The Starlet

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. If a bear shits in the woods and nobody sees it, did it really happen? If a woman wails in space and nobody’s around to hear it, did she really lose the love of her life?

The screams certainly felt real. Whether it was real sound flooding torrents through Novia’s ears or just her brain filling in the gaps of overwhelmed senses, she’ll never know. But the sight of her life partner drifting away - reeling in a wild spin - sent raw flames up her throat.

She wasn’t thinking about the lawsuits or the funeral expenses. She wasn’t thinking about the tear-soaked conversations with family and friends. She wasn’t even thinking about the safety of her own equipment. Novia was busy; she was fucking busy watching her life float off into the darkness. Her soul was clawing at her harnesses. Her brain, eyes, and breath pushed to the front of her skull, stretching toward the distant figure. To rip herself free, to launch out into pitch orbit and catch her love, to clutch one another among the stars for a shared last moment…

But Novia found that she valued her own continued existence more. And that shocked her. That sent frost creeping through the chasm of her chest. How could someone compare their everything against their self? It must have been one of those impossible questions, those survival instinct, fight or flight, only answerable in the moment type of queries. She’d never met one of those face on before - their reality was cruel and unforgiving. She hoped to never meet another in her lifetime.

And so she bore horrid witness to Giuliana tumbling through the cosmos.

The skyscraper of a girl had always wanted to be a movie star…

—

Novia’s body was reeled into the ship.

Alive. Curled. Void.

Giuliana’s body was gone, a distant blur against blackness.

Two souls clung to her curves.

—

The home screen of tablets everywhere illuminated the terror. Stark words in gothic script told the story, wrote the eulogy, passed on the memory. Aboard the starship, Novia’s hell drew forth, closing in around her like a cabin collapsing in a wildfire. Every glance sent rabid reminders ripping down her spine. Every nearby conversation grasped at false sympathy and detached grief. She watched in real time the facading masquerade of fellow passengers react to her girlfriend’s death - aww no, like, comment, scroll.

Previously, Novia’s mind was her escape, her retreat. Now the umber plains of neurons lied dormant. She was empty. She was dead. Giuliana was dead. The simplicity of the nothingness blocked out the fuzzy barrage of wretched pain.

Within the month their ship returned to its port on Saturn. By that time, Guili’s body was likely floating off toward Pluto. Would she be free for the rest of time? Or would the curve of her smile be enamored by the gravity of some larger celestial being? Would she be pulled into orbit, into an eventual crash to the surface of a foreign and wild landscape?

Her burial was one of time.

Her body’s whereabouts remained unknown.

Black holes had always fascinated Novia. Her college astronomy thesis course had taken a trip to the most recent and advanced satellite telescope. There, the students could watch the “closest” black hole, still eons of light years away.

Perhaps now she had traveled there without knowing it. Her mind felt like a black hole. Her body was weightless in her cot. Most of the human population lived in the New Galaxy planets - a realm of Earth-kin celestials in a remarkably large Goldilocks' zone. They circled a new star, a bigger and brighter star. Novia was stationed in a research facility on Saturn. She had been part of a study looking back at Earth to asses its condition following a recent meteor strike. Giuliana had journeyed out to meet her for holiday there.

What a holiday it turned out to be.

—

Maybe she’d die on Saturn. Novia was done with space. She didn’t want to travel through it again. Not when the horrid visage of memories crossed the peppery skies every time she looked up at night. It had taken her a year to even step outside of the facility after sundown. Saturn’s daytime sky was a colorful hue that comforted her broken soul. The night was gorgeous, as there were so few lights and people in the Milky Way these days. But it still ruined her to see the stars - to think of her love, her life, endlessly drifting through them.

The thought should have comforted her. Giuliana was always up there; Dancing through the cosmos. A true starlet.

Hopefully Novia’s program would find a place on Earth for new beginnings.