Then comes the final leg of this tragic journey: the return of Michael Collins, the third, forgotten, astronaut. Collins is the pilot whose job it was to orbit the Moon in the command module Columbia, while the other two set down upon its surface. With Armstrong and Aldrin dead, the top priority – the only priority – is to get him safely home.
His successful re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and his retrieval from the space capsule in the sea are, in the end, a subdued affair. No one can paint him a hero, however hard they try.
There is nothing Collins could have done. There was no backup plan for if the lunar module engines failed to fire and it could not take off again – other than to have him return home alone. Despite this, many cannot forgive him for “abandoning” them, least of all Michael Collins himself.
He remains for twenty-one days in quarantine in a chamber intended for three. No witty banter for the camera or the company of colleagues. No conversation with his president via telephone as the two men watch each other through the glass. Heroes die with epic gestures. To many, Collins is seen as an embarrassing reminder of a nation’s failure. He soon becomes a solitary figure, refusing to give interviews and leading the most private of private lives, blighted with survivor guilt.
Sitting back in the car now being driven at speed – putting as many miles between himself and Wapakoneta – he thought, for the millionth time, how different it would have been if they’d all come home together. He thought of an alternative history where Eagle’s engines had fired and docked with the command module and they’d all made it home. Instead of this.
As the Ohio countryside rushed past him, he looked up to the sky. Seeing the Moon, he pressed his hand against the window and spoke his nightly ritual.
“Goodnight, Neil. Goodnight, Buzz,” he said, closing his eyes and wishing that, for once, he would have a dreamless sleep.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thankfully, in reality all three Apollo 11 astronauts returned home safely and are still alive at the time of writing. Although President Nixon never needed to make such a speech, that is not to say that the speech itself is fiction. It really was written by William Safire, to be used in the event of such a catastrophe. A full transcript is in the public domain and can be found in the US National Archives. I must also stress that, although I used the names of real people in this story, I am in no way suggesting that the actual people would have behaved in the manner in which I describe.
THE Y2K BUG
Eleanor Updale
As the twentieth century came to an end, a warning of doom ran round the world. People said that computers would not be able to cope when their internal clocks changed from 1999 to 2000. There were dire predictions that crucial services and communication links might crash.
In 1999 there were no iPods, and many households still had neither a computer nor a mobile phone, but “new technology”, as it was called then, had made an impact everywhere in a rapid, uncontrolled way. The industrial, political and business worlds already depended on microchips, so governments across the world treated the threat of the “Y2K Bug” seriously, and took precautions.
In the event, they probably felt rather foolish as midnight on 31 December 1999 came and went without incident.
But what if it hadn’t?
It’s going to take me ages to type this. I’m using Gran’s old manual typewriter. I’m not used to having to hit keys so hard, and it took me a long time to work out how to load up the ribbon. I’ve got ink all over my hands. But I want to type it. I don’t want the people of the future to have to decipher my handwriting. And, anyway, we’ve only got a few pencils left now, and pencil writing smudges and fades. I want this to last. I want to set down what has happened – at least as much as we can work out here. Because one day someone might find this and it might explain the things they can’t understand…
It sounds mad, but we knew it was going to happen. The papers had been going on about the Y2K Bug for months. They’d shown all the precautions the government had in place, and the public had been getting ready for computer trouble. I’d even printed out my coursework just in case. (It was a project about international trade routes. It was geography then – it’s history now.) I’m typing this on the back of it. We can’t afford to waste paper these days.
And it wasn’t just in the press. We actually saw it making its way towards us on the telly. There were special programmes all day on New Year’s Eve, showing midnight sweeping from east to west across the world, starting somewhere way down under. Tonga, or somewhere like that. I’d check; except I can’t. Not now. It’s not as if I can go on the Internet, or even down to the library. Anyway, by lunchtime the TV news was running pictures of one place after another having a party and then going dark: New Zealand, Australia and countless other countries I’d never heard of. The reports were followed by interviews with British government ministers, who kept telling us not to panic: they had plans in place for midnight GMT.
In our house we had good reason to believe them. My dad worked in IT at the power station. He already knew that he would have to go to work that night. He was annoyed about missing the celebrations. But he was confident that the plant would cope, even if the doom-mongers turned out to be right and its many computers did go down for a while. So Mum hadn’t joined the bands of people who’d decided to do some last-minute stocking up on tinned food and bottled water. The message on the telly was clear: some faraway places were having a bit of a Y2K hiccup, but everyone was sure that they’d have themselves up and running again soon. Meanwhile, it was over to Davina McCall and the jolly crowds outside the Millennium Dome who were gathering early in the hope of seeing the Queen and getting a good spot to watch the fireworks at midnight.
Through the afternoon there were a few reports on TV of people rushing to airports and harbours in search of transport westwards, to places where the new century would arrive a little later. A guest in the studio noticed a prominent politician and a minor royal in one of the check-in queues. The programme swiftly cut back to Davina and didn’t return to the airport story.
I suppose we should have realized then that there really was something to worry about. But by that time, Mum had got us all helping to make the sandwiches for our street party, and Dad was leaving for work. If I’d known it was to be the last time I’d see him, I’d have said a proper goodbye. But my friend Fergus had come round to have a go on Donkey Kong on the Nintendo 64 I’d got for Christmas, and I didn’t want to look wet. So when Dad said, “Have some candles ready for when it all goes black at midnight” we all just laughed.