A Certain Reverence
L.R. Lam

Day 1
We left Earth today.
My ma drove me up to Sutherland Spaceport herself, and I left Edinburgh behind. The smog was bad for my last day on the planet, tinging everything a sickly yellow. Not many cars on the road, just those creaky cargo trekkers. Ma held my hand the whole way, as if I was still a wee girl. The government ordered us a much nicer car than we could have borrowed. No glitches in the self-guide. No getting lost. No sputtering off to the side of the road half the time because the old censors didn’t know it needed a charge.
When we arrived, my ma gave me the strongest hug and a face full of her curly black hair. Her dark brown hands gripped my lighter brown ones, leaving paler indents on my skin.
She gave me a little present, wrapped in plastic, and told me to open it once we lifted off. Once Earth was just a little speck in the sky. Open it and think of me, she said, and I’ll be thinking of you.
She got me then. I had to give her one last squeeze then hoof it, or else I’d start bawling right in front of my new crew.
My ma almost stopped me going. They’d already made an exception for my age (next youngest on board is twenty-five compared to my nineteen), but she could have overruled it. She let me go in the end, though. Even if it means I’ll never see her again. Even if I went there and immediately back again, 44 years will pass on Earth. She’d be pushing 100. She could be a stubborn enough old biddy to make it that long. Or the aliens will give us the secret to eternal life, and I’ll never have to lose her at all.
My ma gave the chef all her recipes, made her promise to make them for me on my birthday. From stovies to groundnut stew. From cranachan to puff puff. Didn’t have the heart to tell her we’d mostly be eating astronaut food. Lots of things out of packets.
Leaving Earth was like all the practice runs and yet nothing like ’em. We all screamed as we left the atmosphere. Fifty-two souls on board. The sound almost drowned out the roar of the engines.
Earth must be a little speck now, though there are no windows, not with the speed we’re going. I unwrapped the present. It’s so cheesy. A cross-stich, the cloth dyed like a galaxy of purple, blue, and pink. A few white stars, and then, across the middle:
HOME SWEET HOME
Had to laugh. It’s perfect though. Already hung it up above my bunk. That speck of Earth is everything I ever knew, already thousands of miles away.
It was only after the first ship arrived after a forty-year journey that the Proxis gave us speed-of-light tech so we could send the next round of ships and missions. The first ship was Chinese, American, and Russian crew. Must have been something, to land on what you think is an empty planet only to find out the aliens were there all along. Surprise! Time for first contact.
The real kicker is the Proxis had already come and observed us over the centuries, none of us any the wiser. They watched as we suffocated the world. Let us carry on with it. Arseholes.
I mean, being the first humans to ‘discover’ aliens is cool and all, but it also must have felt pretty shite for those who did the Starshot mission. Spend forty years of your life in space only to realise you could have made it in a tenth of the time if these aliens had felt like sharing. Then again, the astronauts/cosmonauts could go home when they thought they’d die in space or on an empty planet. So that’s something.
The Proxis want to learn more of us, see our ways, our culture. We’re the Scotland ship. Most countries have launched their own, though a few are sharing to save resources. Scotland’s always dead set on doing it our own way, though, aren’t we?
So we’re all headed to this planet circling that dull red star to show them all this corner of humanity has to offer. And in return, we find out if they’re going to help us. And even if they help us, who’s to say we’ll get back in time to find there’s any Earth left to save?
-Blair
31 October 2035
Official log of crewmember Blair Orji, acrobat, singer, and research assistant.
Day 29: We’re all settled into Kinnara-3, our new space home. I helped double-check inventory with Junior Scientist Kenneth Callahan. We tested the suits, ensured all our radiation goggles are in working order, and every member on crew is continuing their research. I’m starting with general knowledge then I’ll figure out what I’ll specialise in.
Science fiction films have it all wrong, I’m sad to report. One, we’re not allowed to actually look at the stars because we’d be fried from radiation. But even if we could see them, the stars wouldn’t look like threads or a tunnel when you move close to the speed of light. All we’d see is a hazy grey orb—residual radiation from the Big Bang. We’d see the cosmic microwave background blueshifted into the visible and the stars would be blueshifted to X-Ray. These are the types of things I’m learning on this ship.
