Preview: One Giant Leap

Kay Simone

Shine little lights of ours

Like Orion's Belt of stars

Connected only from afar

“Little Lights,” Punch Brothers

Introduction

One Giant Leap is as much a love story about the relationship between two men as it is a love story about the relationship between humanity and space.

I began writing this book more than a year ago, and from the beginning it has been anchored in “soft” science.

I’ll admit that I knew next to nothing about manned space exploration when I started drafting. I was more interested in the politics that surrounded NASA -- the way that legislators had controlled (and decapitated) a program that had always struck me as one of the most important endeavors of humanity.

I learned enough to define the roles of each astronaut on my fake mission. I imbued Curtis Larkin and Patrick Harte with the same wonder and curiosity that I feel when I look at the night sky. I revisited the real history of Barack Obama’s relationship with NASA.

Then I rewrote history.

Becoming fascinated with the history of manned space exploration was an unintended side effect of writing this book. For some time, I consumed no media if it was not related to NASA. But even armed with more information than I could’ve ever asked for about the specifics of manned space flight, I have kept the science (and the general reality) in this book very soft.

It’s meant to be a romance novel -- not a textbook.

And even as romance novels go, this one ought to feel like a fairy tale.

The hard science surrounding man’s exploration of space has been explored by minds much sharper than my own: Mary Roach with Packing for Mars, Col. Chris Hadfield with An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Neil DeGrasse Tyson with Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier -- and the list goes on.

Just because something is accurate and scientific doesn’t mean it’s boring.

But for a time, I wanted to live in a world where a commanding astronaut could fall in love with a capsule communicator on the ground that he’s never laid eyes on.

I wanted to envision a mission control that would take a giant risk by promoting a rookie to a senior officer position in a time of crisis.

I wanted a universe where two men could make one giant leap of faith and come out on top.

-- Kay

Prologue

“They’re lost again,” Patrick says the minute he’s in the house. “Just got off the phone with Carmen.”

Curt lets loose a pained sigh from over the bar in the kitchen. Patrick rounds the corner and catches the man in the complicated dance of preparing lunch.

With one oven-mitted hand, Curt hefts a skillet out of the oven. With the other, he slides in a sheet of naan bread and shuts the oven door.

He hesitates with the heavy skillet for a split second, and Patrick almost reminds Curt to find a surface to put the skillet down on. The skillet reaches its intended trajectory without the word of caution though. Curt places it down on a cool burner.

Thank God he’d stopped dropping things, expecting them to float in mid-air.

It had taken months of cleaning up messes to convince Curt to remember gravity. They were just lucky nobody had handed the man a baby during the adjustment period.

“You’d think that after half a year of freeze dried junk on ISS, Amal would make it a priority to get here for lunch while everything is still fresh,” he says, wiping his hands down the front of his half apron. He doesn’t turn to face Patrick — just stares down in dismay at the skillet in front of him. “Well, what’s their ETA?”

“At least an hour away,” Patrick says. He steps behind Curt, placing his hands on the man’s hips and standing on tiptoes to see over his shoulder. There’s a fragrant mix of chickpeas, tomatoes, onions, and garlic simmering in front of him. “At least channa masala keeps well, right?”

Curt slumps back a little, letting some of his weight fall on Patrick.

“Whatever. I guess. I should’ve known they’d manage to get lost even though there are only three goddamn roads in this town.”

Patrick smiles and pulls Curt closer, looping his arms around the taller man and pressing his face into the skin of his neck. Curt doesn’t wear a beard anymore, and Patrick is thankful for the feeling of tanned, smooth skin against his own.

“I’m sure there’s a joke somewhere about being able to navigate a shuttle however many miles it is to the International Space Station going 17 thousand miles per hour, but not being able to find a ranch a few hours away from your own house that’s been in the same spot for 50 years,” Patrick says.

“ISS is 250 miles away,” Curt says, sharp, “and excuse you: I navigated them there. If Amal had been piloting, we’d be on an accidental mission to goddamn Mars and I still wouldn’t be home with you.”

Patrick laughs softly into his neck and squeezes around him tighter.

“I’m glad you’re here and not on Mars.”

