In the blackness

‘Begin re-entry sequence when ready.’

The strange thing about space is that there is no light. That is untrue; there is light, but it’s not the right light. It’s not warm. And the light that does exist feels more threatening than providing. Light keeps Earth alive; light here just burns and burns and burns. There is the sun, there is what the moon reflects from the sun, there are the scraps of dingy light within the satellite. The lights in here will fade, flicker on and off, flicker off and never on. But the sun will never fade, at least not while I’m alive. It will go burning on and on and on.

Space also has no sound. But I can hear sound. Sound echoes from the radio. There is sound in the beeping and beeping. The beeping makes me feel like I’m in a hospital; a hostile, white hospital. I hear sound as I move within the ship. I hear sound when I talk, when I shout, when I scream. When I yell and cry and hit things. But it is nothing like the sound of Earth, that busy sound. Here all sound is isolated; sound can only occur when I set it in motion. On occasion the ship will make sounds, beyond the beeping and the radio. Often, I hear it groaning, the sound pained and hollow, as though it is being eaten by the blackness that surrounds it.

‘Repeat, begin re-entry sequence when ready.’

There is no time. There is time, but not measurable time. I can see the sun, burning and burning like an endless, hellish fire, flames licking at the blackness with the ferocity of starved lions. But I can never not see the sun. It is never day or night. It is always just black. Blackness and blackness and blackness, and occasionally a smaller, less bright marble will drift by. The smaller marbles breathe radiant colour into the surroundings. Bright, blinding colours, swirling colours, scarred with craters, banded with layers of cloud, glowing and brilliant spheres. But those marbles pass so quickly, and they are so far away.

Does time exist with nothing to measure it? There are clocks all around me; numbers, endless numbers. But numbers lose their value when they change so quickly, so often. The day, the hour, the second, moving and switching and blurring together into a stream of digits I cannot put an image to. Those numbers become meaningless without the characterisation of light, without the buzzing of sound. I sit and watch them, changing and changing. I sit and stare at them, hoping to see something new.

In the blackness, I would occasionally see other satellites, other people, other stations. In their passing, I would press my hand to the window and hope maybe they were doing the same. Here, in the land of blackness, in the land of darkness, there is no law or religion or country or institution to separate people. Up here, in the realm of lifelessness, they too were stuck alone, alive by the grace of the universe and the flimsy collection of alloy and insulation they inhabited. But the people in those ships – if there were people in those ships – were buried behind thick metal walls. I would never see them, never speak to them. I would never feel them. I hadn’t felt anyone in years.

‘Please confirm your status?’

There is little meaning up here. Particularly regarding words. Words have lost meaning. The early philosophers named ‘space’ the ‘heavens’. A womb of worlds. A sublime, empyrean ocean of deep, radiant blackness. Not something dead, but something that poured beauty and life. An ocean from which our world, from which all worlds and all life had been born. Somewhere so beautiful it was inhumane. That is what ‘space’ had been described as. A sanctuary from the mundanity of home. But I found no sanctuary here. I found no meaning.

I found no hope, no purpose, nothing remarkable. Nothing worth the testing, worth the training, worth the launch. That word – ‘space’. That word shifted. ‘Space’ is no heaven. ‘Space’ is a cool vacuity of immeasurable cold, of utter, pure deadness in the most horrific of ways. A place so lonely it was forced into an awful, lifeless existence, trapping us in a small, heaven-sent bubble.

The splendours of ‘space’ had worn off long ago. Long ago did those thoughts, those wonders, wash off into a pallid, cheerless grey. Space, a place I envisioned as perhaps a chariot gliding through the fields of heaven, was now a dark steel box, dimly lit by a narrow slit of light.

I found myself staring through the rounded hatch door toward the back of the ship, watching the blackness through the window, hoping to catch a glimmer of the wonder I had imagined so vividly. I found myself staring at that window more and more often.

‘Repeat, please confirm your status?’

There was no warmth. I hadn’t felt anything human for so long. Longer than since I had come out here. I hadn’t hugged my mother or my father. I hadn’t told them I left. The outside of the ship was warm; I leant against it, closing my eyes and pretending it was a person. But it was only the nauseating warmth of thick, cloudy radiation building across the ship. It was trying to suffocate me; it was starting to become successful.

Taped haphazardly to the padded sleep station sat an image from Earth, a polaroid printed and given to me prior to launch. It was an image of me, alongside four candidates who weren’t selected for the program. I had spoken to one, Matt, who boasted of three children and a wife. The same age as me, with three children and a wife. The other three I didn’t know. Never spoke to them. Two had rings; one girl didn’t. The girl was smiling broadly. I had named her Olivia, after a brightly spotted fish from my childhood. I look at her often, her eyes so wide and beautiful and real, and I wish that she had come with me. I wish I had spoken to her before. Because maybe then I could be up here and she could be down there and she could remember that I existed. And when they added my name to whatever file, to whatever number, she would remember me beyond that. But I had never spoken to her.

I held the image closely, tucking it into my breast pocket. I looked to the window.

‘Commander, do you read?’

There was no freedom. There were only walls, and walls, and walls. And the walls were hot and browning on the edges. The ship groaned with a pained sound, longing for the safety of Earth’s atmosphere once more. Radio words drifted between the echoing groans and the browning walls. Loneliness here felt like a disease. Crippling and breaking and tearing and eating away at whatever I had left. I cannot describe how lonely it was, watching my home dwindle into the size of a fist, then a lemon, then a pin, and then vanish until there was no home or city or country. It had been so long since I had heard my own voice. I used to sing and talk and whisper to the walls, just to hear something human, just to hear myself. I was scared to talk now, scared to hear what distorted, mockery of a voice remained.

Had I always been lonely? Not like this, never like this. But I had always been alone. No family, no friends, no relationships, no children, no luncheons, no laughter. Yes, I had always been alone. Did I want a family? Did I want children? Did I want more? I place my hand on the window of the rounded door hatch, feeling the cold blackness stab back at me.

‘Repeat, Commander, do you read?’

What was the meaning in this? To find more? To see more? What more was there to see? Rather, what more did we need to see? Theories upon theories upon theories. We’ve reached the point of no more advancements, certainly not scientifically, possibly not even ethically. So, what was I doing? What could I do? When I return, what do I return with? Who do I return to?

‘Commander, do you copy?’

What am I doing?

There is no meaning up here. Perhaps, there is no meaning anywhere.

‘Repeat, do you copy?’

The blackness is comforting and cool; I feel it breathing its cold breath onto my cheek. I feel the awful, airless air circling impatiently around the hatch. Nowhere could be worse than this place. The seal of the hatch begins to hiss as the parasitic vacuum of space thrusts its way through the door. Inching and inching and inching through.

‘Repeat, Commander, do you copy?’

Would anyone care if I didn’t come home? Would Olivia recognise my face in the report, recognise me? Would Matt tell his wife I was gone? Would there be a funeral? Would I ever be more than another digit changing and changing in some meaningless spreadsheet?

‘Commander, please, do you copy?’

I wish I could regret leaving the ship. But that blackness was so comforting. And the light had finally begun to come back, brighter, far brighter than before.

‘Commander?’

…