VII.

The end: Part VII of Backwash.

VII.

 

            Word came several days later that we were to stop on Argus, a large rock planet a few million kilometers from our solar system. Happiness spread through the ship like a contagion; it was the closest we had been to Earth in more than two decades. The shopping! The goods! The food! The clothing! We could stop living off of alien and synthetic materials for a while and get the real, genuine goods from the furthest export center Earth had. What a center of commerce! Even my parents were excited despite their resentment towards anything Earthly. They kept showing up at my quarters, calling me on my telecomm and inviting me to their private dinners to tell me about the wondrous things we could purchase and see at the human settlement on Argus. I merely picked at my mashed potatoes thinking about gray clouds and blue oceans, allowing their words to swim around me but never penetrate my mind.

The Captain temporarily relieved all nonessential personnel as the ship docked on the landing port on a fairly small continent on the southern hemisphere. I admit: I was happy when I heard the news. Working for J could become dull and uninteresting, much like the taste of chocolate cake after your first slice. Too much of a good thing, J had said, when I told her this. I didn’t think my feelings about being her assistant would hurt her feelings. She smiled understandingly and nodded as I moved my arms while I talked and expressed my distaste with the position. She wasn’t angry or hurt. Just empathetic, but I think it was because she believed that life couldn’t be interesting all the time. I let her believe this as opposed to forcing the truth down her throat: I no longer cared about rocks or fetching her some raspberry-flavored iced tea. And so with the temporary time off, I strolled down the long corridors of the ship, my hands running through the smooth plastic-metal hybrid walls, lost in swirls and patterns of gray and blue.

I made a friend on Argus. Well, we were friendly acquaintances, much as Garth and I began. Her name was Laurie, born and raised on Earth. She worked on Argus, trading Emotional therapeutic medication for a pharmaceutical company called Assistra. I liked her very much; she had soft brown eyes that looked at you with a genuine interest, the kind that made you feel special inside. I met her on my first excursion into the main shopping center on Argus while searching for a new pair of work pants. She was looking for the same thing and we happened to be in adjacent fitting rooms in a small-size clothing store called Express. Somehow, I managed to accidentally kick my hanger into her stall and with my face slightly pink from embarrassment, I went over and knocked on her door to retrieve the hanger. She was extremely kind about it; turns out the hanger had slid underneath the barrier separating our two fitting rooms and bumped her on the toe. I apologized and she waved me off and invited me to lunch.

L was an interesting person. She told me that she was born on Earth, in a country called Australia. I’d never heard of it and I suppose that’s why she spoke funny. She attended a girl’s preparatory school in a place called Cairns, where she studied economics and upon graduation, was recruited by Assistra. After five years working at their main office in Boston (which I have heard of), the notice came that she was being transferred to Argus to become a Class-A Seller. She didn’t have an exclusive partner as of yet but she told me, amid giggles, that she had her eyes on a man who delivered medicines from Earth to Argus, a Level-2 Transporter. She told me that he looked at her in That Way, as she termed it, too. L was only two years younger than me but I felt that she had already lived at least fifty years longer than me. She was experienced, wise, and mature. I was a child but that didn’t matter. She told me she’d once had a friend like me—quiet, calm and agreeable—whom she liked very much. I asked what had happened to that friend. L told me that she had taken her own life after her exclusive partner had died from a virulent case of pelvic hernia, the depression being too much for her. I bit my lip and remained silent; I didn’t know what to say but thankfully, L changed the subject.

            “So Bethany, dear, you were born in space?”

            “Yes—on a residential outpost on Callisto, one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. I lived there for the first two years of my life with only my mother, while my father traveled and researched. My mother and I eventually went with him after the doctors deemed me healthy enough to travel.”

            “Healthy enough? You weren’t well?”

            “I was but it was protocol. Our ship is a Class-B research vessel and small children and babies are accepted only after careful examination with conclusive evidence that they would not bring any contagions or toxins aboard.”