Curt moves in his grip, turning to face Patrick before catching him by the waist. Contact like this still thrills Patrick , even as Curt fixes him with a serious look.

“Still gonna be glad when NASA does get to Mars, and I’m here, bitching to you about not being on Mars?”

“That depends,” Patrick says, pretending to think it through. “Are you still gonna love me when I’m 60 and bitching to you to… I don’t know… mend the damn fence, or something?”

Curt snorts and crinkles his face.

“‘Mend the damn fence?’ Who mends things?”

“People who own ranches,” Patrick says, half-heartedly pushing him away. “I don’t know, gimme a break.”

“I absolutely will not give you a break,” Curt says, pulling him closer until their hips are pressed together. “You wouldn’t want me to, either.”

Patrick tucks his chin and takes a deep breath. He’d been in the middle of taking some things out to the guest apartment to get it ready for their overnight visitors, but now that he’s here and Curt is holding him, the list of priorities in his head are rearranging themselves.

“And yes to that previous question, by the way — I’ll still be glad,” Curt says. “But I hope you’ll figure out how to mend your own damn fence by the time you hit 60.”

“I’ll figure it out, but you’d do it better.”

“You can legitimately do anything I can do, just as well as I do it,” Curt insists. It’s a tired conversation and he’s already rolling his eyes. “And you like it better when you do things for yourself, anyway.”

“Not true.”

“Name one thing.”

In answer, Patrick rocks his hips softly against Curt’s and drinks in the way that his expression changes. Curt draws a breath at the movement.

“OK,” Curt says, shaking his head. “I walked into that one.”

“You set ‘em up and I knock ‘em down, boss.”

Patrick tilts his chin up and catches him in a kiss before Curt has time to think of a comeback.

Even after all these months, it’s still better than he’d ever imagined.

Chapter One

[Transcript courtesy of AMERICA TONIGHT. Original air date: June 7, 2015]

MAXINE MORALES: It’s a story that rivals the plot of any Hollywood movie — and one with backdrops that range from clay ball fields in small-town South Carolina to the vast landscape of outer space. Good evening. I’m Maxine Morales, and this week on America Tonight, I’m taking you to meet one of America’s most enigmatic and — until recently — misunderstood anti-heroes: Curtis “Launchpad” Larkin.

(Morales delivers her script in front of a green screen. While she speaks, viewers see images of a space shuttle, 80s home pictures of kids on a baseball field, a polaroid of men and women in astronaut gear — stopping finally on a hi-res close up of a man with close-cropped sandy brown hair looking through a wide bay window into space, the earth faintly visible in the background)

(Commercial break)

(Camera cuts to host Maxine Morales and subject Curt Larkin sitting across from each other on a set. Morales is dressed smartly in a tailored suit. Larkin, tan and in his late 30s, wears jeans and a dark t-shirt with “NASA” printed across the chest.)

MORALES (voiceover): To tell Larkin’s story, we start at the bottom.

LARKIN: I — uh, you know it was never supposed to end up like this. I think the only thing that hasn’t surprised me about my life so far was getting arrested in a bar fight.

(Larkin laughs and shifts in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck.)

(Footage cuts to a newscast labeled “Courtesy of Fax News, April 25, 2010”)

FAX NEWS ANCHOR: And in the news of the bizarre tonight, noted astronaut Curt Larkin was jailed overnight after a fight that ended in a fractured skull for one Houston bar patron. Caught on camera by a bystander, the footage shows Larkin growing increasingly confrontational and finally landing a punch on the man.

(Grainy footage shows exactly this: Larkin looks agitated, pushing back from the bar to face a man speaking heatedly. The man continues to speak and without warning, Larkin punches him square in the face. The man stumbles backward, clutching his face, and Larkin turns to leave. Footage becomes shaky as the person filming walks to follow him. Footage ends.)

The man was taken to a nearby hospital, and Larkin was subsequently arrested. The astronaut is being charged with battery and faces up to six months in jail.

When contacted, NASA declined to comment.

