Space Is Big

Space is very, very big, even in the bits we’re comfortable with. Even our home neighborhood — the Earth and the Moon — is hopelessly vast. And we are virtually nothing. There are ten billion humans, but you can’t see any of them from orbit. They’re too small; they’re just wandering around on the surface of a gorgeous, possibly unique, hunk of rock. Earth is a tiny hunk, too, it’s nothing to the size of the sun, and an unthinkable amount less than that to the sheer, staggering, endless size of nothing. It’s called ‘space’ for a reason; because that’s almost all it is. We’re not even motes, drifting in the black; open your window in the morning, watch the dust swirl through the sunlight; it’s far, far denser than we are to anything else. Space is so pointlessly, hopelessly giant that even light cannot cross it with anything resembling haste. 

It’s truly incomprehensible, but as Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker stared down from Mortimer Station at the surface of Earth and the pitch darkness around it, there was flicker of comprehension. It’s very easy to realize that we’re completely alone when the planet you‘d never thought you’d ever leave only takes up one window. It’s impressive, and it’s terrifying. We do not so much live on Earth as cling to it while we hurtle through emptiness. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker liked the feeling of inconsequence, though. It helped her realize that no matter how mortified she was about the fruitcake malfunction at her wedding, the damage wasn’t real, and the consequences were nothing (Jacob, who had spent a night in jail as a result of the fruitcake malfunction would beg to disagree). The Earth continued to turn and orbit. The sun continued to burn. No stars winked out in protest. 

In space, baseball scores and championship standings don’t matter. Global politics, even less so. War, disease, and fruitcake; humanity’s greatest enemies, seem trivial. They matter, but only barely. Even mighty concepts like love and taxation pale with the stars as a backdrop. Complacence fades in an eye-blink. Loneliness comes quickly; it’s a staggering thing to be the only eight humans within thousands of miles. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker tapped thoughtfully on the window, and hummed a meaningless tune. Earth was distant, the Moon was farther still, and space was very, very black. 

Emily hovered at Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s shoulder for a moment before speaking; her captain was lost in thought; pondering the vastness of space, Emily supposed. 

“Why are we here?” Emily asked.

“Do I look good in uniform?” Cypris said without listening. She stared at her reflection in the window for a minute, then looked back to Emily with an expression of unbridled perturbation. 

“Sure.” Emily said quickly, failing to notice the unbridled perturbation. “What are we doing on this station, Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker?” 

“You don’t have to use my full name.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said, running her fingers though her hair. She stared out the window, focusing on the stars instead of her apparel. 

“Yes I do.”

“I have no clue what we’re doing here.”

“Oh. Good.” 

“Good? Why?” 

“For a second, I thought I’d been excluded from something.” And with that, Emily walked away to go hit something (possibly Conrad) with a wrench, leaving Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker to stare at the Moon. 

A minute later, rock music blared from the axle of the station, to cover the sound of Emily and Conrad alternating between argument and work. Evie pushed a cart of vegetables down the curved-up hallway, scowling but pretending to smile. It was loud on Mortimer Station, despite the vacuum outside, and the few reasonably reasonable astronauts on board, namely: Kareem, Reyes, Henry, and Tyler. The sound of machinery droned on in the background, as did the babble of banter between Evie and her more disobedient plants.

Evie Kingston was a great proponent of botanical psychology; Conrad Munroe had invented the Plantpeuter. Evie Kingston held rock music in the lowest regard; Emily Hamilton wore concert t-shirts under her coveralls. Sooner or later, things were bound to go badly with her and the engineers. 

It started like this: 

Emily was mending the sleeves on her coveralls in Mortimer Station’s only workshop, which also happened to be the botany lab, which  also happened to be housing a number of rare plant species which did not react well to the acrid smoke drifting off Emily’s chem-stained coveralls because she’d got too close to the torsion driver again whilst removing a tertiary power coupling that she thought could be used to improve the station’s maneuvering engines. It couldn’t, because the power coupling was made by dengÜ-Power Systems, and the engines were made by their rival, Tremley Technologies; there was another use for the power coupling, however, and Emily (now with the help of Conrad, whose interest had been thoroughly piqued) set about exploiting it…

In the meantime, Evie was attempting to repair her relationship with a soot-stained daffodil, which was still incredibly vexed about Conrad’s calling it a jonquil. (Actually, Evie was vexed, and transposing her opinion onto what she supposed was the plant’s consciousness; the daffodil was woebegone, but otherwise had no quarrel with Conrad; it was too busy plotting to drown Emily in potting soil.) Evie spent the remainder of that orbital period watering her plants and wondering the best way to revenge herself upon the engineers whom she loathed without undue ado. She eventually decided that dinner provided an opportunity for humiliation. Her plan was simple: First, dinner would be made, then dinner would be sprinkled with chili peppers. 

In hindsight, it’s staggering that such a simple plan could have gone so horrifically wrong. To be fair, though, Evie couldn’t possibly have accounted for the failure of the maneuvering engines, or the extremely distracting (and totally fake) allergic reaction Conrad had to the chili peppers, or the subtle but severe allergic reaction Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker had to the chilis, or the outlandish result of Emily and Conrad’s collaboration with Reyes…Really, Evie ought to just have been prepared for anything. 

It wasn’t anything that happened though, it was everything. All at once, and for no good reason. The universe, it should be noted, is infinite and does whatever it wants. And if ‘whatever it wants’ is to throw a small group of astronauts halfway across the milky way, then so be it.