Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘I thought I’d spend my life with her, on Earth, on Terra-Two. I hoped that we’d die at the same time. I thought there was only one way that my life could turn out. But now…” He lowered his gaze and stopped himself.

‘But now…?’ Jesse asked.

JESSE

^29.01.13

THE FIRST MONTH OF the New Year hurtled by and from then on, whenever Jesse slept, he’d dreamt of flight. The control panel illuminated before him, navigating the constellations with the ease of light across water. For five weeks, he made a habit of running the simulator every single day. Once he finished his chores in the greenhouse, he would march down to the games room and play until late into the night. Sometimes, he awoke to the sound of the morning bell, tangerine sunrise-light from the hall bleeding under the door. Flying goggles still strapped to his face, etching tender creases beneath his eyes and across his brow.

As he ascended the levels, the games became more beautiful. Jesse took more time to notice the grandeur of the sky, the exquisite detail of the virtual cockpit. In the intermediate levels, planetary nebulae and the remnants of supernovae unspooled in the foreground in vivid conflagrations of light.

Even with his new, more intuitive, understanding of the games, Jesse would still get stalled for a week on a single level, unable to master the delicate manoeuvres required to steer through a cloud of accelerating space junk, or to rendezvous with another craft. During those times, the task would plague him. His frazzled mind projected planets, darkly visible in the foreground, particles of dust suddenly and momentarily iridescent before a careening asteroid knocked him abruptly back into consciousness.

One fine night, by some miracle of dexterity, Jesse managed to skate through every challenge. Though the hull of his ship was fairly dented, it remained unbreached. He dodged debris and space junk and avoided sudden death by decompression. His heart pounding and palms sweating, Jesse’s mind narrowed into a corridor of exhausted focus. But he stayed true. He met every challenge with triumph, the sticky frustrating levels – eight, eleven, thirteen – he ascended them all.

How had it happened? Was it that keen blinkered attention which arose from weeks of sleep deprivation and determination? Was it that his exhaustion made him reckless and bold? Perhaps he had run the simulation so many times that something of the computer’s underlying logic had seeped into his consciousness.

Experts said it took around 200 hours of flying to become a space pilot, and, at five- or six-hour stretches every night, Jesse had managed at least that since Christmas.

Finally, here he was, on the last level, at the final leg of the challenge. Landing. He reached a half-familiar green and blue planet. Lapis coastlines and snow-white whorls of gorgeous sky. Home? was the message that flickered on his screen. ‘I hope so,’ he said to himself out loud. Hands shaking as his cockpit filled with cobalt light from the little planet. The challenge was to land at just the right angle, at just the right speed, in the thick atmosphere. But Jesse had an intuition for it now; he’d decelerated through atmospheres as thick as Venus’s – ninety times thicker than Earth’s and obscured by sulphuric acid clouds – and survived. This was easy. This was joyful. He slid down into the temperate embrace of the troposphere and brought his lander shuddering to solid ground. He climbed out, his avatar stumbling in the gravity, and stared, for the first time, at an ocean.

The screen went blank.

Jesse had been gripping the controllers so tightly that he could feel the blood throbbing in his fingertips. The words SIMULATION COMPLETE dazzled against the static.

Jesse had finished the game at 6 a.m., just as the alarm in his bunk would be going off. He’d played since dinner ended the night before, at 8 p.m. In game time, he had travelled for half a century.

As he sat back in the mock commander’s chair, Jesse realized that this was the moment he had been waiting for. He had spent almost a year struggling to catch up with the other members of the Beta. He had been cowed and intimidated by their learning and by Harry’s formidable skill as a pilot. But, according to this single metric, he had far surpassed them all. He knew everything there was to know about flying. Everything the computer could teach him. Peeling his hands off the controller, he shouted in delight. He had beaten Harry, at last, in the only game that really mattered.

WHEN JESSE AWOKE, HIS heart still full of his victory, he was not surprised to see Juno standing above him. In his half-dreaming haze, he was like a gladiator. A hero. Odysseus returning to claim Penelope. He could have kissed her she was so beautiful, crowned in fluorescent light. But she was clearly upset. ‘Oh,’ she said, wiping one eye, tears dripping off her thick lashes, ‘you’re here.’ She sounded a little disappointed.