An Astronaut's Life by Sonja Dechian Read Free Book Online

the
night. On the ride here, Mendel told him that in just a matter of hours they might
not remember any of this.
    Sean makes his way along the side of the house. The gate is locked, which is new,
but he climbs it without too much trouble, probably because of the adrenalin. He
pictures a string of tiny bots spilling into the basement of the Gratton Building.
In reality, they are too small to see. They are as tiny as a virus. They are as single-minded.
    ‘François?’ he calls, standing outside his friend’s window. He says it louder.
    There’s no reply, but a shifting light through the curtains suggests François might
still be awake. Sean raps his knuckles against the window and after a startled clatter
from inside, it slides open.
    ‘What the fuck?’ François can’t tell who is there because of the darkness, but he
makes his voice gruff, just in case.
    ‘It’s me,’ Sean says, coming closer to show himself in the light. ‘Hi.’
    ‘Shit!’ François fumbles to free the flyscreen from the window. ‘Are you okay?’
    ‘Yes, sure,’ Sean says, to dispel the empathy in his friend’s face. ‘I’m fine. I
just wanted to see you. I did something.’
    ‘Your parents will freak.’
    ‘They won’t wake up.’
    Sean climbs inside and drops onto the carpet. François extends a hand to steady him.
    ‘I sneak out every week,’ Sean says. The pressure and comfort of François’ hand makes
him confessional. ‘My parents take pills so they can sleep, they don’t hear a thing.
I climb out the window.’
    It’s too dark to see his expression. François squeezes Sean’s arm.
    ‘You’ve got to come with me,’ Sean says.
    ‘Okay—my shoes.’
    ‘I’ll meet you out front.’
    As he waits, Sean pictures his sleeping parents. He doesn’t mind that they take medicine
to sleep. He just hates the thought of them waking, that moment where it all floods
back each morning.
    François looks apprehensive as he emerges from the side gate and Sean is afraid that
if he does not hurry and explain, his friend will turn him away.
    ‘You said you did something,’ François says.
    ‘Have you got your phone?’
    ‘Yes. What is it?’
    ‘Let’s go.’ Sean steps away, towards the street.
    ‘Tell me.’
    ‘The punishment. It’s happening.’
    Sean sets off down the driveway and François follows. For some reason François doesn’t
seem to question what Sean has said. When Sean reaches the street he looks back at
his friend and the expression on his face is so concerned, so trusting, that Sean
feels his first wave of doubt.
    ‘Come on,’ he says, because he also feels an urgent need to escape.
    He starts to run, and François runs alongside him, through the circles of road lit
by streetlamps and the darkness in between. The sounds of their breathing and their
footfalls form a heavy rhythm. Sean is regretful and frightened and excited; he is
bursting with all of these things and he is not thinking about the picture, until
he realises that this is the first time in forever he has not thought about it. François
passes him and Sean shouts ‘Hey!’ and his thoughts are overtaken by his proximity
to François. He wants to hug François again. He wants to shout. Everything is going
to change now—could that be true?
    The university’s horticultural gardens contain over two hundred plant species, if
you include the grasslands, but at night very few of them can be identified. You
would only care what they were if you were a particularly committed botanist because
in the darkness they are all home to spiders.
    In the garden’s back corner, behind the Gratton Building, there’s a nameplate attached
to a rock explaining how the unassuming shrub behind it is in fact the critically
endangered Lomatia tasmanica , a clone that reproduces itself identically by dropping
branches that then take root.
    There’s a window jammed open right behind it. It’s here that a series of microscopic
machines stream out into the world. Some