There’s a hurricane teasing the leftover bits of Massachusetts. A snow storm masking Chicago. Mission control wants to keep things concrete. Be specific they say, since this is the final call.
“Are you sure I can’t come home?”
Static. You perform what must be your 40th cartwheel because 40 is your…was her lucky number.
The ship the you before this you managed to leave earth’s atmosphere before disappearing in an attempt to reach Jupiter. However, Earth needs something positive. Something good to believe in and no one believes in a positively dead astronaut who was never declared to be anything good or bad.
“What else do you see?”
“Oceans with land blemishes. Ice like the abandoned scattered teeth of a knocked-out victim —”
“Concrete.” The voice is male. The male that burps at the end of every sentence.
“Why?” you ask, because this is the final call and you want this call to be special.
“Because this is the final call,” he says.
You need this call to be something special.
“You…we need you to be a symbol,” he says, “to represent what’s possible.”
“Even when I’ve failed?”
When he’s quiet, there’s never any static, which feels nice. At least you know he’s there. That he’s thinking, despite all the burping, which you think could be hiccups. You smile at the thought. The sound of you making someone so far away nervous. Excited. Frightened by the realization that you’re there.
“You didn’t fail.”
You perform your 41st cartwheel. “When can I come home?”
There’s static. Oceans. Continents. A hurricane and snow.
“Do you copy?”
Static and your helmet and your suit and the debris of a ship that everyone on Earth pretends is yours. A ship you were never in, never touched, never felt the warmth of its destruction.
“Please…”
And there is static before the quiet and you allow yourself to think that he was right. You were not the failure. That you are someone different, someone worth retrieval. Someone who listens.
“There is static,” you say. “There is static. There is static. There is static.”
Someone who is still here.
