One Down

No one tells you how boring it is, living in space. Or maybe they do and you never listen. They used to do all kinds of psych profiles on prospective astronauts, I guess in a way they still do. For us lifers, they only really care if you'll last long enough to pay off their investment in you. Most of us wouldn't be considered 'normal' or 'mentally healthy' by many standards. Even by the companies' standards were weren't, but we're willing to live here and die here in the cold reaches, so we're worth the risk to employ.

I remember sitting in the recruiter's office, staring at the holographs of my debt, the time I'd have to work to pay off the companies' investment in me, anything but the recruiters stolid face as they droned on about how insurance would only pay out after a set time. About how while I had issues with self-harm and had tried to kill myself three times (it'd have been less except for the police arriving - I'd have rather died than go to jail again, especially considering which jail they'd put me in), but that I was an acceptable risk, as I had never managed to complete an attempt. I guess if I had, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Corpses don't make good asteroid miners.

I thought about being able to work long enough to ensure my parents' retirement and pay off my cloned womb and other transition costs. Meanwhile, the recruiter was blowing his load, quoting Gibson at me, "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." I was already sold on living the rest of my life 19 to 27 light-minutes from the Earth, so all I could think is that the future was a sham, unevenly distributed like a multilevel-marketing scam.

I snapped back into a frame of reference where the recruiter existed as he was shoving the contracts in my face. I signed my life away. A long list of check-boxes, personal information, and signatures. All really a formality, since they had everything but the signatures in their database already. And here I was, in a tin can (not really a tin can, but who cares what the can is made of when you're cockroach squatting in it as it tumbles through space) 22 light-minutes from Earth, give or take a few light-minutes.

Lately I had take to listing what I could do each day. mostly it was waiting. Waiting for messages. Waiting to eat again. Waiting for it to be 'late' enough in my daily schedule to drink coffee. Daily routines were important. At least the companies' counselors all said so. Waiting for this months-long arc of my trip from asteroid to asteroid to be over. Waiting for a new post by the videes back at base. Bored. Bored. Bored.

When I wasn't listing or waiting, I was thinking. Thinking led to writing when I was lucky, a way to expunge the thinking and make an echo of those thoughts for later... amusement. "Amusement" seemed like too strong a word, but i hadn't thought to download a thesaurus. Another thing to put on the "List of things to bring next time" list. A long list already, but it grew slowly these days. Just as well, since it'd be years before I could get anything on it.

I had to keep my mind running, because it would even if I didn't keep up with it. Lately I hadn't been sleeping for days at a time. It was too dark in space. They wouldn't let me override the lights during the night cycle, though I was working on that.  So I crouched next to the window to stare at the dim twinkle-twinkles so far out of reach.

I had to watch because I could feel him there with me. I thought I could have escaped him out here. If I slept, I could step out of the darkness and get me. Every time I felt my eyes closing, I forced them back open, because I could feel him getting closer.

Then I saw him. With that odd crooked smile I had always hated seeing in the mirror. That short-cropped hair, the baggy clothes. I tried to turn my back on him, but I could see his reflection in the window, moving closer. I got as close to the window as I could and then he was there in it, staring back at me. My eyes came open again, shaking off sleep and he was still there. Except it was my own damn reflection staring back at me.

Coffee, time to stay awake until the night cycle was over. Can't think, but do my work anyway. Strap on a headlamp and work. Then fall asleep when the day cycle lights come on. List item: try to get an appointment with a company counselor. List item: don't fall asleep again. I could almost feel his hand on my shoulder, trying to reach into me, to have my body for himself. The hairs on my neck stood up. List item: I am a woman, this is my body. Only three more of these probe-retrieval runs and I'd be a free woman. Only ten more than that and I'd have my parents' retirement ensured. Only one more before I could have a fatal accident and they'd receive my insurance payout. I still needed to get through this one, though.

Two hours until light, everything done. Teeth chattering, hair still on end. I am a pattern embodied in physicality. I am a pattern embodied in physicality. I am a pattern embodied in physicality. List item: I am a pattern embodied in physicality, repeat. Repeat again. Repeat until the words become sounds without meaning.

Jerk awake again. The alarm is blaring. Time to try to schedule that psych appointment. No luck, waiting list. Try to hack the lights. No luck, lacking admin user privileges. Play seventy-three games of Reversi. Think. Wait. Lights-out again. Try facing the darkness again. Can't see him, but he's still lurking in the darkness. Shapes of nothingness morph into him and back into nothing. The mantra again. I am a pattern. I am THE pattern. Jerk awake again. Alarm blaring. I thought I turned that off.

The message program pings at me. My appointment is scheduled - for the middle of next light cycle. I guess I'll have to leave that alarm on. Another list-filled day passes, another nerve-wracking night. This time I try exercise. Too much exercise for my caloric allotment, but I need something to keep my from thinking about him hovering just out of coherence, haunting me like ill-fitting clothes sculpted by shadows into a boogie-man. I sleep through the appointment. Back to the bottom of the appointment listing.

The next night I try and make a small wine batch. Juice packets, a bit of the bread I traded for back at the base (a real score), a coffee-sweetener packet. At night I begin staring at this, willing the liquid to bubble with carbon. Will it be too much for the air filters? I never find out because, as is later confirmed by my baker friend back at base, the bread is chemically leavened. I have to compost the moldy mess. Thankfully it doesn't foul the composter. A week has passed.

On the radar I can see it, a faint fuzzy blur. The computer automatically sends a wake-up call to the probe and I'm getting telemetry. More information than I nee and it gets logged automatically. I tune in the visual feed. In the shadows of this asteroid, I don't see his face. A bug in the system lets me set the screen on with the visual feed, which lights up the inside of my not-tin can. I stare at it the rest of the weeks it takes to get there. One down, a lifetime to go.