The Braver Choice

Chapter 1

Planet #1704 existed untouched for all its existence. Then, the heavens parted. Were there humans there, they might mistake the descending space capsule as the saving hand of God, or aliens. As it happened there was no life at all on the red planet’s unmoving surface, thus the space capsule descended undisturbed. The only life forms were the two Scouts inside the capsule which had landed and whose side door was now opening in a burst of pneumatic noise. Their names were Jim and Gary.

It was Gary’s fullest intent to be the first to pop the footprint cherry of this Mars wannabe and so was the first one visibly standing in the opening of the side hatch of the capsule. His sleek, plain white spacesuit that closely hugged his body perfectly melded to the Varitint glass dome protecting his head which was topped off with a metallic white disc. When the designs were first revealed publicly, it definitely turned heads, or attracted eyes to screens. It seemed like the sci-fi bastardisation of a Mafia boss. The Varitint dome an extreme extension of shades and the metallic disc the spirit brother of a white Fedora. Gary and Jim were here to claim new turf.

Aided by the planet’s low gravity and the built-up experience of doing this hundreds of times, Gary leapt off the side door, plunged eight meters and stuck a perfect landing on the planet’s surface. He bowed, turned around in a vague mess of a pirouette and bowed again to a planet-sized imaginary audience. Jim looked down from the hatch and sighed, which only succeeded in fogging up his helmet. He thought to himself how he should have fixed that by now.

Chapter 2

A circle of ants rotated below Jim and Gary’s curious noses. Some accident had caused a typical line of ants to close in on itself into a loop, and now a swarm of them were following each other endlessly. Given enough time they would follow each other to exhaustion. They had been watching the ants under the dim glow of a streetlight for a very long while and had concluded that the ants were rather bad at going anywhere. The poking and prodding of the mass with sticks had done nothing to aid them and an unlucky few had died in the name of scientific experimentation. Then, one ant broke away from the pack and went off on a tangent.

The brave rebel marched towards no apparent goal, as if the breaking away was the ends. Jim reached out and stubbed the ant with his finger, rubbing his finger against his shirt in disgust upon seeing its smashed remains on his fingertip.

“Why did you do that?” asked Gary with obvious annoyance and a less obvious concern. More so for Jim than the ant.

“It doesn’t matter. He would have died anyway.” Jim replied dismissively.

Though Gary could not explain why, he felt sad for the little defector.

As they continued watching the main colony, the world suddenly went dark. Time had slipped past them and they had remained out during power curfew. It was a regular occurrence for electricity to be cut at midnight. Diminishing fossil fuels necessitated strict measures in reducing power consumption. People rarely ever stayed out past the power outage and it was an unspoken agreement that you should be in bed by midnight. Jim and Gary of course were 10, and curfews were a suggestion. And besides, they were right outside Jim’s house.

At times like these, when Jim was awake during the power outages, he would go stargazing. The dimming of the light pollution would give way to the shine of the cosmos, and Jim never tired of staring upwards. When the night sky took hold of his entire field of view, he could almost believe he was no longer on earth. Enraptured, Jim could escape in these ephemeral chances and pretend he was not on a dying world. That’s what did it for him, space was everything and everywhere but where he was and that’s where he wanted to be. He had heard through commercials and holograms of the ISA’s mission to find a new home and he would like to think that he was looking at his future, better home somewhere out there.

Without turning to Gary, who had been mildly concerned at Jim’s motionless stare, he declared, “let’s be Scouts in the future.”

Without a second thought, Gary agreed. “Why though?” he asked.

Jim didn’t answer him but instead he pointed to the night and asked, “Do you see that speck?”

There was no possible way for Gary to know which speck he was talking about, but Gary said yes anyway because Jim was having his moment.

“That's our home. We're leaving here and going there so I never have to see anyone else ever again.”

“Wouldn’t we be lonely?”

“No different than here.” Jim never once tore his gaze away from the stars.

Gary couldn’t help but feel a little insulted at what Jim implied. “What about me?”

“You’re my best friend, we’re practically the same person. You don’t count.”

“So, what is the difference?”

“Difference is we’d be free.”

“But we can’t come back.”

“I don’t want to come back.”

