Angels of the North
Three hundred years after the shipyards of Tyneside were closed, a new breed of ship was being born; vessels that would not cross oceans, but galaxies.
And so, the docks and workshops along the Tyne river were opened once more, to aid in this new era of discovery. Dry docks that had laid empty for generations now housed immense fuselages and engines the size of skyscrapers, assembled by teams of thousands of men and women who riveted, welded and bolted all through the day and night. The smells of ozone and molten steel drifted in the air from the docks, all the way down to the beaches of South Shields.
No shuttles or rockets ever launched directly from the docks, however; they were carried on tankers, like huge steel skeletons moved piece by piece, along the Tyne and down toward the Isle of Wight to the international launch stations.
Within a hundred years of this expansive industry, the city of Newcastle in the county of Northumbria had become the economic powerhouse of Great Britain. There had even been talk of Northumberland joining the independent state of Scotland, so as to cut off the few vestigial ties that lingered between the North and the Southern parliament. Powered by wind farms and tidal batteries off the coast of the North sea, the city of Newcastle soon became a hub of rapid innovation, with engineers and artists sharing ideas and aspirations that would shape the future of humanity. Engineers and scientists from all corners of the globe now called the city their home; and on their Sunday’s off, they filled Northumberland Street with the songs and cries of a hundred different languages.
Prosperity and independence aside, there had been moments of tragedy in the city. A shuttle meant to navigate the moons of Neptune had ignited in a warehouse on the docks, its fuel-tanks blazing with white and blue flame. Four hundred men and women lost their lives in that inferno, their skeletons fused together like melted steel wire. It had taken two weeks to quell the flames, the air so hot that windows in the city of Newcastle melted and buckled from the down-draught. Even the bronze seahorses atop the City’s civic centre felt the heat, their spines curling inward and their shining coats tarnished by the ashes.
Working on the shuttles and rockets was laborious, dangerous work; the old trade unions from previous centuries returned in new guises to protect the interests of their members, to pressure private industries in valuing the rights of their workers. The Durham miners gala welcomed the new unions with open arms; every year the bright tabards and banners of the industries of tomorrow were held high in Wharton Park, creating rich tapestries of colour that reflected the bright futures of a people liberated. Who would have thought, so many centuries ago in the distant year of 1871, that the footsteps of the Durham miners association would be retraced by their ancestors who with their skill and craft had touched the stars themselves.
Soon, it seemed every other household that lay along the Tyne was home to a man or woman involved in the trade of ship-building. The rallying cry of the workers soon became ‘The North has risen again.” There was a sense of pride in these words, and assuredness. But more importantly, there was hope.
However, there were some warehouses along the Tyne that were kept hidden from public eyes. These held military spacecraft, spy satellites,and weapons designed to launch from the upper atmosphere, dropping payloads no heavier than a metal rivet that could easily level a city. The people of Newcastle knew little of these places, and those that did were paid for their silence, and their compliance.
There was a small research facility just outside the docks at Jarrow, one that was never mentioned by name in official documents. It was made up of a row of squat, prefabricated huts, with an outbuilding that served as a research laboratory and medical bay. The fenced perimeter was guarded by a private security force, one that was given enough authority to wield firearms, and to use necessary force when discouraging trespassers.
It was in this guarded township of the Jarrow Institute, that they kept the Angels.
In the first years of galactic travel, there had been much debate as to the matter of inter-generational crews. If a ship took over half a century to reach its destination, and another half to return, it stood to reason that children would have to be born, raised and educated during the voyage. The question was, how to do it successfully.
Ethical quandaries abounded; muscle tissue and bone density atrophied during even the shortest journeys, and the effects of low-gravity on skeletal structure and muscle development could prove fatal to any infant successfully birthed on board. And the chances of even performing that were painfully, infinitesimally small.
After many decades of compromise and with the precise exploitation of ethical loopholes, it was decided that a selected group of infants would be brought to term on earth, raised there until they were teenagers in their respective homelands, and then after years of rigorous training, and with it hundreds upon thousands of tests and evaluations, they would be sent up to accompany the senior crew members of the shuttles on their journey to the stars.
