Temi Oh - Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Eliot frowned.

‘I realized that when I was twenty-four,’ Cai said, ‘and it freed me. So I’m telling you.’

‘But what about the way I feel right now?’ Eliot said quietly, lowering his gaze. ‘That I loved her? Where does that all go?’

Cai pointed to the sketches on his wrist.

‘It’s just chemicals,’ he said. ‘Infatuation, love: oxytocin, dopamine and adrenaline.’ He pushed his green finger hard against Eliot’s temple. ‘One day we’ll know the molecular formula for disappointment, for despair, for grief… it all happens in here.’ He pushed harder. ‘Chemical reactions. Nothing more.’

Eliot swallowed, noticing that his heart had stopped pounding, although his fingers were still trembling, the sunless skin over his arms raised up in goosebumps. ‘But,’ he said, feeling a little ungrateful, ‘I don’t understand how that makes it any less important?’

2001

HE HAD LOVED HER with everything he had. They’d met for the first time in the playground at their primary school when she had been talking to the wind. She convinced the other girls that she was a witch and that when she called the wind came rushing. They’d believed her, of course they had. Ara had been like the Pied Piper.

She’d said she was magic and for a while Eliot, too, had believed it. She’d raised an arm, and a second later a breeze kicked up, scattering leaves. But Eliot spotted the glimmer of uncertainty in her eyes, the moment of doubt that crumbled the entire illusion, like a curtain drawn back, the glimpse of the old man behind the wizard. He could not un-see it, even if he wanted to.

‘I don’t believe in witches,’ he’d told her.

‘Then I don’t believe in eleven-year-old boys,’ she’d said.

‘You lied.’

‘No.’

‘You told us that you could control the wind.’

‘That’s not what I said,’ she insisted, letting her arms fall to her sides. ‘They just choose to believe me.’ She glanced at the girls in the corners of the playground, giggling, braced against the gusting wind.

That was all anyone saw, Ara breezing through life, swallowing up whole days in her manic search for glee. Looking everywhere.

When they were teenagers, she wore glitter under her eyes every Friday night, even after it was cool, even before. They went to a club night called ‘How does it feel to be loved?’ and she’d danced like a firecracker across the floor, the only one. He alone had caught up with her at the bus stop, and she’d been crying so hard, for no reason at all, that glitter dripped off her lips, her whole face spangled like a disco ball. ‘Everything hurts,’ she said, clutching her chest as if she’d been shot.

And yet he loved her like she’d lived, as if she wouldn’t be around for long. Loved her to the marrow of his bones, the only way a teenager can. Hysterically, electrically, with everything he could give.

Could he have saved her?

Maybe it was a miracle that she’d ever existed at all. She had been the love child of a seventeen-year-old Indian girl and her middle-aged boyfriend. They were only together for five weeks and, seven months later, Ara was born, bringing with her nothing but shame. She’d been in the intensive-care unit for six weeks, working all day just to draw air into her underdeveloped lungs, her skin so paper-thin that her mother’s touch could burn.

In Dalton, Ara had been like the best kind of soul friend. Something like a sister, but also something like a special dispensation from the universe, some creature who had entered this world solely to make it a better place for Eliot Liston to live.

They’d discovered sex early, before anybody else had even heard of it. The very first time had happened at sunset in Battersea Park, in the subtropical garden – a little fenced-off area where unlikely plants grew, giant reeds and dwarf palms, banana trees. They’d stayed out all night and the next morning the dew-covered earth was a little different.

‘I feel the same,’ Ara said, rolling over to him after, her cheek plastered with grass.

‘Me too,’ Eliot had lied. He’d kissed her before she crossed the road and took the bus in the opposite direction, her school tights scrunched up in her rucksack.

He slept until noon the next day. And, in the dream he had, he and Ara were in the subtropical garden again, snapping exotic fruits off vines that were heavy with them. In his dream, Eliot bit right into a mango and, when he opened his eyes to the kind 1 p.m. light, he felt as if his body and his heart had come alive at the exact same time.

JESSE

30.06.12

THE LONELINESS WAS BEGINNING to sting. It was the end of June, and after seven weeks on the Damocles , the elation of the launch had finally evaporated for Jesse. The flurry of emails, well-wishes and congratulations from friends and family members on Earth had subsided and Jesse’s life on the ship had naturally settled into the ebb and flow of their routine. Waking up to Commander Sheppard’s recording of Coltrane’s Interstellar Space , queuing for the bathroom, breakfast, which happened quickly, everyone rushing about the kitchen reading the news on their tablets and squabbling over the coffee machine before they settled down for morning briefing. Then they’d disperse into their different areas of the ship to attend to their own chores and tutorials. During the week, that meant that Jesse was alone for three hours in the greenhouse, weeding and fertilizing, logging notes on the ship’s computer using an arcane system of Cai’s devising or reading about the biochemistry behind hydroponics. After lunch, there were medical checks and their group lessons, then dinner. Whole days sometimes went by without anyone speaking to him directly. The semi-playful banter between the seniors and the Beta never included him, and sometimes he walked past the five other junior astronauts in the crew module, huddled up on one of the sofas watching a movie, Harry’s hand buried in Poppy’s hair, Juno’s head on Astrid’s lap, Eliot nearby, all of them enjoying the cosy comfort of friendship. If they didn’t fall completely silent when Jesse approached, then they lowered their gaze or greeted him with brittle formality. ‘They’re still grieving over Ara,’ Fae had explained to him during one of their counselling sessions. ‘They’ll warm up to you.’ But almost two months into their journey, Jesse became less and less hopeful.

That weekend, he somehow managed to sleep through the ecstatic tenor saxophone solos of ‘Mars’ and ‘Venus’ that burst through the speakers every morning, and by the time he trudged into the kitchen, breakfast was over. Poppy was watching a comedy on her laptop, the canned laughter ringing obnoxiously even through her headphones. Juno was absorbed in some task that involved poring over notes she had made during the previous day’s lesson. They didn’t greet him.

Jesse had been pouring sweetener into the morning’s first milky cup of coffee when he heard Poppy’s scream. He jolted and the hot liquid splashed over his hand.

Poppy, still attached to her laptop by her headphones, reeled backwards, knocking a plate onto the floor.

‘What is it?’ He turned to her in alarm and noticed that her grey eyes were wide with fear. She pointed a trembling finger towards the counter, and turned away in disgust.

‘What is it?’ Jesse asked again, taking a step back.

‘ Look… ’ she urged. Her voice had turned up an octave into a whine.

Jesse walked tentatively to the counter, edging into the shadowed corner to which Poppy was pointing.

When he spotted what had frightened her, he let out a laugh of relief and surprise. It was a spider, about the size of the base of a cup, a black thing with sharp legs, kicking at its silvery web.