The Abomination of Life in Space

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

That fact, however, does nothing for you as your mouth will gape anyway, straining release from a newly abject terror that is now extinguishing your essence from existence; the liquid on your exposed tongue beginning to vaporize faster than any rapid-boil technology.

In this particular debacle, the question isn’t whether you hear the screams of your now free-floating colleagues, it’s whether you can forget them.

Feral shrieks were silenced so swiftly by the vacuum of space as the entertainment quadrant finally fractured after a split-second of depressurization, unforeseen and unwarranted.

Would the sudden silence be the last time her eardrums deciphered vibration?

Hetaera was motionless, living for a moment fully in the shock of watching service workers and clientele alike struggle to deploy safety suits from packs strapped to the smalls of their backs. Some packs were successfully deploying while others sputtered to provide small pieces of assistance in the form of a single sleeve, or a partially developed face shield, which rendered the entirety of the suit useless for survival.

The safety briefings Hetaera had attended every month reminded her that she had about ten seconds now before losing consciousness, and little over a minute before her body completely surrendered to the unknown.

She didn’t hold her breath as she tapped the pressure plate at her waist to initiate her own safety suit, waiting to see if it would malfunction like it had for Trian who now floated lifeless across what had been a theater. Just moments ago, the stage had been decorated to transport clients through a facade of luxury, back to a time before we hid in cages of metal hosted by the ever hungry void of space.

Before currency determined your odds of survival because you bought the cheapest safety suit.

As the flexible alloy responded to her graze across the pressure plate –initiating an activation that hopefully resulted in a complete safety suit– Hetaera only allowed a brief moment to remember the defect statistics associated with the make and model of this particular ensemble.

The corporation responsible for the space station, her occupation, and her safety suit advertised that defect-free deployment occurred in eighty-three percent of this specific suit style. And if she had paid the 3.5 million dracnae for the second-tier product, her odds for a defect-free deployment increased to over ninety-two percent.

She wouldn’t do math in space, she decided. Wouldn’t count the service workers who also could only afford this tier of safety products; wouldn’t count them alive or dead.

Instead, she would keep her eyes and mouth shut and give her suit all of the seconds it needed to wrap itself around her before her body began to succumb to eternal ice and silence if the technology failed her like it had already failed so many others this day.

“Do not breathe in,”

It was not a voice. There is no sound in this space.

It may have been closer to a thought than a sound.

“You will only encourage the void to rip the air from your lungs with increased strength,” it continued.

“Exhale with me for five, four, three,”

Oxygen flooded the interior of the exoskeleton that had unfolded in it's entirety, but Hetaera continued to exhale until a flat tone hoisted itself into existence. Her eardrums cringing slightly at its insistence. She dismissed the prior cranial invasion as her bodies response to shock and directed her attention back to her safety suit.

“Classist piece of shad developers,” were the first words formed by her thawing flesh now that the pressure stabilized within her fully functional safety ensemble.

There was no sentiment felt as she began breathing purified air. Activating the suit was purely instinctual.

Instead, a low-burning rage took up its familiar post in her mind. The conviction generated by her neuro-divergence was comfort enough to welcome her back.

Now she would count the bodies both alive and dead, to create some defect statistics of her own.

Human bodies, now doubled in size, showcased bolts of stretch marks, the skin’s adaptation to natural circumstances that demanded more from its innate elasticity.

Hetaera couldn’t look away as liquid continued to vaporize on pairs of eyes she had laughed with. Couldn’t look away because she had never seen an eyeball blister in sub-zero temperatures.

She spotted Wanya near the fractured and floating stage of the theater and suddenly hated that she was breathing air in a metal outfit.

Only recognizable by her cinched toga, Wanya’s body had ballooned beyond its normal shape and of what Hetaera remembered of those tattooed arms. She could not look at what remained of the face who had only hours ago been showering her own nose and eyes and cheeks with the softest of kisses.

“Embrace”

A kiss near her chin.

“Your”

Another kiss on the tip of her nose.

“Spice”

A final kiss planted directly on her forehead, a space most sacred to those who love without condition. Wanya had sniffed a laugh as they pulled away, steeling themselves for the very likely retort forming itself on Hetaera’s own lips.

They had been her only reminder in this unforgiving cage that she in fact deserved these soft moments of bliss and partnership.

Working her way towards the disfigured form through this scene of lonely death she pushed off of another bloated form, the carcass belonging to a client who made his money off a currency that wasn’t even tangible. His body and erection (now frozen in memoriam) told Hetaera he had been in the orgy hall right before the catastrophe struck, no safety pack strapped to any part of his slicked body, almost like he was daring death to take him at his most vulnerable. Or maybe, the asphyxia resulting from space catastrophe while maintaining an erection was exactly how he wanted to go.

But Wanya did not have the luxury of choice on how they wanted to go.

“Not like this,” was the only sound in the tragic landscape that escaped from Hetaera’s lips. She reached across the remaining distance to gently tug Wanya’s doubled-in-size forearm; an anchor and a plea.

As she willed herself to look at what remained of her friend’s face, hope was entirely extinguished as eyes scalded by heat and ice looked back vacant of expression and vacant of life.

And as the larger station’s emergency responders scrambled to cast a magnetic net to corral the entertainers and guests alike, alive and unalive, Hetaera felt magma along her now curving spine as the alloy mesh dragged her and Wanya back toward the nearest receiving bay.

And knowing what she knew of space and time, she allowed her heated core to form a scream that ricocheted within the metallic helmet.

She screamed until the reverberating sound overcame her eardrums and created a resonance that shut her consciousness down, giving way to darkness laced with deep unencumbered breaths, and blissful ignorance.