319 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
319 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
From: Chris Maldonado <cmaldonado@voortrekker.com>
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To: Sameen Lee <sameen.lee@recoveryinstitute.org>
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Delivered-To: Sameen Lee <sameen.lee@recoveryinstitute.org>
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Received: from relay7.qec4.rs001.l4.earthsys.gov
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for <sam@recoveryinstitute.org>
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Subject: Love from Esperance
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Date: 7 Apr 2419 21:57:18 +0000
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Date-Local: 21 Sep 2421 20:33:18 +0000
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf8"
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I promised myself I wouldn't talk too much about the memorial. But
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that was before...
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I don't know what I was expecting. Rows of seats, I suppose. Trying
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to find a comfortable spot while Director Soloviev talked too much
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about people he didn't really know or remember very well. Our
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friends, our loved ones - his employees. Because it was the
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expected thing, the thing that people do at a time like
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this. Trying to bring closure, whatever that means.
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Instead, we made a garden together. Right at the center of our hab,
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in a roundish open space that I hadn't got around to asking why it
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was even there. Now I know.
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The first thing we did, right in the middle of what was to be our
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garden, we brought in a piece of Voortrekker herself and stood it
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on end in a deep trench we'd dug to receive it. A tombstone, I
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suppose you could call it, but I don't think any of us really
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thinks of it that way. Four meters high, two wide, a jagged chunk
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of hull plating with just the top left corner of the 'V' from her
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name still visible on the charred surface. We helped a lot, those
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of us who've changed, bringing it in from the crash site and
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setting it in place. But I don't think there's a living pair of
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hands on this planet which didn't touch it, didn't help carry it at
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least a little way.
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Once we'd got it set in place, once we had the concrete curing
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around it and the braces set to keep it upright until its footing
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could take the weight, the Director did say some things. I won't
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try to write them all down here - I don't remember them all, and
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anyway Jen and Eve and I were crying together, just like everyone
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else - little knots of people, big groups, I don't think anyone was
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alone in it. I hope no one was, anyway. I wish I could remember all
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of what he said, but what I do remember, I don't think I'll ever
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forget.
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I don't know how long I'll live, as I am now. But thinking back on
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what the Director said, I don't mind if I live a million years, or
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a thousand, or ten, or one. I never liked to think about it. Not
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for myself, and a thousand times as much, not for the people I
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love. I never could imagine anything coming after, anything except
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the end of everything. It's not as if I know otherwise, even
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now. But I think I might not mind not knowing, because not knowing
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doesn't mean I can't hope, and now I know what I can hope for. I
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can hope that it's not the end of everything, after all. I can hope
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that it's only a little time we have to spend apart, and when that
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time is done, we'll be together again, in a place where no shadows
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fall.
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There were freshly turned patches of earth in that roundish place
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at the center of our hab. I suppose we all knew they were
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graves. Does it seem ghoulish that they're also part of what gives
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our new garden life? I don't think it does. When our trees and our
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flowers are grown, when our memorial garden has become the cool and
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quiet place of solace that we'll help it be, we'll see our friends
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and our lovers in every blossom, every branch, every blade of
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grass. We'll walk and stand and sit and lie with them, all the time
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we spend there. And they'll be there with us, too. And when new
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people come to join us here on our new world - you among them, both
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of you, I dearly hope - we'll bring them to our garden of memory
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and tell them the stories of those who came before, and have gone,
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and whom we hope some day to meet again, in a place where no
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shadows fall.
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That's what we did for one another, too. All the time we were
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laying paths, building benches, planting seeds. We told each other
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stories, and laughed together, and cried together, and somehow by
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the time we were done, it...it wasn't so much. We still miss them,
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and we always will. But the cloud that'd been over us - I'd hardly
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even noticed it was there, with all the time I'd spent hidden in
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Main Control, but it had settled in on me too, it had found me once
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I came out of my hiding place and met everyone else again. It's
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gone now. Like taking a deep breath when you hadn't even realized
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you weren't able to, before. I think it's that way for all of us
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now, and I think that's the way it was meant to be. We're not
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carrying such heavy hearts, any more, now that we've laid our dead
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to rest.
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Well, and for one other reason. We've never really called this
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planet anything other than "Ross", and that makes sense, doesn't
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it? Our star is Ross 128, and our planet is in the catalogue as
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Ross 128 b - but that's a bit of a mouthful, so we shortened it for
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comfort. We never really had time to think about calling it
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anything else. But the Director evidently has, because as we
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finished our planting and mourning, he told us he hasn't been
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thinking of this planet as "Ross" for a while now. He said he
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thought it was time for us to decide on a name, and asked us for
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suggestions, and he had a name of his own in mind to suggest:
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Esperance, which means 'hope'.
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So our planet isn't Ross 128 b any more, except in the catalogue,
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which can do what it likes. We live on Esperance now. And our hab,
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the colony that we're building? That's Hope.
