[Bale, Wayward Cosmos – 8]

I have obviously fought through some very serious bouts of boredom in the 9+ years I’ve been on this ship. Thankfully several years back during one of those fights-with-sanity I decided to go through the exterior environment suit inventory and find my size.

There were exactly 325 suits to choose from that varied in exactly 8 sizes. Since I’m slightly smaller than the average man but still roughly in the middle, therefore in the majority, I had almost 140 suits that fit me.

Back when I originally realized this I got it in my head to run around the ship in one of the suits. I had this plan that I was going to simulate an emergency where the ship’s artificial gravity was muddled up, I had limited access to food and the life support system was running thin on oxygen. So I didn’t take the suit off and even slept in it. I only ate tiny portions of food and even practiced using the suit’s waste removal system, which was not as gross as you’d think. But as usual one night, on my third night, due to my boredom, I took it too far. In one of the largest forward cargo bays I turned down the gravity to 0.2 of normal. While idiotically jumping back-and-forth across the 25 foot gap between the stacks of containers, I accidentally dropped a 12 ton titanium cargo capsule on my head.

Luckily the 24,000 pounds at the reduced gravity only weighed 4,800 pounds and the helmet had a strength rating of 5,000 pounds, so it didn’t crush my head flat. I couldn’t back out of the suit because the clasp to the helmet was under me. I was stuck for what I later found out was 4 days. I honestly don’t remember much of what happened while trapped, mainly because the oxygen in my suit did run dangerously low causing a case of cerebral hypoxia.

One memory from this ordeal I’ll never shake though is while I laid face down staring straight at the cold floor, gradually coming to terms with the fact that I was more-than-likely going to die with a 12 ton container of dried prunes on my head; I had never felt more at absolute and complete peace.

I later realized the “anoxia” (as it’s called) caused this. However; after several hours it also caused me to temporarily forget where/when/why I was in this situation. I inexplicably thought I had a future; my brain had manufactured false hope where there was none previously. Of course at the time down to my bones I believed this was all real.

My mind formed one single uniform thought – Kate!

In a growing panic I could feel the lines of sweat stream down my back in the humid suit. I was stuck, I was STUCK! I had lost all sense of my current time or place. I remember seeing a flash of her face wearing a shallow mask of utter anguish as she shrieked wide mouthed in panic and fear. My mind formed a single wailing inner voice “where is she, why can’t I see her, she must be in trouble too, if I have to pull off my own head I HAVE TO GET TO KATE!”

“If it is between HER or ME then I CHOOSE HER!”

I certainly don’t remember how but I must have flailed like a grounded fish and stood up at a sharp incline allowing the container to roll off the rounded top of my deeply dented helmet.

Once free I looked down and saw my suit torn to shreds. My helmet was so damaged the ship’s oxygen rushed in through every ripped and cracked breach. My lonely reality also rushed in with expediency as my mind was finally fed.

Being forced to rapidly relive my life up to that point, without Kate, the existence I was in fact living, almost killed me a second time, in a single day.

I remember standing still for a long time trying to recalculate my reality, searching for the truth.

The realization hit me suddenly, like a brick to the face; I’d never see her again, and I have no one to blame but myself.

I also remember being terribly tired, hungry and beaten. I distinctly remember having a horrible copper taste in my mouth emanating like a gas from the empty pit in my stomach. Or maybe that was just the sour taste of my tainted soul.

I finally stripped off the suit, left it where it fell and never went back to that cargo bay again.

I hated prunes anyway, dried or otherwise…

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More on the way
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