One
I’ve totally Fucked this up.
What was I thinking?
THE DAYS ARE LONG in the southern Indian Ocean. The Desolation Islands are close to the Antarctic Circle, and in the summer months the afternoons extend into never-ending twilight. This evening, just as the sun is beginning to set, the sky turns pink. Dusty pink, like the color of cultured meat or the algae blooms that plague the planet’s waterways—a ruddy hue that reminds Quinn of birthday party icing and plastic dolls from her childhood, so she names it Nostalgia Pink.
She goes to bed thinking how quickly time has passed; almost thirty years of her life already over, and tomorrow she’s getting married.
She wakes at midnight in an inky mauve darkness reminiscent of the not-quite-blue chrysanthemum flowers her mother received after she was born. It’s a feigned purple-blue, more lavender than blue, and the scientific feat of gene-edited pigments; as in the case of her mother’s chrysanthemums, it had yet to be refined and polished to produce a true blue, like the azure and sapphire hues now abundant in today’s floral sprays.
Bathed in the modified mauve of anthocyanin pigment, Quinn says, “Good lordt, I’ve totally fucked this up. What was I thinking?” and is gripped with an urgent need to jump off something very high. (Leaping from great heights is how she resolves most of the dilemmas in her life. Falling through space helps her to breathe, and it’s here, immersed in the undulating, flexible universe of space-time that the heaviness of existence slips away. This is the place where she thinks, where she plans, where she finds freedom: tumbling from a mountaintop towards Earth.)
Objects—rocks and rain, planetary bodies and people—all fall because space curves. Gravitational fields spread out across the universe, trapping us all in their warp and weft, and it’s the curvature of space-time that holds Quinn down, pinning her to the planet, binding her to her bed in the inky mauve glow of midnight.
If Quinn intends to jump, she needs to do it soon; Mount Ross is a five-hour hike and they’re leaving tomorrow, headed for Antarctica, so the passenger drones are stowed. But she lies motionless in her crib, immobilized by regret. “I’m so fucking stupid, I can’t believe how stupid I am,” she mumbles. And it’s true, this is probably the worst thing she’s ever done, and it’s entirely her fault—no one else to blame, just her. She created this mess and now she has eighteen hours to fix it, to find a way out.
Quinn Buyers has a PhD in electrodynamics. She’s been called a world leader in electromagnetics and nuclear forces. Few people on the planet understand how shape-shifting neutrinos merge into dark matter, or, how the graviton—the particle defining gravity— functions, but she does. Clearly she has a brain—a brain that works, a brain adept at math and science, a brain that loves physics. How then, she wonders, is it possible to be so competent in one part of her life and so mind-numbingly stupid in others? Years of study and academic achievements have failed her. Decades of learning about nuclear forces and shape-shifting neutrinos have failed her. Gravity has failed her.
“Fuck, what have I done? I don’t love him. I like him, sure—he’s good company, sometimes he’s funny—but I’m not in love with him. I was never in love with him.” In eighteen hours they’ll be exchanging vows five kilometers high in the sky, because they’re getting married inside a cumulus cloud, a big, white, fluffy cumulus cloud—another stupid idea that she agreed to.
Quinn was a bit preoccupied when Mori asked her to marry him. She was busy reviewing figures from the magnetometers that monitor the planet’s Auroal Zone, and there had been some unusual geomagnetic disturbances. Normally those are linked to sun spot cycles, but this activity was atypical and unsettling, so understandably she was distracted and his proposal took her completely by surprise. She looked up at him, standing there in the doorway of the Research Station, and replied, “Sure. Okay. Well, why not?” Then they smiled at each other, and she thought he looked a bit like a giant otter leaning against the doorframe. He’s long and slim, with small ears and not much of a neck, and he wears his climate pants too high. (None of the rest of the team wears climate suits in Kerguelen; he’s the only one. They are south of the equator, a long way south, but he feels the heat and the pants keep him cool.)
Yes, she thought, if he were an animal, he’d be an otter, and she went back to her confusing data. But he didn’t leave; he waited, unsure what to do next, so she said, “You organize it,” because that’s what he’s good at, organizing things. That’s why he wears three Bands, so he can schematize all the different parts of his life. And he has a lot going on: there’s the new business, Dining in the Clouds, and he’s head of New Development at eMpower, so he needs a Band for each of those. The third is for other things—personal things, important things, she’s not sure what, but he has a lot going on.
Now, a month later, lying in the darkness, she knows two things for sure. First, no one needs three Bands. You can manage perfectly well with just one. Secondly, “Sure. Okay. Well, why not?” is not an appropriate response to a marriage proposal. It’s not even close. The truth is, she believed compatibility could sustain their relationship. But it hasn’t, and he deserves so much more. He’s good, and kind, and patient, and he’s been so helpful, organizing the funding for her research. He’s the reason they’re here, deep in the Southern Indian Ocean, on Kerguelen, searching outer space, recording geomagnetic disturbances.
It’s now after midnight, and she needs to formulate a plan, a new plan. She needs to jump off something very high and she needs to do it very soon.
***
The trek up Mount Ross is peaceful, the morning clear and mild—a balmy 20 degrees. There’s a new moon and a few lingering stars to the west. Her ascent is perfectly timed, and as she reaches the summit the sun begins to rise, the scarlet orb slipping quickly into the morning sky. The sight leaves her slightly awestruck—the dawn of a perfect day. Poetic, but not very smart. After the five-hour climb, she’s weary, and there’s an irritating tickle at the back of her throat; she could be coming down with something.
After pulling on her wingsuit, she steps out onto a small plateau, almost the highest point on the island of Kerguelen, and moves to the edge of the precipice. She drops a small rock over the edge, then watches it fall. A time-formed habit. There’s fear, but she’s always scared—the edge, the height, the speed, the fall. The trick is to make it into something else. Change it from a clawing, negative thing to a thrilling, tingling sensation. This is the first step to freedom. Soon her fear dissolves like melting ice, replaced by anticipation.
She straps on her helmet and goggles, pops in earplugs, and turns the music up, loud. Closing her eyes, she tumbles backward, over the edge, free-falling, but not into emptiness—space is not empty.
Adjusting her angle, she tilts 90 degrees and follows the curve of the mountain. The route takes her through a deep ravine, around the side of Mount Ross, and over what remains of the Cook Glacier. Thirty years ago, the glacier covered 450 square kilometers. Today, some sections are still frozen, but the meltwater has forged a majestic, swift-flowing river that runs from the mountaintop to the ocean. Pooling arteries of icy liquid, like blue and white lace, seep into the scenery, and Quinn sees her reflection as she zips across the fjords. The remainder of the mountain landscape is sparse, rough with stumpy vegetation, thick shrubs and grasses, and a particularly unpleasant native cabbage.