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Director Soloviev did all that for us, in the space of a few
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hours. I'm not sure if I underestimated him before, or if he's
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changed more than I would have imagined he could. Either way, I'm
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glad I was wrong about him. We need the person he's become.
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Of course, we need all of us, really. We aren't trying to keep to
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the original build schedule - that'd be impossible even if everyone
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had survived the crash, because almost all of our lifting gear,
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earthmoving equipment, and heavy machine tooling didn't. But even
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at the slower, merely backbreaking pace we're setting, there's so
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much work to be done! As soon as we were done building our garden,
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Jen got together most of us who've changed, along with the Director
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and about a dozen others who haven't, and we went to work setting
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up solar collectors.
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That engineering problem she mentinoned, right after she got me out
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of the ship - one of our reactors was getting dangerously unstable,
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and we were going to have to shut it down soon. That'd only leave
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one up and running, and we'd need almost all its output to run the
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QEC and maintain our cryo systems so we can keep from losing our
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livestock embryos - there'd be almost nothing left for the hab, the
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labs, and the heavy equipment we've got left. So we needed as much
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solar capacity as we could get, in a hurry.
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As soon as Jen said that, I knew why she'd got all of us who'd
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changed and didn't have other work to do that they absolutely
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couldn't let wait a while. All that gear is really heavy! Usually
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you'd need six or eight people to carry a single panel, but two of
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us could manage it - the balance was a little tricky, and it was
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thirsty work, but we could do it, and we managed to clear out most
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of one whole cargo hold in the space of twenty, twenty-two
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hours. Somewhere in there I think most of the unchanged people went
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to get some sleep, and others came onto the job? I was mostly in
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the hold and not paying much attention to anything except the work,
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but I started seeing new faces after a while.
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Anyway, most of the unchanged people started setting up panels once
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we had enough of them out, while we switched to hauling storage
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batteries. Even for us, it took five to a battery, and we only
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managed to bring out nine of them in twelve hours before Eve made
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us stop - we didn't really mind, we were mostly played out by
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then. But nine will be enough, at least for a few sols! We'll have
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to watch our consumption at night, and some of the high-energy
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experiments will have to wait until we can bring the reactor we
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have left back onto the hab power grid, but we'll still have enough
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power for almost everything. None of our systems even flickered
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when Jen isolated the failing reactor, and it's in cold shutdown
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now.
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By that time we'd all gone to the refectory, though. I hadn't
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realized how hungry I was until I smelled food, and then I was
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ravenous! I think we all were, even the unchanged people who'd been
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working with us - it was getting late in the sol by then, and most
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people were in bed or on shift, but we spent a solid hour and a
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half in there anyway before people started leaving. Tired as I was,
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it felt really good! I mean, eating, of course, but more than that
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just...just being together, all feeling good about the work we'd
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finished together, laughing and joking and sharing a sense of
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accomplishment. I never really knew what that was like, before - I
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never really quite knew how to get along with people, mostly, so I
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mostly just hid in my lab or at home, and even on the ship I tended
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not to spend that much time just being around people outside my
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quarters or the bio section.
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You both know that, of course! It's a wonder we ever even met -
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Sam, if you hadn't kept coming and finding me at that
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convention...But here, it's just different somehow. I mean, you'd
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think it would be weird! With how different we are, how different I
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am especially. But people just seem like they're not quite the same
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somehow. Or maybe it's me, I don't know - maybe it really is
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me. Whatever it is, though, it felt really wonderful just to be
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sitting together laughing and talking with everyone over supper,
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and all of us knowing we'd all just done something amazing
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together. I think that might've been my favorite time here so far.
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I am pretty worn out, though - amazing or not, it was a lot of
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work! But there's one other thing I want to tell you about before I
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finish up and send this. It really is amazing, and I'm honestly not
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sure how I feel about it.
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So, I mentioned that we planted trees and flowers in our
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garden. You're probably wondering how we knew whether they'd even
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germinate! Well, I did end up finding Gareth in botany the other
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day, like I was talking about in my last message. I didn't get to
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ask him right away about joining a fetch team, though, because he
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and Elva were checking on one of her experiments. I don't know if
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I've ever mentioned the two of them, but they're adorable
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together - he's built like a wall, and even by my standards she's a
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little tiny thing, maybe a meter and a half and so slight you
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almost expect her to float from place to place instead of
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walking. They spent a lot of time together back on the ship, and
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they're almost inseparable now, which is no surprise
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considering. But the experiment...
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Remember before I left, when I was telling you all about the ship
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and our plans for the colony? Hydro farming was an interim measure,
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just while we worked out how to cultivate in the ground here? We
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thought it'd take a couple of years! Elva was just doing basic
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testing with one of the ADM maizes and a couple of hardy cereals,
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planting them in our new soil and watering them with our new
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rainwater. We do that mainly just to find out what stops them
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germinating, what kinds of fertilizers they need, simple stuff like
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that, and we expect it to take a long time for two totally
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different ecologies to fit together. But when I came and peeked
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over their shoulders, what did I see but three dishes, each with a
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sample of Ross's sandy soil and a half dozen green shoots poking up
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out of it!
