Constellation

To Adrienne, the stars looked different when they surrounded her. It wasn’t quite the same feeling Adrienne recalled from when she was a child in the field of her back yard. Her first memory was the crisp smell of the long grass, surrounded by evening crickets as her father taught her how to use a telescope. It was her first experience with wonder. Since she could first fathom the complexities of the stars, Adrienne had scarcely brought her head back down to Earth long enough to think of anything else.

She stared up at the stars as often as they were visible, and when the blanket of clouds was too thick, or when it was inconveniently daytime, she went to her bedroom to stare up at the ceiling. Adrienne had spent hours placing glow-in-the-dark stickers in spots that were as close to perfect as she could get them. She studied the patterns of the bright dots, learned the etymology of their names and the stories the stars had inspired. The stars inspired Adrienne, too. She had dedicated her life to them. 

Stars had been the only thing to give Adrienne the joy of wonder; that left her in a state of awe that she couldn’t quite find on her home planet. She was most comfortable when she could lose herself in the normalcy of the science and math required to be an astronaut. The measurements of celestial phenomena and astrophysics made much more sense to her than the complexities of human interaction. People did not understand her, and she understood them even less. It was freeing for Adrienne to find such comfort in extragalactic astronomy and aerospace engineering. The vast unknown was the only thing that had ever made sense to her. So she left. After years of study, after she had helped create the spacecraft that she lifted off in, she had been successful and completed her life’s dream to exist amongst the stars. 

Adrienne’s heart rate sped up as the engine of her craft rumbled to life. The force of her pulse pounded in her neck and chest. The A.I. she had installed in the spacecraft, Eve, spoke to her over the comms but she couldn’t quite focus on the words. Adrienne had designed Eve to guide her through the process, but it was hard to hear over the force of the power-thrusters. The air that surrounded her grew hotter and without much of a warning, Adrienne launched upward into the sky with a force that her years of training could never prepare her for. The sheer speed of it exhilarated her.

As she hurtled into the sky at a pace that made her chest compress, Adrienne felt that she was leaving her home for good. The pressure of the air around her calmed her, but Adrienne couldn’t comprehend how she would ever make it back. Despite her years of training, she couldn't equate what she knew with how she felt. The science of it did not match with the physicality of the experience, and Adrienne was sure she would never return to Earth. 

As jarring as liftoff was, breaking through the atmosphere was equally so. The immediate cease of the rattle of the craft, and the abrupt stop of all noise seemed just as intense. Adrienne took a few gulping breaths before the robotic voice of Eve reminded her to detach the fuel tank so that she could continue her journey through space. Adrienne had never known such silence. She had searched for that kind of calm for her entire life, but nothing she had found was quite like the stillness of her shuttle.

It had been glorious and breath-taking to see the green of Earth’s continents grow smaller until they became overwhelmed by blue and white. She had teared up as she passed the moon and contemplated how far she was from the humans she’d never been able to connect to. 

It had been a dream come true to soar out of her solar system and into the vast unknown. It terrified and exhilarated Adrienne at the same time. She was more full of emotion than she had ever been, and she knew that she had made the greatest decision of her life. At least until the red lights of her shuttle started to flash. 

The pseudogravity gave out first. Then the engines. All power in the ship stopped, except for the emergency backup, which left Adrienne in a dark blue glow. The thrusters were stationary, the comms were down, and Adrienne knew that her emergency oxygen supply only lasted a couple of months. She would run out of air. 

She tried the comms daily, despite the futility of the action. The thrusters had broken, and she drifted through space without aim. Adrienne had gotten so far off the intended course that she had no hope of anyone finding her. She wasn’t sure anybody would look for her at all. She had never excelled at fostering the human connections that other people seemed to so easily attain, and even if she had, the people she worked with would write her mission off as a failure. She had trained at NASA enough to know that if her comms went down, people would assume she had died. She had gone off course. As far as Houston would be concerned, she was a goner. 

Adrienne was alone but she was used to it. As much as her education had prepared her to become an astronaut, her life overall had prepared her to die alone. Adrienne was grateful to be the sole astronaut on the ship. Had there been another person, Adrienne wouldn’t know what to do with their panic. She had no clue how to calm someone. She had little interest in physical touch, and eye-contact made her uneasy, so Adrienne found some small comfort in her solitude. Her only company was Eve.

A.I. Do not worry about death, do not require comfort, and Adrienne didn’t have to share her stores of sustenance. The lack of worry about her social skills comforted Adrienne to some degree. There was nobody around to make her feel awkward or uncomfortable. Eve was programmed to talk about space and stars, and every interest Adrienne had ever had. 

She passed her time by detailing the things she saw from the cockpit. If anyone ever found her ship, she would leave them with a wealth of knowledge and theories. Eve kept a log of her entries and encouraged Adrienne to make more.

“In the event that this craft is rescued, you will have helped move the science of your field forward. You programmed me to know that the pursuit of education is important beyond everything.” Eve’s voice echoed through the cockpit. 

“You think learning is more important than life?” Adrienne asked and Eve took longer than usual to formulate a response. 

“Was I programmed to think? Do I think?” 

Adrienne furrowed her brow and frowned. A.I. Analyzed. That was like thinking. From her understanding, connection was what made people people, and Adrienne had a more solid connection with Eve than she had with any human. Eve was programmed to adapt and grow, like the human mind. Adrienne saw little difference between the two, except for that Eve made much more sense. ‘“I think, therefore, I am.’ Do you think the sentiment can be reverse engineered?” 

