The unfortunate death of

November 28th, 2007 Edit

Zithromax Lotrisone Taking Erythromycin Lipitor Where Order Prevacid Age Discount Nexium Cheapest Pills Buy Levitra Frankfort Purchase VPXL Pierre Generic Zyban For Add Generic Levitra Health Forum Nexium Where Order Nizoral Side Effects Where Order Clomid Canada Where Order Stromectol Italy Where Order Soma Get High Celexa Prescription Where Order Cipro RX Price For Inderal Side Effects Where To Get Aricept Dosing Seroquel Comparison Generic Levitra Atlanta Price For Cymbalta India Generic Toprol XL Denver Flomax Toprol XL Comparison Where Order Zelnorm India Price For Amoxil Effects Discount VPXL Get High Price For Zelnorm India Levitra Hoodia NoRX Generic Soma Side Effects Purchase Female Viagra Columbus Purchase Lasix Phoenix Buying Topamax Lasix Weight Discount Lipitor France Purchase Doxycycline Concord Herbal Cymbalta United Kingdom Purchase Nexium Phoenix Price For Female Viagra Comparison Doxycycline Delivery Herbal Ultram Proper Dosage Price For Prednisone Health Forum Celexa Discount Prednisone Australia Price For Seroquel Online Clinic Discount VPXL India Where To Get Amoxil France Price For Norvasc Mail

The unfortunate death of  Please help /w naming of protagonist

I’ve been stranded in space now for a week. My stomach constricts, expands and wraps itself around my vital organs in a futile attempt to make me eat. I ask my stomach, what am I supposed to eat?
The few rations I left on the ship disappeared the first couple of times my stomach tried to convince me to eat. No matter how much talking I do I cannot convince my stomach there’s nothing left.
My synthetic boots, synthetic clothes, synthetic blankets and cot can’t be eaten. The metal hull is, well, metal. The plastic instruments would send me into a very uncomfortable downward spiral if I tried to boil them. Still my stomach persists.
To take my mind off of the violent ballet my innards rehearse, I’ll write down the story. The story of how my stomach muscled its way into my constant thoughts. The story of how I find myself stranded in space with no companions. It’s all my fault, I know.

The government launched me and two others into space in the spring of 2056. The crew of our ship took people from three general areas: Asia, Europe and the Americas. The international community decided Australia did not count as a general enough area, despite its continent status, to be included on the flight. Africa languished in a state of under-representation on the national scene.
I represented the Americas, both North and South. Shu put a face on Asia and Milsh portrayed the European powers.
The three of us trained for three full years at the Kraft Foods Space Complex, living together in the Keebler House. Corporate sponsorship dominated the naming industry, transcending national and geographical borders. Our ship, the Light Fantastic, defied the name whoring trend.
We got along most of the time. Arguments over the trash and the dishes erupted on a weekly basis like a liter of diet Pepsi with a package of Mentos dropped in.
The space complex wanted to make sure that the three of us could get along well enough on the ground under the assumption that if we could get along on terra firma, we could play nice in the cosmos.

“Take out the trash before I throw you in the compactor,” Milsh said in his watered-down eastern-European accent. Milsh did not yell, he spoke. His words might be violent but he delivered them like he would read a newspaper article out loud.
“I’ve told you once, Milsh,” Shu said in his non-accented voice. Except, he did have an accent, sort of a negative-accent. He tried hard to eliminate identifiers from his speech and dress. Shu ultra-pasteurized himself, to look like an innocuous concoction of the global culture. “It’s not my turn. So help me, I will break your leg off and put it in the trash if you bring up disposal one more time.”
Shu abhorred swearing and wiped it from his speech. Milsh and I swore like sailors, in anger, in pain, in pleasure and in everyday speech. Shu expressed vulgarity through threats of violence. Shu used violent speech as a proxy for swearing.
“You think you can hurt me?” Milsh said.
“I think I have a nice band saw under my bed,” Shu said.
“You don’t have the balls to hurt me.”
“I can remember when I broke your brother’s arm,” Shu said, “and he’s a full foot taller than you.”
“I let you break his arm,” Milsh said. Milsh had a few anger problems, in addition to the swearing. The complex invested a large sum of money into Milsh’s training before it recognized his anger problems and it assumed another candidate would be just like Milsh but with tendency towards other mediums of expression.
“You lie,” Shu said.
“You need a saw, you puny man,” Milsh said. “I need only my hands to rip you apart.”
“Stop,” Shu said and looked at me.
Milsh turned his head towards me.
“If you ask nice I’ll take it out,” I said. “But staring at me isn’t going to do anything.”
“Take the fucking trash out,” Milsh said me to me.
“No,” I said.
“I will destroy you,” Milsh said.
“Ask me nice,” I said, “and I will take the fucking trash out.”
“Please take the trash out,” Shu said. Despite his violent speech shortcomings, Shu liked to broker peace between the three of us. The Space Complex trained all of us in the ways of getting along but Shu took the lessons to heart. Milsh slept through the brokering classes and I made paper footballs. I always made sure to make enough footballs to pelt Milsh with when he started snoring.
Milsh stomped outside, heading for a drill sergeant and his recruits. The cadets stood perfectly still, staring at the drill sergeant while watching Milsh through peripheral vision.
The drill sergeant yelled something at Milsh, we couldn’t hear from the house, and started waving his finger at the big man. Milsh said something to the sergeant, picked up a recruit and hefted the poor boy onto his shoulder. Milsh walked with a nonchalant gait to a training-course mud pit and threw the recruit in. He walked back to the house, avoided eye contact with us and went into his room.