Gary would not know it then, but he was growing concerned with Jim’s detachment. If he had been Jim’s mom, he would have asked him to get out more. But Gary couldn’t say anything because just then they were blasted by a pair of headlights as an electric car pulled noiselessly into the driveway. The car came to a violent halt and was haphazardly parked; the driver clearly unconcerned with appearances. The lights turned off with a click and a short descending tone meant the engine was turned off as well.

From the driver’s seat exited a woman in her mid 40’s in business attire. She was clutching her purse to her chest as if to comfort her and she seemed to be in desperate need of it. Her movement seemed uncertain and laced with a tension that seemed a part of her more than being caused by some external stress. Makeup had run down her face, been improperly wiped away, then redrawn, then run again. All this didn’t help to cover up the fact that she must have been sobbing right before she left the car. With those eyes, she made eye contact with the two boys.

“Hi Misses- Miss Gleeson!” Gary greeted with an enthusiastic wave.

Miss Gleeson, who was until recently Misses Gleeson, stared at them for a brief moment as if wanting to reply then fearing that her voice might betray her state further. She decided to rush quickly into the house. Jim, for no particular reason he could pick out, became angry at the sight of his mother. He returned to the stars.

Gary asked, “What’s wrong with your mom?”

Chapter 3

The third day of their visit to planet #1704 was halfway through. Jim had spent the day doing some maintenance work on their space vehicle, a lightweight skeletal car with four metal mesh tires with some solar cells and storage space in the back to recharge its electric engine and keep stuff in. Though it had an official name, Jim and Gary affectionately dubbed it the Mars Kart.

As per the results of a low gravity, slow motion coin toss, Gary had won the right to go out and do the sample gathering while Jim stayed behind in the capsule to guide him and perform other miscellaneous (A.K.A. boring) work. Mostly though, Jim had brewed himself a cup of coffee, ‘brewed’ being used loosely. Boiling water wasted too much energy, so Jim had to suffice with pouring instant coffee powder into lukewarm water. A freshly ‘brewed’ cup would instantly taste 5 hours old and never be mixed evenly.

He sat down in front of a large array of monitors, some giving him various video feeds and others displaying information. At the moment, the centre screen was displaying the live video feed from Gary’s helmet. Perhaps in any normal context, it would be conversation suicide, but Jim and Gary would often talk about the weather. Some planets they visited had barely any atmosphere and so even in what would be considered broad daylight, the clear night sky shone brazen. Other planets, leaving the capsule meant being caught in a dense, toxic fog or being pelted by heavy opaque rain.

Planet #1704 had a dense cloud that stretched homogeneously to the horizon. Gary described it as ‘apocalyptic.’

“It’s a good one to end on” mused Jim.

“End on?” came Gary’s perfectly clear voice through the intercom. The days of compressed and grainy audio were the childhoods of their parents. There was a pause, which they both knew was deliberate; there was no delay in the feedback loop.

“I’m not really sure how to tell you this but, I’m not renewing my contract.”

There was no hesitation before Gary replied, “Then I’m not renewing mine either.”

“That’s up to you man but don’t quit because of me.”

“You’re the one that’s quitting because of you.”

“I guess.”

“Is it anything you want to talk about? You can’t be missing home.”

“Well, I’m not loving this really, you understand. I’ve already bought a house back home. It’s funny what a planet that will die in 100 years will do to lower housing prices.”

Gary knew Jim’s headstrong manner in making decisions. Whatever this was, there was no point picking his decision apart. Even if Jim couldn’t defend it, he wouldn’t budge. “Well then, nice weather huh?”

“I don’t know, what do you see out there?”

“You have my feed, don’t you?”

“Tell me what you see brother.”

Chapter 4

In days forgotten, towns gathered around men yelling out news from afar of a new indifferent king. Then, families gathered around radios in dark crumbling houses to hear news that the war was to continue. Later on, fans canned themselves in bars to watch the final goal decide the champion of the world cup.

Gary and Jim sat, camped outside the front display of a home appliance store, engrossed in the holographic rendering of a match in the World Chess Championship. Neither of them knew who the players were or what importance this match had in deciding an actual champion, or whether they were any good. The hologram consisted not just of the perfect replication of the chess board and its pieces, but also the statuesque thinking postures of the two foes. It painted a perfect picture of diametrically opposed competitors.

After a seemingly unnecessary amount of time, the woman on the left shifted forward and slowly moved a piece on the board. This caused the man on the right to change posture, as if to think harder. Then, in an anti-climax, the man reached out his hand halfway between him and his opponent. The woman met his hand with hers, shook it and they both got up and left.

