Transforming Humanity
Wish You Were Here

YiHwa Hanna
Arab-Taiwanese American
Writing from UAE
We’re about fifteen minutes away from landing now. I know we must be, because the baby in the pod behind me has been screaming for at least forty-five minutes, and these commercial spaceplanes always begin rousing us from our sleep state an hour before arrival. It’s meant to be a gentle, gradual wake-up process. Who needs a dawn simulator when you can open your eyes to the vast inky velvet of space, that’s slowly lit by the sparkle of a star glimmering ever brighter and wider, until it becomes an airglow that turns into a crescent moon, before revealing a whole entire planet – a fascinating new world just begging to be explored?
Watching the world from the window is my favorite thing about flying. I love it during my travels on Earth too, but ever since the space tourism industry developed enough to let common folk like me explore the rest of our solar system and the exoplanets beyond, the thrill has evolved. What can I say? It’s hard to beat the view from space.
The baby is clearly as eager to arrive as I am. His screams have grown louder now, his quivering vocal chords given a unique vibrato from his gurgles and grunts. I suspect he’s hungry.
Me too, kiddo, I think, as my stomach joins his chorus in silent solidarity. My last meal was fifteen hours ago, since I was too busy to eat while I packed for this spontaneous trip, and the flight left way too early for breakfast.
A ping comes over the PA system: “We are now beginning our descent into Atropos. Please ensure that your harness is tightly fastened, and that you put on your oxygen mask to prepare for landing. We hope you have had a pleasant flight. Thank you again for flying JetAir. We wish you a wonderful onward journey.”
My smart tablet is in my hand the second I step into the spaceport. I switch it to thought-to-text mode, and instruct it to begin composing a message to Justin. “Just landed,” it reads.
“Glad you made it safely. How was your flight?” he responds.
“Ok. There was a baby screaming bloody murder during landing hour. Not the most pleasant wake-up call,” I write.
“Ouch. Dang budget spaceline! That’s what we get for not flying luxury class, I guess,” he says.
“We’re not all as lucky as you when it comes to sleep. We could land like an asteroid and you’d still probably hardly flicker an eyelid,” I say.
“Some of us are created with natural gifts,” he says with a winking emoji. “Better hurry so you don’t miss your tour bus.”
I’m through passport control, with my backpack in hand, within an hour. So far, Atropos gets top marks for efficiency. It’s a good thing too, since I can already see my guide. He’s holding up a sign with a list of names on it with two of his arms, and his second two arms holding a flag for Earth. I’d wanted a local guide, and this one is most definitely an Atropan. A humanoid species with elf-like ears and two sturdy legs, their smooth skin can be light or dark blue and their hair purple or white, but all of them have four arms. No wonder Atropans are known for their exceptional productivity – they must take the expression ‘many hands make light work’ to another level.
He greets me with a friendly smile and broken English.
“Eva Marrouk,” I say, pointing at the list as I find my name on it.
“I welcome one to our planet!” he says brightly. “Please take your most favorite seat on the bus.”
My stomach growls again, and he gives me a sympathetic look. “Please not worrying, our first stop is being a look at the Diamond Waterfall, then we are stopping for a local breakfast.”
My furrowed brow gives away my confusion.
“Please not worrying about plan, we will surely going to all the main sights. We are visiting the Crystal Temple, then Gem Valley, before we stop near there for lunch eating, then we will gonna see the Sapphire Sea in time for sunset, before one is dropped at one’s hotel,” he says, his smile stretching from ear to ear. It’s clearly meant to be reassuring, but something about its wideness, its insistence upon joy, is unsettling.
“No no it’s not that, and I’ve already seen the itinerary, thanks. I just—how did you know I was hungry?” I ask him.
“Well, I am hearing your stomach!” he says. I must still look confused, because he explains further. “Our ears, hyper sensitive,” he says, pointing at them. “Now go, get oneself a good seat!” he continues, ushering me onto the bus.
