Peripheral Visions: Orientation

"Peripheral Visions: You sense them from the corner of your eye or in the soft blur of darkest shadows. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late."

Orientation

It was a hell of a note, waking up from cryo and finding out that things had not gone according to plan.

They told us that we'd learn more at the official orientation in a couple of days, but what we had to know now – sick as we were, weak and dazed as extended cryogenic sleep had left us – was that only about sixty percent of the ship's original colonists had survived.

This wasn't the result of mechanical failure. The Aditi had outperformed well beyond expectations. It was the universe itself that created the problem. From Earth, we thought we knew exactly where to point the ship, and just when to launch, and how much energy to use for thrust to get us to 70 Ophiuchi in a quick 54 years – much less than that, of course, shipboard time. That much time elapsed, and several more decades too, before the autonav decided to wake up the ship's chief astrogator because astrometric data was simply not making any sense. It was a choice the autonav might have made earlier, except that its software hadn't been written in anticipation of something so fundamentally unexpected.

The astrogator looked at the data and woke up the captain, who then woke up the chief engineer and a half dozen physicists – some from the ship's crew, some from among the colonists. They worked on the problem for months, consuming some of the supplies that had been meant for the surveying phase of the mission once Aditi reached 70 Ophiuchi.

Finally, everyone but the physicists went back into cold storage, and the physicists kept working while the rest of us slept: Lonely insomniacs, baffled and frightened, laboring in the deep heart of an endless night. It had been ninety-two years after launch when they'd been roused; they lived out the rest of their natural lifespans, lived frugally and without hope of seeing the majestic dawn of 70 Ophiuchi and its two suns. But they lived long enough to crack the problem, and to come up with a solution. They programmed the autonav, updated the ship's mainframe with new instructions about when to start waking the rest of us up, and then... well, no one's sure, but the rumor is they placed themselves back in their cryo tubes having modified them to serve as hypobaric chambers. They went to sleep, and the tubes cycled down and they never woke up. If that's true, was it because they knew they'd never survive another round of cold storage at their advanced ages? Or had they fallen into despair? Or had they felt, as some of us speculate, that they had done their life's work? Or had they gotten so much cosmic radiation by then that they were dying anyway?

What those brave, lonesome scientists found out during their years of industry was that spacetime is vastly different than we thought it was – different from what we would have been able to tell from our perch on Earth, or even from the probes we'd sent outside the solar system. Our assumptions, based on the information gathered by our telescopes and the mathematical equations we'd devised accordingly, were completely wrong. Spacetime isn't simply flat and straightforward; it's extradimensional in all kinds of complex, crazy ways. Its true nature is nothing like what it appears to be.

As a result, we'd built a ship for the wrong kind of journey.

In other words, the universe had punked us.

***

We were all assembled in the ship's staging bay, which had been turned into a makeshift auditorium. The woman explaining things to us was named Kaia. She said she was the social integration coordinator of the colony project. We didn't think about it at the time – our mental state was too foggy – but there had been no such official when the ship had left Earth. Of course not: Kaia's position had been created on the fly, and out of necessity.

Kaia offered a synopsis of our situation: Evidently, the ship had fallen out of contact with Earth shortly after we had left the solar system. Somehow, this was related to our main problem, which was this: Despite having been in flight for decades longer than planned, we were still hundreds of light years away from 70 Ophiuchi.

My head was swimming from having been in cryo. Nothing this Kaia person was saying made sense. Someone in the crowd called out a question: How could we be hundreds of light years away from our goal when 70 Ophiuchi was only sixteen and a half light years from Earth?

Kaia spent the next fifteen minutes talking about cosmology and physics, explaining about the autonav and the physicists and how they had come up with a new theory about spacetime, some kind of exotic higher-dimensional geometry, optical information being distorted, stars being farther away than they seemed...

Blackness pulsed at the edges of my vision and multicolored amoebas drifted before my eyes. I felt hot, dehydrated, dizzy.

Then Kaia told us not everyone had survived the additional years in cold storage.

"Of the colony project's 2,460 adults," Kaia said, "1,476 are still with us. But that means that we lost 984 people along the way. And of the ship's 102 married couples, I'm sorry to report – "

A hubbub suddenly rose. There were loud cries, frantic voices scattered through the crowd; people calling names, people screaming.

Kaia paused, her face taking on a stricken expression.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. Forty-two of you lost your spouses."

I had a hard time hearing Kaia at this point. A man near me had begun shouting in panicked voice. "Kristen?" he cried out, again and again. "Kristen?"

A woman's voice seemed to be coming closer. "David?" she was screaming. "Dave?"

For a moment I thought she was Kristen and he was David, and a happy reunion was about to unfold; but she pushed her way through the assembly, continuing right past where I stood, as the man – not David, I realized – made his own way in a completely different direction. The woman collapsed, sobbing, a few seconds later; the man kept shoving his way through the crowd, shouting and then cursing, as two security officers found their way to him and began to talk him down. Someone who looked like a medic approached the man and offered him a syringe, which he declined; the medic then headed for the woman, who by now had stopped screaming and was weeping quietly in the arms of huddled strangers.

Overcome myself, I had to grab the shoulder a man standing next to me. He looked at me, bleary and yet also alarmed. "You okay?" he asked. He put out a hand and took me by the arm.

I recovered. "Yes," I nodded, grateful to him. The entire staging bay had become a mass of grieving humanity. The crying voices had subsided, and aside from sobs coming from various points around the space and the noises of the ship's operations, there was a hush.

