“Boss, you awake?”
It’s Baker who bothered me, eyes sincere and arms spread wide as those tight uniform sleeves allowed. I wanted to laugh in his face because these words, like all the rest now, are worthless. No arrangement of any alphabet would save us yet he’d persisted in talking, talking, talking. Between bugging the other red-eyed bastards in their quarters, he’d swing into my bunk. He moved like clockwork in a space without time. I’d been torn between hugging him and wringing his neck. Funny how I’d been charged with the grand speeches and morale boosting. The crew’s persona non grata took up the mantle with ease.
He hovered in front of me as his fingers fumbled across the floor or the ceiling. No matter how much zero gravity training a man got, there was always a primal drive to stay planted to something. The ship’s cylindrical design made up and down a perpetual enigma. I used to make light of it by saying I lived in a Pringles can. My Pringles can in the sky, a shallow mantra I’d use to keep her close. She loved those stupid chips.
She teased me when she’d munch on them, slip her dainty hands into the tube in a way she alone made sensual, and I’d starve for her. We sat on our old sofa, pulled together by the force of gravity on the sagging middle, and she laughed as I stared in awe. I sprung for her and she darted beyond my reach to dance on the coffee table. I caught her in my arms Dirty Dancing style and thought, screw NASA. This is flying.
“Boss, are you with me?”
I’d have given anything to not be there with Baker. The crew cracked jokes about him. My men always snickered when he passed us by, mocked his peace and love and harmony shtick while speculating on how NASA ought to build a time machine so he could get jazzed at Woodstock. Baker is a Quaker, I’d jeered once. The phrase became our campaign slogan when we’d toast our opposition to piss-poor pacifism. Men who lived for life above the surface had no room for softness. I told my crew they needed pure grit to keep the Earth in one piece.
She and I had our first big fight about politics. It started over appetizers when one comment raised my hackles and by dessert tact had been left abandoned with the cutlery. Her brows furrowed so tight I worried she’d get a headache behind my self-righteous rage. Her lips moved but the words died in the space between us and I launched my rebuttal across the dinner table until her eyes glinted in the candlelight and I choked on the pain of the divide we’d discovered. The fight hurt worse than anything so I swore next time I’d stand down. I loved her enough to lose to her. I hugged her tight as we slept, whispered my apologies, and she laid her head against my heart.
“We gotta do something.”
Baker came nose to nose with me. For a moment, I saw who I wanted to see, but a second glance revealed my crewman. I shoved him away and scratched an itch on my stubble. My fingers grasped glossy paper, one of the shredded remains of my pictures. My bunk held a wealth of shredded confetti from my cherished memories, all of which were now trapped in perpetual anti-gravity freefall, the same as the rest of us. I suppressed the pain when I saw the fraction of the image didn’t contain her smile.
The thin triangle displayed part of a mushroom cloud, remnants of humanity’s darkest hour. An hour I used as a tool to motivate my crew when I spoke about the perils of war and the good we did for the world. My stomach churned at those memories. I told them our months in orbit would lead to progress. That this work allowed our government to save humanity from humans. At least all those “Employee of the Month” plaques were gone. I didn’t mourn the man I used to be.
I made a career of spouting all the pamphlet bullshit. I told the crew we were heroes, counseled them through the distance from their families, and preached about this sacrifice being noble. My men missed their kids’ first steps, their anniversaries, and more than one fell out of love as the price of the job. I called it necessary. I talked like staying rooted to Earth and making a home there was selfish, as if her face didn’t swim in all my dreams. I echoed what I’d been told, that this branch of NASA existed for a higher breed of men. Men who would ascend beyond the limits of the human mind to craft a better future for the poor bastards stuck in the real world. Men I now knew could never exist. I’d been so blind. I swallowed the speeches, savored the poisoned passions, and digested hearty helpings of hate for the people declared enemy.
She worried about it all. When life got too loud, she’d drown out the noise with pills that lifted her head away. I’d hold her, stare at those glazed eyes, and she’d smile. Eyes unseeing, heart unfeeling, she’d finally smile. Her wan lips stung worse than her bright tears. Over dinner, I’d told her the worries weren’t the problem. The Zoloft was a waste. I thought her heart needed the fixing because it broke down too much about everyone and everything. Someone needed to fix it up the way I’d been trained to fix the essential parts of my ship. I’d give anything for the chance to tell her she wasn’t the broken one.
