The Loneliest Girl in the Universe(7)

Hi Romy,

We have some bad news for you. Recently NASA have been finding it difficult to gain enough access to the Deep Space Network telecommunications antennas to send you any large transmissions. Unfortunately, The Infinity has just been ruled a low-priority mission by the international board. This means that using the DSN to transmit high-memory data such as audio files is no longer considered a valuable use of space agency resources.

From now on, only email communication will be possible except in unavoidable circumstances – meaning that I’m not going to be able to send you any more voice messages. Unfortunately, we also can’t send any music or podcasts.

The Advisory Council thinks that this will only be a short-term issue, and it is likely that we may be able to resume our original broadcasting schedule in the future, once the political climate changes.

I’m sorry.

Molly


No more audio. The quiet happiness I’ve been carrying around since I found out about The Eternity drops away.

I had no idea this was possible. It’s a scenario I’ve never even worried about – and I’ve worried about most things, realistic or not. The further away The Infinity travels from Earth, the longer it takes for messages to arrive. I know that. I’ve accepted it. But to get no audio messages at all? It’s all I have.

Why would my mission have been ruled as low priority all of a sudden? Have they decided that, since The Eternity has been launched, it isn’t worth spending any more money on me?

Now that Commander Shoreditch is around – clever, competent and NASA-trained – there’s no point baby-sitting me any more. I know that I’m the worst possible person to be responsible for an interstellar spacecraft. Even if NASA would never tell me that, it’s the truth. They would never have actually chosen me to command this mission. They’ve only spent all this time looking after me because they had no other option.

NASA have always sent me everything I could possibly want to read: the latest scientific papers and newspaper articles; books; blogs; Twitter feeds; medical journals… I could read all day and never get through all the information that comes from Earth. I’ve tried.

Is that over now? Are they slowly cutting the ties between me and Earth completely?

What if I never hear Molly’s voice ever again? What if I’ve lost her, along with the voices of everyone else on Earth?

I should have enough already; I know I should. My hard drive contains every TV show, book and video game made in the twenty-first century, as well as thousands of songs, apps and podcasts. I have nearly every YouTube video – and an entire archive of Loch & Ness fanfic. I have Commander Shoreditch now, too, I remind myself. At least he can still send me episodes of Loch & Ness.

That should be enough entertainment to occupy a human for an entire lifetime. Shouldn’t it?

From: The Infinity Sent: 27/02/2067

To: The Eternity Predicted date of receipt: 09/06/2067

Dear Commander Shoreditch,

I got a worrying email from Earth today. Apparently there’s something happening that means they can’t send any audio files for a while. Did you get the same message? Do you know what’s going on?

I guess there’s no point in asking, seeing as you won’t read this message for months. Hopefully it’ll be fixed before you reply to this, anyway. I just needed to tell someone.

Commander Romy Silvers


I’m so jumpy for the rest of the day that I manage to catch my thumb with the scissors when I’m cutting the top off my lunch packet. Blood spills over the dried noodles inside, and I quickly wrap up the wound in my sleeve, pressing hard to stop the bleeding.

Get a grip, Romy.

I need to calm down. It’s just voice messages. It’s not that big a deal.

I use a first-aid kit to bandage the cut, even though it’s already stopped bleeding.

Afterwards, I eat my noodles, picking out the blood-covered ones as I take a walk through Google Earth.

I click down a street, not really thinking about anything, just absently taking in the trees and street lamps and parked cars, frozen in time in the decades-old recording stored on my hard drive. It doesn’t really make up for not being able to walk there myself, but sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can trick my brain into thinking I’ve actually been for a walk. On those nights, I’ll dream of Earth and wake up happy, stretching out in my sheets, trying to grab on to the tendrils of my dream and keep them. Make them real.

There’s a girl on the pavement, an old phone to her ear. As I click along the street she turns and watches the camera as it passes. It’s like she’s staring right at me. She looks like a ghost, moving through the series of sequential photographs that tie together to make the Google Earth images. I click back and zoom in. She looks around my age – maybe fifteen or sixteen – with red hair, a long fringe and bangles around one wrist.

I wonder what her name is; who she was talking to on the phone. I wonder if she remembers the day that a Google Earth car drove past and she turned to look, her picture caught in their records for all eternity. I wonder if she knows who I am.

I take a screenshot and leave her picture open on the screen while I tidy up. I stare at her, imagining the conversation we might have.

“Excuse me,” I’d say. “Sorry, I know you’re on the phone, but I was wondering if you knew the way to the cinema.” I’ve always wanted to go to the cinema. It looks fun. Popcorn. Slush Puppies. “I’m Romy. What’s your name?”