This is an old draft of a sci-fi piece I was inspired to write back when the Trappist-1 system was discovered – you know, the one with some of the planets in the habitable zone from its star?
I couldn’t find any prompts I liked, so I thought since I’m not doing anything with this draft right now, you all might like to read it. Feedback in the comments is welcome and appreciated on this and all my work.
(Not) Alone:
Many years passed before we finally reached the system called TRAPPIST-1. Even with our advanced ship and all its technology, I knew it would still take time for the images we saw now to reach the Earth. I wondered what they would think.
“It just dawned on me,” I said to my other crewmembers, “that we’ll never see them again, except in messages, and even then the time difference will be -”
“Astronomical?” said Jenny with a grin.
She loved puns. I managed a small laugh.
“Yeah,” I agreed, even as I felt my heart sink.
Everyone was silent for a moment.
“So,” I said, “what happens if… well, you know, if we don’t… find anything?”
“What do you mean?” Jenny asked.
“What if we can’t find a place for a colony? What then? Did we really travel all this way for nothing?”
Jenny shook her head.
“I know this whole thing is scary when you start to think about it, but you’ve gotta try and think positively.”
She gave me a reassuring smile.
“There are already so many things that could’ve gone wrong, before we even got here,” she added, “like, what if the cryogen chamber had stopped working, or what if the ship’s computer or the autopilot had malfunctioned? The fact that it’s all worked out so far… well, it’s gotta mean something, right?”
I nodded.
“Do you think using the antimatter fuel was a good call?”
Jenny looked a little confused.
“Well it was part of the mission plan: cryogen for the first five years, then -”
“Then use the antimatter to get the rest of the way,” I finished.
I sighed.
“S-sorry for interrupting you,” I said, giving her an apologetic look.
She nodded for me to continue.
“‘s alright,” she said, “go on.”
“Well, what if we need that antimatter to get home, if we can’t find a colony? Nobody’s ever really tested how far the cryogen can sustain you.”
I tried to hide just how much the fear was getting to me, but I guess my expression gave me away.
Jenny put her hand on my shoulder.
“I know you’re scared – hell, we all are – but we all have to try and take things one at a time.”
I looked at her. She was always so confident.
“We made it this far, now let’s see what’s out there, ok?”
She smiled.
“Nice speech,” said Marcus.
I could hear him chewing something behind me. I turned around.
“Got some sandwiches for everyone, you want yours?”
He grinned and offered me a sandwich from a box he was holding. The foil had my initials marked on it in dark ink from a pen.
I gave him a confused look, but took the sandwich anyway. I unwrapped it and inhaled.
“This is real,” I said, surprised.
I looked down at the sandwich.
“Where the hell did you get this?” I asked. “The food synth doesn’t make food that smells this real.”
“The food synth just makes food that smells like… artificial, not even like frozen food!” Jenny agreed as she took her sandwich from Marcus.
“I made them the day before we left, froze them, then kept them in one of those portable freezers while we were in cryogen,” Marcus explained.
Jenny and I looked at him, then at our sandwiches.
“Did you really?” I asked as I bit into my meal.
It tasted real, too; ham, lettuce, cheese, all on whole grain bread.
Marcus laughed.
“Nah,” he said, “that would’ve been too easy!”
Jenny looked up at him with her turkey sandwich still in her mouth. She chewed slowly.
“I fixed the food synth,” he explained, “so it’ll make way better food now!”
He grinned wider. The smell of fried chicken suddenly came from behind Marcus, at the doorway.
“What?” cried Jenny incredulously, “Fried chicken? No fair!”
She got up and hurried toward Devin. I thought she was going to snatch the chicken from his hand, but instead she walked right past him and down the hall to the kitchen. I looked at Devin, who chuckled.
“What, you guys didn’t know Marcus fixed the food synth?” He looked at the chicken leg, which I realized he hadn’t started eating yet. “I brought this for you, you know,” he called to her.
She didn’t answer. Devin shrugged.
“Didn’t hear me, I guess,” he said.
Jenny was back in a flash. She grabbed the chicken leg and smirked as she took a large bite out of it.
“Thanks,” she said, holding up another chicken leg, “now I can have two!”
Devin’s face turned a shade of red. He turned to go back down the hall.
“Wait,” said Jenny, “you can have this one.”
