Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

The patients on her ward claimed that she spoke incessantly about another, better world and infected the other women with hope. The halls began to echo with their sobs. ‘ Fernweh ’, the doctors called it, or far-sickness. The patients were sick for somewhere they had never travelled. Would never travel.

Tessa was confined to a windowless room, but she managed to escape. One February night, she made it out into the frosted grounds. She had trampled an erratic path through the long grass, footprints in the snow leading to the fountain in the middle of the garden. What had she been thinking? Astrid always wondered. Was she a madwoman or a prophet? Perhaps she believed everything she had promised those far-sick girls; that to get to Terra-Two all they needed was hope. But she died instead. The staff found her floating in the fountain the next morning, her eyes unblinking, her body blue.

By the time Astrid finished reading, the lights in the corridor had dimmed and she could tell that the other members of her crew were asleep. She shut the computer and rubbed the blue shadows the light bleached behind her eyelids. Before she fell asleep that night, she saw Dalton’s empty quad as it might have looked that night, the grass bleached white as bone by the June sun. The black patch of soil where Tessa Dalton’s feet had been.

ELIOT

19.06.12

YEARS AGO, WHEN ARA had been struck with appendicitis, Eliot had sat by her bedside the entire twelve hours it took for the surgeons to finally confirm the diagnosis. He’d watched the doctors come in and out of the infirmary, draw her blood, press down on her stomach and ask, ‘How much does it hurt? From one to ten – ten being the worst?’

‘Eight,’ Ara had said each time, ‘and a half…’

Later on, she told Eliot that she had lied. It had been the worst pain she had ever felt, but she’d been too afraid to tempt fate and say ‘ten’ in case it grew any worse. She said that it hurt too much to move. Hurt too much to cry. Hurt too much to breathe except for in careful shallow sips. She’d said, ‘I just wanted to rip myself open and tear it out. Whatever was broken.’

Eliot hurt like that now, all the time. One part of him couldn’t wait for the day he awoke and remembering that Ara was dead didn’t hit him like a sick surprise. But another part of him never wanted to get used to living without her.

‘That’s interesting to me,’ said Dr Golinsky, ‘that when I asked you to describe pain, you used Ara as a reference.’ Eliot was in the ship’s infirmary with her. The psychological team on the ground had given him a thorough assessment before the launch, and scheduled twice-weekly counselling sessions with Dr Golinsky. Eliot dreaded the meetings.

‘Eliot,’ the doctor asked after a minute of silence. ‘I can’t help you if you don’t talk at all.’

‘I don’t think you can help me,’ he said, his eyes drifting to a poster of the human skeleton above her head. It was more artistic than anatomical, the bones delicate and beautiful as egg-shells.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘It’s been five weeks since she died and I feel as if it’s getting worse,’ Eliot said.

‘Are you talking about the nightmares?’

‘I’m talking about everything.’ Eliot gritted his teeth. ‘I keep checking my emails to see if I got one from her. Look around the table for her face, waiting for her to roll her eyes every time someone says something funny.’

‘Well,’ Fae said, ‘it might help if you think of grief like a physical injury. That it might take a long time to heal, that it will happen in small increments—’

The bell rang for dinner, and Eliot felt an answering rumble in his stomach.

‘Would you look at the time,’ Fae said with a theatrical gasp. She glanced at the digital face of her watch.

‘Can I go?’ Eliot asked, already standing.

‘Yes, but it’s vital that you turn up on time for our next session, otherwise I can’t give you the full forty minutes. And don’t forget to take your vitamin D tablets.’ She indicated a blister pack of them on the counter. ‘Your latest blood tests flagged a deficiency.’

When Eliot left the infirmary, he bumped into Astrid and Commander Sheppard talking in the narrow corridor as they together headed towards the kitchen, ‘…turns out the rumours were right,’ Astrid was saying, ‘apparently Tessa Dalton’s statue was stolen.’

‘It’s not as dramatic as it seems, though.’ Sheppard waved dismissively. ‘It was just a New Creationist stunt.’

‘New Creationist?’

‘That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.’

The air in the kitchen was steamy and thick with a school-dinner smell of vegetable stock cubes and rehydrated meat.

‘Smells good,’ Sheppard announced as he entered, nodding at Juno, who was bent over the counter island at the far end.

‘Don’t get too excited.’ Harry slammed forks down on the table at intervals. ‘It’s only macro.’

Eliot’s stomach was already beginning to turn at the smell of macronutrient broth, the thick, bland porridge-like substance served for either lunch or dinner every other day. They tried to improve the taste by adding spices or stock cubes, but there were only so many times Eliot could eat the same meal without growing to despise it.

‘Poppy said she would cut up the leftover potatoes and make chips today,’ Astrid said as she sat down.

‘Well, Poppy isn’t here, is she,’ Harry said.

‘Where is she?’ Juno asked. ‘This is the third time she’s missed dinner this week.’

‘I’d bet you a grand she’s sleeping,’ Harry said.

‘Everyone has to eat dinner together,’ Juno said. ‘That’s the rule . We weren’t allowed to stay in bed at Dalton.’

‘We weren’t eating slime every day at Dalton,’ Harry muttered.

‘Every fifth meal,’ Eliot corrected quietly.

‘This mission is not the same as school,’ Commander Sheppard said, moving to the head of the table. ‘You are all adults now, professionals, and you have more freedom.’

‘But,’ Juno said, ‘eating together is an important part of team-building and morale. We’re a family now. It’s important for us to spend regular recreational time together.’

‘All right; cool it, Juma.’ Harry put the last glass down on the table. ‘You sound like you’re reading straight from a psych manual. She says she’s ill.’

‘She’s not,’ Juno said. ‘Eliot was actually ill. For two weeks, with spacesickness, and yet he cleaned and cooked and came to tutorials just like everyone else.’

Eliot winced at the memory of those interminable days of nausea. His head still spun like a fishbowl if he stood up too quickly, his body hungover and heavy in the mornings.

‘Poppy’s been suffering with migraines,’ Dr Golinsky said gently. ‘That’s real.’

‘But the thing is…’ Juno continued, ‘ someone has to do her chores.’

‘Yeah, us ,’ Harry said, folding his arms. ‘Apparently.’

‘Look what I found.’ Astrid held up two tin cans. ‘Extra rations of peaches. We can have them for dessert. That’ll make a nice change.’ They sat in their usual positions around the table, the senior crew on one side and the four Betas on the other. Eliot was on the corner of the table. He stirred his broth. Their meals were carefully calculated to keep them at an optimum weight and contained the right balance of ingredients to suit their particular nutritional needs.

As Juno passed around a bowl of bread, Eliot’s eyes drifted towards the window, where he thought that, for just a second, his reflection had changed.

‘Who are the New Creationists?’ Astrid asked over the clinking of cutlery as everyone began to eat.