The Specks and the Sparkles

It’s amazing how much space nothing can take up.
Mmm, how oxymoronic. I like that. I guess it’s also pretty amazing how the only time anyone has nothing to think about is when they don’t have a choice but to think.
I mean, here I am, floating around with nowhere to be but here. No way to be anywhere but here. Perhaps they were right when they told me running away was a stupid thing to do.
Don’t you hate that? All my life, people have been telling me not to run away.
But now I’m here. And this is just a guess here, but I don’t think I have much longer. So I may as well be profound and think about things that matter. Like….. God, I don’t know. Like… grass. Nice stuff, grass, always did like grass. I wouldn’t be a sheep though. Not in the literal sense of the word. I was always a sheep figuratively though. Always a follower. I was an easy child to manage. I worshipped my parents and did everything they said. Until I became a teenager, of course, at which point I was skilled enough at pleasing my parents I could keep them happy no matter what.
I would have followed my first girlfriend anywhere. She definitely wore the pants in the relationship, that one. She was blonde, she had everything. She came from a rich background, and introduced herself “Hi, I’m Lana, that’s Lah-nah, not Lay-na.” She never took no for an answer. I realised after a couple of months that I wasn’t so much a boyfriend as a lap-dog to make her look good. Of course, by then I knew about her “real” boyfriend, a handsome, muscular, married businessman 10 years older than her.
We didn’t break up as such… she just ignored me from then on. Oh well, take what you can get, right?
This place is horrible. I can’t stand it. They asked me if I was claustrophobic when I signed up for it, I wasn’t then, but I’m thinking about changing my answer, not that it makes a difference. Bit late now. I hate that I don’t have anything to ground me. Haha, look at that, a joke. “Ground,” I wish. All I can see up here are specks. It feels like I have been up here for years. Up here with nothing but the specks and the sparkles and the space.
But I mean, I don’t have anything to look at and know where I was, even what way up I am. I suppose I’m not any way up at all.
I thought it was nice at first. It was nice, it was beautiful. It felt so good to get away. But that was when I thought I was going back. I remember that feeling, the equally and oppositely good feelings of going away and coming back.
Like when I was younger and went through my phase of going away to my parents’ country house almost every weekend. I remember once I took a girl. Her name was Tania. She was an Indonesian girl; she was very small, and very sweet. She was studying at my school. It was a good weekend. We sat around and watched movies and ate junk food and so on. Nothing much happened. We just relaxed and ate and so on. Gosh, she was pretty. I remember being amazed at how many sweets she could eat in one go. She used to force me to go shopping with her. Round and round the shops, no matter how much I protested. It seemed to me like she never bought anything, but she must have, she was always well-dressed. She made sure I was well-dressed too. She went home to Indonesia after a while.
Wow, Indonesia is a place I wouldn’t mind going. But then, maybe the heat would have been too much for me.
I wish I had some music up here. They said it “wasn’t necessary for this mission,” so I missed out. If I could talk to them, I’d yell at them a bit for that.
I wonder what them back at home are thinking? About this whole situation? Probably forgotten about me by now. I really don’t know. It might have been a week since I left, it might have been months. All the instruments are broken and it isn’t like I have anything else to go by up here, time wise.
I’m feeling a bit light-headed. I guess the oxygen is finally running out. In a way, it’s a relief. I’m so sick of it up here. At least they provided me with a decent “air-lock waste and refuse disposal unit,” which translates into “terrifying air-sucking toilet and rubbish bin.”
Great, thanks guys.
Better than nothing though. And far better than the “waste and refusal storage unit,” otherwise known as a sealed porta-loo, which the earlier craft were fitted with.
Ugh, feeling a bit drowsy now. In training they said that if I started feeling like this, I should “switch to backup oxygen supply immediately,” but I’ve already done that, so I’m a bit stuck, aren’t I?
I wonder if this is what it feels like when mountain climbers are at really high altitudes? I think that’s different though, because they get altitude sickness, and they didn’t mention anything like that to me in training.
Hmmm. Time to go to sleep, I think.
Ahhh, look at that view. Here I am, sitting in my little tin can, as far into the middle of nowhere as anyone could ever be.


We regret to inform the family of P. Jamieson that the spacecraft XY-38-v.5, manned by the aforementioned Mr. Jamieson, has not been recovered. Mr. Jamieson’s status has now been changed to missing, presumed dead. Considering the limited supply of oxygen onboard the craft XY-38-v.5, we doubt that this status will change.
Our apologies and condolences.

Laura A-D