Diaspora Ad Astra (5 page)

“Well, I simply thought we could eventually convince you when the actual day nears,” Amir answered.

“Even when your grandfather was still alive, we made the choice then. Your Ama and I have claimed the Tierra as our planet. Our home. Our lives began in the Tierra. When
it dies, we die with it. I wish he were here with me to witness the end. If he were, he would have made the same decision as mine. Discussion closed, Amir. Let’s talk of something more
pleasant, could we? I would also suggest that you don’t tell anyone of my intention to stay. They will force me out of here.”

Early on the day of the evacuation, Amir visited his grandmother to say goodbye.

“Ina, I cannot bear leaving you here alone. The thought has been nagging me the past nights. I would bear the guilt… Salud and the children, too.”

“No, Amir. This is my choice. Do not bear my burdens, son. I have talked to Alani and Awati. They understood. Somehow, they always understand me. Much better than you,
you know, even though they are mere children.” Ina smiled as she wagged a finger at her grandson. “Eighty years ago, when we decided to leave Lantawan, and volunteered to be part of the
Mass Migration to these space communities along with thousands of other families from different parts of Planet Earth, we knew then that we were leaving Earth for good.

“I still remember the excitement… the anticipation! We were newly married, eager to begin a new life, and nothing could be newer and more exciting than living in a
new world. My Ama said I might be making a mistake. But he always understood and trusted me and let me go where I will. My father raised me to be a free spirit, to be unafraid to be different and
bold. Ponce was an orphan so he had nobody stopping him. We volunteered. Earth was full of the same things it had for centuries—wars, religious conflicts, poverty… We felt the place
was too old. Here, we were reborn. Although we brought a lot of things from Earth into the Tierra, and Earth continued to meddle with our affairs, there was the sense of civilization starting from
scratch and everyone excited to build a new world and new lives.

“I am a hundred years old, but I never regretted the decision to come here even once in the eighty years that I lived in this place. Ponce and I shared our best memories
here. Your mother was born here. I saw both your parents die in the plague during the 20’s. Your grandfather died five years ago. I have seen you grow up, get married, have children… I
have lived a full life, son. I experienced the greatest joys and the biggest grief of my life here in the Tierra. I am content and fulfilled. I see no need for another world. The Tierra is enough
for me in this lifetime.” Ina Dolor had a calm look on her face.

“You have many years ahead of you, grandmother. You know you can live a few more. Give us more of your company, Ina Dolor. Your grandsons are young. They would benefit
from your lessons as I have… and I do not know how I would manage without you. It seems like you have always been there ever since Ina and Ama died and you raised me like a son.”

“I am proud to have raised a good man in you, Amir. Do not worry. I am not. You do not need me anymore. My legacy will live in you. You will teach your sons how to grow
with courage and principles, as I have taught you. Bring your family to the new settlement. Bring your memories of me, too.”

Amir hugged her grandmother. “I will try to understand, Ina. I will leave you in peace. Salud will visit later at about the 24th hour to say goodbye. We board at Hour 25.
She will be cross when I get home. She asked me to come to force you to change your mind at the last minute,” He gave a weak smile. Amir rose from the chair, took his coat from the entrance
hall closet and closed the door after him.

Salud did come with her two sons.

“We came to say goodbye, Ina Dolor. Amir is helping load our things on the ship. I have also come to try to convince you one last time. Please?”

“Oh, Salud. You have always been a stubborn girl and I love you for that. You are just like me. Thank you for everything, Salud. For loving my grandson the way you did. I
never worried too much about him anymore when you became his wife because you have taken good care of him, and my grandchildren, too. I have nothing more to ask of you but for you to give me my
last ounce of dignity. I have always chosen my own fate. Allow me to do so unto the last. Alani and Awati, come give Ina your last hugs. Goodbye, brave Alani.”

“Goodbye, Ina. I’ll miss you.” Alani hugged his great-grandmother.

“Goodbye, my clever Awati.”

