Ten years
I’ve been alone on this shuttle for ten years
and after ten years
of being surrounded by blinking lights
and whirring sounds
and radar blips
and radar bloops
and only raw data coming in,
I’ve started to forget what it’s like to be
around someone else.
I think I am forgetting
what the soul of another feels like.
I think I am forgetting
about what
my own soul
feels like.
When I contact homebase, it’s to send back my reports
and they only want facts:
how much radiation my shuttle is encountering,
how much space junk floats by,
are there any radio signals
or subspace signals.
Things like that.
I don’t get to tell anyone what I think
any of it means.
I can’t tell them about isolation or fear or longing.
That isn’t my job out here.
My job is to collect, not interpret.
Never to interpret,
nevermind if whatever gets back home is old news anyway.
They told me they only want unfiltered data
so they can approach it from a fresh viewpoint.
I understand that to a degree,
but
what I understand more is the unfiltered data lets homebase decide
what any of it means before anybody else can have a say.
I remember during the plague when
nobody knew what was going on.
Nobody knew
who was calling the shots,
nobody knew
when things really went south
what might happen.
Too many cooks in the kitchen, in a way.
But,
in another way,
too many politicians in a room.
Too many people who only cared about themselves in a room,
too many people who wanted to pretend to pretend
they cared about others in a room.
Being out here, it doesn’t feel altogether different.
Being out here in deep space,
it feels like nothing matters.
Being alone for this long,
with just the bleeps and bloops to keep me company
I wonder why I even keep sending anything back
anyway.
I don’t know if any of it even matters.
I haven’t listened to music in ten years.
It was early on when I had a power issue
and my music archive corrupted.
Whatever I think a song sounds like
isn’t what it sounds like,
isn’t what it sounded like,
but,
instead
it sounds like whatever I imagine it sounds like.
Can you imagine thinking
James Brown sounds different than how he sounded?
It’s been so long I might not even remember
the sound of his voice.
That’s what I worry about out here,
that I forget everything.
Maybe that’s why homebase doesn’t want me
interpreting anything.
Maybe they know being in space alone for this long
does something
to the mind.
Maybe they are worried I will corrupt the data
unintentionally,
even intentionally.
Maybe they know that a man who forgets what the heart of
another man,
another woman, or
another person feels like
loses track of what being a human feels like.
Maybe homebase is worried the distance of
time and space
is too great
for anyone to survive.
Maybe they are right.
Maybe they guessed right.
If they had an idea about being right though,
why did they let me come on this mission?
Why would they even let me leave in the first place?
I can’t even remember what the O’Jays sound like anymore.
I’ve been alone on this shuttle for ten years
and I just want to go home.
