Star Man (2/3)

I have no idea what this is. Is it a journal entry? Is it fiction? I dunno. But there are words and they're on the page, and that's what it's all about

        I rattle against the walls of a steel capsule, caught in a decaying orbit.

I’m trapped in situations outside of my control with nothing but the white hot firmament of heaven to greet me.

I have a radio, everyone has a radio, I have enough switches to flip and channels to tune to. Kessler Syndrome averted for another day after I hit a wall of gas that will shake me to pieces.
I’m stuck in a capsule and the sun is bright through the porthole, yellow in the corner of my sight like a children’s drawing and it would be so nice to slam a pair of sunglasses on that bad boy. A warm sun with a big smile, not a conflagration of gravity and gasses and heat that will never notice my coming or going.

Round and around, day after day, slipping closer and closer to the ground as man’s mockery of nature fails to keep the joke going. The cosmos will have a last laugh if it can bear to spare me a thought as I plummet.

I’ve always wanted to go to space. You need a certain aptitude for it, I guess. Maybe that sounds a bit too coy. As though we’re a caste apart, those who want to go to space and those who don’t. But that’s not really the case. I wanted to go to space because it’s the only thing that I felt I would be any good at. And now I can feel atmosphere scrape against the hull like a sandbar and I’m not so sure that was the right call. But you’ll never know the right call in the moment, will you?

They said to aim for the Lagrange points. They said it should be easy, but that clearly wasn’t the case. I fell short, and I’m tumbling down the gravity well like a flipped coin. Someone get Lassie!

I joke. A dog couldn’t help me right now. I’m hesitant to bring any dogs up here. The memory of Laika is still fresh.

The cabin is comfortable at least. I have food, packets of freeze-dried something or other that grate against the teeth and never quite get unstuck from your back molars. I have a backlog of podcasts which I’m trundling through. Sometimes, when I’m at the right stage in the orbit, I can even play a couple turns in chess or a round or two of go-fish with the folks down below. It’s nice, in its way. It's not enough to keep me from noticing how low the altimeter has dipped today. I’m still above 200 miles. That’s something.

Sometimes, and this is a hoot, I’ll try and throw the cap onto my pen as it hangs in zero gravity. I get it maybe 3 times out of a hundred, but hopefully I can get that ratio up higher before, well, you know.

Today I got the chance to speak to a 3rd grade class over a HAM Radio. They always ask the same questions but it’s nice to have the conversation.

How long have you been in space?

I’ve been in orbit for 284 days, Bryan.

Do you like it up there?

Yes Melissa-I’m sorry, Marissa- yes I like space I suppose. And I’ll continue to love it for the rest of my life

Are you scared you’re going to die?
Great question Janay. All the time! I can’t move some days because I feel like there is a tangled knot of razor wire connecting my rib cage to my spine, and that knot will not come undone. Shifting or jangling it just slashes and stripes me down to my very spirit. Some days I just float and hope that maybe there’ll be a blowout and I’ll spin out into the vacuum of space like a ninja star.

I like ninjas.

Not really a question, but I like them too!

How long until you blow up?

No Ms. Nielsen it’s fine to ask. I don’t actually know! I know that every day I get lower and one day I’ll get so low that the air around me will ignite to a heat of around 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ll rattle around the capsule like the last tic-tac in the box and I will either explode in midair like a firework

Like the Fourth of July

or I’ll careen into the surface of the ocean and the whole capsule will crumple flat in less time than it takes for you to blink. My preference though is that I’ll smack my head into the side of the capsule as I bounce around and it’ll just be lights out.

I’m scared of the dark

Well you better stay on the ground then! That’s all space is, it turns out. All the parts we can reach at least. It’s a lot of dark, and a lot of cold, and there’s sometimes a rock that’s extremely radioactive. But I get to see my house from space as it gets closer and closer and closer every day. That’s neat!

Are you scared of the dark?

I didn’t used to be.

How do you go potty in space?

Well, we have these really neat vacuum cleaner sort of things. It’s gross but really cool!

And we have fun, for the most part. Well, they do, at least, because the whole time we talk about poop and if I’ve met an alien or if the earth is flat all I have to do is peer out the window and know that someday soon I’ll be back on the same planet as those kids, screaming like a banshee at 18,000 miles per hour.

People talk a lot about Icarus. I mean it’s the first metaphor people think of. You flew too close to the sun and now look what’s happened! I don’t know if that’s the case, beyond the literal. But I don’t know if I agree. From where I’m sitting, floating, what have you- semantics! Ugh!- I wasn’t trying to defy anybody. I didn’t want to break any rules. I don’t think I did.

Someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I answered truthfully and now I’m in a metal box the size of a VW Bus and I can hear the bolts groan and the metal ping every time the sun crests over the curve of Earth’s horizon. I don’t think I did anything wrong by wanting to do something that made me feel happy, but that’s on me for not expecting this.

You seldom expect to run face first into a nightmare scenario. Nightmare scenarios are supposed to jump out suddenly from behind a corner. You never expect that when you’re bolted into the capsule that the nightmare scenario will creep up on you long after the fact. You hate to learn that you’re stuck in a coffin only after the decision to step into the coffin has been made.

I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I was so excited to be up here, to get a chance to do something real and tangible. I thought it might have been fun.