The Place Where Nothing Grows

1: smooth sailing

Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. He couldn’t know for sure. Seeing his reflection against safety glass, Apollo wondered what would happen to him if his tether should break loose on a “walk” if his transponder died. He would skim an ocean of stars between him and a single solid footfall. Frankly, it didn’t sound all that bad until he saw his breath fogging up the two-inch barrier between him and that ultimate nothingness. Weightless or not, he’d still need oxygen. Once his tanks ran out, he’d breathe in his own exhaust. He couldn’t scream if he wanted to. His world would go foggy. Blood vessels would swell in his temples until he couldn’t think, until even the lights burning all around him couldn’t keep out the dark. He didn’t want to think about that now. He was here for the duration. He had an idea how long that was, but deployments had a funny way of stretching out. Just how long he’d be there was someone else’s decision.

It was his first time up. No one knew what to expect, not even his handlers. The goal was simple enough: deploy element-sensitive probes across the Milky Way at intervals. Many in the administration felt that sending a single tech into the outer reaches of the galaxy was a gross misuse of Jack and Jill Taxpayer’s savings. And they were right, there wasn’t any dispute there. A robot didn’t need to be fed. It didn’t need to sleep. It wouldn’t collect worker’s comp if it broke down. But if it did break down, there was the rub. So far out from anything, there was no way for it to be serviced. A technician was called for. It was a tough sell, but a little persistence, some political sleight-of-hand, and one multi-trillion-dollar appropriation were enough to grease the wheels. And by the skin of his teeth, the mission was Apollo’s to man. Now, that wasn’t actually his name, of course. That would have been completely asinine. No, there were other forces at play.

Maybe you could chalk it up to the long hours skimming over the same bottom-of-the-barrel dossiers or the sweat-soaked summer months, but there was something in the air the day one of the rear admirals flagged Paolo Grunbaum, the plasterer’s son from Cardiff in Encinitas, for space-faring duties. There was just one small proviso. The Midshipman, Third Rate never received an official notice. He only found out about the change during orientation when he realized his name was misspelled on every article of his issued gear. He didn’t balk. He’d never dreamed anyone could do this on purpose. It was a clerical error, an honest mistake he meant to ride as long and far as it would carry him. And it carried him. All the way up here.

Now he was tired. He’d managed a couple of hours in his rack, but sleep didn’t come easy. There wasn’t a soul around for many hundreds of miles. No interruptions. No excuses. Sack time was unnaturally peaceful, the isolated sigh of air ducts hampered only by the constant sense that he was hanging upside down, no more gravity to pull the rush from his head, not to mention his bladder. The day was long and only just begun. He hummed loudly to himself to ward away sleep, and he strained to read the impossible list above the airlock partition.

As he’d come to find out, there were lists for everything: supply manifests, itemized parts kits for hull repairs, sequenced procedures, and so on. There were even lists he never saw, like the one that ranked each of the candidates for this excursion in order of aptitude, personal resolve, and a dozen other variables that quantify mission readiness. He was not first on that list. In all fairness, he hadn’t even been on the list (name changes notwithstanding) until the well of promising, young mission leads had dried up entirely. It was an open secret that each of their test flights had run into its own unique “complication”, a favorite euphemism at command. “Electrical malfunctions” in the cabin, “clock drift” between the bridge, and regimented life support. It was virtually impossible to find an after-action report that wasn’t “complicated” like that. Then again, when the latest and greatest piece of astronautical engineering money can buy suddenly turns into a one-and-a-half million ton pyrotechnic on launch, things certainly could become complicated.

That was where the drawing room wunderkinder came in, restlessly spit-balling ideas, obsessing over every permutation of every conceivable crisis event until a solution was found and finalized, or so the theory went. Each bullet point on the spiderweb of branching protocols was extrapolated in such loving detail as to be completely useless under cherry red lights and shrieking sirens.

Things like that happened all the time. Too much of a good thing, not that it mattered. Crewmembers were expected to cater for any contingency with an almost enthusiastic disregard for their own safety as if they had a choice. And so, they would. And in so many cases, it wasn’t enough. But that was the trade-off they all accepted, the risk they signed away on the waiver. As far as Apollo knew, all the kinks had been ironed out and everything was set to go off perfectly. So far, he was right.

As the ship yawed to sidestep Saturn’s orbit, Apollo sat in the airlock priming a probe. Great big, bulky things, he figured they must’ve weighed at least as much as a car. Arming it was short work, all he had to do now was get his timing down. Standing at the airlock partition, Apollo measured the ship’s speed against its angle. 3, 2, 1, CLICK.

The probe shot out of the airlock like a cannonball, passing out of sight in seconds. Watching it jettison off to do precisely what it was meant to do while he stayed behind, listening to those maddening, wheezing air ducts, something came over Apollo.

He walked up to a frosted glass door and stood as machinery whirred inside. He checked the combination on the number pad display to make sure it was right. Then the door slid open. Behind it was a woman in casualwear. She looked 40 more or less. She stood between two chairs that faced each other.

