Margo’s World
They were at the caboose when the whole space station popped like a balloon a clean billion miles away from the gently spinning core of the earth. Luckily for Paul and Margo, they were in their spacesuits. They had been floating around in the antigravity room, bumping against each other and playing Hole in the Wall, the official game of year according to the Salvation Ship Chronicle. Their new home was how many years away now? The station how impenetrable? Their boredom how acute?
Paul couldn’t stop spinning for about ten minutes, ears blaring—maybe he was on the way to going deaf, but he was surprisingly unhurt otherwise. These space getups were legit. He was surprised, in addition, that he was alive at all, and then had to wonder: Who else? The neighboring cosmos was an infinite pool above and below, an ocean of stars and debris littering his field of vision. When he finally righted himself, what should he see but a flaming mass of humanity’s last hope, and the embers of the space station blinking sadly in the ruins?
“Oh cripes.”
He slapped his wrist and pushed back the vomit in his throat. This slap on the wrist was to initiate contact with survivors. The vomit was due to his being horrified. “Uh, hey hey hey! Help? Help!” He got static and the whizzing sound of what could’ve been an alien, then nothing.
The escape project, nicknamed “Project Salvation” by its architects, was a no-go then. All those courageous world leaders, once enthroned on ivory chairs endowed with the ideals that were supposed to propel them through the heavens and onto the next evolutionary step—reduced to stardust. Sure, there were some poor folks who opted to stay on that little blue dot once known as Earth, but as far as the saviors were concerned, if the voyage to Planet 45X failed, humanity had failed.
Margo told him that she was going to give him a surprise that night. She wouldn’t tell him what it was. That would spoil the surprise, now wouldn’t it, Paul? They lived on the same hall in the east wing of the space station, like college freshmen in a unisex dormitory, and as of three weeks ago, read in some archaic book that when two people have the “fuzzies” for each other in their intestinal regions, this most likely indicates you should bump wine glasses and later bump something else. He wasn’t exactly sure of the order of things.
Have you ever missed someone you’ve never met? You look for them in the hallways of your workplace and imagine them sitting across from you in the cafeteria amid the flurry of passersby and noise. And this person isn’t asking anything of you. She is sitting there playing with something on the table, maybe a pack of sugar, maybe with a toothpick in her mouth, but she is saying nothing. All she’s doing is looking deeply into your eyes to assure you that she understands who you are and what you’re going through, that no, you’re not alone, and no, you’re not a space alien orbiting a planet of non-belonging. That’s how he felt about Margo. She had big brown eyes behind a pair of thick-lensed glasses and was the daughter of one of the billionaire honchoes who had originally funded the expedition. She spent hours at the Big Window staring at the stars and suns and fire-tailed comets tucked in the folds of Andromeda, sipping her coffee with a book tucked beneath her arm. She was short—only five feet tall, with a bob of brown hair and a round face that looked like a moon. She never capitalized on her beauty—she was nigh perfect in the eyes of the passengers, many who were conditioned to be attracted to her type, including Paul. But she belonged in a world of her own, apart from the Salvation station, floating out there in the cosmos in search of an old planet, an old memory. He was running laps around the Space Auditorium and kept seeing her in one of the chairs by the Big Window, spinning slowly in circles with her feet tucked beneath her thighs.
“Margo!” As if anything in the universe could hear him. “Margo!”
Can you swim in space? Paul did breaststrokes, but there was no way to tell if he moved forward, backyard, up, or down. He kicked the atmosphere beneath his feet and reached upward as if there might be some sort of bar to hold onto that would lift him to safety. He wanted to see her more than he wanted to get back to safety. But he saw the fiery rings of debris, the electrical tailspin of cutting-edge pieces of machinery, and knew that finding her was almost definitely out of the question.
“Margo!”
His spacesuit could furnish him with the nutrients he needed to survive for up to six months. When the time came, nodes would attach to his forearms, like an IV, and keep him alive and kicking. The humans on the space station they called the Salvation were really good at keeping their own alive, and for a long time, too.
“Margo!”
“You know, friend, we are not as safe as we feel.” They were munching popcorn in the basketball courts just yesterday when she said that, looking off into the bleachers. The gym was a model based on an old similar kind of facility from Earth, a small, dusty junior high dungeon with gum under the seats and scuffs on the court. There were lots of artifacts on the ship like that. There was a little country post office, a gas station that sold bad coffee and corndogs, and even a country church. There were no cemeteries.
