CONTENT WARNINGS

(non-permanent) suicide, asphyxiation, death

February 3rd, 1994

The wall around the porthole window was wrong.

It was one of the first things Ophelia noticed when she arrived on the VIC-27 space station with the rest of her crewmates. The porthole was positioned unevenly between two panels; semicircles had been cut out of each one to fit snugly around the ring of metal that supported the window, but “snug” was a very generous descriptor for what they ended up with. The left panel was clearly set right, and the bottom portion of the semicircle sat flush against the window, but as it curved up and around the top, it went just a little too wide and left a small gap. The panel on the right was crooked, pressed too hard against the porthole at the top and loose at the bottom.

“Rowan?”

Ophelia tore her gaze from the window to look at the captain.

“Did you catch all that?” The captain asked. She was an older woman, one Ophelia hadn’t worked with before in the past few years she spent as a space technician. She had plenty of experience, though, which showed through in the stress lines of her pale face and the dark bags under her eyes. Every line on her face was put to serious use now, giving her a grim look of inevitability, as if each one was formed just for her expression in this moment.

Ophelia gave her captain a nod. “Solar flare. Very serious. I got it.”

“Now, it’s possible it’ll miss us completely. I’d love to assume the best, but we should prepare for the worst.” The captain went on, surveying the faces of the crew. Besides Ophelia and the captain, there were five other crew members; three scientists, one doctor, and another technician, who was here on his very first job.

“But this station is built for this kinda thing, though, isn’t it? What do you mean, prepare for the worst?” One of the scientists asked.

“The projection based on the current magnetic energy you told me about exceeds what the station was built to withstand.”

“Can’t we move the station out of the way?” Another scientist chimed in with sweat already beading up on her brow.

Ophelia stared at the window. “The auxiliary engines are shot. We wouldn’t move fast enough.”

“What do you mean, shot?” The first scientist exclaimed. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? You knew you were gonna have to fix them before you even boarded the ship to this station! We’ve been here for a year already!”

The light of Antares flickered against the metallic edges of the window. She knew Antares was meant to explode into a supernova sometime in the next million years; some part of her started to baselessly believe this stronger than average solar flare was the precursor to that happening prematurely.

“Are you even listening? Look at me!” The scientist shouted, his grating voice bouncing off the walls of the exceedingly small dining room. It was more like a hallway, like pretty much everywhere else in the station, with barely enough room to fit everyone around their mostly decorative table.

“That’s enough.” The captain interjected as Ophelia turned to look at the scientist.

This scientist, the supervisor over the other two, was normally very mild-mannered. If Ophelia could feel anything at the moment, she would probably be appalled he was raising his voice like this at her. His eyes were wide and desperate, pupils just dots as he floated in the light Antares shone through their sorry excuse of a window.

“The report of the damage I got wasn’t correct.” Ophelia answered. “I was told the link between the solar panels that charge our auxiliary engines needed to be replaced. I came here with the equipment to do that, but the link is fine. The engines just wore themselves out. We’d need to replace them completely.”

The scientist deflated. “Well...did you tell that to home base?”

“Yes.”

“What did they say?”

“They said we can limp along with just the resistojets until the next crew change.”

The room went deadly silent, only broken by a sharp creak in the station.

They had a few hours before the solar flare was expected to hit, which was enough time for Ophelia to gather up the newbie tech and take him outside to start moving shield panels from unnecessary branches of the station. They’d layer them up over vital areas, hopefully increasing their heat resistance where it was needed most for them to survive. It brought to Ophelia’s mind how a freezing creature’s blood curls inward, closer to the center; staring at the branches deemed unnecessary was the same as staring down at fingers frozen solid.

After they were finished with the shielding, they’d move on to the solar panels next. The VIC-27 station was old, having carried over 15 years’ worth of missions, all here to study the infamously dying star. Newer stations tended to have automatic retraction systems for their solar panels, while Ophelia was left to unscrew, collapse, and collect them manually to take inside through the airlock. Without them, they’d be left running at absolute minimal capacity on all systems across the station to stretch out saved energy reserves as long as possible, and they’d be forced into a Code Hansen scenario.

It was a lot of work for just three hours of time, but Ophelia hoped they could manage, between the two of them. She looked over at the newbie tech, finding his hands trembling fiercely as he still worked at unscrewing his first panel while she was just finishing up collecting her third.

With a click and the brief hum of static, she heard the newbie’s voice over her radio. “Ophelia?”

Ophelia kept her eyes firmly on her work. “Yeah?”

“How long have you worked with Bartell Explorations, again?”

“...Dunno. A few years.”

“A-...are the stations always like this?”

Ophelia lifted her fourth panel, revealing flimsy metal underneath. She got the unreasonable urge to pierce through it with her screwdriver. “We don’t actually design or build any stations ourselves. Other companies present their designs and bid for a construction contract with us. So...hit or miss.”

The newbie was quiet as they removed the last panels from the area and strapped them to their backs. They left their first tethers hooked where they were as they moved on, the line unspooling from their belts to accommodate as they moved for the next tether hooks along the hull. Upon arrival at the next area, for however tedious she found it, Ophelia followed protocol by connecting her spare tether first before hitting the quick release button on the main tether, watching it start to reel in slowly. The newbie’s hands shook as he floated with no contact to the station’s hull, moving for the quick release button before he’d even connected himself. Ophelia grabbed him before he reached his belt.

“What the hell are you doing?” She demanded.

“What?”

The newbie’s eyes were glazed over as he stared right through her. Ophelia sighed, grabbing his spare tether to hook it to her belt before hitting the quick release button on the main line for him. He started to say something, but she quickly disconnected her radio.