(Cut to footage of Larkin sitting in a courtroom, head in his hands)

MORALES (voiceover): With a stellar 12-year career, it seemed to everyone that after becoming the world’s youngest astronaut and setting the American record for time spent off the Earth’s surface, Launchpad Larkin’s lucky streak was coming to an end.

(Cut to man in suit and tie. Label at bottom reads ED BROWN, PROFESSOR OF POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES, BOWLING GREEN UNIVERSITY)

BROWN: I think the Larkin situation was such a big deal because Larkin had always been the underdog. I mean, he really lived the American dream and so many Americans — and even people in other countries — were watching him saying “Yeah, this is me, this is someone who could live on my street.” This is somebody from a working-class background, first person in his family to attend college, who becomes one of the most wildly successful and celebrated pop culture figures — for a whole decade.

I mean, he’s dating A-listers, getting the kind of endorsement deals that NFL quarterbacks dream of. He’s on every hotlist that exists, right? He’s an idol whether you’re into space exploration or just looking for a sex symbol. But then when that kid starts to grow up and he gets tired, he gets arrested, he wants to be back in control of his own life... The tide can turn fast when it comes to public opinion.

(Cut to woman in a cardigan. Label at bottom reads KRISTEN JOHNSON, CHILDHOOD FRIEND)

JOHNSON: We felt like he betrayed us, basically. Curt had become this person that poor people could hold up and say 'this guy represents us, look at everything people like us can do!'

And then when he got arrested, it was like everybody — all of us from the neighborhood sure, but almost like everyone who came from that same income bracket, even — we could feel the rest of America turning to look at us and saying, 'Yeah, this is exactly what poor people do,' — and that hurt.

We didn't want kids' books about him anymore... He didn't feel like the right role model.

(Cut to different man in suit and tie. Label at bottom reads NEAL DEGLASSE BRYSON, ASTROPHYSICIST, COSMOLOGIST, AUTHOR, & SCIENCE COMMUNICATOR)

MORALES (voiceover): And yet? Larkin still had his supporters.

BRYSON: I mean no I don’t — I think — honestly, no, you don’t punch someone... But I’d have punched that guy.

(Bryson laughs and throws up his hands.)

And I’m just a physicist! Can you imagine what it would feel like if you had been to the moon and suddenly you have a moon landing denier getting in your face?

When you deny that we landed on the moon, you’re taking away one of the most monumental achievements of the modern world. You’re looking at people who have dedicated their lives to bettering our understanding of the universe around us and the people — real people who have really died — and you’re saying ‘Yeah I just don’t buy it.’

(Camera cuts to Morales who is in the studio with Bryson)

MORALES: So you would have done the same thing?

BRYSON: I don’t have a left hook like Curt!

(Bryson laughs, shaking his head.)

Listen, I’m not condoning it but I’m saying I can understand it. Especially — I mean, you talk about someone who is dedicated to the mission of NASA as a whole. It’s Curt’s life, he’s all in. You don’t walk up to that guy and say, ‘Hey fella, I want to talk moon landing conspiracy theories with you.’

(Camera cuts back to Morales and Larkin.)

MORALES: Set the scene for us that night.

LARKIN: Look, it’s no big secret that I drink —

MORALES: Some say it’s part of your charm.

(Larkin snorts and takes a deep breath, looking at the floor of the studio.)

LARKIN: Right, yeah, very charming. So I’m in Houston, I’m back, I’m still trying to get my bearings. You don’t log almost a year off the face of the earth and not feel a little disoriented. I’m at my (censored) bar, right? Sure I’m a few bourbons deep — that’s what you do at a bar.

MORALES: And this man is a complete stranger?

LARKIN: Yeah, this complete stranger sidles up to me saying ‘Hey don’t I recognize you?’

MORALES: And you’re getting ready for, what, an autograph session maybe?

LARKIN: (laughs) Maybe the guy wants to buy me a drink!

MORALES: But it goes south.

LARKIN: Oh, it goes south immediately. Guy wants to talk about how the seven — mother(censored) SEVEN! — manned moon landings are a hoax. Including mine, by the way. He starts talking about third-party evidence and this thing he saw on the (censored) Modern History Channel...

MORALES: And do you engage him?