The stars are invisible, but they’re still there.
Back on Earth, where you are, time’s passing differently. We’re going 98% the speed of light, so our journey will feel like slightly longer than 4.24 light years—it’ll technically be 4.33 years. But for you back on Earth, 22 years will pass. I’m not sure I’ll ever get my head around it.
We’ve already received contact from the a Proxi alien. It’s basically an email, but thanks to their tech it arrives instantly rather than after years. They won’t share the mechanisms, but I can send and receive messages back home thanks to the same tech, and I’m grateful for that.
He’ll (I mean, he’s been using male pronouns, but that doesn’t exactly translate into Proxi gender and sexuality) be interacting with all of us as we make our way towards him and his planet.
There are small charged particles hurtling through space at the speed of light. The Proxis gave us shielding because a shipful of dead humans arrive is likely less interesting to them. I’m conducting experiments with the other scientists on the ship to try and discover how it works. I’ve attached a sample equation. This is an example of the type of things we work on up here in space.
Until next time!
Click here to see Blair’s calculation!
Day 334
Haven’t updated this since the first night almost a year ago. We have to make so many official logs back to Earth that the last thing I want to do is sit and actually write longhand. I hate those logs now. Have to write ’em knowing they’re going to be read by millions of humans is hard. We’re supposed to sound all formal yet conversational at the same time.
Some of my crewmen are really, really honest with what life is like on the ship. But most of us self-censor and are pretty damn boring. Today I studied this. Today I calculated that. Today I ran this experiment. I like the work, but writing up the results for those back home feels fake. I have to tone down the Scottishness because Americans don’t follow it.
Turns out I’m ready to scribble away in this thing when I’m in a flap. So here we go.
Kenny the Bastard Junior Scientist told the heid Science Officer herself I was ‘difficult to work with’, just because I corrected him on a calculation about the shields. What he neglected to tell the Science Officer – and I kept my own mouth shut about since I’m no a grass – was he said he wouldn’t be corrected by no huddy.
Aye, I’d heard what some of them called us. Huddies. The ones who knew a wee bit of science but were learning more on the way. They chose some of us because of what we could offer on the performance side. The dancers, the singers, the acrobats, like me. I’m only on this ship because I’m bendy and can do three flips in a row. That’s only what a couple of them think, anyway. And plenty of the boffins are learning acting or singing or studying up on their Rabbie Burns.
So aye, I bit back at him. He’s just mad that the alien Proxi contact for our ship, Gall, writes to me more than him. Not my fault Kenny is boring. And he won’t get chosen to perform in front of the Proxis. He’ll only see them from afar, if at all.
Poor, wee Kenny. Tch.
-Blair
Day 989
Transcript of conversation with crewmember Blair Orji and Proxi Contact D-3, alias Gall.
Blair: Why do you talk to me more than the other members of the crew?
Gall: You ask the most questions.
Blair: Ah, so you like the bolshy ones. OK. Here’s a question: are you looking forward to meeting us? Or are you like ugh, humans, crashing our planet, pure annoying.
Gall: ‘Looking forward to.’ That is such a human way of phrasing it.
Blair: What’s the alien way?
Gall: I believe it would translate to the idea that we view your coming as a gift that we will receive with reverence.
Blair: Right.
Gall: You’re holding something back.
Blair: I’m wanting to say something cheeky, but it doesn’t matter. I did another calculation. I know this is like a kid showing you their crayon drawing—I mean, even to the other humans—but will you receive my gift with reverence?
Gall: Humans don’t have a monopoly on sarcasm. But yes, I will gladly.
Blair: Nice one.
Day 1366
Had one of those shite practice sessions today where nothing clicked. Did my warm-up. Plenty of stretching. Worked with coach (and lead of Astrophysics) on flip technique. He made me do a handstand for two minutes! Thought I was going to fall on my heid by the end. Coach says I keep tilting my heid to the side when the movements get tough. Must work on that. Though would the aliens really gie a toss?
Did eighty minutes on silks. Then cool down. Finally. Whole body feels like jelly. Been awhile since coach put me through my paces like that. We’ve been up in the stars for almost eight months now. They say artificial gravity is the same, but it’s not. I move differently up here.