“I wish you didn’t have to stay, Ina. It would be fun to have you in our new home. You can play with us,” said the child.

“My good sons, you will find many playmates on Mars. And you will have much, much bigger spaces to play in. I will be all right. I am as excited to join your
great-grandfather as you are excited to start over in a new world. Be good to your father and mother for as long as you live, okay? I am proud of your father. I know I raised him well.” The
two nodded their heads as if they understood.

“Do not forget to say a prayer for Ina Dolor every time you look up at the Martian sky.”

“We will, Ina,” the two children answered.

“All of us,” Salud echoed.

“I have something for you, Salud.” Ina took out a square box from her pocket and opened it. Inside were sheets of board paper with images on them. “We call
them Polaroid photographs…just like the MovingImage we have here, but only on paper—one of the old things I brought from the old planet. These are old images of us, Amir’s
grandfather and me, taken on our wedding day. I have taken one from the collection to keep for myself. You will realize that time makes our memories falter. In time you will forget what I looked
like. In five or twenty years, when Amir and the children would like to remember how their Ina Dolor and Ama Ponce looked like, just pore through these photographs. This is how I would like to be
remembered. On the day when I was my most beautiful,” Ina laughed.

Just then, the Public Address System outside Ina Dolor’s room chimed. An announcement came on:

“To all residents of Buildings C and D, you are requested to gather at the Eastern Meadow for final registration and boarding. Tierra 20 will shut down in 5 hours.
Residents of Buildings E and F, your turn will be called in 30 minutes. To all residents of Buildings C and D, you are requested to gather at the Eastern Meadow for final registration and
boarding…”

“That is your building. Go now. Put on your coats. May God guide you in your journey,” said Ina Dolor.

“They are going to do a head count before the ship takes off. Amir already told them that you died yesterday and that since the crematorium had closed, we have decided to
leave your body behind. We had to keep the children around us all this time for fear that they might spill the truth. I am sure the entire Tierra is mourning for you right now, Ina. You are one of
the remaining first inhabitants and you were loved.”

“Well, thank God for that. Tell everyone I went peacefully and bade you all a safe journey before I died, Salud. Now go, go…” She hurried them out the door
into the hallway which was now deserted since all those who lived in Ina Dolor’s building had been evacuated hours before. “Be careful that nobody sees you leaving the building or they
might become suspicious.”

After she had seen Salud and the children into the elevator, Ina Dolor locked the door and slowly shuffled to her bedroom. She looked around the room. All were in order. She
had changed the sheets early this morning. Faint whiffs of jasmine came from the air conditioning unit.

Ina Dolor went to her closet and took out something wrapped in thick Ziplocked plastic from the bottom drawer. She unfolded a white dress—her old wedding gown—and
put it on. It was creased in some places and smudges of dirt lined the hem where it touched the ground, but it still looked as it had when Ina wore it for the first, and only, time. It was a little
loose, though. She had become smaller with old age, but the white silk still flowed gracefully to the floor as it had in the small reception hall her father had rented for her wedding. Her father
arranged and paid for everything from the church, the gown, to the caterers. His last gift to her, he said.

Ina looked at herself in the mirror. The same mirror she brought from Earth. She had to fight with her husband to bring the round mirror with its narra frame. It was her
father’s present for her eighteenth birthday.

She pulled up a chair in front of the mirror and started brushing her hair. Ina Dolor gazed at herself self-consciously and noticed how dry and wrinkled her face and arms had
become. Her silver hair shone in the dimly lit room but the whiteness of her dress made her radiate with the same aura of the bride on her wedding day eighty years ago. Ina closed her eyes and
imagined the puttering around her, people shuffling and hurrying around the house, everyone excited about her wedding. She remembered the shock on her father’s face when she told him a week
before the marriage that she and Ponce had volunteered to be one of five hundred couples who would move to Tierra 2.

