Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Eliot slumped in the margin of the photo. The make-up artists had managed to conceal the tangle of blue veins usually visible around his temples, although the photographer’s attempt to coax a smile from him had yielded only a pained grimace. Juno flipped to the next page to find that he wore the same twisted expression in another photograph, gazing up at an overcast sky, his pewter eyes giving off an aura of terrestrial melancholy.

‘You look gorgeous,’ said Poppy. ‘Both of you,’ she added for good measure, pointing to the corner of the page where the twins stood beside each other, smiling the same lopsided smile. They had been too hot in their spacesuits and had been restless by the time that photo was taken. When asked how to tell them apart, Juno had overheard the public affairs officer tell the interviewer that Juno was ‘the slimmer one’. A whispered distinction Juno recognized for the first time that day. She had never noticed the way Astrid’s generous hips and bottom made the material of her suit strain ever so slightly against flesh, while Juno’s bunched like dead skin around her thighs.

The voice of the public affairs officer sounded shrilly through the walls of the library, snapping Juno out of the recollection. When the officer finally returned she announced that two of the senior astronauts, their commander Solomon Sheppard and the flight engineer Igor Bovarin, had both been delayed at the UK Space Agency, and were not expected to arrive until after 1 p.m. The tree-planting ceremony was going to be delayed by at least an hour.

‘What should we do in the meantime?’ Ara asked. The officer cast her gaze around the library, as if hoping she might find an answer amongst the publications rack.

‘Read?’ she suggested.

‘Can we see the garden?’ Astrid asked.

‘Or the museum?’ Eliot asked. ‘It’s just in the next wing over.’

‘I can show them around,’ Noah suggested. ‘I work here. Sort of.’

The woman glanced at her phone, then looked at them nervously. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

‘We can’t sit here for hours,’ Ara said. ‘Not when the sun’s coming out. Not when we won’t see the sky again for twenty years.’

The public affairs officer grimaced. ‘Wait here one minute,’ she said, brandishing her mobile. ‘Let me ask your flight surgeon.’ She left the room again, and they listened to the undulations of her voice through the door.

‘ We’re never going to see the sky again ,’ Poppy said mockingly, flapping an arm in the gesture of a prima donna.

‘It’s true, though,’ Ara said.

‘Well I wish you’d stop saying it.’

‘I wish you’d stop doing that ,’ Noah hissed. Eliot was crouched on the floor, where he had found a lighter someone had tossed near a dustbin. He was sparking and re-sparking it, his thumb sliding over the sputtering flame as he stared, mesmerized.

‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he said, without looking up.

‘Still—’ Noah twisted uncomfortably. ‘…it’s something about the way you look when you do it.’

‘How?’ Eliot tore his gaze away from the flame and glanced up at Noah.

‘It’s just strange, that’s all.’

‘There’s nothing strange about a fascination with flames,’ he said. ‘Fire is pure energy. Light and heat. Some places in the world, people worship it.’ He stuffed the lighter into the pocket of his jacket. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘you can’t be an astronaut if you’re afraid of fire. Or if you’re afraid of what happens when gasoline meets liquid oxygen. Tomorrow we will be sitting on top of a bomb.’

Noah’s lips were white. ‘Maybe that’s why I’m not an astronaut,’ he said quietly.

‘She’s not going to let us go.’ Ara was looking anxious now, chewing on a thumbnail, and beginning to pace.

‘Where do you even want to go?’ Poppy asked, leaning back in a reading chair to flip through the rest of Vanity Fair .

‘Where the fun is,’ Ara said. This was Ara’s catchphrase. On the few nights out they had been allowed over the years, Ara would refrain from making plans and jump on random buses until she reached somewhere exciting – and she always did. She attracted fun things, like an impromptu street party, a marching band. Ara seemed to trip through life wide-eyed, expectant and spoiled on delight.

‘I’ve spoken to the flight surgeon.’ The door flew open as the public affairs officer re-entered. ‘She said that you can look around the library and this wing of the space museum, for an hour. You must be back here and changed into your flight suits before your commander and the other veteran astronauts return.’ She looked at her watch. ‘One o’clock.’

They all agreed.

Back in the main hall, Juno’s crewmates looked as if they would burst with delight. Ara was laughing, Poppy’s face was red. ‘One whole hour,’ she said as if it was something too large to eat.

‘Where should we go?’ Juno asked, but Noah slipped his fingers into hers.

‘Come with me?’ he asked.

‘But, the others…’ When Juno turned back, Ara, her sister and Eliot were already skipping in the opposite direction.

‘Please?’ he asked, his knuckles dovetailed into hers. Every time she looked back on that afternoon, Juno would urge herself to do something different.

‘Let them go,’ Noah said.

And she did.

THEIR FEET FELL INTO a familiar rhythm as Noah led her down the dim corridors and towards the lift that led to the Garden of Flight. The silence was uncomfortable, so Juno scrambled for things to say to him. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘Everyone’s getting really emotional this morning. About the launch. I feel as if I’m the only one who’s excited. They’re only focusing on the things they’re leaving behind but there are so many things I’ll be glad I’ll never see again.’

‘Like what?’ Noah asked, pressing his thumb against the scanner to hail the lift.

‘I don’t know. Traffic jams and hailstones.’ They stepped inside. ‘I’ll probably never have to pay taxes, or stand in line at the post office.’

‘You’ll probably never see all that stuff that supermarkets throw out in those big skips at the end of the day and the people who rummage through them for something to eat,’ Noah added. ‘That makes me sad as hell.’ The floor numbers began at zero and descended into negatives, Noah pressed -7 and the door closed.

‘Greenhouse gases,’ Juno said. Her stomach dropped as they headed to the basement. ‘Civil war. Famine.’

‘All those things might happen on Terra-Two, you know,’ Noah said. ‘Eventually. I mean, war kind of happens everywhere.’

‘No, it won’t,’ Juno said. ‘We’re leaving behind a world where slavery happened. Two world wars. Genocide. A world where people have used atomic bombs. Terra-Two will be different. Better. We will make it better.’

The lift pinged and they stepped out. The Garden of Flight was a dark orchard, densely packed with trees of all different kinds. Lots of silver birches, with bark that peeled like tissue paper. ‘Sheppard had a birch tree,’ she said.

‘All of the Mars Expeditions did. I don’t know why. Look here.’ He led her to a row of them, like pale sentinels, the names of astronauts carved into a marble stone at the foot of each tree. Juno found the names of the veteran astronauts following them on the mission. Igor Bovarin had the most trees; some delicate saplings, others sturdy and flush with leaves, thick roots swelling from the black soil.

Noah led her to the centre of the garden, skipping over an artificial spring, into a luxurious clearing, lit blue with holographic galaxies projected on the ceiling. The air was heavy with pollen, and Juno trod carefully, so as to avoid crushing the flowers. ‘This place is different from the way I imagined,’ she told him, looking around at a patch of bluebells, their stems heavy with flowers. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen a plant, or anything other than titanium and steel and plastic, for over a week.’ Juno laughed. The air smelt deliciously of apple blossom, and juniper, mint and wild sorrel. ‘It’s still spring here,’ Juno said, reaching to break a bunch of cherry blossoms off a branch.