Across the Universe

When it happens, I’m not looking at Earth. I’m looking at your ship, or at least the ship I believe is yours, straight up from Seoul, out of the atmosphere but still feeling the desperate pull of our planet in its final moments. The asteroid flies by, momentarily blocking you. Your ship shakes, like a boat in rough waters. As it stabilizes, the first chunks of North America blast outwards and the force of the collision propels my ship forwards.

I stumble, nearly fall over. I was supposed to be getting to the flight deck. Unlike you, I wasn’t a fully-qualified pilot: I could help steer, but I wasn’t allowed anywhere near the cockpit as we took off.

(The night before my takeoff simulation, I’d stayed up talking to you until dawn. You told me about your family, your childhood, and the time you laughed so hard ginger ale came out your nose. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. I don’t think I’m really as bad of a pilot as that failed test made me out to be.)

I make my way to the top of the ship, access card checkpoint by access card checkpoint, until I’m in the cockpit with 360-degree windows. My senior pilots – Jack and Ashley, there’s one thing you’re not missing out on – are taking the two peripheral seats. The assistant’s chair in the middle is empty and waiting for me. (I got bumped up to third pilot when you weren’t able to be here.)

“Deidre, you’re late,” Jack tells me. 

“Got a bit distracted by the impact. Sorry.”

“This is the time where we need you to be the least distracted.”

“Do you want to sit down?” Ashley asks. She sounds friendly when she talks, but I know well enough that she is less kind on the inside. “We really need you. We were rocked a bit from the asteroid, but we’re back in control now. Our communication satellite got knocked out of whack, though. I need you to…”

She kept talking, and I swerved my chair so that I was facing her, making a serious I’m-listening face, and really I was taking mental notes, but also, through the corner of my eye, I was watching your ship (I hope it’s your ship) disappear into a white speck like a disappearing star.

In truth, when the news came that Earth was going to be armageddoned, I was a little excited.

Why do you think I wanted to be a pilot in the first place? It’s the home to our species and all, and I’m sure it was beautiful at one point (maybe if we’d had more time with it, it could have been again), but it’s also miserable. Really, it’s – it was – a B-list planet and a hundred years past its prime. The only people left on it were the hippies who think it’s wrong to abandon the cradle of our species’ existence, even when we’re well past the point of no return; the people who were too stubborn to leave (and their luckless kids, like me); those too poor to go; and the professionals who had to stay without anarchy reigning the planet. After twenty-four years – I was desperate to escape.

The day the news broke, it was like my Golden Ticket out of here.

“After months of studies, scientists have confirmed that there are three asteroids set on a course for Earth, all set to make impact in twelve months, on August 7th, 2167. Astrophysicists, geologists, and biologists agree that there is no hope for life on Earth and the planet will be obliterated. The USA (Universal Space Agency) has confirmed that it will be coordinating a mass evacuation procedure to relocate all Earth residents to Mars, Europa, Occasion, The People’s Planet, Jamila, and Xinsheng. USA will be providing specific details in a press conference on Wednesday at noon EST….” 

It was a cosmic catastrophe so impossibly clear in its intentions that it almost made me believe in a God.

My cell rang, the display said Abby. “Hi?”

“Can you believe it?” I couldn’t tell how you felt from your voice.

“It’s wild.”

I could feel you rolling your eyes at me through the phone. Chronic under-reactor. “Isn’t it awful?”

You always had more of an attachment to this place than I did, and I told you so.

“I know, I know, you think Earth is poorly designed and fucked up and whatever. But it’s our home. My family, your family, we made this place what it is.”

I felt the need to change the subject. “So where do you want to end up?”

You took a moment, like you hadn’t already made a list in your head ranking each of the planets. My first choice: Jamila. Beautiful.

“Oh, I don’t know, I never thought I’d leave Earth forever. It’s so sad…”

You paused. Jamila, from what I’d seen and heard, had little-to-no traffic anywhere, libraries beyond what you could believe, and the least disruptive introduction of Earth plant species without disrupting the natural ecosystem – a cross between the normal and the alien that seemed absolutely breathtaking.

“I have some family on Europa, I do miss them an awful lot….”

But Europa had astonishing lakes. We had our whole lives to visit Jamila.

“It all depends on where my family is assigned and more importantly which ship I’m assigned, but I’m sure they’ll take family into account, you know, I’m assuming they’ll have all-hands-on-deck for this and we’ll be helping to fly the ships out… I guess I know why they’ve been building those humongous mass-passenger ones now.”

You’d first noticed those ships a couple weeks into pilot training. We were standing out in the yard. In front of us, across a high chain link fence, were enormous half-built monstrosities: sleek, white, streamlined, and capable of carrying thousands.

Jack came up behind us. “What a sight, huh? I heard they’re getting a travel line going.”

You squeezed my hand. “It’s incredible. The fact that you can make that many people fly at once. Do you think we’ll get to pilot them?”

Maybe I should have thought more about it, but I was focused on other things: you were quickly becoming my entire universe.

The night before we’d skipped the social event at the bar to stay in at my apartment. You cut my hair short like yours. Standing over me in your Galaxy 2100 t-shirt (your favourite post-pop band) while I sat on the edge of my bathtub, dim lighting making me worry about how it would turn out, I told you: “I’ve never had a friend like you.”

