Page 2 of Below Zero

For the record, it’s a horrifying pickup line. Do not recommend. Use sparingly. Use not at all, especially if—like me—the person you’re trying to pick up has brown eyes and is fully aware of it. But what was an undeniable low point in the history of flirting ended up serving, if you’ll forgive a very self-indulgent metaphor, as a meteorite of sorts: it crashed into my life and changed its trajectory.

In the following years, I would find out that all of my colleagues at NASA have their own origin story. Their very own space rock that altered the course of their existence and pushed them to become engineers, physicists, biologists, astronauts. It’s usually an elementary school trip to the Kennedy Space Center. A Carl Sagan book under the Christmas tree. A particularly inspiring science teacher at summer camp. My encounter with Brian McDonald falls under that umbrella. It just happens to involve a guy who (allegedly) went on to moderate incel message boards on Reddit, which makes it just a tad lamer.

People obsessed with space are split into two distinct camps. The ones who want to go to space and crave the zero gravity, the space suits, drinking their own recycled urine. And there’re people like me: what we want—oftentimes what we’ve wanted since our frontal lobes were still undeveloped enough to have us thinking that toe shoes are a good fashion statement—is to know about space. At the beginning it’s simple stuff: What’s it made of? Where does it end? Why do the stars not fall and crash onto our heads? Then, once you’ve read enough, the big topics come in: Dark matter. Multiverse. Black holes. That’s when you realize how little we understand about this giant thing we’re part of. When you start thinking about whether you can help produce some new knowledge.

And that’s how you end up at NASA.

So, back to Brian McDonald. I didn’t go to homecoming with him. (I didn’t go to homecoming at all, because it wasn’t really my scene, and even if it had been, I was grounded for failing an English midterm, and even if I hadn’t been, fuck Brian McDonald and his poorly researched pickup lines.) However, something about the whole thing stuck with me. Why would a sunset be blue? And on a red planet, no less? It seemed like something worth knowing. So I spent the night in my room, googling dust particles in the Martian atmosphere. By the end of the week, I’d signed up for a library card and devoured three books. By the end of the month, I was studying calculus to understand concepts like thrust over time and harmonic series. By the end of the year, I had a goal. Hazy, confused, not yet fully defined, but a goal nonetheless.

For the first time in my life.

I’ll spare you most of the grueling details, but I spent the rest of high school busting ass to make up for the ass I hadn’t busted for the previous decade. Just picture an ’80s training montage, but instead of running in the snow and doing pull-ups with a repurposed broomstick, I was hard at work on books and YouTube lectures. And it was hard work: wanting to understand concepts like H-R diagrams or synodic periods or syzygy did not make them any easier to grasp. Before, I’d never really tried. But at the tender age of sixteen, I was confronted with the unbearable turmoil that comes with trying your best and realizing that sometimes it simply isn’t enough. As much as it pains me to say it, I don’t have an IQ of 130. To really understand the books I wanted to read, I had to review the same concepts over, and over, and fucking over again. Initially I coasted on the high of finding out! new! things!, but after a while my motivation began to wane, and I started to wonder what I was even doing. I was studying a bunch of really basic science stuff, to be able to graduate to more advanced science stuff, so that one day I’d actually know all the science stuff about Mars and... and what then? Go on Jeopardy! and pick Space for 500? Didn’t really seem worth it.

Then August of 2012 happened.

When the Curiosity rover approached the Martian atmosphere, I stayed up until one a.m. I chugged down two bottles of Diet Coke, ate peanuts for good luck, and when the landing maneuver began, I bit into my lip until it bled. The moment it safely touched the ground I screamed, I laughed, I cried, and then got grounded for a week for waking up the entire household the night before my brother left for his Peace Corps trip, but I didn’t care.

In the following months I devoured every little piece of news NASA issued on Curiosity’s mission, and as I wondered about who was behind the images of the Gale Crater, the interpretation of the raw data, the reports on the molecular composition of the Aeolis Palus, my hazy, undefinable goal began to solidify.