            L mouthed a “wow”, forming a perfect O with her lips as she leaned back in her chair, pulling her glass of java coffee to her lips.

            “So you grew up on the ship? How was that like?”

            “It was fine.”

            “Just fine?”

            I shrugged.

            “Were you the only one your age on the ship?” she pressed.

            “No. There are two others—F, short for Farhana, who is three years younger than me. She’s still on the ship, working as a history teacher for the newer children. She loves history and she’s very smart. And James, who was my superior by one year. He died in a shuttle accident a while ago.” My heart thumped as I said his name.

            “So that’s it? Those were the only two you grew up with?”

            “I didn’t grow up with James. He transferred to the ship. My parents found him; he was supposed to be my exclusive partner. But yes, I did grow up with F. She was born on the ship, actually. We were in a remote part of space when her mother went into labor.”

            I saw a look of shock and sadness pass over L’s face as I mentioned James but surprisingly, she didn’t ask about him further.

            “So were you and F good friends?”

            “I suppose. We were each other’s only company but she liked history too much. I couldn’t often follow her sometimes so we grew apart as we grew older. She got lost in history and I…” I trailed off. I didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

            L’s eyes seemed to glaze over when I said that F and I grew apart, almost as if what I had said was reawakening some sort of lost memory within her.

            “Childhood is wonderful, isn’t it?” she asked, almost rhetorically. I kept my mouth shut and waited for her to continue.

            “So what did you do for fun on a research ship? I imagine it must have been boring for two little girls, surrounded by things you couldn’t understand.”

            “The ship wasn’t built to raise children,” I admitted, “but we found entertainment. We read a lot but mostly played pretend. F would be a Greek princess and I would be the English knight who’d rescue her. But it wasn’t too bad because we’d land on different worlds for our research. Geological research, after all, can’t be conducted in space. I especially liked the worlds with the large oceans. F and I loved to swim. We’d swim for hours, splashing around under the watchful eye of our designated Caretakers.”

            L gave me a knowing smile.

            “I used to love the ocean myself. Cairns was right by the beach, did you know? It’s very beautiful. My brothers and I would play a game when we went for our twilight walks on the beach, which we did nearly every night during summers. See, we’d hunt on the beach for the perfect piece of driftwood. When we did find one, we’d mark it and throw it in the waves and we would wait. After several minutes (or seconds, time seemed to move differently when I was a child), we’d hunt for that piece of driftwood separately, each one of us trying to find it first.”

            “Of course. Because whatever you throw into the ocean, the waves would just carry it back,” I said.

            “Exactly, unless you threw it really far, past the waves. But none of us, my tallest brother included, had the arm length to do that.”

            “Counter backwash,” I muttered under my breath.

            “Excuse me?”

            “Backwash. Know what it is?”

            “Isn’t it like, the waves that retreat back into the ocean or something?” L asked, sounding perplexed.

            “Backwash is the backwards flow of water on a beach after a wave has broken. The phenomenon you describe sounds a lot like counter backwash…I think that’s what it is. The water from the waves return to the sea but the waves bring objects back to land.”

            L smiled.

            “Everything eventually returns…” I mumbled, deep in thought. I suddenly got up, surprising L.

            “Are you all right?” she asked me.

            “Fine. But I’ve got to go. I’ve—I’ve just remembered something important.” I cleared away my leftover food and trash.

            “Thank you for the lunch,” I said to her, “I enjoyed meeting you.”

            “And you, Bethany.” She shook my hand.

            I rushed back to my quarters as fast as I could without drawing too much attention to myself on the way. Some of the Argus natives shot suspicious looks towards my direction, as hardly anyone travels in haste on the planet, but I ignored them. I needed to see it, the letter from Garth. He wrote something and I think I just realized something. I entered my quarters in a flurry of haste, want and mild excitement and my hands moved frantically as I flung my clothes, my papers, data pads, and other useless items as I searched. I finally found the letter buried under a pile of bathymetric data from J on my work desk. My eyes quickly scanned Garth’s words, searching for that one sentence. Found it!