Just had a tidy scran of shite outta a packet and now it’s rec. Going to nap. Then it’s singing practice. Today’s creative. Back to the science tomorrow. Sent Gall a message, but he hasn’t responded. Maybe because we’re getting closer. Or maybe he finds me dull as a doornail.
I want to call my mam. She’s good at talking me down when I get in a faff. She does wish she’d kept me back, though she never says it. It floats there between us though. She’s turning 63 back on Earth any time now. Better call her before I nap—could sleep through it.
-Blair
Day 1580
We’re landing tomorrow. Tonight, we’re circling Proxima Centauri b, which the Proxis themselves call something we cannae even hope to pronounce. Spent the last few years trying to get some sort of handle on Proxi linguistics, but our throats are never going to master it. Turns out aliens like bagpipes because they sound the closest to their language, ain’t that a laugh?
At least from all my hard work I can understand a few of the Proxi language recordings now. It does sound a bit like someone put a tennis ball in a blender.
I wanted to learn enough to say ‘Hi, how are you?’ to Gall. Don’t think I’ll manage.
It’ll be weird to meet him, the one who interrogated us under the guise of being our new alien chum. Never knew what answers he wanted me to give. He liked my shite banter, so I gave him plenty of it.
Proxima Centauri b does look pretty from up here. It’s tidal locked, so half of it is always darker than the devil’s waistcoat, as my gran liked to say, and the other half is burned to a crisp. We’re landing in the Twilight Zone since that’s the only place humans can survive. Even the Proxis don’t go on the surface of nightside or dayside—they stay in the subterranean lattice underneath the entire planet to protect themselves from the solar storms. When we lower into the atmosphere, it’s definitely alien. We’re able to lift the shields on the windows for the first time in over four years.
The Proxima Centauri sun is dim. From the planet it looks larger than ours, all red and hazy, but the actual sun is a wee thing, with a radius a tenth of the size of our sun. The binary star of Alpha Centauri blaze in two, tiny pinpoints, right next to each other from where we’re looking. The oceans and mountains are jagged, broken teeth. Look at me, trying to be all figurative in my writing. My ma would be proud.
Haven’t been able to talk to Ma much recently. Even though the Proxis shared the tech, it still takes so long for the Scottish Space Agency to comb through it before sending it to her, then they look at it all again before they send back. Nosy buggers.
The videos always come eventually, even if sometimes they’re scrambled and Ma sounds like a robot. In each one, she’s that much greyer, that much more lined. But I look the same.
It’ll be cold planetside. I’m so used to being on a starship programmed to be perfect for humans. Down there, even in the twilight zone, it’ll be 8°C. No frozen water, but even on an alien planet it’s going to be dreich weather. Hah.
The gravity is higher than Earth. Our suits will help keep us warm, protect us from the radiation, do what they can for the gravity when we’re not in the human quarters on Proxima. The aliens can shift gravity whenever they want underground, evidently. Means if we get on their tits, it’d be easy enough to nix us.
This all feels like a joke. We package up what makes humans great and the aliens make their call. Are we even selling ’em the real thing? Or is it like the fake tat we tout at the tourists, which isnae anything like true Scotland at all?
It doesn’t feel like home. Part of me doesn’t want to go down. I havenae told anyone, and it’s hard to even write it in here, but I’m afraid of the aliens. Of what they’ll be like. Why would they even want to save us?
Even though we’ve spoken most days for two years, and even though I’ve learned more from him than my own mentors, I’m a little afraid of Gall.
-Blair
Day 1581
This has been a day.
I knew meeting an alien would be weird. But it was still way weirder than I expected.
Only the humans who live permanently on Proxima ever see the aliens as they are. Despite all the folk back home bitherin them to snap a photo, no one’s cracked. Tabloids back home keep publishing fakes.
I knew the Proxis would use their humanoid avatars. None of us have a clue what they’re made of—clones or androids or mouldable goo, fuck knows. They say they do it to make us more at ease. Just means we imagine them all the more monstrous.
Took ages to put on the suit and actually get off the spaceship where we’ve spent the last four years. That first step on alien soil, though. That was something.