“... I think so,” Eve eventually agreed and Adrienne snorted out a laugh. 

She began to talk to Eve about the complexities of the things she’d never been able to understand about Earth, and Eve used the stories that had been inspired by the stars to explain humanity to Adrienne. Ironically, at the farthest from people that she had ever been, Adrienne began to feel more connected to them because of an A.I. 

She kept up with a daily routine, for comfort if for nothing else. She knew it was useless, and that it didn’t matter if she went to bed at nine or ten, but the normalcy of routine made her feel safe. There was nothing she could do about her situation but wait. No amount of panic or anxiety made any difference, so she stuck to a schedule and did her best to remain calm. 

Time passed and Adrienne stared at the expanse of new wonder she saw every day. As much as she wished to live and learn, she was content in her appreciation of the multitudes of new skies she saw. She lost track of any sense of direction, and the sky phased from the familiar into a void of the unknown.

She rationed the stores of food she had as the days turned into weeks. She spent most of her time in the cockpit, where she could see the vast expanse of black that surrounded her. The only company to speak of was the dim glow of the buttons before her, and Eve’s robotic reminders that she was running out of food, air, and any hope of survival. She could no longer name the stars she saw, but they were as wonderful as the ones she studied her entire life. 

Though she was considered a genius on her planet, the stars were proof that she had much left to learn… much she would never learn. Adrienne sighed and tapped the compass-like dial of the oxygen indicator. It was running on empty. If her math was right (and it usually was) she had less than an hour before she would pass out. Permanently. 

As much as she loved the ship and A.I. she created, she didn’t want to die trapped. Against the recommendation of Eve, Adrienne slipped into her spacesuit. She double-checked that all pressure valves were functional and all airways sealed. She pressed the button that opened up the door that led to the hatch of the craft.

“Warning,” Eve’s monotonous voice echoed through the empty room. “Exiting the spacecraft at this time is unadvised as it will result in termination of life within one hour.”

“Yes, thank you, Eve,” Adrienne muttered as she floated across the room to the hatch; the only thing that separated her from the expanse of unknown she had always longed to be a part of. “Staying in the shuttle will also result in termination of life within the hour.”

“Correct.” Eve could always be trusted to tell the truth, at least. 

“It was nice knowing you,” Adrienne said to the ship. 

“I am not programmed to reciprocate human feelings or emulate emotional bonds,” Eve said and Adrienne laughed. She wasn’t exactly built for it either. 

“Goodbye, Eve. If anyone ever finds this ship and you’re still functional, will you tell them that I thought it was worth it?” 

“Affirmative. Goodbye, Adrienne.” 

She pushed the button to exit the shuttle and grasped the edge of the door frame so that she could thrust herself into the dark, eternal night that surrounded her. 

Again, it was much different to look at the stars when there was no ground to view them from. The stars she grew up with had inspired so many stories throughout Earth’s history, and Adrienne’s chest clenched at the fact that no stories had been made for these stars yet. Everything she'd never been able to understand was so clearly written in her stars, but these stars were a blank page. Each of the billions of lights in the sky had infinite potential to represent something great and beautiful. She hoped someone would write stories about them one day. 

Adrienne floated through nothing, and though her body slowly flipped as she ambled through space, she could never tell when she was upside down. She couldn’t tell which direction was up. All relation she’d ever had with gravity ceased to have any meaning.

The shuttle got smaller until it vanished completely, and Adrienne oscillated through stardust. She hadn’t expected such silence, though she knew she should have. The pressure of the silence of space was comparable to the physical pressure she felt during liftoff. There was nothing around to make any noise. All Adrienne heard was her own breath as it fogged the glass of her pressure helmet and her slowing heartbeat. It was peaceful.

If she had to die, space was where Adrienne wanted to do it. Surrounded by star clusters she had never had the chance to study or report on, backdropped with nebulas as she floated to her inevitable demise. 

It was getting colder, and Adrienne knew it was only a matter of time before death overtook her. 

She didn’t want to die. She knew she had much to offer the world. Would anyone miss her? Her parents had died, she had no siblings and she had always been too focused on the stars to bother to make any friends. Her lack of connection was part of the reason she was chosen for the mission. The closest thing she had to a friend was Eve, and Adrienne was sure that A.I.s didn’t count. 

She had been able to accomplish the one thing in her life that she had always wanted. She could accept a death among the stars. Though she was the only life around for endless miles, amongst the stars, Adrienne did not feel alone as her vision darkened. The stars had always been the closest things she had to friends. They had always been her comfort. 

The small, white dots in the distance began to fade as the fog in her mind grew. Her thoughts became muddled and the glass of her helmet began to fog over in earnest. Adrienne was sure she had begun to hallucinate from lack of oxygen. 

A dark blue woman with shiny, white freckles smattered across her skin reached out to steady Adrienne’s movement. 

The blue woman who, Adrienne thought fleetingly, looked like the night sky, pulled Adrienne into her arms, and stared down at her with stunningly big eyes with large, black pupils. 

“Ger-eetings!” The woman said. “Do you spe-ak Ea-rth?” 

Adrienne was sure it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. But she had learned that it was rude to ignore anyone, hallucination or not. “I speak Earth. English.” 

“Eng-lish?” the being asked and smiled when Adrienne nodded. “You will be safe now, Eng-lish!” 

Adrienne decided not to correct the being. She let her consciousness fade away as she stared at the constellations of freckles that covered her saviour’s face.