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The landing wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t gentle. Conserving fuel wasn’t really of use to them, since Cooper didn’t plan on going back, even if they were already nearing an empty tank. There was nothing left for him in their solar system. Earth is devastated. Only space stations remain. The thought disheartens him, and a sense of longing settles deep within him. If only he didn’t go on that goddamn mission.
As Cooper takes the first step onto Edmunds, he thinks of his kids. Of Tom. Of Murphy. He never got to see most of their lives. They grew up without him. Without parents. Cooper tries the best he can to push down these thoughts, his eyes unwillingly prickling. He was never going to see them again. They’re just memories. Parents only exist to be memories for their children.
“Cooper?” A voice says behind him. Cooper must have been zoned out for quite some time.
He looks out across the horizon. It looks barren. It looks like a dead end. Dirt, sand, dust, boulders, and rocks are all he can see, their shadows stretch far against the landscape as the sun sets. This landscape—it’s not something he’s unfamiliar with back on Earth. The further you head west, well, more of the landscape would look like this. In some parts of California and Utah. Parts of Arizona and New Mexico.
So, there could be hope.
“TARS, what is this atmosphere primarily composed of?” Cooper asks, refusing to let himself turn around and face the former U.S. Marine Corps tactical robot, becoming a coward like Mann was. Although he supposes that’s what he is now, since he’s resorted to exactly what Mann wanted to do. To repopulate a habitable planet.
It takes a few moments, but TARS replies, “It’s composed of 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. Exactly like Earth.”
“Just like Earth…” Cooper mumbles, “That’s quite a rare chance, ain’t that, TARS?”
The sole response Cooper gets is a few heavy, mechanical footsteps inching closer.
Cooper reaches up and takes off his helmet, clicking from the levers and buttons being heard. And, then, he takes his first deep breath of fresh air on Edmunds. Real, fresh air. Not the type of air that hasn’t been artificially built for space stations, ships, or suits. Fresh air that’s been in the atmosphere for years. Fresh air that hasn’t been tainted by the odious Human race.
And… it feels good.
“I can’t imagine how it must feel,” TARS begins, thinking the exact thing that Cooper is, “to take a breath of fresh air after years of electrolysis.”
Cooper takes another breath, his eyes slipping closed. “It’s commendable, Slick. Like nothing I’d ever felt before.”
A few more mechanical footsteps are heard, crunching against the sand and rock of Edmunds’s terrain until TARS is standing next to Cooper.
This time, Cooper looks over at TARS. His screen faces the setting sun, which reflects off of the surface and his rectangular, metal body.
The only thing Cooper can think of when he looks at the sunset is his family. His home. Earth. This time, it’s a good feeling. One that settles nicely. One that doesn’t immediately make him feel as though he’s alone in the world.
“Are you thinking about them, Coop?”
Cooper chuckles softly. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
It didn’t take long for TARS and Cooper to set up camp, even though some of that time stretched into civil twilight, towards dusk. The sun had sunk below Edmunds’s horizon, leaving only the remnants of light and their makeshift campfire to illuminate the surface. Night ambiance lurked in, with merely the sound of a cool breeze shifting through the air.
At this point in the night, Cooper would hear crickets. They didn’t get that anymore.
Cooper began to wonder if there was any intelligent life at all on this planet.
The campfire that TARS and Cooper had scrounged together was meager, but it was ample enough for Cooper’s warmth. Not that TARS would need it. But he did help with gathering driftwood that was scattered nearby, which Cooper was thankful for. Wherever on the planet that the two resided now must have been an ocean at one point in time.
Hence… some form of life. Some form of life that could produce oxygen through photosynthesis.
Cooper sits down on the bare ground, rocks and pebbles vexatious underneath him. At this point, he wished that he would have brought at least something with him. A blanket, a tarp. Something other than the basic necessities.
“How do you feel about Dr. Brand, Coop?” TARS asks at one point, amidst Edmund’s night’s silence and tepid breeze.
Cooper looks up from the cracking fire in between them. TARS’s screen is tilted towards Cooper, interested.
Cooper speaks, fiddling with a small, dry tendril in his hands, kindling for the fire. “Well, Dr. Brand, you know him. He was an amazing physicist. He—”
“I’m not talking about him, Cooper. I’m asking about Amelia.”
“Amelia?”
TARS does not answer.
Cooper looks down at the piece of sprout in his hands and twists it once more before tossing it into the fire.
“I’m sure you already know how I feel about her.”Cooper chuckles.
TARS is silent.
Cooper clears his throat. He did not mean to imply it that way. “I feel the same way that you and CASE think of her. She’s an able teammate. I should’ve listened to her and landed here instead of on Mann’s planet.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“What about… your daughter?” TARS asks hesitantly.
Cooper glances back down at his hands, wishing that he hadn’t thrown away the dry tendril.
“No parent should have to watch their kid die,” Cooper says quietly, not finding it in himself to look back up at TARS, “That’s what she told me. And that I should find Brand. Amelia.”
TARS is silent once more. Cooper has noticed this more recently.
“Why do you ask about Amelia?”
There is silence for a while, and Cooper thinks that TARS might not answer this question as well.
TARS speaks quietly. “No particular reason.”
After that, silence settles in between them once more, Cooper left wondering why TARS had asked a question that he already knew the answer to.
Cooper lays down and faces away from the fire, from TARS. His arm is used as a makeshift pillow as he closes his eyes and falls, uncomfortably, asleep.