LARKIN: No, not at all.

I ask the guy to leave me alone and I’m trying to get the bartender’s attention — I just want to close out my tab at this point. I can barely walk ten (censored) feet before I need a break because (censored) gravity is just a mother(censored) (censored) at first.

At this point? I just want to go back to my hotel room and lay down.

MORALES: And this stranger doesn’t want that.

LARKIN: No, he’s relentless. And other people are starting to notice now. And the bartender is just ignoring me and —

(Larkin interrupts himself with a deep breath and closes his eyes. He massages the bridge of his nose and considers how to continue.)

Look. I’m not saying it was the right thing to do by any means. But I just — yeah, I mean you’ve seen the video. I punched the guy, and they arrested me.

MORALES: What would you do differently if you could relive that moment?

(A long pause, Larkin presses his full lips together, as if to suppress a smile.)

LARKIN: I’d use my right hand. I fractured my left hand on that guy’s face and it hurt like a (censored). That’s my writing hand.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Laxmi steps outside to make the call at 3 a.m.

It’s June in Houston and it’s swampy outside the large building that houses mission control — but she’d rather stand out in the night air than sit under the harsh lights in her office.

Laxmi massages her temple with one hand, scrolling through the contacts on her phone. She’s been up — shit, they’ve all been up — for almost 30 hours now.

“Laxmi?”

Patrick answers, his voice thick with sleep.

“Hey Patrick,” Laxmi says.

“What’s going on? Is everything OK?”

“We need ya, buddy.”

“What? Wait at — what about — did something go wrong with — ”

“No the crew is fine,” Laxmi says. Of course Harte’s first reaction would be to worry about the Hermes mission, Laxmi realizes. “Everything's going great up there. But there’s… Well, Jeanne Williams had a stroke.”

“Jesus Christ, Laxmi! Is she… ?”

“She’s recovering,” Laxmi says. “It happened late this afternoon and we caught it fast.”

“She was, what, on the floor when it happened?”

“She was on the goddamn comms with Commander Larkin,” she says. “He’s the first one who noticed she was acting off. Doctors said the timing was critical.”

“Jesus. How is she?”

“I left a few hours ago. She’s… I don’t know — it seems bad right now. I don’t know anything about strokes,” Laxmi says. She rubs the back of her neck and strains to look up at the moon. It’s been a rough night for them all, and she’s only barely been holding it together. “Her doc says she never wants to say ‘full recovery,’ but that the outlook is pretty good.”

“But she’s so young.”

“She’s in her sixties, Patrick,” Laxmi says. “It happens. Either way, she’s off this mission. And we need a Chief CAPCOM.”

“Laxmi… No, I,” Patrick says, and Laxmi can hear him getting out of bed at this, heavy footfalls. “Laxmi, I didn’t run any sims with them. I can’t just walk on and coordinate communications.”

“It’s at the direct request of Perez,” Laxmi says.

“Allan Perez? Allan Perez knows I exist?”

“He’s asking for you by name, Patrick,” Laxmi says. “Yeah, Perez knows you exist.”

“I don’t — There’s… there has to be someone else on team who can shift to CAPCOM.”

“There’s not, Patrick. We sat down and talked through it and there’s no shuffle that makes sense. No matter what we do, we’re one brain short. And it makes zero sense for us to play musical chairs with a whole group just to fill one position.”

“There has to be someone more senior. Or a second-shift CAPCOM who’s ready to move up —”

“Patrick, you don’t get to say no,” Laxmi says. “There are more senior people with more experience but they’re years behind the comm technology we’re using now. Everyone’s behind but you and Jeanne Williams. Which leaves you. You have the clearance, you have the training — shit Patrick, you basically invented the technology we’re using… You’re ready. I wouldn’t be on the phone with you right now if you weren’t.”

Laxmi hears a door sliding and then the sound of cicadas. Patrick has stepped out onto his back porch, he guesses.

“OK,” Patrick says after a long pause. “Yeah, ok. What time should I be there?”

“How soon can you get dressed?”

Chapter Two

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

0300, Houston time

Hermes I Mission Day 2

Curt’s never felt space sickness.

