V is for Venus

There was at least one perk to working in the lab of Aerostat 5 - it came with a nice view.

Yes, the temperature control was on the fritz, and yes, transmissions with Earth were few and far between, and yes, the food was as terrible here as it was on Earth (there were only so many flavours of algae that she could take), but still, the lab had a window. It showed the white-yellow haze of Venus below her, and the darkness of space above her. Like all of the RDA's Venusian aerostats, the structure floated in the clouds of the Sol system's second planet. If the laws of gravity stopped working, then Aerostat 5 would fly off into space, where its crew could enjoy floating everywhere before eventually running out of food, air, or heat. If its propulsion systems stopped functioning, the crew would plummet through the clouds of Venus, where they could either boil to death, be crushed to death, or if by some miracle that they survived either of those things, die on impact.

Being honest with herself, Roberta Chang of the Resources Development Administration wished she'd known that such a thing had happened to Aerostat 6 before she signed a two year contract to work on its predecessor. But hey, a nice view. One that her eyes weren't even focused on, as she checked the cell cultures behind the incubator. Her eyes narrow, her lips in a frown.

"Crap," she murmured, checking the first. "Crap...crap...still crap...not too bad...crap...holy shit, that's crap..."

Cell culture 5 had done better than the others. Cell culture 7 was completely useless. But at the end of the day, it meant nothing. All of the cell samples were failing to perform at optimal levels, considering that they hadn't grown to any significant amount, and inside the incubator, CO2 levels remained the same. Making a final note on her datapad, she cast a gaze outside the window. She had no doubt that the aerostat's designer had meant to give the scientists here a pleasant view, but right now, it felt like mockery. Partly because, despite its namesake, Venus was one ugly mother. And partly because, due to a litany of reasons, the lab of Aerostat 5 had only one staff member. Herself.

"Well, there she is, Snow White is out of the woods and is back home."

She winced. Two members, she reminded herself.

"Is lunch really all that bad, Bobbie? It's Meat Monday after all."

She looked at the asshole. "Okay, first of all, Meat Monday isn't a thing. Second of all, I'm a vegetarian. Third of all, why are you here?"

Dax shrugged. "I don't leave Venus until tomorrow."

"Right, well, don't let the door hit you on the way out." Roberta looked away from Dax, took a seat at her work station, and began checking the next batch of cell cultures.

"Doors can't hit me here Bobbie. They all go up and down with a hiss." He walked over. "Or a whoosh, but usually it's a hiss. Like, hiss...like a snake. Or at least I think like a snake. I've never actually seen a snake. Certainly not a live one."

Roberta snorted. "Don't worry Dax, that makes you like pretty much every man, woman, and child on Earth."

She returned to her work, hoping Dax would leave. Reflecting that she'd seen a snake once as part of a breeding program - par for the course, since most non-human lifeforms on Earth these days could only be found in breeding programs, most of which were underfunded. Not unlike the RDA's Venusian operations, which were so minute, they didn't even warrant a mention on its quarterly reports these days.

Nevertheless, she was here. Tomorrow, Daxton Hall wouldn't be. Despite having worked together for the last year, he'd managed to get out of his contract early, to head for greener pastures. She, however, not wishing to be sent a million miles and more from home, had resigned herself to stay here. No matter how fruitless an endeavour it was turning out to be.

"You know..." Dax began.

Roberta winced. Christ, are you still here?

"It isn't too late for you to sign up as well."

She span round in her seat to look at him. "Be shot off to Alpha Centauri? No thanks."

"Bobbie, have you even seen the pay packet?"

"I have."

"And?"

She spun around. "Some of us don't care about how many zeroes are on our pay cheque."

"Right. Of course. Because wasting your life on Venus is doing so much good."

Roberta didn't say anything.

"This research you're doing is over a century old. You think you're going to make a breakthrough now?"

Roberta, still silent, fought the urge to say that if their employers invested more in the Aphrodite Program, they might see some results. But the problem was, Dax had a point. There was a very real chance that she was just engaging in false hope that had its roots over 120 years ago.

2020 was the year that phosphine had been discovered in the clouds of Venus. A gas that, by the understanding of the time, required life to generate. In 2024, NASA had sent a probe to take a sample, and in 2025, it was confirmed that life had existed in Venus's atmosphere. The planet had gone to Hell in every sense of the word, but life, albeit single-celled life, had managed to hold on in its clouds. After all these years of wondering if they were alone in the universe, humanity had found an answer.

How people had reacted back then, Roberta didn't know. No-one did, at least on the personal level. But the history books indicated that most people didn't care. It was all very well to confirm that life existed on Venus when life on Earth was starting to get a mite unpleasant, as the planet got hotter, as the ice continued to melt, as animals continued to die, and as the rainforests continued to burn. Similarly, the discovery of multi-cellular life on Pandora, and indeed sapient life, hadn't changed much either for the everyday person. They were living on a dying world, held together only by duct tape, and for all the wonders of Pandora, no-one actually wanted to live there. The Great Migrations of the 21st century had mainly taken place on Earth. People fleeing the tropics, either heading north, or heading south, even going as far to live in a greening Antarctica. With Pandora only good for supplying the proverbial duct tape, and Luna and Mars nowhere near self-sufficiency, Venus had been quietly forgotten.

