{"id":2993,"date":"2024-12-11T16:31:36","date_gmt":"2024-12-12T00:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/?p=2993"},"modified":"2025-01-28T15:56:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T23:56:36","slug":"a-background-narrative-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/a-background-narrative-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"CLERE\u2019S STORY, PART 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

PART ONE<\/b><\/p>\n

Now:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clere floats. Her suit keeps her warm; one scant breath away lies the vacuum of space, safely on the other side of her clear visor. <\/span><\/p>\n

Above her is the infinite sky, cloudless and airless, of a barren ice moon by night. It holds countless stars, a spread of jewels across a profound black that is deeper than any ocean. From where she is on Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus, she can barely see the tip of the rings poking above the horizon, reflecting the sun she cannot see. It\u2019s a desolate place, a surface of cratered ice, pocked and cracked from millennia of impacts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under other circumstances, she might stop to stare into endless space; but she\u2019s on a mission, one that entire nations are waiting on, back on Earth. She briefly puts one hand over her chest, over the pocket on her jumpsuit that holds Sofia\u2019s picture; then she activates her suit jets and gingerly moves away from her lander and towards her destination: the mysterious alien structure that holds all of humanity\u2019s greatest hopes and fears.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then:<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re it, Clere,\u201d the voice said on the other side of the line. \u201cIt\u2019s not official yet, but it will be by this afternoon. You probably have a couple of hours to get back here and shower before the press shows up.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cHoly shit,\u201d was all she could muster.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

She\u2019d paused her jog above the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial to take the call; her breath condensed in the cold winter air in front of her. Snow bones and puddles had made for a tricky hour of exercise as she dodged halfhearted tourists on what was left of the Mall. The city was on one of its periodic power outages, and of course most of the Mall had been underwater for quite some time; as sea levels had risen, so had the Potomac. The reflecting pool had been given raised embankments so that people could still walk along it, see the Lincoln Memorial just offshore, and see the dirty water lapping at the steps, on its decades-long climb to Lincoln\u2019s feet.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Clere began walking slowly back across the embankment bridge in the direction of Washington Monument Island. From there she\u2019d be able to go over the pedestrian bridge to her office at the Smithsonian.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cYou heading back now?\u201d Ismail asked. \u201cWe need to think about how to tell the story to the press.\u201d He was the director of public relations for The Project, and what the press thought was always his top concern.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, of course,\u201d Clere said. \u201cYou\u2019re sure about this? They really picked me?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Ismail said. \u201cYou\u2019re it,\u201d and hung up.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Clere broke into a jog again, then an outright run. She was going to space. She was going to Saturn\u2019s moons. And after that, she might be going to the <\/span><\/i>stars<\/span>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a door. A human-sized door. It looks like wood paneling. With a fairly ordinary handle. Which seems odd on the face of it: why would an alien species capable of interstellar travel make a door that looks so much like one from Earth? There\u2019s even what looks suspiciously like a welcome mat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Clere narrates awkwardly for the record, her suit keeping a log and taking video of this extraordinary sight. A regular front door to a house, with a regular door handle. There\u2019s even a keyhole. The mat is fibrous and clean, bolted to the icy rock. Reflexively, she wipes her feet on it, and has to grab the door handle to keep herself from floating away in Enceladus\u2019 low gravity.<\/span><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t open, of course. \u201cThere must be an airlock on the other side, which means there\u2019s probably a doorbell of some sort to request access,\u201d she muses aloud. <\/span><\/p>\n

The surface of the door is unbroken, but to one side she finds a small square touch panel with an old-fashioned doorbell, complete with brass mount. As she moves her hand closer, the touch panel glows a soft yellow. As she touches it, she hears a solid clank from within, and the door lock releases. The panel turns black. She tugs at the handle, and this time, it opens.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside looks much like a waiting room, softly illuminated by diffuse overhead lights. There are chairs, clearly meant for humans. They even have cushions. Behind her the door closes and for a moment she panics, alarms on her suit jumping as her heart rate climbs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am inside. The door closed behind me. I\u2026 hope I\u2019m not trapped.\u201d Almost ninety minutes from now, Mission Control will catch its breath in fear, when the radio transmission from Enceladus gets there. \u201cSorry, don\u2019t mean to scare you,\u201d she says self-consciously. \u201cIt looks like there is another touchpad on this side.\u201d She taps it experimentally, and the door once again makes its solid <\/span>chunk<\/span><\/i> sound. This time the panel turns black. She pushes on the door, and it starts to swing. She pulls it shut again, and it turns yellow once more. \u201cIt\u2019s got a lock, I can open it whenever I want and leave. Like an airlock but with a touch panel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Having reassured her listeners back home, Clere surveys the room. \u201cIt kind of looks like a dentist waiting room.\u201d A portion of the wall seems to be a screen; right now, it is showing video of a human figure in a spacesuit sitting on one of the chairs, over and over on a loop. \u201cLooks like they want me to sit down.\u201d There\u2019s a door on the far end, with another touchpad. It\u2019s currently not illuminated at all; when she taps it experimentally, nothing happens.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand how there can be a human in this video,\u201d she says, watching the figure repeatedly sit down on the chair, then stand, then sit again. They look like a department store mannequin, but it\u2019s still clearly a human. \u201cWhoever they are, they must have been watching us for a long time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, she can\u2019t shake that feeling as she looks around the room: it seems very much designed to make her feel comfortable. The floor is metal, but it has been painted in a pattern much resembling a carpet. The walls are an off-gray, but a cheerful blue stripe runs along the baseboards. There are baseboards. \u201cIf they were trying to make me feel at home, it\u2019s not working. I actually feel a little creeped out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To sit or not to sit?<\/span><\/i> she thinks to herself. Once again she places her hand over Sofia\u2019s picture. It\u2019s the whole reason she\u2019s here. Her daughter may be stuck in cryogenic sleep to save her life, but she\u2019s still the impetus behind all the training, the endless hours of study. <\/span>Come alone<\/span><\/i>, the message had said. <\/span>Send one person, one of your best, and come alone. <\/span><\/i>And now here she is, alone and a billion kilometers away from another human soul. And she\u2019s debating whether or not to sit down? Fuck that. Besides, there\u2019s nothing else to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clere carefully jets over to one of the seats, and ever so slowly lets the gravity of Enceladus take her down. The moment she settles into the soft cushion, the lights flicker, gravity seizes her, and the whole room shakes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

[TO BE CONTINUED…]<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":217806712,"featured_media":2996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1462,1457],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-lore-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Clere_Daughter.png","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdLeGO-Mh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217806712"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starsreach.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}