It’s part of what initially made him an ideal pilot, despite his unlikely background to be an astronaut. His iron stomach, his inner-ear’s unwillingness to succumb to bizarre changes in gravity and orientation — these were physiological advantages he had over most of the human race. He’s never known what it means to get car sick. Never had a moment of vertigo.

But as he straps himself to the treadmill on Tuesday morning, he can almost imagine what it must feel like to be dizzy.

It had started as a slow, low turn in his stomach when he heard Williams’ voice go strange. Almost slurred, like she must be holding her mouth funny.

And the new comms system — damn the thing — though it was faster than ever before with no delay between speech, it didn’t allow Curt to see the person he was talking to. But Williams had been his CAPCOM for nine missions, his invisible tether to the earth. It had been Williams’ mellow voice that centered him during emergencies, that woke him from sleep when something needed his attention, and broke into a low laugh when he said something to try and make her smile.

The change — though slight — had been instantly apparent on Monday afternoon, the first day of the Hermes mission.

“Mission control poppin’ bottles down there?” he’d teased, only half listening to the comm chatter. He was filling out forms, checking dials — the usual. It was quiet in the cabin as the rest of the crew rested, adjusting to zero gravity. He always did the brunt of the work for the first few days up since he was the only one who didn’t suffer the headaches, malaise, and disorientation.

“Why d’you ask?” she’d said, a little too slow.

“You sound like you’ve got a buzz on, Jeanne.”

“No, I’m…”

And then silence.

Curt had stopped what he was doing and pushed himself across the cabin, his face right in front of the communications input — as if that could help, as if getting closer to the unit would somehow put him closer to the CAPCOM on the planet below him.

Curt had never seen a stroke go down before, though his grandmother had suffered one. He’d spent enough time in hospitals, stared at informational posters. What were the signs? Difficulty speaking, weakness on one side of the body, drooping face.

“Jeanne, I’m going to say something and I want you to say it back to me.”

“Curt…” she started, then trailed again. “Hm, why?”

“Just, please?”

“Yeah,” she’d said.

“Say ‘the sky is blue.’”

“Sky…” she’d started. “The sky.”

He’d slammed the button to buzz Allan, not waiting another second. You don’t fuck around with oxygen — with brains. Allan was on the comm immediately.

“FD,” Allan had answered, his voice measured and calm. It wasn’t standard procedure for the mission commander to reach out to the flight director without having the spacecraft communicator in the middle of them, and Allan had to know there was something major happening for his friend to bypass the CAPCOM.

“FD, this is mission commander,” Curt had barked into the comm. “Your CAPCOM needs medical attention. Stop what you’re doing and get Williams in an ambulance, Allan.”

“Roger,” Allan said, no pause, no questions. Thank Christ for Allan.

Curt left the comm on then, hoping to hear something. Minutes had passed. And then:

“Curt?”

It was another woman’s voice. Not Jeanne Williams. Not his CAPCOM.

“This is mission commander,” Curt had said by way of an answer. Whoever had control of the comms had no idea how they normally buzzed back and forth.

“Curt, it’s Laxmi. Sorry, getting the hang of these comms,” she said.

“Jeanne?”

“They took her,” Laxmi said. “Allan stayed here but… I don’t know how you caught that. Thanks, Curt.”

“Yeah.”

“Looks like I’m your CAPCOM until further notice,” Laxmi said, sounding apologetic.

Christ, he’d thought. They’ve got the damned flight dynamics officer working the comms.

“Well who’s going to fill in?” Curt said, feeling a little panicked.

He likes Laxmi — had always liked the FIDO and admired her expansive knowledge — but there was no way she could act as the hub of communications between the shuttle and mission control and direct the goddamn flight dynamics at the same time.

One of the two jobs was going to end up getting short-changed, and if the crew ever wanted to walk on goddamn land again, it had better not be the flight dynamics.

“We’re meeting about it in two hours,” Laxmi had said. “We’ll have someone by 0600, ok Curt? Communication is going to be a little truncated until then.”

“That’s — ... yeah that’s fine. Can you send someone once they get her stable? I mean — to the hospital.”

