3.2
03 February
I.R.V. Intercession
Extra-Kuiper Space
209 A.U. from Earth
“I’m not a priest,” Brother Michael objected.
“Never said you were,” Igbal said back.
Michael studied this man, this agnostic trillionaire, wondering (as always) what exactly made him tick. Still eight months shy of his sixty-fourth birthday, Igbal Renz had already invented more and built more and accomplished more than Franklin or Edison or da Vinci, securing an outsized place in the history of technology, and in history, period. He’d once turned down a Nobel Prize!
And yet, Godless and heedless, he didn’t seem to really care about the money or the glory or the infamy, except insofar as they helped him achieve his other goals. Which were numerous and grandiose, this mission being a prime example. Whether Igbal should have spent those trillions improving life on Earth was immaterial; here they were. Michael had been commanded by His Holiness Himself, Pope Dave the Frowny, to be a part of this crew, and so he was. But what exactly did that mean?
“As far as I know, none of you have been baptized, or are even culturally Catholic,” Michael said carefully.
In the 0.1 gee of the ship’s acceleration, they were neither floating nor standing, but sort of loosely resting their feet on the floor, as one might in neck-deep water. Michael himself was used to standing in Lunar gravity, which was seventy percent stronger, and he had still not quite adjusted to this. He had to remind himself, moment to moment, not to flex his slippers enough to send him bouncing toward the ceiling. It was easier, he thought, for those accustomed to weightlessness, although they seemed to struggle with it, too, in their own ways.
“Can it, friar,” Igbal told him. “Nobody’s asking you to perform a liturgy. But you’re the chaplain of this vessel, and we need some freaking spiritual guidance.”
Michael wasn’t a friar, either, but various heads nodded, and voices grumbled. Assembled here in the wardroom were not only Michael and Igbal, but also Engineering Officer Sandy Lincoln, Information Officer Harv Leonel, Helmsman Hobie Prieto, Chef-and-Purser Thenbecca Jungermann, Maintenance Officer Dong Nguyen, and Flight Surgeon Rachael Lee. Michael himself—Brother Michael Jablonski, erstwhile Prior of St. Joseph of Cupertino Monastery, was in charge of the ship’s recycling and life support systems. All of the people here were experienced astronauts, who had built things and fixed things and dealt with emergencies. All awake and unfrozen so they’d be available on a moment’s notice, if needed.
“I’m at your service,” Michael assured them all, “but it’s not clear what you think I can do. Or what Pope Dave thinks I should.”
The “wardroom” was simply the crew quarters, with the doors of all the crew berths rolled shut, the table folded out, and the lights set to a businesslike blue-white. A central ladder pierced through the center of the room, leading upward through the ceiling, into the bridge, and downward through the deck they were standing on, to the service deck where the galley, bathroom, shower, and gym were located. At meal times, these same crew quarters became the “dining room” simply by switching up the lighting to sunset orange. This was a surprisingly effective tactic for making the ship seem bigger, much like the chapel back at Saint Joe’s, in the Lunar South Polar Mineral Territories, whose pews could be folded out into dining tables and benches, converting the space twice daily into a medieval-style refectory.
At times, the eight members of Intercession’s crew had also made this module into the “garden,” the “beach,” the “forest,” and the “circus tent,” simply by programming the shifting colors of the lights, and the images on the video displays above each sleeping berth. But it was a cheap trick, already starting to rub the nervy crew the wrong way.
“You’re maddeningly serene,” Harv Leonel said. “Let’s start there.”
Michael laughed. “I’m a monk, Harv. Being serene consumes fully half of my mental energy. But like our captain, I’m alarmed at how this crew is dealing with the isolation. It helps to stay very busy, but it’s hard not to see that some of us are busier than others.”
“Your job has a lot of moving parts,” Harv said.
“It does, yes.”
Harv was an interesting person; an outdoorsy college professor who’d suddenly blasted off into the cramped quarters of space in his early fifties, apparently as some sort of self-reinvention. He seemed like a man who used to be happy, missed it direly, and was casting around for it like a lost contact lens. But he carried his sadness with such good cheer that, even for Michael, it was easy to miss. Michael thought there was probably a woman involved.
