Noumenon. Marina Lostetter J.

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      The foghorn blew once. We all shifted on our numbers, impatient for our turn.

      Eventually, it blew twice. Then three times.

       We’re next …

      Four times.

      We all cheered and rushed forward. No pushing or shoving, no stepping on anyone’s toes. We’d practiced this. But we were definitely on a mission, moving with enthusiasm and intent. Our cries were muffled by our helmets, but we kept shouting.

      The crowd was miles away. They might have been cheering, too, but we couldn’t hear it, so we rooted for ourselves.

      With great sweeping metal curves, almost like that of a giant zeppelin, Mira was both beautiful and imposing. The hull was so shiny—well-groomed and polished, as though it were a billionaire’s favorite sports car instead of a spacecraft. All of the rooms inside were illuminated, which made the many portholes look like strings of little twinkle lights wrapped around the ship.

      We reached the open bay doors of the shuttle hangar and marched aboard, keeping our rank and file. We waved to invisible cameras and blew kisses to invisible people.

      When the cold Icelandic plain was finally obscured by the dark carbon-fiber walls of the ship, I turned my attention to the open airlock. It was small, and we all had to move through two-by-two.

      Once inside Mira proper, I wanted to skip to my room. But I restrained myself. Even on a wonderful, exciting day like today, it was inappropriate for a woman of twenty-five to bound around like a schoolgirl. Or, at least, that’s what Mother would say. But I wouldn’t have to keep to such restrictive expectations once we were off on our own.

      Then I’d skip all I wanted.

      My cabin was on the fourth deck, toward the front of the ship. It was a single. There were doubles, too, and if I ever got married we’d move into a quadruple—if you commit yourself to a partner, you commit yourself to raising two clones. Father had set the system up just so.

      The jump seat automatically thrust out from its compartment in the wall next to the window, waiting for me to settle in. On the cushion sat a little blue envelope with my name scrawled—not typed—across the front.

      It was a letter, written in Mother’s hand, but signed by both him and Father.

       Had they really written fifteen thousand goodbye notes?

      No, I’m sure they had a template—copied thousands of times over, then each finished with some sort of personalization. But even if each wasn’t handwritten, it was still a nice gesture.

      They did care about us. As people, not just as parts of the mission.

      I made up my mind to read it on a day when I was really missing them. For now, I simply wanted to enjoy the moment.

      I glanced around my small room. Every cabin had a window, though there were quarters in the ship’s interior. A complex system of tubes and mirrors assured everyone had a view, though.

      Mine was less than spectacular at that moment. I saw mostly a lot of ground and a sliver of horizon.

      I should have treasured that splinter of sky. Even though I’d never see the sky again it was still too pedestrian for me to take note of at the time.

      After removing my helmet and letting my curls free, I sat down and strapped in. The space suits were mostly for show. We had to keep them close during launch, in case of emergency, but most of us would never need to wear them again, provided all went well.

      “Hello, computer,” I said, wondering if the system would be as cold as the prototype.

      “Hello, Margarita Pavon.”

      “Are you ready for lift-off?”

      “Nearly. Just accessing a package left for me.”

      “What kind of package?”

      “A few … memories.”

      “I won’t bother you, then.”

      “Thank you.”

      The ship jolted and rumbled a little, but it wasn’t the shake and shimmy of lift-off. With everyone aboard, consortium aides could now roll our shuttles back into the bay. A faint grinding of the hangar doors signaled the end of loading—and the end of my time on Earth.

      Soon we would be shooting off into the stars.

      The ship went quiet for a while. Almost everyone on Mira would face the lift-off alone. It would have been nice to have Nika nearby to share the moment with, but I suppose Father thought this was a good time for individual reflection and contemplation. That we would all like to meet this new life in our own, private way.

      Father wasn’t always right.

      A tremor vibrated up my spine from deep in the ship. Then there was a roar deep in my bones, and I knew the external cyclers had come to life.

      My room shook dramatically. Luckily everything was either bolted down or tightly secured.

      I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to hold myself still. There was a giddiness in the pit of my stomach, like the kind I got on a rollercoaster anticipating that first big drop. The ship rattled like it was going to fall apart.

      Everything will be okay, I told myself. No need to worry. These ships were the safest spacecraft ever built.

       Yeah, tell that to the team that blew up when they tried to go subdimensional.

      No. I wasn’t going to think about that. No point in panicking over a fluke. This was a great moment, epic and intense, something I’d been looking forward to since I was old enough to understand what was happening and why I was so special. My silly fears weren’t allowed to spoil the splendor.

      I had talked to lots of people before we boarded, and they were choosing to watch the launch via their implants. It was the last time we were going to be able to access that kind of real-time data from Earth. And sure, watching it from the outside while being inside was impressive. But I wanted to experience it all live, all in the moment.

      A billow of wind whipped up the dust outside my window, obscuring the ground from view. And then there was a slow, intense thrust. The pressure pushed me deep into the jump seat, and I closed my eyes for half a moment.

      The shaking stopped as soon as we were free of the mooring and into the sky. I knew we weren’t speeding away—the g-forces were little more insistent than those on a car chugging down a highway—but I felt like a giddy kid on a fair ride nonetheless.

      I opened my eyes again. Up, up we went. Past the birds, the clouds. Past mountain peaks and into the paths jetliners usually took (all rerouted to give us plenty of clearance, of course). We drifted higher, and higher. Iceland shrank away, then all but disappeared. I could see the North Atlantic and the Greenland Sea, despite impressive cloud cover. And then two coastlines pushed in from the periphery of my window СКАЧАТЬ