“What? That’s it? Isn’t the king supposed to get eaten or something?” cried Gary with a frustration that surprised him. It seemed he was more invested in the game than he knew.

“I think he knew that her win was inevitable, so he resigned.”

“Resigned? Doesn’t that mean she won by default?” Gary took a handful of chips from the bag between them and scarfed them down.

“Oh, it’s a really common way to win. I mean once you get to that level, you can tell you’ve lost many moves before you’ve actually lost.”

“Then shouldn’t they play it out just in case? You haven’t actually lost until you’ve actually lost right?”

“What’s the point if you know for sure?”

Before Gary could give his passionate reply, a girl came walking down the sidewalk to their right. As per their rehearsal, they both immediately got in their sleeping bags and covered their heads with their bags. As they closed their eyes, they could hear her come nearer until she was surely right on top of them. But then she stopped. Was she engrossed by the hologram? By now it had changed to some other channel, surely. Did she care that they were there? She would have been used to the thousands of homeless people after the Repentance Movement. Then, only after a few seconds she began walking away continuing her original direction.

Long after they could no longer hear her footsteps anymore, they cautiously got up. The hologram was now showing the failed landing of the first Scouts mission on some unimportant planet far away, decades after they had first left Earth. Some unforeseen problem caused the ship to slam into the planet surface at hundreds of miles an hour, instantly killing their crew. They had seen this footage replay dozens of times.

Jim nudged Gary and gestured inside the chip bag. The girl had placed an A5 sized card inside it. Ignoring the hygiene issues, Gary pulled it out and examined it carefully. Neither of them had ever held a piece of paper. It was an artefact of a decadent past where wood was still so abundant that paper was still an acceptable use for it. Nowadays paper was reserved for the keeping of the information that could not risk being stored digitally and as status symbols for the extremely rich. This piece of paper had yellowed with decades of aging. The girl must have been lucky enough to have a piece kept from when they were still mass-produced.

In giant cursive letters she had written ‘JAMES GLEESON’ on the front. Writing was also now considered old-fashion and nobody their age was any good at it. Not for lack of trying though, school often enforced many archaic skills. Gary passed it to Jim who opened it.

Hey Jim,

I didn’t know how else to contact you since you’ve essentially cut off all technology and are now living like cavemen so I could only write you this letter. I wanted to tell you that everyone in 10th grade knows what’s up with you and your mom. The suicide attempts and all and why you ran away and left school. We’re not sure who spread the news, but I think it’s Mr Edgerton. It’s not Gary. Everyone knows it’s you when we see you and Gary sleeping around town, you don’t have to hide. I’m sorry if it was really important to you that nobody knew it was you, but it is what it is. I wanted you to know that I never talked about you and I tried to avoid convos about you and your situation. Not that this letter is about absolving me.

I don’t know if what you’re doing is brave or the right thing to do, but it’s what you’re doing. It just seems really you honestly, I’m not surprised. You were always looking at the sky and escaping whatever was right by you. This seems like just an extension of that? But I am worried, not that you’ll die or anything, I mean won’t we all in like a few decades anyway? HAHA JK. Not really. But I am worried, so here’s the important part: I want you to know that if you need anything, I’m here.

Food, water, shelter. My sister’s room is empty now ever since she left to join the ISA so you could use her room, I think. If you wanna order pizza or something you can just use my house as the delivery address. That’s if you have a way to get online. My address is written on the back btw. I hope you know town well enough to find it without Maps. Also, you can have a shower. That’s also impt.

I have so many questions for you and Gary, but I won’t ask them here since there’s no point if I can’t get your answers. I’m genuinely worried. I can’t say much cos I don’t know much but I do think, you shouldn’t let your mother have control over your life. Avoiding her is also a form of her controlling your life too. I like you, It’d be nice to see you around school again and your life back on track. It’d be nice if I could help .

P.S. This paper was my grandma’s and there’s a trick you can do to get the ink removed and make it blank again. It was just one of her grocery lists or something back when those things still existed. So don’t worry about giving this back, you can keep it . Maybe if I ever see you, I can teach you then you can keep using this paper!

P.S.Again. Apparently, this was how they used to add stuff they forgot to letters after they’d finish writing them. I think it stands for Please See. Writing letters is kinda fun but it’s so slow.

