Invisible Things

  Invisible Things is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by Mat Johnson

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by One World, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  One World and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Johnson, Mat, author.

  Title: Invisible things : a novel / by Mat Johnson.

  Description: New York : One World, [2022]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2022003915 (print) | LCCN 2022003916 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593229255 (hardback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593229262 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

  Classification: LCC PS3560.O38167 I58 2022 (print) | LCC PS3560.O38167 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23/eng/20220128

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2022003915

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2022003916

  Ebook ISBN 9780593229262

  oneworldlit.com

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Michael Morris

  Cover images: mike black photography/Getty Images (outer space); Westend61/Getty Images (dome); Helen_Field/Getty Images (moon’s surface)

  ep_prh_6.0_140224945_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part Two

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Three

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Dedication

  By Mat Johnson

  About the Author

  After months in deep space conducting an intensive field study of social dynamics aboard the cryoship SS Delany, Nalini Jackson, NASAx Post-Doctorate Fellow of Applied Sociology, D.A.Sc., came to an uncomfortable conclusion: She didn’t really like people, on the whole. It was an embarrassing realization, given that her life’s work was studying them. Sort of like a dentist who hates teeth, she feared. It was incredibly isolating as well, as the universe lacked any other intelligent life to talk to.

  There were several human beings, among the (likely) millions she’d encountered, whom Nalini appreciated on an individual basis, which is why she didn’t consider herself a true misanthrope. She even loved some of them, sometimes. Individually, people could be great. Studies showed that even the most antisocial primates made similar exceptions; all the data were clear on this. When feeling particularly optimistic, Nalini would advocate for the theory that, if limited to very small bands, people could even be enjoyable. In limited doses. But the unavoidable truth was that, when people were given the chance to form groups of significant size, tribalism erupted among them like recurring blisters, and thus Homo sapiens’s true nature was revealed. Because with the tribes came the bickering, the rancor, the fighting among polar opposites, the infighting among ideological twins, the rejection of empirical evidence in favor of the soothing myths and partisan lies. Nalini could list the faults of humanity all day; it was all rather predictable, but still fascinating. Sometimes, Nalini wished she could simply enjoy the study of her own species solely for the comedic exercise it was, without the haunting knowledge that these same traits would likely result in their extinction. For, though humanity had faced a myriad of existential questions over the course of its enlightenment, Nalini had the misfortune of coming of age during an era when there was really only one: Would we destroy our planet before we figured out how to escape it?

  If humanity achieved interstellar migration, it could pollinate the universe with sentient life for millennia, avoiding extinction via diversification of location. If humans didn’t accomplish this goal, the only unanswered question would be which combo of consequences for humanity’s collective sins would deliver the fatal blow. Climate devastation, nuclear Armageddon, systemic xenophobia, virulent partisanship, pandemics man-made or man-fault—they were all strong contenders. The range of cataclysms was dazzling, but as an academic, Nalini was most impressed with humanity’s ability to embrace the delusion that everything was fine.

  In her application for NASAx’s advertised “Open Social Science Astronautic Research Position,” Nalini proposed examining whether the Delany’s crew, consisting, as it was, of society’s most capable, intelligent individuals, could overcome humankind’s known social limitations. “Effects of Prolonged Interstellar Expedition Isolation on Group Dynamics,” she’d titled her proposal, then submitted it on a lark, inspired by hubris, free time, and a depressed job market. But someone must have agreed with the argument she made in her cover letter: that, as a sociologist with an undergraduate degree in planetary science, she was uniquely qualified to study humans beyond their Earthly habitat. This undergraduate focus was a mere vestigial tail of a long-abandoned dream that lived solely on her résumé, but it was enough to give her an advantage. Within a year, she was bidding farewell to her life on Earth—her great-aunt; her studio apartment; her younger sister, whom she didn’t really get along with—surprised by how little there was to say goodbye to.

  There were so many potential career benefits to her participation in the Delany’s mission that Nalini failed to note the fact that the trip itself sounded like her worst nightmare. That this honor wasn’t another abstract academic fellowship, but something she really had to do. Something she actually didn’t want to do. On paper, cryosleep sounded straightforward, almost relaxing: You simply sleep through the most dangerous parts of the journey. But as soon as her cryopod’s lid clicked shut, it became immediately obvious to Nalini that underplaying her claustrophobia during the interview process had been shortsighted. Locked into place and still wide awake, Nalini noticed for the first time how much the pods looked like coffins. Before losing consciousness, Nalini realized she’d been snared by a branding trick: This was not “cryogenic sleep,” it was temporarily induced cold death.

