spacebutnotfar

[spacebutnotfar]

Martin Zaragoza woke up on Tuesday. In many ways, it was like any other Tuesday for him. Walking down the street, he made sure to always look both ways before crossing, and in the elevator, he always made sure to leave ample room in case someone was getting off before he came in.

He fiddled with his keys a bit, gripping the large hexagonal one firmly and opening the door to his office. He opened the windows and aired out the rooms; as he did, Sally, his and Charlie's secretary, turned up with coffee for the two. Of course, Charlie was fashionably late; Martin thought that living in the suburbs would do that, justifying never leaving the city himself.

"Mr.Agostini is coming at 10:30 today, doctor; he is your first for today" - affirmed Sally as she logged into her laptop. 

The day went on like any other.

"I love that you are making progress, Luke; you are openly and earnestly talking with your roommates about the division of labor at your home; that is a big step." - Said Martin, ad the edge of his chair.

"Thank you, doc, but what if they hate me for it? I don't want to come across as demanding and..." 

"Nonsense! You told me you all made cookies this past weekend, and so far, they have always been open with you, no? You had that chat last month about your bike, and they told you their desire to keep the house clean, so if they are communicating and letting you know how they feel. That is good!"

As Martin spoke, a sudden shock went through his body, triggering a fight or flight response. He blocked and swallowed simultaneously, seeing a vast void before him. He suddenly, but for less than a second, felt like he was floating on water. He felt like he would drown had he been there a second longer.

Before his brain could realize it he was back in his office, in front of Luke, his patient of two years, and listening to him repeat his words once more.

"Thank you, doc, but what if they hate me for it? I don't want to come across as demanding and..." 

"huh? Sorry, Deja Vu, or something" - Martin touches his hair and looks at his notepad - "did you feel anything weird just now?"

"Um, no, sorry"

"Nono, don't apologize; just a me thing it seems, but time is short now, so let's wrap up before we go over time again like last week, haha."

A few days pass, and the "moment," as Martin begins to call them, becomes rather frequent. He has them while eating lunch while talking with other people, and most dangerously, while driving.

Feeling a deep sense of dread and knowing well the signs, he visits a neurologist and proceeds to spend the next few weeks of his life going through a marathon of experts and tests to figure out his ailment until one day.

"It's nothing," - said Jordan, his doctor, in his Australian accent - "You are perfect head to toe. Maybe could lose a few kilos, sorry pounds, but we all could do that!" - he points to his belly.

"Nothing on the scans, or bio, all that?" - asked a slightly less worried Martin.

"Nah, you are good on all those. I know you are the psychologist in this room, but if you asked me, you need a vacation mate. It's winter, and people go crazy in this climate; head south, go to Sidney and enjoy a week off. We could all do with that!"

Another moment, this time it's longer, considerably so. Martin breathes deeply, reflexibly, as if about to dip 5000 miles underneath the sea. He smells rosemary, thyme, and a hint of chocolate. By the time his mind starts to wander off, he comes to again.

"I know you are the psychologist in this room, but if you asked me, you need a vacation mate. It's winter, and people go crazy in this climate; head south, go to Sidney and enjoy a week off. -

"We could all do with that" - says Martin right away.

"yeah! Now you are getting it!"

Martin ponders for a few days what to do. Clearly, something is happening, but he is a man of science. He also acknowledges that perhaps he has to relax. Being there for so many people is a stressful existence, he thinks to himself.

As he boarded a plane headed for the southern hemisphere at the recommendation of his doctor, he thought to himself how odd he had had no other moments since. He began to believe that indeed, it was all due to stress. Once I am out on the beach, he thought, I’ll; get a nice tan, drink something fruity, and maybe actually enjoy life for once.

As he decompressed on his seat, putting on a pair of earphones and a blackout facemask, he remarked to himself how legitimately happy this made him. Martin had not taken a day off outside of the odd sick day in years.

Dropping down the levels of consciousness, he began to ruminate on the moments; although they seemed gone, he was never the less intrigued by the visions. At that moment, he found himself sitting in his office chair, notepad in one hand and pen in the other, just like any other day.

“I want to talk about my family, and my place in the existence” - said a low grumbly voice, though it did not sound quite like anything else Martin had ever heard.

Martin looked up and saw a towering figure, a shape that did not stand still, vaguely a blob taller than wider, within it a void, but not quite the same void that surrounded him, as the surrounding felt like his office.

“Oh hi, sorry, I am going on vacation, right now, you can talk with Sally to make an appointment for next month thought! you can leave your details with her, and she…” - Martin’s brain finally catches up to his body.

