The truth was, I was so involved in the daily tasks set by NASA that I didn’t really allow Tom’s look to sink in until Anton advised me to send a video to Darce. But it was strange. In fact, surely it was a terrible sign she didn’t answer my first call from the ISS or any of my calls in the six weeks since. NASA had assigned an escort to my family to keep Darcy, my father, and my aunt informed of my continued safety. And our arrival on the station was televised, and I’d agreed to send videos and photographs to NASA that they could share on an Instagram account they’d set up for me. I wasn’t a social media kind of guy, but I’d do whatever the PR team thought might bring interest to our mission. They’d posted my arrival to my Instagram. Besides, I had talked to Darcy and my family during a press conference, so they both knew I’d arrived safe and sound.
Still.
It was definitely a little off that Darcy didn’t pick up when I called from goddamn space. Her emails arrived regularly, and she explained she was busy with a massive case against a large corporation for noncompliance with their environmental impact. However . . . Christ, even my father had picked up when I’d called. Yet, it was possible Anton was correct. Perhaps Darcy was more afraid of me being in space than I’d considered. Though we were encouraged to talk it through thoroughly with our loved ones while we trained for a mission and while I knew my aunt was excited but afraid for me, Darcy had seemed . . . fine.
Thrilled to tell people she was dating an astronaut.
She’d even come to Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a few days before launch, though her schedule meant she’d had to leave early.
Did she really have to leave early? Or was that just an excuse?
And shouldn’t I care more if it was?
I didn’t say any of this into the video. There was no time or space in my life to feel resentful and confused. For now my focus was on the day-to-day tasks and the greater task of staying alive in space. At any moment something could go wrong on the space station, and my focus needed to be on keeping me, my crew, and the other three astronauts on the station alive. Darcy and I would talk about our relationship in four months when I returned to Earth.
Returned to Earth.
I grinned at the thought and then remembered I was supposed to be making a video letter. “So that zero-gravity training . . . tip of the iceberg, Darce. It’s taken me six weeks to get a handle on moving through the station with some swagger.” I chuckled at that. “I’ve missed handrails, bumped into walls—thankfully not destroying anything because the walls are packed with experiments and wires and pipes. Everything does something. The noise you hear . . . Loud, right?” Hence the reason I had to speak up to be heard. “That’s the fans and the pumps. Everything we need to survive. Keeps us warm and provides us with oxygen. Takes some getting used to. Don’t know if I ever will, to be honest, but it’s worth it for the view. I wish you could see what the world looks like from up here, Darce. The world you’re fighting to protect. I get that more than ever now. It’s so beautiful. I know you asked me in your emails to describe it. . . . For the first time in my life, I wish I was a writer so I could describe it to you the way Tom can. He writes it all down so that . . . you can almost feel what it’s really like to be here. I’ll give it a shot for you though.
“Nighttime is my favorite. It’s mesmerizing. All the lights . . . sometimes it looks like gold dusted across black marble. Other times the lights are fiercer, like fire burning across the surface of a black river. I think daytime would be your favorite though. Blues and greens and silvers and grays and purples and then suddenly rusts from the desert, smog over the cities, and the rivers of the Amazon can seem like liquid gold. It’s an ever-changing landscape. I’ve been in the Cupola only a few times—that’s the observatory module.” The Cupola was my favorite place on the station. Through its trapezoidal windows, it provided a 360-degree view of Earth.
“To enter it, you dive into it and then pull yourself up, like diving into a cave. There are cameras in there so we can take photographs. NASA assigned me to take some a couple of days ago, and they posted them to my Instagram so you can check them out. Good thing I got a handle on zero gravity. Some of those cameras are expensive.” I joked; everything on the ISS was expensive. The station weighed in at a million pounds and was the most expensive object ever built.
“Tom said, on his last mission, they captured a space aurora. I’ve seen the photos, but I’d kill to see that in real life.” The green lights over the planet looked like something out of a science fiction movie.
“You asked a lot about zero gravity. Well, it’s like learning to fly, except everything is effortless, you know. It took me a while to get a handle on it because I kept putting too much force into everything. You don’t need to. Darce, you’d love it. When we’re not spending hours every day on experiments, trying to figure out how to make a spaceship that can venture farther into space while keeping humans healthy and alive, we’re having fun.”
It was the truth. My father would look down on that. Nothing in life worth doing is fun. He’d said that a lot to me when I was growing up. When I was nineteen, I’d finally quipped back, You’ve never had great sex, then. My father didn’t care if I was in college. He’d smacked me across the head so hard my ear throbbed for hours afterward.
“Sometimes I’m pulling myself through the ship and I’ll look into a station and there’s one of the Europeans just tumbling and pirouetting on their downtime.” I grinned because it was not uncommon to find me doing the same thing. In fact, four days ago, I’d videoed myself doing just that and sent it to NASA; they added a Bowie track to it and posted the video. It was a hit with social media users. Apparently I’d gone viral two days ago and had accumulated thousands of new followers within hours.
“Here’s something cool for you.” I reached out for a water pouch I’d strapped to the wall. I’d tucked my feet under a handrail, my back against the wall for support. “I’m in node two,” I thought to tell Darcy. “The sleep station. My pod is just down in the floor over there.” I pointed off camera at the pod that held my sleeping bag. The bag was tied to the wall, and we just zipped ourselves up in there. “Sleeping in zero gravity is what I imagine sleeping on a cloud is like. It looks weird, like we’re wrapped up in a cocoon, but it’s the best sleep of my life. Still, enough of making you jealous of my incredible sleeping habitation . . . As requested, water in space.”
I chuckled as I carefully opened the pouch and squeezed a little water out. It formed into a bubble that danced in the air in front of me with a wiggle. Placing the closed pouch back on the wall, I gently tapped the water bubble toward the camera and then tapped it back and forth between my fingers.
“Cool, huh?” Then I reached forward and sucked it into my mouth. “I just drank my own piss, Darce. Yes, yes, I did.” I laughed, imagining the disgusted look on her beautiful face. “Don’t worry, it’s purified. Our purification system turns our sweat and urine into water. Clever, right?” I wouldn’t tell her I rarely allowed myself to think about the pee part or I might dehydrate.