Leila looked forward to this meal, one she had eaten twice before with other departing crews since arriving at Schaefer Station, on the lunar South Pole about six months earlier. She was beaming. Suresh, sitting next to her, was manipulating a handheld computer, immersed and unaware of the crowd and of the many pairs of eyes that spent far too much time on the face and figure of his goddess, luxurious black hair tumbling in giant curls and waves well below the tops of her shoulders. About a hundred eyes lusted; an equal number envied. All of them admired. She kept looking at the entrance, waiting for her mother-in-law to arrive.
Raul’s eyes and hands were occupied. He stroked shoulder-length blond hair while he studied Maricia’s features, placing her image, texture, and smell deeper into his brain in the faith it would survive centuries of sleep, in hope it would not be erased by death.
Leila laughed, tossing her head, “Raul! You are not subtle. Your eyes are undressing her in front of everyone!”
“I’m just burning her into my long-term memory.”
“‘Long term’ is an understatement. It’ll need to last for millennia,” said Chen.
“I’m working on it.”
“That’s so sweet,” whispered Leila. “Don’t you think that’s sweet?”
“Sappy is more accurate,” replied Chen. “Way sappy. Besides, we have holo-repos of each of us, including smell. Much more accurate and not degradable like human memory.”
“Chen! Don’t be so uncaring,” scolded Lucinda.
“Don’t worry, Luc, I’m not going to let your technophile husband ruin Raul’s hot Latino sentiment.” Maricia stroked his cheek in return.
Most of the squad of REAP 23 laughed and visited with other astronauts until the expensive dinner was served. They enjoyed imported red wine and great cheeses from Europe, beef brisket from Argentina, and vegetables grown in the unique lunar biospheres. Bread baked in reduced gravity was deliciously light. More than the food, they fed on the spirit emanating from young adults from all over the world, full of hope and idealism. Their crew, like all others, comprised of four couples with requisite skills and vigorous genetic, psychological, and health screening, who had worked together for two years. They were the residua of eighteen people initially assigned to REAP 23. Most of the others had been eliminated from the program. Four had been assigned to other teams. Of those, two were aboard 22, and two were new to Schaefer on REAP 24.
The crowd consisted of the next crew, the booster vehicle squad, and all support and administrative staff. Everyone here was part of the Repopulation, Expansion, and Annexation Project (REAP), a global program commenced in recognition that Earth was eventually doomed and that mankind would be extinguished if they did not find another place to live. While the certain time of destruction was more than a billion or more years in the future, when the sun would begin its death process, the time scale to expand to another planet with a younger sun was daunting. Twenty-two ships had been sent in various directions to solar systems that appeared to have habitable planets. There was funding for twenty-five missions. Mission 23 was aimed at the farthest system technically possible, five thousand light-years away, a mere 5 percent of the diameter of the galaxy.
Dozens of raucous conversations echoed around the hall. “May I have your attention!” followed stentorian tapping on the microphone. Gen. Cecil McBain stood on a small dais and flicked obnoxiously again to confirm the mike was working. “Ladies, Gentlemen, and the rest of you.” There were a few polite chuckles from the sycophants in the audience. “I hope you are enjoying the meal. It certainly sounds like it.” Scattered laughter was repeated as the din of conversations receded. “As you know, every six months or so for the past eleven years, we have enjoyed this feast to honor the departing astronauts. Today we are here to send off REAP 23, who will launch in just a few hours. Twenty-Three, please stand up.” The bunch rose to their feet. Applause filled the hall, as did shouts, whistles, and hurrahs. They waved and pumped their fists in return. Three of the four couples had one arm around each other, the other raised. Suresh put his computer down and nodded with a polite half smile, while Leila Nguyen just looked delicious, her smile gathering the bulk of attention and gratuitous close-ups transmitted to Earth. This went on for almost one full minute.
During the applause, a uniformed woman, plump and young, entered the hall and made her way to the table where Dr. Suresh Parambi stood. Leila watched as she approached, her smile fading almost imperceptibly.
The audience sat as the general continued, looking into one of several cameras. “The few of us here and the millions on the planet who join us by conference all know pretty much what I am going to say.”
“Dr. Parambi, sir,” the woman said in a low voice. Her hair was stretched back, accenting her red puffy cheeks.
He looked at her without a verbal response.
“Sir, I have some news. Bad news. There—”
“You are interfering with this program, young lady,” he curtly interrupted.
“It’s about your mother, sir.” He turned his attention back to McBain.