“What do you mean we’re not safe?”
She swallowed her popcorn, pensively knitting her brows. “I mean we’re not really safe. We’re hurling through the outer reaches of the cosmos in a tin balloon. Doesn’t that…” She cocked her round head. “Perturb you at all?”
“I’ll tell you what perturbs me. If I can be honest. Knowing that nothing I do really matters.” She cocked her head, frowning. “I mean,” he continued, “I was made in a laboratory. In ice. Almost everybody here was. I look a lot like hundreds of the other guys. If I die, they’ll just cook me up again and it will be like I never existed at all. Isn’t that what they were going for all along? Do you know what it’s like to feel like you could do anything, either something really good or something really terrible, and have it not matter at all because you’re not related to anyone and no one seems all that affected by what you do anyway?”
They had left the gym and walked down the garish hall of the mockup junior high. Homecoming was next week. They walked outside and stood by the flagpoles under the light of the artificial sun. She was dipping low now, easing into the bottom of the cylindrical space station while the real stars burned effulgently through the windows.
Margo gripped the flagpole and swung around it a couple times. She watched him while she swung.
“So nothing you do matters, huh?”
“Sure feels that way.”
“What if you pinched me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I said ‘what if you pinched me?’ It would probably hurt pretty bad. That would matter.” She stopped swinging. She held out her hand, almost like she was wanting him to kiss it. “Go ahead. Do it. Pinch me. Pinch me real hard. See if I care!”
“No, I don’t want to do that.”
“Ha!” she snapped. “Why not? Why don’t you want to pinch me?”
“Well, because it would hurt you.”
Margo smiled and spun on her heels. She spun in more circles by the flagpoles and tossed her scarf around her neck, so she looked like a caterpillar. The artificial sun went out so Margo became a shadow against the distant windowpanes. Only a moment later, a digital moon sprung at the apex of the space station, and a hologram of President Nielson appeared against the ceiling. “Good evening, fellow pilgrims,” he softly boomed. “As we make our historic journey into the far reaches of the cosmos, remember that every stage of the process matters. You are the carriers of the future. The intermediary generation. Humanity forever after will thank you for your sacrifice. You are the heroes of the cosmos.” Nielson, a spindly man with a hooked nose and unconvincing smile, gave a little salute, and then disappeared into the pixels. Margo mouthed the words as he spoke, cocking her head at him again, looking regal.
“See?” said Margo. She was a silver twig in the moonlight, arms spread. “Old man Niel says you matter, Pauly!”
He wasn’t convinced. This ship would not land in their lifetimes. He existed so someone else could exist on a real planet. Carry the flame, soldier. They came to an empty cobbled street that led into what was supposed to be a Bavarian village. A film of snow even fell under the lamppost by a German bakery: Deutcher!
“Are they open?”
“Nah. It’s Saturday.”
“Saturday. Everyone’s at the Ball of Brilliance—remember?”
“My father wanted me to come. I told him I’d come. Clearly I am a traitor to the cause.” Margo opened her hand. A couple of the snowflakes landed and melted on her palm. She cupped her hands against the window, peering inside to survey the cakes and rolls setting on platters just inches away.
“What cause are you talking about?”
“You know. The ‘cause.’” She shrugged and kicked her heel against one of the cobbled stones. “No one tells you what the cause really is—only that it’s the most important thing—” She stopped. “I was going to say ‘the most important thing in the world,’ but you know, that wouldn’t be quite right. Because we don’t live in a world. We live in a floating tube, filled with little fake worlds that are supposed to make us feel at home. The cause is causing me to be quite caustic.” She turned to him, evading the light of the lamppost by pressing her blue ballcap tight on her head, and he felt it again: that near irresistible draw to bring her in, put his hands on her hips and…sway? Move side to side? In the old movie Casablanca they danced in the bar to piano music. He took a step closer, face reddening in the dark.
“What if we all had spacesuits on?” she said. “What would be different about that?” She slapped her arm and clicked her boot against the post. “Because really, that’s what we are anyway. Suits blocking everything out.” That drove him up the wall. To touch her like they touched in the movie! He could see Messieurs Rick drawing close in the shade of his study, Ilsa’s eyes brimming with inconsolable longing—complicated, impossible desire! But their desire wasn’t about bodies touching. It was about that and something more. What?
