The Wild World Outside

Never forget that the world outside is wild.  Turn off your electronics, unplug, and sit quietly by a window on a blustery evening.  Feel the wind shake the panes.  Hear it as it whistles around your home, around the homes near yours, around the carefully planted trees.  Hear how the rain wants to come inside.  Feel how it pounds relentlessly against the wood, brick, glass, metal and remember that without constant vigilance, it will get in.  The wild world and weather will eventually get in and tear your home apart.  The shingles will fail.  The wood will rot.  The masonry will crumble.  Your belongings will rot with repeated wetting, freezing, thawing, gnawing, dragging, blowing.  The traveling earth swirls the winds so you can feel the speed of the rotation and the revolution.  Your comforts will be rended by these winds, pulling apart all that you know.  Even the wild world outside is comforting and familiar when you expand your imagination to see how your world is also hurtling through the empty, airless, limitless space.

Tending Garden

Evie preferred the hands-and-knees method of garden tending rather than letting the automatic systems take over.  The robotic systems never managed to get out all the weeds and always managed to take out some of the veggies.

The dirt smelled rich and natural, and when Evie closed her eyes, she thought of the worms in their tunnel homes, full, fat, and happy, warm and safe in the dark.  She looked around, but no other gardeners had been assigned near her area, so she stretched herself out flat between the rows of spinach plants and laid down right on the path, her nose to the dark brown earth.  Evie felt a nauseating fluttering in her stomach and her hands went flat, as if grabbing the path might hold her safe.  It was nearly always in the garden where she could forget they were on a star ship, until, of course, a change of direction or power fluctuation brought her back to the limits of the world.

Which Star Wars character best describes you?

Most stay-at-home types thought that space travel was all action, but in truth it was quite often butt-numbingly boring.  Han had been waiting for what seemed an eternity on this forsaken planet in this no-name system on the rear end of nowhere just to get one crucial part for his ship.  The Millennium Falcon could fly without it, but hyperspace was no-go, and he hated having his secret weapon out of commission.  Chewy had wanted to look around what passed for a city, but Han had a bad feeling that strangers weren't welcome to snoop, and Chewy was stranger than most in this, apparently hairless, planet.

If an alien came to earth how would you show it love?

For more than a week, the nights had been sweltering, the air thick with humidity and not a hint of breeze.  The evening news kept predicting blessed rain, but always at the end of the ten-day forecast.  No matter how close the days crept to the prediction, the rain stayed out of reach.

Naomi wheeled her TV cart to her farmhouse's front window and sat outside to listen to the gentle babble over the sounds of crickets and peepers having sex in the fields and woods that surrounded her for miles.  A gentle stream would usually be heard, but that had dried up close to the start of this unholy summer.  She lay back in the hammock strung from the house to a pillar of the wide porch and wished for a breeze.  Tonight would be another night out here, she thought.  Is it ridiculous to drag out a fan?

The thin, white, over-sized shirt she wore for pajamas was already clinging to her back and chest.  Living alone and so far out in the countryside, her house not even visible from the little-used road, Naomi thought maybe she'd go without, but her natural modesty wouldn't let her stray any further than the already daring nightwear.  She decided on a bowl of ice with a washcloth plus the fan.

Just as she swung her bare feet to the wide-planked porch boards, her television flickered and went out.  Naomi stood still to take stock.  The light in her kitchen was also out.  Conclusion?  She thought in her careful, scientific way.  No fan for me.  People with air conditioners loved to hog electricity, despite the warnings of brownouts and blackouts, and now look where it puts the more environmentally conscious.  In the dark.

Naomi let her eyes adjust.  She plotted out her route to her favorite flashlight, to the linen closet for a washcloth, and finally to her freezer for the quick removal of one tray of ice.  And a metal bowl.  She'd set it on her chest and absorb the chill until she had a bowl of water, but at least she might be able to sleep.  Before she implemented her plan, she was lured off her porch and on the dry dust of the path before her house.  The stars, without any light pollution, were brilliant, and she could see the long, dusty arm of the Milky Way.  It fascinated her as it always did, even though studying the stars was a part of her job.

Pageant Question: Who do you think will be the first woman to become president? Why?

I remember learning in Ancient History that when faced with the first knowledge of what they called "alien" life, Earthlings went to war with each other.  Leaky, I know, but that's what they did!  War used to happen a lot on Earth, and the reasons were both complex and animalistic.  Earthlings didn't like change, and they were intensely self-absorbed.  Individual Earthlings were self-absorbed, and their increasingly larger tribes were self-absorbed.  They had family tribes and community tribes and religious tribes and belief tribes and national tribes not to mention a starload of sub-tribes.  The change that came from the "aliens" shook up all those tribes.  It's ridiculous to think how many they killed while fighting change.  The word "eventually" is a horrible way to skip over those decades of death, but eventually Earthlings created a panel able to handle their new, galactic world.

Pageant Question 36: Tell me about the most important decision you have had to make.

