“You’re afraid,” I say to him and he nods and looks up at me through his furrowed brow, the shake in his hand calming. “We’re all afraid,” I smile and hold the glass front of my helmet against his.
I reach for the other hand by his side and interlock our fingers through the thick spacesuit gloves. We’re separated by all this material, thick and hermetically sealed as to protect us from the vacuum of space, when we eventually get there, but for now it just holds us apart. Despite all these layers, despite there being no physical touch, despite our voices being separated and relayed through the radio circuits, we’re as close as we have ever been.
“Did we make the right decision?” he asks as he clasps my hands and I see the side of his mouth twitch. He wants to say something else, but he can’t bring himself to do so. He wants to say a million things but it’s all too much.
“I don’t know. How can we know?” I pull back slightly and look at his terrified face, trying desperately hard to hold onto the strength I know it has. “We can’t know until we get there.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” he says and lets go of one hand, bringing his glove up to the glass shield on my helmet and running his fingers down it slowly, the way he would run his fingers down my face. From forehead to chin, and then down along the line of my jaw and onto my neck.
Lay there for hours, just exploring each other’s bodies, our skin and with each little touch, each little moment, coming to know each other a fraction better, trying to fill our memories up with each other. This existence, the fight we’ve fought to get here, it wasn’t made for people like us. It was supposed to be for great explorers and heroes and adventurers. Somehow, we won the genetic lottery—not just one of us, but two of us, and in a couple already, which made us prime candidates for the new missions. It gave us the chance to leave the dying surface of Earth and resettle on the blooming red planet, on Mars, where the existence of humanity might remain.
“They told me that on Mars, because the sky is red, the sunsets are blue, can you imagine that?” I say, and I hear a small muffled laugh come through the speaker and see a pinch of a smile ride at the side of his mouth.
“It really does sound beautiful,” he says. “Just like you.” He smiles that rich smile of his and it reminds me of all the possibility that it used to hold when we first met. It brings back that strength he has, he always had, the sense of adventure that he brought to me and the keen urgency with which he wanted to explore the world. It’s all gone now. It’s that which hurt him most. Seeing the planet die, it scarred him, and there was nothing I could do.
“We have a new chance now, we have to take it, we have to try,” I say as I smile back.
“I know, I know,” he says as he takes my hand and turns to the door that leads to the launch platform. “It’s time.”
Building inspiration: Belarus National Library
Musical inspiration: Public Service Broadcasting - Sputnik
About the Creator
Brutalist Stories
Short sci-fi stories in 500 words or less deriving from the stark style of the functionalist architecture, that is characterised by the use of concrete.
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