Please stay alive and stay safe okay!

Love,

Jenna.

Chapter 5

Neither Jim nor Gary’s opinion would be considered expert on anything to do with planets. The halcyon days where astronauts were elite minds on the forefront of human endeavouring were long gone. Today, Gary collected rock samples guided by an A.I. who chose the samples for him on his display. Later, Jim would say he tested these samples. What that really implied was that he tossed them into a collection bin inside their main shuttle currently orbiting the planet and the onboard computer would do the rest. Just like any industry, even space exploration was heavily automated; they were merely supervisors and assistants to the robot experts. It was the only way to let the bar of entry low enough to get enough Scouts to meet the manpower needed to search all the planets within a hundred light years of Earth before she passed Critical Death.

To say this did not imply that either of them thought their job any more or less glamorous than they had desired. If people asked who conquered planet #1704 for humankind, Jim and Gary could easily claim that right. The thing was that that used to imply months and years of training, extensive testing and dangerous gambles with lives constantly one small rubber seal away from instant death. Now it meant that Gary’s mock chicken was freeze-dried instead of fresh

As Gary loaded the 7th featureless iron red rock onto the back of the Mars Kart, his professional opinion was that this was a shitty fucking planet.

Chapter 6

Riding shotgun in a self-driving car, Jenna was remembering how her mother had told her of games she used to play in her head to help pass time on long road trips. She had imagined a superhuman woman running outside the window, jumping impossible obstacles or bashing through others. Ever since a few decades ago, the smog posed a danger to driver visibility. Now long-distance highways were encased in climate-controlled tubes. As she watched the perfectly unchanging grey landscape flash by, she wondered who was it that played the very final game of impossible parkour person in their head.

The hologram was getting unbearable. She wished she could open the window and let some wind in for a change, but highway speeds had increased so much since driverless cars became normal that it was banned for windows to be let down since the wind became genuinely dangerous to be exposed to. Most modern cars had permanent windows now. On the hologram, some ISA representative was announcing the successful return of the first two-way Scout mission. Good news or not, it upset Jenna greatly to hear anything about the ISA.

She pressed a button in the centre of the front console of the car to switch off the hologram. The lack of background noise left a heavy silence in the car.

Laura leaned forward from the back seat, “Why’d you turn it off?”

Jenna continued to face away from her. Jim — who was in what was traditionally the driver’s seat —felt obliged to answer for her, “Her sister was a Scout back when missions were one way. She and her partner were left stranded on their final mission.”

“Well, aren’t they going to grandfather in the stranded Scouts? I think she was about to explain that before you turned it off.” Laura was oblivious to the weight of the conversation and spoke with an insultingly light-hearted excitement.

“And how long will that take? How much supplies did they give her to survive?” interrupted Jenna fiercely. “They got my sister, and they almost got my husband.”

Laura turned to Jim, “You’re a scout?”

“Gary and I were in training when we got married, she convinced me to stay.”

“How romantic!”

“It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have to convince someone not to sell their entire life.” Jenna killed the conversation again.

Jim secretly pleaded for Laura to have the mercy of dropping the topic. He thought Gary needed to get over his dumb partner phase. His last boyfriend had endeavoured to plant more trees to extend Earth’s lifespan. The naïve commitment would have been endearing if it wasn’t so sad. Laura did not give Jim the mercy. “Well, it’s at least a brave endeavour, isn’t it?” She asked with genuine hope in cheering Jenna up. Maybe Gary falls for that pure joie de vivre that only comes with ignorance these days.

Jenna finally turned to match Laura’s hopeful eyes with her own despairing ones. “Is it brave to send out innocent men and women to die? For nothing?”

“It’s braver than sitting here and waiting for the same.”

The palpable hatred emanating from Jenna was worrying. Jim interjected, “drop this, both of you.”

Jenna ignored him, “Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s braver to face the consequences of our actions than run away.”

“You don’t believe we’ll find a new home!” accused Laura as if she had revealed Jenna’s true beliefs naked. She did not.

“I believe whatever new ‘home’ we find is just another place for us to fuck up. We’re not solving, we’re escaping and ignoring.”

“STOP IT!” Jim screamed. He never liked to see this side of Jenna. Couples only work if they fully accept each other, and he hated being reminded of this part of Jenna he could never accept. Worse, he hated being reminded that this was one thing Jenna would never accept about him.