The snick and hiss of the helmet locking into place and the rebreather kicking on always made Sam's heart quicken.  This time, however, he was alone.  More than alone.  Sam turned at the waist, the thick suit crinkling, to check the door as his shaking hands went through the motions necessary to preserve his life.  Initializing all the systems was usually done by another crew member and double checked by a third, and Sam hoped that he hadn't forgotten any of the process in his nervous rush.  The gently flowing air in the suit made him shiver.  Sam rechecked each clip and back-up clip that held the precious pack to his suit, his shaking hands made clumsier by the suit's gloves.

He was as ready as he thought he could be without assistance.  This airlock had a small window, and his heart hammered harder, causing the suit's biocheck to beep softly.  Sam took precious moments away from his schedule to breathe deeply until the beeping stopped.  His fingers danced through the procedure he had done a thousand times to open the airlock onto space.  Seal the inside door.  Depressurize the small room.  Release the outside door's quintuple locking mechanism.  Spin the wheel. Magna-lock the door to the hull.

He held his breath, and, while the alarms began ship-wide, Sam stepped into open space.

323

The screaming of the engines drowned out the screams of the passengers as they thrust into hard reverse to slow their unplanned descent.  "Unplanned descent" is what the spaceline called it, but to everyone on board, it was a crash.  The six passengers had been required to fully strap in as soon as Oceania 8 had a view of their destination, and only one had ignored the computer's instructions.  The 20-something girl in A-2 thought there would be just enough time to retrieve her Halcion IV Interactive, but there wasn't.  A-2 continued to get smashed around the cabin even after she became just a body.

318

When I want to make myself feel dizzy, I picture myself, feet not just on earth, but on the Earth.  I imagine myself being held to the Earth as it spins.  Then, like one of those videos from Cosmos, I pan out and up from me.  I am tiny on the Earth.  The Earth is tiny.  The solar system is tiny.  The Milky Way is tiny.  I am here, yet I am nothing.

That's when I start to feel dizzy and the pile of dishes and messages to answer seem... tiny.

311

"Jettison the extra."  The captain's pronouncement froze his crew.  "Now," he added to jump start them breathing again.  It was a testament to their training and their belief in their captain that all three of the crew were jolted back to work.  Ben prepped the magnetic release, and Jo went to double seal the airlocks in reverse from the rear of the main ship.

Although Gia continued rerouting critical systems in preparation for release, she was in doubt, and not afraid to question Captain Halloran.  "Captain, there could be another way.  What if we..."

"I have thought about it plenty, Gia.  This is our last chance.  Ben?"

"Mags ready, sir."

Jo skidded back onto the bridge.  "Airlocks sealed."  Gia swiveled her seat to look at Jo; to see how she felt.  Jo wasn't looking back, but her lips were tight and she seemed pale as she sat back in front of her console.

"Jo..." Gia began, only to be cut off again by the Captain.  "Gia, prepare the thrusters."  Captain Halloran dropped into his chair and buckled in; everyone followed suit.  "Ben."  The Captain ran his hand over his face.  "Release the maglocks."

5

“It’s not working.”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘It’s not working?’” Malek’s voice verged on panic.

“I mean,” Lorin said with patient frustration, “it’s not working. Nothing’s happening.”

“You reset?”

“That’s what I went over here to do, Malek, so yeah, I reset, but it’s not resetting.” Lorin straightened, shook her light brown hair out of its ponytail tieback and braided it deftly.

Malek stood in a slight crouch, arms and legs spread slightly, looking to Lorin like a squirrel frozen in traffic. He gaped at her as she pinned her braid into a tight loop on the back of her head.

She saw the question stuck in his frightened throat. “I’m getting ready to jump, Malek, and I suggest you get ready, too.” Lorin didn’t wait for his reply. She zipped her flight suit and checked that all her pockets were tacked shut even as she moved towards her storage locker.

“But…we can reset…the ship can…we can’t possibly…there’s no…” his hands made limp circles as he looked from the helm to the terminal screens and back.

“Listen, if you’re not going to finish a sentence, why do you even bother starting them?” Lorin finished securing her inter-space lifesuit and paused with the helmet in her hands. “I suggest you put on your lifesuit, too, Malek. Unless you’re planning on going down with the ship? The captain’s dead. There’s really no need for you to die, too.” The helmet self-fastened as soon as it touched the top of her suit, inner atmosphere initializing. She checked the stats on the visual screen superimposed on half the faceguard and noticed Malek still staring. She selected external audio with a blink. “Malek,” she spoke as if to a resistant child, “put on your lifesuit. Now!”

Any action Malek may or may not have taken was overridden when the port side of their ship peeled open and all the air, as well as Malek, were sucked into space.

Lorin swore once. She had about two minutes to save him before the effects of the vacuum were irreversible. Hopefully, he remembered to scream to help balance his internal lung pressure, or she’d have even less time. Lorin grabbed Malek’s suit from his storage locker, disengaged the magnetic coupling on her lifesuit’s boots and launched herself after her ill-chosen boyfriend.