(original author unknown – posting for its poetic impact)
I’m not sure how long it’s been. My only reference points are distant stars and planets that basically all look the same and don’t appear to be moving much from here. The radio and GPS cut out some time ago, and the manual propulsion system engines were damaged in the inital collision.
I’ve since been drifting alone and disconnected in some unknown direction, towards something or nothing. I suppose both are sort of the same to me at this point. I can only assume I’m moving rather fast considering the speed at which we were hit, but it honestly feels more like I am just floating in place. Like I’m submerged in a literal infinity with no edge or surface. My only hope left is that this is some strange dream or hallucination and I am still on the ground somewhere, soon to come back to reality at any moment.
Admittedly, early on, when the reality of this whole situation really first started to set in, I seriously considered that as a possibility. I guess hoped might be more accurate; my brain’s imaginative wishful nature trying to conjure up and sustain its last bit of artificial hopefulness, almost convincing me that what is real isn’t, and vice versa.
I have since given up such hope. At least of that form. I realized around the same time that I had a decision to make; to either continue on in terror and paranoia fueled by the hope that there was something to be done, something I could do, some other way this whole thing could go.
Or I could sit back and enjoy the stars. The decision was pretty obvious. I am going to die. And no one can save me. And I only have so much time left. And I am going to enjoy it.
I float through the void now, free. Perhaps more than I have ever felt or imagined before, totally and completely free. I feel infinity play with my limbs, as its laws of motion carry me, like a child’s plush toy. I just let it. I do not flail. I do not fight it. I just float. I think about where it might be taking me. Where I will end up. What distant space I will float on to. What my final view of everything will be.
You know, I have seen this same night sky nearly every night of my life, and I have had the great fortune of being in a profession that has given me the opportunity to see it from all sorts of different angles, close and afar. But right now, swallowed up by it totally, with no sight of home, further out than perhaps anyone has ever been, it looks completely different. Or perhaps it feels completely different. Either way, in this, I realize now more than ever just how used to the insanity of everything we so easily become.
To the grave, imminent dangers of living and moving through an unending and unknown space. The unfathomable depth of potential and mystery that is just a short float above our heads at all times.
I can’t help but laugh to myself at how bored we so easily become; how much we struggle to be dazzled by awe and silenced by humility. We must be the only thing cursed with the tendency to reduce the magnificent to tedium. To analyze beauty into ugliness. To reduce our incredible position to misery.
We are so small. It took no more than one cycle of oxygen for essentially all clear traces of home to disappear from my vision forever. All the greatest heroes and sages and leaders and so on, from here, I don’t see any of them.
We forget that we are a life still in its adolescent years, at best, yet to even really leave home. Our species still filled with the angst and juvenile rebellion of a teenager.
The universe must laugh at our arrogant ignorance. Our smug righteousness. Our poutiness. We still think we know everything, but we know damn near nothing about anything. Like our pioneering ancestors of every form discovered lands and worlds and ways of being that we take for granted now as the status quo, great unknown lands of the future await us. Great unknown manners and knowledge of how to live and be.
Unknown turmoil too. Casualties of this kind and far, far worse, of course. To grow up, to age, to toy with the universe and venture out into the unknown always carries its great uncertainty and risk. But it is perhaps one of the most beautiful imperatives of our kind to do so. To live is to be afraid. But perhaps to center that fear on something that unites and grows and reveals wonder is to be afraid with some purpose. I don’t know.
What else could life possibly be but a series of new horizons? New views. A constant rediscovery of beauty and wonder.
I am going to die a casualty of this cause. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
If I have any remaining wish, it’s that this was not all in vain. This fatal mission and every pair of shoulders that it stood on. Every prior fatal mission. Every prior successful mission. I hope that more and more of my kind will see and feel what I do right now, with less finality and more intention. To continue on into the darkness, bringing the lights of their own creation, illuminating the heavens and revealing them as new homes.
Today, the great frontiers are above us. Into the once believed heavens that we need not be dead to touch. We can touch them now.
We will, if we can survive our teenage carelessness and anguish and avoid the irreversible self-harm that so many adolescents fall victim to. If we continue to grow and learn and survive together, we will live together up here somewhere.
Into forever. We either live together or die together. I don’t know how long my suit will survive after me. I don’t know if these words will ever be heard by anyone else. No matter the case, I’ll be ok. I’ll be dead. But if anyone does find me, or rather what was once me, if anyone finds this recording, please know that I was happy while speaking these words.
I have lived a good life. An aesthetic voyager who lived and died by the space that enthralled him.
If you have not already, I hope, even if just for a moment, you see and feel what I do right now. I hope you see past me. I hope you find a reason to continue as a string of life, extending further and further out, reaching with excitement and wonder into the infinite, yet continually insufficient frontier.
Don’t cut the string short for trivial, absurd reasons. If it’s absurd to continue, then it’s absurd to cut it all short. And if you can’t find the reasons to continue, my friendly suggestion is: make them up.