DEEP BLACK AND BRIGHT STARS

The majesty before him is not lost, but it’s still quite overwhelming.

He takes a deep breath, knowing he shouldn’t.

Shallow breaths are the key. Conserve oxygen. Give them time. Even a few seconds could make a difference, give them a chance. You never know when a miracle might come your way.

It isn’t so easy though. It’s difficult not to panic as he slowly drifts off into the black. He needed to ground himself, taking his mind off of what was happening. From there he could see everything. The world. His loved ones. The passage of time. Everything that led him here.

Ironic that he’d waited his whole life to see the Earth from this vantage point and now it will be the last thing he ever does. Hell of a sight to see. Hell of a way to go.

It took a lifetime of hard work to get here. Studying and training. An engineering degree from Notre Dame, while minoring in Astro Physics. He then went on to get his Masters in Engineering from MIT. All financed by a scholarship for Track and Field. Constant work. Constant studying. Constant training. No time for friends or girls. All of his cousins were married. Many of them had kids.

All he had was his dream.

His family lived in rural Tennessee, out in the holler where the light and the air were still unpolluted and you could still see the heavens on a clear night. Ever since he was a boy, he’d looked up at the deep black and bright stars, wondering what else was out there. And every night he would pray to the Moon in the sky to grant him his wish, to take him up there. 

It never occurred to him that the Moon would take his wish so literally.

It took 35 years for him to get the mission call. A satellite had been hit by some small meteoroids, killing the thrusters and pushing it off its orbit. While the satellite wasn’t in any danger of crashing to the Earth anytime soon, it still needed to be fixed. He got tapped as the mission specialist in charge of the physical repairs. The boys in brass considered this a bit of a cakewalk… well, if anything in space could be considered a cakewalk.

Cakewalk? Spacewalk? Heh. Heheheh.

Was the joke funny, he wondered? Or was delirium setting in? Was this the end?

…best not to think about it.

Going up was so surreal. One minute your insides are being crushed by gravity as you achieve escape velocity. The next, those same organs are sort of floating around, just as weightless as you are. You can actually feel them moving around. No one warns you about it beforehand. The guys who’ve been up before just laugh when you ask. Its sort of like an initiation thing. “Welcome to the stars, kid.”

They got the shuttle as close to the damaged satellite as possible without causing a problem. Far enough that he couldn’t be tethered to the ship. He had to use a Manned Maneuvering Unit… one of those giant jetpacks you see on TV. 

It's so wild! There he was on his first spacewalk, wearing a jetpack on a mission! If only the eight year old version of him could have seen it.

When the bay doors opened, it was the Moon who greeted him. It was so much bigger in space. His family had been devoutly religious. It never really took with him. He found it hard to believe that somewhere out there was an all-seeing, all-knowing God watching over us. But as the Moon stared down on him, floating towards the stars, he saw the folly of his arrogance.

Not that he was any closer to knowing what God was than before, but as he stared at the heavens, he knew there was so much more to the universe than he could ever find in the science books he’d devoted his life to. 

As it turns out, he was so wrapped up in his religious experience that the mission leader, John had to ask him if he was planning on finishing the mission.

When he apologized, John just laughed. “It happens to everyone, kid. Enjoy it.”

The first few hours of the repair was fairly by the book. It wasn’t “easy”, but it was simple. One of the other mission specialists would occasionally have to spacewalk out to him to bring parts for the repair. Those were the best moments. There was nothing to do but wait until she arrived. In the meantime, he savored every second of the experience.

He chose some of the stars as his favorites and gave them names; Optimus Prime, Indiana Jones… and Bob. The stars likely already had names, but those were given from people down there… on the ground. These names were passed on from a friend, someone who was only a few million lightyears away.

The satellite was almost repaired when it happened. More meteoroids. They were the size of finger nails, but they ripped through the shuttle and the satellite. One of them must have hit a nitrous tank… blowing him clear. 

Slowly, silently he drifted away. Away from the Earth. Away from the shuttle. The radio was damaged, so he couldn’t even talk to anyone. There was no way to know how bad the situation truly was.

…but then it didn’t really matter. The situation was dire. This was the price he’d pay for flying too close to the Sun.

He couldn’t even pray to his old friend, the Moon. When his momentum began, he was facing away from it and couldn’t turn to see if it was still there, shining down upon him. And for the first time in his life, he felt truly alone.

The beeping of his oxygen sensor pulled him from his thoughts. Almost out. Almost done.

This was it. He’d be buried in the black.

Perhaps when he was gone, the Moon would welcome him to sleep in his arms. Or maybe, millions and millions of years from now, he would reach Optimus, Indiana and Bob.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

He could see them now. Bright, brilliant stars. Bright lights… right in front of him. 

…a light.