You took to the stars with adventure in your eyes and dreams in your head.
Eleven hundred of you - shot off into the inky darkness of space with three missions.
Survive.
Search.
And, if you're lucky - [[make contact|Still alive]].
[[You're still alive|Most of you are, actually]].
[[And you've been searching|You've been searching]].
Most of you are, actually. You're not sure //quite// how many - nine-hundred forty, maybe fifty-ish - but for all the nagging from well-meaning relatives about how the little ships were nothing but death traps sent on suicide missions, you've all had a [[remarkably easy go of it|Still alive]]. That doesn't keep you from panicking nearly ever day about what happens if something goes wrong - but so far, nothing has.
Lord, how you've been searching. Seven months of searching, now, from star system to star system, poring over planets and moons and asteriods and little specks of oort and the endless heaps of readings, petabytes of data from the vast array of sensors scattered around your little ship that all add up to [[the same thing - |No one else]]
[[There's no one else out here|Utterly alone]].
You - the human race - and //you// - a single scientist, out in the void - are [[completely and utterly alone|Don't give up hope]].
//Don't give up hope//, they say. You get updates every two days - little more than a missive from HQ letting you know that //no, we haven't found anything// (//yet//, there's always that //yet// in there), and once, [[well wishes|Well wishes]] from your family and friends back home. But that's it. Signals aren't strong enough to pick up much else from home. You can still reach your fellow voyagers, and you do - even though, to be honest, you aren't //supposed// to be sending unauthorized text out. But the brass back home realized pretty fast that if they didn't let their guinea pigs [[talk to each other|So that's what you do]], they were liable to go mad.
You think about dying a lot.
Your relatives told you this was a suicide mission, and they were right. You knew that. You all knew that. Your superiors told you that - that this was a //sacrifice//. That you weren't going to come back. Your payment, your reward - that it wasn't for you. That it was for your family, or friends, or whoever you entrusted it to. Unless you find someone - //which you won't// - and they can get you back - //which they can't// - you're going to die out here. Eventually.
You think about how many days you have left.
You think about how that is the [[//only// thing you can control|Rockets]], right now.
Your life doesn't mean much, [[but it means something|Dead by their own hands]].
A lot of those hundred-fifty-something dead are dead by their own hands.
Maybe. You think. You don't know. You //gossip//, sure, but you don't //know//. Plenty of them died because of faulty machinery. Someone got hit by an asteroid, you hear. Like, back home. Before they even cleared Jupiter. But there are a lot of them that just get quieter, and quieter, and then...
They go dark.
One of them killed himself for sure. Lu- Lucy? Lucien? Lulu? You don't remember. But you know that they killed themselves.
Because they sent out a note to their neighbors, saying they were going to try to unseal the airlock, wait out the [[two-hour precautionary period|Precautions]], and then open it up and step outside.
The brass - actually, you don't know if the brass even know about it. All you really get to send back home is a signal saying "I'm still here" and, if you do find something - a burst of information, screamed out as loudly and clearly as possible. No matter how much power it uses. Even if it kills you.
[[The note, though - |The note]]
You lost contact with someone else today.
She's still there - you checked with a friend, and they checked with their friends, and yep, she's still there, still breathing, still soaring - but she's gone. [[Out of range|Daisy chain]].
She's dead, more or less, and that's okay. A lot of your friends have "died."
A [[//lot//|Seven]].
Someone told you once -
- or maybe it's something you learned in one of your classes -
- that the color of the universe was beige.
Strip out all of the //darkness// - all of the space, all of the void - and that's what it all averages out to. //Beige//. [[//Cosmic Latte// was the proper name|No Wikipedia]]. You knew when you set out - they //told// you - that it wasn't going to be like the posters. No nebulae of brilliant, super saturated reds and greens, no strings of pink pouring across the sky, no blossoms of purple and orange hanging outside your viewport. You knew what to expect, sort of, but some child-like little part of you was still expecting to see The Majesty Of Space. Like in the movies.
[[But instead you got fucking //beige//|Lucier]].
Or maybe that's all bullshit. You don't know. You don't exactly have Wikipedia [[out here|Beige]].
