We’re back doing group counseling again. I’m back doing group counseling again. ME. I mean, I don’t even. After all the effort I put into getting out of this the first time.
ㅤㅤBut they’ve decided we are all super traumatized by the Copernicus, and reconvened the groups they had running after the rescue. The latest round of talking (or not) about our feelings led our group leader to conclude maybe some of us are more forthcoming than others when it comes to sharing the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves.
ㅤㅤBeing the astute creature she is, she spent ten minutes I’m never getting back pointing out that just because we don’t talk about our feelings, doesn’t mean we don’t have them.
ㅤㅤThank you, Captain Obvious.
ㅤㅤI guess she was looking at me on that one. I haven’t slept properly since it happened, and I keep waking up at night wondering … bad things. I just don’t think talking about it to a group of worried faces is the way to help me.
ㅤㅤI hate the crying the most. It just creeps up on you out of nowhere, and suddenly you’re in the middle of doing something and you realize your goddamn eyes are wet again and you don’t know how it happened. And the last—the LAST—thing you want is for anyone to notice, because next thing they’re cooing and clucking over you, and they want you to talk, and it’s more than I can take.
ㅤㅤI have my mom’s voice ringing in my ears, though, so I am trudging along dutifully to these stupid group discussions, even though it’s pointless.
ㅤㅤI haven’t kept a journal since I was a kid, filling it with all the secrets of the universe, the suckitude of my parents moving me to a hideous hunk of rock like Kerenza, the total angst of it all that I’d give anything to get back. It worked, though. Writing it down stopped me saying it when I shouldn’t, and over time the problems faded away. My present problems aren’t going anywhere, but maybe the Return Of The Journal will stop my head exploding.
ㅤㅤThis thing is locked down under the kind of privacy protections even Byron couldn’t crack. And if anyone reads it, I’m going to devote my life to finding a way to program every bathroom door on the Hypatia to refuse to recognize their ID. Actually, I think I could do that. BEWARE, SNOOPER.
ㅤㅤSo, a journal. I appreciate that they’re trying to help with the group sessions, but they’re scientists, not therapists. You can’t run people through a quick training session and then have them host a bunch of traumatized survivors sitting in a circle and trying to talk it out.
ㅤㅤMy group leader says it’s important to talk about my FEELINGS. I am stone-hearted and have none, of course.
ㅤㅤWell, that’s not true. Most people would say I’m pretty cold, but I think of it more as … private. People are always saying “how are you?” to each other, and I guess I just don’t see why I should answer such a personal question for just anyone.
ㅤㅤBut for the sake of trying, here goes.
ㅤㅤEzra’s been on my mind a lot, lately. Why, I don’t know, except that the more you lose, the more you realize you don’t have much left.
ㅤㅤBut at the same time, I’m … am I dumb to go back there? It was hard enough to make a decision the first time, but if after a year he couldn’t even trust me enough to talk about whatever he had going on … and anyway, practically the first thing he did was email me and say it was all a sign, and we weren’t meant to be together, and I do have SOME dignity. I don’t want to be an option for him just because now he doesn’t have any others.
ㅤㅤI’m glad he made it out, obviously. It’s not about that.
ㅤㅤI think a lot about who made it out, who didn’t. Sometimes I just remember some random person, like the lady who came to fix our habitation recyc the week before it all happened. I can see her face, but I don’t remember if I knew her name.
ㅤㅤI wonder if she made it out, if she’s somewhere on board, or if she died. And then I don’t know why I’m wondering something like that, or why I feel so bad about not knowing. Survivor Guilt, according to the Counseling Circle Of Hastily Downloaded Wisdom.
ㅤㅤI guess an experience like this is supposed to mess you up.
Learning is everywhere. I remember my mom telling me that when I was little, making mundane things seem like they were full of adventure. What I wouldn’t do for a little mundanity at this moment. Or my mom.
ㅤㅤI wonder if I’ll be able to claim some kind of school credit for the stuff I’m learning on board. It’s not exactly conventional, but I haven’t given up on college and I don’t want to end up behind. Note to self: figure out how to argue the merits of practical experience in computer crime to a college application board without getting arrested. (ha ha, I am on a REFUGEE SHIP limping alongside a disabled military battlecarrier being chased down by a BeiTech dreadnought and hoping to live long enough to find a jump gate so I MUST NOT GET BEHIND ON MY SCHOOLING … I sound dusted.)
ㅤㅤI am just too funny, but there’s nobody here to appreciate my jokes. My group leader says I mask my emotions with dark humor and sullenness. Maybe she’s right. The poor woman used to be a geologist before they made her a counselor, and the only thing she’s got going for her is that our group is about as easy to talk to as a bunch of rocks. But who wants to break the dam on stuff like this in public? You write it down and put it away, then back to work.