We all said ‘one giant step for mankind’ as we touched down. Think we all grew a little space crazy, near the end. Knowing this was coming. We’re still breathing artificial air, we can’t feel the atmosphere on our skin. I wonder what the planet smells like.
We only spent an hour on the surface. The sky was all blue and pink. The planet’s tidally locked—no sunrise or sunsets in the Twilight Zone. The rocks were striated, pointed at the top, like the Quiraing but in colours of dull fire instead of green, black, and the purple of heather. No plant life, no other animals. Dinnae know how anything could survive here at all.
Below ground is a different story. It was warmer down there, though still baltic for humans. The suit kept me toasty enough, but ice frosted the edges of the caves and tunnels, the striped rock carved smooth. Our muffled steps echoed as we twisted our way to the meeting place. Light came from red, glowing fungus-like plants. Aye, it looked real evil.
So I was pure gobsmacked to see a man dressed up in full Scottish Jacobite garb in the middle of the underground alien tunnel. No word of a lie. Kilt, sporran, red socks, white ruffled shirt, a cap with a bloody fake thistle in it—the works! Like he was about to run across the field at Culloden.
All fifty of us stopped and stared. Kenny fainted, and I almost guffawed at that. They had to send him back to the ship.
I don’t think anyone could really process what was happening. Whatever we were expecting when we came face to face with an alien, it wasnae this. I couldn’t help it—I laughed. His heid swivelled towards me. Eyes were too green.
Gall.
He gave us a hearty hello, and he had something resembling a Scottish accent, but it was all tilted. Hard to put your finger on why, but once we were close enough to him, he could only just pass for human. His skin was just that bit too smooth. Those green eyes didn’t blink often enough. Ginger whiskers too even. Uncanny valley.
Gall kept turning his heid towards me. I was all self-conscious; my face was a sweaty mess within my helmet. One of my braids was in my face that I couldnae move aside. Gall gave something meant to be a smile.
The Captain spoke to our Jacobite, polite like, though I bet his heart was hammering as fast as mine. There was much pomp and circumstance. I wanted to talk to him. Have a conversation that wasn’t recorded to be dissected and disseminated. Ask him what I really wanted to know: where were the aliens? Were they all watching us, somehow? What does he really want from us? From me?
The back of my neck prickled.
Gall took us through more winding corridors until we entered a large arena. This is where we’d perform. They’d carved it special. The stands were all in shadow. They would seal this area off, pump it full of oxygen so we could perform without the suits. Amend the gravity, like they do in the human quarters.
The Captain wasnae good at hiding his greed and hope. That the aliens will gie us what we need. Knowledge. Tech. Power. The key to changing our dying world. Plugging up our punctured atmosphere. Our bairns growing up. If they don’t help, then in no time we’re all refugees, hoping these aliens let us claim sanctuary anyway.
We all had to go to the ship psychologist after meeting the aliens. I found it a waste of time. Yeah, aliens are weird. Who knew? Think others took it harder, though. Guess I ken that.
Have to go practise. Feels like all I do is push my body to its limits and then push my brain just as hard. Cannae remember the last time I just . . . was.
-Blair
Day 1583
Finally had a chance to talk to Gall face to face. Still I dunno how to feel about being one of his ‘chosen’ crewmen. Half-honoured, half-suspicious. He took his time, picking through the crew. One day, he talked to the Captain. The next to a scientist, then a singer. Finally, the acrobat.
The crew slept on the ship. We’d gone down to the human settlement, clustered in the Twilight Zone. Full of the people from the first mission who had decided not to go back to Earth. Their bairns, who’d never known Earth at all.
Life on Proxi still took its toll, despite alien tech. They wore goggles to see better in the dimness. They even ate the glowing fungus the aliens did. I tried some—it tasted beyond foul. Like rubbish even the Edinburgh seagulls wouldn’t touch.
Some of the humans spoke some weird blend of a humanoid Proxi. I could follow along, had some conversations with them. These folk are changed, though. I wasnae sure if they felt like kin. But they seemed happy enough, on this cold rock so far from home. They had the option to come back to Earth, if they wanted, but so far none had volunteered.
My first few chats with Gall, when he finally called for me, were just like when we sent messages on the ship. I watched what I said, and he was dead evasive.
