[Bale, Wayward Cosmos – 5]

I couldn’t see anything. I liked it that way. It was nice and super warm. I liked that too. Not hot to the point where it was stifling but just warm enough to where I would sweat just a tiny little bit.

Over the years I’d gotten so used to the low bassy hum of the ship’s engines I couldn’t consciously hear it unless I concentrated really hard. It sounded like a huge subwoofer speaker that had shorted out and was hissing in the extreme low register. I actually loved that sound. It made me feel like I wasn’t completely alone, even though I obviously knew I was. There were lots of things on or about the ship that made me feel like I wasn’t alone, the hum was one of them. The engine had slightly audible random variations to it that almost made it sound alive.

The reason I was extra warm and in the dark was I just flat couldn’t get out of bed. Hours before I had pulled the two sets of sheets and comforter completely up over my head. I still felt terrible from the ordeal the day before. My head didn’t hurt anymore but I felt like I had just gotten over the flu or something and was still woozy and mentally out-of-it. Being buried under the covers made me feel a little better. The self-made cozy enclosure created a false sense of being safe. Thinking back to my childhood I never used to ‘hide under the covers’ from a bump in the night, but as an adult I felt I could fully relate to why millions of kids would retreat nightly to the soft caves of security after glimpsing a shadow move in the closet. Being completely covered caused you to forget how deep your outside environment was – it gave the sensation of your whole existence only being as big as your pleasant little cocoon. This sensation provided a false but welcome solace from my reality of being directionless in the vastness of infinite space, by myself.

Opening my eyes I could see tiny light points creeping through the multi layered covering. I sat watching the colors change through the threads – I just didn’t care about the now – I was wondering about time.

Being on the ship for so many years it was almost as if time had stopped. I had been on this senseless voyage for over 9 years and I hadn’t felt a day older than when I had left, I hadn’t once sneezed or coughed (mainly because of the continuous recycling air-filtration system and the lack of bugs / germs) – it gave me an unnatural feeling of artificial life – was I still a real person – was I already dead and this was some sort of purgatory? Four or five years ago I purposely cut my finger with a paring knife just to make sure I could still bleed. Only on days where I had my encounters with outside life (which to this point were only the two instances and both had turned out horrid) did I ever even feel like I could die. Most days I felt as if I would never die. I would instead be alone, on that ship, forever.

I mean I knew I was aging even though I never looked in a mirror. My hair was extremely long growing down past the middle of my back and I would imagine I had the freakiest beard in human history (as even back on Earth I never could grow a ‘normal’ one). But other than days such as today, I had never even simply suffered from normal aches and pains.

I never remembered reading that these were known effects of long term space travel. But then again no human had ever traveled in space as long as I had been.

If the ship’s chronographics were correct I had hit 40 not that long ago and I felt nothing different. But was I supposed to? I had no point of reference or anyone to discuss it with so who knows…

Closing my eyes tighter, consciously feeling the heat being reflected off my body from the bedding over my head, I allowed my mind to wander about where I may end up one day.

I had no planned trajectory so even with the fail safe systems would I simply die crashing into some sort of space chunk?

The ship wasn’t designed to last forever but with only one occupant it would last many normal human lifetimes.

…Did that mean I’d just die of old age on the ship? Maybe I’d be found after my demise, some unknown time in the future, by some sort of alien species. They obviously wouldn’t have had previous contact with a human, so maybe they would consider me a great celestial discovery and ultimately put me on display in a museum. What would that be like? Countless generations would point at me and say “Hey mom look at the weird space ape!” Well that’s if they had apes on their planet to begin with. Maybe they would look at me with reverence. That would be wrong… after what I did. I’d rather they stare at me in disgust…

Many nights I would internally realize I was inside a dream; that was one of those times.

Especially, since I saw her.

[785] Words : Hats?