THE WHALES
My mother leaves the planet on a regular basis. Ever since I can remember, she’s been splitting her time between me and the whales.
During my childhood, she would bring me outside on clear nights and show me the whales. Their massive bulk would block out the light of the stars. My mother would point out the shapes of their tails and their fins, and tell me how they swam through the universe, collecting more knowledge than we could ever conceive of.
“Someday I’ll bring you up there with me,” she always promised. “Someday we’ll start to understand what they know.”
I dreamed of that day, when my mother and I would leave the planet and study the whales. I would imagine swimming through the stars alongside the whales, reaching out touch them, following them as they migrated between our planet and the sun.
When my mother left on her research trips, my grandmother would come and take care of me. We would stay awake for hours at night, watching the stars, trying to pick out the shapes of the whales. My grandmother worried about my mother—as I slept the nights away, dreaming of when I, too, would leave the gravity of the planet behind, she would be anxiously awake, waiting for the dispatches from the research base. The crackling radio lulled me to sleep on those nights, the researchers letting each other know they were safe. Sometimes, when we were watching the stars, we’d see bright points of light, spinning around the dark shapes of the whales. Maybe they were just shooting stars, but my heart lifted every time I saw one. I think it made my grandmother feel better too, to think that maybe the lights were my mother’s spaceship.
Weeks or months later, though, my mother would always come back. She would tell me and my grandmother stories of all the things she’d seen. Stories of the sharks and schools of fish and, of course, the whales. For days afterwards, I would draw pictures of all the things she talked about. Sometimes she would bring me teeth and scales that she’d been able to collect. I filled boxes with them, and would spend hours touching every one, trying to imagine and understand the creatures that they came from.
When I started school, I followed the same path as my mother had. I learned specialized skills and went to programs to further my knowledge of astrobiology and research fields. Every class, every project I undertook had the same goal: to get me ready to go to space. I learned the inner workings of research vessels and how to move in a space suit. I spent hours and hours at night, writing essays about space research and doing complex math problems that the teachers said were invaluable.
My friends and I talked constantly about our future research and how excited we were to graduate and get our own missions. I, of course, was going to study the whales with my mother, but my friends talked about following pods of dolphins as they moved around the solar system, or studying microorganisms in the atmosphere. For years we studied, working together in the researcher community—working our hardest to fulfill our dreams.
The community of space researchers was enormous, but that didn’t make it any less tight-knit and beautiful. Together we all celebrated each other’s successes and mourned each other’s failures. Together we lived and worked with our hearts in the stars. There was no place that I would rather live than the research base, no group of people that I would rather work with, nothing I would rather devote my life to than the mysteries of space. No wonder my mother was so passionate about her work.
Years passed and as I got closer and closer to graduation, my studies got more and more specialized. I focused solely on the study of the space cetaceans, delving deeply into the amassed knowledge of decades of research. I found reports written from the very beginning of the field of study, with my mother’s name as the author. I thought about my future contributions to the field—all the reports and samples that would have my name written on them.
A week after my graduation, however, things fell apart completely. My mother, along with thousands of other researchers, left in new spaceships built and funded by a corporation for space research. Every single one of those spaceships, upon reentry to the planet’s atmosphere, burned away to nothing.
It was an astonishing blow to the field. There had never been a disaster like it. I wandered around for weeks, overwhelmed by my grief and the grief of the thousands and thousands of others who had lost their loved ones as well. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I had spent my entire life preparing to study the whales with my mother, and now she was gone. My passion for the creatures hadn’t died with the accident, but my courage and desire to leave the planet had most certainly burned along with those ships. Of course, I valued the advancement of knowledge above all else, but I also (perhaps selfishly) valued my life highly as well. I wanted to contribute to the field, and then live on in my old age, watching our knowledge grow and grow. I couldn’t do that if I was dead. I wondered if this made me a bad person, that I wasn’t willing to potentially sacrifice myself for the greater good. Many of my friends and peers were struggling with similar feelings. The job applications for planet-only research jumped to record numbers.
