Word Count: 6518 | Reading Time: 22 min
I hurtle out of orbit, and burst into flames as soon as I hit the atmosphere. Cruelly, I am ripped from slumber. I fall like a burning inferno, my Mooncat an artificial comet of glowing aluminum and melting plastic. Despite the drugs coursing through my blood, I can still feel the pain all too well. My arms blacken to coals around the box I am desperately clutching. Screaming till the fire burns away the air in my lungs, I die never knowing if it was worth it.
***
I had been floating in the Mooncat outside of Station Epimetheus like just another piece of jetsam flushed out into space. On my dashboard, Ration lay sleeping soundly, his whiskers twitching occasionally as he dreamed of whatever it is rodents dream of. I watched the station hovering in the Moon’s orbit, stagnating in the same spot it had resided in for a century. A little yellow warning sign flashed in a corner of the main viewscreen, signaling that cosmic rays were penetrating the hull. I paid it little mind; the damage they caused had already been done to everyone in my profession, frying our gonads and rendering us sterile. Small price to pay for a little peace and quiet.
Trash collected outside the station, sticking to its hull like lint on a woolly sweater, or floating a few kilometres away. It was my job to clear the debris and either push it down into the moon’s gravitational well, or away from it so that it would drift out into the void. Occasionally I hopped out of the shuttle attached to an umbilical to salvage anything interesting that caught our eyes. My ‘cat and I, and the rest of the trash men in their ‘cats, could only do so much, of course. It was not our cause to give us clear skies – that would be an impossible task – but only to reduce the likelihood of our exhaust vents getting entirely clogged, or a debris field cascade event from taking place and damaging the station. It was not a desirable job for most of the station’s inhabitants for obvious reasons, but it suited me well. It was the only place where I could be alone, where I was not fighting through crowds just to get by.
The vast majority of the Epimetheus citizens worked in call centers and data processing centers, taking on all the statistical and logistical tasks required to keep both our and our sister station’s systems running smoothly. They performed pure, senseless number crunching standing shoulder to shoulder and were constantly surrounded by a cacophony of voices babbling technical jargon in English, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu, Mandarin, and other languages I did not know, all lune long. I never understood how people could tolerate it.
Almost a century ago, or so it went, Station Epimetheus and Station Ananke were one, until our forefathers staged a mutiny. Why they were possessed with such a mad idea, no one knew, though Ananke claimed treachery to be a trait inherent to our race. It would have jeopardized the last bastion of mankind, ever since the species fled the barren Earth. Fortunately, it was quashed swiftly, but unfortunately, Ananke had to separate the mutineers’ section from the primary station. They floated it out to the far side of the moon, and left it there, for their safety, and for our own. Even so, we were not abandoned to our fate. Ananke sent us food, equipment, and batteries from their own meagre supplies, just enough to keep us alive. In exchange, we took on work, keeping us both operational even in such dire times. And our arrangement carried on well since our founding.
Still, not everyone could work in the data processing realm. Someone had to maintain the machinery keeping us alive, to resolve disputes and keep the peace, or indeed, to take out the trash. Though some number crunchers considered my job to be beneath them, I did not mind. They would never experience the view I had, of the dark side of the moon haloed by a corona of Earthshine. Of the Station, ever so slowly spinning in place, at one quarter turn a day. Or of Ananke, just visible at the Moon’s terminator, a singular speck in my vision suspended in orbit, just as stationary as us.
KRAK!
Something hit my viewscreen, leaving a tiny crack in the exterior glass. Ration woke with a screech, and hopped off the dash instinctively, scampering into the tangle of wires underneath for shelter. A jettisoned condom had hit my Mooncat, its frozen solid contents leaving it hard as stone and inflated from the pressure differential. When bits of trash collide against one another, they pick up momentum, and with no drag to slow them down they could reach dangerous speeds. I understood the phenomenon, and was quite used to many of the unpleasant sights the garbage cloud had to offer, but somehow, it always had a way of surprising me now and again. Grimacing at the sight of the spent rubber sleeve, I reached for a dial on my dashboard, and twisted it. There was a brief crackle of static as my short-wave transceiver cycled through various frequencies until it found the one it was searching for.
