“It’s boiling,” I say, as we enter the Rainforest Biome. I look up at the glass dome above us and can’t help thinking about the Subtropical Swimming Paradise at Center Parcs. I feel a sting in my gut. We shouldn’t have come here. We should have gone for a glass of wine or ten.
“This is the largest indoor rainforest in the world,” Anouk says.
I look around and try to practise mindfulness. Bananas, shamanic wall paintings, African totems . . . I don’t know why I feel so nervous. “There’s something I want to tell you, Anouk,” I begin.
“There’s something I want to tell you too,” she says. “Can I go first?”
I nod.
“That time you babysat Nike—”
“You know I’d happily do it again. But you said you didn’t want—”
“I didn’t go to yoga that night.”
“Oh?”
“I went night surfing.”
“Night surfing?”
“Riding the waves. In the pitch black.”
As we start weaving in and out of tropical plants, I say: “To be honest, Anouk, it sounds dangerous.”
Anouk’s eyes are shining. “It is dangerous. Unless you know what you’re doing.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Not a clue.”
“That’s crazy.”
We approach an area called “Tropical Islands,” and Anouk stops by a bush marked “Croton.” She twists one of the red buttons on her vest top. Her fingernail has been bitten painfully short. “I know your secret, Solvig.”
I stop breathing. Has Evie somehow been in touch with her?
“It’s a death sentence.”
A family with two young children passes us. Anouk smiles at the parents, then scowls at me. “I’m talking about you flying off into outer space, Solvig. I take it that’s what you were about to confess to me?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s right.”
“What are you thinking? What does James make of all this?”
More people are coming our way, so we keep walking towards a zone marked “Southeast Asia.”
“How did you find out?” I ask quietly. “I haven’t told anyone. Not even James.”
“There are links to this thing all over the internet. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? And James? Christ’s sake. Your photograph is online. And you don’t look happy in it, by the way. You look like you hate yourself. You’ve got two hundred upvotes.”
“Two hundred?”
“Yes. People are clicking a thumbs-up icon under your photograph, voting for you to die. It’s ridiculous.”
My cheeks are blazing. “I’ve got two hundred upvotes,” I echo pathetically.
I wonder how many upvotes Evie has. I’ve been too embarrassed to risk seeing my own face on the Mars Project website, so I haven’t looked. It’s mortifying but thrilling to think that it’s been there all this time.
Anouk stops again. “You think this is a joke? You find a one-way ticket to Mars funny? God, Solvig, I know we’ve grown apart lately, but this is madness. Where’s your head at?”
“This means a lot to me. I know how it sounds. But it’s a dream. Something I have to do.”
Anouk laughs. “You have to die in space? What a superb dream.”
“I probably won’t die in space.” I swallow. “I’ll die on Mars.” I look at a sign announcing that we’re outside a replica of a Malaysian house known as a kampung. It’s built from wood and straw, with a vegetable garden around it. “I want to build a home there.”
“Look around you, Solvig,” says Anouk. “Look at this place. Imagine living in the Amazon. And then multiply it by infinity. That’s how difficult life would be on another planet. Why are you smiling?”
“Because I find this place inspiring.”
“You want to build a home on Mars?” asks Anouk. “You won’t have time for that. It’s a suicide mission. I’ll email you a list of ways you can die out there if you like. I read an article that sums it up perfectly. ‘10 Reasons Not to Apply for the Mars Project.’” She pauses. “You know they put your essay online, too? That thing you wrote to enter the competition? ‘I want to expand man’s horizons! Pain is part of the process!’ Well, it’s a good job you enjoy pain, girl, because it’s going to be excruciating.”
There’s an agave plant up ahead. “Agave americana” it says on the sign, and beneath that: Century plant. There’s one of these in the botanical garden in Falmouth. James pointed it out to me. He told me that each plant takes years to build up the courage to flower. James might have said “food reserves,” but I prefer “courage.” When it’s finally ready for its reproductive act, the plant shoots up a long stalk, much taller than the original plant, taller than a man. At the top of the stalk, it grows blossoms: daring gold explosions in the sky. Shortly afterwards, it dies.
“James is going to find out,” Anouk says.
I swear there’s a snake coiling around my ankles. I jerk away from it, reaching out for a palm tree.
“Solvig, why are you doing that? You’re acting weird. Stop it.”
Anouk’s voice sounds distant, as if she’s speaking through a long tube. There are flecks of light, and then there’s nothing.
27
10 Reasons Not to Apply for the Mars Project
1. There’s not enough money in the world . . .
The team behind the Mars Project wants to raise $10 billion to put people on Mars for the rest of their lives. NASA has spent over $150 billion keeping humans alive at the International Space Station for just twenty years. Bear in mind the ISS is 250 miles away. Between Earth and Mars there are 140 million miles.
2. What spacecraft?
The transit vehicle that will take the astronauts to Mars is a figment of the Mars Project’s imagination. It’s all very well talking hypothetically about this astonishing craft, but if it doesn’t exist yet, how does the Mars Project know that building it is possible? Then how does it know, without a series of highly expensive test flights, whether it would work? And how does it operate a safe landing? Two-thirds of the forty-four missions to Mars have failed. There’s a