“Yeah, no, as soon as I have a break I’m headed to see her. I’ll give you a full report.”

“Thanks, FIDO,” he’d said, already drifting away, some stubborn part of himself insisting that he won’t acknowledge Laxmi in her temporary role as CAPCOM. “Hermes will be standing by.”

That had been more than half a day ago.

And sure, Curt understands that life and the mission have to go on. Better for an emergency to happen on earth where there are resources to attend to it. But it feels utterly disorienting.

Emergencies are supposed to happen to the astronauts — not the support crew keeping them alive.

The sprawling, exhausting hours of simulations they’d run together on the ground, all the time they had spent walking through worst case scenarios and playing out disasters, survival techniques, preparing to deal with the worst of the worst in zero gravity — after all that, what feels like the biggest emergency of his professional career is playing out on the ground below completely without Curt, completely out of his sphere of influence.

Jeanne doesn’t have kids or a husband or a wife or even a roommate. Her parents passed a decade ago — no brothers and sisters. Maybe that’s part of why they’d connected and made a friendship leagues beyond what a normal astronaut would share with his CAPCOM.

Just like Curt, Jeanne Williams is a NASA lifer. And every single one of her friends on earth are working round-the-clock at mission goddamn control trying to keep Curt and his crew alive.

Who will visit her? Who will be Jeanne’s advocate?

Since his first mission, Curt has never spent a moment off of the face of the earth where he wished to return. He’d never say that out loud, of course. It makes him sound at best like a workaholic and at worst like a misanthrope. But since that last exchange with Williams, the tug in his chest has grown and it’s been hard to put away the feeling that he wants to be back now — not months from now.

He would give up anything, he realizes now, to be back on earth. To be sitting with his head in his hands in a waiting room somewhere, eating crappy food out of a hospital vending machine, exchanging those awful empty glances with strangers who were feeling the same way. There is nothing he wouldn’t give up to be back for Jeanne.

That’s what makes it hard for him to get his bearings, then, as he pulls a bungee cord and clicks it into place on the harness across his chest.

That’s what makes him want to vomit as he brings the treadmill to life, starting an easy jog at 5 mph. As spacecraft communicator, Jeanne has been his advocate and stand-in on earth — making sure all the vital pieces are in place for Curt and his crew.

But she is more. She tells him what the weather is like in Houston today. She complains about the traffic that he’s missing. She describes the incredible cheeseburger she’s just had for lunch and taunts him about the freeze dried meals that await him.

She calls him an asshole when he’s being an asshole and tells him to concentrate when a troubleshooting problem has him so mad his hands are shaking.

So yes, Laxmi will do her best to be an acceptable stand-in CAPCOM.

But never before has Curt felt so goddamn alone up here.

[Transcript courtesy of AMERICA TONIGHT. Original air date: June 7, 2015]

MAXINE MORALES: Your old captain posted your bail?

CURTIS LARKIN: Yeah (laughs). Yeah, Allan showed up to spring me out of the drunk tank and drive me back to my hotel.

MORALES: That must have been quite a car ride home.

LARKIN: He read me the riot act, yeah.

(Camera cuts to Morales and Allan Perez sitting across from each other on a different set. Screen reads ALLAN PEREZ, MISSION COMMANDER, 1998-2003. NASA FLIGHT DIRECTOR, 2010-PRESENT. Allan is older than Curtis, and unlike the other astronaut, he’s dressed in a nice, dark suit with a crisp shirt underneath. He wears a neat beard and round, wire-rimmed glasses.)

MORALES: You were disappointed.

PEREZ: I wanted to (censored) strangle Curt.

MORALES: But you had advice.

PEREZ: Which he ignored.

MORALES: What would you have had him do?

PEREZ: I told him to go on damage control. I said, “Curt, you can come back from this — we can turn this around and spin it. There are lots of ways to fix this.”

MORALES: And he wouldn’t hear it?

PEREZ: He told me to (censored) off.

MORALES: How does that feel, coming from someone you just bailed out of jail?

(Perez laughs and grimaces.)

PEREZ: It’s exactly what I expect from Curt any time. I could care less about that part. I just didn’t want to see him kiss his entire career over something so stupid. We needed Curt.