And you told me, “Me too.”

It was all I could think about.

I can’t believe all my time with you was just seventeen months. Within a couple weeks you were pretty much my favourite person, and those seventeen months feel like a whole other life separate to the one I lived and the one I’ll be living now. I can dip into those memories for the rest of my life, and each time I’ll always trip upon something new, something I forgot: riding around the city after dark, your head on my shoulder, the first time we flew a ship together, every single joke and anecdote. A vast, infinite pool of time where we both in the right place at the right time. A whole other life. Not just seventeen months. 

I don’t have time to go over all of it right now. While I’m a pilot on this long journey – we’re out of the solar system, it’s been a few weeks now – my thoughts are preoccupied except for when I can sleep. But there’s one moment that I’ve thought about every single day since I left Earth:

April, lying on the grass in your backyard. Staring up at the stars twinkling in the sky.

“I want to see all of it.”

“Me too.”

You lifted yourself up on your elbows, turned towards me. Your hair was longer than mine now – I kept it the way you first cut it, but yours was reaching your shoulders. “I want to see all of it with you.”

“Are you asking me to explore all the cosmos with you?”

You rolled your eyes. “Yes.”

“Well.” I smile. “There’s nothing I’d like more.”

We talked about it like some grandiose dream, but in that moment, I felt like I was already there.

As it happens, the scientists who were left on Earth were not our best ones, because their calculations were off by a matter of weeks.

The Space Agency was working ahead of schedule, though, and had all the ships ready a month before, the art and books and resources we wanted to save shipped out two months prior. Really, we were ready to go anytime, but seeing as people would protest if we left too early, the plan was to take off three days before the asteroids hit.

You were not as prepared.

You decided to be with your family, saying goodbye to your generations-old home in Korea, up until the last possible moment you had to be back at our ship’s takeoff site. You’d managed to get your family approved to board on our ship, E-37, heading to Europa, instead of their initial assignment, E-21, to Xinsheng. It was all sorted out. You were going to be third pilot, and I was to be fourth, your backup, basically. For me, it was not the worst possible scenario.

On the night of July 16th, I was woken up by sirens blaring in the street below and my phone beeping to the ringtone I set for work.

It was alarming enough that I had no time to be groggy. “Hello?”

“Deidre Nantes?” I recognized the voice as the secretary Bethany’s, who was usually informal and friendly, but her voice was short and clipped.

“That’s me.”

“You need to report to work immediately. A-1 will be making impact in 14 hours and takeoff will begin in 13.”

“What?”

“I have a lot of calls to make,” she sighed. “Just get to work.” And she hung up.

My phone lock screen showed four messages, all from you, just seventeen minutes ago:

Deidre wake up. Check the news.

There isn’t any time for me to come back. I’m sorry.

I love you.

Call me.

I turned the TV on, but all the channels just played static.

It’s been a month since I left now, and I still feel like I’m in a trance. I should be loving this: I wanted to love this. My first time, for real, in space. Not a simulation. The view is beyond imaginable. The all-encompassing void sparkling with stars should fill me with inspiration and joy. I passed by Mars, I saw it with my own eyes. It was ethereal. I felt like giving up.

I just keep coming back to you.

We’re approaching Europa now. It’s gorgeous: all cottages and boats, cities floating on water, icy patches and poles where winter sports are played best.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to think about you.

The thing is: I don’t know where you are.

No one here knows where you are.

For all the progress people have made – the planets are all still very far apart. They’re separate and independent. And they’re all very full. Communications between them are slow once you get to the ones outside the solar system. To get a specific message from one person on one planet to another can take years. There’s no Web connection between them or Yellow Pages for them. Radios and satellites are only used for government communications. The overflow of people in the universe makes finding one of them like locating a hydrogen atom in a nebula cloud.

I don’t even know what planet you’re on – four ships left from Seoul, all to different destinations. And – well – one of them got hit by a chunk of debris from the asteroid. We were going too fast to know if it made it out of the impact intact. But I’m not going to let myself believe that ship was yours. I can’t.

If I can’t know if you’re safe, then I can’t know if you’re in danger, either. And if I’m going to keep going, I’m going to have to believe in the best and nothing else.

What I’m trying to say is that I might not ever get to see you again. Or at the very least, I won’t for a long time.

But I’m still going to try. 

I’m getting to the flight deck now because we’re about to begin landing on Europa. The first thing I’m doing once I’m on the ground is finding a way out of here.

I will find you. We’ll finish this journey together. 

I’m strapped into my seat, working the control panel, focussing on landing this ship safely. Europa’s sky takes over outside the windows: the same sky blue as Earth’s, but everything about the ground coming into focus is different. Everything was thought out, planned, when it was built. The buildings are new. The streets are clean. The waters, the many lakes and oceans, are clear like blue diamonds.

I’m coming back to you.

And in the meantime, I’ll try my best to convince myself that you made it out safe, and that even if I never see you again, you will be happy.

I glance up at the darkness of space, overwhelming and disconnected and beautiful, and imagine you somewhere out there in it.

I’ll hope you think the same for me too.