The Descent

The world shivers as it comes into focus. White spots dance and fade before my eyes as I blink away coagulated Suspension Fluid. The shaking isn’t entirely my muscles coming to life; we’ve hit atmosphere.

The thought isn’t my own, I know that. Three others leap unbidden to the forefront of my mind;

1. I am a synthetic human, and property of Langstrom Genetics.
2. My thoughts and feelings are being recorded in real time for analysis upon my return to Earth.
3. I am currently plummeting into the atmosphere of Jupiter on a scientific expedition.

I briefly try to imagine Earth. My mind holds pre-made images of it; an oblate spheroid of rock and water draped in a film of green life and swaddled pale blanket of atmosphere. Maybe it’ll look different from the surface. I know I think Sunsets are beautiful.

The pod around me shakes again as it opens; revealing a standard Ulster-Hagerland Dynamics Descent Module. I remember the second thought and glance around the smoothly curving room. It is pleasantly warm, bright and fully functional.

I pause briefly in my exploration. This room is much bigger than that in which I have spent my entire life so far. It feels as though it could swallow me. The hormonal regulators distributed through my endocrine system release a soothing trickle of serotonin, and I push the thought aside, stepping free of the pod in which I have to this point been curled. Opposite me is a large window; semicircular reinforced plastic nearly four metres thick, and tapered in such a way as to feel paper thin. I walk over and reach out to it, feeling the clear sensation of cold for the first time. I like it. It’s new and different from the pleasantly forgettable warmth of the rest of the module.

Beyond the window is an infinite sea of tousselled, roiling clouds. My mind tells me it is primarily composed of ammonia ice, laced with delicate traceries of sulphur and phosphorus churned from below the surface. It’s beautiful; somehow seeming as rough as the grinding of my infant joints and as smooth as the walls around me.

A small blue light springs to life on a console beside me, indicating that an atmospheric sampler has turned on. I realise that the scientific operations of the journey are automated, and I exist solely to provide a poetic, human view of the process. I don’t know whether to feel privileged or insulted. I have a detailed operations manual memorised, though I suppose that is only a last resort if systems fail, and automated repair proves inadequate.

For a moment I almost will something to irreparably break, just so I have a chance to prove I’m more than a philosophy textbook clothed in meat. Then comes fear; my first truly uncomfortable experience. I’m mortal, and though the capsule around me exists to a great degree to keep me alive, I’m suddenly aware of the millions of ways it could cease to do so. I shiver again, despite the warmth.

With this in mind, I amend my purpose. I am here to provide a human perspective on the expedition, and ensure that my existence can continue after it. Serotonin once again smooths the nagging in my new mind that something is wrong with the order of those priorities.

The blue light snaps to green. Nothing has broken, and I am still alive.

The floor around the window slowly slides down, revealing two steps and expanding my vision of the planet engulfing me. I realise my legs are trembling, and sit down on the steps. For reasons I can’t explain, I lift one leg up onto the surface I’m sitting on, hunching forward so my chin rests on it and I can see as much of the world outside as possible.

As they have for my entire existence, the billowing veils of vapour look beautiful… No. Divine. What a wonderful word. My descent has taken me closer to them now, and I can see the edges of each delicate peak glisten with reflected sunlight. The poets coded into my brain hand me metaphors and similes for each spire. I decide that they are wind-sculpted and pulchritudinous, rolling both phrases around my mouth and feeling it curl into a smile as the acoustics of the module pass the sound back to me.

Looking out over the rapidly approaching strata, I notice that the module is slightly tilted towards my left, sinking through the atmosphere at an almost imperceptible angle. I know that this is the standard flight-path, designed to slowly increase in angle as we go deeper until we’re suddenly back on our way towards the surface, but this little asymmetry is so wonderfully vital that I can’t help but imagine the module has done it on purpose. She’s come to this place with a human aversion to truly straight lines, just to let me know I’m not the only person out here.

I cock my head to one side. People have names. Sure, I have a number, a serial code written in dark melatonin on the sole of my right foot, standing stark against the mid tone pale brown of the rest of my skin. People don’t name themselves though, and I appear to lack the usual relatives to do it for me. I decide to improvise; name myself. And the module. She’s my partner on this sojourn, and she’s the most human thing out here.

Her name comes to my mind first. Skye. I feel a slight colour rise in my cheeks at the cliche, but my Skye is named after the clouds of Jupiter; the near-eternal exchange of heat and light and vital life on a planet only we get to see like this.

My name is a little trickier. I think through the people whose work I carry in my neurons, moving in circles through the syllables like Skye’s engines cycle to switch from void to atmospheric travel.

As we enter the atmosphere proper, all thoughts of naming myself flee my mind. Skye and I are suddenly bathed in a tapestry of turquoise, orange and white. Refracted light bouncing its way down to us through the continents of suspended ammonia droplets we fall through. After an eternity that could only have lasted a few minutes, the universe explodes away from me again, as we pass into a pocket of gases I can see through. I feel as though we’ve somehow emerged into a whole new planet; deep red and yellow particles hang around us in their trillions, backlit by the sun from light-minutes away.

And then everything collapses in again, and we are on our way down again. Skye and I, plunging into something far too large to ever truly comprehend. I feel momentarily inadequate. My perspective isn’t the all-encompassing prose of some old Earth writer. But I realise it doesn’t have to be.

I think I know my name. It’s something fundamental to the human experience, and emotion that has stood quietly with me for my whole life, my whole being is saturated with it as we fall ever deeper.

My name is Wonder.