Chapter 9: O-days
"So," said Hannah, "what other questions do you have for me?"
Ellie appreciated the invite; she needed a distraction from fixating on the possibility of a blood draw. Plus, she'd felt somewhat that she needed to dig to get information out of Hannah thus far. She considered where to start, and then decided:
"Why did you say I wouldn't want to sleep in my own bed?"
"Because once people see Eden, they're usually not in a hurry to leave."
"Why is that?"
"Well..." said Hannah, "besides the fact that it doesn't suck... Generally speaking, the people we recruit don't have lives that they're sad to leave behind."
This stung. "I don't hate my life."
"I didn't say 'hate'," said Hannah. "But I found out some key facts at the bar. Namely:" Hannah extended four fingers and began counting off on them. "You find your job to be oppressive... You aren't romantically attached... You're uprooted... And you're alienated from your family by choice."
Each of these points made Ellie flinch. She found it degrading to be reduced to something akin to checkboxes on a form, and so accurately. "So that's all you needed to know about me? That shit hasn't been going well recently, so I'm ripe for plucking?"
"Ellie, nothing I just described about you is embarrassing. They're the same reasons I joined."
The plane hit a pocket of turbulence, which was handy; Ellie could disguise her uncomfortable fidgeting as bracing herself.
"In a way, we're all victims of... you know... that." She gestured out the window, at the concrete and asphalt sprawl thousands of feet below; at the vast sea of suburbia, criss-crossed by freeway and bordered by desert. "We designed a world for ourselves that blocks us from any kind of fulfillment. It sucks."
"That's an opinion," said Ellie, "but I think it's a little... arrogant, honestly... to just say 'everyone's miserable, but WE have it figured out.'"
"No," said Hannah, "we probably don't have it figured out. But we know what hasn't worked. We have an opportunity to nix what's broken and take a stab at it from a new angle. And it's not like there's anything to lose." She gestured out the window again. "Despite our best efforts, humanity won't be the masters of our own destruction. We spent all this time doing our best to sabotage ourselves and now we're just losing to a shitty dice roll." She finished with a mirthless chuckle.
Ellie nodded along, but something just truly registered for the first time: Damn, she really believes the world will end. And Hannah's blasé presentation of the whole idea squared with the fact, Ellie supposed, that she'd had ten years to acclimate to her doom.
"That's fair," said Ellie. "But we kinda tried the whole 'free love' thing in the sixties, didn't we?"
"No, we tried hedonism in the sixties," said Hannah. "That was just narcissistic pleasure-seeking. The counterculture movement was openly sexual, and that's fine; but where they lost sight was their other ideal: 'What I Want Right Now Is The Most Important Thing.' They got as far as rejecting religious dogma, but otherwise held on to the other toxic impulses society had trained into them."
"What do you mean?"
Hannah smiled. She did a cave man voice. "Me feel good now. Have stuff that is mine. Fuck you."
Ellie laughed. "Okay, so how is the Eden Project different?"
"The burden of responsibility," said Hannah. "We're working towards a mandate. Our kids have to be better than us. Collectively. They have to inherit values of love and respect, inside and out. No tribalism. No bigotry. No possessiveness. No elitism. Just an inherited feeling of responsibility toward the welfare of everybody. To love everyone the way you might love...I don't know..." She fumbled for a moment. "Kathleen, might be a good example. Or yourself, most importantly."
Ellie thought, perhaps, what Hannah almost said was, "me."
The plane had climbed enough so that the desert below had blurred into a vague brown sheet. Barren mountains slid past, penetrating the sandy haze.
"That's all we can try to achieve before we send them rocketing off to a new planet, hoping they won't fuck it up as bad as we did. And if they do fuck it up, hey." Hannah tossed her wrist, as though throwing a ball skyward. "It's in their hands."
Ellie gave herself a few minutes to reflect on this, watching the desolate blue-brown tableau outside. She might not understand everything yet, might not believe. But something dawned on her: In this moment, at least, she did not feel danger.
"Did you only come to Phoenix to recruit?"
"Yep," said Hannah.
"To a Holiday Inn on I-10?"
"Next to the perfect bar to let off steam," said Hannah. "Offices nearby, soulless suburbia... it was perfect. I did my research."
Another sting of resentment. "It doesn't feel great that you had an agenda the moment you met me," said Ellie, "that you were just ... targeting me all along."
"Ellie, I love my job," said Hannah. "By design I get to meet the best people. But most of the time --nine out of ten times -- the people I approach don't have it. It could've been, you and me trade a few words, I let you get a few peeks at my tits to thank you for your time, and then moved on." Hannah smirked and shrugged. "Believe it or not, I'm selective. Sure, there were the things about your life that made you a good candidate -- the rootlessness and all, the need for a strong purpose -- but those aren't the only requirements.
"You also have to be --" she splayed fingers again to count out each item -- "Kind-hearted, unreligious, self-determined, and capable of true love. Not Disney true love," she added, responding to Ellie's eye roll, "Humanistic true love. Absolute nurture and respect, inward and outward. Just like I described at the hotel.
"I can sniff that stuff out pretty quickly, and you had it. Our talk at Luann's was a job interview; you just didn't know it. You almost lost me with the comment about Marco's shirt tucking, but you recovered. Understandable moment of weakness. You were upset." Hannah paused and added as an afterthought, "And I would've walked away if you asked me to."
Ellie couldn't help but be flattered, coupled with a small renewed shame for the Marco comment.
Riley on the intercom: "Okay ladies, we're at cruising. You can unfasten your seatbelts."
"Oh, that reminds me," said Ellie. "Can I brush my teeth? Is there a bathroom?"
"In the front," said Hannah. "You can use the toothpaste in my bag." She leaned her head back against her head rest; her eyes looked heavy as she stared out the window.
Ellie grabbed her new toothbrush out of the drawstring satin bag Riley gave her, then crossed to the overhead and unzipped Hannah's bag. She reached in and fished around for the jar she knew to be Hannah's toothpaste.
After she found it, she clambered to the front of the cabin and found the bathroom across from the bulkhead. She stepped inside the coffin-sized space and slid the door shut. Soothing orange LED's lit the tiny room. Here was an airplane toilet and the inherent, tiny limitations that came with it; however, this bathroom had more luxurious touches than a Delta flight. The sink was a glossy wood grain that matched the accents in the cabin, and the lights mounted behind the mirror glowed at the perfect intensity to make Ellie's skin appear flawless.
Ellie peed, and then unboxed her new toothbrush and undid the lid of Hannah's "toothpaste". It was a gritty, mealy white paste, and Ellie suspected it was a thick slurry of baking soda and water. She applied some to her toothbrush with her finger, and the taste confirmed her suspicion. The vaguely salty, pool chlorine flavor wasn't nearly as appealing as the spearmint she was used to, but it got the job done. She rinsed in the tiny sink, splashed water on her oily face, patted dry, and stepped back out into the cabin. Her tongue now ran across slick, smooth teeth and she felt distinctly freshened.
By the looks of the back of Hannah's still, reclined head, she was asleep. Ellie looked to her right and saw Riley in the flight deck. Autopilot was on. Riley was wearing her headset, doodling on a clipboard what looked like wing cross-sections. She was drawing lines across them to simulate air flow.
