I look at myself in the mirror, and wonder what the captain thought when he saw me. A wrinkled face, a long, grizzled beard, weary eyes… I have somehow become the grandfather without a child to my name. I was surprised by the interview; I never expected that anyone would be interested in my paltry list of publications. A thousand articles, each and every one without acclaim. Books written, good enough to publish, not good enough to sell. And yet the captain called me up the space elevator to speak with me.
I wonder if the captain knows that I knew his grandfather? My name never made it into the history books, just an acknowledgement of Zheng Lee returning with a thousand men and women from other worlds, all curious about the Tien Terra system. I’m not sure if his grandfather would have remembered me, by the time the captain was born. And, of course, I avoided mentioning it – I suspected, and continue to suspect, that the captain lives in the shadow of his father and grandfather.
They are very different men, the captain and his grandfather. Zheng Lee was man of determination and grit. Sometimes I wondered if he would have ever built his planet’s Gateway if it weren’t for everyone telling him, ‘No! That’s impossible! You are a fool!’ Maybe he would have built it, but tell the man what he couldn’t do, and he would do it just to prove you wrong. The captain, Zheng Hui, is of a different fiber, I think. Young. Idealistic. Troubled. If someone voiced doubts to him, he would take those doubts to heart, where his grandfather would press on to prove the doubter wrong. A softer man, but not necessarily worse for the softness.
He hadn’t read the files I sent him, so far as I could tell, not even the essay on why I wished to join the crew. Instead he asked about me, about my connections to the planet, about how long I had been here. Then he asked about my motivations, my fears, my family (or lack thereof). He tried to scare me off by warning of dangers, of death, of never returning. But never on my writing, never on my skill, just about me.
And now I have been accepted to be part of the crew. I have my suspicions on why he chose me, of course. Long ago, I landed on Tien Terra Beta, full of foolish dreams. I thought that I could tell the story of that civilization making contact with what would become the Linked Systems. I failed, of course, but so would anyone else. Now I am older, I am wiser, and I remember. I’ve seen it before, a civilization, previously isolated, being rudely awakened from preconceptions grown of distance. And I remember everything.
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