            It was never home.

            And I took a good look at the horrible mess my quarters were in and felt the resolve that had existed in pieces throughout my life build itself from Garth’s words and from L’s story, from Emotion and Switchover Earth, from all these ideas that seemed to float around me constantly before but never tied together. Until now. I felt that resolve grow and strengthen and it was this resolve that directed my hands as they picked the clothes from the gray carpet and stuffed them into a small suitcase. It was this resolve that guided my feet as they stepped onto the shuttle dock several minutes later. It was this undeniable, unstoppable and unforgettable resolve that powered my fingers as they pressed the buttons on the shuttle keypad, laying in a course. This resolve of inexplicable meanings opened the shuttle dock doors, ignored the frantic warnings of Captain H, bought shields online when the ship fired on my shuttle and caused the ship to jump to high-velocity mode the second it cleared the main ship’s electromagnetic field.

            I first made contact a week later as I approached from the dark side of the moon. I couldn’t see it yet but the radio, which had remained eerily silent the entire time, suddenly cackled and jumped to life as a cool female voice called me from home.

            “Class-B shuttle, this is Travel Regulator 17 of the Starship Communion, Lunar location. Please identify yourself.”

            “Bethany Marie Kastrada.”

            “Pilot ID?”

            “None.”

            The radio was silent for several seconds before it sparked to life again.

            “The Starship Communion is not expecting a Class-B shuttle,” the female voice said.

            “It was sort of an impromptu mission.”

            “How many passengers?”

            “Just me.”

            “Your racial designation, as outlined in the Charter of United Planets?”

            “Human. As you may have inferred from my name.”

            “Your intended destination?”

            “Earth.”

            I still couldn’t see it, though. A great, dark rock was in the way. I was still behind the moon.

            “Do you have a Planetary ID number?”

            “Yes. Gamma-K-1-5-7-T-4.”

            “Your reason for visitation?”

            “Does a person need a reason to come home?”

            “Please answer: work, vacation or personal.”

            “Personal.”

            There was more silence as Travel Regulator 17 undoubtedly pulled up my profile on the census database.

            “You are cleared,” the voice finally said, “for visitation and relocation, should you wish it. Please proceed forward and land at the Toronto shuttle port on the northern continent. I am transmitting the coordinates to you now. Please radio back on Channel G-15 if you do not receive them. Upon landing, you and your shuttle will be required to submit to an inspection. Welcome to Earth.”

            And a tiny beam of light finally appeared on the horizon and soon, the entire cockpit of the shuttle was filled with sparkling sunlight as I laid my eyes on the blue marble for the first time. My lips parted in awe and finally, finally, I felt something stir inside me, a kind of Emotion that I had been waiting for my entire life. This was Emotion the fantasy books described, the people expected, the philosophical notions of grandeur craved. I felt my hands sweat, my heart beat irregularly, and a rising force coming from my stomach to my lips as they curved upwards. Earth grew bigger and bigger through the window, so blue that the surface seemed to shimmer as though someone had scattered diamonds. I knew this Emotion would only be temporary, as all Emotions were, but it felt more real to me than the affection I had for James or the love I had for Garth. Those existed but were they ever real? Both of them were gone forever but they mattered for they were both crucial steps I had to take to get here.

            Switchover Earth looked no different than the Earth in the Apollo 17 photograph yet it was more beautiful. And all of a sudden, I knew how to finish the sentence I couldn’t finish during my lunch with L.

            James disappeared in time. Garth ran away from humanity. F got lost in history. And I fell in love.

            There was only one thing in my life that had remained constant, which had never fully disappeared. It sometimes receded into a forgotten corner of my brain but it always came back no matter what happened. It was my interest in Earth. Which wasn’t interest at all, I realized as I stared at the oceans and valleys through the window. It was love. Love, real love, not the kind where you want to kiss a person, or mate with him or read him stories while he’s sick, wasn’t an Emotion at all. It was an Instinct for home. And unlike Emotion, Instinct never dies.