Homeworld Syndrome

She had read about it in piles of complimentary back seat magazines before. It was never described as a bad thing though. At the end of the day, Trans-Universal was trying to sell tickets. It was no surprise that their on-board literature would try to spin Homeworld Syndrome as this beautiful transcendent experience well worth the hefty price of admission. Brady had not really expected anything from it, she had heard it was not nearly as revelatory for someone born in a fringe colony. But seeing it now, earth, the once great ancestral centre of the ever-expanding human civilisation. It was missing a certain pallor, a certain gargantuan presence as it was depicted in her high school textbooks. Perhaps the full effect of Homeworld Syndrome was diluted when you could only see it from an economy end window while pressed into the furthest back seat of an interplanetary passenger freighter.

Brady was a geologist, a common but valuable specialisation in most colonies. Her contracts dragged her from planet to planet every other day. So the experience of hanging above a swirling celestial ball in low orbit was not a fantastical new experience for her. But these feelings, these new tinges, some primal hereditary confusion she associated with this glassy blue pearl must have had some significance. 

Every other planet she had seen had been some barren rock in deep space. A lifeless, flash frozen celestial cadaver rich in some specific mineral that someone up the chain could make a fortune off of it. Some of these planets were imposing just because of their sheer size, others for their violent natural weather patterns which turned their external facade into brilliant swirls of toxic violence. Earth was none of these. It did not tower under her feet as some colossus of nature. It was empty, a lifeless glass shell long stripped of its once fantastical appeal. 

Brady had been past Mars once, the new epicentre of human expansion. It had only been in passing though, a short transit between stations that allowed her to soak in a full view of the planet before they loaded off into another station. It was incredible, even from space you could see the fiery glisten of human ingenuity. The technological centre of the entire universe. A living example of how humanity can turn a dead wasteland into a bustling living metropolis. If anything, Mars had captured the tabloid imagining of Homeworld Syndrome. When she was above Mars, she felt proud, eternally grateful, a witness to a gilded age in history. 

But the true face of Homeworld Syndrome was nothing like that. Earth was dead. An empty blue wasteland of toxic air and dead cities. From her porthole view in space, she saw a fragile silky atmosphere, a thread thin shell between the cold expanse of space, and the equally cold ruin of humanities former home. Homeworld Syndrome was a physical lurch, a knot in the base of the spine, a list of unnerving physical symptoms all brought about by the instinct to reflect on the entire legacy of human existence. 

Brady twisted in her seat. She needed to stretch out her body, but the furthest she could get could only be achieved by notching her knees under the seat in front of her. The cabin had been dimmed. It didn’t matter where you came from, if you were flying economy on a Trans-Universal spacecraft you had no choice but to accept whatever light schedule they decided was best for the flight. As a result, Brady was not the only one who was wide awake. It was by pure chance that to get to the aisle and de-cramp she needed to carefully navigate the sliver of leg space between four heavy sleepers.

It was a delicate art, but once she lifted herself above the row of seats, she could carefully arch her legs to a decent foothold on each of the bare steel armrests. It had been a long and idle flight, as a result every step on cold metal was a sharp spike into her sensitive feet. But her delicate dance paid off once she was able to comfortably lower herself into the aisle. Any minor discomfort was worth a few minutes away from that window. 

Brady made her way to the island of vacant green light by the toilet cubicle. With every step her joints cracked with fresh action. It was exhilarating in a sense to finally get her eyes off the curious loom of the blue planet. But it did not take long for its image to sink back into her thoughts. As soon as she stepped in, she shut herself into the empty cubicle. It was tight, and it reeked of disinfectant, but at least it was private.

She looked at her paled face in the mirror. She had the dried out and defeated look of a long flight in her glazed eyes. Her tied back hazel hair drifted awkwardly in frayed tufts, a minor effect of artificial gravity. She ran her fingers along the concrete grey scar on her cheek. A fresh reminder from a rig explosion on her last mining site contract. She had a lot of them, a scar for every planet. She lifted her cotton over-shirt and pressed her waist up against the plastic sink. Her biggest scar, a slivered smile across the side of her stomach.

She had been to a lot of different planets. Each one as hostile and barren as the last, each would leave its own brutal mark on her body that would quietly disperse over the passage of time. But the image of the phantasmal planet earth would not leave her mind. Something about it drifting, eerie and lifeless in the void. It is one thing to hang in the wake of a lifeless, hostile rock, it’s another for that hostile rock to have a real history.

Brady stepped back out into the cabin just as they began to raise the lights. They had timed the revival of the cabin to match the revelation of the sun as it peaked into view above the earth. Brady returned to her row to find most of the more adjusted passengers stirring under their complimentary blankets. She navigated to her seat once again balancing over the flitting eyes of the other irritably awoken travellers. Then, once she was uncomfortably back in her seat, Brady drew the curtain.

But she was only capable of closing one window. Everyone else drew theirs open, expecting to be enamoured by the stellar beauty of the earth. Brady fixed her attention on a sharp cut corporate man two rows in front of her. As he stirred, he too brushed open his window to reveal the searing image of the dead planet. Upon seeing it, he twisted unpleasantly in his seat. He reeled back and very soon after, shut his curtain again.

It was at that moment that Brady realised the true nature of Homeworld Syndrome. As if to test her theory, she pushed back her curtain and gazed back down at the painful blue landscape once more. Mars had been beautiful, because it reminded her of everything that had been achieved in her time. A grandiose monolith that would continue to show the generations how much they had achieved as a species. But while Mars existed, Earth would too. A festering scar, A flaking blue scab etched into the annals of time. A constant reminder to everyone who looked upon it that this was where we failed. In all our hubris, in all our might, we destroyed the only true natural beauty within our cosmic reach. And now it sits empty, to be slowly carved up of its last scrapes of value and left to disintegrate into the abyss.