A Cure for Homesickness

Anne Charnock

Curious multi-level spaceship orbiting a green planet.

You look rough,” says her supervisor.

“Sorry. Self-inflicted. I didn’t take my probe tablet this morning.”

Jeez. Why not?”

“Got distracted.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Thought I could handle it.” Helena drags her palms down her face. “I’m wiped out. Headache coming on.”

“I could report you… Go back now. Take an early break.”

She retraces her walking commute through the platform’s labyrinth. A dose of daylight might help, she thinks, but there’s no chance of that. At the end of her fifteen-hour shift at 2700 hours she’ll catch the last sunrays out on the viewing deck. Together with her co-workers she’ll drain a couple of beers and watch the scintillating green sunset as it slowly calms and fades. Then there’s Ray’s farewell dinner, off-platform. Could be a late night.

She didn’t bother with probe-and-fix tablets back home. Waste of money. Her mother pestered and even offered to pay. But what was the point? Helena could tell by the colour of her urine if she was boozing too much. And her weight wasn’t exactly a problem. “Look, Mother, I know what I ought to do – a bit more exercise, drink more water, cut down on dairy. Save your money. I feel perfectly all right.” Helena relented when this new job came up because taking the variant probe-and-fix medication was a condition of employment. “A plain physiological necessity,” said the recruiter. “It’s the only way anyone copes with a thirty-eight- hour day.”

I’m an idiot, forgetting to take it this morning. As she trudges deeper beyond the administration decks and towards the personnel quarters, she wonders what her mother might be doing at this very moment. What time is back home? She can never work it out.

She’ll message her mother, she decides, at the end of today’s shift and bring her up to date: debts paid off, and the cost of the return transport almost covered. She’ll be relieved for me.

Helena takes the stairs two at a time. Her headache is thickening.

Lately she’s considered extending her contract to help rack up her savings. Most people stay longer than they intended. I’ll broach the idea with Mother. See how she reacts.

Eight years ought to be enough – eight home years, that is. She’s done the maths, but she knows if she can just stretch to ten her wage-monkey days will be over.

And then she can focus on her health.

For the first time since she arrived six years ago, she recalls her mother singing a sea shanty in the kitchen. It had to be a Tuesday; she always baked on a Tuesday, however tired she felt. Always scones and… That’s unbelievable! I’d forgotten about her bread and  butter pudding; my favourite. Come to think of it, the food here is kind of… disappointing. No, it’s way worse than that!

Helena is tempted to send an apology and cry off Ray’s dinner this evening. The meal will be barely mediocre.

When was the last time, she wonders, that she truly enjoyed her food? She recalls a lunch she once had, way back, on holiday with… that cool guy. What was his…? Though she can’t remember his name, she sees a white-clothed table on a cramped narrow veranda, which overlooks a steep wooded valley. She mouths the words, “Per primo, una zuppa di verdure per favore, di secondo, insalata di Cesari con Pollo, e da bere, vino bianco di Orvietto e una bottiglia di acqua mineral frizzante. Grazie.” And, to herself, I love Italy! Long lunches… under the shade of vines.

Each footstep creates a shock wave that passes through her body and reverberates inside her skull. But she still manages to smile. Those fields of sleepy sunflowers. And those crazy frescoes in…? A green-faced devil eating a naked man, whole, head first. She places one hand on her head to dampen the pain.

Why these memories? God! I hope I’m not homesick.

On the final stretch towards her living quarters she detects a metallic smell with hints of synthetic freshener disguising staleness. An industrial smell, a hermetically-sealed-environment- type smell. She hasn’t noticed it before. She lifts her right hand, pushes errant strands from her face and, fleetingly, she imagines a fresh salty breeze blowing along the corridor. She licks her lips.

As she opens the door to her windowless quarters she stalls and appraises the narrow steel-framed bed with its off-white bedding, the narrow desk – little more than a shelf – and the bare steel floor. This isn’t fucking minimal. It’s dire. She kicks a shoe across the room.

The probe-and-fix tablet lies by the sink. So I did take one out of the bottle – no prize for that. The tablet looks like a piece of hard shiny toffee but it tastes more like fudge. She swallows it without water and reaches for her toothbrush. A hesitation. She doesn’t have time.

Out into the corridor, deserted at mid-shift, she takes long strides towards the first of many flights of stairs. As she takes her first step up, she halts. William. He was called William. And three steps higher she stops again. It wasn’t bread and butter pudding. My favourite was rice pudding with a burnt skin. Is she making rice pudding today? Is it Tuesday at home?

Back at her workstation, Helena pulls up her day’s assignment, deletes her earlier substandard work and starts from scratch. She feels no trace of a headache. I feel better already. I’ll not make that mistake again. She kicks the table leg to check there’s no knock-on pain inside her head. No. All clear.

In truth, she now admits to herself, she grew to like burnt skin on rice pudding only because Mother served it so often; an acquired taste born of repeated kitchen oversights. Why didn’t she ever set a timer? She shifts in her chair so that her back is straight, her feet flat on the floor. And William…nothing came of that little fling. Though Italy was lovely, except for the insect bites and those bloody noisy neighbours.

Helena flicks her assignment aside and brings up her contract of employment. She finds the paragraph header: Contract duration. A few paces away, her supervisor looks up from a conversation and raises her eyebrows at Helena. She replies with a thumbs up.

There’s no real reason to rush back home, Helena decides. In the tiny on-screen box that allows for two numerals, she overwrites 8 with 11 and submits her request for a three-year extension.

Anne Charnock’s writing career began in journalism and her articles appeared in New Scientist and The Guardian. Her novel Dreams Before the Start of Time won the Arthur C. Clarke Award (2018). Her debut, A Calculated Life, was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award and The Kitschies (2014), and The Enclave won the BSFA Short Fiction Award (2017).

Anne’s short stories and non-fiction have been published in anthologies including 2084 (2017), Best of British Science Fiction 2017 and 2020, and Writing the Future (2023).

Anne lives on the Isle of Bute, Scotland.

A Cure for Homesickness was first published in Shoreline of Infinity 11½, the Edinburgh Science Festival Special, in 2018.