NASA.

NASA was the place to be.

The summer between junior and senior years, I found a ranking of the hundred best engineering programs in the U.S. and decided to apply to the top twenty. “You should probably extend your reach. Add a few safety schools,” my guidance counselor told me. “I mean, your SATs are really good and your GPA has improved a lot, but you have a bunch of”—long pause for throat clearing—“academic red flags on your permanent record.”

I thought about it for a minute. Who would have figured that being a little shit for the first one and a half decades of my life would bring lasting consequences? Not me. “Okay. Fine. Let’s do the top thirty-five.”

As it turns out, I didn’t need to. I got accepted to a whopping (drumroll, please)... one top-twenty school. A real winner, huh? I don’t know if they misfiled my application, misplaced half of my transcripts, or had a brain fart in which the entire admissions office temporarily forgot what a promising student is supposed to look like. I put down my deposit and approximately forty-five seconds after getting my letter told Georgia Tech that I’d be attending.

No backsies.

So I moved to Atlanta, and I gave it my all. I chose the majors and the minors I knew NASA would want to see on a CV. I got the federal internships. I studied hard enough to ace the tests, did the fieldwork, applied to grad school, wrote the thesis. When I look back at the last ten years, school and work and schoolwork are pretty much all that stand out—with the notable exception of meeting Sadie and Mara, and of begrudgingly watching them carve spots for themselves in my heart. God, they take up so much room.

“It’s like space is your whole personality,” the girl I casually hooked up with during most of my sophomore year of undergrad told me. It was after I explained that no, thank you, I wasn’t interested in going out for coffee to meet her friends because of a lecture on Kalpana Chawla I was planning to attend. “Do you have any other interests?” she asked. I threw her a quick “Nope,” waved good-bye, and wasn’t too surprised when, the following week, she didn’t reply to my offer to meet up. After all, I clearly couldn’t give her what she wanted.

“Is this really enough for you? Just having sex with me when you feel like it and ignoring me the rest of the time?” the guy I slept with during the last semester of my Ph.D. asked. “You just seem... I don’t know. Extremely emotionally unavailable.” I think maybe he was right, because it’s barely been a year and I can’t quite recall his face.

Exactly a decade after Brian McDonald miscolored my eyes, I applied for a NASA position. I got an interview, then a job offer, and now I’m here. But unlike the other new hires, I don’t feel like Mars and I were always meant to be. There was no guarantee, no invisible string of destiny tethering me to this job, and I’m positive that I made my way here through sheer brute force, but does it matter?

Nope. Not even a little bit.

So I turn to look at Alexis. This time, her NASA necklace, her T-shirt, her tattoo—they pull a sincere smile out of me. It’s been a long journey here. The destination was never a sure thing, but I have arrived, and I’m uncharacteristically, sincerely, satisfyingly happy. “Feels like home,” I say, and the enthusiastic way she nods reverberates deep down inside my chest.

At one point in history, every single member of the Mars Exploration Program had their first day at NASA, too. They stood in the very spot where I’m standing right now. Gave their banking information for direct deposit, had an unflattering picture taken for their badges, shook hands with the HR reps. Complained about Houston’s weather, bought terrible coffee from the cafeteria, rolled their eyes at visitors doing touristy things, let the Saturn V rocket take their breath away. Every single member of the Mars Exploration Program did this, just like I will.

I step into the conference room where some fancy NASA big shot is scheduled to talk to us, take in the window view of the Johnson Space Center and the remnants of objects that were once launched across the stars, and feel like every single inch of this place is thrilling, fascinating, electrifying, intoxicating.

Perfect.

Then I turn around. And, of course, find the very last person I wanted to see.

Chapter 2

Caltech Campus, Pasadena, California

Five years, six months ago

I’m finishing my initial semester of grad school when I first meet Ian Floyd, and it’s Helena Harding’s fault.

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