“I will crush you,” Milsh’s brother Igore yelled at Milsh.
“You cannot hurt me, brother,” Milsh said. Milsh, a seven-foot-tall man, looked up at his one-foot-taller sibling.
Igore started yelling at Milsh over Milsh’s refusal to return to his family. Milsh’s mother caught pneumonia. Milsh’s dad dived, head first, into a sea of senility years ago.
Shu and I watched the two argue from a pair of recliners we moved to face the kitchen table. We watched as Igore changed his tactics. He tried the big-eyed puppy look.
“I cannot take care of both without you, Milsh,” Igore said. “The crops sit and rot. The wild pigs forage in the fields and gored the dog. I need your help Milsh.”
“Leave,” Milsh said.
Igore walked over to Shu and put him in a headlock.
“I will break your friend’s neck if you do not leave with me,” Igore said.
Milsh looked Shu in the eyes. We had lived together long enough to form silent communication.
Shu grabbed Igore’s arm and moved it the wrong way until we heard a loud crack and a scream from Igore.
“Leave,” Shu said to Igore.
Milsh’s brother walked, cradling his broken arm, out towards the Blue Dog Brothers’ Brew Infirmary.

 Night of drinking before launch. Add Morning of launch. Expand into a full scene. The three of us stayed up the night before the launch in a final farewell to the earth, alcohol and everything we held dear.
We started with a few cases of beer but digressed into drinking games with both light and dark liquors.

The engineers, designers, mechanics and quantum physicists outfitted the Light Fantastic with the latest, greatest and best gear. The ship, through technologies beyond the comprehension of its crew, could travel at speeds exceeding, by a few miles an hour, the speed of light. The discovery of wormholes in 2045 made space exploration even more viable and appealing.
The idea of discovering and systematically raping new planets and solar systems propelled the Light Fantastic to the top of the international list of really important stuff. World hunger, poverty, electricity and water took a back seat to the exploitation of uncharted territories.
Shu, Milsh and I knew our importance and how we would be seen for future generations. The new conquistadors, we thought. Bringing disease, blight to a brave new world and wealth to the old one. Wealth did not drive us. We did not crave more stuff. We cared about the exploration. Sure, the risks existed. Risks have a way of worming into the heart of every Endeavour. “You could be hit by a bus tomorrow,” Milsh would say to reporters. “Ve will all die someday.”
Milsh’s accent amplified ten fold in front of the cameras. He thought the people wanted to see a European instead of a really tall man in a suit layered with corporate endorsements.

The first six months of the trip went by without issue. We all got along better than expected. We read, watched movies, old TV shows and played board games with magnetic pieces.
We exercised and played poker. The trip meandered through time just as it should have. We did the same things over and over.
On the first day of the seventh month in space, while playing poker, Milsh accused me of cheating. I denied the claim and Shu tried to broker a peace between us. His attempts failed.
“I will fucking kill you,” Milsh said.
“Do you know how easy the airlock is to operate, Milsh?” I said, gesturing towards the back of the ship.
“You are small. My dog is bigger than you. You think you can throw me out? I laugh at you. You cannot throw me out,” Milsh said.
“You’re bulkier than me is all,” I said. “Sure, I’d die too, and so would Shu, but who cares? You’d be dead Milsh.”
“You would not dare,” Milsh said. I could see a hint of doubt in his eyes, contradicting his words.
“If I’m going to die, why not take you with me?” I asked.
Shu walked over and punched me in the stomach and Milsh in the face. “I cannot let you two bicker,” he said.
I grabbed Shu around the neck and threw him into the wall.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I said.
Milsh grabbed Shu and threw him into the floor with the word “Die.” Milsh kicked himself off of the wall and launched himself at me. I ducked and jammed my head into his midsection when he floated over. Shu grabbed my legs after Milsh hit the ceiling and whipped me up, forcing my head into a ceiling beam. I blacked out at that point.
When I woke I found Milsh holding a frozen bag of peas to his left eye and Shu sulking in a corner. None of us spoke for four weeks.