ㅤㅤToday’s counseling session was about looking behind the face we put on in public to think about what else might really be going on. I wonder if that was just a sideways attempt to get me to be nicer to some of the others, walk a mile in their shoes, blah blah.
ㅤㅤAnyway, she gave us the theme, as she launched off into another round of how-does-that-make-you-feel, I kept thinking about this traveling holoshow that came to Kerenza. They put on a play in the community complex with light-projected puppets, and I snuck away from my parents and went around the back to investigate the puppeteers. The whole romance scene was spoiled by me sauntering out on stage to share my discovery. (I am only realizing now mom and dad must have wanted to hide under their seats, but to be fair it was hardly the first time I’d mortified them.) I remember that moment really clearly. It was so important to me that everybody understand that what they were seeing, this romance, these feelings right there on stage—none of them were real. And that the girl puppet was really a guy with the biggest moustache I’d ever seen, which struck me as hilarious.
ㅤㅤClearly I had missed the romance of the moment.
ㅤㅤI was all over today’s theme of What-Might-Really-Be-Going-On though, even at the age of eight. I knew it mattered, getting behind the pretend, the masks, and finding out what was really happening.
ㅤㅤAnd romance? I knew even then it wasn’t the real deal.
ㅤㅤToday, as we practiced empathy and pretended to put ourselves into the shoes of others (without really doing it, because none of us want to imagine anyone else’s grief, we have enough problems with our own), I thought a lot about that holoshow, and the commanders of our little refugee fleet.
ㅤㅤLike I said, back to work. My group leader has no idea how much I want to know what might really be going on. And I’m going to find out.
Today’s group counseling session was taken up by a lady called Martha, who worked GeoSpec Analysis on Kerenza. I think. I guess it doesn’t matter where she worked.
ㅤㅤMartha had three daughters named Julie, Lela and Katya.
ㅤㅤJulie was six. She died during the evacuation of her school.
ㅤㅤLela was two. She died when their car crashed on the way to the evac shuttles. Martha’s husband Tony had Lela on his lap. He died too.
ㅤㅤKatya was eight. Martha doesn’t know how she died, or if she died, just that she never made it off planet.
ㅤㅤShe’s been so quiet through all our sessions. Like me, she never really spoke. You couldn’t tell what was going on in her head. She’d sit there, hands folded in her lap, listening. But she’s been slowly coming unfastened, the last month or two. Strands of hair hanging loose from her normally perfect bun. Buttons done up wrong. Shirt untucked. Little things you see everywhere, but never before on Martha.
ㅤㅤToday, she just imploded. She was sitting right beside me.
ㅤㅤI don’t even know what set it off, but one minute I was counting ceiling tiles, and the next she was talking. One of the guys in the group, Thanh, was in the middle of some story, but he went quiet when she started. He knew it meant something that she’d chosen that moment to speak.
ㅤㅤShe told us about the girls, and her husband. She said she thinks a lot about whether Katya and Julie were scared at the end. That she wasn’t there for them. And then she started gasping for breath. Short, sharp, hoarse breaths, like she couldn’t drag in enough air, her whole body shaking.
ㅤㅤSome people, when they lose it, they scream, they fight. I hope that would be me. Martha just slowly slid down off her chair and folded in on herself. Everyone stared at her like she was contagious, and I reached out like—I don’t know, maybe I was going to touch her or something. And suddenly she was crying. Long, low moans that sounded like they were wrenched out of her. All her grief and pain in those noises, like her body couldn’t hold it any longer. One piece too many got added to the load, and she couldn’t do it anymore.
ㅤㅤThe group leader called the medics, and by now Martha’s probably under sedation, but I’m not.
ㅤㅤI’m lying awake in bed, wondering what will happen if one piece too many gets added to my load. Wondering if there’s any way out for Martha. Any chance she’ll ever be okay.
ㅤㅤI can hear every sound in my dorm, every rustle as someone turns over, every sigh.
ㅤㅤIt’s impossible to sleep.
ㅤㅤThere are a lot more of us on board than there were ever supposed to be—the Hypatia’s a research vessel, so they have a lot of space, but most of it was intended for samples, labs, stuff like that. There are over 2,000 of us jammed in where there used to be just 500 crew.
ㅤㅤMy living quarters used to be a storage facility for geological specimens, by which I basically mean rocks. The air leaves a sharp, metallic tang in your mouth, almost salty. It clings to your hair, so you carry it with you and the scent wafts around you when you turn your head. The air is also HOT and kind of humid, because the scrubbers just weren’t designed to recyc for this many people. Makes you really, really wish we weren’t on water rations. You get used to it, though.