It was for the best that Ophelia didn’t have any sort of watch on her. Working with the terrified newbie felt agonizingly slow. If she knew how much time was passing as they worked, she would drive herself insane and waste time taking him back to the airlock. Her forced ignorance couldn’t last forever, though; she was shocked back into the present moment by the captain’s voice ringing out over her radio.

“How’s progress?” She asked hastily.

Ophelia eyed the newbie, who was blissfully unaware of her ongoing communication. “Depends. How long has it been, already?”

“Two and a half hours.”

Ophelia furrowed her brow as she looked out across the station. “Are you kidding me? Don’t fuck around with me right now.”

“What’s going on out there?”

“The new guy’s too freaked out. I’m doing pretty much everything right now.” Ophelia said through her teeth, gripping her screwdriver too tight as her heart began to pound in her ears. The head of the screwdriver began slipping from the screw she was trying to loosen, grinding the grooves down.

“How much more do you have left to do?”

“We’re only halfway around the station.”

The captain was quiet for several moments as Ophelia struggled not to strip the screw. “Have you even touched the solar panels?”

“Not yet.”

“Jesus Christ. ” The captain whispered, probably assuming Ophelia couldn’t hear it. “Finish up whatever shielding panels you’re pulling and start putting them up around the main branch, and put away the solar panels. You have half an hour.”

“I can’t do all that by myself! How about you come get the new guy and help me?”

The radio cracked as the captain shouted into her microphone. “I have my hands full, too! I’m trying to keep four people calm enough to work right now! You can keep one person focused, can’t you?”

“How am I supposed to do that while I’m trying to work?”

“Figure it out!” The captain barked back. The radio buzzed and went cold.

Ophelia had no choice but to stop, forcing herself to even out her breathing. When she returned to the panel, she got the screw loose, sticking to her magnetic screwdriver for her to collect with relative ease. She pressed the button on her suit to connect her radio to the newbie’s, hesitating as her helmet was filled with his quiet sobs.

“Doing okay over there?” Ophelia asked cautiously.

“I-I can’t...I can’t do this.” He choked out. “I’m so scared, I can barely move.”

She bit down on her tongue to keep herself from shouting at him, only speaking when she felt her heartrate settle a little. “Just finish up that panel, and we’ll go start layering.”

“I can’t!” The newbie sobbed, slamming his fist on the panel he was trying to remove. “I wanna go home...”

Ophelia just stared at him before attaching her newest panel to his back, then pushed him out of her way. He flailed as he drifted from the station, caught by his tether attached to her belt. Once stable, he went limp, watching Ophelia silently as she detached his panel and started for the main branch of the station.

They didn’t have enough pieces to layer up nearly as much as she would have liked. The newbie had gone completely unresponsive, forcing her to drag him in by his tether and move him like a ragdoll to take up his tiny share of panels, and even then, the difference they would make was probably negligible. She was just finishing up attaching the last one when her radio crackled to life again.

“How’s it going out there?” The captain asked.

“I’m about to move on to the solar panels.” Ophelia replied as she tightened the last screw.

“You haven’t done that yet? Jesus, Rowan, your time’s already up! You two have to come inside now.”

Ophelia gripped the closest handrail and turned to look at the sun, as if she’d find a fiery arm already reaching for her. When she saw nothing of the sort, just Antares looming over them like always, she relaxed significantly.

“It hasn’t started yet, has it?” Ophelia asked, taking up her tools and heading for the first set of solar panels.

“Leave them and come inside right now. That’s an order. We’ll replace them with the spares later if we have to.”

Ophelia arrived at the first set, the newbie dragging behind her like a long-forgotten balloon. “I don’t trust the spares.” She said as she took her screwdriver to the closest screw.

“I don’t trust you two are gonna survive if you don’t come inside right fucking now!” The captain nagged. Ophelia turned off her radio.

She didn’t have time to take the disconnected solar panels to the airlock one by one. She instead used her spare tether to attach them to herself as she moved on to the next set, hanging onto the station’s hull as she released the main line to reconnect before pushing forward again. The panels and the newbie together caused her significant trouble navigating along the station, slowing her down further, but Antares still looked normal, so she hooked her tether to the station and started unscrewing the next set.

Ophelia felt it before she saw anything out of the ordinary. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as her blood seemed to stop and go cold all at once. There was a disturbance in the tether, one she thought had to be from the solar panels; when she looked behind herself, though, she saw the newbie pulling himself in as spots on Antares’ surface began to flash. Ophelia slammed on the button on her radio, getting only strange, whining static.

She started to gesture at the newbie, waving at the solar panels waiting to be collected. He ignored her, grasping with both hands at his tether connected to Ophelia’s hip. He was disconnected and free-floating before she even processed what he was doing. She let go of her screwdriver, freeing up a hand to grab him as she used the other to keep herself steady against the station.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She demanded over the dead static in her helmet.

He couldn’t hear her, though, starting to crawl up her arm to get to the closest handrail. Gritting her teeth, she tried to pull him in closer, only to meet a strange resistance. It was only then she registered that his legs were drifting behind him, out towards the star.

A million thoughts ran through her head at once, rendering her mind completely useless. She held onto him tight as the pull grew stronger, starting to grasp at her as well. His gloves slipped down the sleeve of her suit until he had her just by her wrist and fingertips. She gripped the handrail tightly in her other hand as the rest of her body was dragged away from the hull.

Ophelia felt a lurch in the station. She wrenched her arm away to turn fully towards the hull, grasping the handrail with both hands. Just to the left, she could see her tether hooked safely to the hull.

“What happened to him? Where is he?” The captain’s voice asked.