MORALES: You thought this would be grounds for termination.

PEREZ: Yeah, no. Definitely. The attitude, the drinking, the cursing — it’s funny and it makes him likable. But it also made him a target. I knew this was something that wasn’t just going to go away.

MORALES: (voiceover) What Allan Perez didn’t know — what no one knew — was just the amount of damage that one punch was about to do.

(Cut to video labeled “Archive Footage Courtesy of the United States Senate, May 13, 2010.” A man takes the senate floor in front of a large screen. He gestures and the screen which now displays Curt’s mugshot from the April 25th arrest. Label at bottom of broadcast identifies the man speaking as SEN. TOM BENSON, R-FL.)

BENSON: Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to say hello to the hero of today’s children.

(Senator Benson clicks a remote control and a slide show begins to cycle through unflattering candid images of Curt: Curt toasting a beer with someone, Curt passed out with an arm slung across a sleeping cosmonaut, Curt in a beer hat, Curt in a tattoo parlor.)

BENSON: Each year we funnel billions of dollars into NASA’s coffers to send people like this man into space.

That’s billions. With a B.

Now, this isn’t some inconsequential guy who works in the office, people. This is Commander Curtis Larkin — the face of our space program. So you explain to me, when your constituents call and tell you that they can’t find work, that they’ve been lookin’ for a job for 10 months — you explain to me what you’re going to say when they ask you why we have billions of dollars to send a rockstar with anger issues — a guy who gets mad and knocks somebody out in a bar — into space... but we can’t put a little money back into the pockets of the blue collar workers who keep this country running?

(The slide show reaches an image of Curt and cosmonaut Luka Teplov, both visibly drunk, flipping off the camera and smiling)

BENSON: I urge you to take a long look. Because until we dismantle this wasteful program, this is the message you’re sending to your constituents: a big “F U.”

(Camera cuts to a man in studio wearing a suit and bow tie. Screen reads WILLIAM “BILL” MCCANN, SCIENCE EDUCATOR, MECHANICAL ENGINEER, AND HOST OF “BILL MCCANN THE SCIENCE MAN”)

MCCANN: Benson had been an outspoken critic of NASA for decades. The truth is that he’d been planning on going on the offensive against manned space flights for weeks. In terms of Curt’s arrest it was just… bad timing. In the extreme.

(Cut to man in suit and tie. Label at bottom reads ED BROWN, PROFESSOR OF POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES, BOWLING GREEN UNIVERSITY)

MORALES: Would it have made a difference if Curt Larkin had gone on a PR apology tour after the arrest?

BROWN: No. There’s no way. It was like the great Britney Spears meltdown of 2007 — it wouldn’t have mattered what he did the day after or the week after. That’s the cult of celebrity. You do something human and suddenly you’re the punchline to a joke.

The difference between Britney Spears and Curt Larkin — besides… the obvious — is that Britney Spears never got taxpayer money during a highly politicized recession.

MORALES: So in your opinion, Larkin was going to be a target either way.

BROWN: Right. If he hadn’t have slipped up in that bar, there were still 800 other reasons why Senator Benson would’ve used him as the scapegoat du jour.

So he’s never punched anybody? Well, he cursed on live national television. Well, he drinks. Well, he snuck vodka into space for cosmonauts.

All of the reasons why people in Curt’s generation like him are things that could, essentially, be twisted and used against him.

MORALES: (voiceover) And so, the very next week, Curt Larkin went on a different kind of damage control.

(Cut to a newscast labeled “Courtesy of RBC Nightly News, May 17, 2010”)

ANCHOR: After coming under fire for a recent arrest, noted astronaut Curt Larkin resigned this afternoon in a press conference.

(Camera cuts to footage of Curt at a podium with a large NASA insignia behind him. He’s wearing a dark suit, looking uncomfortable, and reading from a prepared script. Directly in front of the small stage is a large crowd of media who begin snapping photos as he leans in to speak.)