It takes us approximately one hour to see the waterfall, and it’s an utterly breathtaking sight. Streams of spring water cascade into a series of emerald-green pools staggered throughout a lush, verdant cliffside, their droplets sparkling like diamonds as they hit the surface of each lake. Atropos is famous for its high-pressure atmosphere and unusual climate. Although this makes it impossible for humans to walk around in the open air without a protective suit, it also means the planet is filled with natural crystals of every type, in places you’d never see on Earth.
It’s a brilliant start – “pun intended,” I say in my message to Justin – and I’m so enthralled by the scenery that I almost forget about breakfast until it’s laid in front of me. We eat a lakeside café at the foot of the falls, made human-friendly through a clear, protective bubble. “The pastries are flakey, warm, and a bit spicy, kind of like burek, and the juice is green, but it tastes sweet and sharp, like wild pomegranates with sugar, and lemon,” I write to Justin. “Tastes a million times better than the gloopy, printed mass of molecules the office cafeteria dared to call food,” I add.
Our next sight is the Crystal Temple – a historical building where ancient Atropans would honor their dead – followed by Gem Valley. Its rolling green hills, scattered with crystalline flowers of every color, sparkle in the golden sunlight, making my breath catch in my throat. By the time we stop for lunch, in an old tavern on a winding path to Atropos’s rugged mountains,
I’ve already sent Justin at least fifty photos. Yet I can’t resist one more. I turn the camera into self-facing mode, and beam a holograph of his head next to mine before snapping and sending it.
“This, right here, is where you should be,” I write.
“I wish. But right now, I need less face, more dishes. Show me the food!” he says, with a drooling-face emoji.
Just as I begin to compose messages describing the smorgasbord of small, colorful dishes in front of me, I’m tapped on the shoulder. My thought-to-text flow is punctuated with some unpleasant words of irritation. “Delete that,” I instruct the device. “Type: Sorry, being interrupted, be right back!” The intruders are a couple in what looks like their mid-50s. Their space suits, bedecked with designer labels, are a little too tight, and they’re clearly part of my tour group, but I still wonder why they’re talking to me when there are at least four other empty tables in this restaurant.
“We saw you sitting all by yourself, and thought we should come sit with you. Nobody should have to sit alone!” she says, her tone solicitous. Her husband nods, and they both take a seat before I can even open my mouth.
“That’s very kind of you, but I’m really ok. I like eating alone. And I’m not actually alone, anyway,” I say, pointing towards my tablet. “I’m speaking to my friend.”
“It’s very unusual for someone to travel alone, especially all the way to these exoplanets,” the woman continues, clicking her tongue disapprovingly as she completely ignores what I’ve just said. “Where are you from, and why did you come to Atropos?” she asks. Her face is so hopeful and curious that as annoyed as I am, I can’t help myself from responding.
“My best friend wanted to come with me, but he couldn’t make it. And in answer to your questions, I live on Earth, in Dubai in the UAE; and why not?” I say, sighing as I resign myself to the chat. It centers entirely around shallow small talk—the type of conversation I hate most—and by the time we head back to the bus, I pray that their seat is far from mine.
“Made a new bestie?” Justin writes, with an amused emoji.
“Nobody will ever replace you,” I write, with a heart emoji.
An old Atropan approaches our group as people pile back on the bus. She’s holding a basket full of crystal flowers from Gem Valley, selling them as souvenirs. I send a photo of it to Justin.
“What color do you want?” I ask.
“It’s up to you. It’s just going to be for you, anyway,” he says.
I don’t respond, taking so long to mull it over that our guide comes to check on me. “Are you ok?” he says, his face concerned.
“Yeah, just not sure which color to pick,” I say.
“Are you being sure? Your heart, it beats awfully fast in this moment,” he says. When I look back at him, slightly bewildered, he points at his ears. “Special hearing,” he says again, with a smile.
I nod curtly, then choose a blue flower. I snap a photo of it before the old Atropan wraps it up in a protective bag. “To match your eyes. Like the coffee cups I brought you from Marakis, and the vase from Xanthar,” I write to Justin. He sends me a blue heart emoji in response.