Ophelia blinked slowly. She was in the airlock now, her helmet disconnected and floating by her side. Her mouth didn’t cooperate just right; all she could offer was a heavily slurred, “What?”

The captain floated in front of her, gripping Ophelia’s shoulders tight enough that it might hurt, if not for the suit. “He was supposed to be in your sight at all times! Where is he?”

Ophelia glanced around the airlock. It felt empty.

The captain and the doctor crowded her, saying things at her, poking and prodding her. She eventually mustered the self-awareness needed to push them away.

“Where are the solar panels?” She asked.

The captain just stared at her. “What?”

“The solar panels. I brought them in, didn’t I?”

The captain and the doctor exchanged a heavy look. When the captain turned to look at Ophelia again with fury in her eyes, the doctor squeezed her upper arm to stop her. “She must be in shock...”

The station lurched again, metal beginning to pop and groan around them. The captain grabbed Ophelia and the doctor, shoving them ahead of her as she urged them to go to the common area. Ophelia did as she was told, leaving the doctor and the captain behind as they shouted at each other about something she couldn’t fully process. They quickly joined her with the rest of the crew in the common area, though, where they sealed off the doors to all other branches of the station.

The rest of the crew had been busy while Ophelia was out moving panels, having moved everything of value into the main branch. Most of it was secured to the walls with tape or netting, but other small things floated freely, the other two scientists working at taping them down for stability. Everyone stopped at a jump in the station, followed by a resounding, barely muffled boom. Ophelia didn’t realize she was screaming with everyone else until her ears stopped ringing.

Alarms blasted over the speakers, cutting each other off in desperate attempts to be heard as red lights spun around the room like spotlights. The temperature control hissed and groaned in an earnest effort to keep the room cool, but it was quickly growing unbearably hot. Ophelia was certain she’d already sweat out everything she possibly had to offer within just a few minutes, between the heat and the stress. The station’s automatic systems worked hard with the energy it had saved up before Ophelia removed the solar panels, but it wasn’t long before it had to start choosing priorities. With a warning bell, the lights flickered off, and there was another boom, somehow louder than the last.

The other crew members clung to each other in a tight circle, some of them muttering prayers over each other as others stayed deadly silent. Ophelia held onto the handrail against the wall to their side, alone, staring at the uneven porthole window. She’d taken extra care to layer shielding over it, leaving them in just the swirling red alarm lights that chased shadows all around the room. Ophelia drank in every detail she could, as this was going to be the last room she ever saw.

She didn’t care to know how long they spent that way. The time didn’t matter, if they were about to die, anyway; she couldn’t stop her internal clock from trying, though. All she knew was that it felt like an eternity before, slowly, the room started to cool. The temperature alarm stopped, as did the one that indicated something about radiation a little while later. It took ages after that before the captain extracted herself from the huddle, grasping at rails with trembling hands to check the console at the other side of the room. She turned off the alarms, first, shushing the immediate questions from the scientists as she typed. Everyone watched her, holding their breath as they waited for her verdict.

“It’s over.” She said, turning to look at the crew. “The flare is over. We made it.”

One of the scientists let out an apprehensive laugh. Otherwise, the room was silent.

“What about the station?” Ophelia asked, her voice hoarse and scratchy.

The captain was quiet as she turned her gaze back to the screen. Her face was hard as stone, barely capable of moving enough to mutter to herself as she poured over the station’s diagnostics.

“I’ll have to go out and check myself. But...we have severe hull breaches, and all other branches are unresponsive.” She finally said.

Nobody said a word for a long time. The captain just floated there, staring at the screen as if it might eventually cave and tell her, just kidding! Seeing it was never going to happen, she puffed out her chest and started towards the airlock.

“I’ll come with you.” Ophelia said, pushing off the wall she’d been clinging to. Her fingers popped from the effort to uncurl from the rail.

The captain caught herself on a wall, turning to give Ophelia a venomous look. “No.”

Ophelia watched her go in silence.

The solar flare had left the station in critical condition. The captain tried to carry out damage control on her own, but Ophelia joined her out on the station’s hull anyway, eyes widening at the station—rather, what was left of it. The majority of it was either gone or damaged well beyond potential use; even the main branch, for all Ophelia’s efforts to protect it, was left disfigured in the aftermath. It had warped and contorted under the intense heat of the flare, taking on a strange new shape. She helped the captain adjust the two resistojets they had left to keep the station in orbit; one of them was sputtering, though, a problem that Ophelia could only temporarily fix. After Ophelia did what she could for it, they worked together to reinforce the weakened parts of the main branch. They were out as long as their suits allowed them to be, eventually heading back inside as their oxygen alarms started to beep. Back inside the station, the captain pulled off her helmet, staring down at the floor with a look of resignation.

“What happened to him?” She asked quietly.

Ophelia only stared at her.

The captain pulled her arms out of her suit, freeing up her hands to reach out and grasp Ophelia’s face tight. She forced her to look her in the eye, even as it made Ophelia’s stomach churn. “I’m fucking furious, Rowan, but I-...I don’t want you to be charged with manslaughter. I’m trying to help you. I can’t help you unless you tell me what happened.”

“...Do you really think we’ll make it back to Earth?”

The captain averted her eyes, retracting her hands to grip at the edges of her suit. Ophelia started replacing the oxygen tank on her suit.

“We should put the solar panels back up.” She said, peering out into the hall to find nothing but junk taped up to the walls. “Where are they?”

The captain gave her a strange look. “They’re gone. We’ll have to use the spares.”

