Spaced
The say in space no one can hear you scream, but guess what – that's bullshit.
Sure, there's no air out here, no way for the sounds of your pulsin' vocal fear to be broadcast to the uncaring planetary dust you've got all around you, but the truth is you can hear it in your head, loud and long and clear as you're ripped out of the universe you know and into something wholly different – wholly other – than anything you ever thought possible.
You're like that tree in the woods they always talk about – if no one's around to hear you, do you still make a goddamn sound? You bet you do, bucko.
See, it comes to down to the fact that Einstein was right about a bunch of the nutty stuff he talked about, crap that rocket-jockeys didn't really need to know about before blasting off and heading out into the wild black yonder. Lightspeed and relativity were relatively ignored in favor of technological advancement and the pursuit of human “improvement”, with whatever spin it is you want to put on that.
What it really meant was fly-boys stuffed in metal tubes and shoved up the ass end of the speed of light until we came spewing out the thing's nose, careening faster than man had any right to go. All that nonesense about infinite mass and energy once you got up there? Can't speak to it, but I'll tell you this – shit sure got weird.
Screaming was the first step, deep breaths in that resulted in face-shaking expulsions on the way out. The cabin went de-pressured almost immediately after the hop and the suit kicked in, keeping me from dying as my oxygen bubble escaped to the uncaring midnight and the straps on my chair making sure I wasn't another piece of garbage floating around in Saturn's rings. I bellowed 'till I was hoarse, 'till there wasn't much else to do but stop and look around, take stock of just what'd happened and where the sam-diggity-hell I was.
They covered a whole mess of things when I went through the program, from what to do in a failure situation to how to keep your home life settled down when things got hot at the agency. Most of it was good stuff – taught by guys that had been there and back and one that had actually managed to stay married – but none of it covered this.
Not that they could, since so far I as knew I was the first guy to make it, first guy to get through to the other side and see what all the fuss was about.
Lookin' around didn't tell me much; everything mechanical or electrical was shattered and lying in pieces at my feet, so figured I'd better get on the horn and report back in to base. A few tries told me I should've been smart enough to include in among the stuff that'd been broken, but a trip this this did some number on a guy's nerves. I checked the suit – the radio still worked in there – but I got nothin', no answer from any of those pocket-protectors back at HQ. Even with the expected time-lag factored in, I should have at least got a confo message, a beepin' boop that told me what I spewed out in patchy sentences and colorful language actually got through.
No dice.
Along about then I figured on two choices: stay put and hope the next guy they sent found me but didn't ram into the husk of a ship I was sittin' in or de-strap, pull the pin and get the hell out. I had enough air to last a day or two and anchored to the ship I could get a better read on just what kind of tree I'd stuck my head into. Sure, there might be hornets, but they'd get me just as surely inside as out, and being cowardly just isn't part of the makeup.
Stupid brave might be, though.
You'd think I'd have lashed myself to the ship, prevented the suit from floating away and of course I did, but you know what? I cut that cord in about a minute and a half.
The outside wasn't space, buckos, at least not like I'd ever seen it. Yellowed ropes of blazing fire hung together in impossible combinations, blue starlight filtering out from every impossible angle to suffuse the suit visor with more azure eye candy than I'd seen or ever wanted to. Color was the barfed-up everything of the world outside the rocket, and it was like nothing. Really. Nothing.
'Course, there was also Him.
The pronoun might not be right but a guy's gotta pick something and that's the one I'm more familiar with. I'd tell ya he was floating there, open arms outstretched in greeting, but he wasn't really anywhere, 'cept inside my head. That, and suffusin' the universe.
He said my name – I heard it, loud and clear. Somethin' about a welcome, a gift I'd been given. Said he'd show me – and you know what, he did. I cut that cable and went, followin' after some mind-stranger I'd barely met and he showed me just about everything I'd ever wanted to see.
God, Buddha, Allah – buddy was it, and it showed. He also didn't care.
I got all emotional, started tellin' him my problems and he just floated away, moved on 'til I couldn't feel him anymore and I was alone, somethin' in my eye and real twist in my heart. I went lookin' for him, turning over planets and kicking down stars until I realized just what I was doing.
The helmet came off, folks, and the air went right out – swish, boom, gone.
Air – didn't need it. Planets – mine to move. God? Sure, you can call me that.
Gotta tell ya, though, you're startin' to bore me.
- D
No comments:
Post a Comment