ARTIST’S NOTES: From the surface of any of the Trappist planets, you’d be able to see the other planets larger than our moon in the sky, an interplanetary conga line reflected on an ocean without end.
Before we went to sleep, many passengers were convinced that the Trappist-1 system would be the one. An abundance of water. Seven chances to get it right. The mess halls buzzed with conversation about restarting our lives, claiming a patch of land to build a cabin, a dome, whatever we might need to find happiness. The commander planned to retire; the first officer would take over the Yamato and continue exploring the universe; an astrophysicist and her engineer husband would start a K-12 school and maybe, one day, a university. The botanists dreamed of Trappist soil and wondered how our seeds would fare, if any local flora would bring us food and medicine. The astrobiologists spoke of deep oceans that might contain creatures of unimaginable size, conjuring fantastic visions of giant squid and whales. But as we approached the system, we saw no continents or islands, no biosignatures of animal life. The observation deck was filled with silence and tears. Dorrie was crying. Maybe I wanted to cry, too. Instead, I chose to stop wallowing in the abyss of the seven worlds before us and to paint the crew. Because from afar, we did not look sad or defeated. We looked like pioneers bearing witness to one more beautiful site along the way.
Dear Clara,
You’d be so proud of Yumi. When people started to get sick, she thought of her friends and family first. She wanted to help. I wish you hadn’t cut us off for so long. I hope you understand that we just didn’t want you to miss out on your daughter’s life. I was always proud of your work—your books and documentaries and lectures. Your father filled scrapbooks with your clippings. I would always tell people that you were trying to cool the planet, to convince the world we needed to find another way to live. In the end, they did listen—albeit too late for you and for us. But they listened, my strange and wonderful girl. Yumi wrote to you one last time. Perhaps you already know that somehow. Along with your ashes, drifting in our outer solar system, is a letter folded into an origami crane. Yumi must have written this letter and folded it several times until she was satisfied with the result. Here on the ship, I’ve re-created our family vacations in murals—you and Yumi in Denali National Park, setting up your tent; all of us at the Museum of Natural History in New York, where you and your father presented together not long after you received your doctorate. Perhaps by the time we stop, Dorrie and I will have run out of room, every inch of this ship covered with life.
Rogue
The Yamato’s autopilot stopped when it sensed the object. Lit only by a nearby nebula and the blanket of the cosmos, the rogue planet was alone and cold without a star. One would have thought such a place to be a lifeless rock. Preliminary data suggested that this rogue with its thin atmosphere was nearly as old as the universe. Our first good look from a Yamato search probe showed the surface punctuated with ruins—vast, modern cities not unlike our own, frozen in place for eternity. Perhaps this world was flung out of its star system not long after its birth, breeding life with the heat it held inside itself for billions of years. Or perhaps this rogue once had a home and this civilization felt the warmth of its star before being torn away by a colliding galaxy. We had so many questions and someone will certainly return to answer them. The inhabitants likely knew for a long time that their world was dying. Perhaps this is both comfort and despair, a reminder that we are not alone, that we are still here.
Earth II
It’s strange how a graveyard the size of a planet could instill hope in us all, help us to understand that our ship was more than a ship and whatever we found would be home not only because of oxygen and water and soil chemistry, but because of us. We stopped at two more planets before embarking on the big sleep to the Kepler systems that would see us add not decades or centuries to our Earth ages, but millennia. We had been out in deep space for well over five hundred years, though most of us had been together outside of our stasis chambers for only a little over one year. Some of us chose to remain awake longer this time, stitching together the bonds of a community—the commander became Frank, the lead botanist Cheryl, the chief engineer Hiro. Nurse Pratchett fell in love with Lieutenant Sanchez. Val, the girlfriend of Bryan Yamato’s brother, moved on and was seen holding hands with a probe mechanic on the observation deck. We celebrated the birthdays of our children outside their stasis chambers— Happy 507. You’re such a big boy now. You don’t even know! Whenever Dorrie and I found a new corridor to paint, members of the crew would come to share their stories—how they’d petitioned to be here, who they’d left behind, the last moments they remembered before our lives were upturned by virus or fire or hurricane. One day, the two of us on our backs in a service tube, Dorrie and I painted what we liked to call our miniature version of the Sistine Chapel.