At least until a few decades ago, when someone in the RDA had looked into the prospect of studying Venus's microbes. The idea of genetically altering them, to get them to increase their metabolization of CO2. A kind of 'soft terraforming' of the planet, similar to how in Earth's own evolutionary history, microbes had made the planet fit for multicellular life via photosynthesis. Importing such microbes to Earth would be far too risky, but terraforming Venus? Making it more hospitable than Mars? Investors had rushed forward. Aerostats had been constructed. Resources were shipped in, Meat Mondays became a thing, and then...nothing. Turned out it was far easier to emit CO2 into an atmosphere than remove it. That was why, even with the elimination of fossil fuels, Earth was still wrapped in greenhouse gasses that had contributed to the die-off of 90% of all life. The teeming billions of humanity excluded.

"Bobbie?"

So here she was. Still trying to get the microbes in Venus's atmosphere to be a bit more hungry. To gulp down CO2, to terraform the planet, to kickstart a process that, even by the most optimistic estimates, would take centuries. She could make a breakthrough today, start the process today, and not even her grandchildren's grandchildren would live to see the results.

"Earth to Doctor Chang."

Provided she had children at all, and they didn't die horribly. Which, she reflected, as she looked at Dax, were two sets of prospects she didn't want to entertain right now.

"You okay? You've got 'the look' again."

"The look?"

"Yeah, the look. Like, lost-in-your-own-thoughts-woe-is-me."

She frowned. "That isn't a thing."

"Yeah, it is. Just because you say Meat Mondays isn't a thing, doesn't mean that's true."

Roberta scoffed. "Meat Mondays is a fancy term for letting us eat in-vitro meat rather than algae, distracting us that the 1% is able to eat real meat, from real animals, raised on what little arable land Earth has left."

"Ah, there's the Bobbie I know."

She got to her feet and headed back to the incubator. "If you don't have anything else to say, I need to get back to work." She glanced back at him. "Actually, if you do have something to say, don't say it."

Dax put his hands in his pockets and started twisting one leg behind the other. "Just saying..."

"I told you not to say anything."

"It'll be twenty years before I'm back in Sol. I mean, this'll be one of the last times we'll be able to speak to each other."

"Duly noted." She turned back to the incubator. "Door's open."

She hoped she sounded harsher than she actually felt. Because even if Doctor Daxton Hall had been the type of person who was content to cruise through life rather than soar, he'd still been her lab partner for her last year, on an aerostat that lost more and more staff every time a shuttle departed for Earth. Come tomorrow, Dax and fully half the station's personnel would begin a two week trip to Sol III, before, in Dax's case, he'd transfer to an ISV. He'd spend seven years in cryo, six years on Pandora, and seven years coming back. Technically five years for him each way, given how relativity worked, but then, her field was astro-biology, not astro-physics. And-

She looked at Dax. "Why is your hand on my shoulder?"

"Too much?"

She swatted it off. "As I said, the door's open."

He sighed. "Fine," he whispered. "Fine."

She didn't watch as her colleague headed for the door. She did listen to his footsteps though. It was with some measure of distress and relief that she heard them stop, before exiting the room.

"You're wasting your life here, you know that?"

The relief turned into distress and the distress to aggravation. "Excuse me?"

"No-one gives a shit about Venus. The RDA doesn't, and no-one on Earth does. People care about Pandora. And do you know why?"

"Because it's named after a Greek broad?"

"Because Pandora has a magic space rock that prevents society from crumbling around us. That's it. That's the only reason. And because people care, the RDA has the funding to send astro-biologists like me there, to search for the scraps, and hopefully make a difference."

"Nice speech. You think of it just now?"

He sighed. "Venture Star's leaving in two weeks," he said. "Please. Come with me. Venus is dead. Earth is dying. You're not going to save either planet, no matter what you do on this aerostat."

"I..." Roberta's mouth opened and closed like a fish. "I..."

She couldn't speak. And in these moments, Dax couldn't, or wouldn't. So with a final nod, he left the lab. Out of sight. And eventually, out of memory.

Leaving her alone, above a dead world.

To work in vain trying to save a dying one.


A/N

So, not too long ago (at this time of writing), phosphine was detected in the atmosphere of Venus. Potentially, a sign of life. What got to me more however, was upon reading the news, how little I actually cared. Ten, even five years ago, I'd probably be geeking out, but I can't help but reflect on the irony that we have the means to detect life on other planets, but don't have the means to save our own. Certainly won't be alive in the 22nd century, but hey, got the 21st to see how things play out.

In the meantime, drabbled this up. Existential angst is good for something I guess.