Hobie Prieto, the ship’s pilot, said, “I’m sick of playing VR games in my bunk, Michael. Until we get back to the inner solar system, I get to steer this bucket one time—a one-eighty-degree flip. That’s no life for a pilot.”
“I got no messes to clean up, no broken things to fix,” said Dong Nguyen. “I think we built this ship too well.”
Thenbecca Jungermann, who was both chef and purser, said, “I at least have a lot to do, and cooking makes me happy. But I feel it, too, this creeping ennui. I thought I knew all about living in space, but we’re just so far away, from everything. Maybe this emptiness we’re feeling is something physically real, that humans have never felt before. Something quantum mechanical, about the way our brains work out here? I don’t know, but the Beings wanted to meet us far away from the Sun. Maybe this is why.”
“Metaphysics,” Dong said, dismissively, although in Michael’s experience Dong seemed to believe all kinds of other wacky things.
“We need to be more like a monastery,” Igbal said, “and less like a bunch of friendless kids on summer break.”
People reacted grumpily to that.
Michael said, “It’s a matter of perspective, I’m afraid. If you think you’re two hundred astronomical units from everything you’ve ever loved, and probably ten A.U. from the nearest speck of tangible dust, you’re right. You are. If you think an hour a day of exercise and another hour of cleaning makes for a dull existence, well, then it does. But we’re also on a grand adventure, yes? Making history? Shaking the pillars of Heaven, on a gamma-ray flame that could torch whole cities if we let it? A billion people would trade places with us, no questions asked, if they knew what we were up to.”
All eyes were on him. He was keenly aware, suddenly, of his choice not to wear the blue uniform of Renz Ventures on this mission. By sticking with the same robes he’d worn at Saint Joe’s, and before that at Saint Benedict’s, he had consciously set himself apart. Thinking ahead, Michael had, before embarking on this mission, stitched wire into his robe in strategic places, so it would not float up in freefall. This was partly a practical matter, and partly one of modesty and politeness. But in truth it was also partly vanity, for he wanted to represent the Church with a certain mystery and grandeur, by seeming immune to certain laws of nature. A jumpsuit was far more practical in this maddening gravity, but also a surrendering of identity. He was different, and he meant for his crewmies to know it.
Well, now was the time to actually put that difference to work.
“Look,” he said, “the philosophical implications of what we’re doing are profound, and you’re all just . . . waiting. Waiting when you should be preparing your minds and souls for the mother of all culture shocks. The Beings are very, very different from you and I. Have you thought about that? Have you talked about it? If you don’t spend at least an hour a day doing nothing else, then you may find yourselves poorly equipped for the big day, when it finally comes. It’s only nine months away!”
Still, everyone looked at him, saying nothing. Even the great Igbal Renz! Maybe there was something odd about the vacuum they were passing through. Maybe their brains really did have a harder time functioning here. Or maybe not. In any case, sometimes the best way to get people moving was to get really, really specific with them.
Fighting the urge to sigh, he said, “As your chaplain and spiritual advisor, I’m going to start holding daily guided meditations before dinner. Mandatory attendance. I don’t care if you believe in the same God I do; I’m not out to convert anyone. But I see a group of souls in need of nourishment I know how to provide. Furthermore, I’m going to set up a schedule. Every day, each of you is to talk to one other person, in private, for at least an hour. No small talk, no chitchat; I’m talking full-bore dialectical analysis of the meaning of all this. In seven days, we’ll start the rotation over again, and in a month I’ll want you all to start preparing lectures. You’re not just lonely astronauts; you’re globally ranked subject matter experts, carefully selected to bring a unique perspective to this paradigm-shattering mission. For God’s sake, act like it.”
And still, nobody said anything, until finally, sounding a bit embarrassed, Igbal Renz said, “You heard the man. Jesus Christ, people, look alive, or I’ll thaw somebody out to do it for you.”