Kaia, too, kept quiet for a few moments. Then, she spoke up again. "This is hard news," she said. "I'm sorry about that. But this is where we are. We have no choice but to press on. You're all depleted and weak from many additional years in cold storage – I'm not going to overwhelm you with details that can wait. I'll have more to tell you at the orientation assembly, which will be the day after tomorrow. In the meantime, security helpers and medics are going to help you find your rooming assignments. I know you're all feeling sick, but that's to be expected and you'll feel better by the time we have our next assembly. In the meantime, anyone with unusual symptoms – heart palpitations, excessive sweating, sharp pains anywhere in their bodies – should alert the medic nearest them and get checked out. If you feel hung over or like you have the flu, that's normal for what you've been through, and please understand that we need to conserve our medical resources for those in real need."

"So they're rationing health care, now," the man who had helped me regain my equilibrium said.

It took me a moment to understand that he was joking. I offered him a smile that I'm sure didn't look very genuine. He smiled back.

***

One of the security helpers gathered up a group of us and escorted us to the crew cabins. Most of these were dormitory-like accommodations, but to my surprise he took me to a small stateroom.

"Why am I getting the star treatment?" I asked him.

"Luck of the draw," he said.

When I entered the stateroom, I found I didn't have the place to myself, as I had assumed I would. Another man was already there. Dark hair, dark eyes, friendly face. He didn't look as though he felt very sick. I envied him.

"Ethan," he said, holding out his hand.

"Hey," I said. "Tom." We shook briefly. His skin was cool and dry, his knuckles pronounced and knobby.

"As in Thomas? Cool," he said, "My brother's name."

"Yeah?" I spotted a bed and headed straight for it. "I don't know any Ethans."

"You do now," he said, still annoyingly chipper.

"Just lucky I guess," I said, which now I know was nonsensical. In fact, I'm not sure I really even said it. As soon as I lay down I fell asleep, and when I woke up twelve hours later I don't think I had even moved.

The other guy had, however. While I was sleeping on top of the blankets, fully clothed, he was tucked into the other side of the bed. His shirt and trousers were hung up on something that looked like a towel rack. I thought this was forward of him until I realized there was nowhere else for him to sleep. Whoever made these decisions had put us into a room with only one bed – big enough for two, but still, it galled me to be lumped in with some stranger and expected to share space so intimately.

What had he said his name was? Evan?

I thought about finding someone to complain to, but then I thought about how Kaia had asked us not to bother the medics with trivial health questions. Every other sort of resource was also bound to be stretched thin. Besides, I didn't feel like dealing with bureaucracy. I considered looking on my own for a free space in one of the dorms, but first I wanted some food. I left Evan sleeping in the stateroom – he didn't so much as stir when I got up, or when I made my way out the door – and I found my way to what looked like a jury-rigged mess hall.

"Is this whole operation being improvised?" I asked the guy sitting next to me at the long table where I and my tray came to rest. A kitchen worker had put a bowl of beans and a slice of whole grain bread on my tray, along with a glass of water, a cup of tea, and a small bowl of something wobbly and orange – gelatin, I supposed.

"Nothing on this ship is supposed to be permanent," the guy said. He was a big man, like me; in his late twenties, maybe his early thirties – again, like me; blond and blue eyed, Swedish looking. Not like me at all in that way, but enough like Paul to give me a pang. "Remember?" he continued. "The ship is going to be taken apart and used to set up the early shelters, the command center, and the power plant."

"Yeah, of course," I said. They'd told us this before we left, but somehow I hadn't expected everything to look so slapped together. The mess hall was in a long, narrow space with a sharply canted ceiling that blocked the lights and gave the place a dim, subterranean feel. It was a room that seemed incongruous with the purpose it was serving.

"Did you lose anyone?" the blond guy asked.

"No," I said, wondering why he was asking. "I came aboard single."

"Had to get divorced when you signed up?"

I hesitated. I don't like having to talk about it. And how had he known?

The blond guy pointed to his collarbone with a thumb. I realized he was referring not to himself, but to the ring I wore on a chain around my neck.

"A lot of people do that, I guess," he said to me. "Wear their wedding rings like necklaces after they joined the colony project and had to dissolve their marriages."

"Yeah." I sampled the tea. It was bitter. I looked around for some milk and saw none. "What about you?"

"Never married," he said, "but I had two boyfriends I left behind."

I laughed with surprise. "Did they each know about the other?"

He gave me an aggravated look. "Of course. I'm not a player."

"All right," I said.

"We're a – we were – a throuple," he said.

"Okay," I said, trying to sound conciliatory but not wanting him to think I was interested in hearing about it.

"Never heard of polyamory?" he asked.

"Of course I have, but..." I shrugged. "Never really felt drawn to it."

He smiled at me in a way that might have been intended to encourage me to think of him as a prospective new partner, or might simply have been friendly. I looked away, uncomfortable. I knew I would probably find someone new – I was too young not to – but I wasn't at a place, yet, where I could imagine being with anyone other than Paul.

Paul. Jesus, I thought, looking at my bowl of beans. What the fuck had I been thinking?> How could I have left him?

"You okay?" the blond guy asked.

I realized I had been sitting there staring at my food for five or six minutes. "I'm fine," I said, grabbing my spoon and starting to eat.

He went back to his own meal. We ate in silence. Around the room there were a few murmured, brief conversations, but no one was laughing or telling stories. There was a strange mood in the air.

The blond guy mopped up juice from his bowl of beans with the last of his bread. "Be sure to eat your gelatin," he said.

"This orange shit?"

"It's not dessert," he said. "It's full of enzymes and electrolytes. Stuff we need after that long, cold sleep." He pushed himself up from the table. "See ya around," he said.

"Yeah," I said, going back to my beans and bread.

***

"Where'd you go?" Evan asked when I returned to the stateroom.

"There's a mess hall up the corridor a ways," I told him. "If you're hungry."

"I'll check it out." He eyed me flirtatiously. "After I take a shower. I'm still feeling cold. And grotty. Did you happen to see any shower facilities between here and the mess hall?"

"No," I said.