“What the fuck are you?”

“Goreth Bloodhound, you are waking up, one moment”

Martin returns to the plane, earplugs not plugged in, facemask in his hands, panicking eyes scanning the interior around him. In his hurry to get off the plane he stands quickly, forgetting his stature in the process and smacking hard on the roof, knocking him out in his seat.

The old lady next to him wakes up after a few minutes and tugs him in with a blanket and a facemask.

“Fuck, I have a concussion,” - says Martin, in his own head - “Who the fuck are you?” - he asks pointedly around him. I am the narrator, Martin. “This makes no sense”.

“Apologies, he likes to jest with people's fates,” - affirms Goreth. For the record, I do not, is just that people’s fates can be funny sometimes. - “He is Analith Epithath” - Friends call me Epy.

“I have gone mad, I truly have” - begins Martin - “I am looking at an Eldritch being and an ethereal narrating voice” - Yes you are - “I have truly lost the plot” - there never was a plot.

“Epy please, cease.” - ok - “Martin, would you mind talking with me for a second?”

“We better”.

“I know this is complicated, I can’t really empathize with what this sort of interaction could do to you, but I truly do mean this, I need your help”

“Why? How? No this is insanity”

“My existence depends on me actually working through some, rough stuff, and I heard you help people” - Goreth slowly sat down on a wide couch, the slight shadow of his body projecting onto the surface.

“And what if I don’t want to?”

“Well, you are knocked out, it's a 17-hour flight and time moves slower here. Plus, because I was trying to contact you, we are now astronomically linked.

“Which means?”

It means you are in Goreth’s domain for as long as you remain unconscious, forever. Go to sleep? you will be here, get blackout drunk? here, have a wet dream? here.

“Is what he-” They “they are saying true?”

“Yes.”

– Real person here, not Epy. Have no clue if I should write more. I kind of feel like it would be better as a comic/visual novel, but i can’t draw for shit, so I'll leave it here until I get more inspiration –

#short story #original story #sci fi #space

[spacebutnotfar]

Pilgrimage

Over the years, I've started a pilgrimage. Throughout the months and years, I collect... things, trinkets, souvenirs, letters, photos, foods, leaves, a collection of things so lacking in common features that it might as well be called trash, though often trash can be categorized as the things people what to get rid of.

I guess, in a way, it is trash. I too, want to eventually get rid of it; it is just that instead of being so indifferent to its location, I am highly interested in where it will be.

Once I have enough, and let me tell you, the definition of enough has never been subject to so many revisions, I pack my things, call my time off the colony, and depart.

My wife was stranged at first by this ritual of mine. She was really suspicious when her boyfriend of 2 years one day knocked on her door and said he would be going on a trip out to the Redlands and near the peak of Olympus Mons.

Over time, she mellowed to it, even made the trip a few times with me, but ultimately, she and I realized that for whatever reason, it was my trip, my time to be alone with my thoughts and with my trash.

It's a long trip, about 4 weeks worth, and once I am off the Redland's solar farms, there are no more humans until I get back.

I took a photo of one of my trinkets, a seashell from Earth, though it had lost all its color and nearly looked pearl white. I found it one day in a playground; Though there it was surrounded by green grass and kids playing. I asked one of the kids if they knew whose it was, and after playing detective with one of them in the hunt for its owner, we came to the conclusion that the teddy bear on Miss Alewinth's desk was to blame. I don't think it would've held in court though; the deposition of Carlos, the wise tree snail, was made under duress because we threatened him with salt if he didn't spill the beans.

Nevertheless, the victim, Shelly, needed a place to rest for the rest of time, so it was only fitting I would take them with me on this trip.

Out here is where I only really appreciate the expanse of the world before me. I grew up in one of the largest cities on earth and was told that I would meet civilization no matter where I walked or how far I walked. It was supposed to be a great human achievement. For me, it was an overwhelming feeling of compression.

Here on Mars, I would need to go around the whole planet before meeting another human, and I don't think I have enough life support to get even a tenth of the way there.

People ask me if I thought this desolate, deserted, uninhabitable, radioactive, thin-atmosphere planet is worth living in. Every time I tell them of the last pilgrimage I did. Congratulations, you caught this one.

Time to reflect is rare, and Mars is unique in that there is nothing but reflections outside the colony. You are just in a suit, walking through sand and rock. You look up, and maybe you can stop a satellite, but that's it.

Want introspection? Come to Mars. Catchy slogan for the tourism board, eh? They rejected it three times so far, but they are good sports about it; it became a bit of an inside joke among the staff there since I always come by their office before going to Olympus Mons, and they are the ones setting up my equipment. I bet next time, they will run with it.

