Launch: Chapter 35

  The next morning, Markus stepped out of the roadpod at the front entrance of the Vancouver Hospital complex where his mother was being treated.  It was raining a modest morning shower, but he didn’t hurry himself while making his way out of the vehicle and into the hospital; he was still rather emotionally drained from the night before.  Amber was waiting for him in the central lobby inside the doors.  He had told her to meet him there.

  “Markus…” she uttered as she approached, looking down the whole time and only furtively meeting his gaze.

  When she was within reach, Markus put his hands on her shoulders, and then looked down for a few moments, collecting himself.  He then held his head up and looked right at her, forcing her to look at him too by looking directly into her eyes.  With his right hand he felt a bit of her hair and looked at it, trying to be as present in the moment as he possibly could.  “I’m going,” he declared with a confident certainty.  He had chosen.

  “If you really are okay with that, and you really just wish me luck with it… then I can be okay with what you have done too,” Markus affirmed while looking intently at her and studying her responses carefully.

  Amber collapsed onto the couch behind her and teared up, but didn’t descend into full blown tears.   “I’m sad,” she stated.  “I’m a little hurt,” she continued.  “I’m disappointed,” she added.  “But I’m not surprised” she said as she shook her head.   “But like you said,” she stated as she rose to her feet again, “if you can be okay with this,” she gestured towards her midsection, “then I can be okay with what you’re doing too,” she conceded.   “I’m actually quite relieved to be honest,” she admitted, “I was getting so worried that you would stay just because of this and wind up hating me for it.”

  “I considered that too,” he admitted.  “Amber… there’s something else I need to say too.  I don’t love you.  I never did.”   The woman snapped to attention with hurt and shock.  “I could’ve walked away without ever having said that, but I don’t want to.  I care about you,” he admitted, “but not the way you want me to, not the way you care about me… not in a way that could have made me stay behind just to be with you.”

  “Why are you saying this?” she asked.  Now she was crying.

  “I’m confessing,” he explained with a shrug.  “I want you to understand.  I don’t want to leave you with any illusions.  I’ve been callous and shallow.  I’ve tolerated you, because of what I’ve gotten out of our relationship.  I paid some attention to you and in exchange I received your affection, but I only ever accepted as much as I was willing to, as much as I was capable of desiring.

  “You know,” he exclaimed as he sat down beside her on the couch, working things though in his own head as he explained it to her, “all the way up until a couple years ago… if you’d have done this before, I probably would have just fallen in line… I might’ve wound up hating and resenting you for it eventually, but in the meantime I would have just gone along.  I would have allowed you to make that choice for me, and it wouldn’t have meant any more to me than any other life I might have lived…  There wasn’t anything I really cared about, nothing so important to me that this… well, intervention would have interrupted.”

  “But now there is…” she offered, apparently beginning to understand what he was getting at.

  “Yes… now there is.   Now there is passion, now there is a sense of belonging for me, a self-awareness I didn’t have before, and it’s not here and it’s not with you.  It’s up there with them,” he declared as he looked up at the ceiling and saw past it, up to the ship in orbit and onward to Haven, unconcerned with whether or not either were in his literal line of sight.

  “You’re still young Amber… I hope you find passion, I hope you discover something that makes everything else seem pale by comparison the way I have.  I hope you find something worth dying for and in the process discover what it means to truly be alive.  I hope you find a way to teach that to your child too.  I hope you both come to see how anaemic the age you live in is.  It would be absurd to think you could do anything to change it but… but I think it may be the most important thing in the world to at least be able to recognize it.”

  She stood up, and then he did as well, following her lead.  “You still don’t get it do you?” she asked, shaking her head.

  “What?” he pressed.

  She looked at the floor, continuing to shake her head.  “This child is that for me.  That’s why in the end I didn’t care what you thought, why I was willing to risk our friendship over it.  This is my passion,” she stated as she gestured towards her midsection again, “and believe me, I certainly do see how woefully inadequate the world is for it.”

  Now he understood completely.   It may have been a common passion, it may have been the basest of all constructed human meanings, but it was nonetheless legitimate and a purpose all her own.  For her it was enough.  For her it was everything.  For her it was the New Horizon; for her it was a star.

  The two of them hugged.  Their hug lingered as they sealed a new understanding between them, and the beginning of a new and final chapter of their relationship.  “I still don’t want you to go,” she admitted.

  “I know,” he replied.

  

                  A little while later after speaking with Amber for the last time, he went up to his mother’s room.  “Hello Mom,” he said over the intercom which allowed them to speak to each other through the clear material of her quarantine enclosure after he sat down beside her bed.

  “How are you son?” she asked.

  “Well, I did what you asked Mom, I did seriously reconsider.  I was even thrown a serious curveball from Amber which really made me think… and what I decided is that I want to go.  That is my choice.  The mission really means that much to me.”

