Escape

When we crash landed on the barren island, and everyone survived, there was celebrating.

Not too much, and not too long, because there was so much work to do, but it was lovely to be Home, which is what our leaders shamelessly and sentimentally called this new world.

We had landed in the wrong hemisphere, and Aries 1 would never fly again, but we had landed alive and mostly equipped for starting a new life.

I can't remember much of the scary time. Annie says it's repression.. that if I can't remember everything then I won't have to remember anything.

I don't know.

I do remember the first person who checked out, or just went out, as we began to call it.

It was Lydia Balent. Scientific, cool, balanced and poised Lydia. We emerged from the big tents one morning to find her sitting near the fire pit in her sling chair. Her face was serene, and she looked fine. But she was... suspended. Heart and breathing okay. She didn't talk. Did not respond. Didn't seem to hear. Did not resist as we carried her to the infirmary.

Her life followed her mind out of existence within 24 hours. Nothing the medics did made any difference.

People began going out at about 18 hour intervals. There was no reason. No pattern. At least not one we could discern. We burned our dead and numbly waited for the next ones to die.

Jacob Aubrine went out during dinner one evening. He turned to his wife Mary and said, "Pass the bread, please."

She reached immediately for it, and held it out to him. But Jacob never took the plate from her hands. He had gone out, you see. Right there at the table. In front of at least 50 people.

About nine days into the nightmare, we began to realize that no one under the age of 15 had gone out. Whatever had happened to our people on this new world had not happened to the children.

In less than two months those of us under 15 were all that was left of the first wave of colonists.

Well, we could manage growing food and making or finding permanent shelter if we could manage to make it 300 miles or so to the Northern hemisphere. The conditions on South Island (very poor soil, no rain, too cold) would not allow us a good chance to survive.

And there was still something there.

There are no guarantees, but we hoped that whatever made our parents and friends go out was confined to the deep crater and arid conditions on South Island. To add urgency, six of us were within months of our 15th birthdays, and the days were growing shorter and colder.

We tried to figure ways out. Ways we could survive and save the smallest ones.

Alwyn knew balloons, and after taking stock of what we had, we thought it to be our best chance.

We dismantled the gigantic, communal tents, cut them up and used gallons of the poly-glue that they'd planned to use to assemble the plastic shells of our permanent homes to coat the inside of the balloons we made from them.

We brought all the seeds, some tools, Melly's cat and the kittens and our hopes. The next colonists aren't scheduled to arrive for five more years. Five years. Will we still be here?

And the 38 of us who remain alive are in these balloons now. We made the water crossing and can see lovely land around us.

Will we still be here? Will the oldest ones go out before then?

I hope. It's what I have left.

Excerpt taken from the diary of Ilea Graham, found in a small hut near the deserted settlement which is the landing place of Aries2.

Van Schaefer, acting on behalf of Aaron Galen.
It is upon my authority that we will be leaving this place today.
Aaron was the first to go out you see.