“There are about one hundred million solar systems in our galaxy, most of which are in the inner portion, where radiation causes genetic instability. Less than 1 percent of the system is within our reach, not half a million stars. Among these, astronomers have identified twenty-five planets or moons among these stars that have characteristics of liquid water and an atmosphere containing oxygen and nitrogen.”
“Sir, there has been an accident. Please come with me.”
“Young woman, you are discourteous. Please leave, or I will summon security.”
“I am security, sir.”
“I am Mrs. Parambi, ma’am,” Leila interjected, placing a hand on the uniformed arm. “Let’s move away from the table.” Leila walked away to the edge of the room with the embarrassed girl, face growing redder with each heartbeat. “What’s wrong, Lieutenant?”
“The rocket carrying Dr. Parambi’s mother crashed nearby an hour ago before landing. No one survived.”
“Oh my god! Are you certain?”
“Yes, ma’am. No survivors.” She lifted a small tablet and tapped it a few times. “Is this your mother-in-law?”
It was a picture of an elderly Indian woman, smudges of soot across her cheeks and dark-red blood from her graying hair framing her face. “Oh, it is.” Leila put both hands over her nose and mouth and breathed deeply a few times.
General McBain’s speech pattern was loud, short, clipped, and precise, characteristic of his demeanor. The volume made it necessary to raise their voices almost to the point of yelling. Leila bent in to the ear of the guard. “Can I have this?” She pointed at the image.
“I can beam it to your device,” she hollered as she nodded to a black object hanging from her belt.
“Of course, yes.” She flipped the handheld out and within seconds had the photograph on her screen. “I’ll tell Dr. Parambi. Thank you. Will you wait at the entrance for a few minutes?”
“Yes, I’ll be happy to.”
Leila returned to her seat. Savanna was looking over her notes, not paying full attention to the speech until McBain said, “At this point, we traditionally give the departing crew a chance to be heard.” The general with his familiar false smile, the look of anticipation mixed with concern over decorum, looked toward the crew. “What have you planned?”
Savanna stood and walked to the podium, shook the general’s hand and then gave him a hug. She then noisily adjusted the microphone to her height. “The tradition has been to allow the departing souls wide latitude in saying farewell. In the past, we have seen skits, both profane and deeply moving.”
“Suresh,” Leila whispered into his ear. He turned. She had the image of his dead mother on screen in her lap.
“What?” he whispered back with irritation.
“. . . raising money for REAP. Our team decided on a fertility ritual with loud drums and wild dancing, but the general turned us down. Why? He knew he could not follow a mating dance starring our very own Leila Nyguen.” She pointed to the well-known beauty. The boisterous whistles, cheers, and catcalls forced Leila to stand and bow, her emotional conflict appearing as embarrassment, increasing the thunderous din. “Besides, what could REAP 24 do to compete with that? General McBain didn’t want the previous crews to be upstaged. Not that they would ever know. It’s a legacy thing. So, in a selfless gesture, we decided to put on the worst program of all crews, a speech from a French Belgian farm girl with no talent whatsoever. I will use up less than my allotted fifteen minutes of undeserved fame.”
Leila sat down. “Your mother’s transport crashed. That’s why she is not here.”
“I did not want her to come anyway.”
“She died in the crash, Suresh.” She held up the image where he could see it. He looked at it for a second.
“She was near death anyway. At least it was quick.” He turned back to Savanna’s speech.
“As general McBain said, our task as with each REAP mission is to copulate—I’m sorry, populate a so-called M class planet then send a signal of our fuccess or sailure.” Savanna paused appropriately to let the transpositions sink in then as laughter punctuated her dialogue. “However, I want to address the mital vission of you that remain, which is equally important.”
“You are pathetic.” Leila sat for a moment then walked away, seething disgust never reaching her face. The other crew members looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and irritation as she left the hall with the young lieutenant.
“Looking at your uncertain future, our little shocket rip will be a party in comparison. Eight of us up there yucking it up, having fun, sleeping in. We’ll get along without narcissists, murder, theft, or disputes, religious, social, or political, without other catastrophic dysfunctions that have plagued mankind since the teginning of bime. All we have to do is get knocked up and land the damn plane in paradise. It’s just that easy.” The crowd laughed, engaged by the monologue.
Savanna kept her serious performance face as applause and cheers again filled the small hall and thousands of rooms over the planet below. Maricia looked at Lucinda and said, “She did good.” She looked at Raul and repeated it. Neither could hear her but understood what she said.
“She did well,” Raul almost shouted in Maricia’s ear.
“Thank you for correcting my English.”
“What did you say?” Raul shouted.
“What’s up with Leila?”