Original Fic: las prompt three- Abandoned
I had this challenge mostly written well before the due date but then I decided to rewrite the thing entirely, and I don't think the submitted version turned out nearly as well as I wanted it to (it never does).
Anyway I decided to finish it up to get it off my GoogleDocs, so the altversion is
There were five letters in the word alone, and Conrad thought he knew why each of them was there. There were an equal five letters in the word space, and his thesis went something like The shape of the word alone and the shape of the word space are the same if you flip one onto the other. From this it can be inferred that when one was flipped into space it meant they were alone.
Conrad’s list of reasons for each of the letters was nearly complete, although he was sure they only made sense when your primary life support system was telling you it was dying and that it was dragging you with it.
If he could have written it down it would have looked like this:
1. Dreaming of space was exactly the same as being in space.
2. Just like the universe, the centre of a balloon had nothing to do with the actual balloon.
3. Seeing anything without a visor was impossible.
4. Pythagoras was a liar- there was no music in the stars.
In fact the only outside sound he could have possibly heard was from his radio, and he didn’t consider that to be a real sound at all. The only sound he could hear was himself breathing and it made it a bit like being completely under a blanket, both comforting and claustrophobic.
He hadn’t quite figured out the last point on his list. It had to do with this concept of being surrounded he thought, but he still wasn’t sure. He needed to find a way to put that in a five to ten word phrase he could tag with a number.
Floating there was not like being submerged underwater at all, no matter what they tried to tell you. It had nothing to do with feeling weightless and everything to do with the fact that you aren’t born from a void, you’re born from a sac of liquid.
There are a lot of things missing in space, and it made the one thing that actually could penetrate any of your five senses completely disconcerting. He sometimes thought that one day he was going to wake up and discover that light travelling through the nothing that was space was going to turn out to be some primordial magic trick the universe had played on them all.
It was fascinating what comes to mind when you are alone and there is no one to hear you scream. He might have done, but he wasn’t the screaming type. He wasn’t the anything type, really, besides his need to makes lists. Sure he had enough grey matter in his skull to get him out here, but not nearly enough to prevent his stay being permanent.
When you got humans alone, with the chance to form gangs and hunt and persecute each other like something out of that damn Lord of the Flies novel, they would do just that. Conrad wasn’t even sure exactly what he did to have the crew turn on him. He tried making a list of possibilities that included They didn’t like the way he sucked the powdered protein through the straw and They thought white didn’t suit his complexion. That list had been forgotten though when he stopped being able to remember what number he was on.
He knew he wasn’t the most likable person. He’d made his mistakes. But he could still appreciate the sun the same way that they did. Better in fact - he had a list. Of course it was a list of his favourite colours he’d seen the sun turn but that was more than they’d ever done, surely. It went something like:
I. The school bus he always got stuck behind
II. His neck when Sonya, the receptionist, talked to him
III. The end of a lit cigarette
IV. The OPEN sign in the 24 hour convenience store down the street
V. Orange juice and vodka, or rum, or... well, anything alcoholic
He probably could have put every colour the element on his stove went through when he had it on high, but he had never used the thing enough to care.
Boy he would miss those colours. And he couldn’t even see them properly now. That was the funny thing about being up or down or just away, where everything was a different shape - it was a different colour too. Earth looked so much cleaner. The blues were deeper and the whites were brighter and the green seemed like a being in itself. It was beautiful.
Finally he had all his lists in order and he made one last one before the blinking lights hit critical. It was a list of ways to properly see the bottom of a shuttle, and there was only one item on it: As it’s moving away.
Anyway I decided to finish it up to get it off my GoogleDocs, so the altversion is
There were five letters in the word alone, and Conrad thought he knew why each of them was there. There were an equal five letters in the word space, and his thesis went something like The shape of the word alone and the shape of the word space are the same if you flip one onto the other. From this it can be inferred that when one was flipped into space it meant they were alone.
Conrad’s list of reasons for each of the letters was nearly complete, although he was sure they only made sense when your primary life support system was telling you it was dying and that it was dragging you with it.
If he could have written it down it would have looked like this:
1. Dreaming of space was exactly the same as being in space.
2. Just like the universe, the centre of a balloon had nothing to do with the actual balloon.
3. Seeing anything without a visor was impossible.
4. Pythagoras was a liar- there was no music in the stars.
In fact the only outside sound he could have possibly heard was from his radio, and he didn’t consider that to be a real sound at all. The only sound he could hear was himself breathing and it made it a bit like being completely under a blanket, both comforting and claustrophobic.
He hadn’t quite figured out the last point on his list. It had to do with this concept of being surrounded he thought, but he still wasn’t sure. He needed to find a way to put that in a five to ten word phrase he could tag with a number.
Floating there was not like being submerged underwater at all, no matter what they tried to tell you. It had nothing to do with feeling weightless and everything to do with the fact that you aren’t born from a void, you’re born from a sac of liquid.
There are a lot of things missing in space, and it made the one thing that actually could penetrate any of your five senses completely disconcerting. He sometimes thought that one day he was going to wake up and discover that light travelling through the nothing that was space was going to turn out to be some primordial magic trick the universe had played on them all.
It was fascinating what comes to mind when you are alone and there is no one to hear you scream. He might have done, but he wasn’t the screaming type. He wasn’t the anything type, really, besides his need to makes lists. Sure he had enough grey matter in his skull to get him out here, but not nearly enough to prevent his stay being permanent.
When you got humans alone, with the chance to form gangs and hunt and persecute each other like something out of that damn Lord of the Flies novel, they would do just that. Conrad wasn’t even sure exactly what he did to have the crew turn on him. He tried making a list of possibilities that included They didn’t like the way he sucked the powdered protein through the straw and They thought white didn’t suit his complexion. That list had been forgotten though when he stopped being able to remember what number he was on.
He knew he wasn’t the most likable person. He’d made his mistakes. But he could still appreciate the sun the same way that they did. Better in fact - he had a list. Of course it was a list of his favourite colours he’d seen the sun turn but that was more than they’d ever done, surely. It went something like:
I. The school bus he always got stuck behind
II. His neck when Sonya, the receptionist, talked to him
III. The end of a lit cigarette
IV. The OPEN sign in the 24 hour convenience store down the street
V. Orange juice and vodka, or rum, or... well, anything alcoholic
He probably could have put every colour the element on his stove went through when he had it on high, but he had never used the thing enough to care.
Boy he would miss those colours. And he couldn’t even see them properly now. That was the funny thing about being up or down or just away, where everything was a different shape - it was a different colour too. Earth looked so much cleaner. The blues were deeper and the whites were brighter and the green seemed like a being in itself. It was beautiful.
Finally he had all his lists in order and he made one last one before the blinking lights hit critical. It was a list of ways to properly see the bottom of a shuttle, and there was only one item on it: As it’s moving away.