“Come in. Come in. Please take a seat,” she said. He did. She wore a smile and a deeply interested look as he got settled in. He smiled back his courtesy.

“If you’re hungry, there are snacks on the desk.”

He peered over at a handful of prepackaged cookies on a dish. They sat in silence a moment.

“Last time we talked about… Navigating home life. Would you like to continue with that?”

“I pretty much said everything I wanted.”

“I’m sorry. Could you say that again?”

“No.”

“If we change our minds, we can always come back to it. Was there something you wanted us to talk about?”

“I just wanna talk.”

“Was there a topic you had in mind?”

“Anything. Just talk to me.”

“Well, my name is Debbie. Like you, I’m also from California. Cupertino.”

It was all too much for him. He was short with her.

“Call.”

The Doctor’s mood shifted.

“Are you sure you want to end this session?”

“I’m sure.”

“Just a moment… What kind of call would you like to make?”

“Morale.”

She thought about it.

“Is the number on file: 1-760-3–.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry–”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Connecting you now.”

Apollo looked at the dozens of lights on the walls and ceiling all projecting inwards. They dimmed for a split second as the Doctor was swallowed by crackling static and the shape of a much shorter woman came into view.

“Allo?”

“Mom?”

“Can you hear me?”

“You’re coming through. I can hear you.”

“Why can’t I see you?”

“It’ll take a sec. I can hear you.”

The woman’s face came into view holding spectacles up to her face.

“There you are. You’re looking puffy, or is that just the camera?”

“How you doing?”

“This isn’t collect, is it?”

“No. What are you doing?”

“Cooking. Everything okay?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Well, you got me.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“Cariñito, I got my hands full right now. Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

Looking at her wiped every thought from his head. He looked back at the lights and chewed over what he was going to say.

“I don’t think… I don’t think I can do 14 more months. Here.”

“What?”

He locked up.

“Where’s this coming from?”

“I guess it’s just… It’s a lot of things, really.”

“Talk to me.”

“They have this analyst or whatever here. They said she’s supposed to help, but what help can she give me? She isn’t even a person. You know? She doesn’t feel anything. I need…”

He could see that she was thinking. At first, he thought the call dropped. Then there was a soft, mechanical winding sound, like a DVD player searching a disc. She sat back in her seat.

“I can’t make you do anything, but please, if you don’t want to do it for yourself anymore, do it for your family. You know how many people we told? What would they think if you came back when you just started?”

Something didn’t sit right.

“My brave boy. So incredibly brave. Just keep working. You won’t know where the time went. I promise. Okay?”

He regarded her suspiciously.

Apollo wasn’t sure what that was back there, but it certainly didn’t sound like his mother. He always wondered how they would manage a broadcast all the way from home. He knew that gravity did funny things with time. It got him wondering where his mother was and what she was really doing right now. If she were even still alive.

That was his worst weakness. Wondering. Getting sucked up into things. As a child, he was somehow even more curious. He’d been on airplanes before, but one ascent stood out in his mind. He was barely tall enough to look out the window being only about five. What he saw seemed to him like a valley of cotton, thick and billowy and entirely unconcerned. It was impressive. The most impressive thing he’d seen in his little life. Paolo was a good boy. He wore his Sunday suit to the pews and listened to the priest mumble about “the man upstairs”.

Well, here he was. Up the stairs, but nowhere was the man. At least, not that he could see. It would be years before he realized God required a little imagination, but the image never left him. The canyon in the clouds. Nothing. He wondered where Miso, Oma Birgit’s thoughtlessly named Pekingese, had gone. A couple of months earlier, they found the 16-year-old dog curled up under the porch. Oma told Paolo that Miso was dancing with the angels now. He imagined the shaggy little shoe brush floating above them lighter than air and making her way to Heaven. But sitting there on that plane, he didn’t understand. He saw no God, no angels. Who was going to catch her? What was supposed to keep her from floating away?

And then it came to him. Surrounded by that sweeping space-scape, he didn’t picture himself drifting away anymore. He saw something wholly new. Looking out into infinity, he wondered if she were out there somewhere. It was just possible that, as humans couldn’t see black holes with the naked eye, maybe Miso and Oma and everyone who’d left were up here with him, too, dancing in the dark where he couldn’t see.

His heart rattled like a broken bell. He took a moment to catch his breath, but no matter how hard he tried, it eluded him. He held a hand out to the glass and found that it was trembling. He became frantic as he realized the entire ship was shuddering more violently from one moment to the next. He felt a tremendous weight holding him to the glass. He looked out and saw the stars spinning endlessly around him. The ship was twirling end-over-end. The force was punishing. Through the window, he could see a light that was brighter and bigger than anything else he’d come across. Veins bulged in his throat. He drew in with every ounce left of his strength to get one breath in, but there was nothing he could do. His world went black.