Marc walked into the common area and nearly had a heart attack. Before he could even turn on the light, dozens of people jumped up from behind the various pieces of furniture and yelled, “Surprise!” When they saw the shock in his face, they laughed. After breathing deeply a few times, Marc shook his head and laughed with them. “You people. You’re going to drive me crazy.”
“Yeah, well, we only have another 12 hours to do it then.”
“Very funny.”
Marc had finished his ten-year stint and then re-upped for another five years. There were several good reasons for this. First, even though he wasn’t the official leader of their community, he was still one of the more important people there—“important” in the utilitarian sense. He could get a lot more things done than most others could. After ten years, there still seemed to be too much work to do that only he could do right; or at least, so he thought.
Second, there was something deeply attractive about being a member of a small community completely separated from the rest of humanity. The trillions of people in the Sol System, contrasted sharply with the hundreds here. It was refreshing to be recognizable by everyone on sight. And he loved the people. They all got along fairly well, not perfectly of course, and it was going to be hard to leave them.
But there was another reason he had stayed five years longer than his term: Four years after he had first arrived here, after several hundred people had been transmitted, without any warning or indications, all communications with Earth and the entire Sol System shut down. No other transmissions had been received for over ten years. They had sent multiple transmissions of their own, of course, to ask what happened; but given the distance between Sol and Sirius, the soonest they’d hear a response would be another six or seven years—assuming that Earth could and would respond, which was almost certainly not the case.
Because their line to Earth had been cut off, they had never received upgrades to their computer and mechanical systems. This wasn’t usually a problem, but given how incredibly unpleasant synthesis was with this old technology, no one had chosen to do it again since they had arrived. Yet this didn’t mean they hadn't expanded. They had seven bases on this moon, two of which were manned by rotating teams, and they had unmanned stations on two other bodies in this system—one moon orbiting the same gas giant they were, and one planet closer to Sirius which could theoretically be a better location. But since no one wanted to broadcast themselves there, the only way to get there was with old-fashioned rocketry, which took time. In fact, by broadcasting himself back to Earth, Marc would be the first one to do it.
Of course, everyone had tried to talk him out of it. “We don’t even know if Earth is still there,” “What if there’s been some sort of societal collapse and they can’t synthesize you,” etc. But Marc had waited long enough, and it was time to reap the benefits. It was funny; his overriding goal for as long as he could remember was to be a first, and now that he was one, it was very hard to leave all of his friends. He felt like he was giving up genuine intimacy for the fake intimacy of celebrity.
He walked among the partiers, shaking hands, being embraced and kissed, while everyone told him how much they loved him and would never forget him. Several were even crying. It really was going to be difficult. But he was now the most famous man who had ever lived, the first person to travel beyond the Sol System. His name would be known by everyone for thousands of years, and here he was living in a small community of just under a thousand people. In many ways he didn’t want to leave, but the attraction to go back to Earth, the desire for universal recognition, was too strong for him.
Later that night, he was alone in the observation lounge, looking up at the stars. Emery came in with two bottles, sat down next to him, and handed him one of the beers. “Three hours until your jump.”
“I know.”
They sat there in silence for several minutes. Then Emery said, “I’m going to miss you Marc. You’re one of the best friends I can remember having.”
“Yeah, me too. It rots. I want to stay here, I really do. But I want to go back to Earth too. And it’s not that one want is stronger than the other; they can’t be compared, they’re two different kinds of wanting.”
“Then why are you choosing to go back?”
Marc shook his head and looked down. “I don’t know. I just want to be known. Do you know what I mean Emery? I want to be famous.”
“You are famous. Everyone here knows you, and most of them even like you.”
Marc laughed and drank some of his beer. “Yeah, I know. It’s just … I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”
“You don’t have to. I understand it. We all do. The reason we volunteered for this in the first place was to be famous, to get our names written down. I used to fantasize about people wishing they were me.”
“Used to?”
“Yeah, I haven’t thought that way for a while. Here it just seemed so pointless. So immature. I mean, we used to live our lives surrounded by technology. Maybe if you were in the Syndicate and were chosen for some remote outpost before it had been developed, you could get a sense of …” he gestured up at the night sky, “… this. But it was too easy to look away from it. Here we don’t have that option, and I’m glad of it. It woke me up.”
“Woke you up to what?”
Emery grinned at him. “You know, that’s the funniest thing. I don’t know exactly. I’m just aware of something that I wasn’t aware of before, but I can’t quite get a hold of it. I just know that I feel a sense of belonging here that I can’t remember ever feeling. You?”
Marc looked at him for several seconds, then looked down at the floor. “Well I think I felt it before. With a woman. But I know what you’re talking about. This place just seems right and in retrospect, the Earth doesn’t.”
“OK, so why are you choosing to go back?”
“I guess I just haven’t … matured as much as you. I still want people to look up to me. I want everyone to know me and …”
“And what?”
“And love me.”
Emery nodded. “Yeah that’s the desire to be famous all right. But you’re bypassing something important. You don’t really want people to know you and love you; you want people to love you without getting to know you. That was the way it was for me. Once I discovered that, I realized I was afraid that if people actually knew me they wouldn’t love me. My desire for fame was based on fear.” He paused, then, raising his beer to his mouth, said, “The hell with that.”
“That’s a pretty cynical view of it.”
“Is it an incorrect view?”
“Probably not.”
“Well, there you go. And that raises the question once more: why are you choosing to go back?”
Marc sighed. “I guess my desire to be loved is greater than my desire to be known.”
Emery nodded. “Well, I didn’t mean to come here and give you a sermon. You just take care of yourself and know that there are people who know you and love you.” He stood up, put a hand on Marc’s shoulder, and then walked out.
Marc sat there looking up at the stars for a long time.