༺ Thesium ༻

Youth

They held their biggest party on midsummer’s day. Every year they felt the need to come together, to unite and really celebrate their achievements. That first decade things had been touch & go so often that it seemed like some kind of miracle that they’d made it at all.

The nursery had been wildly successful and the youth had burgeoned. It was so lovely how they related to Theo. He was the oldest man on the entire planet since he was the oldest of the crew that first set foot on exo-108. They made him the centre of the party whether he liked it or not. Generally, he liked it. He was a kind of Santa Claus for the young ones and for the older ones, the remaining members of the crew, he was still the captain.

There had been a dozen or so deaths during that first period. Several accidents, some from various illnesses, not all of the babies made it through their first year. Naturally, he had conducted the funerals.

So many weddings came along too. He officiated at them all. The original crew paired up all over the place, him included. Even Doug had got together with one of his former assistants, a programmer called Gemma. They made an awkward couple but sweet with it. Maya, his first mate, became his, well, first mate. They fell head over heels in love, there had always been a little frisson between them, but so much was at stake before their arrival that there never seemed to be enough time to get to know each other. There’s something about a leisurely swim in a mountain lake, a special magic around a bottle of wine and an afternoon in the long grass that just will not be denied. He still felt a glow all the way down to his feet every time he remembered that first time. When his fortieth birthday rolled around he was father to quite a gang. His own brood, three girls and a boy, merged with the larger gang, universally known as the wild bunch!

Even in those early years it was clear that the wild bunch had an intensity about them. They spent as much time as they could in the woods of the surrounding hills and always together. As much as he loved the place he couldn’t really commune with it the way they could. It was a wonder to behold.

And then there were the technicians. Doug lead a tribe of uber-geeks. Their communing was always with Root. The thrill they got from life seemed to be mathematical and technical. It was a good sign as far as Theo was concerned. It looked like things were going to hang together.

Around the time of his fiftieth birthday there were signs of tension. The wild bunch had become a tribe by this time, their leaders were his own children. The way they wanted to put his party together had caused arguments. They kept on about “praising the light” and similar religious sounding terms that the technicians thought to be silly and had managed to ignore up to that birthday. His son, Thito (little Theo) had got into a fight with the one nicknamed ‘Einstein’, Doug’s boy. They were both in their early twenties and all out violence would’ve been serious if he hadn’t stepped in. He heard shouting and the sound of glass shattering and so had barged in on a party planning meeting.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” he demanded.

A group of boys were hanging on to a furious looking Thito. Similarly, another group were holding Einstein back.

“Just tell him will you, dad? They’re just so disrespectful, I’m not flaming having it!”

Einstein shook off his captors. “It’s all just bloody nonsense all this ‘holy light’ stuff. We’ve had enough of it, haven’t we? You’ve learned the same as everyone else how much trouble it caused on the Old World. Leave you’re woo woo out if can’t you?”

Theo had had to put his foot down. He called his own meeting when the combatants had cooled down.

“The feeling we have for this place is just as important as the understanding of it, isn’t it? You need each other equally. We just can’t afford to have a tribal falling out now can we? Now, for this party I want the wild bunch to make a special effort to include the techies in all the decisions. It’s turned into more of a ‘festival’ than a ‘party’ hasn’t it! So, you lot, the techies must be listened to. And you techies, please, you have to see that it is out of their special love for this place that the wild bunch are acting. Sure, it might look weird to you, but you have to see that a Romantic sensibility isn’t something that can be just ignored. You have to see that, no?”

Thus an uneasy truce was maintained. The festivities turned out just great, he thought. The Classical techies had conferences, ‘symposiums’ and lectures on works that had been written for the occassion. The Romantic wild bunch had a wonderfully dramatic ceremonial followed by a general bacchanalia that went on for days. What made him uneasy was the subtext going on. The next generation was already vying for position for when he was no longer around.

And so a pattern was set for the years that followed. Each midsummer there were ructions between the two groups in the planning. He had to ameliorate both sides, always emphasising that they needed each other and should work together. Each midsummer the actual festival went off well and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Each time it became more obvious that there was some sort of proto-religion forming, apparently out of thin air.

What really kept him up at nights was the feeling that much more was expected of him than he could possibly live up to. He was trained as a captain of a spaceship and a kind of mayor, not as a knower-of-all-things. The wild bunch in particular seemed to want him to be a saviour or a messiah, some sort of great sage and to give them answers to questions he’d never given much thought to. Man, life was getting complicated.