Nobody realised that the argument had woken Gary up in the backseat until his hand gripped Jim’s shoulder gravely from behind and he yelled all too late, “THE ROAD!”

Gary regained consciousness feeling heat against his cheek. Without thinking he began moving all his extremities, making sure he was whole. He was. Miraculously he only had some cuts along his arms, probably from shielding himself as he was flung through the front window, and his head was bleeding. He turned to where he felt heat and saw Jim’s electric in flames. It was overturned, the front of it crumpled until the car was almost only half its length. Broken glass littered the ground, not from the windshield which was laminated and was still on the car with a human sized hole in it. The broken glass was from a car-sized hole in the side of the tube that encased the freeway which they had caused. Smog was now invading the speedway, slowly toxifying the air. Judging by how hazy it was, Gary had been unconscious for a considerable time.

With no thought, he ran to the car crying out for Jim, Laura and Jenna. The effort induced a cough, both from the smoke from the fire and from the haze which irritated his lungs and throat with every breath. He reached his hands into the flames, finding the back door. The paint around the handle had melted to reveal the aluminium underneath, it melted his skin in the half-a-second he took to open it. He immediately saw what must have been Laura, she was no longer recognisable. Most of her skin had melted off exposing bone in places with less muscle like her hands and face. She was limp and unmoving. Though every frantic breath burned his lungs, and he could barely open his eyes, he leapt into the fire in an attempt to save her, if she could be saved.

Suddenly some violent force yanked him backwards away from the wreckage by his shirt which ripped from the exertion. He fell backwards onto the tarmac and saw Jim standing above him. He had pulled him out, had prevented him from saving Laura. He stood back up quickly, the burnt skin of his hands stinging as he touched the ground. He ran back to the car but once again Jim held him back. “Let me go!” cried Gary with a raspy voice which was mostly gone due partly to smoke and heat but mostly from choking on his own tears. Gary had not realised he was crying.

“They’re gone!” Jim had already done his bawling. His eyes and voice were already exhausted long ago. “There’s no point.”

“You don’t know that! We can save them!”

“Look at them.”

“You don’t know.” Gary was crumbling. He wasn’t in denial or rather, this was more than that. Something inside Gary meant that he had to try. When the coroner will eventually proclaim the death of his girlfriend of 3 years, whose proposal ring was in his pocket, Gary would still be compelled to try. When Laura’s grave is slowly lowered into the ashen ground, Gary would still try. He did not know what he had to try to do. It was not so much the goal of saving her or regaining her life that mattered as much as the effort of trying. He owed it to her, to her life. Gary’s legs gave way and he fell to the ground. “Did you even try?”

“I did not.”

“How could you?”

Jim calmly knelt down beside Gary and embraced him and said in a barely audible voice, “I looked into the fire, and I saw reality.”

It was the most hurtful thing he had ever said to him. Gary wept unconsolably.

Chapter 7

In another life, Jim would have been the one driving the Mars Kart. In a better life, people would listen when both of them said they never want to touch another vehicle. In this life, Gary was driving the Mars Kart back to the capsule with a trunk load of deep soil samples. At least, this time they could see the world fly by, this particular boring, barren hopeless world.

There is something about cosiness that makes things feel like home. Though earth was home, Gary never felt it. How could a planet be cosy? This planet though surely made a case that worlds could be the exact opposite. The Mars Kart died.

Jim checked his wrist monitor which he had set to display the time relative to their landing. Gary got off his seat and began running a diagnostics procedure as he was trained to do. The capsule stood a kilometre down their path, too far to push the kart with their current oxygen supply, but near enough that they were not in any danger of being stranded. Jim checked his wrist again. Some habits are timeless.

“Are we supposed to be in a rush?” Gary asked, bent over in the process of running through advanced system settings.

Jim barely registered the reply and gave a vague, “hmm?”

“You keep checking the time.”

With no sense of weight, as if commenting on the weather, Jim replied, “It’s because I set the pod to leave in 10 minutes.”

“What?” Gary asked gravely.

Gary looked at the failed Mars Kart which was just fully charged and whose entire system had gone through a safety check the day before and who was last touched by Jim. Then he turned to the capsule resting in the distance, coloured a deep red by the hazy atmosphere. Then he met Jim’s resigned stare and he saw reality. In that moment he believed he had two courses of action: he could convince his best friend to undo his current plan, or he could undo it himself. The fact that his body instinctively turned and began sprinting towards the capsule betrayed the fact that Gary no longer truly trusted his best friend.

