Float
TIMOTHY TSE
It was supposed to be a simple mission. A quick repair job. Yet now I have found myself staring into the eternal abyss of death. A black, gnawing vacuum devoid of all life but mine. And soon, I will be assimilated as well, a floating carcass that would never be discovered.
I tried turning, only to end up in a swirling loop. As I attempted to steady myself once again, I caught glimpses of my wreckage. What was once a beautiful and sleek spaceship had now been crushed into oblivion, an unfamiliar heap of aluminium and steel.
An alarm blared within my spacesuit, a startling blast into my eardrums. In bright red letters, my console displayed that my oxygen levels had reached a critical low. The little hope I had of survival had now diminished completely as I sighed and muted the alarm, shoving the notification aside with all the other warnings telling me how I was going to die.
As the lack of oxygen affected my brain, my mind began to wander. Memories flashed vividly as I fell into the pit of history. I thrashed, clawed, dug my way out, only for a wave of nostalgia to hit me in full power, forcing me to relive my past. My eyes rolled back as I closed my eyes.
When I reopened them, I was greeted with the familiar scenery of Enceladus. Six large hemispheres with hexagonal panels running across the top occupied the icy-grey surface. These spacedomes were where all Encelis lived, providing oxygen and water for us to survive and prosper. My grandfather helped develop and build these domes, while my father designed the Hekati colony, the very dome where I was born in.
Because of my family’s involvement with Enceladus, we were rather well-off. Our estate was the biggest in Hekati, from our three-story house to our massive backyard. We even had a pool filled with Earthian water, not the melted-down Enceli ice water that most people use. My father enforced weekly swimming lessons since I was a child, even hiring an instructor all the way from Earth to teach me. My earliest memory of my father was him standing on the edge of the pool as I shivered in the water. I was around two years old, barely standing above the water level. Even now, as I drifted in my spacesuit, I could still hear the echo of his speech from all those years ago.
‘There are three things to do when you are in the water,’ his deep voice boomed as he glared into the eyes of his offspring, ‘You can swim: a logical and wise action with the best conclusion, allowing you to move forward and improve. You can sink: a cowardly choice, accepting your demise with no fight. Or,’ his mouth twisted into a growl, ‘You can float: the state of neither swimming nor sinking, neither continuing nor quitting. A fool’s decision, for only a fool would be stuck. Choose what you want to be in life: cowardly, foolish, or wise.’
My father’s words stuck with me as I grew up. I could be wise, cowardly, or foolish. What person would want to be the latter two? So, I swam. I swam to the first place in my class. I swam to team captain in every sport I did. I swam to the top university in Enceladus. When the space travel agency Hipolitusia announced that they were opening submissions to become a spaceman, I swam to enrol. My track record, as well as my family name, speedily assisted me in getting a spot with the Hipolitusia Young Spaceman Program. Other people claimed that I was accepted due to my family’s history, but I knew who I was, and I knew why I was chosen. I refused to be a coward or a fool. I must continue on. My father never liked the company, but joining the program would allow for better future prospects, so he allowed it. If only he had stopped me then, perhaps I would not have found myself in my current situation.
Three years of vigorous training, endless nights of studying and the occasional brawl in the hallway allowed me to graduate the program with flying colours. I wanted to continue with Hipolitusia by joining their ranks as a proper spaceman, but my father instantly shot the idea down. He claimed that I was becoming a fool, staying in one place, floating on the log that is Hipolitusia. For the first time in my life, I ignored him. I would not be floating, but swimming through the ranks. Soon, I would be swimming through space, helping discover new planets and satellites for humanity to grow.
A year of desk work later, the company leaders approached me with a position in an upcoming mission. It was to the nearby Saturnian satellite of Dione to study and prepare it for human colonisation. Obviously, I agreed. This was the next step in my dream. My father disapproved, but he had been disapproving my every action since I joined Hipolitusia. Our last conversation ended in an argument as I stormed away, not realising that it would be the last time I saw him.
The team consisted of seven members, including myself. We lived on a space station that orbited above Dione, a white tube with panels and antennae sticking out in every direction. I had a hard time getting used to the small living space, especially as we lived with zero gravity. My job was to log down anything and everything that happened, sending regular updates back to headquarters. I had no problem with completing my tasks, but everyone else seemed rather ill-equipped. Our navigator Esteria failed to identify every star on a starchart. Our geologist Gaiya could barely identify the difference between a chasma and a fossa. Our leader Manni could not even manage his family back in Enceladus, let alone a mission team. Perhaps it was my desire to swim through the ranks, but I ended up voicing my concerns in one of my updates, declaring that this seven-membered mission could easily be accomplished with only myself. Not only did I receive no response from Hipolitusia, but my teammates somehow learned about my request to kick everyone off the mission. This resulted in a series of arguments that went from passive-aggressive jabs to insults, and even escalated to physical attacks. It took Manni’s threat of disbanding the team and sending everybody back to Enceladus to stop our fights.