In the end, though, it didn’t matter that we were struggling. In the year after the accident, there were apologies and financial reimbursements from the government and the spaceship supplier. There were protests from the people, saying that space research was a stupid thing to have done in the first place. We as a species were meant to stay on the planet. What had the government been thinking, playing with fate? What did they expect was going to happen? There were petitions and debates and elections, and a year after the accident, the space research foundation was officially shut down. I had never made it off the planet. No one would ever leave the planet again.
There was confusion and terror and grief as I and the entire population of space researchers prepared to leave our lives behind. We thought of the thousands of people, burned to nothingness in the accident. They had devoted their lives to the advancement of knowledge, and this was how they were being remembered. Now that there was no chance of ever doing the research again, the moral dilemmas I had been facing seemed trivial. Of course I would sacrifice myself for the advancement of our species. Of course I would swallow my fears and climb on a spaceship. But it was too late.
The last weeks at the research base were quiet and empty. People wandered around, looking lost, or looking like they were trying to remember everything about the place. I spent hours locked away in the research stacks, searching for my mother’s work, carting it out to my own room. I wouldn’t let it be lost. Other people were there too—finding their own work, or the work of their friends. Who knew what the government was going to eventually do. Better that everything was safe in the hands of people who cared.
Some people started talking about what they were going to do when they left the research base. Some said they were going home to start families. Others said they were going to keep doing their research, some way or some how. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had no family anymore, no desire to be anywhere. I was too lonely to want to stay on the planet, and too scared to try to leave it, even if I could have. I spent the days drawing whales and sharks and brightly-colored schools of fish on the walls. Perhaps it was a kind of mourning.
As the final week neared its end, there were whispers of something. The older researchers started carrying around large notebooks, which they seemed to write in constantly. They went in and out of the storerooms, making mysterious checkmarks and counting people and spacesuits. I hardly dared think what they were planning.
The very last day in the research base, government officials came to lock the doors and evict the remaining people. They used loudspeakers that would have driven even the smallest particle out from its hiding spot. We covered our ears and left the building, most of us, myself included, carrying bags filled to bursting with equipment and old research we wanted to save.
The government officials shut the lights off room by room, floor by floor, and we watched the building go dark. Decades of groundbreaking research, brilliant minds and passionate, committed people, going dark. Many of us cried. The doors slammed shut with a resounding groan of finality.
The government officials waved their hands at us, shooing us away from the doors.
There were long moments of silence, as we refused to move and the government officials wondered what to do. As they got more agitated, the crowd of researchers subtly shifted. The older members moved slowly in the direction of the spaceship docks. Whispers passed back and forth, fleeting and quiet, and slowly, slowly, we all began to turn.
The community of space researchers, the huge and unwieldy group that we were, walked away from the doors of the research base and down towards the spaceship docks. Some of us held hands, many of us were singing. The spaceships, the old, trustworthy vehicles that had taken off and landed more times than anyone could count, were waiting, their doors open to anyone who would go. Our now-defunct educations allowed us to fuel the vessels, climb into spacesuits, and collect the equipment we’d need to conduct our research.
The government officials chased us down to the docks, once they realized what was happening. They warned us with their loudspeaker about what we were sacrificing, telling us that we would never be able to come back, that what we were doing was stupid and foolhardy and ineffectual as a protest. No one listened to them.
This wasn’t a protest, this was a fulfillment of destiny. This was a memorial, for all the researchers who had died in their attempts to further our knowledge. This was for us—for every person who had the stars in their heart, who couldn’t bear to think of a life spent with their feet stuck to the surface of the lonely planet. If we couldn’t be where we belonged, we were going to die in the attempt.
One by one, our spaceships lifted off the ground, never to touch it again. With my friends, I left the planet for the first and last time. As the blue-green world dropped away beneath us, I fearlessly turned my eyes towards the stars, as I had so many times as a child, watching for the whales.