He’s in the tesseract again. Inside the black hole. There, he floats amongst rows and rows of bookshelves, all corresponding to a certain point in time. He had no EMU on, he was bare, in the everyday clothes that he would wear back on Earth.
“What the hell…?” Cooper says, looking around. It was the same. He floated closer to one of the bookshelves and peeked over the spines of the books.
He sees him leaving once more, ready to head out and ruin his and his family’s lives.
Cooper’s eyebrows furrow in pain. “Don’t let me leave…” He repeats as he had when he was last here. “Don’t let me leave, Murph!”
His eyes grow blurry, and he can’t help but feel the hotness in his eyes.
“Don’t let me leave!” He cries. At any other point in his life, he would shy away from this. He’d stop himself.
But he fucked up his life. Was it worth trading his life for all of humanity’s?
Cooper desperately tries to claw his way through the books, but they won’t budge. No matter how hard he tries to go back to that day to stop himself, nothing works. He’s trapped here. Trapped in this life that he doesn’t want. Trapped on another planet as his own sits there and rots, his family dead. He has no one.
As Cooper realizes there is nothing he can do to get back, he lets go of the bookshelf and feels himself drifting into the darkness, despairing sobs escaping from his lips. “No…”
I did this to myself. Cooper thinks, but he doesn’t want to believe it.
When Cooper wakes the next morning, the first thing he realizes is that he is alone. He slowly sits up, the memories and emotions of his dream from last night settling within him. Next to him is the burnt-out campfire, only charcoal and ash remaining. Across the fire is an imprint in the sand, likely where TARS sat all through the night.
Cooper hopes that he wasn’t saying those things out loud.
Then, the realization hits him. He is alone. TARS is gone, nowhere to be seen. Cooper quickly gets to his feet and scopes out the land. He can’t see TARS.
Rushing towards the spacecraft, Cooper also saw no trace of TARS.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Cooper mumbles, grabbing the hair atop his head in a vice-like grip.
Cooper runs back over to their makeshift camp and grabs his comms.
“TARS? TARS, do you read me?” Cooper asks frantically. “TARS!”
Cooper rushes out into the open, dodging the many boulders that rested amongst the pebbles, stones, and sand. Where the hell did TARS disappear to? How far did he go to the point where the comms didn’t reach him?
“TARS! TARS, do you copy? TARS!” Cooper nearly yells into the mic.
Other than silence, Cooper hears something. It’s choppy, but it sounds like TARS’s voice.
“TARS, you there?” Cooper asks, halting in his steps now that he can hear TARS clearly.
“Cooper, I’m here.” TARS says.
“Where the hell are you, TARS? I woke up and you were gone! I couldn’t get a hold of you!” Cooper asks, glancing at his surroundings. He didn’t feel safe being this out in the open. The camp was about fifteen meters from where he stood now.
“I took the ship and left you here, Cooper. No. I’m out surveying the area, Coop. Nothing to worry about.” TARS says simply.
“You—” Cooper begins before sighing, “TARS, I… never mind.”
He didn’t want to be left alone. Not again.
Then, he begins to head back towards the camp, away from TARS’s voice, away from it all. Despite how much he wanted to simply be with another person. Not alone.
TARS stops him. “You don’t want to be alone.” Cooper’s footsteps are quelled. His fists clench and unclench. Hearing his feelings said aloud doesn’t feel right to him.
“What makes you say that, Slick?” Cooper says lowly.
“I know you, Coop,” TARS says, “I’m on my way back right now.”
TARS doesn’t know him at all. Just because they’ve spent some time on the Endurance and dove into a black hole together doesn’t mean that they’ve known each other for decades. (Even though, quite literally, they have).
Cooper was nearly finished packing up camp and whatever belongings he’d brought with him in the spacecraft by the time TARS arrived. Cooper wonders how long ago he’d left and how far he’d traveled. More importantly, what information he’d acquired.
“Find anything, TARS?” Cooper asks, packing the last thing into his backpack.
“Yes, actually. We did land on Edmunds with no plan whatsoever, no direction in which to start searching for Brand, but…” TARS begins, “I got faint traces of a radio signal just about due west.”
Mechanical footsteps are heard as TARS steps closer to Cooper, his screen tilted as he watches Cooper stuff the last of his supplies in the backpack.
“You think it’s her?” Cooper asks hopefully, standing up and slinging the backpack over his shoulder.
“Well, unless an alien’s set up with a radio tower, it has to be her.” TARS says, his cue light turning on, even though Cooper could notice the sarcasm in the robot’s voice.
Cooper taps TARS’s screen and walks past him, the robot turning to follow him. “Well, if you think about it, TARS, we’re the aliens here. We’re foreigners to this planet. Whatever native life that may live here, intelligent or not, let’s just hope it’s friendly.”
Then, Cooper and TARS set off into the vast landscape of Edmunds, leaving behind their spacecraft. There’s no use for it anymore. TARS takes the lead since he knows the coordinates, and Cooper follows.
“What about Edmund? Think he’s alive?” Cooper asks as they skirt past a large boulder.
“It’s a possibility.” TARS says. “Why? You know there’s something going on between them. There’s nothing you can do about it, Coop.”
“That’s not why, TARS. No. I don’t feel about her that way. I’ve told you this, Slick. I feel about her the same way you do.” Cooper says with a sigh.
“And if I’m in love with her?” TARS asks, and Cooper can’t tell whether his cue light flickers on or not. He doesn’t care either way.
“Then, I’m not.”