In Search of Rocket Fuel
The window crackled with each wind sweep. An ice tray separated me from an unforgiving cold, inches away.
And it was colder than Mars outside (they said).
I sat in my cube, adorned with a bed, storage for supplies, my devices, and a door which led to a bathroom and a shared kitchen to the left. Lastly, there was a “living” area, whose name betrayed what lay outside it.
It was colder than Mars outside.
Hours earlier we sat in a dining hall, looking like an admissions catalog. Our plates hat some sort of buffet mix, wet, cold, warm, with a satisfactory mix of textures geplaced. The twins made dry jokes and the student from Kazakhstan said funny sounding things in an accent. We were all very sarcastic, but had no makeup on since there were no spotlights.
It was colder than Mars outside.
We spoke as if we knew each other and talked the way one watches a commercial on TV. Generic laugh-tracks played, stories exchanged like poker cards, and we dressed like children in adult clothes.
It was colder than fucking Mars outside.
My stomach sank to my heels while we read our lines in the dining hall. The voices, laughs, and expressions ran, but the fourth wall had broken. Where was I? Someone asked me if I was “okay.” I responded with words. My body lay but my voice was in the corner and my eyes opened in another continent.
It was colder than Mars outside.
In my cubicle, I called a hotline for emergencies. They took down my name and the most beautiful voice asked me where my mind was. Since I was not in “danger,” the voice listened. I said things. Far from a hearth, the window crackled like an ice tray. From my intestines to my eyes I felt rain drops. I hope someone thanked her as much as I did that night.
It was pretty fucking cold out.
I pretended to read but it didn’t work. I tried to play a game on my UI, but my attention lay elsewhere. The earthquake settled, but I didn’t know where it came from. I was working on a path with no signs along the road. I could take a left or the right path but they were covered in snow. My haircut was really fucking stupid. I had to schedule classes, the ones that fit.
It was fucking cold.
I almost died months earlier. The earthquake was real that time, though I thought it was just a tremor. It smelled of autopsy when I woke up on a bed, looking up at a high ceiling. My voice left me the way a blue jay yelps. I didn’t notice my cheeks were wet because all I felt was pain. The only cure for an incision is nausea, I found out. Still, I felt better on that bed than on the Martian surface.
How do any animals live out there?
No blood relatives nearby, no story, photo albums, chess sets, old toys, small, colorless television screens, no collectible cards, no national anthems, no late night drives with open windows, no sibling to yell, no smell of cow shit, no grandpa to call, no reason to be.
And it was really fucking cold.
A decade later, I built a rocket, but there’s no fuel on the Martian surface. Let’s hope it works. I miss that TV set.
Unheimlich maneuver.