ASTRID
01.07.12
THEY CALLED IT A ‘doomsday cult’, but the New Creationists were the opposite. Their leaders did not rally docile crowds to keep vigils for the end of the world. Their eyes were fixed on the skies, happily heralding the arrival of a new one. The new Earth, the second chance. And wasn’t that, really, what everyone believed?
After that night at the dinner table when Astrid first heard about their movement, she could not help herself. She watched all the videos she could find about them. Clips that had already garnered thousands of views in certain corners of the internet. Read comment threads and forums devoted to discussing Tessa Dalton, the unwitting founder and martyr of their movement. She’d been called out of obscurity like Mary, the mother of Jesus, like the Old Testament prophets, or the Magi who trekked across countries following portents they’d divined in the stars.
New Creationism was in perfect harmony with Astrid’s religious upbringing. In Sunday school, she’d been taught about the Garden of Eden. For a whole year of her life she could not help but imagine it: eternal life, milk and honey, God walking like a giant amongst the trees. She imagined the agony of being cast out. Tried to envision what kind of life Adam and Eve could eke out after that. Rebels, fools, they’d lost everything.
And so Astrid was converted to New Creationism. It happened all at once, like an earthquake, a momentous shift, the tectonic plates of her belief rearranged violently under her. It happened the day she saw Terra-Two.
She had followed Eliot down to the engineering deck to see the new images of the planet that had been uploaded by NASA.
Astrid had always found the engineering deck a little creepy. As the ship’s engineer, the person who spent the most time there was Igor Bovarin. His pencilled diagrams were draped across empty patches of wall and any careless step threatened to knock over a wobbling tower of his dog-eared manuals. Astrid spotted him emerging from the shadows between the machines so often that every darkened alcove seemed to mirror the hunch of his back. Every oil spill looked like a footprint from his boots and the chug of the machines resembled his dry cough and heavy breathing.
‘Astrid said you wanted to see me?’ Eliot asked, stepping further into the gloom. Igor smiled, the light coming off his old lamp illuminating his face sodium-yellow and accentuating the lines in his liver-spotted skin. Astrid followed Eliot and ducked into the honey-coloured light of their little workstation. It smelt of oil and ink.
‘Astrid, Eliot,’ Igor said, their names still an exotic delight in his thick accent. ‘Sit. I have something to show you both.’
Astrid saw Eliot’s eyes fill with the kind of rapt attention he only ever paid the aging cosmonaut. It was no secret that Eliot idolized the man. Astrid had been present the first time Igor made a surprise appearance during a physics class at Dalton, and Eliot had been struck dumb with delight. So happy that he waited behind by the Bunsen burners for everybody to leave and then asked Igor to sign a battered copy of his biography, which Astrid knew Eliot kept under his desk for inspiration. It was no surprise that Eliot had been chosen to come under Igor’s tutelage. He was lucky to be learning everything Igor could teach him about engineering, physics and the ion engine in the two decades they had together, she thought.
Igor was holding a device shaped like an egg.
‘It’s an Albatross,’ Eliot explained to Astrid as she ran her finger quizzically along the upturned base of it. ‘One of the most powerful cameras in the world. If we flew this thing over London Bridge we’d probably be able to count all the greys on every head.’
‘That’s right,’ Igor agreed.
‘NASA were using one for a long-range reconnaissance mission. To retrieve high-resolution pictures and geological data of Terra-Two.’
‘Today, they broadcast their findings on global television,’ Igor said, and Astrid gasped with excitement. ‘You want to see?’
‘Please,’ Astrid said, breathless. Igor tapped some buttons on his keyboard, opened up windows and then expanded one into a full-screen video.
Astrid watched open-mouthed as the pictures unfolded on the screen. The room filled with the blue light of cresting waves exploding into white foam on alien shores. The bright reflections of two suns shimmered like silver coins off the surface of the water, one huge and one small.
‘Look at this.’ Igor paused the video as the aerial camera swooped over the ocean. He used his mouse to zoom into the mottled navy pattern that haloed a small island. As the picture resolved, Astrid saw what he was pointing to. A strange chalk-coloured skeleton just visible under the pale water. ‘Calcium-carbonate,’ Igor said. ‘The main compound in pearls, snail shells, egg-shells and—’
‘Coral reefs.’ Astrid finished the sentence for him, touching the screen. ‘They’re real.’
‘That’s right,’ Igor said. ‘Who would have thought?’
Astrid laughed. Terra-Two was beautiful and everything, every single thing was just the way that she had imagined.
That night was another of her Terra dreams. Astrid awoke mistaking the hum and sigh of the ship for the rhythmic lapping of water. She could feel it, the feather softness of the surf, the way it slid up her thighs and kissed her face. Only it was the rumpled peach cotton of her duvet covers, and when she’d rubbed her eyes and sat up, her mattress was rocking against ivory shores.
She woke up early for the rest of the week. And every time she did, she would climb out of bed, and type ‘New Creationism’ into her tablet search engine.
Chapter 20
HARRY
14.07.12
HARRY BELLGRAVE WASN’T IN space. He was sprinting through a forest he had never seen. The vegetation was so thick underfoot that he was forced to edge closer and closer to the river. The water was like glass. Every now and then he caught sight of a fish, the sun momentarily igniting its scales red or gold or green before it slipped again into shadow.
He was glad to be outside, to catch glimpses of the sun rising through the foliage, to watch as water sloshed across the coloured rocks on the bank, and how they glittered and skittered over each other as they were drawn back into the river. It looked as if the ground was crumbling beneath his feet.
Sometimes, moss-covered branches would fly into his field of vision, as if to whack him across the face, but he would ghost through them unharmed. That was one of the problems with the simulation. He could see things but he couldn’t feel the morning sun on his shins or the sharp wet rocks at his heels. These limitations stopped him from ever truly escaping the bounds of the games room.
Presently, the trees gave way and the river bulged sideways. Harry barely had time to stop running before the ground fell away and he was standing on the edge of a sheer cliff-face. River water sluiced over the side and crashed down into the glistening pools below, sending a foamy spray up into the trees.
He saw, then, how high he had climbed. Golden shafts of sunlight burst through the granite peaks of surrounding mountains. From his vantage point he felt as if he could grab the half-faced moons in the sky.
Below, a dozen waterfalls converged in misty pools or disappeared into the foliage. He could see all the way out across the bleach-green lagoon and untilled fields to the ocean, which was stained with pre-dawn pink. Goosebumps prickled up his arms. All around, the unblemished, unpeopled earth beckoned. That was where the footage ended.
It had been Eliot’s idea to connect the footage from the five Albatross cameras up to the simulator. So that when the crew were running on the treadmill, it was projected before them.
Pulling off his goggles, Harry jumped off the treadmill. His thighs and arms were glistening with sweat and he was still breathing hard from the workout. He took off his shirt and slumped down on the floor, his lips salty and wet.