Ophelia felt a surge of panic in her stomach—it was weak, but still, she had no idea she was even capable of panic after everything she’d been through. She pushed her way through the junk to get to the storage room, filled with more junk, finding the spare solar panels strapped securely to the wall in their case. When they’d first gotten to the station, Ophelia found them free-floating out of the case, which had been repurposed by the previous crew to hide alcohol. She’d tossed the bottles aside to put the panels back where they belonged, too busy to test them and make sure they still worked. She never got around to it; the station had too many other problems for her to focus on.

She pulled each panel out one at a time, inspecting it closely before plugging it into the diagnostics panel in the wall to test it. Not a single one of them worked.

Ophelia joined the crew back in the common room. One of the scientists was sobbing uncontrollably, the doctor running his palm up and down his back as he tried to coax him into drinking water. Ophelia realized how thirsty she was, finding another bottle taped to the wall and sucking down as much as she could stand before she made her way to the captain. She was staring at the console again, chewing hard on her lip before taking notice to Ophelia.

“The spares don’t work.” Ophelia said.

The captain’s expression didn’t change. She just looked exhausted as she turned back to the screen and nodded slowly. Ophelia hovered over her shoulder a little, scanning over the damage listed on the screen. She and the captain were silent for a long time, even as the scientists pestered them with questions. Finally, the captain seemed to muster up the strength to turn and address the crew. “With all this damage, we have no other option. We’re entering a Code Hansen scenario. I’ll send a distress signal, and you’ll all go into cryosleep.”

A scientist and the doctor both sagged with relief. Another one of the scientists just stared blankly at the wall behind them.

“I-I can’t go into cryosleep like this. How do I know I’ll even wake up again?” Their supervisor demanded.

“You know because I’m telling you.” The captain said, slowly regaining her authoritative voice. “The parameters for a safe mission have been breached, yes, but our chances of survival are far from 0. It’s dangerous with the other branches gone, but I’m staying awake to maintain the station.”

“Well, let me stay up, too! I’ll help you!”

The captain pushed away from the console, moving in closer to the supervisor to give him an intense stare as she spoke to him slowly, as if explaining to a child. “All of our solar panels are gone. The station is running on absolute minimal capacity, which means life support is only running strong enough to keep one person alive until rescue comes. You’re going to sleep, whether you like it or not.”

Something in Ophelia’s stomach began to twist.

The captain had them start preparations to sleep immediately. Ophelia just floated where she was, though, unable to move, even as the captain turned and started barking orders at her. For just a moment, Ophelia was standing on a mountain, her chest burning as she drew in thin air with cold, jagged edges that stabbed into her lungs. She registered two hands that weren’t her own; one rested lightly on her back, just above the top of her backpack, while the other constantly beckoned her forward along the steep, uneven path as she wheezed. Her legs felt like jelly and her lungs constricted and swelled, but she pushed forward, following the beckoning hand ahead of her.

“I’ll do it.” Ophelia said.

The captain stared at her in dumbfounded silence for a beat. “What?”

“I’ll stay awake.”

Everyone had gone still, watching Ophelia and the captain with bated breath as her shoulders sagged, just slightly.

“I-...I can’t let you do that.” The captain said, mustering up her stern face. She turned to the rest of the crew, waving them towards the room that held the cryosleep pods. “We’re wasting time and air, people, come on.”

Ophelia followed loosely behind the captain as she herded the crew towards the cryosleep pods. Some were more eager to put themselves down than others; the supervisor gave them a heavily suspicious look before pressing the button to close his pod. Ophelia and the captain just watched them as they used the in-pod controls to start up the sequence. The glass fogged fiercely with sleeping gas, followed by cryo-freeze before slowly settling, allowing them to see their crewmates in peaceful, frozen slumber.

The captain’s voice was raw and quiet as she indicated to the closest empty pod. “Get in.”

Ophelia stared at it for a long time. Fitting, she thought, that it reminded her so much of a casket. Like some sort of poetic justice.

“Ophelia.” The captain snapped. “You’re wasting my air. Get in the pod.”

Ophelia turned to look at the captain. Her eyes were red and sunken, cheeks stained with tears. When had she even had the time to cry? She wondered. Ophelia gently took the captain by her shoulders and placed her in the pod. She didn’t resist at all as Ophelia shut it, nor did she move for the release button as she activated the sequence from the outside. Once finished, she heard a light, muffled hiss as the pod went to work. She watched the captain stare back at her as long as she could. In the final seconds before the gas would obscure her completely, Ophelia saw her mouth two words.

And with that, Ophelia was alone. She let out a heavy sigh of relief.

****

Ophelia finished typing her communication to headquarters, only glancing over it once before preparing it to send. The comms console on this station was probably the newest piece of hardware, sporting a Young Industries logo on the side and on the screen upon startup. Ophelia wasn’t a communications expert, but from what she understood, it was an automatic system that handled the hard work for them, translating, encrypting, and transmitting the message itself, which eliminated the need for a communications expert altogether. Someone at headquarters called it “idiot-proof”; the captain called it something like a dog leash. She pressed the final button to send the message, faced with a loading screen that made her skin crawl the longer the little hourglass spun. Then, the screen displayed a message Ophelia had never seen before.

She furrowed her brow, hesitating as her hand hovered over the keyboard. She pulled away to peer around the side of the console, where the manual was supposed to sit in its designated slot. The slot was empty. Ophelia returned to the keyboard and selected YES. She held her breath as she waited, watching the hourglass spin until she sighed with relief at the sight of a green checkmark.

