Invisible Things Page 2
“A mountain?” Nalini gave in.
“Come on, lady, you ever seen a mountain with that kind of slope? And look. Look at the top. Perfect curvature.”
“Reminder: We are looking at a computer-generated model based purely on visual images constructed from a compilation of pictures taken roughly two hundred kilometers away.” Nalini was cautioning herself as much as him, and she knew it.
“So what?” Dwayne successfully countered. “The base, where it connects to the level surface—do you see that? It curves back in. Its footprint’s smaller than the widest point at the meridian. And the surface—it appears smooth, like a balloon, right?”
“Like a bubble,” Nalini managed, just to get the idea outside herself, and there it made no more sense than it did in her skull.
Usually, new photos of oddballs were printed and hung on the station’s wall, each one replacing the weakest one posted before, reinforcements in the fight against boredom. This time, Dwayne printed two photos. One copy he gave to Nalini with the message “Tell no one. Not even your little side piece.” The other photo Dwayne slipped into the top of his shirt as if there were a bra under there to store it in.
He wouldn’t look at Nalini in the hours after that. Not even at dinner, as they floated across from each other, munching on unseasoned MREs. And Nalini wouldn’t look at him. Because, if their eyes met, it would be real forever.
* * *
—
It took 3.55 days for Europa to orbit around Jupiter, and Nalini used that time to reassess her entire understanding of the universe.
Hours later, it was Bob and his Bobs’ turn to “cook,” which meant hydrating prepackaged protein. Precious ship space was allocated on the Delany for the long communal table that pulled down from the mess’s ceiling, an otherwise impractical device for zero-g space travel incorporated on Nalini’s own suggestion. It offered enough room for all the members of the crew to latch themselves on and break bread (or at least rip aluminum packets) together. Theoretically, she argued in her initial application, this would keep the crew socially bonded, unifying them after a day of individual and subgroup projects. It was the first of Nalini’s experiments to fail.
It didn’t work because Bob Seaford and his acolytes didn’t want it to work. They were in the majority and genuinely believed this fact entitled them to create new, self-serving rules. Rules like making dinner at 1900 hours on days when Team Engineers were recycling their drones, then moving supper back to 1730 hours when it was Team Beavers’ turn to do the same. Meaning, Team Beavers missed dinner. Meaning, Team Beavers had to reheat and clean up an extra time. And even though Team Beavers was just Dwayne and Nalini, it was a huge pain in the ass. Worse, it forced Team Beavers to submit to yet another blatant dominance display while being unable to complain without increasing tensions with Bob’s majority group, thus making things worse for Team Beavers’ minority. And the Bobs were fine with this, including Nalini’s “side piece,” Ahmed Bakhash.
Before “side piece,” Dwayne referred to Ahmed as “Ahmed the Emaciated Communications Guy,” but he updated that nickname when he realized what was going on. By then, Ahmed, though still a Bob, had begun conducting clandestine hookups with Nalini belowdecks—in the storage compartment behind the water tanks—when the two shared maintenance assignments. This was after month six, during a period when space-cabin fever drove Nalini to temporary nihilism. But for his part, this act of defiance was the very limit of Ahmed’s rebellion; his mantra being “I don’t want any trouble, okay?” Ahmed recited that phrase every time Dwayne tried to recruit him from the Bobside. Nalini truly admired this about Ahmed: his profound commitment to self-preservation. It was what attracted her to him in the first place—the man was like a one-man neutral country in a world war, a morally nebulous position, but still a welcome break from Dwayne’s constant battle-readiness. Ahmed was chill, and Dwayne was livid—these were their natural states. And Dwayne never exhausted his own self-righteous rage, because he utilized it for catharsis as opposed to a tool for helping anything. Often, his confrontations made things on the ship clearly and obviously worse. But it didn’t matter, because it was a masturbatory act made even more intense by the pride Dwayne took from his belief that it was evidence of his moral purity.
