Wonder

I truly believe there’s wonder in everything. Whether you find it or not is the question.

So, that’s how I live my life: Looking for wonder. Or, at least, constantly reminding myself to try and find it in all things, big and small.

With the big things, it’s easy. And with the job I have, as a junior cadet in the Interstellar Exploration Force (IEF), there is no shortage of unimaginably big things to find an infinite amount of wonder in. Not a day goes by that there isn’t something new to encounter and discover. That’s mostly why I joined.

Here, there’s wonder in abundance: Earth-like moons (future human homes, we hope). Countless strange, fascinating planets (definitely not habitable). Even the fact that our ships can now travel at nearly the speed of light, when not so long ago, that seemed an impossible dream.

And then, of course, the unfathomable wonder in our first discovery of intelligent life beyond our own (just a couple of hours ago, as a matter of fact. Still reeling from that one). Aliens, technologically advanced and apparently wanting nothing but to eliminate human existence in the galaxy.

As a space explorer, you keep your mind open, and all you truly know is how little you know, and yet, there’s always been a sort of general (and, honestly, baseless) assumption: that we’d find alien life before it found us.

Evidently, they had the same idea, because they managed to track us down in the middle of deep space. Appearing out of seemingly nowhere, with no signals, no detectable signatures, we were completely surprised. One minute, sailing along through the stars, and the next, complete chaos. Silent explosions as alien ships blasted apart our ship’s engines. Smaller alien ships boarding our newly commandeered home to slaughter whoever they found inside.

And amidst it all: one junior cadet (me) and one junior doctor (or whatever official title Lucas has?), going for a walk, down the hallway of the emergency escape pod storage bay (it has – or had – nice large windows to look out of). Our emergency space suits activated to surround our bodies in a fraction of a second (lifesaving technology). We pushed our way about the floating debris, until we made it to the least damaged escape pod. And by some miracle, it had enough power to fly us out of there.

And here we are now. Hours later, floating among the stars. Damaged, and losing power alarmingly fast, this escape pod is the only thing standing between us and immediate death, but I worry it’s only prolonging the inevitable. We may die out here, together yet alone. Or worse, we still die, but not alone. We can’t see any alien ships at the moment, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t actively pursuing us.

In our tiny capsule, we slowly come to the realization that we’ve done everything we can possibly do. Repaired everything we possibly could (not much). Reached out for help.

Now Lucas is sitting next to me, though I’m not sure what he’s doing because I’m busy clacking away on a transmitter that definitely died five minutes ago. Finally, I accept the obvious and announce, “Transmitter’s dead.”

Lucas nods. “Well, at least we got in contact with base first. And they have our coordinates. They’ll find us.”

He’s right, of course. We’re one ship of many, but we’re still pretty far apart from each other, and even with the high-speed travel we have nowadays, who knows how long it’ll take them to get to us.

“Yeah, but before the escape pod runs out of power completely?” I point out. “Or before one of those alien ships catches up with us?”

“Maybe?”

I can’t tell if he’s being intentionally blindly optimistic in the face of a terrifying truth, or if he’s genuinely that blindly optimistic. It’s probably the latter. In case you need clarification: between the two of us, Lucas is the optimist. I’m the realist. I don’t make things up, or imagine scenarios (at least, not very positive ones, I guess. Anxiety’s a bitch, my friends). I find wonder, yes, but it’s wonder in things that are real. Realistically, things like gaseous clouds of star formations, or interstellar space travel, are awe-inspiring and incredible all on their own, just being exactly what they are. So I try to see things as they are. And Lucas, as I’m continuously finding, likes to imagine things as they could be. King of the Happy What-Ifs.

If he’s truly panicked, he’s not showing it. I have no doubt that I am. I can feel my eyes flickering about the escape pod, looking for anything I can do.

He notices, touching my arm and saying, “Hey. Artemis. There’s really nothing left for us to do. We’ve done it all.”

“So now we just sit here. And think about dying.” I reply.

“Or being rescued.” he counters.

“I don’t know if I love it or hate it.” I laugh.

“What?”

“You’re always so optimistic.”

“That, or I’m just willfully ignoring any reality I don’t like and doing whatever I can to make a different one happen.”

“A self-aware optimist, then.”

“Maybe. Honestly…you know when you’re so overwhelmingly scared that you’re not scared anymore? Like, your body says “okay, we’ve reached our limit”, and now, you’re so beyond scared all you can really think about is how ridiculous it is that anything even exists at all? And you wanna laugh and not stop laughing?”

“I think you’re describing hysteria.” I comment, smirking.

“Probably.” he laughs. “Anyways. That’s where I’m at.”

“I’m getting there.” I reply. “Definitely still too scared to ignore, though. It’s hard to turn my brain off from thinking of a thousand horrible things. I can’t make it stop.”

“So we don’t do that, we just distract you.”

“With what?”

“Well…” he contemplates.

“Well?” I prompt.

“Well.” he states.

“Well.” I repeat.