Today's item of color for you is a double A battery. No longer in production anywhere. This one fell off an old flashlight someone was carrying on their caravan flight to here. The poor fella died on the way to Mars, and so his funeral was here; the family asked for his belongings to be spread among the colony; they did not want to pay the cost of sending them back. Say "Cheese!" Howard.

He, too, was deemed trash, and so I took him with me on a past pilgrimage. Don't worry, it's not his actual body there, just his ashes

Not a lot of people can say their final resting place is on a different planet from the one they were born. Not a lot of people can say where they are buried, actually.

Howards was coming to Mars after the war to find work as a journalist. A lot of educated folks were; they figured if Mars was free, then surely there would be a need for white-collar work.

Among his things were a pair of books. "The Forever Question: Why?" and "For Who Do You Write". Augustine, the librarian, ended up with these excellent books, which really impacted him and how he looked at his work; as such, they were not trash.

Well, here we are. My little spot. It ain't much, but it's far and quiet. Now it's time to dig in.

It takes a while, and the hole goes deeper every time, or so I think, but I take a moment to look at my trash and start working through the list.

Hello Battery, sorry I could not find you a remote to fit into; this is your home now.

Hello Shelly, sorry I could not find your killer; I mean, owner, this is your home now.

Hello 10-dollar bill, I am sorry you are not legal tender here; this is your home now.

Hello Jane's necklace, I am sorry I couldn't find you a new owner; this is your home now.

Hello, screw from the teacher's lounge; sorry I didn't find where you screwed in; this is your home now.

Hello, suspicious USB stick; sorry I was not brave enough to figure out your contents; this is your home now.

Hello Self,

I am sorry I failed you, I am sorry we still struggle, I am sorry you have to keep doing this. But this. Is. Not. Your. Home. Your home is with Alice, with Martin, with Annie, and with the others.

I cherish these items and my time with them because I've made my time with them limited. They and this pilgrimage remind me that I am not here forever and that one day, I too, will need to be disposed of like trash. But if that is to be my fate, then I want those around me to treat me like I treat my own trash.

#space #sci fi #original story #short story

[spacebutnotfar]

Four Years Out of The Pandemic And Four Years Before The Climate Collapse, Where Am I?

I've been going through an interesting line of thoughts lately.

What happens to the people, the lives, that are not fortunate enough to survive, live on?

I'm not really talking about the concept of having children and then those having children. But the more real sense of people simply ceasing to exist.

Furthermore, what if a lineage of humanity ends because of another group's action or inaction, be it justified or not, premeditated or not, conscious or not.

Of course, genocide pops up immediately in this path through ideas. The conscious, premeditated action by one or group of people against another. It is the most well-recorded version of this phenomenon. But there are others.

Original tribes from North and South America might be another example, one in which the bulk of the killing was not by the hand of the Spanish conquistador or the English settler but by the European diseases they brought. Their inaction was partly a lack of empathy for these people, but they also lacked the materials needed to create vaccines and protect those vulnerable to it. Even if they wanted to stop it, they couldn't.

The type of death of people that I am trying to grasp in this text is neither of those examples. I believe my generation will be the first to record it and thus the first case for later generations to study. Yet I also fear that those who do remain will have a heavy incentive to shun the reality of what happened and be so traumatized they will make the generation after them stupider than ours.

People will die, and climate change is irreparably shifting the world's population. With covid, there was a chance, although slim, that wealthy individuals would come down with it. Enough to warrant immediate action.

But climate change is different. Why should a software engineer in San Fransisco care about the most recent flooding in India, killing thousands and potentially leaving millions without drinkable water? They have to worry about potentially selling their home and moving to Las Vegas to stay safe from the rising water level and living costs of living near US coastlines.

Why would a Berliner care if the Amazon River becomes more unstable and causes vast areas downstream to collapse? Or if most of Chile is gone within 10 years. It's not their problem, and they themselves are having to deal with potentially losing part of their industrial capacity due to some docks becoming unusable and both Danish and Dutch climate refugees.

In the end, humanity will live on. 100 years into the future, the Hot Era of the modern world will be a topic given in world history class. It will surely include things like how we knew back in the 90s that this was happening, how governments took too long to respond, or the number of deaths that resulted from it.

But you know what very few, if any, of those teaching will have? People who lived through the worst of it. Let me put it this way. There will be people from all over the world: China, the Philippines, Papa New Guinea, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Madagascar, South Africa, and countless other nations and cultures that will be effectively wiped out of existence.

