Blue Oblivion

Starlight reflected off of the blank control panel and into my squinting eyes. Holding a sharp breath, I punched the button labeled Light-speed Drive. My stomach twisted into knots of anxiety and hope when the ignition button lit up at my touch. The transmission of the space pod shifted into gear, but with a heave the engine died, cutting all power. Without the thrusters to correct its course, the capsule began to spin.

“No, no, no, this cannot be happening…” I flicked the dead switches overhead and pressed the dark, unresponsive buttons. “Please power up, please power up,” I pleaded to the control panel. Nothing was working.

My cold fingers grazed the space pod’s walls as I climbed out of the cabin and through the hall, crawling down into the engine room. All of the lights in the main computer were out, the fuel capsules had stalled, and, most importantly, the oxygen tanks had shut down. I flipped the breakers, hoping to turn at least the oxygen filter and heater back on. I could hear the electricity whirring throughout the lifeless machine, but nothing reacted. I pulled the emergency power lever. Nothing.

“Come on, reboot, Reboot, REBOOT!” I roared at the generator, pulling the lever harder and faster with each word. The engine surged, the lights flickered, the tanks stirred, and everything died yet again. Part of my hope died with it. Shivering, I sank to the floor, head in my hands, painful tears streaming out of my eyes. I grabbed my stomach and shuddered, clamping a hand over my mouth to muffle the wail building in my throat. Gasping and biting my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, I crept back into the control cabin to huddle in my chair. My hyperborean hands wiped away the thick, hot tears that clumped my lashes. Quavering, I grabbed the speaker of the radio-transmitter and attempted to hail any nearby space port.

Silence was my only reply. Not even the smallest crackle of static came through the receiver as I called mayday with a cracking voice.

I was officially alone, drifting off into space with no power, no heat, and no oxygen, farther away from any inhabited planet than I had ever been before. My fingers trembled as I picked up the digital emergency guide I always kept tucked under the pilot’s seat. Well, this should be easy, I thought. I just have to look under, “How to Survive Without Oxygen.”

Much like the rest of the ship, the manual gave me nothing. The tears crept back, blurring all the useless protocols in my useless emergency manual. I screamed in desperation and hurled the tablet across the tiny alcove. My head hung and rested on my shoulder. I stared down at the mission patch on my sleeve. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I had trained for years so this wouldn’t happen. I’ve failed, failed, failed, failed, failed so spectacularly that no one could ever top my fiasco.

My stomach twisted like a knife as I looked to the window, watching my labored breaths crystalize on the frozen pane of glass.

Slowly, my sight drifted out to the painting of stars beyond the port-hole. My eyes were filled with the light and colors of an entire universe as it spread before me, a never-ending expanse of eternal beauty. I wrapped my shaking arms around my knees, closed my eyes, and thought in the perfect silence. I studied the image of the stars that burned under my eyelids,  searching through the galaxies, nebulae, and solar systems.

Words drifted in between the planets and their moons: “Look not merely with your eyes, but with your heart and your mind. Do not simply see things. Feel them. Find in yourself what you have been searching for all along. There is always an answer to everything. Once you find it, keep it in your mind. Don’t let it go. It means something. That something is for you to find within your soul.” 

I smiled, feeling at peace with the familiar words of my professor ringing in my empty ears—the only comfort I had had in weeks. My stomach lurched this way and that with the endless rotating of the space capsule. Flashes of light and color rushed past my closed, yet open, eyes. I raced through galaxies, dodging stars as I searched for my answer. And then it was still.

My body went limp as my mind floated to the scene of my thoughts in the unfathomable depths of space: a beautiful blue star. It floated alone, suspended in bright blue and white light. A solar storm surged around it, whipping my hair into my stunned face. The star was unaffected by the wind; instead, it floated peacefully, surveying me just as I surveyed it. I leaned toward it, pulled into its gravity. I never broke concentration with my introspection. I stared at the marvel for maybe a minute, an hour, a day.

The watch on my wrist ticked monotonously--mocking me as time went on without pity for those who could control nothing, oblivious to any cry or whimper for help.

“What is time? Is it real? Is it real, perhaps, because we think we can measure it? Because we can ‘see’ it? Or is it not real because it isn’t tangible—just a pigment of the imagination, an inexistent force over which we have no control? These are the questions you must ask yourselves. Question not how it is done, but why it is done that way. Go ahead: question time, the universe, the existence of thought. Question it all! You will find an answer in yourself.”

I shuddered and leaned forward, smacking heavily into the metal control panel before my face. But I did not open my eyes.

Instead, I continued to stare at the placid star, that ball of light that had no care in the world, or in the universe for that matter. I longed to draw closer to it, to be as at peace as it seemed to so effortlessly be, surrounded by the raging tempest. Dizzily, I fell toward it, in a constant state of spin, never stopping. My body slammed to the side of the cabin, pain searing in my ribs as the space pod collided with something unseen. My eyelids never opened.

Instead, they grew heavier as my breaths became shallow in the cold, thin air. My mind fogged up…my thoughts iced over…my heart became numb. With a final, silent breath, I plummeted toward the star and sank into beautiful blue oblivion.