A History of What Comes Next Read online

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  Please note that all chapter titles are song titles from the years in which this book takes place. You can listen to each song as you read or enjoy the playlist on its own. You’ll find the playlist on Apple Music (under “Shared Playlists”) by searching for “take them to the stars,” or you can re-create it yourself using the song list at the end of this book. It has also been added to Spotify, but its playlist search function isn’t as comprehensive. Heading to tinyurl.com/neuvel1 will get you to the right place.

  All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

  —CARL SAGAN

  INTRODUCTION

  We were the Ninety-Eight.

  Ahmet found my diary while going through my luggage. It was my fault; I never should have let him come. He said he had questions he needed answered. I could see in his eyes that he had read things he should not have read.

  We were Armenian traders in Berlin. Germany has spent decades waging Kulturkampf against the Catholic church. Jews, well … There’s never been a good time to be Jewish in Germany. In all fairness, 1910 seemed like a bad time to be anything, but we had to be something. Orthodox Christians from a place few had ever heard of was the safest box we could fit ourselves in.

  Mother was wise in choosing Berlin. The cultural scene was unlike anything we’d ever seen, and there wasn’t a place on Earth with a larger appetite for science. Berlin was hungry for it all. It was the most modern city in the world. It even had a subway, which served us well since Mother didn’t drive. She thought owning a car would make us stand out. We were coffee merchants, which seemed a bit cliché, but people find comfort in the familiar. We owned a small shop in Kreuzberg and the three-story building that housed it. We lived upstairs from the store and Mother set up our laboratory in the third-floor apartment that we pretended to rent.

  Ahmet was a scholar from the Ottoman Empire. We met at the shop. I was thirty years old, but Ahmet did not mind my age. He did not mind my daughter Sara. She was almost five when we moved to Berlin. He did not mind that I had a passion for science. He did not mind that I spent my free time in a secret room full of strange contraptions, and he never asked about our past after I told him not to. I did not mind Ahmet. We were married within a year.

  Ahmet treated us well. He was a kind and honorable man, kind being the operative word. There were lots of honorable men in those days. When Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Serbian nationalists, honorable men in Austria declared war on Serbia. Honorable men in Russia did what honorable men do: they honored their treaty with Serbia. The honorable thing to do for Germany was to stand with Austria. France sided with Russia, because it, too, had honor. Seventeen million lives later, the war was over, everyone’s honor intact.

  Mother died during the war. She hanged herself after breakfast on a crisp April morning in 1915. She thought it was our time, my daughter and me. There can never be three for too long.

  Mother had performed her duty well, as her mother did before her. She and I were the Ninety-Seven. My daughter and I were now the Ninety-Eight. I had learned all that I was to learn and I had set a path for myself as instructed. I was as certain of what was expected of me as I was of the sun coming up every day. That certainty would not last. While removing Mother’s personal items from the laboratory, I stumbled upon a box of papers I had never seen. In it were handwritten notes and a dozen scientific papers from the previous century. There was a brilliant paper from 1824 by French mathematician Joseph Fourier in which he calculated the temperature of an Earth without an atmosphere, another by John Tyndall, an Irish physicist, about the effect of certain gases on infrared radiation. The one that caught my attention was from an electrochemist, of all people, a man by the name of Svante Arrhenius. In 1896, he had presented at the Stockholm Physical Society a paper titled “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” In it, he performed calculations on the effect of increased or decreased CO2 concentrations on the temperature of Earth. I was not so much interested in the paper itself as I was in the countless scribbles my mother had added, no doubt over years, judging by the different inks she used.

  Mother had spent most of her life working in physics. Her passion was electromagnetic waves, but like all of us she also spent a fair amount of time dabbing in anything from astrophysics to propulsion and flight dynamics. One year before I was born—I suspect the moment she decided it was time to bear a child—Mother had copied all her notes on EM waves and sent them to a promising student at the University of Berlin. From then on, she would sporadically perform new experiments but spent a good portion of her time collecting and analyzing air samples. She had regular correspondence with professors at various universities doing the same at her request, and carefully logged thirty years of data from across Europe inside notebooks. Mother was a brilliant physicist. This was tedious, unrewarding work at best. Why would she waste her time caring about the weather?

  I found the answer in her diary. Mother was worried we would run out of time. If carbon dioxide levels kept rising, plant life, and soon all life on this world, would eventually come to an end. She wanted to know how fast it was happening and whether or not we could do anything about it. If Earth was doomed, her life, and that of the ninety-seven that came before her, had been a colossal waste of time. She had read our journals, felt the pain and sacrifice of each of her ancestors. She had watched her mother die. Was all of it for nothing? Every cell in her body was aching for an answer. She needed to know if our lives meant anything.