“HQ, this is Hadi. I’m done out here for the lune. I’m coming back in now, so clear the landing bay. Please, thanks.” With that, I clicked the radio off, and before leaning back into my seat, thumped my fist on the window, dislodging the offending condom, and sending its shattered pieces floating back into space. Grumbling at Ration and slipping him a piece of stale naan to distract him, I started reentry procedures. I donned my helmet, and set course for Epimetheus.
***
I hung around the garage, crossing my arms and anxiously rubbing my stubbled chin. “Think there’s a blockage in the oil canister, could hear it wheezing. Transmission could use a tune-up too. Oh, I heard screws rattling in the dash. And the, uh, the impulse engines felt a little -“
“Hadi! I know what I’m doing.” Ayesha snapped at me through gritted teeth from underneath the Mooncat. “Just… wait there and let me do my thing.”
I sighed, my fidgeting only increasing now that I could not pester her any longer. “Fine, fine…” I knew I had no reason to worry, since Ayesha knew my ‘cat as well as I did, having been my mechanic for years. But when my ride was concerned I could not help but fret. I stood back, zipped my mouth, and watched her work.
I could only see her from her waist down, the rest of her eclipsed by my shuttle’s hull, which was pried open like an umbrella so she could reach into its guts. My eyes lingered appreciatively on her legs, bare for the most part save for her cargo shorts. They were golden brown, healthily tanned from her ankles to just above her knees, while underneath those she was as pale as everyone else on the station. It was the UV from her plasma torches, they replicated the effect of standing under a desert sun, something none of us had access to for a century. The occasional flash of light from said torch illuminated her from beneath the Mooncat, accompanied by the ‘fwoosh’ of its flame.
“…Alright. I’ve done what I can. Give it a go.” She stated after a half hour.
My Mooncat was more cow than cat in its appearance. It was wide and boxy, with chunky metal protrusions on its sides, not aerodynamic in the slightest. It was not meant to be, after all. It was built to hold garbage, withstand small scale stellar impacts, and not to get anywhere faster than at a jogger’s pace. I loved it all the same. Eagerly, I hopped up the steps to the cockpit, and leaned onto the dashboard, half my body still hanging outside. Ration’s black eyes glinted at me from under the seat. “Hey, bud. Don’t mind me.” I pressed the engagers, coupling the magnetic impulse drive to the battery. Nothing rattled, wheezed, or whined. The Mooncat came to life, and purred with pleasure, its ailments having been massaged away by skilled hands. I shut it off quickly, hopped back down, and met Ayesha with a grin as she slid out from under the beast. Seeing my satisfaction, she returned my smile, and stood up, dusting herself off, brushing her sable hair off her wide, oil-stained face, and pulling off her goggles. She had white circles around her brown eyes, like a reverse raccoon. “Ah, that’s my girl! Listen to her go! Thanks, Ayesha.” I patted its side proudly, transfixed by its gentle, soothing vibrations.
Ayesha cleared her throat. I turned to her, surprised at how close she’d gotten. She was leaning against the shuttle, her head cocked to the side curiously and with an expectant look on her face. I exhaled through my nose in amusement, then leaned down to plant my lips against hers briefly. When I pulled away, cheeks slightly flushed, she wore a ponderous expression, as though she was evaluating the kiss and giving it a score in her mind. After a moment, she smiled at me once more, seemingly satisfied. I rolled my eyes, though, tellingly, my shoulders relaxed.
“Mm, I’m glad. You can make it up to me later.” She responded, finally.
“Alright. Got something in mind?”
“I do actually!” She responded, a little too quickly. Ayesha’s smile turned sly. “I got a few extra ‘cat batteries lying around. Take me out for a spin later? I’m a little sick of these walls.” She gestured around her. The thrum of our civilization permeated the air, the ever present sound of ten thousand simultaneous conversations bouncing around the bulkheads, mixed with the constant hum of our generators. Never a moment of solace on Station Epimetheus. “I’m thinking 22:00.”
“Uh, you sure, it’s barely got space for even a…”
She narrowed her eyes at me dubiously, arching her eyebrows. Oh… Right.
“You got it. 22:00.”
***
Leaving the garage, I was swept up by the crowds that traversed the promenade at all times. It was a sea of pale brown faces, all jostling and fighting to get where they needed to be. The stench of sweat and sewage hung thick around the station, clinging to the low ceiling and to everyone who passed through it. I traversed the currents, making my way back to one of the flophouses. There were generally two lanes that circled around the promenade, going in opposite directions; one to and one from the data processing center. To get to any other location, typically a traveler would have to hop between the two, and surf along until they reached a breakaway to another section of the station.