  Yet it was still worth it, Nalini tried to remind herself the second she woke back up. A historic mission, the first humanned mission to Jupiter’s orbit. Traversing the Solar System with a dozen crew members contained within the 7,827 square feet for over eighteen months. From a research perspective, this offered a priceless opportunity for discovery. A chance to compile the raw sociological data that might one day improve interpersonal dynamics for the long-haul space travel needed to escape the planet they were currently destroying. Or perhaps her work could even address humanity’s carcinogenic social tendencies in g
eneral. So that one day, if they ever did manage to reach another exoplanet in a habitable zone, they wouldn’t screw it up like they did their first one.

  * * *

  —

  In those first weeks of floating in Jupiter’s orbit, Nalini began to fear that the crew’s wariness of her openly monitoring them would contaminate the process. But over time they grew tired of holding up their façades, just as she’d predicted they would. Nalini’s probing eyes became no more conspicuous to them than those of a portrait on a wall. It wasn’t complete invisibility—they saw her socially. Sometimes they even targeted her as the subject of pranks, behavior she referred to in her notes as “Group Masochistic Bonding.” Whenever they were successful in the act of pranking her, the perpetrators’ habit was to laugh and encourage others to laugh with them, a tool to define in-group membership. It was that signature human maneuver: forming social bonds around opposition to an almost arbitrarily defined outsider (in this case, her).

  On the day-to-day, Nalini functioned as a full member of the crew. Because of the ship’s limits on physical space and weight, everything on the Delany had multiple uses and purposes—Nalini was no exception. In addition to her core mission to observe crew dynamics, she also served as an assistant to Senior Astrogeologist Dwayne Causwell, coincidentally the only individual on the ship who seemed to like her. Whereas the majority of the crew was conducting research on the planet Jupiter, Dwayne’s solitary focus was on just one of its seventy-nine moons: Europa. Its name had always reminded Nalini of some failing nightclub in Prague, but the moon was infinitely more interesting. A bruised ball of ice that hid a revelation: an ocean of liquid water just beneath its scarred crust. The moon was famous for being a possible intrasolar colonization target, but at this stage, even getting near enough to conduct drone surveys of its surface took a miracle of technology and finance. The base on Earth’s own moon was only thirteen years old and still had that new-car smell; an In-N-Out Burger on Europa was a long way off. Still, even the smallest step was a move in a glorious direction.

  Researching Jupiter itself was the focus of Bob Seaford, overall mission leader, and his “band of merry pranksters,” whose idea of humor included switching the sour cream with toothpaste, then laughing when Nalini bit into her burrito. All ten of “the Bobs”—as she’d come to think of them—were from M.I.T. “The Engineers,” they called themselves (even M.I.T.’s nickname lacked imagination, in her opinion). Representing rival Caltech (go, Beavers!) was a two-person partnership consisting of just her and Dwayne Causwell, with whom she also shared the research assignment of mapping Jupiter’s most promising moon.

  On paper, and as was clear to whatever algorithm assigned them to be lab partners, Dwayne was Nalini’s perfect match. Nalini was an applied sociologist with a background in planetary geology; Dwayne was an astrogeologist with a personal history of sociopolitical engagement—a rarity in his field. In addition to an alma mater, they shared the distinction of being the only crew members of African descent. They also shared an intense dislike of Bob; Nalini struggled for scholarly distance, but Dwayne didn’t bother to hide his contempt. And they both leaned on humor to combat personal frustrations.

  Winner of the Society of Exploration-Geophysics Distinguished Award, Dwayne Causwell was brilliant, and ethical to the point of piousness, with a reputation for generosity among his students, peers, and community. “A real good guy, not a creep who describes himself as a ‘good guy,’ ” as one of the references in his psych profile noted. In practice, Nalini found all of his glowing recommendations accurate. The man was exemplary. In fact, Dwayne’s only shortcoming as a lab partner, in Nalini’s estimation as both a post-doctorate specializing in long-haul-transport social dynamics and also his lab partner, was that the guy just would not shut up. It turned out, a major side effect of holding both the world and oneself to such a high ethical standard was that at times one was utterly insufferable—another theory Nalini had going into the mission that proved correct. After 8.58 months trapped inside a space can with him, Nalini often wanted to reach into Dwayne’s ever-open mouth and hold his larynx still with her bare hands till all the pious protestations stopped. But besides that, Dwayne was a joy to be stuck in space with.