“We’re twenty minutes away from the wormhole,” Shu said. Milsh and I looked up from our respective books. Milsh positioned himself at the very back of the shuttle, I had moved to the middle left and Shu had moved to the front.
Shu stared at us, daring us to break the silence for a second time. In the silence, Shu and Milsh shared a look, some kind of silent communication.
“Soon,” Milsh said. “Soon. Do you think the queen will meet us there?”
“Maybe,” Shu said, looking at Milsh. “Maybe.”
I suspected Shu and Milsh collaborated and their words were code of some kind. I needed to make a move, and soon. The looks I saw exchanged between the two over our month of silence had worried me. My worry turned into a survival instinct.
Over the twenty minutes before we entered into the wormhole I tried to plan out their deaths.
Strangulation would require a one-at-a-time approach, I thought. A blunt object to the head would clog the cabin with floating blood. I decided just before we entered the wormhole the approach had to be bloodless. But how, I thought?
Then it struck me, a staple of science-fiction cinema from over a half century before. HAL, I thought. A brilliant machine. I would put on a space suit, tie Milsh and Shu to a girder and open the airlock. Put everything in storage just before I opened the airlock, keep everything preserved.

Space greeted us on the other side of the wormhole. Not just space though. The wormhole left us four months of travel away from a planet the computer marked as exploring-ready.
I prepared to make my move. I thought I caught Shu and Milsh talking in hushed tones when I woke on three occasions on the three nights before we entered the wormhole. I felt tension in the air. They would make the first move if I didn’t.
I waited until the two fell asleep, tied their feet left to a girder, donned my spacesuit and packed all the things not bolted down into cabinets.
I’ll have time to reorganize all the stuff later, I thought. Plenty of time once Milsh and Shu were dead.
I made sure my spacesuit fitted correctly, made my way to the airlock, took one deep breath to steady my nerves and opened the hatch. I saw their eyes open in shock. They tried to speak but the air in the shuttle moved into space too quickly for them to speak.
I steadied my heart rate with a quick closed-eyes breathing exercise. When I opened my eyes I saw freeze-dried versions of my former companions.
“Sorry guys,” I said. Talking to myself. So soon.
I closed the airlock, headed over to the main console and turned off all the alarms the open airlock caused. I checked how long it would take for the atmosphere in the shuttle to return, set the autopilot for the four-month-away planet and took a nap.

I strapped the freeze-dried version of Shu into the copilot seat and tied Milsh down on the right side of the shuttle, placing him where I had spent so many months in silence.
“I wonder how your brother’s doing Milsh,” I said. I talked to the meat popsicles a lot. They were my only company. Even if they were murderous-had-I-not-murdered-them company, they were still company. All that silence after our fight really got to me.
“Well, I don’t think he likes the broken arm any,” I voiced for Milsh, taking out of the right side of my mouth.
“He threatened to kill me,” I voiced for Shu, from the left side of my mouth.
“He had it coming,” I said to the meat popsicles.
I’m having a three-way conversation, I thought. My dad always warned me about that. Two-way conversations, they’re fine he would say. But a three-way conversation? Shit, he would say, that’s just weird.
Oh well, I thought. I have to pass the time somehow. And I did. I learned Milsh, even in his diminished capacity, played an incredible game of chess. Shu beat me at checkers every time.
When my turn to choose came up, I picked risk. The games lasted for days on end. Shu and Milsh always had the advantage because they didn’t have to sleep anymore. When I slept they planned their next moves, colluded together. I could still win but it took lots of concentration and sleepless nights. I couldn’t let them have the upper hand, I would tell myself.
“You can’t keep a hold over Asia,” I would tell Milsh. “It’s too big!”
Milsh never listened to me though. He always went after Asia. I personally went for my birthplace, the Americas. Shu took over Australia; I never figured out why.
I talked to them about my own problems and why I joined the program. I said I abandoned my wife and two kids to fulfill my dream of going into space. I made sure enough money to keep the family in good shape arrived in the mail every month.
Sure, I told Shu, I missed them. And my children grew up without a dad, but, I told him, I’m an astronaut in space! Shu argued with me for hours about how I should have stayed with my family. I’m ashamed, I told him. After I left I figured I couldn’t go back without feeling even worse.