Rats scurried about underfoot, more deft at navigating the station than us. No one paid them any mind. They were the only other inhabitants of Station Epimetheus, stowaways from our departure from Earth, and they had come to be an important part of the ecosystem. They lived harmoniously with us, off of our leftovers, scarcely interfering with station operations once they had learned biting wires would lead to quick deaths. Many of us, myself included, kept them as pets, and we often turned to them for food when times were tough.
Space was a luxury we did not have, and it was no wonder why. With little in the way of entertainment besides the Ananke radio channel, and with communal spaces shared between men and women packed together like sardines, casual sex and recreational drugs were the pastimes of choice for most. Naturally, the birthrate was astronomical. We had reached the station’s population capacity three generations ago, and since then we had exceeded it a few times over. We had been making it work with increasingly desperate measures, but I did not see how it could possibly last.
I sometimes thought that I was the only one who had concerns about the longevity of the station. It seemed to me that most people were happy just to punch in at work and punch out fifteen hours later, day after day, without reprieve. Life was cheap on Station Epimetheus, after all. If someone was killed in an altercation, if someone was lost to illness, or trampled underfoot, the sea of people would simply fill in the gap they left behind and life would continue as normal for the rest. I or another trashie would find their ashes floating in a can somewhere above the station, and we would push it away or down to the moon like any other bit of rubbish, and that would be the end of it for those not personally invested in the loss. ‘More beds for the rest of us.’ Some would say. ‘Can’t be helped. Ananke hasn’t got many meds to spare, and we can’t make our own.’ Others claimed. Antibiotics were in short supply, but somehow we always had decent stocks of morphine.
There were stalls set up outside of the corridor that led to the sleeping area, peddling food and other wares to those coming home or setting off to work. Nihari was popular; it made the most of the meagre water, spice, and bread rations floated over from our neighbor station. I grabbed a bowl and a quarter slice of naan for myself as I passed by the stall, leaving behind a can of water on the counter in exchange. I quickly checked for any scraps of grey fur stuck to it, then hungrily fished a hunk of tender meat from the muddy grease it floated in as I walked.
“Hey, Hadi, brother! How you likin’ the new mini-fridge? Heard the other trashies’re jealous you get to take your lunch out while you’re workin’. I got a microwave that’ll go great with it, y’know?” A rotund, grinning man with a patchy beard called out to me from a stall lined with cobbled together electronics as I was passing by.
“It’d be great if I had something to put in it, Saleem. Gimme the water you owe me already.”
His grin quickly vanished, and he turned his attention to other potential customers, pretending not to have heard me.
I found my way home, and walked between long rows of capsule-style sleeping compartments towards my own, avoiding looking at any squirming sheets or doped-up addicts on my way. When I got there, I banged the wall of the capsule once, and once the rats that had found their way under my sheets had scurried out shrieking, I hopped in. I closed my eyes, filtered out the sounds of those waking up for their shifts (and more salacious noises), and pretended I was back in space. For the next few hours, I got whatever sleep I could.
***
23:13. It was hard to move around much in the Mooncat’s dimly lit cockpit, not with the two of us there, and our feet kept knocking against the dashboard. I was not going to complain about it though, and neither was Ayesha. We were rather too preoccupied to do so. I had my hands on her waist, over the border on her midriff where her skin turned from white to brown, and she had her arms wrapped behind my neck. She was so close to me that it was hard to see anything past her, and her thick black hair prevented my gaze from wandering. A mist had formed in the cockpit, fogging up the viewscreen glass from within, but with the Mooncat’s headlights off there was nothing to see anyway.
Ayesha collapsed on top of me, resting her head on my shoulder and sighing deeply, her skin warm and damp like mine. We lay there for some time, enjoying the afterglow and the reprieve from the station, when suddenly a shriek shattered the comfortable atmosphere, followed by incessant, frantic squeaking. We both jolted awake, Ayesha knocking her head against the low ceiling. She hissed through her teeth and rubbed her head. I looked past her angrily at Ration standing on his pudgy hind legs, staring out the window.