At first her father tried to persuade her against it, but after talking to her for an hour, he eventually assented and accepted her decision with his usual quiet dignity. He
did not even talk about it with her anymore afterwards. He always understood her independent spirit and was proud of her daughter. Ina Dolor always wanted what was different. On the day the couple
went, her father simply hugged her and said goodbye.

Ina Dolor went to the wall switch and turned off the piped-in waterfall sound that endlessly emanated from little speakers around the house. She went to her dresser drawer and
inserted her favorite recording in the antique disc player, another of the luxuries she’d brought from the old planet. She was one of only three people on the Tierra who still owned a compact
disc player. For the past century music became part of the architecture and had none of the singing voices and melody of instruments as music was known to have been made on Earth. Turning a knob
beside the light switch allowed one to choose from different sounds imitating Earth’s natural environment by which to fill the room with: from the rushing of a brook to bird songs to waves
crashing on the shore. But once in a while, when Ina Dolor misses her old life, she put on a disc on the player and listened to music being sung.

“I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,

that this heart of mine embraces all day through…”

The voice of a female alto crooned. It was their wedding song. She liked it the first time she heard it while on her first date with Ponce. It was on the loudspeaker that
continuously played music from sunset to midnight in the Seawall Park. She remembered how he did not like the song. It was sad, he said. But Ina Dolor said she loved the melody and that was the end
of the discussion. He went along with her. It became their song.

“I’ll be seeing you in every lovely summer’s day,

in everything that’s light and gay…”

It was already a very old song during their youth, Ina Dolor mused to herself. Now it was ancient. She then took the urn of her husband’s ashes from the altar in the
corner of the room and placed it on the bed. When she passed by the mirror again she laughed at her own reflection—how theatrical she was orchestrating her own passing.

She could hear the faint humming of the giant spaceship that would take the remaining residents of Tierra 20 to Mars. It was the last of eight trips that had been shipping
people and their belongings out of the Tierra. She pushed a button on the wall near the side table. Metal blinds sealed the bedroom window from outside noise. Now only the singer from the disc
player could be heard, repeating the same song for the third time.

“I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places…”

Ina Dolor lay on the soft bed and waited and sang along with the music. Soon the air slowly thinned and she felt her breathing become more difficult. She closed her eyes and
hugged the urn close to her chest as she drifted into a peaceful slumber.

An hour later, an explosion marred the quiet sky like the death of a star, slow and bright yet insignificant in the vastness.

END

by Vince Torres

David could not believe that his wife was dead. The very thought of Shelley’s passing drained his strength. Weak-kneed and trembling, he slumped back into his office
chair. He was vaguely aware of the other architects who emerged from their workstations, and the receptionist who peered in from the lobby. The visitor who had told him about Shelley remained
standing before his desk.

“There must be a mistake,” David heard himself say weakly to the visitor. Moments before, the man had walked up to David’s workstation and introduced himself
as Pete Mateo from Bio Regain.

Mateo shook his head. “Your wife, Rachel Anastasia Lazaro, was in a tragic accident.” Clearly he had anticipated the barrage of questions David was about to
unleash. “Her vehicle’s autonavigational system apparently malfunctioned. The car crashed into a holo-billboard just off the C8 Speedway. Her neck was broken. Death was
instantaneous.”

From outside, David could hear the muted hum of Sucat City. Life went on. Except for Shelley’s.

The fact slowly began to sink in. David stared ahead at, but did not really see, the floor plan projected above his table.

Mateo turned towards the receptionist. “Dear? A glass of water for Mr. Lazaro, please.”

David clasped his wristwatch.

“Don’t forget to buy Sparky’s food.” Shelley adjusted his tie. She looked radiant even in her old, paint-stained jumper. “Our poor baby will
go hungry by tonight if you do.”

On cue, Sparky dashed into the room. The fluffy white Japanese Spitz frolicked around their legs and yapped loudly.

David bent down to scratch the Spitz behind a snow-white ear. Sparky lolled his tongue in a doggie smile. “We need to have a real baby, you know? Made by us.”
He looked up and gave Shelley a naughty wink.