To Be Taught, If Fortunate

by Becky Chambers

It’s difficult to assign value to discovery when you haven’t sorted out the parameters of reality yet.

When the world you know is out of reach, nothing is more welcome than a measurable reminder that it still exists.

It’s understandable why humans stopped living in space in the 2020s. How can you think of the stars when the seas are spilling over? How can you spare thought for alien ecosystems when your cities are too hot to inhabit? How can you trade fuel and metal and ideas when the lines on every map are in flux? How can anyone be expected to care about the questions of worlds above when the questions of the world you’re stuck on – those most vital criteria of home and health and safety – remain unanswered?

I imagine many despaired at this reality, and perhaps lost heart. But our history remembers those that did the opposite. People of science, after all, are stubborn beyond the point of sense.

Don’t believe the lie of individual trees, each a monument to its own self-made success. A forest is an interdependent community. Resources are shared, and life in isolation is a death sentence.