The children that left earth were all singularly adept and meticulous creatures, whose minds were filled from the ever changing well of knowledge that they expected to draw from. They matured into adults, some more quickly than others; and many found it distressing, due to the relative aspects of time in deep space, that their old friends on earth were deep in middle age by the time they themselves had barely passed their teens. A few were utterly bewildered on their return by the idea of a life back on Earth, refusing to leave the shuttles for fear of the strange, half-remembered world they had left so long ago.
More worryingly, there were some infants born on these voyages, though not by intention. Children sent to travel the stars will become adults after all, and with this transition come the twin agonies of longing and lust.
Most of the newborns born on the voyages died quickly, but a handful of them survived. They were weak, mewling things, their eyes white as snow and their skin as thin as crepe-paper. Their bodies grew long and wiry, the lack of gravity onboard stretching the disks of their spines and bending them into crooked question marks. When those who survived the journey home returned to Earth as adolescents, they had to be supported with metal braces across their limbs, so brittle where their bones.
The colour never did return to their eyes. Years of radiation permeating through the hulls of their ships had left them all but blind, though they were able to see faint lines of ultra-violet light.
The researchers and doctors at the Jarrow Institute found these children to be agreeable, soft spoken, and sensitive creatures. They would close their eyes in thought whenever asked a question they deemed important, and loved to listen to music; somewhat fittingly, they enjoyed hearing Holst’s ‘Planet Suite’ the most.
As the children grew older, they presented an average to slightly above-average intelligence in IQ assessment’s, and a natural aptitude for problem-solving. They were docile and thoughtful in their nature, and sensitive to the needs of others. They required near-constant medical attention, having immune systems not yet adapted for their new home, and almost all of them were unable to walk without some form of mechanical aid.
The parents of the star-children were debriefed on return by their governments, and told that their offspring would be cared for. They were paid for their cooperation in the Jarrow Institute’s mission, though they were reluctant to part with their children. Many never forgave themselves, throwing their lives into research projects in the frozen arctic to create as much distance as they could possibly find, between themselves and their lost humanity.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, a doctor is visiting his patient at the Jarrow Institute. They have spoken many times, and in some ways they considers themselves friends. Though it is a strange kind of friendship, so intimate but yet so distant.
“Overall, tell me how you’re feeling today, Ivan?” Asks doctor Mayweather, the electronic tablet in his hand set to record the day’s psychological evaluation. He looks through the glass divider that separates the room in two, a sterile barrier which prevents any airborne pathogens from crossing over to his patient.
The pale, blond haired young man sat in a wheelchair in the other portion of the room smiles at this question, and closes his eyes before answering.
“I’m quite alright today, doctor. The bonsai tree you sent me is growing quite wonderfully. Thank you for that.” The young man named Ivan opens his eyes, their white pupils scanning the air in front of him. “Are you ill, doctor? It seems like you’re running a bit of a temperature today.”
Doctor Mayweather pauses the recording function on his tablet, and looks quizically at Ivan. “As a matter of fact, yes, I have been feeling a little peaky the last few days. How did you know?”
Ivan squints intently at the doctor, his blind eyes still assesing. “It’s your aura today. It seems brighter than it was last week.”
“My ‘aura’? What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, I’m sorry Doctor. The rest of us have been trying to come up with a more scientific word for it, but that’s the best we seem to have managed. The light around objects, the light we can see, is more vivid to us the warmer the object in question becomes. We discovered this quite by accident last month.”
Dr Mayweather makes a note of this new development on his tablet, and continues:
“Fascinating, Ivan. You mean to say you have all begun to perceive infrared waves as well as ultraviolet?”
Ivan frowns, and closes his eyes. “Not as such, no. It is hard to put into words, as we have no point of reference for what you might call colours. We see shadows mostly. It seems that objects which are hotter than others appear more substantial to our eyes. Thicker with darkness, if you will.”
Dr Mayweather sets the tablet back to its record function, not wishing to miss anything he may omit in his own written notes. “And you say this you all found this out last month? Did you tell any of the research staff.”
