Planetary Delirium

Frank Hawthorne

“The planet looks stunning from this view,” I think to myself as I gaze out a small window made of intensely reinforced glass. The planet is not Earth, if that’s what you’re thinking. We left Earth almost a year ago, and by now we’ve traveled through several galaxies and seen countless planets. Each planet seems to have its own unique color scheme and design. This one is no exception.

Long strands of dark blue travel across the planet in all directions, connecting at the equator. The remaining areas are a shade of light purple, speckled with fiery red dots. I begin to wonder if the red dots might be large cities created by an alien species. If so, then our journey will finally be complete.

Half of our mission is the prospect of discovering new life, and we are all very excited. We are hoping to do what no other humans have ever done: make contact with extra-terrestrials. I walk over to a screen on the wall and say the word “scanner.” I see a very large blue laser trace around the planet’s surface from outside my window. I check the screen and see the words “0 life forms detected.” I guess they aren’t cities after all.

The other half of our mission is much bleaker, but equally important. In the early 2030s, people were beginning to realize that the sun wouldn’t last forever. As it began to grow denser, the Earth’s temperature was slowly rising. Nobody was certain whether it would be a couple hundred, thousand, or million years until the heat would become unbearable. So, a new era of space travel began. Our ship, Columbus 6, was the first vessel capable of traveling at light speed, for about 20 hours at a time with twelve hour breaks in between. We were tasked with the challenge of finding a suitable planet for human life, creating a colony using nothing but supplies from the ship, and sustaining that colony until the collapse of the sun brought the rest of humanity in our direction. While it may seem like that would take an eternity, if we account for the theory of relativity and the hundreds of black holes and other massively weighted objects, it’s more than likely they will arrive within our lifetime.

I walk over to the single bookshelf in my otherwise gray and barren room and pick a book at random. I lie down on my mattress and read the cover. The book is The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Good, I’ve always been a fan of Hemingway. It seems to me that he maintains a certain sophistication and understanding of his world that most writers severely lack. Hemingway is one of the few people I truly admire. I read the book for a long while, until I slowly drift off to sleep.

In space, since there is no night, no day, and no sense of time; there is no schedule. We eat whenever we are hungry, we bathe whenever we are smelly, and we sleep whenever we are tired. You can find different people in the mess hall eating their “breakfast” for around 30 hours until the same people start showing up again. Everything up here feels like it’s running in an endless loop, and I’m beginning to lose all sense of direction. We’ve traveled past an eternity of stars, and the time I’ve spent on this ship has started to feel just as long.

I wake up with a jolt. My mattress is covered with sweat, it’s dripping out my dark hair and splattering on my shirt. My heart is beating a mile per minute and my throat is already growing sore from my rapid, raspy breathing. I’ve been having many nightmares lately. I can never remember them when I wake up, not one single detail. I’ve sat in my bed for hours, driving myself insane, trying to remember anything, but nothing ever comes. I decide not to let myself dwell on it this time, and stumble out of bed to get my “breakfast.”

I touch the sensor pad next to my door, which slides open with a loud hiss, and I wander outside. The artificial gravity has been deactivated in the hallway, which makes it much easier to get where we need to go. I kick off from my door and burst down the hallway, zooming past hundreds of doors. In the beginning, people would slam into each other constantly. The medical bay was always filled with people recovering with everything from small bruises to severe concussions. But as time went on, we became more and more comfortable darting down the long windy hallways. Now, it’s almost second nature. I whizz back and forth between people, waving and greeting them as I fly by. Finally, I arrive at the mess hall and dig my shoes into the metal ground to slow myself down.

The mess hall contains the most incredible view of any room on the entire ship. Other than the kitchen, the room is encased in a crystal clear and immensely protective glass. It gives the sensation of eating freeze dried food on tables floating in the middle of space. It’s quite exhilarating when we pass by a planet or sun, feeling like at any second you’ll get caught in the gravity, pulled toward the object - lost forever in the blink of an eye.

My eyes lock on Ryan sitting by himself at one of the large white tables. Ryan is a tall, skinny guy with a head of bushy, dark hair and a wide, infectious smile. He’s about five years younger than I am, at the ripe old age of 32, and is wearing the ship’s standard uniform of orange, baggy pants and a black, short-sleeved shirt. Ryan might seem innocent and happy, but he has a decent amount of muscle underneath his shirt, and I’m sure he would be deadly in a fight. He’s motioning for me to come over. I mosey toward him and collapse onto a seat.

“Frank!” He shouts, obviously very excited about something. “They dug really deep into the freezer today and actually managed to find more steaks! Go get one before they run out!”

“I’m going. I’m going.” I grumble as I rise from the table. Although I don’t show it, I’m very excited. On Earth, my favorite thing was to bite into a juicy, rare steak. Even though the ones up here are frozen, just the thought of eating meat causes my mouth to salivate. It has been weeks since we’ve run out of meat, and months since we ate our last steak. We still had enough food to last us for multiple years, but food just isn’t as appealing without meat. I walk into the kitchen, where our food is defrosted as well as served, and instantly float upwards. Gravity is turned off in here as well, as it makes serving much faster for the five hundred (more or less) people on board. Platters of food are prepared in the kitchen below us and then launched from a tube into the anti-gravity zone, drifting in the air until one of us claims it. I snatch a plate close to the ceiling and kick back down toward the mess hall. It looks like they found mashed potatoes as well. This is a very rare treat.

When I arrive back at the table, Clarice and Jeremy are already seated, chatting with Ryan.

“Hey Frank! How’s it going? Had any good dreams lately?” Clarice taunts, brushing her deep, auburn hair from her face. She seems especially boisterous and rowdy this morning. She is evidently the most vocal of the group and is probably a year older than Ryan. Ever since I told her about my nightmares, I’ve regretted it wholeheartedly. She uses her knowledge like a double-edged sword. One moment she seems very caring and understanding of my night troubles; the next, she is teasing me about the very same thing.

“Don’t insult me,” I reply in a sharp, sullen tone. “I share something personal with you, and you repay me with mockery?”

“Calm down Frank, holy crap!” Jeremy interrupts quickly. Jeremy has a head of wild, brown hair and always seems to be frowning. He is the youngest of the group, a year younger than Ryan. He feels as if he has to keep pace with the rest of us, continuously shouting out loud remarks to everything we say. But inside I can tell he’s always thinking.

“It was just a joke, Frank, really just more of a light tease,” Clarice adds.

As I take a moment to process everything that has just happened, I realize they are right - I just lost my temper over virtually nothing.

“I’m sorry guys. All this time isolated on a ship in space is starting to get to me,” I reply,

realizing that while attempting to create a lie, what I’m saying is true.

“I think that it’s getting to all of us,” Ryan butts in, attempting to ease the tension.

We sit in silence for the next couple minutes. The only sounds that I hear are the dull thunder of hundreds of other conversations happening around me and the metallic click of the fork every time it strikes my plate. I’m almost finished with my steak and beginning lift my tray, when Jeremy decides to speak up.

“Hey, Clarice. What are you in for?” Now, before Clarice answers, allow me to provide you some background information. “What are you in for?” is a term we have been tossing around for several weeks. We treat it as a sort of game. It refers to the parallels between our current situation and that of a prison. On top of being confined in a single space, both share a similar sense of structure and routine. If someone is asked this question, they must reply with why they chose to board the Columbus and leave Earth behind.

Most people answer jokingly. Just the other day, Ryan explained he only traveled to space to escape the clutches of his ex-girlfriend.

Now, let’s hear what Clarice has to say.