Despite this insight into his character—one she was certain he would be mortified to learn—Nalini’s respect for her senior colleague was undiminished. The man was a legend; his accomplishments were absurd in their ambition and variety. As a mere undergraduate, Causwell was profiled nationally for his advocacy of using drone engineering as a force for social activism. While Nalini was still a toddler, Dwayne had been part of a cohort of Caltech phenoms who’d pushed for replacing police bodycams (notoriously unreliable and alterable) with their own drone swarm freeware capable of independent surveillance of the LAPD. When it was adopted, it was considered a landmark in police oversight, providing bounteous new evidence of race-based police brutality. It wasn’t until years later, when it became clear that people were just as capable of shrugging off high-def recordings of things they wanted to ignore as they were with the blurry stuff, that Dwayne decided to take his drone research to the stars. He was exemplary. But it didn’t change the fact that every time Dwayne confronted Bob on his latest affront, the astrogeologist became intoxicated by his own righteousness, as if his complaints would appeal to some neutral judge who would finally render a decisive verdict on his behalf. But there was no judge—no alien life holding up numbers on the sidelines. Just them, on a small ship, hurtling through a lifeless universe. Instead, every time Dwayne went off on Bob, the pranks only increased in frequency, and severity. The divide between Beavers and Engineers deepened, and nothing changed, yet everything felt worse.
* * *
—
“The universe is a vast celestial necropolis,” Dwayne said out of nowhere. Clearly, he’d been thinking about it. They were triple-checking the maintenance logs for the solar sails, going through the process largely by muscle memory as their minds wandered.
“I like how you said that while pensively staring out the portal at the stars, for maximum dramatic effect.”
“If you accept the Drake equation,” Dwayne continued, ignoring her tone, as he’d become accustomed to doing, “then our universe’s most fertile period for generating advanced civilizations ended more than five billion years ago. Five billion years ago. The party was over before humanity even got out of bed.”
“So we missed sentient life—so what? Have you ever met sentient life? A lot of them are assholes.” Nalini shrugged.
“Next shift, we reset the drone’s software, eliminate tampering as a factor. Then we halt the regular survey schedule, and send them back to the oddity.”
“Dwayne. You’re really going to disrupt the—”
“Just one drone,” Dwayne interrupted, and Nalini didn’t have a good enough argument other than This freaks me out.
* * *
—
Before his own conversion to Bobism, Ahmed was once an individual named Ahmed Bakhash, a graduate of UT Austin who largely did his post-doc work at Stanford. Therefore, at the beginning of the mission, Nalini categorized Ahmed as a neutral player in the already forming Caltech-versus-M.I.T. divide. This lasted until forty-seven days after wake-up, when the Bobs replaced all the underwear in Ahmed’s storage case with burlap Y-fronts. Scratchy, coarse industrial material meant to hold potatoes, not testicles. It was an act that showed great forethought: These were rare novelty items, bought on obscure fetish sites and ordered months before to add to one of the Bobs’ extremely limited personal weight allotments. The morning of the Burlap Attack, Bob Seaford himself shared this information with Nalini. So that he could explain his upcoming mirth and amplify it.
“Guy’s gonna be itching for a week,” said the Bob. His thinning hair was so short that it would have been invisible on his pale flesh if he hadn’t dyed i
t brown. Noticing the way Nalini stared back at him, he added, “Just a little fun. For morale. To keep us from going bonkers.” Bob Seaford winked. At first, Nalini was unable to determine if the wink was a friendly reflex or if Bob was acknowledging that what he’d just said about morale was the bullshit she knew it to be. But then he added, “Whatsa matter? Can’t take a joke? You one of those? That’s the problem today: Nobody’s allowed to admit what’s funny anymore.”
Bob seemed to want to continue the conversation, but Nalini had no intention of hearing more of his philosophy on who should be laughed at without social repercussions.
“Okay,” she replied. It was a nonsensical response that was really just an act of submission, and thus she immediately felt tainted by the interaction. Bob looked her right in the eyes and grinned as if he could taste her cowardice and liked the flavor. Pretending not to see, Nalini turned to jump-fly up the portal in the opposite direction to be clear of him.