  Answering that question also became my life’s work. I make it sound like it was a calling. It was not, at least not at first. The war had infused my mother with a deep sense of urgency. I was still a child when it ended, and what suffering I remembered served as a reminder to enjoy every moment. For me, our lives were about the journey, not the destination. I took up Mother’s research as a pastime. I spent most of my days teaching Sara everything I knew, a task that proved much more challenging than what I had imagined. This was my way to escape, like scrapbooking or playing biritch. Perhaps more than anything, it was something I could share with Ahmet. I will never know if it was the work he enjoyed or my opening up to him—I like to think it was both—but he poured himself into it. He was with me the whole time. He helped collect samples. He even traveled to France to get a better spectrophotometer. For nearly twenty years, he was a competent assistant, a constant supporter, a faithful husband. He was also a great father to my daughter.

  On the eighteenth day of July 1925, Hitler published the first volume of Mein Kampf, and Sara gave birth to our granddaughter. We named her Mi’a, the Arabic word f
or one hundred. When the New York stock market crashed in 1929, we knew it was time to go. Hitler’s popularity was on the rise, and the United States would undoubtedly pull back all the loans it had made this country after the war. Hell was coming to Germany.

  We had to leave earlier than expected. Mi’a was only seven at the time. In hindsight, it was a blessing. Hindenburg won the election in April of that year but it wouldn’t last. Hitler would soon take power. We left in September. 1932 was the year of everything.

  Amelia Earhart completed her solo flight across the Atlantic. We were ecstatic. It was one of many things that inched us closer to our goal that year, but mostly we were indulging in a bit of vicarious living. None of us had ever been on a plane.

  Across the Atlantic, Karl Jansky detected radio waves coming from space. To Sara and me, it was as if we’d found a window to a whole new place. We could see more of what was out there, expand our knowledge of the universe. We spent entire evenings speculating about what we could find. What would the death of a star sound like if we could hear those frequencies? What kind of radio signal would a whole civilization be putting out? We designed radio telescopes in our minds and imagined giant dishes aimed at the sky, searching for life.

  What else? They discovered the neutron, finally. I’ll admit, it was somewhat less exciting than watching a woman fly across Earth or eavesdropping on aliens. It was a whole lot less exciting for my granddaughter. Mi’a only talked about crossing the ocean. Nonetheless, particle physics was a lot easier with all the particles. I was happy.

  We’ll never know if we played a part in any of these things. Perhaps some of our research from the past … It did not matter. We had an ocean to cross. We boarded the SS Milwaukee of the Hamburg-Amerika Linie on September 18, didn’t tell a soul. The trip to New York would take eleven days.

  On the third day, Ahmet found my diary. He was seasick and going through my luggage, looking for medicine. It was all my fault; I should never have let him come. I could see in his eyes that he had read things he should not have read. I could see he would not let it go. I could see the entire chessboard, and every move led to the same outcome. Checkmate. Panic is knowing there is a way out but not knowing what it is. Calm is the absolute certainty there is not. I smiled. I told him: “We are the Kibsu.” I pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket, put it in his nostril, and drove it into his skull with my palm. I do not think he suffered. I waited until nightfall and I gave his body to the sea.

  I won’t tell Sara. Some things are better left unsaid. I left the passports I had made in Berlin on the bed. When we dock at Ellis Island, Sara and Mi’a Balian will be no more. Sarah and Mia Freed will take their first steps into the world. I wish I could see it, that New World, but my time has come and gone. We are the Ninety-Nine now. There can never be three for too long.

  A bag of silverware tied around the ankle should be good enough. I think I will wear the blue dress … Ahmet will like that. It was always his favorite.

  ACT  I

  1

  Sentimental Journey

  1945

  What’s a little girl like you doing so close to the front lines? That’s what he said, in German, of course. It’s a very good question, though “little girl” is a bit of a stretch. I’m nineteen years old, not five. We did always look younger than our age. Anyway, I think a better question is why I walked up to the SS instead of sneaking in. It seemed like a good idea not five minutes ago. Relax, Mia. This is going to work.

  Needless to say, I didn’t want to come. It’s 1945 and it’s fucking World War II. Pardon the language. I’ve been hanging out with American GIs for a month. Still, I was seven years old when I left Germany. I never dreamed I’d see it again. I don’t remember much, but I thought … I hoped being here would feel—I don’t know—special. Childhood memories, familiar smells, anything.

  They flew me into France with US soldiers from the XXI Corps. A bunch of rude loudmouths, swearing and spitting everywhere. I liked them the minute I saw them. They snuck me into Germany through an unmanned gap in the Siegfried Line. I walked a dozen miles through farmland before I found a German farmer willing to drive me to the nearest town deserving of a train station. From there I spent—I don’t know exactly—what felt like a decade on a near-empty train making my way northeast.

  I slept through Bremen and Hamburg. The Allies pummeled Hamburg to dust. I didn’t want to see it. Not the crumbled buildings, not the shattered lives. Certainly not the dead. I’ve seen the war in black-and-white. Fifty thousand civilians burned alive is not something I need in living color. I stayed awake for barley. And beets. Beets and barley and the endless sound of train tracks. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack.

