Star Side

Chapter 3

People in our day and age, with modern medical technology, could live up to two hundred years old if they were lucky. But they'd still look two hundred years old. Thus, Earth, when I had left it, had been caught up in the obsession of preventing or even reversing age. With plastic surgery and more developed genetic engineering, most beauty was achievable, but not permanent.

Despite their graying hair, however, my new life companions seemed to have found that. Apparently, wrinkles and other age-related traits were naturally put off in space with the lack of direct sunlight and ultra-treated air, though neither of these protected hair. A space worker could look to be in their twenties while nearing their fifties or sixties, but their hair would still be thinning and graying. I'd been informed of this before I left Earth, but was still surprised when I actually saw proof of it.

Naomi and Joshua, though in their late eighties, only looked middle-aged at most, like especially young grandparents. Levi hadn't quite reached seventy and could have passed for my older brother if it weren't for the dead look in his eyes. He didn't act all that young either, using the complaint of being too old for anything and everything he didn't want to do, which was usually anything that could be classified as remotely stressful.

I, at a ripe old thirty, was practically treated like a baby. Or at least like I didn't know anything, which was a sham. I had a doctorate in theoretical math, a few degrees in astrological physics, and enough life experience to be jaded. Pass that senior discount, fart knockers.

So what was I doing out here? Besides observing all things space anomaly?

Nobody asked. Nobody needed to.

Which was the first thing that warmed me to my new co-workers.

I tried to give them the same courtesy. But when Levi started swearing in Cantonese at some wires stuck in a bionic gel cylinder and said he'd pulled human arms through a rubber tube easier, I had to ask if it was a joke.

To my surprise, he had no problem telling me 'no', even though his deadpanned 'I hate life and I'm only here for the food' face didn't change.

"There's a kind of hydrolyzed rubber that can hide drugs from scanners that are given to the rats to swallow or stuff up their holes. Got mad once and stuffed a guy's arm in one that he'd just shat out. I broke his bones till his arm was squishy enough to fit."

...That's awesome. And horrible. And awesome.

When I told him so, he gave the first smile I'd seen on him, even if it was little more than a crooked line.

It was the beginning of our friendship. Apparently, the dark holes which were our souls called to each other.

Not that I didn't come to like Naomi and Joshua, bubbly and bright as they were, but all the pep could be exhausting. Not to mention their ease of happiness made me feel like there was something intrinsically wrong with me. It was just weird that people could be so satisfied with their life locked down on a too-large, empty space station orbiting around a planet that hadn't given up any new secrets in twenty years.

Not that you'd be able to tell based on how Joshua talked about it.

"The atmosphere is almost breathable," he'd said it as though it rained diamonds on a sunny day rather than support life. "Oxygen levels are high enough, but there's a toxic amount of argon that's settled on the surface—I still can't figure out why there's argon there at all, I'm not a chemist I only do the plants—and plants aren't supposed to be able to survive such heavy gas! Photosynthesis just isn't supplied to do so, argon isn't friendly to chemical reactions, and yet they manage to somehow push aside the argon to the lighter layer of carbon dioxide above, it's amazing, and—"

Yeah, I tuned him out at some point. Levi admitted to doing the same thing, having not a whit of interest in anything he couldn't eat, explode, or set on fire.

"Life's short," Levi said to explain his interests, then got a funny frown and said. "Scratch that, life's too long. I'd rather go out in a blaze of glory than poking at a leaf that smells like hurled-up carrots."

And hurled up carrots they smelled like indeed. Every sample Joshua brought from the surface had the same stinky aroma that put me off carrots for the rest of the day.

"It comes from the component which binds to argon," Joshua had said, even taking a big whiff of it like it'd been summer rain on the savannah. "The stronger it is, the healthier the plant."

"What about any, like, animals down there?" I'd asked, honestly curious. I'd already started up the matrix to calculate the physics behind said component making argon act unargonly. I'd hit that point in the process that I got a pain in my jaw whenever I heard the word 'argon.'

"Oh, I sometimes catch a few fauna in the probe. The largest animal found before the mineral composite of the planet was confirmed was about the size of a donkey, but no signs of intelligent life were found. Funny, how we're farther out in space than ever before and still haven't found self-aware life forms like ourselves, isn't it?"

Maybe they were just avoiding us. I would if I were them. Humans kind of sucked.

Aliens would make life spicier, but I had no thirst for excitement. I wanted the peace that I found on the observatory, a large glass dome on the top of the station that looked out into the depths of space and sometimes even gave a view of our neighboring carrot-puke planet. If I lay still enough, I could pretend I was drifting among the clouds of brilliantly colored space dust. The stars shone strong without an atmosphere to make them flicker. The hum of the live station made a perfect white noise background.

Sometimes I'd dig out my art supplies and paint the nebulas I could see. Occasionally I'd pull up the telescope function on the dome and spend entire days zooming in on bits of anomalies and see if I could calculate the correct elements making it up based on the numbers fed back to me. I was always right.

Out here, in the color, the light, and the numbers, I could forget I was born ugly, broad, and tough. I could forget why I'd come out here.

I could forget that I'd never go home.

______________________

You, the Reader: where's the egg-slipp'n alieeeeeeeennn?

Me: patience young padawan.