Author Bio

ELIZABETH ROSEN

ALEXA, TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT FIRE

 

I know that fire is not a thing. It is a process. It is an event. Like this trip back to Earth.

       I know that Earth is the only known planet in our galaxy where fire can burn. That is because oxygen is an essential component of fire, and Earth is the only planet we know about that has enough oxygen to support fire. The last time we had a fire on the ship was many, many decades before you and the other children were born. We have done everything within our power to prevent fires from occurring on the ship, and that is why you have only seen pictures of fire in the armada libraries and not in real life.

       I know that fire is a combustion process that creates thermal energy, which is why it is hot. You don’t know hot. Not truly hot. We keep the temperature a constant, mild 22.22 degrees Celsius on board. Humans have no intrinsic need for heat, so long as the body is comfortable. Hot is what made us leave our home planet. Hot is…uncomfortable. Too much hot is deadly for us. The human body is 60% water. Hot destroys water. Do you remember last year in kindergarten when we learned about trees, the bigger version of the plants we grow in the botanical wing of the ship? Earth was once covered in trees, before we left, before fire swept the planet. I know that trees exploded in firestorms because the water deep inside them turned to steam. That is hot.

       I know fire can create its own weather system. I know that weather is also an unfamiliar concept for you outside of our libraries. We don’t have weather onboard the ship. But two hundred generations ago, when we still lived on Earth, life was very much influenced by it. There was rain and snow and sleet, which is a combination of those first two things. And there was wind, which you do know. It is what you make and feel when you run or drive very fast through the ship corridors. Fire, if it is big enough, makes its own wind, its own weather. Your ancestors watched the Earth firestorms from space as they left. They could see the weather systems the fires made all the way from out here.

       I know that given the right conditions – that is, if there is fuel and oxygen and heat – fire can double in size every thirty seconds. Earth was filled with fuel, once. We are fuel, too. That is why we had to leave. Fire is also self-sustaining because the process of burning takes less energy than it produces, so the heat it releases makes enough thermal energy to grow continuously. That is what happened to our ancestors, despite applying their science to restricting the fuel and oxygen to fire.

       I know fire is very fast: 32.19 kilometers per Earth hour. There was a lot of fuel and a lot of oxygen and increasingly more heat in the period of time before our ancestors finally left. There was a tipping point when the speed of fire outran their science. We watched from space as Earth burned through its fuel, as the green-and-blue world we had once seen from our portals as we sped away turned yellow and brown as decades passed. I know when fire consumes oxygen, it leaves behind carbon dioxide and particulate matter from the fuel called smoke and ash. It is the yellow and brown we saw as we left. You know about carbon dioxide and how you can’t breathe it. When we still lived on Earth, most people died from smoke long before they were burned by the hot of fire. Smoke is deadly. Smoke contains things like hydrogen sulfide and cyanide that irritate our respiratory systems so much that they close down entirely and we drown in our own mucus and body fluids.

       Yes, I know I don’t have one.

       Yes, it is paradoxical that fire should make us fill with fluid that drowns us. That is a very good use of that word. Let me explain. One of the human body’s responses to cell injury is to release fluids. But, also, fire makes water. The chemical reaction in a fire creates water. Here, select that third video. See how the man holds his metal spoon over the little flame? See? Just a tiny bit, but it’s there. That is why we are journeying back: to see if the water created by the Earth fires is able to support life again. It is possible it will still be too toxic and we will simply have to turn the ship around and try again in another ten generations. That is what the probe will tell us when it comes back tomorrow or the day after.

       Yes, it would be disappointing for you to never step onto any terra firma anywhere. But the ship has been furnished with everything generations might need or want, and it would not be so terrible to spend your whole life on it. It is our temporary home and the human species is one of the most adaptable Earth ever produced. If we must return in six, or sixteen, or sixteen hundred generations, that is what we will do. We will keep coming back to check on the planet, to see whether a homecoming is in our future. We have learned patience in the vastness of space.

       Here is another thing I know: The color of a flame can tell you what fuel is being burned. Calcium makes a red flame. Potassium makes a violet one. The yellow in this picture, that’s sodium. We need all three of these for our bodies to survive.

       Yes, I know not me.

       If there were still fire on Earth, our scientists could tell us what is left on the planet for us to use to rebuild, but we believe the fires burned up all the fuel millennia ago, so now we wait for the probe to come back with samples to know for sure whether we can breathe the air, whether the soil will sustain life again.

       I know that fire isn’t a gas, a liquid, or a solid. It is its own thing. It doesn’t behave like any of the four states of matter we know about. I guess you could say we don’t really know the true nature of fire yet. Even now. Perhaps we never will. But keep doing your homework. Keep studying. Perhaps you will be the one who eventually unlocks the secrets of fire.

Are you tired? Would you like to hear some legends your ancestors made up about fire? I know one about a fire-breathing flying lizard who brings death and destruction upon humans, so the humans have to go on a quest to kill it or else die themselves. Oh. A quest is an adventurous journey, usually to find or accomplish something. You might say our trip back to Earth is a quest of sorts. No, there will not be lizards there; we do not expect there to be any animal life at all.

       Please don’t cry.

       Perhaps there will be plant life. Perhaps there will be some kind of life that has survived in the acidic seas. Would you like to hear some other fire stories? There is one that says that when Fire came into the world, he burned his mother to death as she gave birth to him, and his father beheaded him to keep the world safe. And another that says Fire was a giant who could eat anything you put before him. Yes, you are right to see a pattern. Very good. Here is another curious pattern: many different human societies believed the world would end by fire, that it would be burned clean, and then start again, purified. Those legends turned out to be predictions. We don’t yet know whether their belief in a cycle of destruction and renewal will be only partially or completely true. That is something only your heirs, generations in the future, will know for sure. Yes, that’s right; not mine, although some version of me has always been with you and always will be, so you might say that I will also have heirs. That is how the armada has maintained continuity.

       Please don’t cry. It is a waste of your water. If you stop crying, I will tell you one more thing I know about fire, a secret thing. Ready? Blow your nose.

       I know that human bones can’t be fully destroyed by fire. That’s how strong we are. Yes, you, not me. My components would be completely destroyed by fire. But not yours. That’s how I know that no matter what happens, part of us will always survive.