Some may remain, but they will do so as endangered minorities. The poor will try to move on and assimilate with whatever nation would take them, teaching their child that this place they are now is safe, but the old one is not.

The rich will just be inconvenienced; they'll move to higher ground or to a more climate-stable region. They will be inconvenienced by their government's switch to renewables, maybe some rolling blackouts for a few years. They will be inconvenienced by losing their favorite vacation spot. They will be inconvenienced by having to see the images of thousands of people marching over deserts, snowstorms, and floods with boxes and bags of their belongings half a world away and simply say, "Glad it's not me," and "I went through climate change, it was not that hard!".

There will have been a mass genocide of likely millions of people, a new kind of genocide.

The generation who started it could have never seen it coming.

The generation who benefited from it is long gone.

The generation who justify it knows it won't affect them.

The generation that is conscious of it can't do anything in time to help.

The world of 2124 will be less diverse because only the rich kids and their kids will get to live in it.

We should have known. It has happened before in human history and will likely continue to happen. Because of all the lessons history can teach us, the fact that the winners are the winners and the losers are the losers always comes too late in the curriculum.

That we exist means we won in the past, but we roll dice every time, and the role we need and how many dice we have is entirely out of our control; we are plonked at the table and told to roll. We can nudge the table and paint our dice to add, but that will sometimes not be enough. You have to win to continue playing; you only need to lose once to lose forever.

Winners are Winners, and Losers are Losers.

[spacebutnotfar]

What About The Ones on The Nice?

The news came quick. It began with voices mumbling in the background as I worked and quickly turned into a rumble. By the time I was considering turning away from my monitor to see what all the noise was about, someone had gone past my desk and bumped it, throwing me off my workflow just long enough to realize people were gathering near the TV at the center of the office floor. As I did, I saw the big red lower third graphics, breaking news. Someone was fiddling with the controls on the back to get the volume up, and a woman turned away from the screen. As soon as I reached the gathering of people, a man walked past me, phone in hand and desperately messaging someone they held dear.

"The Nice Is Rapidly Depresurazing"

On-screen, a live feed from inside The Guangzhou showed the Mars Colonial Ship Nice drifting out in space, a big stream of air coming out of the other side of the vessel.

A voice comes through the feed, that of a senior engineer in The Nice explaining the emergency. As he does, one of the spherical hydrogen tanks on the feed collapses unto itself as it quickly loses pressure. The thud echoes a few moments later on the call.

The news anchor asks if the rescue ships have been dispatched yet; the engineer waits a moment before simply stating they have not.

There are 6540 people on board; are they safe? Ask the anchor slowly, as if fully taking in the sheer loss of life that we could be witnessing.

The news broadcast continued for an hour or so. The once dozens of people watching at the office have now been reduced to a handful, who mostly discuss the events more so than watching the feed.

I sit back at my desk, from where I can peek at the screen occasionally.

As explained, areas of the ship have been sealed off, and the crew is slowly returning sections to operability over the course of the next few weeks.

We won't know the final death toll until they complete the field repairs and then run through the ship's manifest. Several people have already left Nice for Guangzhou, though that is only temporary since the old ship can't house all of them for the remaining duration of the trip to Mars.

Chairman Agustin, Ranking Member Alture, and all members of this special committee thank you for inviting me to speak in front of you and the American public today. I was an orbital engineer for Hokunda Fairspace two weeks ago on the day of the Nice Tragedy. Today, I sit before you to explain how this happened and to ask you and your peers to sign the Solar Space Faring Safety Standards, which every other major Space Faring country has done.

#space #original story #sci fi #short story

[spacebutnotfar]

Today, I am visiting the Galavant, the latest ASTOC (Active Service Transport Orbiting Craft) to join the 2060 Mars Caravan, before it leaves Low Earth Orbit and meets at the caravan's rendezvous point somewhere past the Moon.

The fine folk at the ECSA, the European Commercial Space Agency, offered me to come on board and look at what the first generation of solar fairing crafts in a post-Martian Liberation War can look like. A craft that has been constructed not with potential conflict in mind but with passenger amenities and comfort.

Hi, future Elly here, I just want to add that, yes, talking about space travel soon post-Martian Liberation is... complicated, and it deserves a video all on its own, and one that neither I nor my team is qualified to make. What I do want to highlight here is the engineering and philosophy that went into the project. Ok, back to past Elly and Dr. Agustin.

"The Galavant was first proposed in 2046, just a few months after the cease-fire. The idea was to produce a craft that could eventually support a large number of diplomats, engineers, doctors, and many other professionals to travel to and from Mars and perform most of their duties within the ship as well." - Dr. Agustin, 43 years-old, Head of the Galavant Project at ECSA since 2048.