"Well, I'll see what I can find and report back. You know," he added, pausing in the door, his smile growing more playful, "we need to conserve resources. They told us to consider showering with a friend."

The food had made me feel better. His suggestion was outrageous, even if it was true that the colony project administrators really had suggested – in all straight-faced seriousness – that we limit showers in frequency and duration, and have buddies with us when we did bathe. But they had had a way of making it sound funny, and not prurient.

"Thanks, but maybe later, Evan."

"Who's Evan?" He frowned, perplexed. "You mean me? I'm Ethan, Tommy."

"Oh – jeez – sorry," I apologized. "I'm terrible with names."

"It's okay," he said.

"But... as to my name... it's just Tom. Okay?"

"Right." His smile was back. "Tommy's my brother. Force of habit."

He was out the door before it occurred to me to make a joke about him cruising a man who shared his brother's name. I didn't mind not having made that joke. I didn't want to encourage him. It would have been a bad joke, anyway.

***

I didn't look for a different housing situation that day. Instead, I found myself, rather unexpectedly, content to relax and talk with Ethan once he got back. He had found a shower, but he didn't repeat his offer to share.

The stateroom had a small table and two chairs. We sat at the table and discussed the unexpected circumstances we found ourselves in.

"I mean, I guess it's all the same," Ethan said. "We knew this was a one-way trip. It doesn't matter if we arrive later than we expected, as long as we arrive."

In the back of my mind I knew that Paul had to be dead by now. I ignored the thought as best I could.

They were supposed to have given us all our accumulated correspondence sent over the years from people back on Earth, but there had been no mention of it so far. I brought it up to Ethan.

"I talked with someone about that," he said.

"You did? Who?"

"Some tech who was eating his lunch. Guy name of Brandon. He said that there was a problem with the ship's communications system. They have some correspondence, but only from, I don't know, less than a year after launch. After that, the ship didn't get any more signals from Earth. And he says they think the ship's signals didn't make it back home, either."

That sounded familiar. "Did Kaia talk about that yesterday?"

"She did. I don't remember the details, but she was explaining why we're still so far away from 70 Ophiuchi."

"So... they think we're lost?"

"Not exactly. Do you remember she was talking about some other star? Some star they thought was thousands of light years away, but it turns out to be a lot closer?"

"Hold on... I thought the stars were all farther away than we expected."

"A lot of them are. Some are closer. The tech I was talking to said that space is folded in all kinds of crazy ways. I mean, this is the theory they came up with. Our telescopes and gravitational observatories back on Earth told us one thing, but actually crossing space in a starship is something different. Light and gravity waves pass through all the folds and crumples in a straight line, like a needle through wadded tissue. But the ship is embedded in the tissue, of course."

"I don't get it. What tissue? What folds and crumples?"

"Spacetime," Ethan said. "It's a metaphor. Spacetime is crumpled like a tissue. Radiation and gravity waves don't have to follow the folds and crumples, they just jump right through in a straight line... a 'hyper-straight' line, actually."

"Through hyperspace?" I asked. I didn't know what that was, exactly, but it was something that seemed to pop up a lot in science fiction.

"No, the tech called it 'infraspace.' "

"What's that?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, but the tech said that space was flat and there was no such thing as 'hyper' or 'hypo' space. But there is something called infraspace. I guess it has to do with space being wadded up in all sorts of higher dimensions we don't directly experience. That's why our telescopes were fooled. A star's light might travel eighteen light years in a 'hyper-straight' line, but getting there in a ship, following the folds and crumples in space, means traveling for hundreds or thousands of light years." He sighed. "And, I guess, that's only half the fun. The cosmos isn't static. It's always expanding."

"Sure," I said. Everyone knew that.

"But not just expanding," he said. "It's also shifting. The crumples are crumpling, the folds are folding... at least, in some places. In other places they're un-folding and un-crumpling."

"What does that mean?"

Ethan shrugged. "I guess it means that whoever follows us, if anybody does, would need to create their own new star charts from scratch, because the actual distance from Earth to any given star is always fluctuating."

I thought about that. "Maybe they've invented faster-than-light travel by now," I offered. "Maybe ships can follow 'hyper-straight' lines, too. Maybe when we arrive we'll find people are already there."

"I asked the tech about that," Ethan said. "According to him, a ship traveling through infraspace would follow a hyper-straight line, just like electromagnetic radiation and gravity does, but they'd still need to generate new star maps all the time because the topography of the cosmos is always changing."

I didn't understand, and I said so.

Ethan shrugged. "I don't get it either. But what he told me is, the folds in space-time are in I don't know how many dimensions, and while most stars are farther away than they look, some are a lot closer. So, that's why we're headed to Gliese."

"What?!" The force of surprise made my voice loud, and the word rang through the room.

Ethan winced. "Didn't you hear Kaia talk about this yesterday?"

"I don't remember anything about Gliese. Which one?"

"Gliese Barones. A yellow sun like our own. It's so dim and so far away... I mean, it looks so far away... that they didn't even discover it until those two new space telescopes went up a few years ago. A few years before we left, I mean..." Ethan sighed. "All of this is so goddamned confusing."

"You're telling me."

"But anyway, what I'm trying to explain is Gliese Barones turns out to be a lot closer than 70 Ophiuchi. That's lucky for us."

"How is it lucky that we're going to a completely different star?"

"If we went on to 70 Ophiuchi, we would need to adjust our course. That solar system is moving through space, of course, and it's not where we thought it was in the first place. They did the calculations to figure out the optimal course and speed to get us there, but even the best navigational solution is bad news for us."

"What, we'd burn all our fuel reorienting the ship?"

"No, actually, that would be the easy part. We're still so far away all we need to do is make a very slight course alteration and by the time we got there we'd have corrected our trajectory with almost no extra use of fuel. But our point of intersection is where the 70 Ophiuchi system place is going to be in 1,200 years."