Ivan blinks. “We were unsure wether it was a shared phenomena, Doctor. After all, you keep us here in separate rooms. Our time together is limited to a few hours a day, and usually we are too fatigued to answer.”
This has been an ongoing problem at the institute. The ‘residents’ as the staff sometimes call them, are kept in separate sterile quarters to avoid the spread of infection if one of their number was to fall ill; their immune systems being so frail, even the common cold could effect a mass casualty among the residents. They are allowed to socialise, though with distance measures in place, for a few hours in a shared mess-hall. Though they are usually so tired from the constant doses of medication they require, they rarely speak to one another.
Dr Mayweather looks at the time on his tablet, and smiles tiredly at Ivan. “I’m afraid we may need to wrap things up in a moment, Ivan. But this really is a fascinating new development. We may need to run a few tests, but it sounds very promising. It may even be a sign that your sight is returning.”
Ivan dips his head from side to side, in a gesture of uncertainty. “Perhaps. Although I admit, the prospect of even more tests isn’t very enticing.”
Later that day, It is quiet and sombre, as it always is in the shared mess-hall, and the ten ‘residents’ including Ivan are sat six feet apart from one another along a wide, laminated table. Two young orderlies stand by the doors, ready to assist any of the residents should they require it. Dressed in their drab hypoallergenic clothing, they look like the worlds most benevolent prison guards.
The food at the table is a thin, tasteless protein gruel laced with nutritional supplements; carefully calibrated to not upset delicate digestive systems. It smells faintly of cinnamon, and is the colour of apple-sauce. With plastic spoons the residents prod at their meals, sipping occasionally from cups of filtered, sterilised water.
Ivan looks up from his food, and notices the chair at the far end of the table is empty. He whispers to the woman next to him: “Where is Sacha? She wasn’t at breakfast this morning.”
The woman known as Patricia, who was born in the shadow of a dying sun, replies without looking at him. “She’s been taken into an intensive care unit off-site. They think it might be pneumonia.”
Patricia’s hair is dark, and cut short in a way that she does not like. Her mother and father were a Russian engineer and a Korean biochemist, both members of a trip to the outer rings of Saturn. She knows this only secondhand, as she had been a toddler before being taken to the institute.
To the residents of the Jarrow institute, any sudden illness is a death sentence. They require daily medical treatment, through medicine, physiotherapy and even chemotherapy to keep them alive. Their rooms are bare, undecorated and cheerless cells; anything that could spread infection or cultivate is was barred from their existance. Even their excrement is bagged, and incinerated off-site.
Ivan sighs, and spoons another tepid lump of food onto his weary toungue. He does not belong here; none of them do. Most nights he dreams of his childhood among the stars, floating through metal tubes in the soft embrace of anti-gravity, the womb-like walls of the shuttle cushioning his tiny body. he sighs again as he gulps down the last of his meal.
Patricia leans over as far as she can across the table, to address the others seated along it: “We need to get out of here. I’ve been discussing it with one of the researchers, Dr. Gaskill. She thinks that if we can organise a meeting with one of the departments in Newcastle, we may be able to return home.”
Home. Such a foreign concept. They have no home, not really. Their place of origin is not upon any known terra firma, but amongst the stars, and the endless expanse of the void. But still they long for it, undeterred by its cold hostility, reaching out to it as infants to their mother.
In the Newcastle office of Admiral Eze, head of the expeditionary force of Great Britain, sit three figures. There is Dr Gaskill, junior researcher with the Jarrow Institution, and her supervisor Dr Mayweather. in front of them is Admiral George Eze, an imposing man who even seated seems to be a head taller than both of them. His uniform is as immaculate as his office, and he has a reputation for not suffering fools gladly.
On the desk in front of him is an electronic tablet, its screen blinking dimly; a message reads ‘locating signal’ for a number of minutes, until finally the image of two faces, those of a young man and woman, appear on the screen.
