

  

  “Sufi… may I come in?”  She didn’t answer.  He slowly entered anyway.

  “Why are you leaving?” she asked as he approached, through the pillow she had buried her face in, her head completely obscured by a mess of her long black hair.  He came over and sat on the bed beside her.  At only six years old it was easy for her to be overwhelmed by things that upset her, or that she couldn’t understand.

  “I just have to, dear.  I’m sorry, that’s not true… look, I want to Sufi, it’s an adventure for me, it’s… it’s an opportunity I’ve always wanted.”  She didn’t respond.  He put his hand on her back, “we’ll still be able to talk by laser comm though.”

  She leapt up and threw her arms around him, giving him a big hug.  “It’s not the same!” she exclaimed.

  “I know Sufi, I know… I’m going to miss you so much too, believe me.”  He hugged her back even tighter, and then he remembered.  “Oh!  I have a present for you!  Hold on…”   He left the room for a few moments, and then came back with his bag.  From it he pulled out a scale model of the New Horizon, just about the size of a football.

  Clearly quite curious, she took it from him and looked it over in her hands.  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “That my dear, is the New Horizon Generational Starship.  You see, I’m going on an adventure Sufi.  I’m going to leave in a ship just like this one only a whole lot bigger.  We’re gonna go to a new planet that we think is like Earth but around another star very far away.  We want to go there and build a new home for ourselves… do you understand?”

  “Why?” she asked, holding back tears more effectively now.

  He considered how to provide a more positive explanation than the brutally truthful reasons that immediately came to his mind.  How does one explain species survivability or existential malaise of a civilization to a six year old?  “Well, part of it is just wanting to see if we can do it.  Part of it is that it will be exciting to try, but most importantly because we want to see just how incredible a thing we can accomplish if we really try…  Does that make any sense to you?”

  “I think so… but I’m still really sad…  I still really want you to stay,” she sniffled.

  “Oh Sufi…  I tell you sweetheart, that just by itself is almost enough to make me stay right there… but I just can’t.  I hope you’ll be able to understand when you’re older.  You may not agree, but… but I think you’ll be able to understand.”  The moment hung in the air, she was enjoying the attention, and he was acutely aware of the probable finality of this moment, of how there would never be another like it ever again.  She would grow up and live a full life, and he would see none of it.  The older she got, the longer it would take for messages to pass between them.  It would soon take years…

  The dinner out there, visiting with Lavinia, the trips to Alberta with Hugh, and especially Zoro, Dao, and little Sufi here, he was to leave all of this behind!?  He was overwhelmed for a moment with a mixture of feelings.  He was panicked at the thought of walking away from it all forever, but that panic was somehow combined with an excitement at the adventurism of it all, and mixed with the anticipation of walking entirely away from one social world, and plunging into an altogether new and different one.  It would be so easy to stay, and that was the problem, that it would be so... so easy to live with that choice, he thought. 

  “How about we go out there and have a nice family dinner together before I have to go, alright?  Aren’t you hungry?”

  She looked up and thought about it for a second, then enthusiastically exclaimed, “Ok!!” as she bounded towards the door, still holding the New Horizon model.  It would be a very long time before she’d ever let go of it again.