Author’s Note: This story has been sitting on my hard-drive for a long time, existing in various states of completion. Some years ago, I dusted it off and made a few rudimentary edits to it, before posting it to this blog. A year after that, I removed it; mostly, because I re-read the story and found myself deeply disappointed. It wasn’t what I thought it had been.

Part of me thinks this story should have stayed in a poorly organized folder on my hard-drive. No matter how I went about rewriting it, the story always seemed to aggressively defy any structure I attempted. But the other half of me was curious to see if there was a seed somewhere in here that could grow into something much “fuller” down the road. I’m not sure that has bee the case, but now, I’m at least comfortable is saying Before Man Had Been to EC-I is finished.

1. The Cosmic Lamp-Shade

Benjamin stared out of the metallic port-hole above his bathroom sink, recycled water and shaving-cream dripping from his freshly shaved face.

If not for the depth provided by the stars, he might have thought the view of the universe before him was a flat panorama, wrapped around the ship’s haul like a cosmic lamp-shade. He saw no planets, no astroid fields, no swirling celestial phenomena; only a landscape of penetrating emptiness. But pulsing behind those sheets of stars and the seemingly planar blackness behind them, Benjamin thought he sensed some ephemeral presence,

Benjamin didn’t like space. Planet-life had suited him much better, back when it was an option.

He touched the sensor beside the port-hole, then the glass in-front of him became a mirror; Benjamin saw the face of a one-hundred and seventy-four year-old man reflected back toward him, with no grey-hair or sagging-skin, no wrinkles or deep-furrows. He began to wipe the shaving-cream from his unblemished cheeks.

2. Youth, Nullified

Benjamin dressed, then met Dave in the cafeteria. The usual time.

Dave was a younger man, and like most of the ship’s crew, he had barely passed his hundredth birthday. Benjamin thought there was something disconcerting about those born after the technology that promised them eternal-life, to which Dave belonged. The post-Fountain of Youth generations seemed unanchored from the stream of time, never concerned with yesterday’s or tomorrow’s. In a life with a potentially infinite number of each, the value behind the currency of time had been ultimately nullified.

“You aren’t eating”, Dave said.

Benjamin pushed his plate of synthetic eggs to the side. “I know”.

“Do you want something else to eat?”, Dave asked. “I’m getting more.”

“No. Thanks, Dave.”

Dave picked up both plates. Benjamin nodded his thanks again, then Dave walked toward the food-dispensers.

Benjamin watched the stars out-side the ship move slowly from the bottom of the window toward the top; it looks like the Windows 95 screen-saver, he thought; and with the dislodging of that small, obscure pebble of memory, an avalanche of nostalgia began inside Benjamin’s head.

3. Summer, .i

It’s Summer. Nineteen ninty-five, maybe ninety-six. It’s hot…

It’s hot, and Benjamin can feel sweat pooling on his lower-back. All around him, there is a warm blur of commotion: passer-by’s riding on bicycles, flashing chrome toward the blue sky; sun-bathers laying in clusters, gossiping; an ice-cream truck, filling the park with a pleasant tinkling sound.

Benjamin is clutching a red and white popsicle in his fist, using the pad of his thumb to push the wooden-stick higher up his sweaty palm, while scanning the length of beach for his parent’s umbrella; like his popsicle, it’s also red and white.

…it’s also red and white.

…it’s all so white.

Benjamin attempted to hold firmly onto the memory, clutching it in his consciences, desperately keeping it from slipping back beneath the white fog that had advanced over the first fifty years of his life.

It’s all so white…

4. Earth Colony One

Dave sat down with another plate of eggs and a tall glass of orange-juice. Benjamin relished the silent company of a friend busy eating, but a few quiet minutes later, he could’t help but ask: “Did you grow up on Earth, Dave?” Benjamin didn’t think Dave was a colony boy; he was too mannered, Dave’s dialect simply too planetary.

Dave looked across the table at Benjamin, runny egg dripping off his fork. “Nope.” A mouthful. “I grew up on EC-I, actually; close to city-elleven. I never even visited Earth, not ’til I was sixty-odd or so, maybe seventy-odd. She bought a globe as a souvenir.” Dave laughed, then took another mouthful of egg. “She probably didn’t keep it. Why do you ask?”

“I thought you might be, sorry.”

“No. My grand-parents were among the first Japanese to immigrate to space colonies”, Dave said. “What do you mean ‘you thought’? You’ve never asked me before just now.”

“You don’t speak like someone who grew up on EC-I”, Benjamin said. “I guess I just assumed. Sorry.”