It had taken Ophelia and the crew 379 days to reach Antares from Earth’s orbit. That had been with careful timing, waiting until the planet itself was aligned just right for the straightest shot to the station. This time of year back at home, it would probably take an extra day or two, plus the two weeks it would take for the distress signal to even reach headquarters, on top of however long it would take to organize and launch the rescue mission—ideally, that would only be three days, but it was realistically more likely to be about a week. So, by her estimate, it would take 402 days to be rescued, give or take.

Ophelia worked under dim lights and with stale, hot air over the following months. The station spoke to her in creaks and groans, a language previously unknown to her, telling her all its sources of pain. She constantly refilled her oxygen tank to go out and find the next bandaid fix for the failing resistojet, a massive waste of what little air she had to work with. She followed after hissing noises to seal cracks in the walls; the station was trying to expel its insides like a threatened sea cucumber, sending Ophelia out into the cold vacuum of space with everything else. It stumbled and swayed in its orbit with the force of storms and the unpredictability of the sputtering resistojet, forcing manual course corrections. It was a dying animal, Ophelia fighting against its every instinct, delaying its inevitable demise one hour at a time.

The station grew to despise Ophelia. They were both running out of energy; this wasn’t sustainable in any sense of the word, but as she kept working, the station began to wish for an end to its suffering. Outages in power and life support began, in order to kill her so it could die in peace. In response, she would plunge her hands painfully into the guts of the station, clawing to force the systems back on manually. All the while, she could hear the station’s snarls and pleas reverberating throughout the room and the halls beyond. When she pulled her hands out, they were often covered in blood.

There were clocks in the station, the date and time back at headquarters always displayed in the corners of whatever console Ophelia used. On day 286 since the solar flare, she stared at the number, realizing it meant nothing to her. She never slept for more than four hours before she’d be woken by the alarm for the next emergency to tackle. She had no rising or setting sun, no night-long sleep to ground her to the passage of time. The date seemed to jump back and forth; one minute, it was November 20th, the next it was December 9th, and before she knew it, it was November 16th again. She stopped paying attention to the date.

All the while, she sent messages out to headquarters. She updated them on the state of herself and the crew, she cursed them, and she pleaded with them, always with no response. She never received another error on the comms console, but she still constantly checked the transmitter outside each time she went out to maintain the resistojet. It was just a little black box sitting on the hull of the station, on the other side facing away from the sun; it sat in a comically large slot, where the old radio system must have been contained before the change. She didn’t know how to spot anything wrong with it, let alone how to repair it, but it always looked fine to her. One day, she tore apart what was left of the station in search of the manual before giving up on it, instead positioning herself by the console’s side with her toolkit, only to find no visible screws. She pushed the head of her screwdriver underneath the side panel and pried it open, finding another layer of protective metal held in place by the screws she was looking for. They were all tiny with hexalobular heads. Ophelia didn’t have the right kind of screwdriver for them. Even with the risk of damaging wires, she grabbed her circular saw and cut the console open. Everything looked fine to her on the inside, no matter how hard she searched for fixable damage.

Even still, she spent hours fiddling with the console before finally pushing back, staring out the window she’d uncovered months ago. If the comms were fine, then why had headquarters never responded? Maybe the company had failed during the short few months the rest of the crew had still been awake, and she’d simply been left out there to die. Maybe the messages she sent to Earth at her own whims were meaningless, received by no one. Maybe Earth itself was gone, or maybe Earth had never existed. Perhaps this was all there ever was; Ophelia and the station, in a constant battle against one another, each craving the other’s failure with every fiber of its being. They were nothing more than two disturbed natural forces—a parasite and its host.

The station wasn’t all Ophelia battled with. The only thing she could ever rely on was the stability of her own mind, and yet, that was already gone within a mere week of being alone. She’d sealed off the cryosleep room to conserve oxygen, knowing for a fact that her crewmates were in a deep slumber. Still, she’d often float in front of the door, listening closely to music, laughing, and other much more improbable sounds, such as birds screeching or gunfire. She never felt any real urge to open the door. The idea would cross her mind, but she would physically recoil at the thought, like touching a hot stove. One day, despite the danger, she found herself using her utility laser to seal the door shut.

It wasn’t just abnormal sounds. Ophelia saw things, too, most of them nonsensical—shoes that walked on their own, rats and spiders scurrying around the walls, a knight on their horse seeming to press through the wall from the outside, and most often, meaningless Earth garbage floating aimlessly around the station, such as empty paper cups and torn-open wrappers. Other times, she could see and feel hands reaching through the hull of the station to grasp at her. She felt lurches in her stomach as if she was falling, despite being as motionless and stable as a person could be in zero gravity, and despite detecting no abnormal movement in the station.

Sleep deprivation, loneliness, and stress conspired against her. Her mind fabricated danger when there was none; she fought against herself just as much as she fought the station. This intensified when she was forced to make a tough decision for oxygen and energy conservation. She’d already sealed off doors to non-essential rooms within the main branch, but soon, she ended up sealing off the gym. She did her best to exercise without equipment, but she knew without it, her body was weakening day by day.

After an attempt at sleep had been interrupted by an alarm to check the faulty resistojet, Ophelia carried out her necessary work and looked begrudgingly at the date. She had now been alone for 381 days. Somehow, she’d missed her one year anniversary of solitude by over two weeks. Ophelia made her way to the station’s communication console, preparing a belated message to send to Earth.

Ophelia knew she was crying. She had to wipe tears away from her eyes to see the screen properly, considering they wouldn’t roll down her cheeks and out of the way on their own. Still, her logical understanding was much higher than her bodily awareness, and she didn’t feel the sting of tears or the swell in her throat. Her body had separated itself from her mind to a degree she’d never felt before, now its own independent force; Ophelia was no longer in control.

