Railroad Worm

by Nicholas W. Plummer

On the last evening before our departure for the Brownsville launch complex, Joey insists on going outside to say goodbye to the ants. I sweat as I lever up slate pavers that I placed in a curving path to the back door during a brief spasm of landscaping shortly after I bought the house. Joey crouches down to examine the ants in their labyrinthine nests, commenting on their color—red or black—and how enthusiastically they gather up their pupae when exposed to the light of the setting sun. This sort of thing has been my life since Joey learned to walk, and as long as I don’t throw my back out, turning over pavers isn’t too bad. It certainly beats the time I hauled multiple bucketfuls of tadpoles down to the neighborhood retention pond because Joey was worried that their mud puddle would dry out before they grew legs.

The last paver is on damp ground near a leaky hose bib, and instead of ants it harbors a large population of woodlice. The little gray crustaceans scatter, and a few curl up into tight balls when Joey prods them with a grubby finger.

 “Will there be roly-polies, Dada?” she asks.

It took almost a decade of tinkering with hundreds of different species before we hit on a mix of detritivores that would be stable in the subtropical climate of the Biome. The final inventory, including woodlice, is imprinted on my memory.

 “Yes. Three kinds,” I say.

Joey smiles and claps her hands. “I like to catch roly-polies,” she informs me unnecessarily. Anyone who knows little Joey knows that she usually has a few woodlice or millipedes riding in her pockets along with the acorns and interesting pebbles.

I lower the paver back into the little depression its weight has made in the soil. “Let’s go inside,” I say. “It will be time for bed soon, and we have to be up early tomorrow.”

Enceladus Station, finally completed, waits in orbit. Soon its—and our—long journey will begin.

* * *

Later—after dinner, bath, and bedtime story—I sit on the floor of my empty living room and sip wine from a disposable cup as I stare moodily at the dark, curtainless window, trying to imagine what it will be like to look out on Saturn and its moons. The outer surface of Enceladus Station is heavily shielded, so only a few windows actually face onto vacuum. For most of us, the view from our apartments will be the Biome, the vast central chamber that is the Station’s heart and lungs . . . and my life’s work. As a grad student I helped to develop the theory behind its pared-down artificial ecosystem. Later, I gained tenure on the basis of my methods for testing combinations of species in the lab. I have been one of the first people called whenever the slow, careful implementation required troubleshooting, and on two occasions I was actually shuttled up to the orbital construction yard to deal with particularly intractable problems. 

But even now, with my success assured and our departure imminent, it still galls me to know it was Joey’s potential, not my research, that secured our places in the colony. Those long years of hard work got me just three minutes with the Selection Committee Chair, and although it was almost six years ago, I can still remember every word of that mortifying interview.

“So, Dr. Shelford, it’s just you applying?” she asked.

“Yes. I don’t have a partner. The research has been my life.” I could see a framed family portrait—spouse, two children—at the edge of her desk.

“We value our academic associates, of course, and your team has played a pivotal role in design of the Biome . . . but are you really the only person qualified to monitor its progress once we reach the outer solar system?”

I struggled to answer as heat crawled up the back of my neck and across my cheeks. Imposter syndrome is a bitch, no matter how many scientific papers you have published. “No, not the only one, but I have unique qual—”

“When Enceladus Station reaches Saturn, we will be the most isolated human society in history. With our small population, we need to select colonists very carefully.”

She picked up the portrait and examined it briefly before continuing, “You’re a clever man, Dr. Shelford. I’m sure you can think of some way to make yourself more appealing to the Selection Committee.”

I did think of a way, eventually. Medical privacy laws made it challenging to find a clinic that would provide me with full genome sequences of prospective egg donors, but if the child was to embody as much genetic diversity as possible, I needed a donor whose DNA was maximally divergent from my own. I persevered, made a few payments under the table, and finally found a donor and a surrogate. Three years later I was selected as the station’s chief ecologist, ostensibly on the strength of my research but mainly, I think, due to one toddler and her future contributions to the colony’s gene pool. Don’t judge. People decide to have kids for all sorts of crazy reasons, or no reason at all.

* * *

The windowpane reflects the brightly lit room, so I step outside for one last view of the night sky filtered through nothing but atmosphere. Muggy air envelops me like a warm, wet blanket. Even in North Carolina, it shouldn’t be this hot and humid at the tail end of November. When I look up, there isn’t much to see. The moon is down, and the distant city lights reflect off suspended moisture, filling the sky with a sickly yellow glow that obscures all but the brightest stars, though it fails to illuminate anything on the ground.

