Fiction River: Moonscapes (9 page)

Though happy to see the stars now visible again, they held little sway against the intense, boundless silence of this ocean of nothingness. Since passing Neptune nearly a year ago, this final leg of her journey had seemed longer than the previous seven years combined. Perhaps it was anticipation of finally starting her work.

“Braking,” a simulation of the Popess’ voice warned Carrie . “Secure restraints. Braking.”

Carrie laughed at the thought that she had any choice about moving to or from the bed that held her. Her stomach dropped as the pod settled into the gravitational pull of Charon and Pluto. She trembled with a combination of fear and excitement as Hydra adjusted the orbit with short blasts of fuel. Given Carrie was only twenty-three when she was sentenced; her pod was built to sustain an orbit for a minimum of seventy years. If she lived longer than that, it was hard to know what would happen. Would the pod simply plummet to Charon and finally allow her to die? Or would the Earth programmers find a way to coax her satellite to remain aloft until her death, never allowing her to touch ground again?

After the long journey she was glad to finally get started on her work. She had lobbied Earth-Space Research, in her most contrite writing, to be allowed to move again once the pod achieved a stable orbit. It was “under consideration.”

Carrie clamped down on the little bit of anger she still felt at her confinement. For the most part she had grown to accept her imprisonment. Sometime around year five Carrie had decided not to damn them all to hell every time she received a message with instructions on the nature of her research. In fact, she decided it wasn’t worth the energy to feel anything about the Earth-Space administrators or others left back on Earth. At least she was freed of the daily edicts of the Popess instructing wives in their duties.

During the first two years of her confinement, she’d suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom. She would spend entire days writing angry screeds to the prison panel for this cruel punishment. Getting no response, she turned to dictating novels where she could easily kill off the Popess, the judges, the citizen jurors, and anyone else she cared to control in her fantasy world. When she had finally bled all her anger into the stories, she stopped writing and took to voracious reading. Over a million volumes were stored for her, ranging from light love stories to complex family sagas, stories of crime and fantasy, comedies and tragedies. Even science fiction could keep her going on her worst days. Now that she was no longer a threat to Earth, she had access to thousands of banned books. Her soul already doomed to hell, the Popess and her minions no longer tried to save her from her wayward thoughts.

She was allowed written communication with the Earth-Research administration, where some low-level lacky would decide whether to send her missive off to the addressee. In the first year, her mother wrote weekly. Carrie hated how the greeting was always to “The Prisoner of Charon.” Even her own mother refused to call her by her given name. In the second year, her mother stopped writing. She wasn’t sure if her family had moved or if the administrator wasn’t passing along her messages. By the third year, she accepted she was completely alone.

In the third year, Carrie tried to kill herself by not eating. After all, being sent to the far reaches of the solar system was worse than a death sentence. Her punishment was to live entirely alone for the rest of her days.

Her starvation was not successful. Once she slipped into unconsciousness, the bots fed her and brought her back to health. To ensure she didn’t try it again, she was now not only confined within the pod, but to her small two foot by six foot bed. Yet another indignity visited upon The Prisoner of Charon. One could not choose to die.

Carrie had little memory of what happened in the fourth or fifth years of her journey. As the pod passed each planet, she was briefly introduced to the prisoners of various moons. When she passed Saturn and Jupiter, the list went on forever, with over one hundred prisoners between them. Then Uranus with thirty-two prisoners. She learned that all the scientific studies of the various moons and satellites in the solar system were performed by prisoners sentenced to living alone in a pod orbiting around one moon. At first she had welcomed the brief contact of human voices on her journey, but as she listened to their loneliness, their helplessness, she decided she would prefer not to be introduced. She had enough of her own baggage to carry.

By the sixth year, Carrie was merely going through the motions of living. She had accepted her confinement to the pod, but being restrained in her bed was so demoralizing that she could no longer pretend interest. She missed standing, and bending, and on occasion dancing. The bots’ stimulation of muscles kept her in shape but it was not the same. If it weren’t for her diary entries she would have nothing to prove she actually was conscious during those years. Perhaps it was better she didn’t remember. One day flowed into the next. Without movement or the will to improve her mind she relied on the bots to control all intake, and quickly remove all eliminations with the same efficiency.

When the pod passed Neptune and entered the final year of her journey, Carrie gave up writing in her diary and renewed hope for meaningful work to come. She studied music and poetry. She learned to compose music to match her mood by sampling the ancient symphonies that were supplied via the pod’s computer. She now had saved several new symphonies she’d designed from the inspiration of poetry or classic plays she favored. A favorite was a pastoral piece with some operatic notes and loosely based on Aristophanes Greek comedy,
The Frogs
. Given that Carrie’s life sentence to Charon was her punishment for actively disobeying the Popess, it seemed fitting to pit one philosopher against another in her symphony, just as Aristophanes had done.

Carrie had also zealously studied languages, philosophy, and their relationship to science. As if the bots knew what she needed next, she would be led to find crossover books for her to read—books that intersected with science and religion or language and culture. That was when she developed her plan—a plan to finally win her complete freedom from Earth.

An alarm sounded, and the five camera screens, which had provided the primary views of space, switched on all at once.

“Recording,” Hydra said. “Do you have questions?”

Carrie shook her head. She wasn’t sure when she’d decided to stop talking to Hydra. It had been some years ago. There simply seemed no reason to interact with a computer that didn’t care. She had also vowed not to share anymore than absolutely necessary with whoever was monitoring her on Earth, billions of miles away.

“The prisoner is required to enter perceptions in her diary,” Hydra reminded her. “I would be loath to punish the prisoner again, if the prisoner refuses.”

