Dear Yumi,
What are you dreaming about today? Perhaps you’re with your grandfather at the bookstore or maybe you’re with your mother and father during one of those early road trips before work stole Clara away—maybe Yellowstone, or the time we had a family reunion on San Juan Island to watch the last surviving orcas feed. We found a planet this week that was too good to be true. Or maybe we’re naive to be looking for perfection where there is none to be found—another Earth just for us and with not a whole lot of trouble to begin anew. I sometimes dream of those first hours and days after launch. I wish you could have been awake with me when I released the ashes of your mother and grandfather into space alongside the ashes of the crew’s loved ones. We mixed tiny beacons affixed with LED lights into their collective remains, created an ancestral trail of light that will linger just beyond Saturn’s rings—a star to look up at, to pray to like the necklace your mother wore. I’ve kept some of your mother and grandfather for when we finally stop, so you might let an alien wind carry them away from your cupped hands. I promised your mother I’d care for you. I promised your grandfather we would be okay. And so, I say keep dreaming. Because if we don’t find a new home, what did any of them die for?
Gliese 832 C–—16 Light-Years from Earth; Travel Time: 160 Years
CONSTELLATION: Grus. Super-Earth with a 600-mile narrow band of habitability encircling the planet. Probe telemetry has detected signs of large wildlife and severe weather patterns, with hurricane-force winds persistent across much of the band. Gravitational pull of the planet would make takeoff impossible, therefore any attempt to land is a one-way trip.
ARTIST’S NOTES: We found a blue-and-green halo hugging dead rock five times the mass of Earth. Our probes delivered images of buffalo-like creatures with red fur cascading across their bodies, lakes dotted with islands filled with glowing frogs the size of small automobiles, primate life still living in trees–—their faces not unlike our chimpanzees or gorillas, their skin like fish scales. In the form of the Bayeux Tapestry, I reserved the top portions of several corridors to document life on this planet, a place we orbited for more than a month, studying from a distance.
When I told Yumi we had been given a chance to leave the planet, she didn’t want to consider it, even though she understood that I’d already made the decision. She cried for her friends and her aunts and uncles and cousins, whom I tried to get on board the Yamato to no avail. She cried for our home.
“I’d rather die,” she said. “Things are starting to look like they might get better here, and you want to run away? After all we’ve been through?” I don’t doubt that she meant it. After all, her best friend was sent to the City of Laughter only a year after her grandfather died in Siberia, and for months, she’d begged me to take her to the park. I’d always tell her, “We’re here because of your mother and grandfather and the faith so many had in them. We’re still a family. Everything we do, we do for them.”
I had stored the final video messages Cliff sent us in a digital frame next to Yumi’s bed. We listened to them the night before we left. Now I like to listen to his final words every time I look upon another world.
My beautiful girls,
I’m glad you’re still safe and healthy. Maybe it seems like the world won’t change right away, but believe me when I say that danger is near. Here, at the edge of the world, I spend a lot of time thinking about ice and land crumbling into the ocean—all the secrets the world meant to keep hidden from us. It’s strange how the discovery of an ancient girl in Siberia and viruses we’ve never encountered before can both redefine what we know about being human and at the same time threaten our humanity. If I were a philosopher, perhaps I’d have more thoughts on this. Maybe the two of you and your more artistic minds can wrap your heads around what it all means. I know I said not long ago that I would come home, that maybe my colleagues here at the outpost would find a cure or a way to at least convince the world to treat our warnings seriously. I want nothing more than to hold you both and join the wonderful family gatherings I hear so much about. But there is still work to be done. There is still hope.
Trappist-1 System–—40 Light-Years from Earth; Travel Time: 400 Years
CONSTELLATION: Aquarius. In orbit around Trappist-1e, one of a dense seven-planet system surrounding an ultracool red dwarf star. All water worlds with little to no land. Too wet, too chemically predictable for life to take hold.