During my childhood, she would bring me outside on clear nights and show me the whales. Their massive bulk would block out the light of the stars. My mother would point out the shapes of their tails and their fins, and tell me how they swam through the universe, collecting more knowledge than we could ever conceive of.
“Someday I’ll bring you up there with me,” she always promised. “Someday we’ll start to understand what they know.”
I dreamed of that day, when my mother and I would leave the planet and study the whales. I would imagine swimming through the stars alongside the whales, reaching out touch them, following them as they migrated between our planet and the sun.
When my mother left on her research trips, my grandmother would come and take care of me. We would stay awake for hours at night, watching the stars, trying to pick out the shapes of the whales. My grandmother worried about my mother—as I slept the nights away, dreaming of when I, too, would leave the gravity of the planet behind, she would be anxiously awake, waiting for the dispatches from the research base. The crackling radio lulled me to sleep on those nights, the researchers letting each other know they were safe. Sometimes, when we were watching the stars, we’d see bright points of light, spinning around the dark shapes of the whales. Maybe they were just shooting stars, but my heart lifted every time I saw one. I think it made my grandmother feel better too, to think that maybe the lights were my mother’s spaceship.
Weeks or months later, though, my mother would always come back. She would tell me and my grandmother stories of all the things she’d seen. Stories of the sharks and schools of fish and, of course, the whales. For days afterwards, I would draw pictures of all the things she talked about. Sometimes she would bring me teeth and scales that she’d been able to collect. I filled boxes with them, and would spend hours touching every one, trying to imagine and understand the creatures that they came from.
When I started school, I followed the same path as my mother had. I learned specialized skills and went to programs to further my knowledge of astrobiology and research fields. Every class, every project I undertook had the same goal: to get me ready to go to space. I learned the inner workings of research vessels and how to move in a space suit. I spent hours and hours at night, writing essays about space research and doing complex math problems that the teachers said were invaluable.
My friends and I talked constantly about our future research and how excited we were to graduate and get our own missions. I, of course, was going to study the whales with my mother, but my friends talked about following pods of dolphins as they moved around the solar system, or studying microorganisms in the atmosphere. For years we studied, working together in the researcher community—working our hardest to fulfill our dreams.
The community of space researchers was enormous, but that didn’t make it any less tight-knit and beautiful. Together we all celebrated each other’s successes and mourned each other’s failures. Together we lived and worked with our hearts in the stars. There was no place that I would rather live than the research base, no group of people that I would rather work with, nothing I would rather devote my life to than the mysteries of space. No wonder my mother was so passionate about her work.
Years passed and as I got closer and closer to graduation, my studies got more and more specialized. I focused solely on the study of the space cetaceans, delving deeply into the amassed knowledge of decades of research. I found reports written from the very beginning of the field of study, with my mother’s name as the author. I thought about my future contributions to the field—all the reports and samples that would have my name written on them.
A week after my graduation, however, things fell apart completely. My mother, along with thousands of other researchers, left in new spaceships built and funded by a corporation for space research. Every single one of those spaceships, upon reentry to the planet’s atmosphere, burned away to nothing.
It was an astonishing blow to the field. There had never been a disaster like it. I wandered around for weeks, overwhelmed by my grief and the grief of the thousands and thousands of others who had lost their loved ones as well. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I had spent my entire life preparing to study the whales with my mother, and now she was gone. My passion for the creatures hadn’t died with the accident, but my courage and desire to leave the planet had most certainly burned along with those ships. Of course, I valued the advancement of knowledge above all else, but I also (perhaps selfishly) valued my life highly as well. I wanted to contribute to the field, and then live on in my old age, watching our knowledge grow and grow. I couldn’t do that if I was dead. I wondered if this made me a bad person, that I wasn’t willing to potentially sacrifice myself for the greater good. Many of my friends and peers were struggling with similar feelings. The job applications for planet-only research jumped to record numbers.