//...Lucier//. That was it.
They just signed [[their last name|Out the viewport]].
Still -
You find yourself, from time to time, turning towards the viewport and your breath catches - //just so// - because there is something about out there that is just... beyond comprehension. There's something about that fact that so much of it is //nothing// - dead, all of it, it's all //dead// - but still //beautiful//. Deep. Not deep in meaning, deep in depth - you don't understand what black is until you're out there, staring at all of that not-beige, watching the subtle twinkle of stars, close and nearby. It's beyond //meaning//. It //is//, and that's beautiful, in and of itself -
And staring at all that nothing is the closest you ever get to feeling like you [[found something|It's - ]].
[[It's - |One person]]
One person, now.
The chess guy stopped responding a few days ago. (Whatever a //day// is, out here.) One day, two days - that's understandable. Three, four, five... you know what that means. His last few communications were weak, [[anyways|Shame]].
You sent a message to your last neighbor, asking if he could find out what happened. He sent you back a terse "mayb", but you aren't expecting much. You asked him how many people he had left to talk to.
[[You aren't expecting him to reply to that, either|Birthday]].
You think it's your birthday. You wonder if anyone [[back home|Airlock]] noticed.
You can't stop thinking about the [[airlock|Fell in love]].
You fell in love out here.
A couple times. Back when it was [[fun|Back when]].
But they all disappeared.
You had a falling out with [[one of them|Fell out of range]]. You said something wrong, and there's - there's not a lot of space for discussion out here. No room for subtlety. No details. You remember your mother complaining once, back on Earth - something about a text she sent your father that he took the wrong way, and even though it all worked out fine, you still got to listen to her rant and rave about how there wasn't any room for //nuance// with all of that new-fangled technology. Not compared to just talking to people [[face to face|...]].
You thought it was kind of funny, at the time.
The other one just fell out of range. They were headed out at a five-degree angle from you. There wasn't any way you were going to [[stay in touch|Fell in love]] for long.
That's it, then.
He's gone. The sad boy. Dead, you think; your last few messages still came through too strong for him to have fallen out of range. Or maybe he's just [[not talking to you|message]].
Probably dead, though.
You got one last [[message|Eleven letters]] from him.
[[Eleven letters|Going home]].
[["imgoinghome"|a note]].
A [[suicide|do]] note if you ever saw one.
You don't know what to [[do|Write]], now.
Write, maybe. Exercise. Stare out the window. [[Sleep|Sleep sleep sleep]].
You don't think you can write anymore. You have pages, and pages, and pages, and pages - of garbage, just you slamming your head against the keyboard, sometimes literally; of dreams; of diaries; of your memoirs that no one will ever read, that will just drift through space after you die until they fall into a black hole or get found by some alien race that has no chance in hell of ever understanding your memories: of sneaking out to smoke after hours when you were at boarding school, clothes clinging to your skin, nicotine already staining your teeth, listening to the thunder creeping closer and closer every minute - even though you didn't like to smoke, but you liked thunder and being outside and feeling that //power// literally electric crackling through the air humming through your bones, and being with people who felt that and shared in that experience and looking at them and seeing yes i get it i get how you feel we are both here and alive and we feel the same thing and //that// is what it means to ''be right [[now|Sleep]]''
Mostly, you [[sleep|And wonder - ]].
And [[wonder - |Lie]]
Even though you won't let yourself believe it, not for a second, not for even a little bit - because it's //cruel// to let yourself believe a [[lie|But you wonder - ]] like that -
[[But you wonder - |home]]
Whether or not he was really going [[home|the end]].
the end
started for the fermi paradox jam in september 2016, finished for no reason april 2017
by fern
http://www.rabbitgirl.me
http://twitter.com/_fvkr_
thanks for playing
Just text. Short, concise paragraphs, obviously edited down by HQ. You assume they were actually from people you knew - there's no chance of getting any photos or, god forbid, //video// this far out.
Doesn't matter. Those messages stopped coming [[months ago|Don't give up hope]].
Watch for UFOs, full of little green men that maybe, just maybe, could send you [[back home|So that's what you do]].