It takes us a half-hour to get to our final stop of the day, the Sapphire Sea. As the winding road takes us up to the top of a cliff, I catch glimpses of it through the bus’s seat-to-ceiling windows. But it’s once I step out onto the sand—a fine white powder facing an expanse of every shade of blue—that my jaw truly drops. The sun is starting to set, and as it does, its red light begins to spread out over the sapphire, aquamarine, teal, and azure waters, leaving the gemstone-like surface sparkling like its been scattered with the glowing embers of a fire.
I close my eyes, and take a slow, deep breath. Although I can’t smell or feel this air—tragically, we still can’t remove our masks or suits—the view has stirred a memory. My mind pulls me back to the beloved beaches of my home planet. I see the rainbow sky as the sun sets over Jumeirah Beach, painted with dancing clouds and rich shades of pink, purple, crimson, and gold reflected in its gentle, lapping waves. I can hear Justin’s laughter behind me as I wiggle my toes in the soft, warm sand. It was our Saturday afternoon ritual, after a day of catching waves in the surf. I recall the scent of the ocean carried on the breeze; salty, sweet and enveloping. It smells like home.
As I open my eyes again, I am filled with a sense of wonder. How grateful I am for this vast universe that is able to contain both this magnificent vista in front of me, as well as the sublime beauty of Earth. My eyes are wet, not quite with tears but filled with emotion, as I snap a photo for Justin.
“No matter which sun I’m looking at, the view is always better with you by my side,” I write, putting a cheese emoji next to it. He sends back three heart emojis. “I wish you were here,” I write. The words tug at my heartstrings.
“Me too,” he says. His words tug harder.
***
I head home two days later, my heart, mind, and belly full of the wonders that Atropos has to offer. I promise myself I’ll revisit someday.
I get back to my apartment just after midnight, too tired to heed the gnawing hunger in my stomach. I can only muster the energy for a shower, where I stand in the hot streams of water for so long that I have to ask the smart bot for an extension three times, even after it warns me that I’m already almost over the water quota I’ve saved from the past three days. After the shower, my skin turned pink and my hair still warm from the jet-dryer, I wrap myself in a fluffy robe and pad across the cold, white floors. There’s something I need to do before I can sleep.
Unzipping my backpack, I toss my dirty clothes into the laundry chute, and instruct the system to clean it within the next eight hours. And then I come to what I’m looking for: the blue crystal flower. I pick it up, delicately unwrap it, and carry it carefully over to the series of shelves on the left wall of my living room. My eyes fall across the vase I brought Justin from Xanthar, and I lovingly touch the coffee cup I brought him from Marakis. There’s an empty space on the shelf just after it, next to a photo of Justin. In it, his eyes are the same blue as the flower, and his smile—the one that could brighten up any room, even the one full of shattering hearts at his funeral—still makes me smile now, even as I wipe away a tear. At the bottom of the picture frame are the words, “In loving memory.”
My phone pings with a response to my thoughts. “Don’t be sad, Eva. I’m always with you,” Justin writes.
“I know, but I wish you were here. For real, you know?” I write.
“I know. Me too,” he writes. He sends me a heart emoji. When I trained the AI system to mimic his behavior and speech and typing patterns, I made sure that it would use a lot of emojis. He used to when he was still alive, after all.
My stomach twists, and for a moment, it knocks the wind out of me. “Let’s visit Herzog next! There’s a cheap flight there next weekend,” I write, pasting a smiling emoji after it.
“Another trip already? Don’t you think you should stay home for a bit this time?” Justin writes.
I pause for a few moments, then answer aloud. My words come out quietly, like a whisper: “I feel your absence too much when I’m here. At least when I’m gone, I can pretend that you’re just on Earth. That you’re still here, just not there, you know?”
Justin’s status displays as “typing”, then stops. And again. And again. Then nothing.
“At least we have this, right? Bless the powers of technology!” I say, adding another smile emoji. Another tear escapes, running down my cheek.
He responds with a broken heart emoji. “So, where shall we go next?”