Her body began screaming. Ophelia could hear it, but not feel it; the sound bounced off the walls, piercing her own ears in a way she thought could potentially be very painful. Her body pounded at the walls, bloody fists attempting to break through the too-sturdy windows. It kicked forcefully at a wall, propelling itself to a set of panels taped to the opposite wall and out of the way; she’d torn them permanently from the life support system, considering how often she had to reach inside for wires that would manually reset it. The station groaned and cracked as her body braced itself clumsily against the wall in front of the system.

Ophelia could only watch as her body plunged its free hand into the wires of the system, grasping at whatever it could before ripping them out violently. It released the broken pieces as the lights flicked off, and the ever-present hum of life support died. The room was illuminated only through the porthole window, the light from Antares forming a red beam in the center of the room like a spotlight.

At first, Ophelia didn’t feel anything. Her body had shut off entirely, leaving her mind exposed to the open, dark space around her. The room seemed to expand, as vast now as the entirety of space itself. She was suspended with nothing to hold onto or push off of, truly trapped in a motionless hell.

She wasn’t sure how long she spent like that. Time didn’t exist, anymore. She was at every point of her own existence simultaneously, and then, she was beyond it. Ophelia Rowan no longer was, and never had been. The universe around her burned and froze and breathed and stopped, the station drifting aimlessly around one of many decaying bodies, carrying inside the smallest observer who had traveled so far to understand nothing. Rescue didn’t mean anything; neither did home, or comfort, or even fear.

Ophelia snapped back into her body with a start, as if she’d been woken forcefully from a dream about falling. She jolted and took in a sharp breath, finding herself still holding onto the handrail in front of her. She clutched her chest with her free hand, feeling the pounding of her own heart. Turning, she faced the frayed segments of wire she’d torn out of the system.

381 days of survival, and Ophelia had just damned herself to die in hours. She slapped a palm over her mouth, nails digging into her skin as she strained from the effort not to hyperventilate. The walls of the station started to close in on her. Despite her efforts not to panic, she found herself vomiting, acutely aware of the fierce aching in her joints. Once her stomach was empty, Ophelia turned to the console beside her, staring into the destroyed wiring. She knew which wires were necessary—maybe she could salvage this.

She took up two of the longer pieces of severed wire and reached into the console, searching for the appropriate area to trace where the wires had been torn. Her hands shook fiercely as she did, dropping and losing wires two times before she found the most important damage. Taking the end of the separated wire and the end of the wire still stuck in the console, she touched the pieces of exposed copper against one another, then tried to twist them together. Touching the metal zapped her, and her hand jerked involuntarily, pulling the wires apart.

Ophelia had to abandon her work on the wires for a moment, searching the mess around her for tape. The star gave her some light to work off of, but still, most of the room was cast in dark shadows. She felt at her hip, hoping to find her keychain flashlight, only to find nothing clipped onto her jumpsuit. She searched her pockets, to no avail. She was paralyzed by despair for a moment before she began to do the only thing she could think to do: search in the dark.

With all the damage to the station, Ophelia didn’t know exactly how long she had left without life support. The station loomed around her, watching her search with bated breath to see if its parasite would finally meet its demise.

Finally, Ophelia thought she saw the shape of something circular and reached out. Her fingers recognized the shape and texture of the tape, grasping it with familiarity. She pushed herself back to the broken system, reaching in for the wires to try again.

The wires were tiny and thin, and her hands still trembled; even with the tape, Ophelia struggled to reconnect them. Despite this, she tried again. And again. And again. Ophelia quickly lost count of her attempts, but soon, she was taping up what she hoped was the final, absolutely necessary connection.

Ophelia looked around herself. The lights were still out, and there was no hum from the life support system. It was deadly silent, interrupted sharply by a creaking in the station. Then, she heard a strikingly familiar melody on saxophone, muffled by the door to the cryosleep room—Fly Me To The Moon. She’d memorized it many years ago in high school band class, the song practically engraved in her mind. She listened to it for a few seconds in a bewildered haze before she grasped more segments of wire. She connected more of them, mismatched the necessary lengths for each connection, stumbled back to disconnect and reconnect.

As she worked, the temperature was beginning to drop. Already? She asked herself in horror. She hesitated, listening closely to the room. Was that...hissing?

Ophelia tried tilting her head towards the sound. She couldn’t tell if she was getting closer or further from it. It was too familiar—she’d heard this hissing countless times during the first few weeks, searching for its faint source and dragging her fingertips across the walls to find cracks and suction. She’d mostly relied on her hearing to find it, and with the constant hum from life support, maybe the quieter and smaller cracks had been drowned out. She found her tape again and began listening for the source of the hiss.

Ophelia felt blindly around the room, taping up spots she wasn’t entirely certain of, fighting desperately against the loss of her final resource. She’d nearly depleted her entire roll of tape before the sound of an alarm echoed throughout the room. The resistojet was acting up again; the station was falling into a decaying orbit. Ophelia cursed and headed for the station’s controls for a quick fix, readjusting the jets to keep her in orbit until the faulty one would automatically shut off to prevent overheating.

Ophelia returned to the life support system, continuing her attempts to salvage the wires. She was running low on tape, and any other tool she could think of that would aid her had been lost to the obliterated branches of the station. If she couldn’t revive life support, then what? What was she left with?

The longest she thought she could go at this rate was a couple days, if she was lucky. She’d wait until the last usable breath, then put on her spacesuit, surviving off its systems for an additional 6 hours.

Ophelia pushed herself to the opposite wall, facing away from the star and into the vast depths of space. Pounding on the wall, she began to scream. “Help! Please, please, I don’t know what to do! Please help me!”