You sleep a lot, actually. //It's better for the ship// (you think-say). Uses less oxygen. Less light. Less power. Not that any of that really matters. You're self-sufficient out here, until something breaks and you [[finally start to die|You think about dying]], but just staying awake and waiting for the little beep beep of an incoming transmission makes you a little //antsy//.
You know. Just in case. Who among us hasn't woken up screaming and run for the door, slamming the button in a desperate bid to get out and //go, somewhere, anywhere that's not here?// And who among us hasn't been happy, two hours later, when we've had time to breathe and think and realize that there's always tomorrow, and given thanks to those bastard engineers that built this thing that they didn't let us [[off ourselves|Dead by their own hands]] at a moment's whim?
[[ . . . |That's it, then]]
So that's what you do, most days. Send out fractured, compressed, condensed strips of words to the ships "close" to you - small talk, chess moves, jokes, stories, hell, you've even sent a love letter or two - and then while away the hours and the days waiting for another two or three lines in reply. You sit. [[Look out the window|UFOs]]. Keep an eye on the monitors, though they're pretty good about doing the work without you - honestly, you're just a warm body in here (which you think (or say; talking helps, sometimes) as kind of a joke, but mostly, out here in the cold, it just feels morbid).
[[Sleep|You sleep a lot]].
The rockets just move you forward. You can't change your course - everything from here on out is momentum. A little boost, now and then, to counteract the speed you might be losing from colliding with particulate, drifting around in the vaccuum. But you have no rudder. No wheel. You have a direction, and that's it.
At any point, you could switch off your sensors - redirect the power, kill the power, whatever - but //that's// not control. That doesn't [[mean anything|You think about dying]].
The note got passed around. Between the ships. Piece by piece, line by line, it came to you from a friend of a friend of a friend of a - three simple paragraphs. The plan. Who the author was. And a goodbye to a family that would probably never know what happened.
You still have it. The note - stored on one of your hard drives. The small one, set aside for personal use. Text files. Conversations. Letters.
Notes.
[[Some of them are yours|You lost contact]].
If you want to talk to her again, you'll have to do this; daisy chain your messages along your network of comrades until it reaches someone who can reach her - but you won't. You usually don't. That's not how it's done. Once someone's dropped off, you let them drop off. Pass along a message once in a while, if you think it's //really// important, but what's that important?
What's important, [[out here|You lost contact]]?
There's about seven people that you can still reach. Two of them aren't worth talking to - not unless you're really desparate. Of the five that you want to talk to, there's two that you can get a strong signal out to. The others, you can get //something//, but - it's garbage. Every fifth letter lost or scrambled. So that leaves - two neighbors. Two people to talk to; two people left that remind you that you aren't the last person left alive.
You don't even like them. One of them just wants to play chess, and he's terrible. The other one - no, you like him. He's nice. But melancholy. //Always//. And you aren't good enough to be his babysitter, or mom, or whatever he wants. You can't offer him a shoulder to cry on. All you can do is send back short missives. Words of support, or sympathy. Love, maybe. Depends on your mood.
Mostly though, all you can send back - all you have the energy for - is five letters.
[["Sorry."|Beige]]
[[Shame. He was starting to get good|One person]].
Back when you were days, weeks, months into this thing, and there was still a sense of adventure. Still lots of people to talk to, lots of time to talk. Clear messages. Plenty of room for late-night (hah) conversations. Flirting. Fun.
Some of it felt real. Most of it felt [[fun|Fell in love]].
Sleep. Sleep. Sleep; you wish you could sleep forever, you wish that you could sleep and never wake up. You love your dreams. Throughout all of this, you still have your dreams, where you're back at home, with your friends and family, sometimes flying, sometimes on adventures, sometimes - usually - just being there. Listening to the sound of other people breathing. Feeling the grass beneath your fingers. Sand under your toes. Little tactile sensations that you will never, ever, ever experience again.
But you can only sleep for so long before you're awake again. Before your stupid, traitorous body decides //no! It's time to be awake! Time to be [[awake|Thunder]]!//