“Fucking rat! Knock it o… off…” My words died in my throat, as I saw the incomprehensible outside the window.
Slowly, ever so slowly, a light had begun to drift across the darkness, reflecting in the dew on the glass. We were meant to be in total darkness, on the far side of the moon, and yet, there it was. All Mooncat headlamps shone white, not yellow like I was seeing then, so it could not have been another unscheduled trashie out there. There was no explanation. I leaned forward, and flipped a switch that activated the screen clearer. Heat blasted the window, banishing the fog in seconds.
“Ayesha… Look…” I pointed, dumbfounded.
Across the endless night a lone match head travelled, lit at one end. It was like a star had been given life and fled its fixed position in the heavens. It was beautiful. And as it continued its lazy arc across the cosmos it came into clearer focus, growing to the size of a fingernail in my vision. I could see now that it was something like our station, or even like my Mooncat in some ways, a mechanical behemoth, but propelled forward by a raging flame at its rear. I had never seen something move like that. It looked serene from that distance, but I knew it must have been travelling at tens of thousands of kilometers per second. It slowed down as it passed by Ananke, then actually came to a halt beside it, its fire going out. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I watched its dark silhouette. After a half hour, the fire reignited, starting with cinders then progressing to an inferno, and it continued its journey.
“No way…” I heard Ayesha mutter under her breath.
It only took a minute after that, but it eventually moved out of our field of vision without further incident, even as we stuck our faces against the warm glass to follow its course as far as we could. Ration did not stop squeaking till it was gone. When it disappeared, we said nothing for a time. We were both processing what we had seen. What no one had seen in a hundred years. Eventually we looked at each other, our expressions mirroring each others. We were… afraid.
“Did you…?”
“Yeah, I did. What was…?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should…?”
“Let’s go back, Hadi…”
We struggled to get dressed in the claustrophobic space, turned our shuttle around, and headed back to our home shaken.
***
We explained what we had seen to our overseers, our society’s leaders. Most were skeptical, but some made the effort to contact Station Ananke to confirm our story. Then they too swiftly dismissed us. Ananke emphatically assured them that we were mistaken, that they had no log of such a thing being sighted. Why, some of their own crew were repairing their hull on the outside, and they had not seen a thing either! I could not understand their obstinance.
We explained what we had seen to our elders, to the handful of wizened seventy-plus people who still lived. Many did not know what to make of our story, but sometimes their eyes would light up, and they mentioned stories their grandparents had told them of how Ananke came up into the Moon’s orbit propelled by fire, just as we described. One toothless old man called it a ‘dual-mode propulsion rocket’ and went on to try and explain the physics and chemistry behind it, but judging by our blank expressions he could tell we did not understand. A controlled constant explosion, he further explained with some annoyance. We understood.
After we were done with our interviews and had created enough of a furor among the people that started to pay attention to our story, we retired to Ayesha’s garage. There was a palpable tension between us. We still had unanswered questions, some with disturbing implications. About why our sister station lied, for example. And about where the rocket came from.
“Had to be Earth, don’t you think? It came from that direction.” I said.
“Earth’s been dead for a long time.”
“Well, where else did it come from? It came from past Ananke, so it couldn’t have started there. There’s no other place we know of where people are.”
Ayesha did not have a response to that. She just pursed her lips and ground her teeth as she struggled with the implication.
“Maybe… Maybe they’ve been lying to us about a lot of stuff, Ayesha. They’ve got us doing all their work for them, and in exchange they send us what supplies they can spare, and we’ve always just assumed that it’s the only way for either station to function.” I felt a rising paranoia in my gut. The wrongness in our lives, I had never questioned it before because it was the only way I knew how to live.
“Hadi, we have log entries from before we separated that explain all this to us. The elders would have said something too, if they knew more!” Ayesha claimed. There was a tremor in her voice.
“They could have changed the logs before they separated us! We only have the radio signal they broadcast to us to tell us what life is like there now. That and how many petabytes of crypto to mine, and how many bloody calls to take. And the elders, they weren’t there either. Maybe they’ve forgotten, or… or they doubt their own memories because everything else tells them otherwise. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers!” I stood up and began to pace. “But I do know how we could learn more! We need to see for ourselves. If we can get as far as Ananke, we could learn the truth. We just have to figure out how…”
It was a mad idea. We did not have the means to travel so far. The Mooncats were our only form of travel outside the station, and they lacked the speed to make it to Ananke. And there was a high chance that if Ananke was covering the truth up, they would be hostile if we even did wind up there. Even so… I suddenly felt so sick of eating rat. Of living like one.