“There’s hope, boss. There’s gotta be hope.”
I looked past Baker and saw me as a young man strutting down my university halls, hell-bent on changing the world. I loved botany then. I devoted my youth to studying life on Earth before age made me bitter enough to pursue a life beyond it. I once read about these trees whose roots were connected. Each tree looked autonomous but was really a small part of the whole forest. If even one tree died, all suffered. I read about those trees over and over again. I smiled at people when I passed them by because I believed they were rooted to the same stuff as me. I don’t know when I abandoned that idea. I don’t know why I stopped caring about the trees.
“You’re letting us down.”
Baker left but his words echoed. We’d all let each other down. People loved to predict how the world would end. All the theories revolved around humanity’s sins. We were destined to destroy each other unless a few good men stood against it. Men who lived off of hatred and saw the world as a thing to be conquered instead of cared for. Men who struck people down, watered their morals with blood, but were still great because they were painted as saviors. Men like me. Saviors like me.
Who is a savior when no one can be saved?
I don’t know why I fought with her on my last night before liftoff. I don’t know why I yelled, ignored her tears, and shattered her heart right before I soared beyond her reach. I loved her enough to lose to her, but that night I made sure to leave a winner. I don’t know why a part of me preened at her wounds, saw her pain as proof I’d been right, or why being right mattered so damn much. She’d begged me to stop. She’d pleaded with me to stay. Her hands shook, her empty orange bottles splayed across the bedroom, and she reached for me. She wilted before my eyes, but I refused to lend her my strength. This can’t go on, she’d said over and over and over, the way she’d pray to the Madonna in the foyer when she thought I slept. It didn’t go on for much longer. I liked to think if she’d have known what would come, it would have been a comfort. I knew it wouldn’t have been.
The world ended not by human effort but by the forces of nature. The plates shifted, humanity’s fragile control trembled, and everything caved in. I’ll never know the science behind it. No one will. I only know what I saw from orbit, just far enough away to not do a damn thing. Earth cracked like an egg and the initial thin lines of red drowned the surface in mere hours. Whole countries liquified, humanity silenced, and a blistering wound hovered in the cold vacuum of space. There’d be no survivors.
We called the base when the lines began to appear. We connected for less than five seconds before the signal cut out. Not quick enough to tell anyone we loved them but long enough to hear the hysteria. No one warned us about the possibility of the Earth caving in. I doubt even the highest of the higher ups had a clue. No man dared assume our demise could transcend our own actions. Control is the ultimate precursor to ignorance.
As the planet crumbled into a million pieces without explanation, I knew she was dying, the trees were burning, and no amount of midnight prayers could save us. My knowledge of botany became useless because all remaining life lived in a Pringles can stuck in eternal orbit. Two days after liftoff, my crew and I became the last survivors of the human race.
I don’t remember my final act of leadership and mercy. I don’t remember touching the vitals panel. I don’t remember turning off the oxygen and smashing the box to prevent any attempts at reversal. I don’t remember Baker’s quieting screams or his tears floating in the space between us.
I remember a different life. A life where people lived like the trees I loved. A time where we took care of each other. A world where we spit out hate, watered love, and I didn’t leave her. She lay on my chest and I whispered I loved her the same way she’d pray to her Madonna and we stayed that way all night, hopeful morning would come for us.
Claire Petrichor is an avid reader turned writer from Las Vegas, Nevada. A graduate of UNLV, she now daylights as a special educator and unwinds with stories in the evenings. Her work can be found in the Merrimack Review and Adelaide Literary Magazine. Claire loves working with her awesome students, cracking jokes with her friends and continuing her quest to find the best donut in town.
SPOT IMAGE CREATED BY WARINGA HUNJA
HMS is an arts & culture nonprofit (Hypertext Magazine & Studio) with two programs: HMS empowers adults by teaching creative writing techniques; HMS’ independent press amplifies emerging and established writers’ work by giving their words a visible home. Buy a lit journal (or two) in our online store and/or consider donating.