A cruel joke, now, that they were sharing a room for years. Those grim weeks of annoyance and passive aggression had been a brief primer for eternity. Instead of Ara’s face, he’d wake up to Jesse’s. Eliot shuddered as he headed down the bridge. Once again he reminded himself that it wasn’t Jesse’s fault. But Eliot could not help but remember that, less than four hours after Ara died, Jesse had leapt into the light and volunteered for her place, like a vulture descending on a corpse. He hated him for that.
The boys were on the lower deck, competing on the simulator. Jesse sat in the mock commander’s chair in the centre of the room, and Eliot could see that his eyes were narrowed behind virtual-reality goggles, watching the controller with white-knuckled concentration. Harry leant over the edge of it as if he was watching a football game, and when Eliot entered the room with his camera they both groaned loudly.
‘Move out of the way,’ Harry shouted, swatting at Eliot’s thigh but missing.
‘I need to get one last interview,’ Eliot said. But Jesse didn’t reply.
Of the many games banked on the ship’s computer, this was their favourite. It was an adventure game that involved traversing some artist’s schizophrenic dream of the galaxy, where cosmic background radiation shimmered like television static against an aubergine sky. Every now and then, a star burst into brilliant light, filling the screen with silver, red and gold. At each level, the computer taught the gamer new skills, which they had to manipulate and alter in the following levels. Jesse was in the middle of crash-landing on an alien planet. His craft had sustained damage and he didn’t have much time, according to the dashboard. Jesse collided with the stratosphere at the wrong angle, like a belly-flopping diver. So badly that Eliot winced. Jesse swore as the screen lit up and the hull of the ship began to flake away like crepe paper, flayed by the friction of the planet’s atmosphere. A virtual alien on that planet might look up and see a shooting star for a few brief moments as Jesse set fire to the sky.
Harry clapped slowly, laughter on his lips. Jesse’s measly score appeared on screen.
‘I’ll show you how it’s done,’ Harry said, climbing out of his seat to grab the controller. Jesse pulled off his VR goggles and rubbed his eyes, the shame boiling in his cheeks.
Eliot suddenly remembered his purpose. ‘I need an interview,’ he said, nodding at Jesse.
‘Right, right,’ Jesse agreed. ‘Wait, isn’t Poppy supposed to be doing this?’
‘She has a headache,’ Eliot said.
‘Sure.’ Harry rolled his eyes. ‘Anyway, can’t you see that we’re busy.’
‘This is our job,’ Eliot snapped at them, already tired, his own headache coming on like a slow drumbeat behind his skull. ‘We can’t all be commander-in-training.’
Harry’s mouth curled into a sneer. ‘I guess.’ His eyes rolled down to the little pin with bronze wings attached to the side of his overalls.
‘You know,’ Eliot said, massaging his temples, ‘guess whose photographs will make it into the history books? When we get to Terra-Two, who will capture that moment for the world?’
‘And who will be in those photos?’ Harry retorted. ‘Some record history and others make history. No one remembers the cameraman.’
‘Okay…’ perhaps Jesse could tell that Eliot’s patience was running thin, ‘let’s do it.’
As Eliot switched on the camera, Harry dropped the conversation and settled onto another game.
‘The questions are the same as the ones I’ve been asking everyone. How do you feel about the mission? Have you been settling in? What have the past two weeks been like for you? That sort of thing.’
‘Right.’ Jesse’s eyes rolled up as he thought for a moment. ‘To be honest, it’s a bit of a challenge. I’m from the backup crew and so I didn’t get quite the same training as the prime crew. So, a lot of things are still new to me. But, you know, it’s great to be here. Sometimes I wake up in the night and forget and then remember…’ Jesse glanced at the game Harry was playing on the screen. He was already through the first level. Harry was always winning. He flew through the easier levels with a practised ease, dodging and diving past radiant formations without a sideways glance at the star chart. It was as if he could navigate the universe by heart. Even Eliot abandoned the conversation for a few minutes to watch Harry’s fingers fly across the controls, his eyes triumphant behind sheets of reflected light. He was exactly as good as he thought he was. Able to preserve his ship and crew as he soared through lightyears of imagined space. Eliot could tell that it stung Jesse a little to watch, nightly, as his rival soared unvanquished past all the others, racking up higher and higher scores every night. ‘He’s in a different league,’ Jesse muttered to Eliot, his eyes fixed on the screen.
‘So,’ Jesse said, turning back to the camera, ‘I remind myself to be grateful every day. I’m on a real adventure, even if the day-to-day life of being on a ship is not always thrilling. I still feel like one of the luckiest people in our solar system.’
Eliot cringed.
In the background, Harry swore loudly. They both turned.
‘Watch it,’ Eliot said, pausing the recording. ‘You can’t swear. This will be broadcast all over the world. Schoolchildren are watching this. Jesse, can you repeat what you said?’
But Jesse was again distracted, watching as Harry’s small vessel came into contact with a space station. Harry was tasked with executing the complicated set of manoeuvres required to dock with its port. It was moments like this when Eliot appreciated the graphics, the elaborate detail of the imaginary station circling a phantom moon. Eliot could tell from the beads of sweat on Harry’s forehead that he was struggling.
‘Can you repeat what you said?’ he asked Jesse.
‘Sure,’ but Jesse turned again at a sound from the simulator, and the screen filled with light. Harry had guessed the angle of approach wrong and lost control of his shuttle, which crashed into a wing of the space station. On the screen, it shattered like glass, one whole truss snapping off, exploding in incandescent shards that accelerated in all directions. With a groan of failing machines, the game was over. Harry let out a huff of frustration, but Jesse keeled over in hysterical laughter.
‘I’d like to see you do better,’ Harry said. He tossed the controller at the wall and stormed out.
In the instant the door closed behind him all hilarity evaporated, and Jesse eyed the simulator screen warily. Perhaps remembering that Harry was going to be their commander one day. ‘I guess, it’s not just a game, though,’ he said.
‘No,’ Eliot said. ‘Not to him, I don’t think.’
‘Not to me either,’ Jesse said, gritting his teeth.