“…Dual propellant combustion.” Ayesha said, after a contemplative minute. I tried to meet her gaze, but she only stared at her knees, frowning. “We can modify your ‘cat to be like the rocket. I… I think I can figure it out, it wouldn’t be too different from my plasma torches. If you’re sure, then I think we can do this. But Hadi…”
“I’m sure.”
***
We spent the lune together, sharing a capsule one last time, then made what systems checks we could in the hangar, repeating them twice, thrice, more at times, mostly just to calm our nerves. It had taken months of preparation to reach this point, of skimming off the top of supply requisitions and recycling whatever useful material we came across elsewhere. A few of the other trashies would find their ‘cat batteries mysteriously drained in those months. They would get over it.
We did not have the fuel to spare for more than a couple of test runs, but through sheer luck, or rather Ayesha’s tireless work, everything seemed operational. I had seen the cumbersome bucket of bolts sitting in front of me fly faster than any Mooncat ever had. I had never been more proud of it, or of Ayesha.
We took our time saying our teary goodbyes, then I climbed into the cockpit, alone, clutching a sheaf of documents, and photographs, and a datastick that contained a download of our station’s logs. Behind my seat in my mini-fridge, I saw a white, ceramic box with a heart shaped ribbon on it. Medical supplies Ayesha left me in case of emergency. Bless her. I started up the initialization sequence, and when it was done, I waited until the hangar was cleared and the doors open, then began my journey across space. Ration seemed none the wiser of the momentous occasion, and he slept as soundly as he ever had beside the steering lever. I had tried to leave him behind many times, but he had always found his way back into the shuttle, back to his home. Selfishly, I relented. Truthfully, I was afraid to go out there on my own.
I had found him many years prior, soon after I was assigned to trash duty, alone in my Mooncat, no sign of a family around him. He’d refused to leave, even when I threatened his life or tried to bribe him, scampering around the wiry interior to avoid capture. Eventually, I got used to him, and learned that he was really a very polite rodent on most occasions. I started to see him as a friend, and I liked to think he was like me. He also had no family. And maybe he too had joined this assignment to escape the hordes on the station, and to witness the majesty of the dark cosmos. His company made my daily grind less lonely.
I weaved through the debris field with practiced ease, operating on battery power alone for now. When I cleared it, I let my finger hover over the fuel ignition switch for a moment. It trembled. I swallowed hard, steeled myself, then pressed it.
The sound was enormous, terrifying, an explosive boom that reverberated around the shuttle’s aluminum frame. I could see the light of the fire reflected off the windows edges, bright orange and blue, the only colors in the infinite black around the spacecraft. I could feel the G-force impact throughout my body, slamming me back into my seat and pinning me there, like a giant’s hand pressing down on me. I only had to keep it up for a few moments, then reached out, pushing back against the force, and flipped the ignition switch back the other way. I shot forward faster than I expected, my seatbelt catching me and knocking the wind out of my lungs. Groaning, I sat back, and let inertia carry me the rest of the way over the next few hours, circling around the moon. I checked on Ration, and somehow he seemed fine. Resilient little creature.
As we drifted closer to Ananke, more of the moon’s light side came into view. Its terminator, where it turned from light to dark, reminded me of Ayesha. I monitored my transceiver for new frequencies as the station grew bigger than a mere fleck in my vision. It was much larger than Epimetheus, I noticed, as was the debris field surrounding it. I saw no Mooncats. Instead as I approached, a great ring came into view on Ananke’s far side, bordered by pale blue lights each as big as a half dozen capsules put together. As I got closer though, my eyes were drawn to what was behind it, emerging from around the moon. A blue disk floating in the night sky, much larger than the sun and far more pleasant to look at. It was not a pale blue like the lights, but deep and brilliant. And on it were roiling swirls of white, like paint floating on water, and beneath it all, mottled green and brown spots. Part of it was draped in dark, but even there I could see pinpricks of orange light, just barely distinguishable from the void. It had to be Earth. Not barren as we were told, but alive. Ration chirped at it curiously. It was breathtaking.
