Interstellar

“Blight,” the professor said. “Wheat seven years ago, okra this year. Now there’s just corn.”

Something about that stung a little. He was, after all, a farmer.

“But we’re growing more now than ever,” he protested.

“Like the potatoes in Ireland, like the wheat in the dust bowl, the corn will die,” Professor Brand said. “Soon.”

Behind them, the young Dr. Brand entered with Murph, who looked around in undisguised awe. Cooper had seen places like this, albeit long ago. Murph had never seen anything of the kind.

She also looked bleary-eyed.

“Murph is a little tired,” the younger Brand said. “I’m taking her to my office for a nap.”

Cooper nodded, a little relieved. This was probably a conversation his daughter did not need to hear.

“We’ll find a way,” Cooper objected, once she was out of earshot. “We always have.”

“Driven by the unshakable faith that the Earth is ours,” Professor Brand added, a bit sarcastically.

“Not just ours,” Cooper said. “But it is our home.”

The professor regarded him coolly.

“Earth’s atmosphere is 80 percent nitrogen,” he pointed out. “We don’t even breathe nitrogen.” He pointed to a stalk of corn. The leaves were blotched and striped with grey, which along with the ashen, tumescent blobs of infected kernels were the telltale signs of infection.

“Blight does,” the professor continued. “And as it thrives, our air contains less and less oxygen.” He gestured toward Murph. “The last people to starve will be the first to suffocate. Your daughter’s generation will be the last to survive on Earth.”

Cooper stared at him. He wanted to continue to protest, to advocate for hope. New strains of corn could be bred. The answer to the blight might come the day after tomorrow. Human beings were resourceful—it was their hallmark as a race.

But in the pith of him, he knew that everything Professor Brand was saying was true. Unbidden, he experienced an image of Murph, gasping for breath, her eyes, mouth and nostrils caked with dust…

He turned to the professor.

“Tell me this is where you explain how you’re going to save the world,” he said.

* * *

Their next stop was another room, this one on a scale that dwarfed even the last. But this time he knew instantly what he was seeing, and it brought long-buried feelings rushing back, hard.

It was a multi-stage rocket—a big one—contained in a vastly larger cylindrical chamber. In fact, the launch chamber seemed far larger than necessary, by several orders of magnitude. He felt like an ant in a grain silo. High, high above, light shone, this time unmistakably that of the sun, reflected in by a ring of mirrors.

From the look of things, it appeared to be dawn outside.

“We’re not meant to save the world,” Professor Brand said. “We’re meant to leave it.”

Cooper couldn’t take his eyes off of the rocket. He let his gaze travel up, taking in every beautiful inch of her, not in a hurry. When he reached the top he saw two sleek craft mounted there, belly-to-belly, and he knew them.

“Rangers,” he murmured. Lineal descendants of the rocket planes like the X-15, and the space shuttles that followed, the winged Rangers could maneuver easily in an atmosphere. Unlike their predecessors, however, they were equally suited for deep space—at least in theory. None of them had ever made it there before the program was cut.

Or so he had believed. So he had been told when he was forced to retire, sent to “do his duty” in the fields, almost two decades ago.

“The last components of our one versatile ship in orbit, the Endurance,” Professor Brand said. “Our final expedition.”

Final, Cooper thought, in a daze. That suggested others. And there had been a fair number of craft in his day. He’d assumed they’d been broken up and recast as farm equipment. But now…

“What happened to the other vehicles?” Cooper asked.

A new, unreadable expression played across the old man’s face.

“The Lazarus missions,” he said.

“Sounds cheerful,” Cooper replied.

“Lazarus came back from the dead—” Dr. Brand began.

“He had to die in the first place,” Cooper interjected. “You sent people out there looking for a new home…?” He trailed off, incredulous, but Professor Brand just nodded as if it all made perfect sense.

“There’s no planet in our solar system that can support life,” Cooper said. “And it’d take them a thousand years to reach the nearest star. That doesn’t even qualify as futile…” He shook his head. “Where did you send them, Professor?”

“Cooper,” Professor Brand said, “I can’t tell you any more unless you agree to pilot this craft.”

Cooper stared at him, dumbfounded.

“You’re the best we ever had,” the older man added.

What was he talking about? It had been decades. Everything Cooper had experienced, through most of his adult life, told him this whole thing was impossible. And yet…

To be asked to participate sent an undeniable thrill through him.

Which in turn made him more cautious than ever.

“I barely left the stratosphere,” Cooper objected.