"Wait – how long?"

"That's how much more time a clock on Earth – or in the 70 Ophiuchi system, for that matter – would register before we arrived. Of course, because we're going so fast, there are relativistic effects. Much less time will pass from our point of view on the ship."

"Right, of course," I said. I'd momentarily forgotten about time dilation.

"But even so, the journey is so much longer than we originally planned for that it would take us an additional hundred and twenty years to get there – shipboard time., I mean. But even so, we don't have what we need to keep flying for that long – not enough power for the cryo tubes, if we could even survive in cold storage for that long, which the doctors don't think is likely. But if we don't use the tubes we'll starve long before we get there, or we'll suffocate, or both. We don't have enough air or food or... or anything, really, to sustain even a small fraction of the ship's total population for more than a decade or so. I mean, we have supplies for two years – a year of surveying, and then a year on a planetary surface. Longer if we had to put people back into cold storage. But that's all we've got.

"Now, there is a way to avoid that dilemma," Ethan continued. "If we go faster, we increase the time dilation effect and we shorten the length of shipboard time. But then we have a whole different dilemma: Increasing our speed would mean using too much fuel, and we wouldn't be able to decelerate. We'd end up shooting right through the 70 Ophiuchi system, and flying on forever. So..."

"So we're going to this other star instead," I said. "But will there be a suitable planet?"

"The only information we have about it is in the standard stellar archive," Ethan said. "There's not a lot of detail, but they do know the system has three planets in what should be the star's habitable zone. Which, really, is about all we knew about 70 Ophiuchi. That system has two potentially habitable planets, but who knows what the conditions are really like? I mean... maybe this is actually incredibly fortunate. Maybe we'll find a habitable world in Gliese Barones where we wouldn't have in 70 Ophiuchi."

"Or maybe it's the other way around and we're screwed," I said.

"Or maybe there are habitable planets in both systems," Ethan said. "And our descendants will use Gliese Barones as a stepping stone and get there anyway, in a couple hundred years or so."

"Or there are no habitable planets in either system, and we were always gonna die," I said.

"And God's like, 'Stupid humans, I gave you a whole planet. What more do you want?' " Ethan offered, laughing.

I started laughing, too. For a moment, the whole situation – the whole universe – seemed an incredibly elaborate, improbable joke.

The moment passed. We fell silent. Ethan stared at the tabletop.

I considered what I'd just heard. It suggested all sorts of things I didn't like to think about. We were already more than two centuries out shipboard time, which was more than twice as long as the mission plan had anticipated the flight would take. Much more time had passed back on Earth, of course, because Earth wasn't flying through space at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Of course, what Ethan had said was true: We'd left Earth knowing we were never going back. If our arrival was delayed, and even if we arrived at a completely different star than originally planned... well, it didn't matter that much.

But then again, it wasn't the same. I'd been mentally prepared... or so I thought... for one set of plans, and now all of that was up in the air. And Paul...

Paul felt farther away than ever. I reached for the chain around my neck, touched the ring that hung against my chest.

Leaving Paul when he was young and living, I'd had some idea that I would have decades to imagine him still just as he'd been. Now, all of a sudden, he was gone; he'd been dust for hundreds... actually, thousands... of years. Even the messages he would have sent me over the years were lost.

I'd forsaken the love of my life to go on a big adventure. But now the adventure had turned into something totally different. A voice in my head chided me that this had never really been anything more than a big ego trip, one with irreversible consequences, and I'd been too proud to see it. Now I was alone, thanks to my colossal foolishness.

"What's wrong?" I'd sunk into a state of such preoccupation it was almost a trance. Ethan's voice startled me.

He was looking at me closely. I realized there was tension in my body, and a terrible hollowness along with it.

"Shit," I said. It was as though the gravity generators had failed; I felt as though I was in free fall – falling through an endless blackness.

"Tom? Are you okay?"

"It's really gone..."

"What's gone?"

"Everything. My life. Home. Earth. The Earth we knew. The people. Friends. Parents. Paul..."

"Yeah." Ethan had moved closer to me. His hand was on my back. He sounded sympathetic. "It's a hell of a shock. We thought some of the people we knew might still be around, might be there to hear us radio back. But... well, maybe not." His hand rubbed, ever so slightly, ever so gently. He was just being kind, not salacious, but something in me – some part resistant to comfort – responded with unexpected intensity, almost anger.

"Thanks," I told him, shifting in the chair. He drew back. I stood up. "I'm feeling freaked out. Anxious. I think I'll go walk it off."

"You want company?"

I did, and I didn't. I wasn't sure what I wanted. Ethan seemed genuinely caring, and he was funny and nice. I realized I liked him, but I didn't want to like him too much. I didn't want to like anyone too much. Not yet.

Walking up the corridor, past the mess hall, past work areas and storage bays and dormitories, I felt my heart hammering with the sad, hard impact of realization. It hit me over and over again: I'd forsaken Paul. I'd abandoned my family, and the company I'd begun with a few friends from college – a company that had started to take off. I'd bailed, choosing to rocket out into the black eternity of space just as everything I had worked for was showing signs of blue-sky promise. I couldn't help a bitter smile from spreading angrily across my face, couldn't help that smile turning into a sobbing grimace. I found an observation nook – just a cubby with some unsecured, general-use instrumentation – and shook with sobs for a long time, trying desperately to keep quiet. A few people walked past while I choked and gasped. A couple of them glanced at me and then kept right on their way. Whatever it was – respect for my privacy, simple callousness, emotional exhaustion – I was grateful for it, glad to be left alone.

Depleted, I leaned back. My eyes caught listlessly on the optical display: Stars stretching out across an unending vastness; stars and galaxies; glowing cottony clouds dotting the distance here and there. The yellow glow of Gliese Barones, our new home.