There was a flash of movement and light from the ring, and my attention turned back to it. I squinted, and then suddenly it repeated. A few pieces of jetsam had drifted too close to the ring. When one passed through its center, the rings lights brightened, and in a flash, the piece shot forward faster than I could see, but leaving behind a stream of fading particles tracing its path. It pointed at Earth.
The radio came to life, blaring static for a moment before finding a channel.
“Hello?!” I called out desperately. There was silence for a good while.
“Uhm… Who is this?” A man replied. He spoke with a strange accent, one I had not heard before.
“I- I’m from Station Epimetheus? I need to talk to someone in charge.”
“Wha-?! Jesus Christ…” The line went dead. I shouted back from my end to no avail, then sat out there waiting for something to happen.
“Hey, sorry about that, bud. Just sit tight out there. Name’s John, how ‘bout you?” The man returned after some time, sounding slightly out of breath. I’d never heard the name before, it felt strange on my tongue. I told him mine, and he proceeded to make small talk with me, avoiding any of my pleas that he get an overseer on the line. I began to get the distinct impression that he was attempting to stall me; it made my neck hairs rise.
“Please, it’s important that I spea-” Static interrupted me, and the line went dead once more. John cut me off. Cursing, I slammed my fist against the dash.
Station Ananke shifted. Panels along its side opened up, and I watched as debris began to pour out of it. They were jettisoning refuse, just as Epimetheus often did, but without clearing their vents of existing trash first. I watched in horror as the new particles streamed out, knocking into existing trash, which shattered and knocked into more, and on it went, transferring and multiplying force across the debris field, and rousing it to chaos. They had instigated a debris field cascade event, and I was caught in the middle of it. I would be shredded.
“Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck!” I kicked into gear, flipping the ignition switch again and rocketing ahead, flattening me into my seat again. A rusted washing machine came hurtling towards me. I yanked the drivestick right and veered out of its path, only to enter the path of a discarded battery travelling at Mach-1. I dove down, and grunted in surprise as more shrapnel came at me and bounced off the hull, bringing up a flashing yellow warning on the viewscreen. I rolled and tumbled and rocked the Mooncat, all the while burning rocket fuel to outpace the cascading trash, but no matter where I turned more danger lay waiting. In desperation, I pointed the Mooncat’s nose towards the ring. It flashed erratically as debris kept being flung into it and activating it. I could die here, murdered by Ananke, or I could take a chance. I took a chance.
I cranked the stick forward as far as it could go, and raced for the ring. Shrapnel glanced off the hull, scratching it and scraping off plates of ablative shielding, but miraculously I dodged anything that would have destroyed the ship outright. At my approach, the ring’s lights began to glow. I flew through its center, snatching Ration from the dashboard and holding him close to my chest, and prayed as the great machine activated.
The stars in the sky stretched into lines of white around the shuttle, and Earth’s form melted before me, expanding and blurring into a blue smear. The force of my descent pulled back my lips from my gums, baring my teeth into a pained rictus. My skin rippled as invisible waves battered me. Just as I began to fear that it would be torn from my flesh and that I would arrive flayed at my destination, I began to slow. Not all at once, fortunately, or I would have broken my neck instantly, but little by little. The blue smear began to coalesce, eventually becoming a sphere once more. Now, however, it filled my viewscreen almost entirely. The white stains across it churned ever so gently.
We slowed to a halt, and the Mooncat groaned in agony. I could hear its metal frame stretching to its limit, never having been built for such a journey. I heard something snap, a beam in the transmission I judged, then watched in dismay as the glass in front of me cracked at the edges. Precious air began to hiss out of the cockpit. I scrambled to repair it, pulling duct tape out from my glove box and sealing the breach as well as I could. My ears had popped from the pressure differential formed by the time I was done, leaving a ringing sound bouncing around my head until the cabin repressurized. I sighed, and collapsed into my seat, not knowing what to do next. Looking around, I saw no debris floating about, so I assumed no trash was able to survive the trip through the ring. Which meant I could sit here for some time, at least. In the rear view camera feed I could see a white circle floating in the sky, so insignificant within the expanse of space. I could not even see the stations that hung above it. Now that I had seen Earth, life on Epimetheus seemed so pale, so small now. My mission to Ananke was a failure, a harebrained scheme that was never going to work. Alone out there, truly alone for the first time in my life, I began to cry.