Gall likes to play at being human. He’s really hamming it up. I wonder how much of himself he tucks away. Reading between the lines, his species have extra senses he cannae even describe to us because they’re so far beyond our ken. They see more on the infrared spectrum than us. He tried to project an image to me of how he viewed me. Kinda looked like I was made of fire, which was, to be honest, pretty ace.
Finally asked him why he appeared so overbearingly Scottish to meet us. Didn’t he realise that while we all love our country, Too Scottish things are always aimed at the tourists, not us?
He cocked his heid, fake thistle bobbing, and my suit turned off. The lights went dark. I clawed at the handheld on my wrist, desperately trying to reboot, imagining suffocating and my heid exploding.
Relax, the alien told me. Said I could breathe in here just fine and might as well take off my helmet. They were upgrading the caverns, so they could make any area underground human-friendly, rather than only the area with the original settlers.
Every science fiction film I’d seen told me that was a bad idea, but I did as he asked. The air smelled braw. Crisp, cold, damp with the smell of fresh water and deep earth. I hadnae smelled real air in years, and never anything so clean.
Gall leaned against the smooth wall. The last time he’d been to Earth had been during the Jacobite era, and he still had a fondness for it. He’d spent twenty years in Scotland before he came back. I dinnae know how he would have passed as human. Maybe his avatar back then was missing a few more teeth and a bit ragged ’round the edges.
I asked how old he was and received an elegant shrug as an answer. I guess that means ancient.
Couldnae help asking what he really looked like, half-afraid, half-curious. If he burst out of his fake human suit into some Cthulhu monster, I would officially lose my shite.
He smirked as if he guessed my thoughts. Said we wouldn’t be able to see much of them, if he showed me. Outside our light spectrum.
I can’t hope to describe it in your language, he said, and you can’t learn ours enough to understand. So let me be as I am. Here. Now.
I could only blink at that.
He pointed out my suit wasn’t recording anymore, so we could have a real conversation that no one could hear. Even writing down the gist of it here now I’m back in the ship feels like a risk. Dinnae want anyone to find this, but I dinnae want to forget.
So I asked him why all this pomp? Why make us put everything into sending ships across the stars to perform for them? If they’ve already been to Earth, they know what humans are like. That we’re cruel and kind and stubborn and never sure of ourselves. They know our art, our cultures. What’s different about making a ragtag group of performers-slash-scientists essentially put a Fringe show out on the fringes of the universe?
Much of it was above his head, Gall told me, but they had a plan.
Vague as fuck, right? I told him they’re toying with us, that we’re mice and they’re the cats.
He asked me if I thought humanity deserves to be saved.
And that stopped me short. Because aye, of course, I think we do. But how to say why?
He kept blethering. I’ll try to write it as close as I remember:
—Say we give you this technology you require. What do you do with it? Do you heal your planet only to start killing it again? Kill each other? Your planet is already overcrowded. You’ve made some progress in terraforming, but it’d take generations for Mars to be habitable. And what then—you keep spreading your violent, selfish ways through the universe? Is what we give you a weapon or a gift? If we save you, do you consider us your kings, your oppressors, your gods?
His questions rained down on me. I don’t know the answers to any of ’em. I’m just one lass. I can’t speak for humanity. A lot of what he said made a sick sort of sense. There’ve been times where I’ve wondered if we’re worth it, but then there’s some spark that shows just how amazing we humans can be.
He said he didn’t expect me to have the answers. That, perhaps, there were no answers. But that he and the others were still looking forward to our show.
Then I realised that this wasnae the first time they had made this call.
His heid tilted up at that, bathed in the red glow.
–Do you really think we’re the only two species out here?
–And what, you study all of them, deciding which ones are worth helping, if they need it, and which to turn away?
–Maybe you should stay, then. After your crewmen leave. You’d be able to understand us better.
–Stay on a planet with people who don’t care if we die, I said. So tempting.
He smiled and passed me a little orb, stored in his sporran. It was pretty, made from the striped rock of the planet, polished to a high shine. Like a mini-model of Proxi.
I thanked him for it, but I also wanted to throw it at his heid.
–If we helped you and you knew your Earth was safe, would you stay?
I considered, my heart hammering.