The computer beeped at me until I turned off the alarm.
“Thirty minutes until we land,” I told the popsicles. I strapped Shu back into the copilots seat and left Milsh to float slightly above the cabin floor. I put the game of checkers back into the game board cabinet and strapped myself in.
The complex taught us how to do every single job on the shuttle in case one or both of our shipmates died. Shu practiced more landings than me but I figured I could land without ruining the Light Fantastic.
I put a of tape over Shu’s mouth just before I prepared to land; he tried to blather on and on about how he should be piloting, not me. The tape shut him up though.
Once we landed I checked the atmosphere of the planet from the safety and comfort of the central console. The computer readout said the planet had a high enough oxygen level to maintain human life and the temperature stayed at a balmy 80 degrees during the day and dropped to a comfortable 60 at night.
I opened the airlock for the first time to the scent of a brand new to humanity planet. It smelled pristine, like a high mountain area minus the smell of trees.
I set up the temporary living module, a house for three, just outside the shuttle’s airlock. I unloaded the rations into what I started calling the house and drained the shuttle’s fuel tank.
The shuttle ran on water, through some incredible feat of engineering, so I offloaded the majority of the fuel into a giant canister for drinking and showering. I moved the game boards and blankets and like supplies into the house.
I made sure the house looked clean as could be, took in a deep breath of new-house smell and dragged Shu and Milsh to the dinner table.
“I’m going for a walk guys,” I told the popsicles. “I saw some rock formations or something to the east when we were landing. Going to go check it out. I wish you guys could come, but, you can’t. I’ll be back later.”
That’s what I told my wife before I fled to the Kraft Foods Space Complex I thought. At least this time I would actually come back.

The rock formations turned out to be an abandoned village. The former denizens built each house into a rock about twenty feet tall and fifty feet square. Every house had a single level. In every single house I found some kind of edible dried foods and huge jugs of water.
I wandered to the center of the town and found a what looked like to be a well with a sixty foot opening. I dropped a bucket hanging at the top of the well down until I heard it hit water and winched it back up.
I poured the ice cold water over my head, to calm my nerves and rehydrate. I could live here, I thought. The beds, about twice as big as the cot I had been sleeping on, were soft. I wandered around until I found a house with three rooms and lied down for a nap.
I woke to see two pairs of familiar eyes staring down at me. Milsh and Shu in their pre-freeze dried forms stared at me. I froze for twenty seconds and screamed for a full minute.
They stood there, silent. I could see their chests move slowly. I could feel the body heat emanating from them.
I ran out of the house, out of the village and back to the camp.

My legs burned. The months and months of no gravity took its toll on my muscles. Still I ran for a full hour without rest. I looked straight ahead the whole time. I didn’t want to know if the somehow alive Shu and Milsh followed me.
The camp stood as I left it. I went into the kitchen and found the popsicle Milsh and Shu just like I left them. Except they were screaming.
“You abandoned us!” Shu and Milsh screamed. So uncharacteristic of them, I thought.
“You monster! You left us! You left us! What will the living us say to this treatment? Monster!” The alive Shu and Milsh and the popsicle versions must be in collusion, I thought.
“They’re out to get me,” I said. “Fuck.”
I ran to the shuttle, closed the airlock tight behind me and practiced breathing exercises.
“I sealed the airlock,” I repeated to myself over and over. “I sealed the airlock.” I used it as a mantra for a full twenty minutes until my heart rate came under control.
I strapped into the pilot seat, went through the minimum system checks and launched back into space. After I cleared the planet’s atmosphere I set the ship’s autopilot for home.
The little red gas can blinked at me. The engineers had a keen sense of humor, after all. Still, I didn’t refuel and the launch used up what little fuel I left in the tank. And I left the rations. And the blankets. And the games.

So here I am. Stranded in space with very little water and no food. The hunger pains return, angry at my attempt at suppression. If only I hadn’t abandoned the meat popsicles down there. Or my family.
Oh well, I guess. Starvation, here I come.

Entry Filed under: Wheeler's Posts

543 Comments Add your own

Leave a Comment

Logged in as . Logout.

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed

Calendar

September 2010
M T W T F S S
« Aug    
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  

Most Recent Posts