My radio crackled to life once more, having automatically started scanning for frequencies when Ananke’s signal was lost. A woman’s voice came through, and I heard her rattle off a list of prime numbers in sequence, her voice hesitant, shaky. I choked on my tears in surprise, sitting upright and wiping my eyes.
“…Hello?” I responded in confusion. I heard silence for a moment, then a sigh of relief.
“Phew, I thought you were an alien… Ahem. Sir, can you identify yourself? Our observatory is picking up your signal.”
“Uhm. Hadi, from Station Epimetheus.” I could sense her lack of recognition even from hundreds of kilometers away. “Formerly part of Station Ananke?” I offered, hopefully.
“Ananke? The data server satellite? I’ve heard of that, never Station Epimetheus… Okay, well, I’m Ichiko from the Massachusetts Stellar Observatory Centre of Cosmology.” Her accent was strange as well.
“I don’t know what any of that means…”
“…Well… What are you doing out there Hadi?”
“I…” Didn’t know anymore. I wanted to go home. I closed my eyes and thought of Ayesha. Ration began to climb up my arm to find my shoulder to sit on. I took a deep breath. “I came to help my station. Ananke separated us a century ago and left us on the dark side of the Moon, and they’ve had us processing data for them ever since, barely keeping us alive. We’re starving.”
“I… see…” She sounded incredulous. I felt I was losing her.
“Listen, I… I can prove it to you, I have all the logs, and everything! Can you come get me in a, in a Mooncat or something…?”
“…A what…?”
“Nevermind. Listen to me. I’ll come down myself, and show you all the evidence myself, okay?”
“Hadi, our scanners are telling us your craft is too small for orbital reentry, you’d burn up. You need to head back.”
“Look, I- I see a landmass down there that looks like a lady’s high heel. I’m going to try and descend there. Please, please come look for me. Please.” I ignored her warning, continuing on desperately. There was no way the shuttle could ever make it back to the Moon anyway. I did not give her the chance to respond, switching off the radio.
I took a deep breath, and started up the impulse engines and began to maneuver closer to the planet. If I stopped now to think, I would be too afraid to go through with it, so I closed my eyes and turned up the throttle. I flicked on the autopilot, and got up, leaning past the seat to grab the minifridge. I disconnected it from the wall socket, and hefted it into my lap. I retrieved the gift wrapped medkit and pulled out the painkillers within, dumping the rest of its contents behind me. It was a cocktail of morphine and amphetamines, meant for the worst injuries space could throw at a person. I didn’t want to burn. I jammed the needle into my leg, and emptied the syringe into my bloodstream. My pounding heart would circulate it quickly, so I needed to act fast before I passed out. I reached back for my space suit and its attached umbilical and stuffed them inside, forming a cushion. Then I picked up Ration from my shoulder. His shiny black eyes gazed up at me curiously, nose twitching. He must have been expecting a treat. I kissed his head, and put him inside the empty medkit. I placed it and the documents I’d taken inside the fridge, closing it and hugging it tight after strapping in.
My eyes began to close, just as the planet’s gravity began to pull me in. Turbulence hit us, causing the Mooncat to shake violently. I could see small flames flicker just outside the viewscreen, carried off by the winds. Before I faded from consciousness, I saw the aluminium frame began to glow, and the duct tape seal burn away. I passed out.
#
“…crash-landed off the coast of Sicily! Can you believe it, folks? Check out these photos from NASA’s Saturn 2 expedition, that spotted the mysterious station as it passed the Moon! Ananke’s got a lot of explaining to do. More at eight on the space station slavery scandal. Now here’s Jan with the weather…”
A nurse switches off the hospital ward’s television. Sunlight filters through the window between the slats of drawn shades. Birds chirp outside. Their song is beautiful. After having been resuscitated I cannot move, and I cannot feel my body. I’m told it’s nerve damage. It’s just as well that I cannot lower my head to look at my blackened husk of a body. In a clear box sitting on the windowsill, Ration sleeps soundly beside his water tray. I can hear the clamor of reporters outside my room, but they aren’t let inside while my condition is still critical. The nurse takes a spoonful of brown liquid and slips it past my charred lips. This has been my only selfish request. I taste real nihari for the first time in my life.