She was a young girl when she first ravished, devoured science fiction. She plucked the paperback books from the book cases her Father had filled over many years. In some small way, she understood her father more by reading the books he too had read and loved. He wasn’t a talker, except when he’d had a drink, and then it was 50/50 whether it would be friendly talk or not. She remembered vividly the smell of the pages when she picked up the books which hadn’t been read in decades. Mmmm.. the delicious smell of pulp fiction.
Reading was something her teachers encouraged as a way to expand her vocabulary, and she had spent many sleepless nights with her body lying in her bed, and her head, heart and soul stuck into other worlds, in the depths of a book. Unable to break free from the spells the authors cast on her young soul, she would often read until she could no longer keep her eyes open to roam the worlds captured on their pages.
Often the stories which she could not let go of, the ones she was so very desperate to know what happened next… Those ones contained things which disturbed her soul, but she could only enjoy the ones which also had a vein of good. A branch of security, safety, to hold whilst the horrors were navigated, challenged, overcome. Too much blackness was, too black to stomach.
As she looked out into the vast blackness which was now her forever home, she noticed the hum of the air ventilation systems, and the faint whirring of cogs that kept her alive. She remembered those spells, they were still weaving their magic. They were the reason she was here, in the vast nothingness of space. They gave her the desire to create her own story, and it had to be one that had never been told before. Nothing else would ever satiate her curiosity except exploration of the unknow. Nothing else would be worthy of her legacy.
She had not anticipated being quite this alone when the voyage commenced, in spite it always having been one possible outcome.
She stood up and walked towards the kitchen, then stood and stared blankly at the myriad of dehydrated culinary delights. Thankfully the taste and texture had improved significantly since the inaugural space voyages. One giant mouthful of minestrone soup later, and she’d be feeling much better about her situation, of this she was certain. Soothing soup for the soul. She sighed.
Since she’d woken she was surprised to find the counter displaying the number of miles from earth steadily increasing, oddly reassuring. Even though it was showing the ever increasing aloneness that was now her permanent existence.
In the 24 hours since she’d awoken, (as planned) from cryogenic stasis she had been plunged into the deep end of the pool of her own scifi horror story.. When past, teenage Charlie had first wondered, what exactly would it be like, out there in the blackness of space, to actually leave Mars? She never quite imagined it like this.
She still was the teenager who had devoured her father’s science fiction books. Even the ones written centuries before her, or her Dad’s time, they surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, stood the test of time. Perhaps humans can only grow and develop as far as we can imagine? Perhaps.
But that girl’s voice was strong inside her, still insanely curious as to what was really out there. Was it possible to truly explore the black nothingness of space, and for what ends, really? Satiating curiosity seems such a trivial endeavour, but then, what development of human kind had not been driven by curiosity?
She sometimes wished she had opted for a cat companion for this stage of the journey, but she’d made that decision believing she would be one of twenty alive and kicking, enjoying the journey into the great beyond. Things were not as planned. It did not, at that point, occur to her that other crew members’ cats might still be in cryogenic stasis. Not at that point.
When she did ponder on the plethora of genetic material which was cryogenically stored on this space exploratory vessel her thoughts turned to how to utilise it now the great plans of humanity had, well been somewhat ineffably scuttled.
Her mind had been focusing on the plans she had had, but she quickly realised she needed to set those aside and consider this new problem to solve, without hindrance from the problem solving strategies of a problem which no longer existed. This was a vastly different game, one in which the winning goal was yet to be declared, the reward yet to be decided. Ineffable one might say.
So, she got out her flipchart pad and sharpies, so she could get out her thoughts from her brain, onto the paper. Seeing her thoughts with her eyes always helped her make more sense of them, see the patterns and threads, finding solutions. This was how she created all her strategies. This was her favourite decision making tool, and right now the question was “what the fuck should Charlie do now?” Billions of miles from her home solar system. A billion miles away from the original plan, a billion miles from any other sentient being? Now was time for the new plan to be created. She didn’t need the whole journey, but she did need to understand what the next step was, and it needed to be clearer than, do your yoga, feed your body, check the ship’s efficiency, check the scanners. It needed to lead beyond the situation she presently found herself in. And in order to get that first step she needed to be clear what the final destination was. She was the only one left to work it out, to decide.
She was so fucking glad that the whole of the ship was intact, especially the hydroponics bays, even though right now they were empty. They signified hope. Teenage Charlie had once imagined them to be open to space, a glass view into the universe beyond. She was massively reassured that she could lie on the ground and look up at the holographic sky and enjoy watching the trees swaying in the wind. Just like she had done throughout her entire life on her home planet. Her favourite place to think, to be. Even though she no fucking idea what the fuck she was doing, really.
Her very existence was beyond words, so what hope did she have of devising game play, a plan, strategy, route? When she had not a baldy notion what she should do. In good news, it was at least her choice to make, which meant she wouldn’t have to compromise, or spend needless hours trying to explain to others what was to her, was as obvious as the need for humans to breathe.
Day 3, and the sense of black despair now had an inkling of hope. She had begun to believe that she could. She knew that hope was the past tense of disappointment, and she also knew that like curiosity, without hope, there was no adventure, no nothing really. If you didn’t hope something would happen, why would you do it? Hope was an inevitable ingredient in her ineffable plan. Essential, perhaps. Delicious? Maybe edible, with a bitter after taste perhaps.
Every two hours (she had set an alarm) she broadcast her position, by voice and using base 2 system, it wasn’t because she wanted to be heard, well no, she did want to be heard, but she had no hope that she would be. She did it, simply so she could hear herself. Hear the progress being made, the progress she was making, onwards on her journey, creating a new step in her ineffable plan.
She had her journal too of course, but that was for reading back to herself, reflecting, understanding, being present with herself. Announcing to the universe the progress the ship was making, that she was making meant she could hear it, it was heard.
In many of the science fiction books she had consumed, there would be a voice of the ship’s computer as the companion for the lone, lost space survivor. But this wasn’t science fiction, this was reality, her reality. Front row seat to infinite blackness.
One of the first things she did, once she had caught her breath from waking, alone…. Was to calculate how long it would take to reach Pleuritan, 50 years meant she wasn’t guaranteed to arrive alive, even if every single variable went her way. Given the luck on the journey so far, leaving her the only person alive from a 120 person crew… she needed to find ways to improve her luck.
Her genetics were good, no hereditary conditions, that she could be confident of, or else she wouldn’t have passed the first selection screenings, she would not be here if she had any genetic weaknesses.
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So she was faced with an empty page upon which she could chose her own adventure, a truly blank slate. She wondered whether any human had ever quite had this experience. And thought probably those monks who meditated most of their lives had. It was weird to think that human could desire to be in such blankness, but she was beginning to understand the lure. The freedom of The Blackness.