  When in ranting mode, Dwayne mostly went on about the Bobs, which Nalini found completely understandable. Primarily because the Bobs acted like little shits. Nalini had observed, at around five months post-cryo, that even her own ability to record them with academic impartiality was diminishing. This gave Dwayne the status of a fellow traveler with whom to complain about them endlessly.

  Sometimes Nalini asked Dwayne to stop. Suggested “they” (he) take a break in talking about Bobist topics so that “they” (she) didn’t go mad. Dwayne would try; he really would. He’d go on for a bit about things like the environmental importance of rejecting fundamentalist veganism in favor of ethically harvested honey. Or about the implied ethnic bias in the choice not to season the Delany’s rehydrated food. Or how he wished the Delany were one of the newer cryoships, the ones with artificial gravity replicators. But any observations about the quality of their orbiting home would always lead to mission funding. Which would lead to the subject of the trillionaire donor who pushed NASAx to make his literal “golf buddy,” Bob, the Delany’s lead researcher, despite the fact that any impartial psych evaluator who spent five minutes alone in a room with him would come to the conclusion that Bob was “a complete and utter asshole.” And with that, Dwayne was back to Bob again. The topic was unavoidable. For all their time together and occasional digressions, the pillar of their relationship was a mutual distaste for Bob Seaford, the Bobs, and all that Bobism stood for. As pillars went, it was a solid one.

  * * *

  —

  The Bobs hogged the bridge most of the week, partly because of the nature of their research, but also, Nalini noted, as a dominance display. They maneuvered their probes through Jupiter’s beige fog, hooting as if they were going player-versus-player in some blood-soaked video game. They were loud. They left chaos everywhere—sometimes out of laziness, other times to make the statement that cleaning up their own mess was beneath them. Soiled and discarded socks sometimes floated through the air. In-group Bobist nicknames were crudely etched into the NASAx consoles. Food supplies and schedules were regularly discarded according to their whims. They acted like they owned the whole ship and everything on it, including Dwayne and Nalini—thereby tapping into the pair’s own ancestral trauma, inadvertently or not. But on every seventh day, it was Team Beavers’ turn to take center stage, launching their probes, scanning Europa’s surface until the moon orbited out of range once more.

  Team Beavers’ four drones were named North, South, West, and Camden, the latter a private joke Dwayne took pleasure in not explaining to her. On each run, their pilotless aircrafts shot out to the four directions of Europa’s orbit, taking the day to meet back at the origin coordinates. There, they transferred their visual data to the Delany. “Vacation pics,” Dwayne liked to call them. And Nalini did find them to be like other people’s vacation photos, in that they showed a place she would never go and after a while they got very boring.

  “Oddball.”

  “Where?”

  “Drone South, look. That makes it twenty-three to fourteen: I’m crushing you, lady.”

  There’d been a lot of “oddballs” during the mission: visual peculiarities from the cam footage that Dwayne then printed and taped to the whiteboard as a nod to whimsy in the workplace. There was the image of the rock formation that looked kind of like a smiley face. Meteor scarring that looked like footprints of a giant running for the bus. In his game, every oddity was worth one point; oddball was the only kind of ball there was room to play on the Delany. Nalini collected them, too, and planned to present them one day to Josey, her little sister, so she couldn’t complain that Nalini didn’t bring her anything.

  “A perfect circle, right there on the su
rface. Look at the size of that thing. That’s got to be, what, ten thousand kilometers in diameter? Twelve, maybe? That’s insane. There’s no new crater-impacts in the record.”

  “Well, then, that can’t be right. It doesn’t make sense,” Nalini told him, as if this negated the existence of what they were both looking at.

  “I’m not saying it makes sense—it doesn’t make any kind—I’m just saying that it’s there.”

  The shape the cam caught from miles above was indeed round like a circle. The next image they brought up, taken by a drone roughly two hundred kilometers to the oddity’s west, was even more impossible. The circle seemed to be on top of the surface, not drawn into it.

  Most of the landmarks they found that appeared to rise out of the planetary mass’s surface were, in fact, indentations, illusions of perspective. Scars of a moon abused by the universe. The only way to tell for sure was to have the computer combine all the correlating footage of the area into a three-dimensional model. Dwayne tapped a few keystrokes to create the model. And there it was.

  Rising up off the surface of this moon, a perfect circle. Not just generally round, or near oval. A perfect 360 degrees. True in curve. Poking out of Europa’s surface like a zit.

  Dwayne looked at the screen and started to say something that audibly caught in his throat. The man who would not shut up was, for once, quiet. Dwayne quietly swiped another drone image onto the main screen. Then another. Kept doing it until there was nothing left to contradict the impossible. For almost a full minute, there was not one sound between them.