"The aliens we hoped to meet"

Prime Space is ready to initiate their MarsNOW mission. They’ve chosen three astronauts to complete a seventeen-month simulation. Helen, Yoshi, and Sergei have been selected for being “among other things, the three people least likely to kill one another under these conditions.”

Each member of the team has a support person who is responsible for sending frequent communication.

For Helen, it’s her daughter Mireille, an aspiring actress who has dealt with her mother’s fame and frequent absence since she was a child. She begins a flirtation with Luke, one of the crew members assigned to track the psychological well-being of the team.

Yoshi’s primary support is his wife. Madoka is a high-level executive that frequently travels. Her company designs robots who serve as home-health aides and companions. Confronted by her own robot prototype, she begins questioning what is her true self.

Sergei’s sons Dmitri and Ilya are adjusting to their new life in America with their mother’s new husband. Dmitri begins exploring his sexuality and worries about being discovered.

   

Meanwhile, in the simulator, each person of the “dream team” struggles to hide any weakness or perceived shortcoming that will make them ineligible for the real mission.

In The Wanderers, Meg Howrey couldn’t have chosen better characters to explore the psychological and physical limits of humankind. Luke, one of the observers, remarks on the standards they have set and the hope they represent: “Wise, creative, benevolent, possessed with an understanding about the fundamental nature of reality…We could be the aliens we hoped to meet.”