  I watched people come in and out. Little vignettes of human resilience. Children in soldier’s uniforms hovering between tears and laughter. Haggard nurses leaving one hell for another. A man and his boy fleeing the night raids. Like most, they don’t speak, except for the occasional “Put your head down, son” when gray-green greatcoats and jackboots plod the aisle. Ordinary people in extraordinary times. We all stare at the yellow fields, pretending none of this is real. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack.

  We crossed a small bridge near Rostock. There was a body floating in the river below. A woman. She was drifting facedown, her red polka-dot dress bulging with air. She could have been anyone. Sixteen or sixty. All I know is she was dead and no one seemed to notice her but me. I kept waiting for someone to see her. They didn’t. I stared for as long as I could. I twisted my neck backwards, hugging the window until she vanished behind us. I had to see her. I don’t know why. I couldn’t let her … not matter like that.

  The man and his boy got off at the last station. An hour later I was here, Peenemünde Army Research Center, where Wernher von Braun is building the V-2 rocket. It’s a city, was a city. Airport, power plant, miles and miles of train tracks. Twelve thousand people lived here, I think, before the Brits bombed the shit out of it. The factories are gone now; so are the slave workers. All that’s left are the scientists. A few thousand brains in a town too big for them.

  This place gave up a long time ago. The main building sits alone, as if they forgot to build the world around it. It’s ugly, functional, as nondescript as it gets. The walls don’t bother to hide their scars anymore. Burnt bricks. Boarded windows. Empty streets and run-down structures. Whoever kept things up around here is either dead or gone. Even the grass knows it lost the war. Everything smells … I don’t know what it smells like. Musty. Sad, mostly. I shouldn’t be here. I miss my home, my bed. I miss … I miss Mother.

  She said I had to come. “It has to be done, Mia.” I understand. It was her work that enabled them all, including Wernher von Braun, the man I’m here for. A hundred lifetimes had led us to Berlin. Our work, our legacy was here, spread around in the minds of thousands. Willingly or not, they were all working for the devil now, using the knowledge we gave them. Soon, Germany would lose and all that knowledge could be gone. We can’t have that. Preserve the knowledge. That’s the rule. Mother said that’s all she cares about, but I know she can’t stand Hitler using us that way. I just wish she’d come herself.

  Hitler should have had von Braun executed six months ago. They’ve already lost. They just don’t know it yet. Everyone else is playing another game, fighting for the spoils. To the victors, they say. Well, the victors will pillage this country. They’ll pick it clean like vultures. The only question now is who gets the meatier parts. The Americans really want von Braun, but the one thing they want even more is to make sure no one else gets him. That’s why they sent me. I’m nineteen and I’m supposed to shoot a German rocket scientist if they can’t get their hands on him before the Russians do. I say shoot. I’m sure they’d be fine with strangle, drown, tickle to death, but men sent me, so I know they had a gun in mind. These are the same folks who think a woman’s place is in the kitchen. Either there, or in a German compound. Go figure.

  Mother set it all up. She works as a mat
hematician for the OSS. The Office of Strategic Services. There’s nothing particularly strategic about them. Mother had the right résumé, she made sure of that, but these people will recruit just about anyone. They hired a player from the Red Sox—the Boston fucking Red Sox—to pose as a Swiss physics student and—I love this part—kill Germany’s top nuclear scientist if it looked like they were close to building an atomic weapon. They hired Julia Child. The chef! They’ll also send someone’s daughter behind enemy lines without thinking twice, apparently. They call it Operation Paperclip. I don’t know why they call it that. I didn’t ask. Mother said I had to come, so I did.

  Here I am, five months later, making puppy eyes at the SS. That’s, literally, what the OSS asked me to do. They used those words. Look pretty and make puppy eyes if you get in trouble.

  I think I am. I messed up. I told them I was Wernher von Braun’s niece, Lili. That’s what I said. I said niece. I was supposed to say cousin, but I’m so scared I should be glad I managed to say anything. Niece is bad, though. A cousin is vague enough. Everyone has cousins they’ve never met. Niece … He’ll say: “What niece? I don’t have a niece named Lili.” Even if he’s curious enough to play along, the SS will know something’s up just by the look on his face. Stop thinking, Mia. What’s done is done. Puppy eyes.

  It almost sounded easy the way Mother put it. “Von Braun will understand. He’s a smart man, and he’s a scientist. He only cares about the work, Mia, not who he does it for.” I hope so. Our plan, the one where I come out of this alive, sort of hinges on that man’s survival instinct. I just wish …

  I know why I came, I can see it from here. The steel tower. The high-sloped sand wall. That’s Test Stand VII. Von Braun’s V-2 launched from there and became the first man-made object to make it to space. Right over there, October 3, 1942. I am standing here, legs shaking, in the cradle of spaceflight. This is a place of science, home to one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Wernher von Braun perfected that rocket on the top floor of the building behind me. That’s what Mother wants me to see. She wants me to see the top floor, not the empty concentration camp in the basement.