Carrie laughed at that. The bots could inflict pain at any time, but never enough to kill her. She’d given up on enticing Hydra to deliver pain and remind Carrie that she still lived. Her body was no longer of prime importance. Only her mind mattered now.

Yes, she would enter her perceptions in her diary. She would draw pictures of the moon to provide an artist’s view for those data crunchers back on Earth who would only see Charon in terms of its chemical makeup. What would the people of Earth see in pictures instead of words? She refused to play their game of defining emotions. Instead she would create emotions in them and see how they liked it.

Carrie placed the stylus on her screen and selected white, blue, and grey as her color palette for her first painting. Then she turned her gaze to the cameras as they caught different angles of the moonscape. As expected, it appeared covered with ice. Large rock outcroppings were evident and she noted a possible hill or small mountain in the distance. She quickly rendered what she saw in three different viewpoints. She was sure to add a perspective of Pluto as a moon of Charon—even though it was the larger of the two satellites. That should give them a different perspective.

She added a corona of light around the dark Pluto on her drawing, and then followed that light to illuminate certain features of the planet. This was a more romantic drawing than the realistic depictions on her screens, but that was what she believed would get people excited—would begin to build her popularity.

Could it be true that somewhere on Charon plumes of water were erupting? An ice planet provided water, when heated. If they found a way to heat specific areas, humans could eventually be sustained in domes. With Pluto’s slight atmosphere having more methane, some scientists believed Charon was the better choice for future settlements and a launching place to move beyond the solar system. Of course both worlds—Pluto and Charon—would take decades to build and maybe over a hundred years before an attempt at human habitation. Both worlds would take a millennia to terraform. Carrie wanted to make Charon the world of choice. She wanted to prove to Earth that the smaller, the lighter, the one furthest from the center was the most beautiful.

As the pod passed over the dark south pole and headed north, Carrie couldn’t help but notice the constant presence of the larger satellite. What must it be like to live on the Pluto-facing side? To stand upon Charon and see a moon larger than that world? Would it feel comforting or menacing? Would her body respond to the constant tidal pull or would it become normal? She hoped at some time in the future, the computer would allow her to pass between the two worlds and capture it in her art.

“Analysis,” Hydra stated. The screen on her far right no longer showed a view of the planet, but had instead engaged the spectrascope and spewed chemical data onto the screen in neat rows and columns. “Charon presents a clear spectral signature of H
2
O ice in the crystalline phase, plus an absorption band near 2.2 μm identified as a hydrated form of NH
3
.”

In other words, frozen water was the primary component of Charon with a small amount of ammonia. No presence of methane or carbon monoxide like Pluto.

Carrie sighed and started the next file for a new drawing. This one would not be sent until her plan for freedom was realized. She titled it
Home
.

Over the next two years, Carrie sent more than a thousand renderings of Charon to the planetary art markets. Some were realistic, while others were romanticized. It was the latter that brought the most money into the prison system. She should have felt angry about that, but she didn’t. For the first time in her life, she felt an important part of something—something beyond any personal relationship she’d had on Earth.

Carrie was sure that those on Earth could now see a reflection of the deep love she felt for the moon. In addition to her digital paintings she would compose new music and use it to animate the turns from day to night, from sunlight to dark. She now thought of Charon as a planet, not a moon. She and Charon were becoming of one mind. She was indeed Charon now.

“You are released from your sleeping couch, Prisoner of Charon.” After two years in a stable orbit, Earth administration had finally granted Carrie’s request to walk on her own.

Carefully, she placed her feet on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. She hadn’t felt the floor for years. It was a strange feeling to have that solid surface and the simulated partial gravity beneath her feet once more.

She scooted to the edge of the bed and pushed up to stand. Her legs wobbled but supported her. Intellectually, she knew they would because the bots had exercised her muscles several times each day. But her heart hadn’t been sure. It had been so long since she’d stood she wasn’t a hundred percent certain that her mind and body would cooperate.

Carrie shuffled one foot forward and then another. She could balance too. Amazing what the body and brain could agree to do. Gingerly, she lifted one foot to balance completely on the other. As she tilted to one side she reached to the wall to steady herself. It would take practice to dance again. She laughed. No worries. She had plenty of time to relearn. She would compose the dance of Charon with music, and paintings, and perhaps one day even with words.

Today she would stand at the screen instead of lying in her bed. Today she would show herself one with Charon for all to see.

“Thank you,” Carrie responded, breaking her years of silence with Hydra. “We are grateful.”

Over the next five years, Carrie’s output increased. Now that she could move and dance, touch things beyond her bed, her creativity amplified tenfold. The communications coming from Earth-Space administration indicated they were ecstatic with her output. It seemed that Earth art collectors always wanted more inventory. Her digital paintings were being exhibited in galleries throughout the world. Her musical compositions and animations of Charon were becoming important backdrops in new theater and movie productions. The name of The Prisoner of Charon had exceeded all other moon prisoners combined. The amount of money coming into the prison system was staggering. The subliminal message in her paintings of the moon of Charon standing up to Pluto heightened the confidence of advocates for rehabilitation instead of isolation. In response the Earth-Space administration was required to fund rehabilitation efforts again.

Carrie was satisfied. It was time to implement her plan.

She stared out the viewing port, waiting to pass between Charon and Pluto on their mutually facing side. The pod had been granted that orbit for the past month and she had determined how that would help her. The Earth-based telescopes still had difficulty distinguishing one world from the other, particularly when Pluto eclipsed Charon. When she turned off the communication network, she would have five hours before anyone on Earth knew something was wrong. She was counting on the bureaucracy to first assume a computer glitch and then to begin formulating a fix. Given what she knew about how the prison system worked, she had calculated a minimum of seventy-two Earth hours and a maximum of six days. Either way, it would be too late for anyone to stop her escape.