I was crawling across the floor of my decrepit studio flat. Like a caterpillar, I tucked my legs beneath me, lifted my ass into the air, and dragged myself forward. A no-good thirty-year-old, high out of his mind. I lay there studying the wood grain of the floorboards with scientific devotion. The late afternoon sun fell through the curtains and tinted the wooden floor with all kinds of warm yellow and orange hues. With my face inches from the floor, I let my eyes follow the lines of the wood grain to where they split and curved around the knots. The knots… the eye of the storm. The longer I stared, the more the wood began to move. The grain flowed slowly like water currents beneath the varnish until, without me noticing exactly when, I wasn’t looking at a floor anymore. I was watching the surface of a planet.

‘What’s it called again?’

Flying through the atmosphere of the planet, I struggled to finish coherent thoughts and one notion was quickly overtaken by another.

‘Jupiter!’

The knot expanded until it filled my vision.

‘I’m a space traveller!’ I thought triumphantly.

And there I was.

‘Five… ‘ a voice over the radio announced.

Not in my studio flat anymore, but safely tucked in between my two co-pilots;

‘Four…’

Commander Jakub and Lieutenant Commander Pavel.

‘Three…’

A no-good-thirty-two-year old with a real space suit, in the cockpit of a real spacecraft, waiting for a real launch.

‘Two…’

Jakub, Pavel, and I were trained for this mission. A mission that would last the rest of our lives.

‘One…’

That last second seemed to stretch into eternity but before I had time to wonder how long the rest of our lives might be…

‘LIFTOFF!’

It sounded like the Earth exploded beneath us. The restraints bit into my shoulders. My mind overflowed with the screaming of metal and rattling bolts. And the cockpit… it shook harder than I’d ever imagined an earthquake could.

We weren’t afraid. Jakub grinned underneath his visor. ‘Just like the simulations’. Only it wasn’t. It’s strange how people say things like this the exact moment they stop being true. No simulation can capture the feeling when you finally wake up and understand you’ve made an irreversible decision.

Our lift off went without problems, and once we were in orbit, everything became quiet. We started to make ourselves ready for the long haul. Six years… That’s how long it would take before we’d reach our destination.

Together, we were an experiment. A trio of expendables sent up on a one-way trip. No rescue mission. No return trajectory. No contingency plan. The mission briefing had described it as “humanity’s first extraterrestrial colonization effort.” Jakub called it a “government-funded suicide” in his native tongue. Pavel replied coldly: “important sacrifice, for the numbers”

The trip was long, the days repetitive, the years lonely. We weren’t fluent in each other’s languages. Jakub spoke in shrugs, Pavel spoke in numbers. I spoke to myself. We became experts at understanding the silence and over time, I went into a mental slumber. I formed a layer around my slow moving thoughts, like a cocoon I did not notice I was building until I was already inside it.

And as a no-good-thirty-eight-year old, I watched as we arrived at our destination: Callisto, one of Jupiter’s moons.

To see the place that you know you will spend the rest of your life is something else. The excitement when Pavel tapped my shoulder and pointed towards a small dot in the distance. One small dot, in between a million other dots, that was slightly bigger than all those other dots.

Pavel uttered one of the few words in English that he picked up during our journey to Callisto. A word that had been the topic of many of our sparse conversations.

‘Home’, he said.

Inside, I wasn’t entirely convinced yet that “home” lay in front of us instead of behind us, but I had no other choice than to accept Pavel’s words as truth.

As we got closer, our new home slowly revealed itself. At first sight, Callisto was ugly. Its surface was scarred by countless impacts. But the crust of ice caught the distant sunlight and reflected it back in pale blues and silvers, giving it something unnatural. In its ugliness, a strange beauty was hidden in plain sight. It was special and I felt relieved knowing I would come to love it, given enough time. During our training, I had understood that Callisto was a simple moon. They had meant geologically simple. I simply heard ‘simple,’ and that was enough.

I liked simple.

I was simple.

A simple moon for a simple man.

Our harsh and uncomfortable landing set the tone for our first years on Callisto. I wasn’t ready to leave the warm, familiar space of my cocoon yet, but Callisto’s brutal cold gave me no choice.