“People wear armor here. Do you?”
“Do I wear armor?”
“Yeah. Do you wear a spacesuit? Keeping out all the bad air? The air that will kill you if you get exposed to it?”
He checked himself with a shrug. “Not that I know of.”
She stepped closer. “Whenever I go into the antigravity chambers and try on that stupid suit I feel like I am becoming just like everyone else. I am putting on a covering so nothing will ever hurt me. Spinning through space in a machine that keeps me alive but…”
“Keeps you alive for no particular reason,” he said.
That’s when he sprung forward, charmless as an old bear, and touched her hand. Just the tips of her fingers were available beneath her sleeves.
She flinched her shoulders but didn’t pull her hand away. He sputtered and thought to himself, Conditioned. Conditioned to like her type. That’s what they said in orientation…don’t worry when you feel drawn towards them. That’s all natural. It was in the programming—our top minds know which matches will prove to further the ideal development of humankind. Don’t be disturbed! It’s natural! It’s all natural!
“I’m…sorry.”
“For pinching my index finger? It didn’t hurt.”
“I don’t know what I’m sorry for.”
They left the Bavarian village and walked into a grove of pine trees, heavy with artificial fragrance—pine trees, probably. They found a stream so clear and deep they could see trout rummaging their silver fins ten feet down. Margo stooped and dipped her hand in the water. Paul just listened to its current. He vaguely felt like he had stood here before. He remembered being alone in a forest and feeling the wind on his face, and mountains off in the distance. But he had never felt the wind. He had never seen mountains. Memories, his mentors said, were images of the primordial past programmed to drive a man towards survival. It was all in service to the continuation of the race. All these relics—the gym, the flagpoles, the forest, Margo’s face—were supposed to make him want to pass on the fire.
Margo stood up and held her wet hand above his head. A couple of the drops fell on his cheeks, rolled down to the edge of his jaw. She took her hand away and dried her hand on her sleeve, and they kept going.
They left Corridor Ten, wove down the passage and into the Central Hall, where they heard the shouts of celebration coming from the Ball of Brilliance in the auditorium, all the way to her pod in Hallway 45. They talked about other places in this maze of a ship they might explore. There was always the beach, a simulation of the Blue Grotto. They could go to the cliffs of Dover, even though they were only about a quarter the size of the real thing. Of course, there was always the Grand Mall. It was always chock full, but the movie theater sometimes showed old stuff, taking a break from the predictable cycle of AI-generated flicks and rom-coms. So maybe a movie?
No, they had seen all of this. They had done all of this. He didn’t want to “see” or “do” anything else. She held her wrist against the reader by the doorknob of her pod. The chip beneath her skin gleamed green and the door slid open, and she stood in its open space facing him as if wondering what she was supposed to ask him—as if there was some secret script they both needed to read to sustain their relationship.
“So…” He sighed. “Antigravity room tomorrow? After you finish your book, of course.” He could see her stack of literature on the desk next to her little flatscreen TV.
Her eyes fell to the floor.
“Antigravity room,” she said, nodding. “We can play Hole in the Wall, or whatever it’s called.”
Ironic, he was thinking now as he chewed his lip behind a wall of plastic, alone in the void. She thought the space suits would make it harder to talk to each other. Now they’re the only things keeping us alive.
Why not hold on to blatant optimism? What on “earth” did he have to lose? He floated past a chunk of a cafeteria. He thought he recognized the bar where he slid his tray behind the other clones. In that old world, once so predictable and secure, were the blonde variants piling up on donuts as if they were made for them, and the tall brooders with a love of art and prophecy in a far corner needling their fingers and looking grim. And the Supremes, fit as fiddles in their uniforms, strident and holier-than-thou at the round table near the Big Window, looked over the cosmos they were designed to colonize. Paul shook the images out of his head. The noodles made cursive lines by a big pot and half of an oven. He grabbed one like it was a lasso meant to wrangle planets and let it trail behind him.
“Margo!”
“I have a surprise for you.”
That was the last thing she said to him in the antigravity room when they bumped around the walls and tossed their balls through the holes in the wall. He had twenty scores; she managed three.