This is the Galavant's Solar forum. A room that could connect to the United Nations back on earth, to diplomats here on the ship, and to the recently established Martian Federation millions of kilometers each way.

Because of that need to communicate effectively with the outside and at large distances, there is no large shield generator, armored plating, or even a vacuum chamber on the top side of this room. There is just Space. By all means, and especially at the time of its design, this craft could have been destroyed by anything either side decided to throw at it. It was a gamble on peace. When it began construction in 2052 that still seemed like wishful thinking.

"When we started the process of welding and vacuum sealing the interiors, we actually quite the scare because we were orbiting close to the UN-MF Diplomatic Station and had recently been bombed. So we had to shut down operations for a few months as we waited for our orbit to get us away from the facility."

Now, the only way a Galavant's passenger might realize this was at one point a ship when the war was ongoing is by looking at this. The Peace Plaques are all throughout the halls of the ships. From the dinners to the coffee shops, they all have these commemorative plaques honoring the 57 thousand European citizens who lost their lives in the conflict.

For the first time in 30 years, there will be a craft in the caravan that is not meant for war, or even prepared for it, and it was designed like that on purpose. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I like Agustin's take more.

"I think the economic, social, and cultural impact of such a ship traveling between the two planets is far more powerful than any railgun ever made because this weapon brings people closer, not destruction."

#space #short story #sci fi #original story

[spacebutnotfar]

While in your cabin, waiting for the weekly pressure testing to finish, you began pulling on all the small drawers beneath and above your bed. Accommodations are tight in the Guangzhou, but at least they are orderly.

After going through a couple, one of them won't come open; it seems locked or at the very least stuck. The tiny slit that you manage to create is not enough to get a clear picture of what it holds.

You Stand up, your eyes darting over the room, trying to find a thin, card-like object that you can slip through it and open it. Where that to fail, then your raw brawn ought to be enough to gain access.

You eventually open the small electronics self-service panel. Amidst the phone battery replacements and USB-Fe adapters, you find what you were looking for. A pair of tiny tweezers, they might just be enough.

Coming back to the lock beneath your bed, you start fiddling with the space between. To aid in your concentration, you look out of your window into the deepness of space, fixating on a star and imagining you are twisting, flicking, and shoving it around.

Moments later, you hear a click, and the drawer opens up without much friction. In it, a picture of a young lady in a dress over a green pasture. You figure this is a polaroid, analog photography; you've never seen one in person before.

In the lower third, it reads, "For when you feel lonely, Antoine" with an arrow indicating it should be turned over.

On the other side, there is a small pocket made out of paper, fitting a flash card almost perfectly, though now it lies empty. The handwritten letter continues:

Your love made me happy in a world that otherwise deeply saddened and hurt me. I have since left said pastures, I hope that we will meet again... I'll be waiting for you in Hellas Your, hopefully someday, fiance, Anny

You flip the polaroid back and forth as if a new message would appear, closure to this love story. But nothing. Putting the picture up to the light of your room makes a faint date appear. 2034-10-02, over thirty years ago, on the maiden voyage of the Guangzhou.

You place the picture in your journal, close the drawer, and make a note of the names Antonie and Anny. They must've been some of the first settlers of the Hellas Colony.

#space #sci fi #short story #original story

[spacebutnotfar]

As you are traveling in the Mars caravan, a six month long trip, you make aquitances of all sorts. A mother, whose child fought in the MLA, Martian Liberation Army, tells you stories of her son's bravery and how she will finally see him after decades. As she lightly caressed his physical picture, you could not muster the courage to ask if she knew whether his was was still alive or not. Another, Mike, a tall man. you meet at the food stalls in the Micro-G halls. He was feeling sick, having just finished his adjustment period inside the Gavalant, the capital ship of the caravan. Skiny as a radio anttena the man was hunched over a corner, puking directly into the vaccum waste bin. Once the contents of his breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, you really couln't tell, were all slurp up by the machine, he turned to you.

You hand him a wet wipe and with him the best, but before you could be on your way he stops you, asks if he could offer to buy you a snack from the stalls.

The two of you hang around for some time. It's not until Mike tells you that he his shift is starting soon that you inquire what he is doing in the caravan.

"Well, all ships need a engineer no? i handle the 6-axis trusting platforms across the ship. Basically the docking systems"

Resting inside the Guangzhou you ponder what will be of your life in Mars. You've traveled to the planet before, but with restrictions now lifted after the MLA and the U.N. broker a more permanent peace, the mass migration to the frontier of humanity has truly begun.

#space #sci fi #original story #short story