Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘You’re alive.’ Harry was seated at the table, his face illuminated in the light of his personal computer.

‘Fortunately,’ Juno said, stepping inside.

‘I hear Eliot is sick too,’ Harry said, a smile curling at the edge of his mouth, ‘should have listened to me.’

‘Oh.’ Jesse, who had been leaning on the counter at the far end of the room, looked up as if Juno was a ghost. ‘It’s Juno Juma, right?’

‘Right. Most people find it hard to tell us apart at first.’

The colour rose in his cheeks, ‘Well, you know – fifty per cent chance,’ he admitted.

It had been more difficult when they were younger. Juno and Astrid had dressed in identical outfits until they were fourteen. But, four years on, the differences between the twins were obvious. Astrid wore make up, lined her eyes with kohl and painted her lashes emerald or tangerine. She wore tie-dyed dresses and sandals, while Juno wore either her uniform or shapeless utilitarian clothes that looked like uniform.

‘What happened to you?’ Jesse asked.

‘Low blood sugar, probably.’

‘Right.’ He reached out and offered her a bag of Fruit Pastilles. ‘Well, have some of these.’

Juno looked down at the rainbow-coloured sweets.

‘You sure about that?’ Harry glanced knowingly at Juno from across the room.

‘Sure about what?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘Don’t take food from strangers.’

‘Jesse’s not a stranger,’ Juno said, although she couldn’t help but notice how different he looked from the boy they had trained with only a few months ago. His hair was long now, braided. His whole face hollowed out with a kind of gaunt beauty.

Reaching into the packet, she pulled out a yellow pastille and put it into her mouth. It was lemon flavoured, sharply sweet, and stuck like mud to the back of her teeth. ‘Have the whole thing,’ Jesse said, offering her the packet again. ‘It’s bad for me to be eating so many sweets anyway.’

‘Well, by all means, give them to her .’ Harry rolled his eyes, then pulled his headphones out of the socket on his computer. ‘Come and look at this.’

Juno crossed the room to peer over Harry’s shoulder. On the screen was a news segment, the headlines rolling across the bottom.

‘ A historic day for Britain… ’ the suited reporter said, shouting over the noise of the crowd. ‘ From the early morning hours thousands gathered near Sandsend Fields to catch a glimpse of the launch… ’

There was a slow montage of all their faces and Juno noticed Harry gazing out at the crowd, his hair lit up by the noon-time sun. For a second she saw what they saw. A handsome leader who exuded a cool confidence.

‘ Lift-off! We have lift-off. At twelve minutes past the hour: lift-off for Expedition One. ’ From the cameraman’s vantage point the shuttle was as little as a toothpick, trailing ribbons of smoke as it lanced against the cloudless sky. In three seconds, it was out of sight.

It was difficult to believe that morning she had been on Earth. Already, it felt like a dream. The shouting crowds in the bleachers, the reporters, the brass band…

Juno had been so busy over the past few months that there had been no time to think. But now, a frightening notion nudged to the surface of her sleep-addled mind. What if she hadn’t been brave, choosing to leave? What if she had only been blind? Trading everything she knew, everyone she loved, the rest of her life, for mere promises.

‘Where is Astrid?’ she asked, feeling the clench in her throat.

Harry shrugged. ‘Downstairs, probably.’ He rewound the clip and began to watch it again.

Juno left the kitchen and climbed through the hatch to the middle deck. ‘Astrid?’ She felt disorientated and bereft. Once she found her twin she might be okay. She might be able to orient herself, like a shipwrecked sailor in relation to a star.

Juno searched the large crew module, then the girls’ cabin.

‘Heya.’ Poppy’s voice was bright as the door slid open. Their cabin was small. Two bunk-beds nestled into the wall with a patterned curtain for privacy, like a Japanese capsule hotel. Juno’s eyes roamed to the stacked boxes at the far end of the room, to the names written on them, to the one marked Ara. ‘Yeah.’ Poppy followed her gaze and sighed. ‘I don’t know what to do with it? And we have a spare bed as well now… we’ll have to swap one of the bunk-beds with the boys, since they have one extra. Oh hey, I forgot to ask. Are you okay?’

‘Low blood sugar.’

‘Right, right. Can you hold this for a moment?’ Poppy thrust a box in Juno’s direction and rummaged around in it for a while, before pulling out a clattering string of fairy-lights. Then she searched around for a socket before plugging them in and deactivating the main lights. The room was suffused in a warm amber glow. ‘Good thing I thought to bring them.’ Poppy smiled, ‘And my duvet covers. Makes the room look more homey. Don’t you think?’ She flopped back on her floral-print quilt. Only Poppy would have thought of such details. Astrid and Juno had brought comfortable clothes and books in one box, Earth food they would never see again in another: canned peaches, cookie mix, marshmallows, hundreds and thousands.

Poppy had packed frilly throws and crepe-paper lanterns, a black and white print of Audrey Hepburn. Everything they’d packed had been sent up to the shuttle months ago and was covered now in a thin layer of dust. Other items had been launched years ago; a two-decade supply of toothpaste sponsored by Colgate, microfibre duvets from John Lewis. Heinz had donated 100,000 cartons of dehydrated soup and baked beans.

‘Do you think the bed could fit two?’ Poppy flopped back onto it.

‘Planning on inviting anyone?’ Juno asked. Poppy smiled mysteriously and tapped her nose. Juno shuddered at the thought and changed the subject. ‘Have you seen my sister?’

‘She was in here a minute ago,’ Poppy said, making a snow angel in her duvet covers.

‘Was she?’

‘Like… yeah, well maybe half an hour ago?’

‘Did you see where she went?’

‘I dunno, maybe she’s down in the hold.’

But Astrid wasn’t there either; the large gloomy room under the ship that held supplies in sealed, colour-coded boxes. She wasn’t in the greenhouse, the bathroom or the boys’ cabin. Juno was beginning to grow frantic, retracing her steps, calling out her sister’s name as maddened thoughts began to rush through her head. What if they’d left Astrid behind somehow, and Juno was spinning out into space, away from her?

Juno felt the way she did during the nights when she was young, when she woke up in their shared bedroom groping around in the darkness, post-nightmare, for a warm body that she recognized.

‘Astrid,’ she cried out as she looked around this new place. It was nothing like home. It smelt bitter and synthetic, like burning polymers and heated metal. It would take her a while to adjust to the level of noise as well; the mechanical whir and hum of machines rattling under the floorboards, the whoosh of air through the vents and the constant deep-sea moan of the motors whipping around the central truss made Juno wonder if she would ever sleep soundly again. And the walls felt like ice, Juno noticed, the metal was cold like space was cold. This was going to be her home for two decades.

Twenty-three years in this tin box the size of a townhouse. Back on Earth, twenty-three years had merely been a bridge to cross to get to Terra-Two, foreshortened by her own anticipation. In twenty-three years she would be forty-one – as old as her parents were now – and she would have lived in the darkness for more years than she had lived under a sky. This is my new life, she thought with a sinking in her stomach. Suddenly, it didn’t matter how fast they travelled – how many fractions of the speed of light they reached – Terra-Two still seemed terribly distant.