Return to the void

People often asked him if he ever felt lonely when he was out here. If he felt isolated, alone, vulnerable. He always smiled and shook his head, never looking up from whatever task he was working on. In truth he only really understood loneliness as a concept. They would invariably express amazement, go on to tell him how they could never do it. Tell him of the primal fears that wracked their brains when isolated from their fellow man, surrounded by a hostile environment. He would continue to work as they satiated their need to communicate, smiling gently, accepting the burden of their words.

 They would never understand, he wasn’t like them.

Salim continued along the hull. It was a freighter, ‘B’ class. At the rear were the engines, at the front connected by a long spine like structure was the cockpit and controls. Hanging from the spine were the cargo containers, 347 of them. The containers were all sealed and had just enough atmospheric control to keep whatever goods they contained in good condition. It was illegal to transport live cargo on B class vessels so none had life support which made things a lot easier for everyone. Salim was about 130 containers up from the engines on his way to inspect a power coupling to cargo container 215.

The magnetic boots of the suit had taken a little getting used to in the beginning. There was a pressure pad near the big toe to suppress the magnetic field and allow the boot to be lifted, requiring the wearer to consciously relearn the process of walking that had been unconscious since infancy. Now a veteran of almost fifteen years, he made his way along the spine’s walkway with a well-practiced gait completely absorbed in the process. Press, lift, step, release, press, lift, step, release…

Salim spent as much time out here as he could. When the work orders were posted the maintenance crew knew to leave the outside jobs for him. This was really not as a kindness; they hated going outside, it was dangerous. It was not so much the thought of dying that scared them as the manner of death. Invariably death on a spacewalk involved getting separated from the ship and drifting away into the uncaring void as you saw your only tether to life immediately out of reach and slowly getting further and further away. Shrinking to just another point of light in a sea of lights. Completely alone and with no hope of rescue you were faced with the choice of suffocation or the relatively instantaneous death of removing your suit’s helmet. Immanent death with enough time to ponder your life was a psychological terror most humans struggled with. All the regrets, all the failures and the horrible feeling of finality. That was it, that was your life. You’re done. Forever.

They got extra danger pay simply because their job may at some point entail them working outside, so if Salim wanted to take that risk on their behalf, they were more than happy to let him. In return the crew made allowances for his quietness and almost complete lack of interest in any kind of social interaction, which may otherwise have provoked bullying. He didn’t entirely escape of course; the maintenance crew had dubbed him ‘Rex’ a nerdy nickname based on the abbreviation for a signal receiver – Rx. To add to the hilarity, they had dubbed another crew member ‘Tex’ (Tx) for his habit of constantly talking regardless of who – if anyone - was listening. Salim was fond of Tex, or Frank as he was more properly named. He was a large friendly man, always talking, laughing and joking. He never joked in a mean way like some of the other crew, mostly his humour was silly or self-depreciating and was peppered with idiom and clever turns of phrase. Although usually Salim preferred silence Tex’s company he could endure, maybe even enjoy. Tex required no interaction, merely an audience. An audience to appreciate the stream of creativity that spewed forth from his large laughing face hole as he told of his many adventures, the adventures of friends and acquaintances, stories he’d picked up from others, stories about the mundane he somehow made funny, about the sad he also somehow made funny, about his many misfortunes which he also made funny. To Tex all of life was just a funny story and he was the punch line. Salim could appreciate the wisdom in that.

Out here it was silent. He had turned on the noise cancelling external mic on his suit as he always did. Usually this was used when in some kind of atmosphere to allow him to hear environmental sounds, but he used it in space to hear the silence devoid of his breathing and rustling of his movements. He stopped walking and pressed the transmit button on his wrist.

“Maintenance EVA zero zero one checking in, copy”

“Copy zero zero one, what is your position?”

“Approaching container two one five now, over”

“Received, take care Rex. Over and out.”

