DIATHESIS: DESCENT 1
THE END IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
Maria Rodrigues’ parents were not who they seemed, and so the girl is raised apart from them, hiding without understanding. As she grows into adulthood and becomes enthralled by environmental activism, she meets a man whose genius is tempered by his questionable ethics, coming to learn that the lines between what is right and what is necessary are so easily blurred.
Philosophy, ethics and science are at odds as a disparate cast of soldiers, technicians and explorers clash in the maelstrom surrounding the Ismud project – Earth’s first crewed interstellar probe. Some will seek validation for past wrongs; others revenge for festering pain; some merely a meaning to their existence; while others will stop at nothing to see their genius brought to life.
These lives are mapped with sympathetic immersion, narrating a multivalent trajectory that will see a future cut short as the Ismud launch looms...
Once again, Soledad takes us on a journey to last a lifetime
Taikonaut Li Qiao draws us into a story to define an age...
The outer door opens, my suit stiffens as the airlock empties. I reach for the safety line, stop – I don’t need it, not this time. I face spinwards, push out into the blackness. Antennae and cabling blur beneath me, disappear, and with them the station. I am complete in myself, my own satellite in orbit, no longer Li Qiao of the Lingbao Tianzun.
Earth is void, blacker than space. The Philippines and Japan should burn bright, China’s patchwork of rods and smudges anchors me home, but not now, not ever. Only stars around me and darkness below tell me Earth is there.
Sunrise explodes. No gentle glow on the horizon, no warm, diffuse light heralds dawn; it’s off-on, night to day in a harsh, violent instant. Earth burns burnished gunmetal, a featureless, airless, barren world – no life, no hope, no future.
There’s no one to remember, envy, or respect me, nobody to understand what I achieved, no chance to fulfil my potential and realise the promise within. Thirty-four years is not enough: I’m cheated out of my life, time I deserve, the future owed to me.
‘What use more years when you wasted those you had?’ Fùqin asks.
‘Why me, why now?’
‘As always, this is your doing, your failure.’