“I have a surprise for you,” and then there was the BOOM followed by the soundlessness of space.
He thought he saw her waving her hands during the explosion, trying to grab his arm, but she hurtled in the opposite direction. He wondered what had happened. The space station was self-sustaining, he was told, and no comet or enemy would ever bring it down. He read something about an ancient ship called the Titanic. People thought it was the future, how it would never sink. All those centuries ago people still thought they had made a ship that would never sink.
He let go of the noodle, going head over heels for a couple of rotations, and then found, almost like transmitting into another dimension, himself floating among dozens of books. He hadn’t seen this coming. It was like they were dropped there by an invisible hand, offering some leisure in his free time. Many of them were charred and bleeding with embers, but others were still intact and asking to be looked through. He reached out and snagged a copy of Anna Karenina.
He looked inside the cover. “Property of…Margo.”
He almost swallowed his tongue and swam after another volume. Pride & Prejudice, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Catcher in the Rye, The Westing Game, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. They all belonged to her—every dogeared one of them.
He tried to hold them all to his chest but had to let a few of them go so he could reach for others. He would not be able to carry them all. He didn’t have a house to keep them. There was a portion of her little desk, the flatscreen TV, her smartphone, cleft in two, and all four pairs of shoes she owned. “Margo!”
What was the surprise? Had she solved the meaning of life? Paul reached out and grabbed a small purple leather-bound journal. It didn’t take long for him to know that this was not just another book. It was her journal, scribbled all the way through the final page in sleek cursive. He didn’t know where she learned to write cursive. He never knew she kept a journal at all. He would not have looked through any of it if she had never mentioned the surprise, or if he wasn’t careening towards his imminent doom in space. But he cracked it open to the last page, squinting through the fog of his helmet to read:
Day 7,234
A surprise for you today.
I float in space every day. That was the story at the end of the last journal and that is the story at the end of this one. I walk through the line at the cafeteria and avoid the calls from my father, who still cannot fathom why I would choose to live near the caboose. I get my food and read my books and stare into space. Only I do not think that is a very kind word to describe the universe. An author I read recently said a much better word for it is “heavens.” The last thing this big universe amounts to is “space.” I see stars, the tails of galaxies, distant black holes. But I don’t see our future home. And it’s become frighteningly clear to me. This IS our home.
We’re not sailing toward any future planet.
And I figured it out last night while walking in the Bavarian village with P. When President Nielson hailed us as the intermediary generation, instrumental to the thriving of the future clones, I realized that he and his successors could all say that and convince everyone on board that they’re still going somewhere. Even when they’re not. Every dinner with Dad and it’s the same answer when I ask him about the planet: “It’s beautiful. I’ve seen pictures.” Then when I ask him if I can see pictures: “Sorry hon. It’s classified right now. The experts are still putting together schematics and drawing up the data for where we’ll be landing. It’ll come.”
I don’t remember much about the world. I do remember, though, once walking hand in hand with Mom by a stream. It was clear and deep. You could see fish swimming at the bottom of it. I let go of Mom’s hand and bent down to touch the water, but lost my balance and fell all the way in. I remember opening my eyes underwater after hitting the bottom and sitting upright. It felt like falling into another world. The current against my face, the cold water, and the green reeds weaving through the stones; although I couldn’t breathe there, I never wanted to leave. I could have been happy there forever. But of course, Mom pulled me out, and two weeks later we were aboard the Salvation. I am not convinced that there was ever anything all that wrong with that world.
I have a surprise for P. I want to surprise him with my scary theory that there is no Planet Salvation. And then I want to make that okay by telling him I love him. And that there are real mountains out there. There is real water. There is a world that maybe someday he’ll get to see when he is older and he has learned how to love me back.
Reached the end of the journal. More to come in the next one.
Paul turned toward a new horizon where a distant sun shined openly on his face. Wreathes of nebulae shimmered like pillars of gems. Blinking, he thought he saw a figure dressed in a spacesuit facing it all, as usual, with her arms stretched open wide collecting the light. He could get to her if the currents directed. He could get to her maybe if he prayed for a miracle.
“The world,” he said, inching closer to her side. “I can see your world, Margo.”
Fiction by Peter Biles
Peter Biles is a fiction writer and essayist. He graduated from Wheaton College (IL) and received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University. He lives in Oklahoma.