He stares blankly for a moment, until suddenly he looks like he knows exactly what he wants to say but doesn’t exactly want to say it. After a few moments more, and a ‘what the hell’ shrug and determined nod, he says, “Well, since we have a good chance of dying-”

“99.9% chance.” I correct.

“75% chance.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“I will. Anyways! Since you think we have a 99.9% chance of dying, I guess I’ll shoot my shot: wanna go on a date with me?”

“Now?” I exclaim in a burst of laughter and surprise. Now we’re getting good and ridiculous.

“I think now may be the only time, so yeah.”

I’m curious where this is going now.

“Where did you have in mind?” I ask.

“Well, there’s this cute little escape pod, dangerously close to a spaceship commandeered by murderous aliens.” he describes. “It’s literally to die for.”

“Sounds exciting.” I play along, raising an eyebrow.

“It really is. So…?”

“What the hell, I’ve got nothing better to do.” I agree, and then pause, my urge to say something more in active combat with my urge to stay guarded and avoid embarrassing myself by saying something actually genuine. Screw it, I’m doing it. “And…I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask you out for a while anyways.”

No way would I have added this in any other situation, but given this situation, I make a decision for the rest of my potentially very short life: Give in to every one of my impulses. Don’t let my brain talk me out of things like it’s so good at doing. No time for being shy or cautious or whatever the hell happens when I’m about to say something off the top of my head and my brain says “hm, best not”. I’m probably about to die. I don’t wanna do that with the sound of “what if’s” bouncing around inside my head.

“Really??” Lucas asks, definitely more excitedly and bewilderedly than he meant to, because be immediately splutters, “I mean, uh…” he pauses again, before shrugging and saying, “You know what? I’m not even gonna try to play that off. That’s awesome. I’ve liked you for a while. I thought you liked me too, but I didn’t wanna be like, a narcissist or whatever and just assume that you did.”

I smile, nodding in agreement. “I was going through the exact same thing. Social cues aren’t always easy for me to decipher, and I just told myself I was probably reading into something that wasn’t there.”

“Well…it’s there.” he says, staring into my eyes.

“And we’re here.” I say, staring back, until a split-second later when I unfortunately remember where here is and how terrified I am, so I quickly go back into distraction mode, casually asking, “So, what’s good at this Escape Pod Restaurant?”

“Uh…good question.” he nods, then appears to go deep into thought until realization suddenly springs across his face. “Oh my god, wait.”

I wait. He turns to the left, grabbing his space pack, the one he carries around with him everywhere, opening it up, reaching inside and pulling out, believe it or not, a still-intact bottle of Merlot. Surprised laughter escapes my mouth in that explosive way where a little bit spit goes flying out of my mouth, but I’m way too engaged with this random bottle of Merlot to notice if any actually does.

“A bottle of Merlot? Are you kidding me?” I manage through a fit of giggles.

“Nope.” he giggles back, clearly very proud of himself.

“How? And…why?”

“I don’t know how it’s still intact, with all of that evading certain death I was doing. Good manufacturing I guess. And why? Well…I like Merlot.”

“So you put it in your emergency pack full of essentials.”

“It’s essential, so yes. No matter what happens to me, am I gonna not want Merlot? No. Celebrating? I want it. About to die? I definitely want it.”

“You have a couple of glasses in there?”

We stare at each other, me silently daring him to actually have two glasses in an emergency pack, he with the guilty look of someone who actually has two glasses in an emergency pack. I shake my head in disbelief as he reaches to pull out the glasses.

“Nothing fancy. They’re small, and they’re actually made of plastic, but…they work.”

“You’re ridiculous.” I say with a smirk.

He shrugs in agreement, clearly unashamed at my judgement. He makes quick work of opening the bottle and filling the glasses.

As I accept mine, I comment, “We should probably drink this relatively fast in case the gravity in the pod shuts off soon.”

“Good thinking.” he agrees, holding up his glass. “A toast.”

“To…?”

“To…surviving. To hope. To our first date.”

We toast.

“And probably our last.” I observe.

“Hey, my company’s not that bad, is it?”

“No, but your taste in date locations is.”

“That’s fair.”

We both chuckle lightly, then fall into comfortable silence for the time being.

I stare at the glass of Merlot in my hand, more specifically at the reflection it holds of the little dots of light twinkling on the various control panels surrounding us, flickering like the stars we’re floating amongst.

Truly, all we can do is wait. Wait for the unknown to become known. And what will be will be.

We sit there together, and with nothing more to do, I take it all in: The big and the small. The immeasurable. A narrow escape into the stars. The discovery of intelligent life beyond our own. A first date. A last date? The hope of life after death. The hope of no death at all. The hope of a tomorrow. The hope of living to see it. The flickering lights of a dying escape pod. Two people, alone in the stars, and yet, the least alone they’ve ever been, in each other’s company. An anxious space cadet, an optimistic doctor, and a bottle of Merlot between them. There is wonder in it all.

There is wonder in it all.