Theo traced the pattern with his finger. An ammonite. He didn't need the brass name plate to tell him that; the fossils were his favourite exhibit. Not as shout-out-loud as the dinosaur skeletons ... [+]
The stars circle him. It's not just stars. It's galaxies, he knows; galaxies and nebulae and burning spheres of pure fire, so distant they form only pinpricks of light even this close. He thinks he can taste the stars on the tip of his tongue. From his vantage point, the earth is alight, haloed with the cool light of its thin atmosphere. It curves ethereally below him like a promise.
He is separated from space only by his oxygen-supplied suit and clear glass-like polycarbonate screen of his helmet. He sticks his tongue out, just slightly; he swears, he tastes the stars. They taste like light, salty hydrogen and helium radiating off their fire, warming him from the inside out with their brilliant, brilliant temperatures.
The earth sits there below, waiting patiently. He imagines the oscillation of their geosynchronous orbit, the slow-moving, intimate dance that always pulls them close. Planet and spacecraft. Earth and human.
He doesn't remember a lot, anymore, and these days he looks not at the glowing blue planet thousands of miles below him, but at the everlasting distance in front. He gazes at the unearthly blackness, the dotted lights that weave in between and around him like carelessly embroidered tapestry. The planets. He thinks about them often. Sometimes they scare him; he imagines hovering right next to Neptune, or Enceladus, so large in size and so furious in temperament. They would kill him. Nonetheless, he dreams.
This landscape used to be overwhelming. The creeping clouds of gas, and the constellations that he has become acquainted with by name. Now it's more dream-like, the whole thing. He's floating, because he no longer remembers how not to. He thinks he once knew the feel of his full weight upon his feet, but that memory is ancient and yellowed and tattered at the edges like the pages of an old book. His spacecraft was never fitted with artificial gravity and never engineered to resemble a normal life. And so he is weightless, always.
His hand drifts to the bulky technology on the chest of his white suit and carefully fiddles with a small switch. His volume battery exhausted itself a long time ago but nonetheless, that doesn't stop his suit from notifying him. "Re-confirming action," a clinical voice informs him from the miniature speakers in his helmet, "External support: OFF. Autonomous mode: ON." The suit ventilation slows from a soft hiss to a steady pump that syncs to his own heartbeat like a quiet song. A low, constant beat. Thump. Thump. Thump.
It's time for the last few checks. He navigates-floats-swims slowly over to the right wing's external docking port, silver and solid. He traces his gloved hand over the large letters on the aluminium surface. They are so deeply and neatly engraved he feels the secure grooves in the metal even through his thick suit. The letters mean nothing much to him, but moreso—he suspects—to the engineers of the spacecraft. 3073CX1-A. That is the name of the craft...technically.
Instead, he's always called it the Odyssey. That is a name he plucked out from the floating backlogs of his head, though he can't remember where exactly he got it from. Literature classes, maybe. The spacecraft Odyssey is steadfastly loyal to him, a refuge of a middle ground between the earth and the vast nothingness of the infinite. It's been with him the whole time the stars have made their slow crawl across his peripheral. The Odyssey has accompanied him ever since he knew nothing but Earth.
Some would call it his safe haven. To him, it is an incredible purgatory. He thinks he despises it, as much as one can despise anything intrinsic to their very existence.
It takes a little fiddling, but the large metal hatch on the spacecraft soon lifts to reveal a complex and neat panel of thick, space-fortified wires and locked metal switches. He knows this panel all too well, has worked out what goes into every crevice in the long, long time he's had to familiarise himself with the spacecraft. All it takes is a flick of a switch and a re-plugging of the right wires into their ports.
"External comm relay off," the voice confirms, "Commencing shut down of antenna feed. Commencing shut down of internal functions on 3-0-7-3-CX, Odyssey."
He thinks he feels the Odyssey shudder and slow under his palm. He turns instead to Earth, dips his head to watch the planet carefully. When he glances downwards, it's not vast nothingness, like it is in every other directional degree. Earth is an ethereal globe of blue light and distant atmosphere beneath his feet and he can almost imagine he is stepping on it, stepping on the ground, stepping. It glows a pale azure and thrums steadily with the promise of life and land.
He yearns, wishes, lives to go back home. But he tracks time in the movement of the stars, has watched them bloom infinitely in their beautiful blue-whale choreography, and no one has found him yet.
And no one will.
"Odyssey shut down," the voice reminds him quietly, "Earth disconnected."
The gleaming blue of planet Earth trails the faintest reflected light across his torso. He reaches for the tiedown strap across his suit, feels for the firm metal glint of the snap hook securing his EVA tether, and — like he's been practicing in his mind for years — releases the lock. The instant it detaches, he feels the small recoil of the cable against his palm, but catches it in his grip.
For such a revolutionary movement, it is silent, because this is space. He hears nothing but his own breath in his ears, quickening and slowing and quickening and slowing and quickening—
There is a long pause before the tinny voice reaches his ears.
"Tether status: disconnected. Recommend immediate reattachment."
The thick cable feels solid in his grip. Serenity floods his bones, tingles in his fingertips.
"Tether status: disconnected. Recommend immediate reattachment."
He looks down at the earth for one last time. It stays there, always ethereal, never solid; it mocks him with its largeness and its life. He has spent so long looking at it. He has spent so long waiting.
Now, he turns to gaze at the stars instead.
"Tether status: disc - dis -dis -disconnected." The voice wavers and breaks, and then pauses in such a delay that he is left only with the weight of his decision and the space around him, a melancholic preview of a future he might choose. Then, quietly, the voice asks. "Confirm actions?"
His breathing slows and he closes his eyes, feels the magnetic pull of space in his chest. He listens to the steady pulse in his ears.
He releases his grip and lets go of the tether.
The drift is slow. He waits, waits for his heart to jumpstart and his limbs to flail for the cable, but it never happens. A burst laugh of euphoria rises in his chest like a liquid bubble. The stars blink in their slow dance towards him, perfect pinpricks of light in the magic blackness of the space-vacuum. Space envelops him in a hug like an old friend, weaving its constellation-sleeved arms around him in a mystical embrace. Earth is thousands of miles away. Thousands of miles, and counting.
"Odyssey disconnected. Earth disconnected." He hears from a distance. "Signal lost. Reconfiguring..."
A pause.
"...Set new destination?"
He sticks his tongue out to catch the stars, and laughs.
