Chapter 1
It’s been three years... Three damn years since I’ve heard your voice; or anyone else’s for that matter. Three years, since I could get caught in the rain, and not have to worry about it dissolving through my spacesuit.
I can’t seem to shake this mortal coil. Will I ever find happiness, again? Will my mission be completed, or will I simply suffocate in the vacuum of my own mind? It’s been three, fucking, years.
Cole reclined back in his chair, looking over his journal entry. After being stationed on the millennium for this long, it had become his closest friend. Although, to begin with, it was an exciting adventure, however, after the first few months, the repetition of everyday tasks had begun to irritate him.
“Has... it really been three years?” Cole asks himself in disbelief.
He looks out the window of his space station towards a desert wasteland. Nothing but rust-colored rock and mountains made of that same ichor, for miles.
“Or... is it that time is just moving faster on this planet?”
A sudden, familiar alarm in the other room sounds off, sending a panicked alert throughout the station.
“WARNING. DUST STORM APPROACHING. PLEASE TAKE SHELTER.”
“Ugh that’s the third one today,” Cole groaned.
The lone astronaut stood up and began preparations for his main mission. On the planet, he was to collect data from below the surface, as Cole was looking for any and all signs of life. Of signs that could make it habitable for other people. A new life in the stars.
“I don’t even... know why... I’m doing this,” Cole grunted, whilst hoisting up his heavy computer.
“It’s not like there’s anything worth saving on this piece of junk.” Cole heaved the computer onto a desk, then finished his previous preparations.
“WARNING. DUST STORM APPROACHING. PLEASE TAKE SHELTER.”
“Yeah, yeah! I heard you the first time, you piece of junk! Why don’t you ever give me any good news? Hm? It’s always dust storms and red lights, with you!” Cole looked at the computer that was relaying the message, a tired, desperate gleam in his exhausted eyes.
“Why don’t you ever ask how my day was?” He whispered to himself in a somber tone, turning away and walking over to the shutters. For a moment, while he switched them over, he stared off over the horizon until the shutters fell. Sealed, Cole finally retreated to his desk and had a seat. The astronaut picked up a picture of a woman, then, her hair almost as red as the planet’s lonesome surface. With a smile that shined so bright, that it always seemed to find him when he was in the depths of his mind. Cole pressed his bare fingers over the frame and bit back the rigid taste of growing despair.
“I’ll make it back you.”
He flicked off the lights in his cabin, beside his desk, with nothing but the sound of the 200 mph winds to comfort him in his deck. The rattles of the lifeless storm, dry, and endless.
“I promise.”