The sprinting in partial gravity turned into leaping, each step kicking up piles of red dust. The fact that the Mars Kart broke down so far away from the capsule, and that to get back in time was impossible showed that Jim had planned further ahead than Gary initially thought. Jim began running after him. Why? What did it matter to him?

Jim’s voice came over the intercom, littered with stops to gasp for breath from the exertion of running full tilt on this planet. “Stop it, Gary. You know the door shuts once the countdown begins. You can’t get in anyway.”

Gary did not slow down in the slightest. “Shut up. I’m saving the both of us.”

“Save us? Why is it courageous to do something over nothing if it the result is the same? Because it’s not the easy way out? Effort doesn’t give something value.”

The capsule edged closer; Gary might reach it before it launched. Did it matter anyway? What could he do?

Jim continued, “this is it! Our new home. It was never going to be a perfect new Earth; we couldn’t find it. You think the other thousands of planets we were searching for were any better? If they were, why are we on this shithole?”

“You’re a coward. You just want to escape.”

“I used to think so.”

Clouds of steam eddied out from beneath the capsule as the launch sequence began. Gary was coming upon the capsule just in time now. He entered the haze, engulfed by the vapour. By rote muscle memory, he managed to find the side panel where they kept the toolkit, wanting to get something heavy. It was empty, Jim must have thrown it away or buried it somewhere. He grabbed the hinged panel door with both hands, put one foot on the side of the capsule as leverage and pulled as hard as he could. The hinges were designed for the freezing cold of empty space and the thousand-degree heat of re-entry but apparently not the strength of a thirty-year-old man, the panel door came off.

He realised Jim must have caught up by now, but in the pseudo sauna that the steam created, he could not see beyond a metre in front of him. He felt his way around the side of the capsule and made his way to the ladder which led to the side hatch. Suddenly, thunder. A massive blast of thrust and propellant shot down and sideways from the thrusters. The steam was blown away and quickly replaced by surging heat which could melt steel. The capsule was launching.

Gary held on to the ladder for dear life as he was now riding the capsule up into space. As best as he could, in the new artificial hyper gravity, he began to climb. Each step up felt like he was being weighed down by boulders. It was as if someone was pushing against him in every direction he tried to move. The panel door he was holding, which he could comfortably carry, was now almost unbearable to hold on to. Progress was slow, and with one hand occupied, it was even slower. The capsule burst into the lowest layer of clouds as he reached the window of the side hatch.

He knew it was pointless to try and twist the handle to open the door, it was always auto locked unless the capsule was resting on the planet surface. Securing his feet to the ladder, he freed his other hand to carry up the panel door with both hands. He was about to go for his first swing to break the hatch window when suddenly there was a searing pain in his left leg.

He looked down to see Jim, who was clinging on to the ladder below him, had impaled his left calf with a screwdriver. He had done something with the toolbox after all. Precious oxygen and blood were escaping his suit through the hole it created and he could feel the immediate depressurisation. Jim removed the screwdriver and now the unblocked hole let air and blood spew out faster. His head display was showing too many alerts to register, and an unbearable alarm was blaring, indicating the obvious: that something was wrong with his suit, and he was about to die.

Gary climbed a bit lower and frantically kicked at Jim’s wielding hand. He might have broken some of Jim’s fingers in the process, but he eventually let it go, or could no longer hold his hand in a gripping shape. Regardless, the screwdriver flew away like a bullet back to Planet 1704’s surface. Gary reminds himself that he was trying to save the both of them, no matter what it might look like.

Just then, they breached the highest clouds, and before them was the vast black of space. Directly above them, was the main spaceship which the capsule was intending to dock at. Below Gary, Jim was climbing higher and grabbing onto Gary’s injured leg. He could feel himself becoming lightheaded as the spacesuit failed to regulate the air pressure and consequently the oxygen level. The icy cold of space was slowly creeping in as well. That’s false, he knew it was the heat being lost through the escaping gas. He had minutes to live. Gary needed to rush.