In the end, though, it didn’t matter that we were struggling. In the year after the accident, there were apologies and financial reimbursements from the government and the spaceship supplier. There were protests from the people, saying that space research was a stupid thing to have done in the first place. We as a species were meant to stay on the planet. What had the government been thinking, playing with fate? What did they expect was going to happen? There were petitions and debates and elections, and a year after the accident, the space research foundation was officially shut down. I had never made it off the planet. No one would ever leave the planet again.
There was confusion and terror and grief as I and the entire population of space researchers prepared to leave our lives behind. We thought of the thousands of people, burned to nothingness in the accident. They had devoted their lives to the advancement of knowledge, and this was how they were being remembered. Now that there was no chance of ever doing the research again, the moral dilemmas I had been facing seemed trivial. Of course I would sacrifice myself for the advancement of our species. Of course I would swallow my fears and climb on a spaceship. But it was too late.
The last weeks at the research base were quiet and empty. People wandered around, looking lost, or looking like they were trying to remember everything about the place. I spent hours locked away in the research stacks, searching for my mother’s work, carting it out to my own room. I wouldn’t let it be lost. Other people were there too—finding their own work, or the work of their friends. Who knew what the government was going to eventually do. Better that everything was safe in the hands of people who cared.
Some people started talking about what they were going to do when they left the research base. Some said they were going home to start families. Others said they were going to keep doing their research, some way or some how. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had no family anymore, no desire to be anywhere. I was too lonely to want to stay on the planet, and too scared to try to leave it, even if I could have. I spent the days drawing whales and sharks and brightly-colored schools of fish on the walls. Perhaps it was a kind of mourning.
As the final week neared its end, there were whispers of something. The older researchers started carrying around large notebooks, which they seemed to write in constantly. They went in and out of the storerooms, making mysterious checkmarks and counting people and spacesuits. I hardly dared think what they were planning.
The very last day in the research base, government officials came to lock the doors and evict the remaining people. They used loudspeakers that would have driven even the smallest particle out from its hiding spot. We covered our ears and left the building, most of us, myself included, carrying bags filled to bursting with equipment and old research we wanted to save.
The government officials shut the lights off room by room, floor by floor, and we watched the building go dark. Decades of groundbreaking research, brilliant minds and passionate, committed people, going dark. Many of us cried. The doors slammed shut with a resounding groan of finality.
The government officials waved their hands at us, shooing us away from the doors.
There were long moments of silence, as we refused to move and the government officials wondered what to do. As they got more agitated, the crowd of researchers subtly shifted. The older members moved slowly in the direction of the spaceship docks. Whispers passed back and forth, fleeting and quiet, and slowly, slowly, we all began to turn.
The community of space researchers, the huge and unwieldy group that we were, walked away from the doors of the research base and down towards the spaceship docks. Some of us held hands, many of us were singing. The spaceships, the old, trustworthy vehicles that had taken off and landed more times than anyone could count, were waiting, their doors open to anyone who would go. Our now-defunct educations allowed us to fuel the vessels, climb into spacesuits, and collect the equipment we’d need to conduct our research.
The government officials chased us down to the docks, once they realized what was happening. They warned us with their loudspeaker about what we were sacrificing, telling us that we would never be able to come back, that what we were doing was stupid and foolhardy and ineffectual as a protest. No one listened to them.
This wasn’t a protest, this was a fulfillment of destiny. This was a memorial, for all the researchers who had died in their attempts to further our knowledge. This was for us—for every person who had the stars in their heart, who couldn’t bear to think of a life spent with their feet stuck to the surface of the lonely planet. If we couldn’t be where we belonged, we were going to die in the attempt.
One by one, our spaceships lifted off the ground, never to touch it again. With my friends, I left the planet for the first and last time. As the blue-green world dropped away beneath us, I fearlessly turned my eyes towards the stars, as I had so many times as a child, watching for the whales.