It got her nowhere and wasted oxygen, but she sobbed and screamed until her energy was spent. She wiped tears from her eyes, turning her gaze to the window behind her. Antares loomed there, uncaring and dying itself. Ophelia was lucky. She only had to wait a few days until she’d suffocate and die. The star had about 10,000 years to go.

Having nothing to lose from just trying, and having nothing else to occupy her hands while she waited for death, she continued to work on the wires, even as her hands began to tremble from the cold. Despite her constant effort, she was never rewarded with even a spark of life in the system. She paused to force some food down, hoping it would help steady her hands so she could work more efficiently. Then, as she pulled a section of tape from the roll, she tore up cardboard with it. She used the last of the tape on her final effort to connect wires that seemed appropriate, with no reward to show for it.

For a while after that, Ophelia just floated aimlessly, her head too fuzzy to think about what to do next. Maybe she’d be okay, she thought deliriously. Sure, life support was down, but did she really need a constant cycle of fresh air to survive so long?

Still, something came over her, and she found herself in the airlock putting on her suit. She only used her tether by muscle memory alone as she crawled along the station’s hull, finding a nice spot and holding loosely onto the handrail.

She hadn’t bothered to refill her oxygen tank. She truly had no idea how long she would survive like this, but she hoped it wasn’t long.

When she’d first arrived at the station with the rest of the crew, they’d all gathered around the shaded window, marveling at how massive Antares was even at their cautious distance. Everyone else had their moment of hushed awe, but to Ophelia, the glass was just a screen. Antares was a projection, special effects, and nothing more.

She always struggled to grapple with the reality of where she was and what she was doing up until she finally left the airlock to spacewalk. She was alone the first time she walked, as she preferred. She’d made up an excuse as the crew bustled to settle into their work stations, heading outside and tethering herself before turning to just look at Antares. Even with her tinted visor, it was hard to look at for more than a few seconds, so she’d instead turn her gaze to the rest of the universe all around them.

There was no word Ophelia knew of that described how she felt about space. How could she consolidate something like horror and reverence into just one word? How could she describe how small it made her feel, and how incredible that was? Everything she could see was splashed in watercolor, speckled generously with white dots, three-dimensional in the way abstract paintings weren’t. It surrounded her infinitely, always inviting, always challenging, the trillions of stars just little hands that always beckoned. In space, nothing about Ophelia mattered. It didn’t matter how she felt, what she said, the things she had done or would eventually do, and it didn’t matter that she hardly knew herself as a person at all, because petty little things about personhood were meaningless in comparison to the sheer vastness of reality. Out here, Ophelia could lose herself forever. She unhooked her tether from the hull as her oxygen alarm started to beep.

Ophelia had to blink tears out of her eyes, shaking her head vigorously to force them out of the way. They drifted where they pleased, some splatting into the glass of her helmet’s visor and losing their shape. Then, letting out a shaky breath, she let go of the handrail and pushed off the station.

She hadn’t wanted to look back at it, but she had no choice as even the light force of her push had sent her into a slow cartwheel. There went the station, and here came Antares, over and over in an infinite loop. She lost herself to it, watching as she moved further and further from the VIC-27 station. It simply watched her in return, silent and unmoving, bidding no farewell to its parasite as she headed for Antares’ gravitational pull.

She’d been hoping to be caught up in it, to experience the feeling of an incredible draw into something far bigger than herself, but her oxygen alarm began to beep more insistently as she felt a rushing in her chest and a buzzing across her fingertips. She watched geometric patterns of light begin to form in her helmet’s visor, and she started to laugh. She was going to suffocate before she could feel Antares beckoning her into its beautiful, bright hot embrace, and yet in her current state, she couldn’t bring herself to care. Her heart was pounding with terror, but euphoria had just as much of a hold on her. She closed her eyes and let herself lose all the bearing she had left on the station, on Antares, and on herself.

Then, she felt that beautiful beckoning call anyway.

She tried to gasp as she felt a snap, but her lungs didn’t expand when she asked them to. She could only watch as she was indeed pulled away from the bulky, white form of her spacesuit, spinning limply away from the station. She was pulled further and further, until she couldn’t see the suit containing her lifeless body, anymore.

Without her body, all Ophelia could do now was take everything in. She turned to find whatever had been pulling her away, faced now with the endlessly burning mass that was Antares. From the window, she had been able to comfortably find the edges of the sun’s shape; from here, though, with no regard to physical space, Ophelia had to strain to find where the sun ended and where space began. She felt its heat in a way that approximated pain in her chest, a sharp understanding of its power, how if she weren’t already dead, it would disintegrate her before it ever even got the chance to swallow her up. A pang of sympathy coursed through her new form.

Though it had no eyes, Antares still stared down at her, a meaningless speck of dust in comparison to it. She felt the heat inside her expand, as if even just being acknowledged was enough for Antares to erase her from existence.

Ophelia Rowan. Antares’ powerful presence boomed into Ophelia’s new form, making its thoughts known forcefully.

Yes. Ophelia thought back hesitantly.

You’re a human. But...what exactly is a human? I’ve never seen anything so bizarre, for as long as I’ve lived.

Ophelia had no idea how to answer.

What happened to that thing you were inside of?

It was damaged by one of your solar flares.

I don’t mean the station. I mean the smaller thing, the one that’s soft and full of liquid.

Do you mean my body?

If that’s what you call it, then yes.

...It died.

Does that mean you can’t use it anymore?

Yes.

Can you get a new one?

I don’t think that’s how this works.

Why? How did you get the first one?

I was born with it.

Born? What does that mean?

It’s how I started existing. How did you start existing?

I don’t know. I never stopped to think about it.