“Ah, Ivan and Patricia. Thank you for joining us.” Says Dr Mayweather, nodding at the screen in greeting. Admiral Eze remains implacable, as he looks down at his watch. He will be having stern words with his secretary, who snuck this meeting under his nose right before the he was meant to visit the delegation from Samara. He plays along, for now at least.
“Thank you, Dr. Mayweather. And to you, Dr Gaskill. This meeting would not have taken place without your help.”
Admiral Eze leans forward, adressing the two figures onscreen. “Yes, the good doctor here was irritatingly persistent in tracking me down. For her sake and yours, I hope this meeting is worth my time. Please state clearly what it is you want, and I will tell you by how many degrees it is impossible to give.”
Ivan smiles at this blunt statement from the Admiral, and speaks: “If it is all the same to you, Admiral, I will defer to my friend Patricia. She was the one who conceived of this plan.”
Patricia straightens her posture, though the confines of her wheelchair constrict her movement, and speaks: “I will be frank with you, Admiral. My friends and I at the Jarrow Institute are not suited to this world. It is hostile to our bodies, and to our souls. We belong among the stars, and we wish to return to them.” The Admiral’s poker-face slips almost imperceptibly, and his eyebrow twitches with what could be considered intrigue.
“Though all at the Institute have tried in their way to bring us comfort, this is no way for a human being to exist. therefore, I have, along with my brothers and sisters, devised a plan that I feel would benefit all of us.”
Admiral Ezo looks over at Dr. Mayweather and Dr. Gaskill with the faintest glint of bemused irritation, then back to the screen. Clearing his throat, he replies in his well known tonality of weariness and condescension: “Young lady, you know as well as anyone else the costs of civilian shuttle launches. And even then, only scientific craft are permitted to travel beyond orbit. We are an exploratory science division, not a travel agency.”
Patricia continues to press on with her convictions, unperturbed by the Admiral’s flat refusal: “I am aware of this, Admiral. I have discussed the matter with Dr. Gaskill many times, and we believe that it would only be appropriate that our mission was that of research. Or rather, that of preservation.”
Admiral Ezo feels another twitch of intrigue pierce his stoic countenance at this. He nods, and continues to listen. Perhaps, he thinks, the delegates can wait just a little longer while he concludes this business. Patricia seems to register his interest, and plays her winning hand:
“News travelled to us of the seed banks and the DNA archive your fellow departments maintain in the Arctic. It was a tragic loss, to see them destroyed when the polar caps began to melt. Without them, our survival is a species is, at the very least, doubtful.”
“However, we have a proposition for you: rather than storing the great biological and mineral knowledge you have accumulated here on Earth, you send it off into the cosmos; an ark if you will, navigated by a dedicated team of archivists who are accustomed to life within the void.”
Admiral Ezo takes a moment to compose himself. This is utterly insane, an unethical and ill-devised morass of quandaries and impossibilities, and he is well within his rights as a commander of the fleet and as a scientist to hurl them all out of the building, and to never meet with anyone from the Jarrow Institute again.
But then again, this is perhaps an opportunity too good to pass up.
And so the Angel’s left earth, only a decade after this pivotal meeting with the Admiral.
the ‘Angels’, as some of the doctors at the institute had named them in fond affection, were returning home. They travelled from Jarrow by boat to the isle of Mann, where they boarded the shuttle they had christened ‘Grace Darling’. It was piloted remotely from the ISS, and would follow a long, slow orbit around the solar system, always just out of reach of the Earth but never out of sight.
Aboard the craft there was an EDEN lab, a fertile pocket of green life that supplied oxygen and food to the crew. They played music, to help the flowers grow. Naturally, they played Holst.
The craft was suited entirely to the needs and requirements of its crew, and to them it was a sanctuary of eternal peace and safety. They lived, loved and laughed among the stars, their eager minds nourished by the task of cataloguing the earths mysteries.
An immense archive chamber was fixed to the main body, containing seeds, DNA samples and all the conceivable biological blueprints of creation. And the Angels would protect them, there amongst the stars and turning planets. Celestial guardians, of a library that was the story of life upon the Earth.
