ANCIENT ASTRONAUT THEORISTS SAY YES.

(excerpts)

There are wisps outside by the time I see you waiting for ignition. Your fingers laced, your hands in your lap. Nothing left to do but wait and see if you will explode. And if you don’t explode you will still be on top of a massive modified weapon to be crushed a-little-to-a-lot under the weight of no more waiting. Fighting your way up and out for 9 minutes minimum. Is it even possible to be in the moment in the place where you are and what is the word for being nostalgic for the thing that is happening right now? What if this is fake? How did they do that? The sensation of separation of tanks and hoses. The shaking and the noise. More noises than you thought you could hear all at once. This is the sound of the collision of military precision and the existential terror of leaving the terrestrial behind. Sitting between a million chemical fires and empty soundless oblivion. 

Now you are in clothes that look like the clothes you wore on earth. Something with a collar, something in khaki. You are changing the names of things. You are shifting cases from one rack to another. What are you looking for? How much does it cost to lift each of those cases and insert them into an orbit with you at the same time and place? I know that you will describe what you are going to do before you do it and you will probably ask permission, too. No, you will, it’s protocol. There is a schedule. We agreed on it. There was a meeting. Lots of meetings. There is a binder. Everybody has a copy of the schedule in a binder. You are holding a container that has a number and you’ve told us the number. You are going to open the container that has a number and you will reach in and pull out a smaller container that is maybe more like a bag and it also has a number. You consume the thing that is in the numbered bag that came out of the numbered container. And now the thing is inside your body and may not stay there for very long, but you have made the report of the thing you did with the thing you took out of the thing that was in the other thing. We all expected it because it is on the schedule in the binder and we are all very pleased that you completed this task at the time we predicted you would, and thank you for telling us. Now we want to know how long you slept, how well, and if you had any dreams. 

Then, a choice of cameras, but limited cables and connections available. So strategizing, you pull everything out of a compartment. And then there are cameras and cables and manuals and straps and memory cards swarming around you. Another compartment for things that make more light in varying combinations of brightness and temperature and diffusion. Then you fill the screen with a grid of bright white tiny lights. This LED panel outshines everything else. Everything else is lost. Empty deep dark and unrecorded. Then you move the LED panel out of frame and the image takes a moment to resolve into more familiar/unfamiliar surroundings. Now you are illuminated from the upper left corner of the screen like a renaissance painting, but only for a moment and then sharp shadows cut at different angles. You are in a jumpsuit plugging things into other things. Not looking at the camera, intent on the puzzle in your hands. The light available and the light unseen with human eyes. A compressed and stretched spectrum of electromagnetism. There is so much more to see so you fumble around for a floating infrared camera. I am eager to see your body heat and the heat of the machines around your body. But something isn’t working so you put down the infrared camera and I am disappointed. Regardless, all possible perspectives are covered but someone bangs into something anyway and then we wonder how human blood clots in space. There have been 1,000 experiments conducted involving human blood and how it works in space. 

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When everyone’s heads are uncovered, we see the opportunity for the exchange of movement and sound and ideas. We use our heads to make thoughts and turn them into noises and those noises form in the caves of our mouths and move out and across and around in what is called conversation. The sounds and thoughts are distorted through movement and translation. This is the nature of this sort of communication. This is the risk involved when we are using the tools of our ancestors. The information contained in the vibration becomes shortened and lengthened and heated and cooled. Corrupted, but still mostly understandable because our minds will instinctively fill in the missing pieces. It is important to know or estimate what is being absorbed by the caves of our mouths and what is being reflected. And then we notice the very very tiny dents in our skin and other surfaces caused by the thoughts propelled in all directions. Facts about space and energy and having a mouth. When we think we understand the situation well enough, when we think it’s about to be over, we prepare ourselves for the big lesson, the moral of the story, the whole point of the thing, the reason for the season. It is revealed to us that it is just more of the same. A continuation which is important and subtle and dense but not explosive, unfortunately. And all of us leave with the feeling that we know a little more than we did before, and maybe have a little more comfort in having had the experience with others.  

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We found space algae on some of the windows. Was it with us always and thrived, or did it join us way out here? How can we be sure? From a comet or dust or a far-off ocean without a planet. From a sea creature as big as a star. 

They took away our salt because of our bones, I guess, so nothing tastes good. And I feel too far away from the sound and taste of the ocean. I wonder if you would let me lick your neck to taste the salt there. Or it might taste like plastic. That is a risk. Then they gave us fistfulls of pills as a replacement for something we can’t get out here. We’re all holding our breath until we can’t anymore and we give up and gasp. I want to know how many dead human bodies are in space. (NINETEEN HUMAN BODIES HAVE PERISHED IN SPACE - CLOSE TO THE EARTH BUT NOT CLOSE ENOUGH TO LIVE.) And are they mostly burned up, or what?

WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY LEAVE BEFORE YOU? Afraid of death, but more afraid of the long death. Other people’s long, gross death. Or worse, other people’s long, gross life culminating in a long, gross death. I hope for a quick death. There are lots of ways to die quickly in space. We’re always trying not to die quickly in space. That is the whole point of the Space Program. PICK UP THE PACE, FRIEND. Get busy living or get busy dying. Hurry up. It was winter when the psychic seer confirmed a long life for me because of science and stubbornness. 90 years or more. I was horrified. But it is not a surprise. This is how it is done in my family. 

It was daytime, but dim. It was the longest day so far. It was the longest day this year. It was an event that was not an accident. It was an event that someone had already seen. It was at a certain time. It was a fact someone wrote down. It was a day like any other Sunday. It was not very sunny, but golden anyway. It was a day I will never forget. It was an event I’d rather not think about. It was probably gruesome. It was like a death - like another or like any other. It was sad but normal. It was terrible. It was fine. 

When the end is near and you know you’ll be the last one, you turn out the lights before you leave, and then here is what you must do: Find the shiniest bit of plastic. Tape it to a stick. Poke the stick into the ground. Try to make it secure. Look at the shiny bit of plastic taped to a stick stuck in the ground. Think hard about what went wrong and what could’ve been. Try once more to make the shiny bit of plastic taped to a stick stuck in the ground more secure. When you’ve done your best, lay down on the ground next to the stick and stay. 

You might think it’s not enough, but it is. 

We’ll find it.