The thought hammered me again: I should never have left.

***

The next day, at 14:00 hours, everyone on board the ship who didn't have to be manning some critical system or other was gathered once more in the staging bay. Kaia was up at her lectern again, this time with a flexible optic screen behind her. Workers were still unscrolling the screen as people filed in and stood around. The screen was finally secured to a flimsy-looking framework, and the workers retreated into the crowd.

Kaia greeted us, repeated her condolences to those who had lost loved ones, and then began the orientation proceedings. The screen behind her displayed real-time opticals and computer-generated projections. We were close enough to the Gliese Barones system to have already found that both the second and third planets seemed suitable for life, Kaia narrated, as a short video about the ship's course into the solar system played. Preliminary plans were in place to land on the second planet, which had an atmosphere similar to Earth's. The third planet's atmosphere was different mix, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide. That, Kaia said, could be modified through terraforming, but it would take a century or so. Also, it would have to wait; getting the colony that well-established was going to take thirty or forty years.

More schematics and computer-generated animations played on the screen, showing planetary intercept, orbital insertion, and Aditi's planned dismemberment played itself out. The ship was designed to be broken down into dozens of sections, each of which would either be guided to the planet surface or else land under its own power. The schedule budgeted four to six weeks of orbital time spent mapping the planet and preparing for the deployment of the ship's resources. A primary site and several backup sites had to be identified for the colony. Detailed geological, meteorological, and oceanographic analyses would all be underway simultaneously. We had to put together a quick, accurate picture of how our new planet worked: What were its weather and seasonal patterns? How did its hydrological cycle operate? What form did native life, if any, take? There seemed to be a magnetic field – would it shield us sufficiently from cosmic rays? Was there ozone to screen out ultraviolet light, as there was in Earth's upper atmosphere? The answers to these, and dozens of other, questions would determine exactly how we went about setting up the colony and devising strategies for how and where to live. On the surface? Underground? Would we also need to terraform the system's second planet to some degree?

And then Kaia got around to the part none of us had anticipated, because it had never been part of the original plan.

"Most of you didn't board the ship with a spouse or significant other," she said. "That's because couples in which both partners qualified for the mission were so rare. But we built quite a few components of the mission around those couples, expecting them to provide a certain amount to social stability to the project. There were early considerations that maybe we should focus on couples, if that proved feasible, or even determine who among our single colonists should be matched up with whom, using proven relationship algorithms – the sort of algorithms that operate online matching sites back on Earth. We shied away from that because, of course, we want to bring freedom with us and leave the heavy thumb of intrusive government behind. But the fact that we have lost so many colonists along the way – and our power sources have become so depleted – changes our basic assumptions, and the equations that proceed from those assumptions. We now realize that in order to maximize the colony's chances for survival we need to take an active role in pre-planning with whom a certain number... a minimal number... of the single people among us will be matched, in order to kick-start the colony's families and create a stable social fabric as quickly as possible."

Three were gasps and angry murmurs. One man shouted, "Are you saying you're going to tell us who to marry?"

Kaia swept her gaze across the assembled colonists. "Let's be blunt," she said. "That's exactly what I'm saying. Most of you have spent the last two days in dormitories while we finalized our computations... some of you, the core nexus of our social planning, have been put into state rooms with your intended mates."

Ethan and I had walked to the meeting together. He stood nearby. We turned and looked at each other, our expressions mirror images of astonishment.

Then, to my horror and rage, he broke into a wide, delighted smile.

***

Kaia agreed to meet with me, but what I heard from the secretarial layers of bureaucracy she'd already put in place around herself was that she wouldn't be available for several days.

I fumed during that time, and Ethan's overtures to me – gentle as they were – only angered me more.

"I'm here. I like you. Why don't you like me? What's wrong with me?" he finally asked, after two days of alternatively keeping his distance and trying to insinuate himself, ever so lightly, into my life.

"Nothing. You're a nice guy."

"So?"

"So," I turned on him sharply, "I don't want a nice guy, or any other guy."

He looked at me with bewilderment. "You're just going to spend your life alone?"

I had to take a deep breath and steady myself. I reminded myself that this wasn't his fault. Ethan, too, had left everything and everyone behind when he'd signed on to the colony project. He had a right to expect that he could make a new life, and he had been put into just as difficult a spot as I had been by the meddling of the colony's administration.

On the other hand, he seemed to be enjoying our assignment to each other a little too much, taking it as a given that I was okay with it and would fall in line with whatever Kaia had in mind for us.

"I've never been much for arranged marriages," I told him.

"Tom..." He looked at me with real concern. "It's not like there's going to be many other people to choose from. For you or for me."

"You really want me for a husband?" I asked him. "When I'm clearly not interested? When I'm grouchy and pissed off all the time?"

Ethan smiled. "There's a lot more to you than that. I get why you're mad. I'd be mad, too, except from the minute we met, I..." He paused, and I saw him blush. "Well, I just like you. And we were getting along fine until Kaia's announcement that being in a stateroom together meant that we were supposed to be together. That was a shocker. I mean, I was shocked by it, too."

It sure looked like it, I thought to myself, what with that big grin on his face and all.

"But we're settling on Gliese Barones b for the rest of our lives," he added. "That's a long time to be by yourself. Assuming you even could be by yourself. Housing is probably going to be tight."

"I don't care about having roommates," I told him. "But being informed from self-appointed social guardians that I have to marry someone they've picked out for me? That just makes me claustrophobic. And yeah, sure it pisses me off."

My great-great-granduncle had been one of the first men in America to legally marry another man, a century and a half earlier, in 2004, in Massachusetts. Our family had always been pathfinders and trailblazers, and his pioneering foray into marriage equality was celebrated by his descendants with as much pride as the accomplishments of any other member of our long lineage.

