A Hope for the Future

Hello. I wish I had something better to write, a more quirky, funny opening line, but even if I had one, it would feel out of place. Sorry, would perhaps be a better opening line. My name is Randall Haighes and I am your biological father. I am sure that Melina, your mother, will have told you of why your father was never there, but I wish to give here a more first-hand account of the reasons and my own story. The reasons are selfish, as they will always be for a coming father to travel into space for a voyage that he knows will take nearly two decades. I hope that you can forgive me, and that we can, at the very least, be friends when I arrive home on Mother Earth.

Being an astronaut was always my dream growing up, a dream I fulfilled at the age of 25. In the same year I went to the moon and came to know heaven when I met your mother. I won’t bore you with the details of the following five years, but suffice to say that after that time, I was a recognised astronaut and also a loving partner. Our parting was amicable, as much as it could be given the circumstances, but still I wonder what she has told you of me. What she thinks of me now. I hope she knows that I bear her no ill will for the decision she made to find another man. I made a conscious decision to go to space and leave her, and I would never have demanded she stay loyal to a man that no one would call loyal to her. But I digress.

Due to my experience and other factors I was suggested for and offered the first interplanetary flight to Pluto, the most remote of all the planets in our solar system. Yes, I know it seems to switch back and forth between attaining that vaunted status and failing to meet it every year, but it was a planet when I first looked through a cheap telescope up at the stars and I will always regard it as so. Even though my love for your mother initially caused me to doubt whether I should accept the mission, I underwent the training and preparation, putting the decision off for another day. It was halfway through this month-long process that your mother revealed to me that she was pregnant. I was overwhelmed with joy. I still am, writing this to you, knowing that you mostly likely will not even hear of this letter’s existence until you are already an adult.

I hope you will forgive if I find it difficult to stay on track, but I do not wish to edit this beyond the most basic of grammatical mistakes and problems of clarity, hoping that some of who I am will shine through in this rambling mess. Even as thoughts of fatherhood grew in my mind, my desire to return to space and to reach further than mankind ever had was undiminished. I would be lying if I refused that wish, and I knew that I was unlikely to ever be granted that opportunity again. I could write of the many nights of soul-searching I did, of the doubts that pushed on me every day and night. But in the end, it would simply be an excuse. At the end of the day, I made a choice.

I believe your mother was 2 months pregnant when I and the rest of the crew were ferried into space to the Pluto-mission craft that had been constructed in orbit. By the time you read this, the full facts of the mission, perhaps lacking the ending, will undoubtedly be public knowledge, but still I wish to give some details to communicate the enormity of the task. As said, Pluto is the farthest planet in our solar system, ranging from 4.3 to 7.5 billion kilometres of distance between it and Earth. This voyage, with the technology that at the time of your reading will be 20 years out of date, was estimated to take 10 years of travel either direction, with a month or so of work on the surface of that distant planet. Already, as I am writing this, we have completed that month of work and will be returning to our spacecraft in orbit tomorrow. To list all our discoveries here would be a ponderous task and no doubt boring to read before they are analysed in greater detail. I will attach some photographs, but I have no doubt that you will be able to access the full report from the space agency if you should wish. But still I will venture to describe a few of our discoveries.

Early in our time on the surface we discovered entrances to massive cave networks that, judging both on our explorations and the data returned by our probes, extend far beneath the surface and hundreds of hundreds of miles around, formed most probably by curious geological action. Being so remote from the Sun, Pluto is an incredibly cold place and only great advances in insulation technology allowed our survival outside of exploration crafts. These extreme negative temperatures also had very interesting effects on the material of the planetoid and indeed the frozen substances that we discovered. They were not water, such as the ice is on Earth, but instead a plethora of gases turned solid by the extreme cold. Some instances we found could rival even the great ice-sculptures on Earth, both natural and man-made.

There I go rambling again. You can see this in far greater detail in the material the space agency will receive before you receive this letter, but what I hope to communicate is that, as selfish as it sounds, I have found this mission to be worth it. I do not regret my decision that decade ago, and I hope that you can forgive me for that. I hope your mother can, too, but you will be your own woman by the time we meet in person. To think that, while I am writing this, you will be nearing your 10^th birthday and by the time the Magellan approaches the orbit of Earth, you will be nearly 20.

I want to talk to you. After I’ve returned and the press calms down a little bit and when you’re ready. I want to hear how your life has been. Was school difficult? Was it easy? What do you like to do, and what do you want to do with your life? How many friends do you have? Have you met a special someone yet? 20 years is a lot of time to catch and I don’t expect us to resolve it all in one afternoon.

I hope you can forgive your selfish father for leaving you and your mother behind. I will understand if you wish to distance yourself from me, like your mother undoubtedly will. But my dearest wish is to meet you, my own daughter.

Looking forwards 10 years in time to meeting you,

Randall Haighes, your father.