It wasn’t that Nalini feared Bob physically, it was that Bob was so emphatic in his statements, so unquestioning in the validity of his points of view, that his forcefulness demanded either total acquiescence or the social discomfort of direct and open conflict.
Bob was a bully; it was very straightforward. Some classifications didn’t require a doctorate in applied sociology.
When Ahmed walked into the mess for breakfast, Nalini could see the bulk of the burlap undies beneath his uniform. That bulging was the only sign that something strange was happening. Ahmed himself made no mention of this private torture. After hydrating his breakfast, with his back to the room, Ahmed floated his slender frame over to the table, buckled into his chair before praying, and ate. There was no hint in his face of the discomfort the burlap must surely be causing him. No indication he was even suppressing a response: To Nalini, Ahmed looked bored, half awake, lost within the maze of his own thoughts. The Bobs’ giggles faded into sighs; Ahmed’s nonresponse stole the joke from them. But Ahmed’s performance wasn’t perceived by his antagonists as an act of defiance, Nalini recognized. It was far subtler than that. It was nonviolent resistance for the nonconfrontational. The Bobs recognized it as submission, but Nalini saw that it was submission as a willful and graceful act of rebellion.
Dwayne’s initial response to Ahmed’s undergarment incident had been less graceful.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?! Do you think this is funny?!” At the time, Dwayne was working on the trash compactor, and when he swung around to the room, wrench still in his hand, lumps of food waste floated through the communal space. “Does this excite you?!” Dwayne demanded. “Does this arouse you?!” he repeated, and the Bobs tried to smile, but their spell was broken. They were just individuals again, for the moment. Then Bob himself said, “Chill, bro. It’s just a joke,” and forced out a chuckle.
“That’s the problem with bros like him,” Bob added, minutes after Dwayne briskly floated out of the room. “Everything’s so serious with those guys. Nobody can have a little fun.”
Studying Ahmed in the weeks after the incident, Nalini was overwhelmed by a hybrid emotion of pity and profound respect. It moved her in a way that she couldn’t name, but the feeling pulsed under her ribs. This confusing emotional reaction led her to pursue a private interview with Ahmed, to discern the theoretical underpinnings of this new form of “radical surrender,” as she began calling it. Conversations that led to the more intimate meetings behind the water tanks in storage during shared maintenance assignments. Because, why not—her best data had already been recorded by month five anyway, so she found it easy to justify the risk of tainting the research. At this point, Nalini’s primary objective was just to make it back to the real world without leaving her mind behind.
* * *
—
When the next drone images came back from Europa the following day-span, Nalini and Dwayne saw that the anomaly—what had originally appeared to be a bubble the size of a city—was upon closer inspection a bubble the size of a larger metro area, suburbs, exurbs, and all.
“That’s a biodome,” Dwayne said, like the word slipped past the censor of his conscious mind.
“You’re crazy. You’re crazy, that’s crazy. I’m going crazy now, too—we’re both going crazy, together. But I have to ask…how big?”
Their first estimates, based off of the previous photos, were clearly in error. “Size” was a straightforward data point on which Nalini felt comfortable focusing.
“Roughly four hundred thirty-nine miles in circumference. Seven hundred seven in kilometers.” Dwayne’s voice cracked, interrupting his sentence with his own awe. “Also, it’s green.”
Nalini looked up at the main screen, at the impossibility displayed there. No, it wasn’t green. The surface had no color; it appeared translucent. Or perhaps a naturally forming glass or other crystalline solid.
But whatever it was, it wasn’t green. The green was what it contained. The green part was inside of it.
* * *
—
They skipped dinner. They sucked their soup packets below, by the air filters, near storage. Nalini said it was so they could talk, but it was really because there were no windows down there, and she didn’t want to look outside again, ever. They did talk, but about nothings. Gossip about professors long discredited. Finally, as he picked his mess out of the air and began to head back, Dwayne started talking in a quieter tone, as if this was the separate, silent conversation that had been happening the whole time.