I didn't tell Ethan any of that, but it was a major part of why I was so angry. I wasn't here to push the boundaries of human experience out into the cosmos while at the same time taking a major step backwards in terms of my own civil rights.

***

"You have to understand that we're creating new human society," Kaia told me.

We were in her small office, a tiny space that looked just as temporary and off-the-cuff as all the rest of the ship's cabins. Ethan had insisted on coming along for the meeting, and while the room could have accommodated twice as many people, it still felt close and uncomfortable with only the three of us.

"What kind of society are you going to build with this as its foundation?" I asked her.

"Look, Tom, we're not asking you to marry someone of the opposite sex."

"So? This is any less of an intrusion?"

"My point is, you're not being singled out or subjected to special treatment," she said. "We're asking a number of heterosexual couples to accept our... our strong recommendation that they partner according to guidelines that include genetic compatibility, psychological parameters, physical considerations like age and fertility..."

"I get all that," I said.

Kaia had already bent our ears about the colony's reduced numbers making it necessary to bring a scientific approach to the business of creating families and getting started with offspring. The project simply didn't have the resources to invest in a lot of in vitro fertilization or cloning, or even to do much with the hundreds of multi-ethnic human embryos that lay in wait in radiation-shielded cold storage. The most cost-effective and reliable way of hastening the next generation into existence was, as she had put it, to allow people to fall in love and have kids... but with a caveat: The administration would need to shepherd a certain number of couples together. The margin of error – again her expression – was just too thin for the administration not to take a role in people's private lives. A minimal role, Kaia had emphasized, affecting the fewest number of colonists possible, but, at the same time, a maximally effectual role.

"But why do you care about who I marry, specifically? Or even if I marry?" I insisted. "It's not like Ethan and I would have any children of our own."

"That's not true," Kaia said. "Even given our present circumstances, the administration would not deny you the right to procreation. We don't have a lot of medical resources to divert to cloning or IVF, but for those who need it we will invest the effort."

"Good to know everyone will have a fair share," I muttered.

"Resources are limited," Kaia said evenly. "And we can't ignore the fact that how we allocate our resources will play a major role in whether the colony succeeds or not – which is why we wanted you to partner in the first place. Two people sharing space, sharing water rations, sharing heat, sharing energy for daily needs like lights, like cooking... it may not sound like much, but our first years may hinge on just such thin margins."

"What if I prefer somebody else? Or what if I prefer to be a bachelor?" I asked.

"Your psych profile doesn't indicate that you'd thrive as a bachelor," Kaia said. She had a cool, clinical affect that I didn't like her applying to my personal life. "You had a husband before you left Earth. You were married in your early 20s. All of that indicates that at some point – even if not right now – you're going to want... and need... to pair off and settle down. But that's only half the reason. You have leadership qualities: You're an entrepreneur and a scientific innovator. We knew from the start that you would be important for one of the colony's key infrastructure challenges, namely energy production and management. All of that being the case, you're an example, Tom. Whichever way you decide to handle this situation, you're an example that others will look to."

"So, I'm being saddled with the responsibility of being a role model," I said.

"If you want to put it that way, then yes," Kaia told me.

"And besides," Ethan interjected, "it's not like there's a whole lot of other gay guys on the mission."

I shot him a disapproving look. I had made it a condition of his being there that he'd stay out of the conversation and let me hash it out with Kaia.

"I'm sorry," Ethan retorted to my sour look, "but look, be realistic. You want to be a monk for the rest of your life?"

"What if I do?" I shot back at him.

"Well, I don't," Ethan snapped. "You're also talking about my prospects here. I kinda have some skin in the game, if you'll pardon the expression."

I turned back to Kaia. "Like he says, there aren't a lot of gay guys among the colonists." My mind flashed back to the big, blond guy in the mess hall. Mr. Polyamory. What, I wondered, was he going to do? "And why is that?" I heard a note of accusation in my voice, but I wasn't about to apologize for it. It was something I wondered about before, but I hadn't let it worry me. Now, however, with Kaila poking her fingers into my private life, the question seemed more important. Just how much social engineering had gone into the colony project from the start?

Kaia held my gaze with her own, not backing down. I'd heard the rumors about the closed-door preliminary discussion the colony planners had had. She knew this was what I was referring to.

"Let's level," she said – one of her favorite expressions, and something that I liked about her. Kaia wasn't a politician. She wasn't one to dance around and hide behind smoke screens made of meaningless words strung together in circular patterns. "We wanted to optimize the colony's effectiveness from the start. We gave preference to heterosexuals, for the same reason we gave preference to young, healthy people. And also," she added, "people with the combination of strong libidos and a tendency toward strong social and familial bonds."

"You need people who'll fuck like bunnies but stay in their own hutch," I said.

She actually laughed at that. "That's one way to put it," she said, nodding. Her smile held as she added, "People are people, and we don't pretend they're not. There'll be some fooling around. Probably a lot of fooling around. That's actually good for genetic diversity, so the administration is never going to penalize it or encourage social shaming around it. At the same time, we can't allow people to be too wild – anarchy, or even major social divisions, will sink the colony. You see that, right?"

I sighed and nodded. Yes, I saw that.

"But we can't attempt some sort of totalitarian rule, either. And nor do we want to. Many of us are iconoclasts, libertarians. We value a spirit of freedom and even, to a certain extent, defiance of traditions and rules. That's one reason we made space for artists on this mission, not just scientists, builders, farmers, and architects. We needed people with the sort of adventurous, self-starting spirit that would leave their home planet and all social ties – and we also needed people who could gel into a strong community and work toward a common goal. It's a delicate balance, and all sorts of practical, as well as ideological, considerations had to be weighed."

"Like making sure you had enough breeding stock," I said.