Another year went by, and somehow, we continued on. The façade of teamwork was created for my reports. Instead, we worked independently, only coming together every now and then to detail the progress of our respective field of research. I was fine with this situation since I no longer needed to witness the incompetency of my teammates. However, this severely limited my job, leading to me idling about every day, doing nothing. I remember thinking how my father was right, that I was simply floating in one place, wasting my life.
A few days after one of our mundane meetings, Manni came to me with a task. ‘One of our spaceprobes have been damaged and requires a repair job,’ he mused, adjusting his glasses while ignoring my gaze, ‘Since you’re not doing anything, please take a spacepod and fix it.’ I could not say no, so I nodded in agreement, before following him to the hanger. While walking, I could feel myself burning with annoyance. For research, we had sent out unmanned drones to survey Dione up close. These spaceprobes rarely break down, so whoever was in charge of them should have done a better job. And of course, it had fallen onto me to take care of everyone’s mistakes. Manni continued rambling about how to fix the device, something to do with its antenna, but I paid little attention. I learned how to fix spaceprobes back in the program so I was confident I could handle whatever was damaged.
The space station was equipped with spacepods, small but stylish spacecrafts designed for single travel. Manni helped me prepare the ship for launch. I would be lying if I said I was not nervous, it was my first solo space mission after all. My heart pounded alongside his countdown, and before I knew it, I blasted off. The white interior of the launch room was instantly replaced by the vast nothingness of space. Tiny bright lights illuminated my windscreen as I steered the spacepod to the broken probe. I swiftly found it, before slipping into a spacesuit and exiting the pod. I took a moment to take it all in. The grey moon of Dione glimmered beneath me, while Saturn stood before me in all his might, his ring of rocks and ice slowly orbiting the golden-brown gas giant. The planet was visible from Enceladus, but it was different seeing him up close. After I had finished marvelling at the sight, I got to work. I was tethered to my pod via a line of Kevlar rope, and I used the jet boosters in my spacesuit to travel between the probe and my pod. It was probably easier to link the probe and the pod together, but I was having fun, and failed to anticipate how terrible things could go.
Disaster struck as I was finishing up the repairs. While my back was turned against my pod, an asteroid crashed into it. Normally, the radar system in both my pod and my spacesuit would have warned me of an object speeding towards me, giving me time to move out of the way. Perhaps I was given a faulty spacesuit, or my spacepod malfunctioned, but no alarm went off. Instead, I was aggressively lurched from the probe. Instincts took over and I released myself from my tether, before using jet boosters to get away. As I watched, my pod crashed into another asteroid, crumbling into scrap. If I did not unclasp myself in time, I would have been crushed alongside my pod. I felt a moment of relief, before it was overtaken by sheer shock and fear. I had no way to get back to the space station, nor had I any means of communication. I was stuck, floating in space. My father was right. I had become the fool.
As my spacesuit’s power gradually dwindled, I racked my brain to come up with a plan of survival, but nothing would work. I had diverted all energy to my oxygen levels, causing my jet boosters to be rendered useless. The spaceprobe I just fixed had a built-in communication system, but it was too far for me to access it; I had floated one way, while the probe had resumed its orbit of Dione by moving the other direction. My only hope was that it would break again, alerting Manni that something went wrong so he could send help, but the likelihood of that happening was unlikely. After all, I was actually capable in doing my job. The severity of my situation soon settled in. It finally dawned that I was going to die. Nobody was coming to save me. This was it, the final chapter of my life, an anti-climactic conclusion.
With that, my mind returned to the present. My power reserves had been thoroughly depleted. My throat was coarse from dehydration, and my breathing had become more and more shallow. Beyond Dione and the silhouette of the space station, I could barely make out the grey speck that is Enceladus. It could be any one of Saturn’s satellites, but my mind fixated on it being home. I wondered if my father was staring up into the sky as I floated around in space, preparing for my demise. I regret never saying goodbye before I left, and now I could never speak to him again.
My eyelids felt increasingly heavy. My heartbeat echoed across my ears while spots slowly appeared, merging with the tiny dots of space. In the final moments of consciousness, I noticed a light in the distance, getting closer and closer. Was this another asteroid returning to finish its job? Did Manni send someone to save me after realise something happened? Or was it the gateway into some sort of afterlife? Whatever it was, I floated towards it with open arms as my vision went dark.
Timothy Tse was born in Hong Kong. His childhood dream was to become a writer due to his love for reading. He once suggested to hang out at a bookstore, then proceeded to read and ignore his friend. He is a big nerd who enjoys comics, sci-fi, and fantasy stories.
