John Nance - Orbit

Even condemned serial killers get something better than cereal bars!

It’s one of the few thoughts he hasn’t entered in the computer. So little time, so much to say.

I had no idea I was so… so verbose.

The pause to munch another bar and drain more water has brought him back to the present. He has to live here for a few more days, but the hours he’s just spent wandering through his past have been therapeutic. He’s been back there reliving his teen years and jumping around from good memory to better, whole hours spent ignoring the inevitability of CO 2scrubber saturation. But for the time it’s taken him to eat something and use the relief tube again, reality has claimed him, and he feels the almost desperate need to start typing again.

Kip looks up, taking note of another brilliant sunset, the price for which is realizing how few are left. Better to tackle his adult life. Not just the good parts… he’s been doing that. But he needs to track how he got to age forty-four with such feelings of worthlessness.

No, not worthlessness, he corrects himself. Hopelessness. Disinterest. Terminal apathy.

He takes one more squirt of water, stows the bottle, and resumes the keyboard.

I didn’t have to get married at twenty-two, but I was told it was the right thing to do. Lucy was an orphan who’d raised herself, and I came from a straight-laced family. And it just seemed that she was the logical one to marry. We agreed on that. We discussed it, like my father would have done. We agreed we were probably sexually compatible. We enjoyed each other’s company in a passive sort of way, plus we both wanted two-point-three children and two cars in the garage and the great Middle-American lifestyle. In other words we agreed to marry our middle-aged selves at age twenty-two and twenty-three. How pathetic it seems now, not that I didn’t love her and grow to love her more, because I did. But that we did the practical thing and decided that waiting to fall in love with someone was a silly waste of time, because, undoubtedly, you’d eventually fall out of love, and then what do you have? So, we just bypassed the passion and fast forwarded to rocking on the front porch.

And life? It took one look, rolled its eyes, and moved on, leaving us there.

Jerrod and Julie would hate to “hear” me say this about their mother, but the truth does sometimes hurt. She was a wonderful mom (despite battling the depression she tried valiantly to hide). But neither of my kids grew up witnessing parents with the kind of passion for life I see all around me now at forty-four… guys and gals who, despite being married or just together, love being spontaneous and can still hold decent jobs and professions. Lucy and I were incapable of just doing something on the spur of the moment. And yet, isn’t that where life gets fun? When it’s not so meticulously planned? Why didn’t someone tell me? Where did I get the wrong instruction manual?

And of course the answer is: I was reading my dad’s book. That doesn’t mean it’s his fault. I just followed the wrong plan, and I’m responsible. Boy, am I responsible!

“Diana, exactly when did I lose control of this control room to you?”

Arleigh Kerr has his hands on his hips, but there’s no anger in his voice. Merely deep fatigue.

It’s just past 7 A.M. and only three of the control room staff are present, all watching the multiple television signals their public relations director has been assembling on the screen that covers the entire front of the room. Where normally an orbital map would compete with lists and graphs and a live shot or two at different times in a launch and return mission, TV morning shows are in progress, every one devoting their coverage to the phenomenon of a public transfixed by the journaling of a man about to die.

Kip has been “silent” for more than an hour, the live transmission still flashing the last words of the last sentence he wrote before, presumably, going to sleep.

Diana straightens up from one of the consoles and smiles an equally tired and tolerant smile at their flight director. “Am I interrupting any other work here, Arleigh?”

He pauses and shakes his head. “Naw. I guess I’m just pulling your chain. It’s just… with a bird still up there…”

“I know. It feels all wrong. Just like my complete inability to control even the smallest part of this story feels all wrong.”

“What are they yammering about?” Arleigh asks, gesturing irritably to the silent TV images, each of which has the now-stalled crawl of Kip’s writings across the bottom of each screen.

She punches up the audio from NBC and adjusts the volume, then punches it off again.

“I’m not a sociologist, Arleigh, but this is fascinating. I grew up in broadcasting, and I think you’re looking at the beginnings of a kind of phase two. Phase one was a passenger trapped in space and facing death, and they’re largely still on that phase. In phase two, the story becomes this unprecedented situation of his writing so freely without knowing the world is reading along with him.”

“And phase three?”

“If I’m right… and I’m just guessing… phase three will be when the story becomes what he’s saying. The substance of his thoughts and how they relate to all of us, not just the fact that he’s writing them.”

Arleigh is looking at her quizzically.

“What?”

“Diana, doesn’t this feel a little… sordid? You know… I mean I’m just a technical guy, but doesn’t the word voyeuristic come to mind?”

“A prying observer seeking the sordid or scandalous?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Doesn’t that more or less describe us as a people? Certainly the networks and cable companies think so, paying gazillions of dollars to be voyeurs. I mean, Arleigh, look at it. It’s everywhere! From that thoroughly idiotic ‘O. J. Low-Speed Chase’ that none of us could turn off, through that murderer’s trial before the world’s stupidest jury, through the plague of reality shows and the unbelievable things now broadcast on cable.”

“Not a good commentary on humanity, I agree.”

“And it’s not just us. We’ve taught the world to be voyeurs and they’ve gleefully joined us.”

Arleigh gestures to the multiple images. “But this just feels dirty, Diana.”

“I know this guy, Arleigh.”

“Personally?”

“We’ve talked. But I knew from the first moment I met Kip that his level of enthusiasm for what we do was very special. You should have seen his eyes light up when he was on Good Morning America , talking about how this was the dream of a lifetime. I’d already suggested that he’d be a great public relations icon for us when he got back.”

“I was getting the feeling you had a special concern.”

“I do feel protective of him, not that I can do anything.”

Arleigh smiles and cocks his head. “You’re not dating the customers are you, Diana?”

She feels her face redden. “Arleigh! That’s beneath you.”

“Sorry.” He has both hands up in apology and she nods, embarrassed that he’s identified exactly what she’d been thinking the night before, that Kip Dawson was a man she could get interested in.

Diana clears her throat, more like a short growl of terminated disgust.

“The point I was getting ready to make, Arleigh, is that one reason the public is already resonating with him is that he’s an average Joe, a good guy from Middle America, who knows for an absolute fact in his mind that he’s dead in a few more days.”

“That is incredible.”