he likes to describe his job, when he gives talks and lectures for students, aspiring scientists and astronauts alike: We’re the new Magellans, he says. We explore uncharted places. We go to the limits of the known world, then we go further. By limits, he means both physical distance, but also intellectual distance, and personal, psychological distance. Going to space is hard. It tests you in degrees you wouldn’t expect. Sometimes he explains this concept; sometimes he leaves it unsaid, hoping his young audiences can make the leap themselves.
And here he is again, pressing those very limits. Particularly the personal ones.
He’d launched with two Swedes and a dozen cephalopods from the base at Vidsel the morning before. He spent the days prior working with his soon-to-be shuttlemates, Annika and Edvard, as they prepared for their departure. One evening, in the name of collegial small talk, they told him their favorite part of any shuttle mission was the launch itself.
“There’s this humming that happens within you,” Edvard said. “Like the sound of each one of your cells vibrating. When else will you ever have the chance to experience that? Never.”
“A launch is truly a thing to be savored and enjoyed,” Annika added.
But he disagreed. He likes the part immediately after the launch better—the first twenty-four hours up in zero gravity. Because it feels like being on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Obviously, their shuttle, the Krona Ark III, has complex navigation systems, keeping them in constant communication with a team back on Earth who monitor all aspects of their health and travel. But still, the feeling is the same: that, in their isolation, they really are totally adrift. They have to orient themselves to their new surroundings and rely on their wits and on each other to succeed. And there’s something both powerful and humbling in that feeling.
When he explained this, the Swedes had nodded in a way he hoped meant they thought this sentiment wise. But it also could have meant they were just humoring him. He hasn’t quite figured them out yet. And so, he’s kept a professional distance, both during their time at the base in northern Sweden, and now aboard the shuttle, a full day into their mission. He is pleasant but detached. He doesn’t get too personal.
But if he were inclined to get personal, there are two things, at the forefront of his mind, he might tell them.
The first thing is that he’s never actually been to sea.
Sure, he’s been on boats, but only in Washington’s Puget Sound. So, here he is, a marine biologist by training and a man who frequently compares himself to the oceanic explorers of yore, who has never actually been in the heart of an ocean. It is a source of great shame to him and something he would like to confide in someone about, if only he felt comfortable enough with anyone to confide such a thing to them. He has never met such a person.
The second thing is his son, who he does not yet know, but who occupies all his thoughts, distracts him from the work he is really here to do.
His son is the reason he tries now to think of the sea. This is the part of the shuttle mission where he should be feeling most at sea. Really getting into it. Digging the sensation. He does his best to focus on this idea, to coax his excitement back. But no such luck. He floats around the cabin, listless, hoping his fellow astronauts will not notice his malaise.
When the shuttle mission was initially offered to him, he’d been thrilled, and also flattered. He knows to be a part of the first collaboration between NASA and the budding Swedish space program is an honor. Though NASA has always employed marine biologists, it’s only in the last decade they’ve begun to see the value in sending them into space. He’s one of the first to really make his mark in the field. Still, he was surprised the Swedes had picked him, of all possible American scientists, to join the team on the Krona Ark III and pursue any line of research he wished with the support of the Swedish crew. He has chosen to investigate how the bacteria that live on the flesh of squid react to a zero-gravity environment. He’s selected twelve different species, including his personal favorite, the rare Nordic squid, to be transported in cylindrical tanks of varying size with self-sealing lids. The tanks are here with him now, locked into place on his workstation in the shuttle’s main cabin. The squid appear docile and content.
If only he could direct his attention to his colleagues aboard the Krona Ark III, or the plethora of creatures he’s brought for study. Instead, his mind and heart are three hundred miles below in a laboratory at the University of Michigan where genetic data from his own blood is replicating itself at a biologically predetermined pace. His son, as both he and the UM doctors refer to the project. But really, so much more than a son. So much closer. Although the boy, along with his peers, will live and go to school at the lab, the program director has assured him that donor parents such as himself—all scientists, artists, thinkers of note—will be allowed to visit whenever they want. Of course, right now, the child is nothing but a fetus floating in a transparent vat of gelatinous material designed to simulate the experience of a real human womb. He has been to visit numerous times and has trouble seeing a resemblance between himself and the particular fetus they say is his. Still, he imagines reading to the boy from picture books, teaching him to play catch, taking him on visits to the aquarium. Maybe, someday, they could even learn to sail together. Get out into the real ocean together.
He imagines the day, slated for six weeks from now, when the lab director will pull the baby from its womb vat, wrap it in a blue blanket, and hand it to him. He imagines holding the baby to his chest, feeling his warm little body against him. He wants that day to be today. At the very least, he would like to be back in the lab in the company of the fetus in the vat. He does not like being apart from him in this way—literally the farthest he could possibly be. Fatherly protectiveness, he thinks.
He knows he should focus on the task at hand. There will be plenty of time to think about the boy later, once he’s back on terra firma. Now though, he has much to learn from his squid. He convinces himself it is time to stop all this sad floating around and get to work. He straps himself into the chair at his workstation and is about to pick one of the squid from his collection for analysis when Annika and Edvard enter the main cabin, looking grim.
“We think there is a small problem,” Annika says.
Then the lights go out, the command console goes blank, and the hum of the shuttle’s life support system ceases. The endless foreign chatter from Visdel is silenced. Everything is very quiet.
Now it really is like we’re at sea, he thinks. They are cut adrift. They will have to rely on their wits. They will have to navigate by the stars. And when they return home, it will be with tales of great heroism to tell their loved ones—like cresting a rogue wave, or vanquishing a giant serpent. It will make a good story for the boy, when he’s old enough to hear it.
He doesn’t say this to his crewmates, of course. But it’s a thought he takes pleasure in, and he squirrels it away for later. Something to come back to again once true fear takes hold.
Tiger,
Tiger
Something is amiss at the Rolson Meth Lab.
Though, to be fair, something is always amiss over there. That’s why we call it the Meth Lab, as opposed to the Rolson estate or the Rolson’s place or the That Lovely Home Where the Delightful Mr. Rolson Lives.
My wife and I can’t agree on what’s making the sound, or even what type of sound it is. I say it’s mechanical—the cold rumble of an ancient tractor engine starting then dying, starting then dying, over and over. This would make sense. Chet Rolson, the Meth Lab’s proprietor, is a collector of well-used farm equipment. Ditto for junked cars. I see him tinkering with them in his front yard from time to time.
But Jenny insists the sound is the cry of something living. It’s a distressed mammal. It’s hungry. It’s angry. She holds to this belief and the sounds have become very upsetting to her.
“They’re torturing that poor thing,” she says.
“What poor thing?”
“That poor thing. Whatever it is, they’re torturing it.”