Engine Repair

by Kaden Griggs

Their attention was called to the aft fuselage of the shuttle so they geared up and bounced over into the airlock and awaited the opening of the doors. There, Beau was hit once more with the regret. It was a daunting regret. It had been affecting him ever since they launched. He did not tell Tess about it but thought she could sense its effect on him. She watched him as they awaited the airlock doors. 

Finally the doors opened, an indefinite spillage of star-studded blackness greeted them. The regret panged. There appeared to be some kind of kink in one of the bulkhead’s struts, preventing it from giving full life to the topmost SSME. They drifted out into the blankness, tethered to one another, Tess hauling the toolbelt. Floating is the slowest form of travel. They found plenty of time for conversation. Beau thought it remarkable that location does nothing to evolve human pleasantries: dinner parties or the depths of outer space, we talk about the same things, think the same thoughts, consider the same interpersonal sensitivities and regard the same topics with the same gravity. The human race can normalize anything. Tess and Beau, as they glided to the shuttle, spoke only of their most recent calls back home, the recent Mets game they’d watched together as they spooned levitating soup, the newest memo from HQ. What he really wanted to discuss was why it all seemed to mean nothing. He became an astronaut for its significance. Now that he was out here for the first time he felt little to no change. Probably because he realized he could go anywhere he pleased, but would never live anywhere other than his own head. One’s mind is never a homey dwelling. He had a wife waiting back on Earth. Three children. How to face them again?

He had begun having fantasies about Tess on their third day (day?) in space. Hardly sexual. He thought maybe they’d get a ranch in Montana and raise sheep, or begin a dairy farm in Pennsylvania or upstate New York. Eject from all society, just the two of them surrounded by nothing but their own personal atmospheres. Maybe they’d read science books retrieved from town by the local country mailboy and discuss them in the afternoons after naps. Their naps would be taken simultaneously. He’d have his arms about her abdomen as she leaned back into him, they’d be crooked up in the windowsill, a light summer rain peppering the glass, and wade from all things corporeal. A sheep or goat would bawk goodbye to see their consciousnesses off. 

He didn’t want to go back to earth. He regretted living his life. There wasn’t anything original or lively about it, which is just about the whole point of it all, isn’t it? He played football, went to college, worked a government job, had a wife and family, lived comfortably. And while his particular government job allowed him to visit outer space time and again, it amounted to the same. He still had to come back. Nothing was substantial. 

He looked out at all those jittering stars. Thrumming like promises. Straining to be kept. Nebulae scattering like marbles pitched across God’s great carpet. A great silence and tender stillness, a projection of a beauty too distant to be felt, too intense for its love to be real: the story of the universe. He considered cutting his tether. Maybe his spent husk would reach the unattainable. Maybe his consciousness would be there to meet it. 

They reached the fuselage. “Pop open that access panel,” Tess said.

He did so and they went to work. Tess passed the proper tools at the proper time but his mind was not on the work. His gaze drifted toward space. 

“Hey,” Tess said. He snapped back to life. His hands had stopped working. She looked very concerned beneath the glass of her helmet. “Should I take over?”

Beau lowered the tool and nodded. She took it and approached the panel. She looked back at him. “Are you feeling alright?” 

“Yes,” he said, because he couldn’t say anything else.