ㅤㅤThey’ve taken down the shelving and crammed sixteen of us in here. Each person has a bunk that’s kind of a shelf sticking out of the wall (you have a belt to stop yourself rolling out at night). Being the youngest in the dorm I’m up at the very top. I don’t mind being up high. Sometimes it almost feels safe.
ㅤㅤBut I still can’t sleep. This isn’t my room, isn’t my place.
ㅤㅤThere’s nothing around me that’s known, anymore. Sure, I have routines—there are times to eat, times to sleep, times to train. I just never realized on Kerenza, there was this background comfort level, the knowledge of safety, that was the bedrock under everything else. My big adventure was going to be college. My little adventures were hikes, choosing classes at school, Ezra, even.
ㅤㅤI thought he was going to be a big adventure, but that’s a whole other thing.
ㅤㅤPoint is, I had no idea how safe I was, because I’d never been unsafe. Ezra said that to me once. He was right. I took it all for granted. The constant and comforting background static of the universe.
ㅤㅤNow, though there are more routines than ever before, nothing’s certain. The Lincoln could catch up with us at any point. It’s months until we reach the waypoint to Heimdall. Even when we do, we’ve been isolated for half a year. We could be in the middle of a war, for all we know.
ㅤㅤAnd beyond all that, command won’t tell us what’s happening. I’m pretty sure they’re lying to us about a lot of things that matter, though I don’t know why.
ㅤㅤAnd right now, that’s just one uncertainty too many.
ㅤㅤI don’t know my limit, but I’m scared to reach it. I don’t know what will happen if I do.
ㅤㅤAnd I still can’t sleep.
ㅤㅤAnd romance? I knew even then it wasn’t the real deal.
ㅤㅤToday, as we practiced empathy and pretended to put ourselves into the shoes of others (without really doing it, because none of us want to imagine anyone else’s grief, we have enough problems with our own), I thought a lot about that holoshow, and the commanders of our little refugee fleet.
ㅤㅤLike I said, back to work. My group leader has no idea how much I want to know what might really be going on. And I’m going to find out.
ㅤㅤI wonder how my mom knew my dad was the guy for her.
ㅤㅤWhy didn’t I ever think to ask that?
Today, said our poor, beleaguered counselor, We Are Going To Try Something New. We are going to focus on the fact that despite our personal losses, Life Goes On, and There Is Still A Future.
ㅤㅤFrankly, I think whether or not we get a future is still hanging in the balance, but I figured expressing that opinion wasn’t going to add much to the session, so I stuck to Being A Surly Teen. (Huh, the Inappropriate Caps are catching.)
ㅤㅤThe present is my problem, right now. My brain won’t stop buzzing, scrambling, trying to hook on to something that will tell me which way is up. I lie strapped into my bunk at night, and it all presses in on me. The bed’s so narrow, the blanket smells like the huge laundries they have here, and it itches, and I’m so not at home.
ㅤㅤNothing’s where it’s supposed to be, and without my north, how do I know what to do?
ㅤㅤMy throat closes when I think about it, and a part of me wants to crawl under the covers and stay there. Wait for someone to tell me what to do. Wait for a grown up. But nobody’s coming.
ㅤㅤSo do I drag Ezra into danger? Isn’t he in more danger if I don’t keep trying to work out what’s happening?
ㅤㅤEveryone here wants to believe the guys in charge know exactly what they’re doing, but of course they don’t. There’s nothing in their rules and regulations for this. They’re wounded and limping for safety, and they don’t know how to get away from the Lincoln. So why should I trust them, especially when they’re lying to me?
ㅤㅤThere’s no clear path ahead of me. They never taught this class in school.
ㅤㅤI remember there was this teacher called Ms. McElroy back at McCaffrey. Taught junior tech. She used to go on and ON at me about fulfilling my potential, and I used to roll my eyes, and my mom would tell me to listen to the lady.
ㅤㅤShe died in the first wave. She looked really surprised.
ㅤㅤI don’t mean to make a joke there, though I know it sounds kind of sarcastic. I just mean, that wasn’t the facial expression I would have expected.
ㅤㅤShe used to talk a lot about how to make decisions, as well. Like, she had this idea around exploring your own moral system, but then applying it to a grid to work out what to do. Marrying ethics and technology.
ㅤㅤWhy didn’t I listen to that? I could really use her system for working out the right thing to do around now.
ㅤㅤI only know one thing for sure.
ㅤㅤWhatever they don’t want me to see, that’s where I’m digging. I need to be where the secrets are.