She smiled and offered him the other chicken leg. “I got it for you, you know,” she added.
Devin’s face grew redder. He nodded and ate the chicken.
Jenny smiled, the satisfaction plain to see on her face, and sat back down in her chair near mine.
***
We started to explore the system. There were three planets just before the place called the “habitable zone,” the area in a system in which a planet isn’t too far or too close to its star.
They were interesting, but unfortunately had no water. Don’t get me wrong, I like analyzing rocks as much as the next person – but doing that when you can literally see the other planets in the system in the sky above you, especially when you know some of them most likely have real, liquid water… well, let’s just say you get tired of looking at rocks, even if they are alien rocks.
Finally, it was time to go to the first of the three planets in the habitable zone. Some people call it the “Goldilocks Zone,” though – and isn’t that just something? Humans figure out there’s a certain place a planet has to be in order for things to be just right to maybe have liquid water, and we name it after an old kid’s story about a girl who finds the “just right” level of different stuff in some house she wanders into. Amazing.
The first planet in the habitable zone had water. It was almost hard to believe, really, seeing liquid water on a place I knew wasn’t Earth. We took a few samples and stored them away for future analysis. There were no plants on the land.
“Maybe there’s some under the ocean,” I wondered aloud as I stared at the water. “You know, like seaweed on Earth.”
Devin nodded.
“Maybe so,” he said.
Devin didn’t talk much, just short sentences to get his point across – not that any of us minded.
There was a small amount of land on the whole planet; it maybe took up the space of Scandinavia, plus the UK. When it’s the only land on the planet, though, drifting in this massive ocean, it feels like an island.
A big island, granted, but you get a real sense of your boundaries quickly. It’d be great for people who like the beach, I realized – well, if you like your beaches to be almost the same red as the sky above. The sun in this system was small, a red dwarf. It gave the sky a red color, and it would still be burning long after our Sun had swelled up and died.
The sands were the same consistency as sand on Earth, mind you, but a deep, earthy red. I wondered if “earthy” was really a good word to describe alien sand. It wasn’t Earth, after all. There wasn’t enough oxygen to support plant life on land, let alone for us to take off our helmets.
It wasn’t until I got on the ship and we started heading for the next planet in the habitable zone that it sank in.
“We might find life here,” I said to no one in particular.
“I don’t know about intelligent life,” said Alia, “but hey, maybe we’ll find some plant life! That’s still life, you know?” She was a botanist, and the most optimistic person on the whole ship.
“Maybe it’s because she’s a botanist,” I wondered, “that she’s always so optimistic. She sees things grow, even in harsh places like deserts.”
I smiled.
“I bet you’d get a kick out of that,” I answered.
Alia chuckled.
“I think I’ll leave the weird animals to Devin,” she said, pointing to him with her thumb.
Devin looked up from his book.
“And I’ll leave the weird plants to you, Alia,” he said with a smirk.
They both laughed.
The thought of whether we would find more advanced life entered my mind, but I pushed it aside just as quickly. It was almost scary to think of things like that.
The second planet also had water. There was more land, too.
“How big do you think this land is?” I asked Devin.
He didn’t answer right away. He was crouched down and was staring at the ground and its dirt, which was the same red as the sand on the previous planet.
I almost repeated my question, unsure if he’d heard me, but before I could open my mouth he stood up and answered,
“If I had to guess… about the size of North and South America. Of course, that’s just based on the bird’s eye view we got as we approached the planet. It’s different, you know, when you’re standing on the land itself. Seems bigger.”
He crouched down again and felt the earth on his gloves.
“Computer,” he said through the radio system, “what’s the oxygen content of the atmosphere?”
The radio clicked as he finished his question.
“Guys!” Alia suddenly shouted from somewhere to my left, “Look what I found!”
I turned to her. She motioned for Devin and me to follow.
We trod along on the red dirt, past the dark rocks. After about five minutes of walking as fast as our suits would allow, Alia stopped and pointed to a thing that at first I didn’t recognize.
It was a kind of silver color, and resembled a tuft of grass on Earth, but as I stared at it I found that my mind could not accept what it saw.
“Is that… I mean, what -” I tried to say, still staring at the silver thing.
Alia nodded and beamed more widely than I had ever seen her do so.
“Grass,” she said, “silver grass!” She looked toward the horizon. “And there, trees!”
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