The agency vowed not to commit the same error choosing the mission’s participants as when choosing the settlers for the first experimental human colony on Mars almost 100 years ago. Due to technical limitations of the time, a small group of settlers was sent with no way to go back to Earth. Their enthusiasm soon turned to gloom when the monotony of the environment has become the norm. You visit one desert plateau on Mars and you have seen them all. Of the twelve settlers, three took their life within the first two years. Seamingly sound physically and emotionally, the settlers have found the boredom unbearable. Much of the efforts of the Space Agency were in keeping the settlers psychologically fit to motivate them to wake up in the morning. Their fight for survival – and it wasn’t easy as the machinery sent with the first colonists was grossly under designed for the harsh reality of Martian dust, breaking down all the time continuously putting the settlers in grave danger – quickly turned into endless chore. On Earth one fights while a ship is sinking at sea because the harshness of the experience is singular – when fighting for one’s life on a daily basis, the flame needed to keep on living quickly exhausts itself.

The politics, back-stabbings, economics influencing some choices, personal ups and downs – the process of crew selection was filled with uncomfortable details that need not be retold. After a lengthy process it was decided who should go and what scientific and practical qualities were needed to accomplish the journey. The crew was carefully chosen based on their skills but also their relative indifference to today’s world – their family connections were loose.

They needed someone to lead the team – the Captain was also their pilot (though in an emergency both the Engineer and the Poet could steer the ship proficiently well). Like most captains, he was an no-nonsense man who joked just enough to keep everyone devoted to the goal but when needed could demand his way with a deep baritone voice. His face constantly drifted between cheerful openness and intensely strict concentration. It’s hard to know why he volunteered. He’s been a spaceship pilot much of his adult life. He’s seen with his own eyes Mars, Moon, Io and has flown all the way to Saturn. He probably saw the mission as an opportunity to advance his career in some way as if up to the very end not fully aware the repercussion of severing his contacts with anyone who could push his career forward. He was intelligent, if a bit too strict man, so the mindless opportunism didn’t fully explain his actions. The mission needed a captain and maybe he dreamed himself to be like one of the old sailors swimming into the unknown in their wooden ship while crossing the Ocean? Maybe under the facade of professionalism he too searched for the unknown.

Their Doctor was a cold woman who guarded her feelings. She followed the procedures strictly and never cracked any jokes. If one kept on pressing her with their own avalanche of humor, sometimes you would see the cracks in the cold facade. She was smart and despite her cold demeanor could possibly be attractive. Some wondered if she didn’t sign up for the journey only so that she could escape from need to form relationships with people.

The Engineer was also a sensor technician. He had a teenage daughter with his ex-wife. She didn’t want him to go but she also understood that she can’t convince him otherwise. He was giving up watching his daughter grew up, get married, have children of her own, get old… He was going to outlive his child waking up many years after her death. He once said that after his child was born he started thinking of immortality. In a flash he realised that one day his child will naturally die. He became angry with God as if only then the natural progression of life became apparent – as if before the childbirth, death didn’t matter. He said that watching his daughter’s birth destroyed his belief in God – he looked at this tiny newborn creature in his arms, he couldn’t accept that there is a force in the universe that would want it to die. The Poet suspect he still believed in a spiritual entity, maybe even more than before – but instead of loving God – hated Him.

The Astronavigator was constantly afraid that the celestial structures could shift momentarily destroying his certainty in the navigation charts – thus in the unchanging reality of the world. His profession – mapping out the charts of the stars – will not be affected by the time the flight will be over and this was probably the main reason for volunteering. He wanted to make sure that what is true today will be so hundreds of years later.

The Archaeologist, has authored a few obscure books about the Punt civilization. The land of Punt is one of most obscure ancient civilizations on Earth, because many people have speculated about its location, but nobody has ever agreed where they lived. Thus, it is a great mystery to this day. The ancient Egyptians described it, however, they did not indicate exactly where Punt was. To study any possible artifacts of the Others, they’ve sent a man who wrote extensively based on well research speculations. The Poet wondered if the dissatisfaction of committing life to intangible wasn’t a factor in the Archeologist’ decision. This distant planet they were heading to existed and maybe that was enough for him to sever the ties to the past he loved so much. Through his extensive knowledge of the unorthodox past, he was a vital link in hopes to understand the Others.

The Biochemist never got along with the Archeologist who studying the ancient past was more conservative in his ways of thinking than he probably admitted to himself. The Biochemist was dusexual and didn’t fit the Archaeologist’s clearly defined gender roles where women stay home tending the fire and raising children while men go out into the world hunting the pray for diner. The Biologist was the only other person other than the Engineer that was married (though to a man and a woman). The Poet kept imagining that his/her departure would bring the husband and wife closer together, or maybe it was him/her that held them together and years later they’ll find out that the relationships wasn’t meant to survive without that glue? He/she was an enigma. Incredibly smart in some areas – sometimes revealing profound ignorance in others. Him/her and the Archeologist, were some of the most vital assets in understanding the Others dealing with their possible body.

The Geologist’s job was to study the nonliving environment. She was good at what she did – one of the most brilliant scientist in her discipline and also at some point happily married with a family. At first, she was one of the most important mission’s advisers. Then one day her husband and their two kids were wiped out by a suicide bomber representing some cult that didn’t believe that the mission should take place as it upset their understanding of reality – there was only one God – their God and this was enough to kill. The bomb was meant for the Geologist but an unfortunate series of events made her survive while the family perished. As a way of dealing the the horror of her loss she’s asked to be involved in the mission beyond the adversarial role – she wanted to join the mission replacing our previous geologist. The mission planners were against it because of her possible mental fragility but coincidental health problems with previous geologist made her a good candidate strongly supported by the scientific community.  

The Psychologist was always friendly and open for conversation but there was also something that made everyone reserved keeping their deepest thoughts and feelings away from him. He was always present on the sides, watching. Of course that was his job – to listen and watch but it also made everyone uncomfortable. They were surrounded by cameras and microphones and their bodies were connected constantly to all sort of sensors. In a way they had no right to privacy that’s why they valued the psychological privacy – the only place where they could be by themselves was within the mind. What they thought and felt was beyond physicality of the sensors. The Psychologist was the only person in direct proximity that could get an entry into that forbidden place.

Then there was the Poet – a jack of all trades – the Universal. He was an artist and as such had a broad understanding of various disciplines – even if only ultimately on superficial level. When people’s intellectual specialty leads them too deep into some blind alley, he was suppose to pull them back by presenting a wider perspective overlooked by their particular specialty. The fact that he was to provide a broader perspective didn’t sit well with the Captain who saw it as a way of entrenching on his position. He could be everyone’s assistant and that created some contempt in their eyes for his superficial understanding of their profession. On the other hand, as brilliant as those people were, it pained him to see them so often stuck in some inconsequential considerations only because they related to their particular discipline too deeply.

Those nine individuals were ready to commit their lives for humanity and to satisfy the selfish curiosity about what it meant to be the first facing the Other.