ㅤㅤI’m more interested in ensuring I have a future than they think.
I’m not ready to die.
ㅤㅤIf the Lincoln catches us, she’ll destroy us. There’s simply no other reason she’d chase us for months on end if it wasn’t to hide the last of the evidence. Wipe out the only witnesses with a chance to tell the universe BeiTech attacked another corp, hijacked their illegal processing plant and oh yes killed thousands of people.
ㅤㅤThat, or we’re on the lam because the Lincoln’s captain is secretly Torrence’s angry ex-girlfriend and they have unfinished business. He’s totally the kind of guy who’d leave the toilet seat up.
ㅤㅤI think my jokes are getting worse. Weirder, anyway. The sleep dep is really getting to me. But I can’t miss a chance to peek inside AIDAN and help out Byron, and that means jumping onto a new ID every time a tech takes a break. And in the spare minutes I’m supposed to be sleeping, I’m thinking about what we might find if we make it out of this alive instead.
ㅤㅤI figure it this way: WUC’s operation on Kerenza was illegal, so they can’t tell the UTA we stopped reporting in. When Kerenza was attacked, our alarms would’ve been relayed through the closest waypoint, and then on to Heimdall Station. But the only ship that showed up—the Alexander—was on patrol nearby. Which means our SOS never made it out of the system. And if Heimdall didn’t send the cavalry, that has to mean the station itself was taken as part of the BT attack. Which means my dad might be dead. I am not okay with that.
ㅤㅤI am NOT OKAY WITH THAT.
ㅤㅤWe’ll never make it as far as Heimdall, says my brain, and if we do, Heimdall’s been taken anyway. It says nobody made it off the Copernicus alive—or not alive in any way I’d recognize. I lie in my bunk, pretending I’m at home, and just return those thoughts to sender. They show up, and try to get their claws into me, and with a mental NO I push them back. Force myself somewhere safer. Counting rivets. Tugging at the loose threads along the edge of my sheet, winding them so tight around my fingers my nails turn blue.
ㅤㅤBut deep down, I know it. The truth. Nobody’s coming for us. The place we’re running to probably isn’t safe. And there’s nobody I can trust in this equation except Ezra and Byron. But Byron’s hands are tied, and E’s along with him. So if we’re going to find out exactly what happened to the Copernicus, and why, it has to be me.
ㅤㅤIf we had to, could the Hypatia outrun the Alexander?
ㅤㅤIs anyone who made it off the Copernicus still sane? Or even alive?
ㅤㅤAre they alive, at Heimdall?
ㅤㅤI’m not ready to die just yet. Too many things left to do.
ㅤㅤNo way I am getting short-changed.
ㅤㅤEzra loves me. I mean, maybe I’m an idiot and it’s just his fear and desperation talking, but I don’t think so. I don’t care if it is, I need him. Being angry at him because he didn’t want to leave Kerenza … seems kind of small, now.
ㅤㅤIt was so good, when we were together. It was right. We should have fronted up to the problem, not screamed at each other and avoided it. We should have fought for it, instead of giving up and making out all the time.
ㅤㅤI should have been big enough to tell him what he meant to me.
ㅤㅤNow I get to tell him in 7 minute bursts.
ㅤㅤI try to reach out and connect, to remind him however I can, in my own super awkward way, that I’m here. That if he does something dumb over there, there’s one person left who cares.
ㅤㅤCare doesn’t cover it.
ㅤㅤIf I lose Ezra too, it’ll be one body blow too many.
ㅤㅤIf I lose Ezra too, I’ll give up.
ㅤㅤI don’t think I have anyone else left.
ㅤㅤBut while I have him, I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep us safe.
ㅤㅤWhatever it takes.
I want my Mom.
ㅤㅤI WANT MY MOM.
ㅤㅤI want to feel how soft she is when she hugs me and I lean into her. I want her hair tickling my nose. I want the way she smells, like the lab and clothes softener. I want her humming something really horribly out of tune as she heats up dinner, then starting to sing and making up the words. I want her stuffing my mittens in my bag and then turning out to be right when it starts snowing before lunch. I want to hear her voice on a call with Dad after I’m asleep, all soft and mushy when she thinks I can’t hear, with these long silences when I know he’s doing his charming thing. I want her marathoning shows with me that we’d both die before we admit we watch. I want her making tragic, inappropriate remarks about the boys on the shows in an attempt to pretend she’s not old. I want her talking earnestly about my education. I want her telling me to lighten up.
ㅤㅤI just want her telling me anything. What to do.
ㅤㅤPlease, I want my Mom. I can’t do this on my own.