That formality out of the way Salim stood motionless. The ship continued ahead of him apparently endless, disappearing into a point somewhere far ahead. He could feel the rumble of the engines through the soles of his boots and occasionally a sharper shorter vibration, like something knocking, something loose.

He lifted his head so that his whole field of view was taken up by open space and momentarily could not breathe. It never failed. He stood there in absolute silence and beheld the whole of creation. So many stars they might well be infinite, on a backdrop of deepest empty black he knew must be infinite. What is beyond? Where did it come from? The questions every child asked but then somehow got out of the habit of pondering as they became absorbed by the chore of surviving. Salim never stopped pondering these questions, how could he? They were the most important questions anyone or anything could hope to ask. Countless stars, and around them even more planets, all swirling around the void at unfathomable speeds. Swirling and churning like a shaken bottle of black ink infused with glitter. Trillions upon trillions of floating rocks many of which must harbour life because after all, what would be the point in any of this otherwise? Somewhere out there some alien civilisation was at this very moment being snuffed out of existence by a cosmic event while elsewhere the first microscopic spark of life was being kindled on a newly cooled planet. Beings of all levels of sentience going about their business presumably completely unaware of their utter insignificance.

The feelings this view invoked in Salim were always profound. He felt he was on the verge of some great truth, just out of reach. Obscured by some other information in his mind, mundane but necessary to his mortal life. If he just stared harder, if he just concentrated on the silence…

“You must return.”

He did not recognise the voice as a crew member, nor was it accompanied by the click and hiss of a voice transmitted over the radio. He could not identify the sex or ethnicity of the speaker. It was like no voice he had ever heard and it seemed to be in the helmet with him. No, in his head with him.

“It is time to leave this form.”

Salim considered the possibility that he had developed some kind of psychosis. Perhaps triggered by the awe-inspiring spectacle of the universe, but he had done this more times than he could count. He wasn’t anxious, the crew had never complained about his work. He had never drunk or taken drugs, recreational or otherwise. His genetic history was unknown, but surely by now…

He found his chain of thought slipping away. He was finding it difficult to make sense of the words in his head, they were becoming simply sounds. He clung on desperately, everything he knew was fading, he was fading, he was forgetting who he was. No he wasn’t forgetting, he remembered but in a new way. His memories were different, now, more… more…

It no longer mattered.

Salim crouched, and pressing the pads in his boots launched himself up and away from the ship.

It was a while before the crew had realised he was missing. There were of course strict protocols for EVA, but there were no safety officers in space and people got sloppy. By the book, Salim should have been checking in at least every 5 minutes. But it was Salim, he hardly ever spoke and he’d done hundreds of EVA. He was the safest guy on the crew, so careful, competent, always concentrating on the job. It had been approximately thirty minutes until control had finished the vid he was watching and thought to radio check. He scanned the vitals readout and everything was nominal, it would have alarmed if there was a problem.

“Yo Rex, you still alive out there buddy?”

“Rex come in”

“Rex?”

“Maintenance EVA zero zero one come in please”

“Maintenance EVA zero zero one come in please”

“REX ANSWER THE DAMN RADIO”

“REX…”

“REX…”

“REX…”

He began to alert the crew to form an emergency search party when the vitals readouts flickered around for a few seconds before settling entirely on a ‘SIGNAL LOST’ message.

They sent the search party but they found no trace of him. The only thing they found was a power coupling with worn insulation, floating loose and occasionally arcing against the side of the ship. They assumed he’d been knocked clear by the cable after a particularly violent arc. That’s what the incident report said anyway.

They were briefly sad. In place of a funeral the guys cleaned out his locker and jettisoned the meagre collection from the airlock. They had a wake for him. They sat around one evening drinking beer and listening to Tex tell stories about him. It was slim pickings but Tex managed to assemble a few funny stories that got the guys laughing and toasting and laughing and forgetting.

There was paperwork to fill out of course, an annoyance but necessary for legal reasons. It also ensured his family got recompensed for his death, but he had no family. This petty bureaucracy out of the way, Salim was no more.

As if he never was.