Майкл Бламлейн - Longer

“I want to be alone.”

Dash nodded. It seemed a reasonable request.

“Alone alone,” he added.

Another nod from Dash. “Sure. Why not?”

“You don’t get it,” said Gunjita. “He wants us out of here. Gone.”

“Is that right, Cav?”

“He’s had enough of us. He’s giving us the boot.”

“That’s not true,” said Cav.

“But it is.”

“Not of you. Of everything.”

“You’re tired,” said Dash. “You’re worn out. You’re old. That’s what juving is for.”

“I’m full, my friend. I couldn’t possibly be any fuller. Not if I lived another life, or another ten. I don’t need more than I have. I don’t want more. More would only push out what I already possess, and cherish.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Dash. “You don’t believe that. You never have before.”

“So what if it does?” said Gunjita. “So what? You’ll find something new to cherish.”

“I don’t want to. Do you really not understand?” It seemed so simple, so elementary. He was puzzled and upset that they didn’t get it.

Gunjita was pitiless. “No. I don’t understand. You think you’re being heroic. This isn’t heroism, Cav. It’s stubbornness. It’s idealism. It’s fluff. Romantic bluster. No one builds statues to romantics.”

“I don’t want a statue.”

“You want something. What?”

Freedom, he thought. An end to the work of living.

And time. Time to prepare. Time to get into the right frame of mind. Find the right zone, and take up residence.

True observation was fearless. It was egoless. You had to give everything, expect nothing in return. His hope and his prayer: to be present, fully, for the experience.

“Aren’t you even a little curious?”

“I’ll be curious when I have to be,” said Gunjita.

“Maybe I’ll meet the giant oyster.”

“You’re a child.”

“Don’t do this,” Dash pleaded.

“Honestly? That’s an option. I might not. I won’t know until I do it, will I? I could always back out.”

Cause for cheer, one might think. Gunjita felt differently.

“Take all the time you want. Do what you have to. I won’t be here. You’ve had enough of me? Well, guess what? The feeling’s mutual.”

She started to leave, then stopped, and came back. She took Dash by the arm. “You heard the man. He wants to be alone. Say good-bye. Let’s go.”

They departed the station the next day. Gunjita’s eyes were dry. Dash embraced his dearest friend and begged him to change his mind, at least keep it open. Cav hugged him hard, then faced the love of his life.

They stared at each other, like two old warriors, neither of them knowing what to say or do. Cav had tears in his eyes. Gunjita regarded him stoically, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She reached out and took him in her arms. They held each other tight.

Then a miracle happened.

Time stopped, and the world disappeared. No past, no future, no uncertainty. Just that moment. Just them.

Invincible. Unassailable.

An island of bliss in a sea of amnesia.

Cav didn’t accompany them to the dock. One good-bye was enough. He was drained.

He did, however, have the strength to watch their takeoff. Every second of it. Eyes glued to the screen, as though his own life were at stake. As the shuttle ignited, then separated from the station, and all went well, he felt a wave of relief. Not long after that, he burst into tears.

He had a good, long, exhausting cry, then fell asleep. When he woke, every muscle hurt. He thought maybe he’d broken a rib. Apart from that, he felt better. Refreshed. Ready to move forward.

Mixed with this, a faint misgiving, a qualm, a question in his mind. Had he been wrong to throw Gunjita and Dash together? His wife and his best friend. If it was right, then why was he having second thoughts?

He was jealous. That was why. Not terribly, but a little went a long way.

Old men had no business being jealous.

But it gnawed at him, like a call to arms, a gauntlet that life had tossed in his path, and that needed to be dealt with before he could have any rest. As if it—life—would seize on anything, however petty, however small, to assert itself and not be extinguished.

He wondered how long jealousy would keep a man alive. Would depend on the jealousy. His was sharp, but fleeting. It lived only as long as his eye was turned resolutely inward. Once it turned outward, toward his loved ones and their well-being, their ongoing lives and unfolding futures, jealousy lost its grip on him. The cord was cut.

The HUBIES would come next.

He felt freer than he had in years.

Cav had not been lax. If he knew anything, it was how to conduct an investigation. He’d done his homework.

At last count, there were, roughly, a million ways to die. Less, to take one’s life. Still less, to dispose of the body afterward.

You could burn it, bury it, eat it, or let it be eaten—by worms, microbes, molecules. You could put it outside, aboveground, preferably somewhere humid and hot, and let it be eaten there—by beetles, ants, vultures, jackals, and the like, and the weather. You could freeze it, then transport it to one of Earth’s remaining pockets of eternal ice and snow, and tuck it into bed there. You could embed it in plastic. Drop it into a lake of tar, or of toxic waste. Compress it to near nothingness. Blow it to smithereens with explosives.

On Earth there were options. On Gleem One, orders of magnitude fewer.

Cremation was impractical and risky. Burial was impossible. You could stow the body somewhere, but that would only leave the problem for someone to deal with later. There were no carnivores on board, save one, and that one couldn’t very well eat his own body if he were already dead. Not to mention that eating a dead human, regardless of the circumstances, was gross.

You could suit up and send yourself into space, point toward Earth, ignite the thrusters, and become a meteor in someone else’s sky. A reliable way to dispose of the body, and a quick way to die. Too quick—and too painful—for his purposes.

You could avoid this by aiming the thrusters in the opposite direction, fighting orbital decay, and become a new planetary body littering the sky, at least for a while. Cav hated litter, but felt backed into a corner. It didn’t hurt that he’d been leaning toward ending his life this way from the start: half-knowingly before his arrival on station, then through the long hours of gazing into space, into his heart and mind, awe in ascendance, terror in decline. The idea had been steadily growing.

He felt a shiver of fear and excitement thinking about it now.

Death was a journey, composed of little deaths, little steps along the way. Sometimes the steps were close together, tightly packed, and death came rapidly. Sometimes they were spaced far apart, and it approached at a crawl. Suicide offered a choice of speeds. It was the ultimate in self-determination.

Cav figured six to eight hours start to finish. Most people choose a quicker exit, but he didn’t want to rush. Didn’t want to drag things out, either. Figured time would do its own thing anyway. A minute could last a year; an hour, a second. Six to eight hours seemed about right.

He ran through the steps in his mind. Space suit, jetpack, airlock, outer hatch. Nothing fancy. A simple defenestration. Stand at the brink, take the leap, ignite the burners, and embrace the unknown.