I asked him what I could do here. My science wasn’t great. I didn’t really jive with the other humans who’d been here for generations. Three had decided to go back.
–You could do what you liked. Learn about other stars, other worlds.
–Other aliens? I asked.
–Maybe, he said with a sly smile.
I hmmed, not giving him an answer, but thanking him for the orb. I put my helmet on, desperate to return to my crew.
The last thing I said to him was that I couldn’t speak for all of humanity, but I could speak for me. And I would consider the gift of life something worth all the reverence I could give.
He let me leave.
-Blair
Day 1589
We performed.
There’s something that happens when the day you’ve been anticipating for years actually comes to pass. It never lives up to that shiny, sparkling dream in your mind. Nothing ever goes smoothly.
And we performed in a seemingly empty auditorium, except for the small cluster of the Proxi humans in a corner.
Evidently the aliens were all there, crushed to the gills (I don’t know if they actually have gills – my guess is nah). The rafters were shadowed, and we might not have been able to view them anyway. We all imagined monsters.
Still put on the best show we could. We twisted, twirled. They’d installed silks and I climbed them, hung upside down, my legs in a split, blood rushing to my heid. The music played and swirled, acoustics amazing in that underground cavern. I wore my fitted, sparkling leotard, the star of Proxima Centauri stitched to my left shoulder, Proxima Centauri b marking a stitched orbit around my torso, the planet on my ribs. Me and the other acrobats and dancers moved through the choreography. On the trapeze, I caught Damien, and his hands were slippery despite the chalk. He didnae fall, and neither did I.
Mindy the contortionist twisted into impossible shapes. By the end of it, we’d performed basically a full circus, minus the animals and the clowns (because I’m nae convinced clowns are gonna persuade ’em humanity is worth saving). After we finished the acrobat section, I moved into singing, my voice rising through the auditorium.
I sang a mixture of traditional Scottish ballads. Trevor, our baritone, joined me in the duets. We sang popular songs (aye, we sang the Proclaimers even though we’ve gone a hell of a lot further than five hundred miles). When my bit was done, we put on our other shows. At the comedy, the humans laughed, but we had no idea if the aliens did. The scattered human applause felt so quiet in the grand, empty space.
Some of the others put on an adaptation of Caledonia, and another put on Wicked. I did see one of the humans wipe away a tear, and that was something.
I cannae even bring myself to write all we did. Just this much has worn me out. It went on for hours. We put everything we had into every performance. So much work, so much sweat and tears and heartache. We’d travelled across the galaxy but it seemed as empty as a shite Fringe show no one wanted to see.
As the never-ending twilight of the Proxi planet wore on, we wilted.
At the end, as we bowed and rose back up, still panting. The humans, bless ’em, gave it their all, and I beamed over at them.
We’d pleased our own kind, to be sure, but we still had no clue what the aliens thought.
Gall came forward. Tilted his heid again. And he clapped. Once, twice, three times, then faster. The humans joined in again, even louder than before. Some gave cheers.
Though we still saw none of the aliens in the rafters, the walls began to shake in a patter of noise.
The aliens applauded us. Better late than never.
Our tired soldiers straightened, we beamed at the darkness. We took another bow.
Gall grinned at us, showing his too-white, too-even teeth.
He told us he accepted our gift with open arms.
Then he sent us back to the ship to await our fate.
Tosser.
I left a message for my ma. She’s already 67 now.
-Blair
Day 1590
This morning, we still didnae have our answer.
I’m still thinking about Gall’s offer of staying.
I met with him again, another non-recorded blip. Last time, the crew was well freaked out my suit had malfunctioned. They’d given me a brand new one, yet with a blink of an eye, Gall turned it dark and I breathed the fresh air again.
The cavern pulsed red from the creepy fungus. Water dripped. We were so far underground. Above us was the beginnings of the dayside part of the planet, scorched dry. Every eleven days, we orbited that red dwarf. Each night, the stars changed. I’d helped the astronomers map it. A couple of days of every eleven, we face towards Earth. You can see our star, but not our planet. I always blew my ma a kiss.
I’d brought Gall’s gift with me, twisting the orb this way and that.
If I stayed and learned about the aliens, I asked him, would I be deciding their fate, too?
