The Great Silence

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. That’s what they said in training, which is why it was so important to come out here with a team in the first place. Keep the comms online. Check in with your colleagues. Make sure everything is going according to plan.

I laugh to myself now, when I think about them. In my head I still call them “my team,” but it’s not true anymore. Maybe it never was.

I was sent out here into the void on a relatively simple mission. Plenty of others of my occupation preceded me in it, and they all returned with their teams. Always. In that way I envy them. But, they never met the prime objective, and, for that, I pity them. My leg up on astrobiologists whose teams hadn’t abandoned them was that I would return home as a legend: the first to return to Earth with alien life! Intact, and aboard my ship! I giggle to myself as I think about the revelries that will be had in my honor.

My imaginary celebration is unfortunately just that: imaginary. I have to make it home first, and I am not the trained pilot who got us, ahem, me to this planet in the first place. Having checked the status of the ship and thinking that everything probably looks ok, I peek into the storage area containing my prize. It still lies there, evidently breathing. Good. I approach the control panel and have a seat, perusing the dials like I am selecting a brand of ketchup at the grocery store.

I try to remember what Peter did when we started the mission. We all sat in this room buckled in, but the rocket was upright that time, and I was all the way in the back and, honestly, apathetic of the machinery that got us here. My team all enjoyed nerding out together over the specific mechanics of it all - it was practically all they talked about. I knew I was a bit of an outcast with them, but ditching me outright? In space? Part of me worried that something had happened to them at first, but when Kassandra flipped me off as they all rode away on the other rover I knew they had decided to stay. I might have too, if the other option was spending another year in an enclosed space with someone as unpredictable and irrationally aggressive as I sometimes find myself.

The controls in front of me become blurry, and as I put a hand to my eyes they are warm and wet. Pathetic. I need to focus. Hero-dom awaits.

A sniffle behind me startles me out of my emotions, and I steel my gaze before turning to address my, hopefully apologetic, team. It is not them, though. Just one of them, and they still have their reflective helmet on.

“Uhhh… we’re back on the ship, you know,” I roll my eyes and cross my arms, “Just because you’re too embarrassed to look me in the eye doesn’t mean you have to wear all of your gear.” Even though I am unsure who of my team has returned to apologize, I assume they are here to speak for the group. I would never admit it, but I am also relieved that someone will actually be able to get me home to claim this victory.

The helmet dissipates. Like, into thin air. That’s not how you take off a helmet. But honestly, I barely care how this… person… took off their helmet because I am currently staring into my own face. Wet with tears and slightly snotty, he lets out a deep sob and falls to his knees. Bewildered, I take a step back.

“What… who… are you?” I may not know the controls that well, but there is a big red button on the underside of the panel that just has to be for emergencies like this. I try to scoot my way over to it as the… as I have my meltdown.

“I’m you!!!” He shouts through sobs, spitting with his anger and grief onto the floor of the rocket, “But I really don’t want to be.” His sobs grow quieter and more resigned as he picks himself up off of the floor. I fumble my fingers along the underside of the control panel helplessly, too afraid to take my eyes off of myself.

Then, my saving grace comes into the room behind him. Behind me? The rest of my team enters and I almost collapse with relief, forgetting about the button altogether. “You guys! Get him! I don’t know who that is but it’s not…” I stop. Suddenly I am not where I was. I am where he was. And we are looking at this terrified, crumpled copy of my form.

Peter, my always dependable teammate, disposes of the copy with a flash of his ray. He shrieks, screams, into the void. But no one hears it. I hear it, he hears it, they hear it, and we hear it, but no one hears it. We are all a part of us now. And we return to Earth again.