Our first habitats were small and simple: thick, insulated, inflatable tubes buried beneath the icy surface, drilled deep enough to keep us alive. They were not homes yet. They were places to work, eat, and sleep.

Us expendables had been tasked with starting “humanity’s first extraterrestrial colonization effort”, and so an effort we made. In the silence we’d mastered, the only thing that made that effort bearable was the constant presence of Jupiter hanging over us. During those first days, it didn’t seem real. The size of it. The swirling lines. The stormy eye that watched us from above. It was all so much larger than how we saw the moon from Earth.

We mapped our immediate surroundings, studied the composition of the surface, and searched for craters where the settlement might one day expand. Requests came in from Earth, and the information we gathered was sent back. This went on for years, until, at some point, we lost contact.

But it didn’t matter anymore. Not to us. We had survived and another group of settlers was already on its way. And with the information we had gathered, many more would follow.

When we landed on Callisto, I had crawled out of one cocoon and into another. Only later did I understand that this was how change often worked. Not all at once. Not in a single moment. But slowly, through discomfort, repetition, labour, and time. And though in many ways it had not been an easy path, in many other ways it had felt strangely natural. The effort had come without me having to decide to become someone else. I simply kept going. We all did. And in doing so, we became part of something special. Something beautiful.

Jakub, Pavel, and I were no longer known only to each other. For a time, we had been heroes. Then simply familiar names in a growing settlement. And eventually, just people again.

As a no-good-fifty-year-old, I stepped back from public duties. By then, the settlement had become stable. Large enough that not everyone knew each other by name anymore. It had become normal, in a way all that was once impossible and new becomes normal after a while. And with the advent of interstellar travel, Callisto that once was at the edge of human reach would become the staging point for something larger.

The applause comes late, like it’s not sure it should be directed at me.

I blink.

The wood grain is gone.

In its place: glass, a brightly lit dome full of people, and the familiar blue and silver hues in the distance.

They call it a museum now and they call me a “founding contributor.” A “pioneer of the first settlement era.” I sit behind a small table pretending it’s important. There’s a microphone in front of me and a line of journalists I couldn’t recognize, even if I tried. Most of them were probably born after the third wave of colonists arrived on Callisto.

One of them asks me what it felt like.

‘What it felt like,’ I repeat.

I look past them, through the dome. Outside, the old scarred landing fields. Beyond them, the new launch structures that rise sleek above the icy surface. Today is the first launch. Not to orbit. Not to another planet, but somewhere further.

They say it like it’s normal.

‘Interstellar…’

Outside of our solar system. Going to new places no one has ever gone before. I almost laugh because here we are. Me telling them about Jupiter. About wood grains turning into storms. And they write it down like it’s poetry. And you know what? Maybe it is…

After the interview is done, and all pleasantries are had, I wander the museum halls alone. The countdown had started, and could be heard over the intercom throughout the whole building. There was no escaping it.

They’ve preserved the early suits. My suit is there too. Stained and patched. It looks heavier than I remember. I stop in front of it. There’s a picture of my young face next to it. Jakub and Pavel are there too. My mind wanders to the new crew huddled together in their small cockpit. Three young people with their suits and helmets on, just like we used to.

The voice over the intercom announced:

‘Five’

From the window in the hallway, I see the launchpad in the distance.

‘Four’

I have no clue how long their mission will take. As a no-good-eighty-six-year-old, I make an effort to be unaware of these details.

‘Three’

But when the time comes and their mission is done, they’ll too emerge from their capsule, just like Jakub, Pavel and I did.

‘Two’

They’ll no longer be caterpillars. They’ll be butterflies.

‘One’

There’ll be a new exhibit. Displaying three new suits. Suits that are stained and patched.

‘Liftoff’

A bright flash. The engines ignite, and a low rumble travels over the empty rugged landscape. The window vibrates. Dust and ice rise from the surface as the rocket begins its slow ascent. I watch it rise, and without knowing why, I press my hand against the glass. The glass feels warm, like it has just been touched.

The rocket is already a point in the sky now. One small dot, in between a million other dots, that was slightly bigger than all those other dots. Almost gone. Almost nothing.

And you know what the funny thing about butterflies is? Nobody ever shows the amount of crawling it takes to become one.