"Our farmers wouldn't hesitate to say it more or less just like that," Kaia told me, unfazed.

"So, of course, gay people weren't actively recruited for the colony," I said. It was still an aggravating memory: Back on Earth, some politicians and church leaders had tried to turn that very issue into a polarizing one. Some extremists had called for queers to be jettisoned into space; cooler-headed commentators wondered why gays would be considered for a mission that clearly relied on the cream of Earth's human crop starting the species anew, hopefully, on fertile new soil.

"I can understand if you feel that we were discriminating against people who were less likely to propagate the species," Kaia said. "There were, and still are, many other considerations besides reproduction. Even the need to procreate has limits, of course, because the colony can't grow so fast that our numbers outstrip our resources or our infrastructure. No one wants to replicate the inequalities of Earth.

"But no matter how you phrase it, mortality is the brick wall we're speeding toward, and we have to be sure to find a way around it," she added.

"You expect us to die soon?" Ethan broke in, and this time I didn't reprimand him for it.

"Let me just say this: Our medical facilities were cutting edge when we left Earth, but they are limited in size and scope. Interstellar travel involves a lot of hardship – cosmic rays during the journey, the prospect of harmful solar radiation once we're settled... even time in cryo carries some risk of long-term health consequences, especially when we all spent so many extra years in the tubes. On top of that, who knows what the surface conditions will be like on the new planet? There could be thousands of environmental factors we're not evolved to handle. Not yet, anyway. All of this to say, the first generation of colonists might not age very well."

"You mean they might not live very long," I said.

"Let's just say nobody's planned for the average life span out here to match those back on Earth," Kaia said. "Centenarians are a ways down the road for us. That's just pragmatism. And it breeds pragmatism: We need to repopulate, and we need to do it as quickly and effectively as possible. By effectively, I mean, in part, sustainably. We had to think about things other than fertility. We didn't set out to under-represent gay people. We had to fairly represent all kinds of people within a limited number of colonists."

"Uh huh," I said. I probably sounded skeptical.

"We routinely turned down religious fundamentalists, did you also hear that?"

I had not. "No," I responded.

"From all faiths," she said. "And it nearly lost us our American share of the funding when a senior senator from Indiana heard about it. We were very careful not to let word of our screening process leak, and we were very proactive in framing the message around who we accepted and why. Our dream is a more open and equal society, but we couldn't even put that out there... ironically, the message that resonated most favorably was one with elitist overtones. We were taking the best people. The smartest. The most accomplished. People seemed to like that. I hated that messaging, but it turned out to be great PR. And it got us a lot of support from politicians other than our friend from Indiana."

"Actually, it was the idea that we were starting over with the best and brightest that attracted me in the first place," Ethan said. "If I'm being honest about it. Though I guess that makes me an elitist prick."

"That's not for me to say," Kaia told him. "Look, I'm aware of the optics around these issues," she added. "But our mission planning wasn't ideological. It was a matter of sociology. Fundamentalism, for instance, breaks down social cohesion, leads to warring factions – and for what? One person's fairy tale is better than the other person's fairy tale? We don't have the luxury of that sort of thing. We need a functioning, well-integrated society. We need genetic and cultural diversity to achieve that, but we also need a strong sense of communal purpose. Something that won't be trumped by competing dogmas. We're not here to carry the resentments and affiliations of Earth into the stars with us. We're here to provide the proof of the principle that it's possible for human life to leave its home world and flourish elsewhere."

Her rhetoric was soaring a little too much for me. "I get all that," I said, wanting to bring her back to the present moment and the little crisis that was my life and freedom being taken away under the rubric of the greater good. "It's a beautiful and worthy thing. We all agree to that, or we wouldn't be here. But I came to contribute to that vision – not feed myself to it body and soul. Communal efforts mean sacrifices we choose to make. Imposing sacrifices from the top down? Especially when they weren't part of the deal from the start? That's not a vision of the future, that's the monster of a past we're trying to rise above."

My own rhetoric was starting to get a bit much, I thought, but on the other hand my husband back on Earth had been a poet. I'd picked up a few verbal tics from him, and I'd often seen how his way with words could reach people. Paul, I thought, I hope I'm making you proud.

"To be honest, the matter of pairing up colony members was debated from the start," Kaia said. "It's all a matter of the best use for our available human resources."

"Human resources?" I asked. "We're humans, Kaia. We're not resources."

"That's where you're wrong," she said, flatly. I could tell I wasn't going to gain any traction debating her on this philosophical point, and anyway it still wasn't going to address my chief concern.

"Okay," I said, "if we can focus on the issue at hand..."

"The issue at hand," Ethan interrupted once again, "is that there aren't very many gay men included in the ship's complement – never mind the reasons why, that doesn't matter anymore. If you and I are determined to be the best matches for one another out of the available men in the colony group, and you decide you're not interested in me, then where does that leave me?"

"Where does it leave me, Ethan?" I argued. "Put yourself in my place. Say you weren't interested in me. Would it be right to force you into a relationship with me on the grounds that it's somehow best for society in general?"

"Maybe it is best," he replied.

"But you might not like it," I said. "Would you still defend it?"

Ethan's lips compressed into a thin line. He was clearly upset and, just as clearly, unable to reason his way out of the conundrum.

"Look, I get that you're attracted to me – and I appreciate it," I started.

"Don't flatter yourself," Ethan muttered.

"But," I said, raising my voice so as to talk over him, "how is forcing me into a relationship different from forcing me into sex?"

"No one says you have to have sex," Kaia interjected. "No one's going to come around and enforce some sort of quota of intimacy."

"And yet, forcing us into an intimate living situation... a single bed, a single shower and shared water rations, limited living space where we'll be on top of each other all the time... You think it's not going to be a problem? Especially since Ethan has already shown his interest in me?"