“My parents raised me pretending we were still on Earth. Our house even had a synthetic lawn out-front. My father imported goods from Earth to EC-I for a living; stupid trivial shit people still missed from Earth, like garden gnomes. Our dinner table was actually made of wood. Do you believe that?” Dave laughed, then stopped quickly; he seemed to come to the realization that Benjamin could believe it, and actually he could believe it rather easily. “I don’t like wood”, Dave amended. “I don’t like how it feels to touch.” A shrug. “Anyway – when I was old enough, I ran away and went into the illegal oxygen trade”, Dave said, before another mouthful. “Lots of oxygen farms on EC-I. It was a good job.” Chewing. “So, you can tell me, Ben: did I miss out on much not growing up on Earth, really?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think so, Dave. You don’t seem to think so, though, and your probably right; we brought most of the good stuff with us.” Benjamin raised his mug off the table slightly. “Like coffee. Could of done with leaving the garden gnomes behind, but what can you do about that now.”

“I never understood those things.”

Benjamin turned in his seat, then glanced out of the cafeteria window again, before asking: “Garden gnomes?”

“Yeah.”

“There isn’t anything to get. They were stupid on Earth, too.”

“What’s the matter, Ben? You aren’t eating and you keep looking out that window.” Benjamin opened his mouth, but said nothing; so Dave prompted him: “Are you anxious to start seeing familiar sights? You won’t for a couple more hours, you know.”

“I know. I just had a bad sleep last night.” Dave looked satisfied with Benjamin’s answer, but only some-what. Benjamin continued: “Besides, EC-I isn’t nearly as familiar to me as it is to you.”

Dave finished his second plate of eggs in amiable silence. Benjamin sat back in his seat, nursing his coffee idly, and retreated for a short while into the maze of relics inside his head.

more

Ben filled two mugs with coffee from the dispenser, then brought them back to the table.

“Thanks”. Dave reached for his mug. “Home sweet home, huh?”

A disc-shaped hologram of the Milky Way floated an inch above the table in-front of Dave, projected out of a small device that he had produced earlier from his coat-pocket. Dave swiped his hand at the hologram lazily, sending it twirling in circles like a spinning-top. He stopped the holograms rotation with the touch of his finger, then double-tapped the miniature projection of a small, red planet.

An info screen appeared: “EARTH COLONY I”.

“I don’t have family left on EC-I, like you do on Earth, but I’m excited to see home again. Most of my family is on EC-19, now; everyone moved with my father’s business, but – I guess I just miss the red skies. ”

“I don’t have family anywhere.” Benjamin sat down with his mug of coffee in-front of him. “I out-lived my family.”

“Oh, I’m sorry”, Dave said. “I thoug–”

“It’s okay”, Benjamin said, then he changed the subject: “You know, when I was young–”

“On Earth?”

“Yeah – when I was young, I used to read stories about EC-I. Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein; I grew up on all of that stuff. I had a telescope beside my bedroom-window when I was twelve.” Benjamin smiled, then sipped his coffee quickly, and continued: “I snuck out of bed most nights, just to look through it, sometimes right till morning. My Dad knew – I think he did, anyway – and he never stopped me. I had model of NASA’s Apollo 11 dangling above my bed by a plastic string; posters of Buzz Aldrin and Armstrong in my closet – Armstrong was my favourite.” Benjamin took another slight pause, then finished: “I was a space-nut, I guess.”

“Who are these names? Asimov? Heinlein?” Dave had clearly been waiting to ask the question.

“Never mind. This–”

“Were they astronauts on an earlier Apollo shuttle?”

“No.” Benjamin laughed, pleasantly shocked that Dave had even heard of the Apollo missions. “They were writers. But – this was all before man had actually been to EC-I. Did you know that? We called it Mars then; it wasn’t a colony yet.” Saying that name made Benjamin feel old. He laughed nervously, then checked to see if Dave was still paying attention – Dave had finished his coffee, then set the mug aside; now, he was leaning forward, the partial hologram of a universe impaling his chest – Benjamin continued, re-assured of Dave’s interest: “And in these stories, there would always be life-forms waiting for us on Mars; and they’d always be short, green, and hostile. Silly-looking things, really. We called them Martians.”

5. The Martian

Moments

“There were no life-forms on EC-I before man.” Dave spoke incredulously.

Benjamin shock his head. “No. That wasn’t what I was saying. The point is: I didn’t know if there was – or wasn’t. Can you imagine how that felt? Nobody knew; not really. There was only speculation. We just believed in things, then.” Benjamin sipped his coffee, then shock his head, now unsure of how to continue. He sighed, then asked: “What else could we do?”

Dave sat back in his seat, and watched the hologram in-front of him rotate slowly. After a long moment, he said: “No, I can’t imagine it, Ben.”

Benjamin was looking out of the window again. “Well, Dave, sometime I wonder if I forgot how it felt myself.”