Count Me Amongst The Stars

Have you even seen the stars dance?

Glow from the aftershift, as they careen through the sky with such wonder, impossible ghost images burnt into cosmos and retina alike. Alive even. So damn alive despite everything. White hot rage exploding in pieces of light, fragmented across an infinite dark, daring to rebel. Thrashing, a final defiance before being swallowed whole.

Is silence inevitable? The epitaph of all things, the antidote to a life of movement, laughter, love.

Our solar system is dying.

Star 32-99b. Clinical. Cold. Soon to grow colder. Then full dark. No supernova. No planetary collision. Just... A waining light slipping into... Well... Nothing. Extinguished. Undone. Removed.

They say there's no hope of saving it. Kick-starting the sun, rebooting the night light. That all the joy and the possibility should be glad it was even backlit before the noiseless void.

There will be generations that never knew the Sun.

But that just doesn't feel human. Who accepts their fate when it's global extinction? Honey, they're all out of ice cream, oh, and the entire world is ending. Can't a guy catch a break?

Well he can catch a ride.

Outrun the apocalypse. Only there's no horizon to chase. There's light. The promise of old. But we sail the skies, not the seas. And we will indeed reach these stars. We have to. For everything, for everyone we left behind.

You could say I'm one of the lucky ones. Doesn't feel that way to me most days. But I count myself amongst the saved, and I'm grateful, truly. I got the green light to board Ark Fortitude. Literally. It flashed after my DNA check proved I belonged. On the manifest at least, amongst the crew? That's another thing entirely. Green for go. Almost sickly like acid. Too bright. Artificial. One of the last reminders of the verdant, bountiful home we're leaving behind, the forests and the jungles soon to be annihilated.

Wanna know my number? Designate EG-742 . Catchy huh? Everything is assigned. Uniforms, tools, rations to last years. My own little slice of salvation itemized. Sometimes it feels like a coffin. An allocation of tasks and time, predetermined and monitored for variance. No escape from the tin can hurtling through the black death clawing at the walls. They even count the oxygen I use. Do I get a reward if I skip a few breaths in my sleep? Isn't that the efficiency that will see us forward through the stars?

I don't think they accounted for my sense of humour.

The side-eyes in the mess hall tell me that much.

Right now I'm alone in the observation deck, dwarfed by the view.

You'd expect total dark, but it's not. It's beautiful. A kaleidoscope shimmers across the room, impeccable galactic mood lighting. We're bathed in a fractal aurora. Like a diffused oil slick. Something about the exposure of leftover fuel vapors at this speed and temperature. Creates an aura. A shield.

Hell of a view to work by. Almost makes the recalibrations bearable...

I wonder... Does it look hopeful? Us I mean, charting our way across galaxies? Caught by a fateful observer... An impossible beacon of all that is bright and good?

Or... are we just another flash of light? Desperate. Doomed. Like any other comet or star?

Before I can sink into this week's existential dilemma brought on by the maddening vacuum of space, the light show is cut short.

Everything goes red. Shadows deepen. Gone are the delicate blues and greens. Only red. Red for emergency.

The loudspeaker breaks with a crackle. And I hear the Captain's voice for the first time since the welcome video...