Author Games: Brave New World

Quarterfinals: Marielle Dupain

I paced around the tiny tent, only a few steps each way - four steps forward, turn, three steps forwards, turn, repeat, over and over and over until I was ready to tear my cloth prison to bits.

I'd always done this - paced. Claire used to joke that I'd worn a rut into my office carpet from wear, and at night, when I was close to finishing a project but just couldn't find that missing piece, she said she could hear me walk. She'd wait and wait and wait until my pacing would stop suddenly and then race to the desk and finish typing, because she knew after that I'd shut down and grab a melatonin and sleep for the next ten hours next to her.

Claire hadn't slept next to me in three weeks.

Would she ever again?

She hated that I was on this trip. She did - she put on a brave face and kissed me and told me to bring back an alien baby for her, but she only ever wore that thin smile when she was faking it.

Claire worried about me, and I'd barely thought about how this would affect her.

How would she react when I died from the Danu plague?

Perhaps I wouldn't - perhaps I was safe. My throat tickled from nervousness, I convinced myself, but a second later I was back at my desk, furiously scribbling out a last, desperate letter to her.

At least Moriz had let me keep my notebook - there, I could write everything I knew, a scientist til the end, apparently.

All I knew about the plague was that it was transmitted through contact, with either the fungi that was now removed or bodily fluids of the infected. I'd touched neither - the scientists had been quick to protect us and quarantine anyone who might be infected. Now, of course, that meant all of us, with 10 dead.

Anyone could die next.

I never thought when coming to this planet that I could die. I knew the risks. I knew the consequences if there were hostile natives or poisonous plants or a faulty landing - hell, I read about them weekly before the trip. Somehow, though, when I pictured them, it was never me who was shot in the head or ate the berries or was burned into fiery oblivion when their ship crashed.

It was always the other guy.

Now, I wasn't sure if there were any other guys left.

She'd cry, Claire would. Bawl, just break down. I would too, if she died, but it would be different, not on an alien planet, not from a strange disease that wiped out half the explorers and your girlfriend one of them.

She didn't make bets like that.

Claire had asked me not to go - simple, like that. One day, while I was still waking up, she said gently, "Marie, do you have to leave? Can't you stay?"

I wanted to say yes - she wanted me to say yes. She wanted my life to stay researching at the university and trading off dinner and dishes with her every other night. But I couldn't; the opportunity was too good for me to pass up and too much for Claire to let go.

I regarded my paper, the writing scribbled and messy and not at all my usual neat handwriting. I was the anti-doctor, but I could have been a neurosurgeon now.

Dear Claire, I don't want to make you cry.

I know you will, but I don't want you to.

You didn't want me to come to Danu.

I'm sorry I did.

Please don't cry.

This could be the last letter you get from me and I don't want it to be ruined by tears.

I'll always remember how much I love you and how terrible I was - pacing at all hours of the night, playing old records instead of just buying music like a normal person, giving you hell for being an English major (ENGLISH SUCKS FRENCH RULES). I hope you can forget those and focus on the good things, like living room picnics and making waffles at 3 AM and calling you bumblebee because that's how much I love you, enough to give you a nickname like bumblebee.

Bumblebees, in my opinion, are very dumb, but very cute.

You are very smart and also very cute.

I'm sorry this doesn't make any sense and I'm being a bad girlfriend like usual but I hope you can forgive me. I bet everything on this trip, and I bet enough that I agreed to die here, which I never wanted. I wanted to come home to you and give you enough money from going into space for a year so that you never had to work again, but you would, because you're stubborn and endearing.

I chose you, Claire, because I love you.

I love you more than anything in this entire world and on Earth (this is not a time to be making jokes but I will) and I know you think it was wrong to come on this trip but if I survive I will appreciate you and everything you do for me like waking me up on time and not forcing me to bed at a reasonable hour and letting me have pancakes for dinner on Saturday nights and being my girlfriend and all that cool stuff like letting me hold your hand in public.

I never imagined that I could run into someone who made me so happy and I've been to outer space but there's nothing I love more than you. You are my everything, Claire, my little bumblebee, and I love you so much it hurts to be quarantined without you (even though that would defeat the entire purpose of quarantine).

I know this seems very strange of me to be so personal but I miss you and I don't want to do that thing where I get all smart and defensive like usual.

I love you,

your Marie.

It was long and sweet and everything Claire was - sugar and honey and goodness wrapped into a bitsy Southern package. She would give me hell for this if she ever saw it.

I hoped she never would.

I ran a hand through my hair and folded the letter tight, slipping it into my notebook. Someone would find it if I died. On the front, I wrote in gorgeous cursive, the first completely legible thing I'd written all night, the most beautiful name in the world to me.

Claire.

I'd bet my life on this trip, and Claire had never been a gambler.

I could only hope that if now I bet my life on getting back to her, I'd win the jackpot.