As I turn to go back into the air conditioning, the pavers wobble under my bare feet; I must have dropped some of them askew after Joey finished communing with the ants. Looking down into the darkness, trying not to stub a toe on the edge of an unseen paver, I notice something glowing on the ground. The chartreuse light is steady, unlike the pulsing of fireflies, but it has the same cool appearance. Dumping the remains of my wine, I scoop up the glowing object. On closer inspection, the light resolves to a line of spots that circle the bottom of the cup like a train with brightly lit windows.

Back inside, I examine my catch. It has six legs but looks more like a centipede than an insect. Its elongated body is composed of multiple segments, each decorated with a pair of brick-red blotches edged in black. For a few minutes, I entertain myself by flipping the light off and on, alternating between the glowing train windows and colorful centipede thing. As the insect circumnavigates its slippery plastic prison, I wonder if I ought to add some leaf litter to create a small habitat—a little biome.

Knowing that Joey always loves to see new creatures, I carry the cup to her bedroom. But I’m too late; she’s fast asleep. In the light from the hall, I can see a footie-pajama-clad leg protruding from the nest of blankets we built in a corner of her otherwise-empty room. My earlier disgruntlement forgotten, I stand in the doorway and listen to her breathe. It amazes me that this small person who finds joy in woodlice and ants might one day sit in a control room and direct drones to explore the cold midnight ocean of Enceladus or the ice cliffs of Dione. This little girl who loves to look under every rock and rotting log for the surprises living there . . .

Oh . . .

Well, crap.

I return to the living room to fill a second cup with wine. As I drink, I explore the contours of the unhappy thought, poking and prodding it from every angle. Then I refill my cup.

When the bottle is empty, I pick up my phone and dictate a short message. After hesitating for a long minute, I take a deep breath and hit send.

The phone vibrates almost immediately, and when I answer, the Selection Committee Chair looks back at me. The background doesn’t look like the office where I first met her. I’d guess she’s already in Brownsville, waiting for a shuttle.

“Tell me why,” she says without preamble.

I fumble with an explanation. “I . . . well . . . it’s this.”

I hold up the creature, and it obligingly makes a circuit of the cup. The Chair looks baffled.

“That doesn’t really help,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “What is it?”

“Yeah, I had to look it up, too. It’s a railroad worm, the larviform female of a bioluminescent beetle species.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re giving up your place in the colony, with no concern for how you’re screwing us at the last minute, because of a bug you found?”

I can understand her skepticism. Like most people, she is blind to the tiny creatures that weave the Biome’s ecosystem, but she is familiar with the charismatic species that we selected from all over the world to be a source of joy for the human inhabitants of Enceladus Station. How can the railroad worm compete with soft-furred wallabies, cheeky little bananaquits, or emerald-green lizards with cobalt-blue heads?

I try to explain. “It’s just that I’ve lived here for almost twenty years, and I’ve never seen one of these before. The Biome is a big terrarium; I know every species that we put in there. But here, there’s still a chance of finding something completely unexpected every time we go outside. I lost sight of that, somehow.”

The Chair shakes her head. I can tell she doesn’t understand.

“Do you think your daughter”—the Chair looks at something off camera, probably a monitor—“your daughter Joanna will ever forgive you if you surrender her chance to be a pioneer in humanity’s greatest adventure? Isn’t that her raison d'être?”

“I thought it was. I was wrong. She isn’t a means to an end, and I’m afraid she won’t forgive me if I immure her in a larger version of this.” I hold up the cup and shake it a little harder than I intended. The railroad worm slides back and forth.

The Chair sighs and rubs her forehead. “Look, we all get cold feet sometimes. I’ll give you until the morning to reconsider. After that . . . there are fifteen alternates for your position. You won’t get another chance.”

She disconnects.

Have I just made the worst mistake of my life? I know very well what is hidden by the darkness outside. Am I really giving up the unchanging perfection of Saturn’s rings for a quarter acre of weedy lawn on a suburban cul-de-sac? Or perhaps even less than that. The reflection in the window shows me an empty room. Our physical possessions, apart from our tiny mass allowance, have been sold, and this house is already under contract. The university has accepted my resignation. There’s nothing left for us here.

I reach for my phone, ready to send another message. Ready to grovel.

A gentle tapping and flurry of movement at the window catch my attention. As I struggle to see past the reflection, soft wings frantically batter the windowpane. It’s a large moth, attracted to the light but too stupid to realize that it can’t fly through glass.

I shut down and pocket the phone.

Outside this window, the dark is full of life.