The two months of Basic training went fast. Sarah had grown much stronger during that time, due to the physical training and sound diet that was provided by Artemis. The years since leaving home had not been kind to Sarah’s physical wellbeing. She never had time to think about food, or to learn how to cook. She would often eat takeout food, or just throw a quick sandwich together, but more often, she would just forget to eat. At Artemis, she was able to eat a well balanced diet, scientifically perfect, and exactly what her body needed to respond to the rigorous physical training she underwent for several hours each day. The results were fantastic. She had replaced her old skinny physique with toned muscles. For the first time in her life, she would look at herself in the mirror and be happy with what she saw. She didn’t see the old pile of skin and bones of her days at NWU, but now she was actually looking like a woman, and it made her feel good. She felt attractive.
Of course, the training she had really appreciated was the other specialty training she had undergone. She was invigorated with the knowledge she had gained since starting in the program. She now was trained at operating the navigation system of the A-537 interplanetary craft that would be transporting them from Earth to the Moon, and then from the Moon to Mars. She also was trained in operation of the B-537 landing craft. She loved learning things that were outside the training she already had in atmospheric studies. It was a refreshing change from what she was accustomed to.
Tomorrow would be the day they would launch to the Armstrong lunar base, and the crew was all arriving back at the Artemis building after a three day leave of absence. Elliot had taken the opportunity to visit his family in Inner-London. Garst and Priscilla had spent the time with their families as well. She was looking forward to getting back together with her companions who had shared these past weeks of training with her.
Sarah chose to spend her leave in New Washington. She hadn’t returned to Lower Chicago since her mother had died a year ago. She didn’t want to visit the father who had abandoned her at such a young age. Ironically, she had realized that it was her father’s abandonment that had pushed her away from home, and caused her to pursue the course that her life had taken. She was oddly grateful for the incredible pain, which continued to drive her to follow her dream. The leave time had given her pause to reflect on this paradox. She remembered the day that he had left her and her mother. She was young at the time, but not too young to understand the emotions involved. She remembered the shouting fight the night before, and the countless nights before that day as well. She remembered worrying that her friend next door would hear the shouting. When she woke up the next morning, her father had gone. She found her mother crying on her bed, clutching her father’s jacket in her hands. Her mother took her away that day, and they moved in with Sarah’s grandmother. That was the day that Sarah built the emotional barriers around her heart. She had decided on that day that she would not let her emotions interfere with her life, and locked all her feelings inside, vowing never to let them out.
She always wondered what she would say if she saw her father again. He showed up to her graduation from Harvard, but she avoided him, instead hiding among a group of friends until he gave up and left. She was afraid to confront him then, afraid she might say something she would regret, or perhaps not say something she needed to. Silence was safer. She knew that a confrontation with her father might be the one thing that could crack the shell she had meticulously constructed around herself. The risk of letting her emotions out was not worth the opportunity to make contact with the man who had not been involved with her life.
Elliot had invited Sarah to visit Inner-London with him, but she had decided to stay in New Washington. She needed time to herself to reflect on what had happened throughout the past few months. For some reason she felt uncomfortable going to Elliot’s house in Inner-London. She felt that New Washington was safe ground for her, because it was unfamiliar to both her and Elliot, but she worried that if she were in Inner-London, where she would rely so heavily on Elliot for everything, she would be unable to repress the feelings she had started having towards him. She was certain that those feelings were a result of how closely they had worked over the past year, and the past two months they spent nearly every hour of every day together. She reminded herself that her feelings for him were a sort of default reaction. Having never been in love, she just latched on to the first man who had treated her like she was special. None of this was able to explain the feelings of physical attraction. Elliot was on the same diet and exercise regimen as her, and she had noticed that his body was responding equally well to the plan. For the timebeing, she decided that this was just her reproductive instinct trying to pop up, and instincts were easy to repress. Repression of these emotions had become harder and harder as Elliot went from being her student to being her friend, and eventually her equal. She made a mental note of all these feelings, and compartmentalized them away in the place where she held those emotions she never understood, a compartment occupied nearly entirely by Elliot.
She had occupied herself by going back to the University. She rode the research train to the surface. While the students she rode with were doing research, she just looked out over the planet’s surface. From the mountainside platform, she could see for many kilometers to the East. She could see the Appalachian Mountains trailing off into the ocean beyond. The remnants of a few cities lay below in the valleys. Crumbled buildings strewn across concrete and dried soil marked the places where people had lived before destroying this planet. She looked at the sky above, the blue color fading towards black as the atmosphere thins. In a few more years, the atmosphere would have thinned enough that the brightest stars would be visible during the day. She noted the burning sun shining down on the scorched surface. She knew that at this point, the only thing preventing complete atmospheric collapse were the machines used to condition the air in the cities for people to breathe. There was no way to use mechanical means to bring back this atmosphere.
She was frustrated that a solution did not present itself obviously as she sat there. She wanted nothing more than to be able to go back to the University and announce that she’d figured everything out. But her world was one of baby steps towards the eventual solution. She worried that the science was moving too slowly to make a difference. There was a definite point where the whole system would collapse, and the planet was moving slowly in that direction. She estimated that if nothing changed, they would have one hundred, maybe one hundred fifty years before humans start dying from the lack of atmosphere. The whole process will take another hundred years from that point, slowing as the population declines.
All of these thoughts weighed heavily on her mind as she sat in the residential lounge in the secret Homestead facility that had been her home for the past months. She was still daydreaming when Elliot came into the room and sat in the chair next to hers. “Whacha thinking about, Sarah?” Elliot said, taking some pleasure in the startled reaction he got from her as she snapped out of her thought trance.
“What? Oh, hey Elliot. How was your trip?”
“Good. It was nice to see my friends and family again. Ches says ‘hi.’“
Sarah could tell there was something bothering Elliot, he was holding something back. “You seem upset about something. Wanna talk?”
“Not now, I’ll tell you about it later. It just felt a little weird, like I was lying to them the whole time. I hate having to tell my family the official talking points, mission to the moon, blah blah blah.”
“Ok, well, anytime you want to talk, you know I’m there. What do you think will happen at our final briefing this afternoon?”
Elliot welcomed the change of subject, “Oh, probably just the same old thing, talking about the mission, going over our plans, timelines, procedures, as if the dozen other meetings weren’t enough. I’m ready for the mission to start, all this anticipation is making me anxious.”
“Tell me about it. I get the feeling this briefing might be different. I mean, it’s the last before we launch, if any briefing were important, this would be the one.”
They could hear Garst’s rumbling laugh coming down the hallway, along with Priscilla’s dainty giggle. Sarah took the last moment of solitude to talk candidly to Elliot, “Elliot, I just want you to know that when we get up there into space, I’m going to be glad to have you with me. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have at my side on this mission.”
“Me too, Sarah, we have always been a great team. Our research is so much better together, we’ll make a breakthrough, I just know it.”
Sarah nodded and smiled. Of course that wasn’t what she meant, but she couldn’t let Elliot know different. She wouldn’t let any distractions take them away from the important work they were doing.