“All the UAP sightings over the years, all the flashing lights and flying Tic Tacs or saucers or whatever?” Dwayne said, waiting until Nalini finally offered “Yes?” before continuing. “Even if that shit really is alien, I always figured it still wouldn’t really be aliens—I mean, not like living beings riding inside. More likely: Ghost tech. Abandoned drones still flying around the universe eons after outliving their creators. Like autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners, endlessly sucking debris from the carpet of a post-apocalyptic house.”
Nalini voiced the three-word phrase that had been bouncing in her head for hours. “It was green.”
“Yup,” Dwayne responded, and, to articulate her implied conclusion, added, “Green means life, baby.”
* * *
—
“Bullshit!” was the consensus response among the Bobs when Nalini and Dwayne presented their findings. All the Bobs thought it was a hoax, even Ahmed. Not exactly a hoax, Nalini realized—no, the Bobs thought it was a prank. Of course. They thought it was revenge. A Trojan horse to somehow attack their clan. Nalini and Dwayne were both outsiders, not to be trusted. Worse, Team Beavers had motive, given the escalation in blatantly unfunny practical jokes in recent weeks. So the Bobs looked at the digital imagery and analyzed it for evidence of tampering—all while Dwayne hovered over their shoulders to make sure they weren’t doing their own sabotage.
“You sure you’re okay, big guy?” Bob asked, as Dwayne floated, eyebrows raised. Nalini was sure Bob knew Dwayne Causwell specifically did not like to be called “big guy.” “This is a little out there, even for you. I mean, holy shit, this is nuts?” Bob burst out with a laugh that was purposely loud and forced and signaled to the other Bobs they were supposed at least to smile as well.
“There is no ‘nuts’ in science, Bob. A scientist is supposed to ignore preconceived notions in favor of empirical evidence. I know you bullshitted your way onto this mission with help from the guys at your country club, but, still, I’m surprised you didn’t know that.” Then it was Dwayne’s turn to force a laugh, a solitary sound devoid of the pretense of humor.
That night, far belowdecks and out of sight, sweat droplets floating in beads away from their exposed flesh, Ahmed really ruined the moment by saying, “Little cabbage, I don’t know what you’re up to with this—and don’t tell me, I one-hundred-percent don’t want to know. But if this space-blister thing is about you and Dwayne trying to
get back at Seaford, it’s not worth it. You can’t beat Bob in that manner. He’s a spiteful and petty man without shame.” The last sentence Ahmed whispered in a barely audible exhalation.
“It’s real. It’s surreal, but real. The only reason Bob can’t see that is he’s blinded by the notion that Dwayne and I can’t be trusted, because, for whatever reason, he’s designated Team Beavers as his enemy.”
Ahmed nodded politely as he snatched his clothes from the air, waiting until she was done before pushing both feet off the deck. “But, Nalini, you are,” he said as he floated above her, pulling on his pants in midair.
* * *
—
The thing was, Nalini, proud Beaver, had also attended M.I.T. Technically, she was a Team Engineer affiliate. Between Nalini’s graduate degree and post-doc fellowship, she’d likely spent more time on M.I.T.’s campus than most of the Bobs ever did. But collegiate tribal affiliation was based on where one did one’s undergraduate education, and so, in that regard, Nalini was Caltech through and through (go, Beavers!). As ridiculous as this little war was, the difference in schools wasn’t totally meaningless, she thought. Caltech’s Pasadena campus was a small, temperate town, not a frozen city unto itself like M.I.T.’s; Nalini found it doubtful that Dwayne would’ve undergone his latent lean toward progressive activism in Cambridge. Conversely, Nalini felt that in response to living in the hyper-competitive college town M.I.T. shared with the predatory overachievers of Harvard, it made sense for young people to form cliques, defensively. During Nalini’s own years in Cambridge, spent pursuing her Ph.D. at the Economic Sociology Program, she, too, was forced to make unfortunate social alliances to survive the landscape. Hers took the form of a brief membership in a communal-living raw-foods co-op in exchange for reduced room and board. A period of her life Josey found hilarious to bring up at large family events, a malicious act that always ended with Nalini’s having to repeat the phrase “It wasn’t a cult.”