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Authors: Michel Faber
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the Jump, and then to sleep for 24 hours straight. I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about.
We parted on slightly awkward terms, Severin and I. The fact that the Jump’s aim was more accurate than expected meant that, even with unrestricted use of fuel to get us to Oasis in the fastest possible time, we still had a huge amount left over. So we just jettisoned it all before arrival. Can you imagine? Thousands of litres of fuel squirted out into space, along with our body wastes, dirty tissues, empty noodle containers. I couldn’t help saying, Surely there must be a better way. Severin took offence (I think he was sticking up for Tuska, who was technically responsible for the decision – those two have a love/hate thing going). Anyway, Severin asked me if I thought I could land a ship with that much fuel ‘hanging off its ass’. He said it was like tossing a bottle of milk off a skyscraper and hoping it wouldn’t come to any harm when it reached the ground. I said that if science could come up with something like the Jump it could surely solve a problem like that. Severin seized hold of that word, ‘science’. Science, he said, is not some mysterious larger-than-life force, it’s just the name we give to the bright ideas that individual guys have when they’re lying in bed at night, and that if the fuel thing bothered me so much, there was nothing stopping me from having a bright idea to solve it and submitting it to USIC. He said it in an off-hand sort of tone but there was aggression behind it. You know how men can be.
I can’t believe I’m talking about a spat I had with an engineer! By the grace of God I’ve been sent to another world, the first Christian missionary ever to do so, and here I am gossiping about my fellow travellers!
My dear Beatrice, please regard this First Epistle as a prelude, a trial run, a rough turning over of the soil before I plant something beautiful in it. That’s partly why I decided to transcribe the pencilled scribblings I wrote on the ship, and type them unchanged and unedited into this Shoot message to you. If I changed one sentence I would be tempted to change them all; if I gave myself permission to omit one dull detail I’d probably end up discarding the whole thing. Better that you get these jetlagged, barely coherent ramblings than nothing.
I’m going to go to bed now. It’s night. It will be night for the next three days, if you know what I mean. I haven’t seen the sky yet, not properly, just a glimpse through the transparent ceiling of the arrivals hall as I was being escorted to my quarters. A very solicitous USIC liaison officer whose name I’ve forgotten was chattering at me and trying to carry my bag and I just sort of got swept along. My quarters have big windows but they’re shuttered with a Venetian blind that’s presumably electronic and I’m too tired & disoriented to figure out how it works. I should get some sleep before I start pressing buttons. Except, of course, for the button I will now press to send this message to you.
Shoot through space, little light beams, and bounce off all the right satellites to reach the woman I love! But how can these words, translated into blinks of binary code, travel so impossibly far? I won’t quite believe it until I get a reply from you. If I can be granted that one small miracle, all the others will follow, I’m sure.
Love,
Peter
He slept, and awoke to the sound of rain.
For a long time he lay in the dark, too weary to stir, listening. The rain sounded different from rain back home. Its intensity waxed and waned in a rapid cyclical rhythm, three seconds at most between surges. He synchronised the fluctuations with his own breathing, inhaling when the rain fell softer, exhaling when it fell hard. What made the rain do that? Was it natural, or was it caused by the design of the building: a wind-trap, an exhaust fan, a faulty portal opening and closing? Could it be something as mundane as his own window
We parted on slightly awkward terms, Severin and I. The fact that the Jump’s aim was more accurate than expected meant that, even with unrestricted use of fuel to get us to Oasis in the fastest possible time, we still had a huge amount left over. So we just jettisoned it all before arrival. Can you imagine? Thousands of litres of fuel squirted out into space, along with our body wastes, dirty tissues, empty noodle containers. I couldn’t help saying, Surely there must be a better way. Severin took offence (I think he was sticking up for Tuska, who was technically responsible for the decision – those two have a love/hate thing going). Anyway, Severin asked me if I thought I could land a ship with that much fuel ‘hanging off its ass’. He said it was like tossing a bottle of milk off a skyscraper and hoping it wouldn’t come to any harm when it reached the ground. I said that if science could come up with something like the Jump it could surely solve a problem like that. Severin seized hold of that word, ‘science’. Science, he said, is not some mysterious larger-than-life force, it’s just the name we give to the bright ideas that individual guys have when they’re lying in bed at night, and that if the fuel thing bothered me so much, there was nothing stopping me from having a bright idea to solve it and submitting it to USIC. He said it in an off-hand sort of tone but there was aggression behind it. You know how men can be.
I can’t believe I’m talking about a spat I had with an engineer! By the grace of God I’ve been sent to another world, the first Christian missionary ever to do so, and here I am gossiping about my fellow travellers!
My dear Beatrice, please regard this First Epistle as a prelude, a trial run, a rough turning over of the soil before I plant something beautiful in it. That’s partly why I decided to transcribe the pencilled scribblings I wrote on the ship, and type them unchanged and unedited into this Shoot message to you. If I changed one sentence I would be tempted to change them all; if I gave myself permission to omit one dull detail I’d probably end up discarding the whole thing. Better that you get these jetlagged, barely coherent ramblings than nothing.
I’m going to go to bed now. It’s night. It will be night for the next three days, if you know what I mean. I haven’t seen the sky yet, not properly, just a glimpse through the transparent ceiling of the arrivals hall as I was being escorted to my quarters. A very solicitous USIC liaison officer whose name I’ve forgotten was chattering at me and trying to carry my bag and I just sort of got swept along. My quarters have big windows but they’re shuttered with a Venetian blind that’s presumably electronic and I’m too tired & disoriented to figure out how it works. I should get some sleep before I start pressing buttons. Except, of course, for the button I will now press to send this message to you.
Shoot through space, little light beams, and bounce off all the right satellites to reach the woman I love! But how can these words, translated into blinks of binary code, travel so impossibly far? I won’t quite believe it until I get a reply from you. If I can be granted that one small miracle, all the others will follow, I’m sure.
Love,
Peter
He slept, and awoke to the sound of rain.
For a long time he lay in the dark, too weary to stir, listening. The rain sounded different from rain back home. Its intensity waxed and waned in a rapid cyclical rhythm, three seconds at most between surges. He synchronised the fluctuations with his own breathing, inhaling when the rain fell softer, exhaling when it fell hard. What made the rain do that? Was it natural, or was it caused by the design of the building: a wind-trap, an exhaust fan, a faulty portal opening and closing? Could it be something as mundane as his own window
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