Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

But Jesse was again distracted, watching as Harry’s small vessel came into contact with a space station. Harry was tasked with executing the complicated set of manoeuvres required to dock with its port. It was moments like this when Eliot appreciated the graphics, the elaborate detail of the imaginary station circling a phantom moon. Eliot could tell from the beads of sweat on Harry’s forehead that he was struggling.

‘Can you repeat what you said?’ he asked Jesse.

‘Sure,’ but Jesse turned again at a sound from the simulator, and the screen filled with light. Harry had guessed the angle of approach wrong and lost control of his shuttle, which crashed into a wing of the space station. On the screen, it shattered like glass, one whole truss snapping off, exploding in incandescent shards that accelerated in all directions. With a groan of failing machines, the game was over. Harry let out a huff of frustration, but Jesse keeled over in hysterical laughter.

‘I’d like to see you do better,’ Harry said. He tossed the controller at the wall and stormed out.

In the instant the door closed behind him all hilarity evaporated, and Jesse eyed the simulator screen warily. Perhaps remembering that Harry was going to be their commander one day. ‘I guess, it’s not just a game, though,’ he said.

‘No,’ Eliot said. ‘Not to him, I don’t think.’

‘Not to me either,’ Jesse said, gritting his teeth.

LATER THAT NIGHT, ELIOT re-watched the recording he had made on his laptop. He examined the scene carefully, Jesse’s face in the foreground, with his eyes fixed on the projector screen. Harry, in the distance, holding the controller. And there, in the window, Eliot thought that he could see something. Ara’s face, staring at him through the glass, her lips black, eyes yellow and half-open. Even then, when he gazed at it on his computer, his heart kicked in his chest and he was unable to breathe for a moment.

‘What’s wrong?’ Jesse asked the screen.

‘Nothing,’ came video-Eliot’s voice from behind the camera.

Eliot paused the recording, rubbed his eyes and pressed play. But staring at Ara’s face was like staring at a fluorescent light. Even when he closed his eyes, the shadow of it stained his retina. ‘Ara,’ he said, touching the screen.

Jesse smiled from behind it. ‘Hey—’ he laughed nervously. ‘You looked for a second like—’ Eliot pressed the rewind button. But this time, Ara’s face had vanished from the window. He rubbed his eyes again. It had just been his own startled reflection.

‘What’s wrong?’ Jesse asked in the video.

‘Nothing,’ video-Eliot had lied.

‘Hey,’ Jesse said, smiling at the camera, ‘you looked for a second like you’d seen a ghost.’

Chapter 15 POPPY

^05.06.12

THE DAY THE EARTH disappeared, Poppy had been reading. One of the few novels she had brought with her: the first Harry Potter book, a scrappy second-hand copy she’d been sent by her father. He’d found a Latin edition, Harrius Potter et Philosophi lapis, in an Oxfam bookshop. This dog-eared paperback with its coffee-stained cover was a delight to read, because it reminded her of home, of lying on her back on the carpet, feet pressed up against the caging on the radiator, transported again and again away from the tedium of her own life and down the dim halls of that dead language. Latin had not been her first, but it was her favourite. Poppy liked to believe that simply by thinking in it, she was breathing life into it. Non est ad astra mollis e terris via, as she had thought on the shuttle. There is no easy way from earth to the stars. She was like a linguistic necromancer. She might not be a medic or a robotics genius, she might not have as much to bring to Terra-Two as her clever friends, but Poppy liked to console herself with the fact that she could bring this, she could bring Japanese and German, she could teach Latin to colonist children and resurrect it.

People often asked Poppy whether or not the languages ever became ‘mixed up’ inside her head, like a jumbled salad of half-formed tongues, muddled masculine and feminine, pronouns and present perfect, alif and alpha. Which was a question that Poppy always found difficult to answer because, in her head, sometimes the words did run together. She’d begin a thought in english and then find the perfect untranslatable word for it in French. Dépaysement. La douleur exquise.