Chapter 3
3
I signed up for the expedition because I believe in second chances. I wanted to see the Planet, yes; maybe even to follow in my mother’s footsteps in some twisted way. But it wasn’t just that. It was the dream of a new home for humanity. We killed Earth. Millions of us died, wiped out in horrific weather events, from starvation, or from exposure in the massive deserts that bloomed in the Great Heating Event. And worse, we killed each other, ravaged the land with bombs, no longer concerned with preserving humanity, let alone the environment. There was nothing left to save.
Then we received a transmission from one of our far-reaching probes, one of our last hopes for the future. And there she was, only a few light-years away: the Planet, as if handed to us by God himself, to cleanse us of our sins.
At first, they sent more probes, with ways to measure the atmosphere, water content, biology, everything that might impact our ability to settle there. Probe after probe went out to the Planet, and one by one they sent back data, millions of terabytes of data, all reaching one conclusion:
The Planet will be humanity’s salvation.
A year later, the first manned mission departed for the Planet, my mother among them.
She was the only one who came back.
If Earth wasn’t so ruined, if there was any evidence at all that the Planet was inherently perilous, the Earth Colonization Effort might have put a stop to all manned missions going forward. But they didn’t.
Instead, they took a few decades to send more probes. They got more scientists involved, including me. And finally, when everything was determined to be utterly safe, they opened recruitment for the second manned mission to the Planet.
I have never believed in anything so fervently as I believe in the ECE. Whether it’s my mother’s blood, my obsession with the green and growing, or hard-wired optimism — the Planet is everything to me. It is hope incarnate. And no matter what happened to my mother’s team, no matter what unknown horrors might have befallen them, I have to believe it won’t happen again.
This place is too good, too right. I know in the marrow of my bones that this is where we’re meant to be.
I believe it so strongly; I’m drowning in it.