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They were laying out new experiments on a slate and talking a mile
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a minute, and I didn't want to interrupt, so I got my hand unit off
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this terrible armband and took a look at the experiment files. This
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was actually the fifth attempt, and the first four had been
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inconclusive - the seeds had sprouted and then just sort of died, a
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day or so later. Looking at the microscopy, the cell walls had odd
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little punctures, and the cells themselves didn't look right. Like
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the stain hadn't taken properly, or something - it took me a minute
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to remember where I'd seen something like that before: in the blood
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samples we tested with the bug, not long before I went down.
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After I told Gareth and Elva what I thought I was seeing, we took a
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sample from one of the new shoots and looked at it under the scope,
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and - there's no way those plants should be alive right now,
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because they are just full of this bug, swimming freely in the
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vascular tissue and apparently sessile in the parenchymal
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cells. Then I had an idea - well, what I really had was an absolute
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certainty, but those still don't count until you confirm them. I
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checked Eve's med files on those of us who've changed, including my
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own. She hasn't had time for more than the most basic micro
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studies, but looking at blood samples is pretty basic, and guess
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what? Sessile in the leukocytes, and swimming freely in the
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plasma - just like in the plants, only adapted to the mammalian
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cell structure and circulatory system. Nothing like what I'd seen
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before. More like...
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I said before that I don't want to assume "why?" is a question that
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makes sense here, and I still don't. But just think about it a
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minute. No one's ever seen anything like this before - a
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prokaryotic pathogen that can cause disease in plants *and* humans?
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It's been four or five hundred years since anyone even thought
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seriously about the possibility! But what we're seeing here is even
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more unlikely than that, because I'm increasingly convinced that
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"pathogen" and "disease" aren't the right words for this. Not at
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all.
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What we're seeing looks a lot more like some kind of
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endosymbiosis. We're not sure yet whether it's commensal or
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mutualistic, and we haven't ruled out some kind of novel
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parasitism, but it doesn't really matter - the point I'm making
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here is, we only have one other example of anything even remotely
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like this, and that's the relationship between eukaryotic cells and
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mitochondria. But that took millions of years to evolve, and this
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has happened inside of a couple of months.
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I don't know what to think right now. This thing, whatever it is,
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is truly incredible - it's beyond anything we could ever have come
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out here hoping to find! And what it's already done is so
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astonishing that no one's even making any guesses about what it's
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going to do next. I don't have the words to describe what I'm
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feeling right now, as a scientist and as a human being, just to be
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witnessing this at all. To say nothing of helping investigate it!
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But at the same time...I'm not even sure I still am a human being,
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and whether I am or not, what I am now is what the bug has made of
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me, and it's still in me now. Eve and I haven't taken biopsies yet,
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but I see no reason not to assume it can't colonize any and every
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type of cell in a human body. And part of the reason I won't make
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any guesses about what it might do next is because I see no reason
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not to assume that, whatever it does next, it won't do to all of us
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who've changed. To me. And that's terrifying.
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I miss you - I miss both of you so much! I know you'd both comfort
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me if you were here right now. As much as I wish you were, though,
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I'm almost glad you're not. I don't know what's going to happen
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next, to me or to any of us. It hasn't hurt us yet, not in ways
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that are lasting, but we don't know that it's going to keep on
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being so nice. So, much as I miss you and wish you were here, right
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now I'm more glad you're both back home where you're safe.
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I'm going to stop here, I think, and go find Eve. Wake her up, if I
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have to. She's got to be thinking about this too, and maybe she can
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tell me something that'll make me feel better...if not, maybe just
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talking about it with someone who's in the same situation will
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help.
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Silly as it is to say, please try not to worry too much about me -
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a lot of this is just the way you start to think when you're up too
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late on a lonely night. Writing to you about it has helped some,
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though, and one way or another, I'm sure I'll be fine
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tomorrow. After all, we don't have any reason to think it will do
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us harm, either, and I think I'll have an easier time remembering
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that once the sun's come up again.
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I think I'll sit in the garden and watch that sunrise, when it
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comes. Voortrekker's shard faces west, and there's a bench in just
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the perfect spot to let me watch the orange light of our new sun
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touch its tip and spread down over its surface. I put that bench
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there myself, and I'm going to sit there and watch the sun rise and
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remind myself that, if our new home wanted to hurt us, it would've
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done so long before now. And until then, I'll go find Eve, and
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we'll get through the night together.
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I love you both. Stay safe and look out for each other, and Lia,
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you heal quickly and get back up on your feet again, please! Both
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of them.
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With love as always - your Kit.
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