23 Years, 4 Months, 8 Days
By: BYIT
Chapter 3: 2 Years, 6 Months, 17 Days
"Romilly?" TARS asked, shattering the silence. Romilly's eyes snapped open. In from of him lay countess hours of papers, work, studies. Years upon years of research and he was still just as lost as he had been so many years ago, on a field in Cape Canaveral…
"TARS, how long has it been since you woke me up?" Romilly asked.
"12 days, give or take a few hours," TARS responded. "You lost count?"
Romilly ignored him for now. "How long has it been since Cooper, Amelia, and Doyle left the Endurance?"
TARS responded without missing a beat. "2 years, 6 months, 17 days. I wouldn't worry about the time too much. It's about relativity. It's really only been 17 days for you."
Romilly sat up, and looked back down at his notes with a sigh. "Then why does it feel like a decade?"
—
Romilly and TARS had spent the past 12 days endlessly running over data from Gargantuan. For every breakthrough they made, two steps got taken back in the other direction. It was a grueling, dull procedure. During this time, Romilly would frequently take breaks, taking the time to run around the centrifuge, listen to his earth sounds, and talk to TARS about almost anything.
"You know why we named it the Endurance, TARS?" Romilly asked one day, gesturing to the large aluminum walls that surrounded man and robot.
"My own memory suggests Dr. Brand named it this way to remind humans that mankind will always endure through hard times." TARS replied.
"Well," Romilly said, sitting up, "You'd only be half-right. Any other guesses?"
TARS sat in silence. The Endurance was so quiet these days, Romilly could almost hear the CPU-heart of his companion buzzing endlessly, encoding more and more data and information onto it's hard drives. Romilly wondered who would read these once he was long gone.
"It's also named the Endurance because that was the name of the last attempted shuttle launch."
"The Endurance crash of 2035." TARS remembered. "You were there?"
"I was a boy." Romilly said. "A young, healthy boy, just being driven by the idea that I could leave this planet far behind…"
Romilly took in a breath. "The Endurance was a shuttle designed far back in the day, somewhere around the Challenger days before it."
"The Challenger was another shuttle to destroy itself," TARS recalled from his history log. "Some fifty years prior."
"You'd think NASA would know not to use fifty-year old, shuttle technology to launch people into space, wouldn't you?"
TARS took a moment. "I wouldn't claim to understand the decisions of emotional beings. Only to interpret them as I see fit."
Romilly looked up. "Alright," he said, "Interpret. Why did NASA launch a fifty-year old shuttle into space?"
"…money." TARS said after a long time. "Financially they couldn't launch anything better."
"You're right." Romilly said. "It's always about money with people. Or at least it used to be. Back then, the goal was to get to Mars. The Red Planet. We thought maybe if we went there, mankind would finally step foot on another planet. Who knows? Maybe there was food, maybe there was water. Maybe life."
"There is no life on Mars," TARS said bluntly.
"No," Romilly said, "There isn't. But I think you're missing my point. It wasn't about the usefulness and logistics of the trip. Everyone wanted to go to Mars at that point. NASA was trying to go, private companies…hell, they tried to make a reality TV show out of getting there. You know why?"
TARS said nothing.
"…wonder."
—
The days passed with conversations like these. Some days, Romilly would sleep in for hours. Other times, he's practice stopping and staring the centrifuge's spinning in order to become used to zero-G. Other times, he'd simply look down at the planet and wonder what his friends were doing. Maybe they were talking to Miller right now, discussing how useful this planet would be to society. Maybe this sacrifice wouldn't have been in vain.
And it really was a sacrifice. To leave everything behind, to venture out into the cosmos in search of a home. Romilly wouldn't have been here in the first place if that was the case.
Everyone he cared about was already dead.
"Settling down for the long nap so soon?" TARS asked the next morning. He had found Romilly in the sleeping chambers, preparing a hyper-sleep pod. Romilly looked up from his preparations.
"What do you suggest I do?" Romilly asked. "The texts continue to come back negative. We can't just leave the cusp of this planet, and we can't send anything near Gargantua. All we can do is record and observe."
"You could stay awake with me." TARS said. "We'll grow old together."
Romilly chuckled. "Only one of us." He climbed into his pod, and laid down slowly in the warm fluid of life.
"When do I wake you?" TARS asked.
Romilly thought for a moment. "One, when they get back to the ship. Two, when there's some sort of emergency—"
"And three?"
"In a decade."
TARS paused. "10 years?"
"That's how long it'll take to run every test we have going, through every possible scenario. If you get something, wake me up too."
"Alright then," TARS said, beginning to activate the hyper-sleep pod. "I'll just be out here…alone…"
"Good night, TARS." Romilly said. As the seal locked above him Romilly's mind began to drift once more, into the pleasant thoughts of sleep. He sank deeper and deeper, letting his mind take him away…
…
It was the crash the woke him up.
The seal above him ripped open, and looming above Romilly was TARS' metal frame.
"GET UP!" TARS shouted. Orange glowed behind him.
"What?" Romilly asked, what's happening—"
But TARS didn't need to answer the question. Because surrounding TARS and Romilly was a bright, raging fire.
And it was burning right towards the frozen human embryos.
Long time, huh?
I watched Interstellar again, and remembered this story, and all of you. And I've decided to return to a long—abandoned project.
If there's demand for it, I think I've got a few ideas up my sleeve. As you can see, Romilly's time on the Endurance was not always a walk in the park.
And as for those who figured the contents of chapter 2 was referring to the Challenger, I took this opportunity to clear things up.
Want more? Let me know. I'll try to come back to ya'll soon.
-BYIT