Gall shrugged, an oddly human gesture. He said it wasn’t likely. Only happened once a millennia or so.
–Ah yes, I said, bitter. I’m only a blip to you. A tiny, interesting ant.
–No, Gall said. You’re so much more.
Gall leaned forward, his hands on his knees. And I swear, for a moment, he glimmered. His skin flashed red, orange, yellow. Like the fired version of myself in infrared. A different shape unlike anything I could describe. Tendrils, looping over each other, spiralling out, like a mini-galaxy.
Gall showed me himself. Bright and glorious. Then he disappeared back into his simulacrum of a man.
He reached out a hand, closed my fingers around the orb.
–I gave you our answer before you ever performed, he said. We made up our mind before you even landed. We enjoyed the show, just the same.
Then he was gone.
-Blair
Day 1691
The spacecraft leaves in an hour.
Everyone’s all loaded up, ready to speed back to Earth to save it. I don’t know if the ship will arrive in time. But we can try.
I was all packed, all set, all ready to go. Twenty-two years outside the ship, four and a bit years inside, and I’d be back on that sickly planet. Maybe my ma would still be kicking, maybe she wouldn’t. We’d only spent a few months here, rather than the year or two we’d mapped out, a lengthy courtship with the aliens until we wore them down and they gave us what we wanted.
When I walked up to the Captain and handed him the orb a week ago, he didn’t know what to make of it. Almost scoffed until I held it in my hands and it started syncing with our computers. Hell if I know how it works, but it stores an infinite amount of scientific stuff. As the information streamed up on the screen, he sobbed. Everyone on board did. I stood there, thinking I’d howl but feeling … I don’t know. Like it wasnae enough.
The sour look on Bastard Kenny’s face was worth it though. He’d been completely useless on this mission. Kenny can fuck off.
Everyone else was lovely. I got picked up, twirled around. Performer-scientists and scientist-performers alike. We had a massive party on board. Some of the Proxi-humans from the first ship came. Gall and a couple of other Proxi-avatars came too, amused by the sight of humans on the lash.
I’m sitting on the craft now, in my wee cabin. I’ve my ma’s cross‑stitch in my lap, left hand running along the even stitches.
I really didn’t think I’d want to stay. There’s a lot of minuses:
Cold
Aliens are weird, though not as bizarro as I first thought
Ditto to the other humans
Red mushrooms are disgusting
No ma?
No one else from our ship decided to stay. I’m not even sure if they asked. They wanted to go home, and I get that. I do. But Earth had nothing for me but my ma.
I phoned her up yesterday. Her hair’s pure white now. She’s still a stunner.
She always smiles so big when she sees me.
I showed her the cross stitch and she laughed. She said she barely remembered making it. I guess it was a long time ago, for her.
She noticed when my face went all solemn.
–What do you want to ask, child?
–Are you mad, that I dinnae want to come back to Earth?
She shook her head and told me of course not. She’d known since I was two I was a girl who liked to wander. But she missed me every day.
Time to ask. I took in a deep breath.
–My mate Gall, he said they could bring you here, if you wanted. I know it’s a hell of a step, and you have so much back out there and I’m selfish to ask but—
She held up a hand and cut me off. Said she’d have her bags packed and they could come get her as soon as they liked. That she’d only been waiting and hoping for me to ask.
Gall sent a ship out right away. It’ll still take almost nine years before she’s hear. Turns out even the aliens cannae go faster than the speed of light. She’ll be thirty years older than when I last saw her. She’s coming, though, and I cannae wait.
But until then, there’s plenty to keep me busy.
There’s a universe out here.
-Blair
L.R. Lam was first Californian and now Scottish.
Lam is the Sunday Times Bestselling and award-winning author of Dragonfall (the Dragon Scales series), the Seven Devils duology (co-written with Elizabeth May), Goldilocks, the Pacifica novels False Hearts and Shattered Minds, and the Micah Grey trilogy, which begins with Pantomime. They are also a writing coach at The Novelry.
You can find out all about her at at her website: www.lrlam.co.uk
Art: Sara Julia


First Published in Scotland in Space, published by The New Curiosity Shop/Shoreline of Infinity
Available from Shoreline of Infinity/Scotland in Space