Status Updates From Orbital

‘[…] This is the way it goes—and then another day they look into the face of one of those five people and there in their way of smiling or concentrating or eating is everything and everyone they’ve ever loved, all of it, just there, and humanity, in coming down in its essence to this handful of people, is no longer a species of confounding difference and distance but a near and graspable thing.’ (3/3)

‘When they miss people and things, when earth feels so far away that depression washes over them for days and even the view of the sun setting over the Arctic isn’t enough to lift them, then they have to be able to see the face of one of the other on board and find something there that keeps them going. Some solace. They don’t always.’ (2/3)

‘They are each to the other a representative of the human race—they each have to suffice for billions of people. They have to make do in lieu of every earthly thing—families, animals, weather, sex, water, trees. Walking. Some days they just want to walk, or lie down.’ (1/3)

‘Everything that speaks of being in space—which is everything—ambushes them with happiness, and it isn’t so much that they don’t want to go home but that home is an idea that has imploded—grown so big, so distended and full, that it’s caved in on itself.’