What do you usually think about?

Not much.

Do you talk to anyone? Do you have family or friends?

I can’t recall ever talking to anyone before. You’re the first.

Wow. I’m sorry.

Why are you sorry?

It sounds lonely.

I don’t know. This is a new concept to me.

I guess it would be. Humans are pack animals. We survive together, so when we’re apart, we feel lonely. It’s supposed to make us want to return to the pack.

Can your body die from it?

In an ass-backwards way, yes.

Is that how your body died?

In part.

Where does one human end and another begin? You’re not all the same entity?

Each body you see is their own entity. I completely believed that I would stop existing when my body died.

Wow. So you’ve never existed like this?

I guess not.

That’s so weird. I don’t understand you at all.

I thought I understood you, but I guess I don’t.

That’s interesting. I didn’t understand that I was looking at anything sentient when I first saw your station and the humans in it. I’m glad you are, though.

I’m glad you are, too. But if you know my name and saw us talking to each other, why didn’t it occur to you we were sentient?

Language is a new concept to me.

You sure learn fast, then.

I guess so. I don’t think you guessed I was sentient, either.

I didn’t.

So, how did you get here?

We built spaceships to travel here from our home planet and build the station. When that was done, we started staying here long-term for research.

So you came here by choice? You built things? You put things together to make new things? Research? You’re trying to understand me? You’re studying me? What for?

Because you’re dying, too.

I am? How do you know that?

I don’t understand how we know, actually. But you’re supposed to explode into a supernova sometime in the next million years.

How long is a year?

It’s how long it takes for my home planet to rotate around our sun. I guess that doesn’t mean much to you, though.

Not really, no. Can I do anything to stop it?

I wouldn’t know. I thought you would.

I think you understand more about me than I do.

Well, not much more. I don’t know a lot about stars. I just fix the station.

I don’t even know where to begin with your station. So it’s not a part of any of you humans? It’s not a part of your body? It’s not sentient?

I’m not completely sure anymore.

I’m starting to question a lot of things about myself, too.

What happens to me, now?

What do you mean?

Now that I’m dead. I’m still conscious, so what do I do? Where do I go?

I guess I figured you’d do what I do.

What do you do?

I exist in a structure of my bodily efforts. It is not by choice, but a product of my living. I sit with the incredible consequences of it.

That’s amazing. Do you really think I could do that, too?

Maybe. If it’s not what you already did with your body, then I wouldn’t be sure.

Huh. I guess I’ll just have to find out, then.

Not necessarily.

What?

Perhaps you and I can help each other. We can aid each other. We can work together to achieve each other’s goals. You said I’m going to explode into a supernova? I’m going to collapse? My energy is going to violently expand? This is very strange to me, but I don’t think I want that to happen. Thinking about that makes me nervous. I’ve never experienced “nervous” before. I don’t like it.

Well, yeah, but you’ll be a nebula or something afterwards. That doesn’t sound so bad.

But your body is still right there. If you let me inside of it, maybe I can make it work again. If I can, you and I can ride it together back to your home.

Why do you want to come to Earth?

I want to see what it’s like to exist the way you do. I want to know more. Would you show me?

Ophelia saw flashes of things she’d barely thought about the past year. She saw crowds of people, skyscrapers, pigeons, phone booths with long lines, stray cats, sidewalks and parks littered with garbage, spiders, hairspray, gravestones, skirts, an empty apartment, public bathrooms, bunk beds, rotting plants, and more, a constant onslaught until Antares spoke again.

Your home looks incredible. I don’t understand any of it, but I want to. This is a very new sensation to me. I can sympathize with your efforts to come here and study me, now.

I don’t know if I want to go back.

Why not? I thought you were begging for help before your body died.

We evolved with the express desire not to die hard-wired into our bodies. Even if part of me wanted to die, my body still reacted with fear.

So you inflicted this on yourself? You had your body die on purpose?

Yes.

Why?

That’s an extremely difficult thing to explain.

“Lonely” was a factor, wasn’t it?

Well, yes. But it’s not the whole picture.

I want to understand.

I don’t think I can explain it if you see Earth and all our efforts indiscriminately as good and amazing things. Do you understand that pollution is a bad thing?

Pollution? The addition of waste making a space unfit or harmful to living things? Waste? An unwanted byproduct? Damaged, defective, or superfluous material produced by a manufacturing process? Manufacture? The process of making something out of raw materials by hand or machinery? I don’t think I understand these things as “bad”, or “good” for that matter.

In that case, I don’t think I can explain to you why I killed myself if you can’t frame my reasons appropriately.

Please show me. From what I understand, when we get to your home planet, you’ll just die by your pollution, anyway. Then we both get what we wanted. This seems like a completely reasonable “compromise” to me. “Compromise” is something I understand through watching you and your other humans.

Oh my god.

What?

That just isn’t usually the kind of response I get when I talk about suicide. I feel inadequately prepared to handle this social dynamic.

Well, I’m not human. It seems clear to me that our priorities don’t exactly align.

I guess they wouldn’t.

Either way, I see no issue with this compromise. I think I’ll be taking you with me.

Please don’t. I don’t want to go back.

I believe my desire outweighs yours.

That’s not fair. You’re an eleven million year old sun.

Whatever it is you’ve decided about me is not something I’m willing to suffer for. I’ve never experienced the absence of knowledge, and I absolutely cannot live with it. I fear I will die without knowing, and I really, truly, absolutely do not want to die. You will be my introduction to your world. You will show me how you live, and then, you can die in peace.

All at once, the gentle hum of universal energy that she had become accustomed to disappeared. Everything went black, and Ophelia wasn’t alone.