The thrusters switched off as the capsule began trying to match velocity with the mothership. Gary could feel himself becoming weightless, it meant Jim could now float up too. He looked up to the main spaceship, orbiting a few kilometres above him. He braced himself. In a split second, he gauged a rough trajectory towards the ship, something it took humanity decades to perfect. He was going to hit it roughly or miss it entirely and fly forever outwards into space until he ran out of air and froze to death. The difference between the two was impossibly small. Using his one good leg and both his hands, he launched himself in the direction of the spaceship.

Jim was no coward either and for some inexplicable reason, he was as desperate to follow Gary as Gary was to escape him. He followed suit fearlessly, the both of them speeding towards the ship. As everything near them faded into the distance, there was silence. Gary was aware that the alarm was still blaring but, partially because of his light-headedness and partially because of the lack of a medium for sound to travel in, he didn’t hear it. In another time and place, this would be peaceful.

Suddenly Jim’s voice came over the intercom, with that resigned indifference that angered Gary to the core, “Why do you think they started letting Scouts return home? They gave up. ‘Come home then at least we can all go extinct together!’”

“You don’t know that.”

“Stop looking away.”

“All this for what then? It’s useless to stay and it’s useless to go home so what’s the point?” Gary paused for a moment, almost convinced that all his effort to escape was useless. As if the cost sunk was a reason to continue. Maybe it was.

“There is no point. So just give up, that takes real courage. It’s in man’s nature to progress and to survive. I don’t blame you for trying, but that doesn’t make it right.”

Droplets of blood litter the path behind Gary, some of them land on Jim’s spacesuit, like the Universes’ ironic way of saying that Gary’s blood was on Jim’s hands. It didn’t seem quite so simple now, Gary thought. The spaceship was only a few hundred metres.

It was visceral now just how fast they were hurtling towards the hunk of metal like a human bullet. No, like a reverse car crash. One moment Gary was flashing back to Laura’s melting face and hands, the next, a few ribs and his shoulder joint were being obliterated as he smashed into the side of the spaceship at the speed of a bullet train. A split second later, Jim smashed into him. Both screamed in pain simultaneously, but neither had the conscious thought necessary to broadcast it over the intercom. They screamed in silence as they both tumbled lengthwise along the side of the spaceship, their momentum pulling them on.

Gary desperately flayed his good hand about for a handhold before he would fly away into space and die. Jim, now grappling Gary tightly and restricting his movements, struck his hands away. It seemed giving up took just as much effort as forging on. In the final metres before they reached the end of the spaceship, Gary finally managed to grab onto a side railing and stop them both. Jim slammed Gary’s helmet into the ship, cracking the glass dome. Gary managed to peel Jim off himself and flung himself to a nearby hatch. Jim managed to get a foothold and stay attached to the ship, following close behind. Gary turned the lever and opened the hatch, using the door to slam Jim away in self-defence, causing him to hurtle away into the emptiness. Gary’s life-long brother flung futilely in nothingness with no way of controlling his spin, position or movement.

“I’m sorry,” said Gary regretfully, knowing the consolation was meaningless. He had only a few seconds of oxygen left and was forced to close the door behind him as he entered the spaceship. As the chamber began to pressurise, his hearing as well as other senses returned, but his eyes remain fixed on Jim’s spinning body perfectly framed by the circular window of the door. The natural anaesthetic of oxygen deprivation faded and the unbearable pain of the smashed right side of his body hit in full force. “Hold on! I’m coming back out for you!”

“Why?”

“Because I am!” Gary was angered by the audacity of him to question why he would save the life of his closest friend.

Painfully, but quickly, Gary shed off his broken spacesuit and donned on a new one. Raising his arms to put them through the sleeves was almost unbearable. He was about to test the intercom again, making sure the new suit auto linked with Jim. He didn’t need to, it seemed Jim could predict what Gary was going to do and how quickly.

“Leave me, please,” came Jim’s voice. This was the first time that there was any hint of pleading or desperation in his voice. He was no less sure of his actions, but he was not prepared for how hard it would be to watch the consequences unfold. He wanted them both to give up together, to spend the rest of their time slowly dying on that god forsaken planet. If he had to only give up alone, was it really preferable than forging on together?

“You’re wrong. It’s not useless. You don’t know for sure. If we went home, there could still be a chance for us to do something.”

“I do know.”

“Why do you have to know for sure when you don’t have to?” Gary asked more to stall for time than to find out an answer. The real answer would hurt more than any number of broken bones.

“I don’t blind myself from scary truths. How awful it is is no excuse to looking away like a coward.”