Ethan didn't say anything, but I picked up on his disapproval. I glanced at him and offered an apologetic shrug.

Then, to my surprise, Ethan spoke up. "He doesn't want me. I get it. But there will be a societal expectation. An assumption. Two gay men living together? We might as well be a couple; everyone will assume we are. That will make it harder to eventually pair up with more suitable partners who actually want to be intimate with us." He gave me a look that carried more than a little anger. "And who's to say," he continued, as Kaia was about to speak, "that a government that forces people to live together won't someday start policing our sex lives? Sending 'intimacy police' around to check up on us? Basically forcing us into sexual relations, through one form of pressure or another? That, if I may say so, would be a form of sexual assault."

Kaia seemed to freeze in place when he said those words. I realized he had hit a nerve.

A new tension filled the room. Ethan and I watched, keeping quiet. Kaia seemed to weigh her arguments against what he had just said.

Finally, she spoke. "Would you mind elaborating?" she asked.

"I think I was pretty clear," Ethan said.

Kaia wavered. Ethan's reference to sexual assault had carried an emotional impact, but she needed to hear more; she needed a rational basis to pair it with. Ethan didn't seem to realize this and wasn't going to provide one. The moment was on the verge of slipping away, and it was clear to me what needed to be said, and how. I mentally mapped out my argument and then jumped in.

"If I may?" I spoke up, looking from Ethan to Kaia. They both nodded. "A century and a half ago – and in some places on Earth even when we were still there – it was common for government and societies to try to force gay men and women into heterosexual unions. The justifications for it were the same as you're citing now: Social stability. A need for procreation – which, given the way the population exploded in the 20th and 21st centuries, was actually not much of a reason for forcing people in relationships they weren't interested in. Also – and this is not incidental to our conversation here – there were so-called 'moral' reasons, nebulous claims that if gay men and women were permitted to marry people of their own choosing it would somehow, mysteriously, contaminate the institution of marriage itself, corrupt children, and damage society.

"But Kaia," I continued, "one of my own ancestors, my great-great-granduncle, lived through those days, and reading his journals I saw in his own words how those arguments were used in ways that made no sense. It was the very act of denying gay people their fundamental rights that damaged and destroyed people and, in doing so, scarred society at a basic, root level... the level of individual happiness, the level of individual responsibility and choice. The stunning ignorance and arrogance of the laws from that time are shocking even now. And the suffering those laws caused... I felt the pain inscribed in my great-great-granduncle's words. His later journals provide important contrasts: When same-sex families were accorded the same legal status as heterosexual ones, their joy and fulfillment was remarkable. But then, a couple of decades later, the world's democracies began to succumb to autocrats who built their power on resentments and fear. Free nations became totalitarian states that held onto power by telling frightening stories about minorities. The civil strife and social persecution that resulted plunged gay people like my great-great-granduncle into deep despair – and even more excoriating rage. At the same time, and not coincidentally, the very idea of democracy and self-determination as a human right came close to disappearing.

"I can't imagine what it was like to live in the times my great-great-granduncle did," I added. "I can't imagine the heartbreak and despair of seeing your lot in life improve for years, only for that progress to be yanked away. But I do understand on a visceral level what he meant when he wrote in his journal that the years before he was legally able to marry his life partner felt like a continual assault – a sexual assault, a prurient exercise in sadism and sexual violence, something that offered sick satisfaction to the people doing the persecuting. What I'm telling you right now, Kaia, aren't even my own words; I'm paraphrasing from what my great-great-granduncle wrote in his journals at the time. So tell me, is this the sort of new nation we're going to build? Is this the foundation for what comes after, so many light years from home? If so, then why the hell did we bother coming all this way?"

Kaia looked at the floor. I waited for her to make eye contact, but she didn't. Her skin was pale – was she angry? Then she did look me in the eyes, and I saw that I'd been right when I sensed that Ethan's words had hit a nerve earlier.

When she responded, Kaia sounded steady, but I thought if she'd tried to speak a moment sooner her voice might have been shaking.

"Obviously, we can't ignore your feelings on this issue," she said. "And you're right to point out that you're a human being with a fundamental right to self-determination and, like anyone else, a guarantee under law of absolute authority over your own body. We must honor that. We have to build a new world from the best of the old, or else we revert to..." She shrugged. "Who knows? Who knows how far we could fall if we abandon our own first principles?"

"So you understand what I'm..." I glanced at Ethan again. "What we're saying?"

"I need to say this, also," Ethan put in. "I didn't intend to suggest I have a right to override Tom's choices. He's a man – he's not property."

"Thank you," I said to Ethan.

He just shook his head. He looked hurt – it was understandable; I'd just rejected him – but, I was relieved to see, he wasn't going to try to possess me or claim some sort of moral right over me.

Kaia was looking at Ethan. Then she turned back to me. "There are still practical considerations," she said. "We have to prioritize housing for couples and families."

"So I live wherever there's room for me," I said. "I understand."

"Yeah," Ethan said. "So do I, I guess." He still looked a little sour.

"Someday there will be land and materials for everyone to make their own house if they so choose," I said. "That's the point of work. That's what's behind the human drive to expand always outwards. I'm not in a hurry to build my little home. Nor," I said, glancing at Ethan, "to find someone to share it with. But I do feel confident that I will find someone in time."

"Good for you," Ethan muttered.

***

I took a small equipment room as my shipboard quarters. The place was a little too warm, and far too small for comfort, but the room was mine. My life was mine. My future was my own.

I touched the ring that hung from the chain around my neck, and smiled. I'd left Earth, and Paul, and my life, and could never go back. And yet –�years, and light years, removed, I had come home.

Next week we look in trepidation to the skies... where we see what half the country is determined not to acknowledge: The End of the World. It's upon us even as we try to "Let the Sun Shine In."