The Cosmic Clock
Orbital Space: 240 nautical miles above Earth
Dear Susannah
Believe it or not I am recording all this on a keyboard. Very retro. Very anachronistic. But entirely in keeping with the rest of the mission. We lost a lot when the DataSphere collapsed, including most of our voice recognition technology and the neural implants. The bugs are still there, in place behind my ear, but they are now as inert as the datacore itself. The plug has well and truly been pulled.
How best to record the passage of time in this journal, in “these rough notes” as Robert Falcon Scott would have said? By dates or by distance? Or by both, maybe? After careful consideration I have decided on distance. Any sort of calendar, no matter how grand and all-encompassing, rapidly looses any meaning Out Here. The cosmic clock holds sway in space, its smallest calibrations defined by the passage of millennia. The human span is much too brief to figure in such measurements, so distance it will be.
I think Scott would have understood the journey we are about to make. We will be attempting the impossible. The traverse of not one interplanetary abyss but several in immediate succession, all the way to the far reaches of the Solar System. It has never been done before (because we never had the technology or the will), and if we fail it is unlikely ever to be attempted again. This is what they call a one-shot-mission. Do or die. I don’t mind the former, it’s the latter that bothers me. For if we die, we will die a very long way from home. Neither earth nor fire will mark our passing. Galileo, its decks, corridors and cabins, and the cold sepulchre of space itself will be our tomb.
The view, Susannah! The view! Not just of Earth but of space itself. Every human being should see this and not just on a sense-screen or in a SimShow. Our eyes were made for this view. Even now, after all the damage we’ve done, the Earth remains a bright beacon, shinning in space, as if to light the way home for every space traveller, for every modern day Odysseus attempting to find a way back through the long darkness, through the tightly bound woods of the interstellar night. I struggle to take my eyes from it.
The Great Siren, Natasha calls it, and she too is mesmerised by the sight. We all are. Even those like Ed and Mina who have been in space before. It’s easy to lose track of time once you succumb to the entreaties of this cosmic siren. The view charms and seduces, obliging you to abandon whatever you are doing and just stare at the massive globe.
Space is redefining all my terrestrial notions of scale and perspective. I love to watch the planet roll, to rotate upon its hidden axis. Earth’s rotation is majestic. There’s no other word for it. That momentum is unstoppable. What could halt an object of such size? It’s easy to believe that slow spin, as stately as the procession of the galaxy itself, will continue for the rest of eternity, despite whatever we may do to the planet.
A far better astronomer than me once described Earth as a Pale Blue Dot. Perhaps that’s true when the planet is seen from afar. But up close it’s the sheer rotund mass of the planet that is so impressive, inspiring thoughts of cosmic engineering. And yet, for all its size, its sheer geophysical bulk, I have to remind myself that Earth is tiny compared to the ringed worlds that await us. There will be wonders to be seen on this voyage. Our home world, for all its glory, is merely the first of many.
I for one shall be sad to leave Earth orbit and will watch our home world for as long as I can, until she falls too far behind to be visible, like a cork bobbing in our wake. Then I shall turn my attention to that other great distraction.
The stars themselves.