Air

I float here in my suit, and the important gauge reads a tank 40 percent full of air.

Another gauge tells me im losing air faster than I’m actually using up just by merely breathing.
It estimates roughly 15 minutes of air left.
The suit is smart – it has sensors attached to parts of my body to measure heartbeat and respiration and calculates the air usage based on that.

If i can slow my breathing and calm down that figure of 15 minutes would raise higher. Panic and watch it drop fast.

15 minutes with a 40 percent tank full, even with my accelerated heartbeat and rapid breathing means bad news.

It means that somewhere I have a slight leak. Perhaps due to a tiny tiny scratch somewhere.
Or more probably the abrasive effects of being pushed against the spaceship’s hull -perhaps a layer or two of the suit has worn off and osmosis is leaking precious air away from me.

I can see the white smudge marks where i was hurled across the wall and it had worn away part of my suit layers.

It is chaos where I float – all around me is debris of a world gone mad. The spaceship was meant to spin, thus giving it a centrifugal gravity. But with the accident that spinning effect stopped and gravity also ceased.

Everything conveivable floats and has its own tradjectory. A miniture galaxy of metal, plastic, clothing, food, people and just .. bits of everything that made a spaceship.

I can see a space suit coming towards me slowly, but steadily, and I carefully brace my feet on an opposite wall and watch him as he glides into me. We tumble backwards and hit the wall opposite. A bit of scrabbling and re-orientating, and we are facing one another, embracing each other so we dont float away from the other.

He gestures, I nod and we place our helmet plates against one another – visor to visor.

I can now see its Jorgen, and he looks terrible; a large cut above his left eye, a bloody mouth and it appears he has been sick inside the suit. I dont envy him, but I dont envy me either.

We can’t hear one another through the vacuum, but I can see he is shouting something and he has a terribly glazed look in his eyes.

We stay like this for a minute – him trying to shout to me and me being unable to understand a single thing he is trying to say.
His eyes are bulging now, and each time he shouts his tongue looks more distended, purple and swollen.. then the inside of his visor goes blood red as his suit also bursts from whatever happened to it.

I let go of his body and let it drift away. He was a good bloke.

As I said the suit is pretty smart, and even though it has no radio, it still has speakers and I am able to play some of my music collection. I choose something from my childhood.

I push off against the wall and head for a hole in the spaceships hull. Within moments i am outside the ship. There isnt really anything recognisable about it.

But I’m outside now. I push against the hull, gentle, and carefully (i dont want to spin) and suddenly I am irrevocably leaving the wreckage behind me…

Heading further out into space.

Its beautiful.

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Tags:

fi, melviccomp, sci, space and spaceship