  “What was the serious curveball from Amber?” she asked.  The woman was clearly disappointed, but she didn’t appear to be all that surprised.  Markus sat down close to her bed and looked into her rheumy eyes.

  “She’s pregnant… and I’m the father, well sort of.”  He appeared confused, but nowhere near as much as his mother seemed to be.

  “Wha… what?”

  “She used skin cells from around my home and had them changed into sperm which she used to fertilized herself with.  She says she never planned to tell me, but she did after I told her that I was seriously reconsidering my decision, as you asked me to.  She essentially offered herself as a family in waiting…”

  “And you said no…” his mother responded, further disappointed the more her surprise wore off.

  “That’s right Mom, I said no.  But I will tell you this, I really was tempted.  Tempted enough to reconsider a lot of things.  I hadn’t thought much about having children, but once the ship is underway we’ll be expected to start families.  For the first time in my life though Mom, I like that idea.  I can’t do it here on Earth, but I think I can up there on that ship.  I see the appeal now in the way it fits into the bigger picture of the mission and life on the ship overall.  Maybe part of not wanting children of my own has always really just been about not wanting to raise them here on Earth, in this environment.

  “But there will be another child of mine back here on Earth, growing up and having its own existence separate from mine… but here.”

  “I like the thought of that Markus, in a weird sort of way it’s like you’re staying and going.”

  Markus leaned forward until his head grazed the isolation curtain.  “Yeah… I hadn’t thought about it in quite that way before but it’s kind of true isn’t it…  I’m keeping a foot in both stories aren’t I, the story of the Earth, and the story of the New Horizon and its future colony.”

  It was at that moment that Brakus and Jayn entered the isolation ward, along with all three kids in tow.

  “She knows everything now,” Markus mentioned discretely to Brakus and Jayn after standing up to make way for the kids at the intercom.

  Brakus went over to their mother and asked, “everything okay Mom?”

  “I think so, at least… I think it will be.  Life goes on after all,” she mused darkly.  It would after all, not go on for her personally.

  Brakus and Jayn quietly gasped, but Markus nodded in agreement with her.  “Indeed Mom… life goes on.”

  “Brakus, I want you to include this Amber’s child in the family.  Make sure that your kids are familiar with… with their cousin,” she said as she looked at Markus.  “And don’t you two ever stop talking by laser,” she said to Markus and Brakus.   “Family is important.”

  “Of course, Mom,” Brakus answered.

  “Mom, I think you should go home.  I mean, you can certainly afford to have an isolation room installed in your Richmond house.  You should get that place ready quickly and then head out there.  You love that place; I’m sure Brakus and company would love to visit you there a lot more than coming here to the hospital.”  Some of the children politely indicated that they agreed on this much at least.  “That way you can have the best of both of your options.”

  “I think you’re right,” she replied.  “Brakus, could you set that up for me?”

  “Of course, Mom,” he affectionately answered again, “of course.”

  “One more thing Markus, have Amber contact me, I’d like to talk to her about my new grandchild.  That’s what it is after all, right?”

  Markus smiled a somewhat mischievous smile and answered, “why yes it is Mom, you’re absolutely right.”  He said, “I’ll put you two in touch in the next few days when I get the chance, alright?”  In addition to Amber having to suffer his dying mother, she also granted them a way for his mother to feel that in some way Markus was no longer abandoning her and Earth.  Now a part of him would be staying behind.

  “Thanks,” his mother replied

  Markus checked the time on his wrist scroll.  “I, I have to go,” he uttered with a little disbelief.  He thought there’d be more time, there had been before his plans were changed.  “I’m sorry,” he continued, “my plans changed and we were bumped up a bit so that I could go to this ceremony on Orbital One commemorating the launch…  I’m sorry, I have to go.  Hugh should be here any minute to ride with me to the Orb-port.

  “Goodbye Mom…  I love you.”  He hadn’t told her so in decades, but it had always been implied.  He put his open palm on the loosely hanging clear material separating them, and she put her hand against his for a few moments.  He likewise didn’t feel it necessary to say it to the rest of his family.  He loved them; it just made him uncomfortable to say it when he really meant it.  He showed them how he felt and cared in how he treated them; it was implied.  “Brakus… Jayn…” he said as he hugged them each in turn, lingering longer than usual.   “Zoro… Dao… Sufi…” he uttered as he hugged them each in turn as well, finally kneeling down to Sufi’s level in order to give her a proper hug.

  “Goodbye,” he whispered.

  

  Exiting the front doors of the hospital complex, Markus found Hugh waiting, standing up beside a roadpod and leaning against it.

  “Did I miss anything?” Hugh asked as Markus approached the vehicle.  “I take it you’ve made up your mind at this point?” He asked as his friend though the roadpod doors open.

  “Yes.  I’m ready.” Markus stated, looking at his friend over the roof.   “Let’s go,” he said with purpose before looking ahead of them and climbing into his seat.  It was time to go.