The hatch door is opened, Gary takes a step out safely in a new spacesuit. In his hand he holds a bungee cord with a hook on both sides with one side hooked onto his waist. The other side is hooked onto another rope, and finally the end of that rope is hooked onto a railing on the side of the ship.

“I think you’re the scared one,” accuses Gary.

“That’s what happens when you face scary truths isn’t it?”

“No, I think you’re scared of trying. You’re scared because it will hurt more to try and fail than to never have tried at all.” Gary exits the hatch and shifts along the side of the ship, sliding across the railing.

“You take Shakespeare’s side? Then go home, fight for mankind if you want to. I can’t stop you anymore.”

“Aren’t we the same person?”

“Are we?”

“Then if, by some miracle, there is a peaceful future, and I make it and you’re not there, it doesn’t count.”

Gary launched himself gently this time, another trajectory perfectly computed in his mind in a split second. He slowly floated to Jim, a few dozen metres from the ship. Gary reached out his hand. God in the Creation of Adam. God spoke thus, “take my hand.”

“Why?”

Again, the audacity to question. Gary spoke with suppressed rage, “because I would. It's meaningless if I grab onto you and drag you back to the ship. You need to choose to want to try.”

Jim hesitated for the longest time but finally decided to grab onto Gary’s arm. His arm then became his whole body as he turned the fingertip touch of creation into a tight embrace. Jim wept. It hurt more than broken bones. It felt as if Jim wanted absolution. He wanted to be absolved for turning his back on mankind and on his life. He wanted to be absolved for giving up on his mother even before she had given up on herself. He wanted especially to be absolved for watching Jenna burn beyond recognition and doing nothing, for letting her die in his mind before she had in his arms. But most of all, he wanted to be absolved for turning away from Gary all his life, for looking at the stars rather than right next to him, for allowing himself to question why he would save him at the cost of his own life. What right did he have to selfishly decide the end himself? Did Adam ever question whether he deserved to be made or did he just accept that it was his right to exist? Did he ever feel like returning to nothing? Was that peace?

God cannot give true absolution; Gary could not forgive because there was nothing to forgive. All there was to do was love, as he always had. Gary held the embrace equally as Jim did. He too wept. He could not bear to see Jim wrack himself over what he will not let himself forgive. He saw no way for Jim to really be at peace with himself. He thought, no, he knew, Jim was destined to live a life tortured by the knowledge of an inevitable fate, the knowledge that he could do nothing about it, and that he chose to live meaninglessly anyway. But he could not let Jim decide that it was the end until it was the end. Did he have the right to play God that way? Did God ever feel accountable for creating?

Adam was created in God’s likeness and in every moment, thought, blink and gesture, God must have seen himself in Adam. If God knew then what would happen to the world in the era of man, how could he have created man? If Adam had no choice but to exist, why was suicide a sin? Why was exercising a choice forced upon him punished? God then did not give life to man but forced us into the shackles of existence. God and Adam had a relationship which was only consummated in the act of turning away from the paradoxical. They could not and did not truly love each other.

“Goodbye Gary, you’ll live without me.” Jim whispered directly into Gary’s ear, though in the vacuum of space, Gary did not hear. It did not matter. With gentle motions, and peace he never had before, Jim took off his helmet and exposed his head to the icy vacuum of the Universe. Nonetheless Gary held on. Jim let go, and then Gary let Jim go to float into existential oblivion. Jim was allowed to reclaim his existence.

Gary slowly drifted back towards the ship and shut the hatch behind him. This wasn’t giving up on Jim, it was accepting that the choice to live was one he could only inflict upon himself. Gary took off his space suit and collapsed on the floor, knowing he will inevitably be carried to the operating table by the robotic assistant onboard. The last thought he had before he became unconscious was the apology he never gave to his brother and the happiness he had that he saw, even so briefly, Jim truly at peace.

Jim gazed at the stars, for the first time being truly amongst them, not only when he ignored what was right beside him. “This is my escape. Jenna, are you there dear? I see you watching me, waiting. I’m so sorry I took so long, but I’m joining you now.” His hand gently touched his frozen cheek, as if holding the hand of a lover who wasn’t there. He died peacefully with his eyes open to the heavens: the blissful dark of nonexistence.

photo source: https://www.wallpaperflare.com/man-staring-planets-illustration-space-simple-motion-indoors-wallpaper-ppdiy