LARKIN: It is with a heavy heart this afternoon that I tell you my time working for NASA has come to an end, effective immediately. Because of my actions, the organization I have dedicated my life to has come under fire. I acted out of anger and in a way that was inappropriate to my station — and I am willing to accept the consequences of what I’ve done.

(Camera cuts back to anchor.)

ANCHOR: The astronaut’s speech became political, however, as he went off script to respond to recent attacks on the organization posed by Senator Tom Benson of Florida.

(Back to Larkin, who is speaking directly to reporters gathered at the press conference. He leans forward, hands on the edge of the podium.)

LARKIN: What I am unable to accept, however, is the idea that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ought to be punished for what I and I alone have done.

NASA is more than astronauts. It is more than manned space flight.

Today, I ask our legislators to use their heads and not to give up on the future of aeronautics and aerospace in order to gain short-term political success. Do not let one small minded man bully you, and do not let the threat of being associated with someone like me be a bargaining point.

Science, the stars, the future of life on Earth is not a political issue.

I urge you to take a stand for reason. Thank you.

(Back to anchor.)

ANCHOR: The senator issued an immediate response, pointing again to the massive government spending on NASA, criticizing Larkin’s emotional appeal, and rejecting the notion that he is a “small man” and a “bully.”

(Camera cuts to Larkin and Morales in studio.)

MORALES: Is Senator Tom Benson a bully?

LARKIN: (laughs with an easy smile across his face) To be honest? I’ve never met the guy. He always seemed like a real (censored) to me though.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Hermes I Mission Day 2

0643, Houston time

“CAPCOM to mission commander, do you read?”

The voice is young, deep. Curt responds from across the cabin.

“This is mission commander, I read you,” he says. “So someone who knows comm procedure wrangled the box away from Laxmi I see?”

“Yes, this is your new spacecraft communicator, taking over officially for Jeanne Williams for the duration of the Hermes mission.”

Curt stops what he’s doing to sigh and drift. So they’d made a move fast on the ground. That much, at least, is a relief.

“How’s Williams, CAPCOM?” he asks. If this new guy isn’t going to offer his name, he’s not going to ask.

“I haven’t seen her,” the person on the other end of the comms says. “Laxmi tells me she’s stable.”

“Yeah? Well I don’t trust Laxmi as far as I can throw her when it comes to delivering bad news,” Curt says, rolling his eyes. There is a long pause, and for a moment, Curt wonders if there’s actually a problem with the communications system.

“On earth or on the shuttle?” the CAPCOM asks, finally.

“What?” Curt says.

“You said ‘as far as you can throw her.’ She’d be weightless in space,” the voice says without the slightest hint of even a joke or a smile. “Theoretically you could throw Laxmi… really far under the right set of circumstances.”

Curt can feel his face go funny as he squeezes his eyes shut and begins to laugh at what has to be the absolute stupidest joke he’s heard since this mission started. The laugh comes out of him, high and unexpected and bubbling up and feeding on itself until he’s gasping breaths and there are tears wobbling in his eyes. He can’t get past the image of launching Laxmi with all of his might across the cargo bay of the shuttle, her black hair fanning out as she spins weightless and laughing in his mind.

It takes Curt a minute to catch his breath after that and he drags his hands down his face at the thought that such a dumb joke had caught him right in the gut. It’s the first time he’s laughed since liftoff, he realizes.

“Ah, Jesus,” he says finally, trying unsuccessfully to blink away tears of laughter. “You can’t do that to me.”

“Sorry, I should — I didn’t mean to be unprofessional, sir,” the kid says. “It just came out I — ”

Curt laughs again, smiling now into the monitor.

“No, shit, I mean you can’t make me laugh like that, Christ,” Curt says. He opens one eye wide and points at the weird sheen of fluid across of it, demonstrating to the CAPCOM. “See? Tears don’t fall in zero g — it’s annoying as fuckall.”

The person on earth doesn’t respond, and without a display that shows him what’s happening down there, Curt doesn’t know what to make of the pause. This is so odd — so unlike communicating with Jeanne, who always seemed to know what she needed to say to him and when and how to keep a conversation going if they were just chatting.

“Well, welcome aboard, CAPCOM. Wish it was under better circumstances,” Curt says, slinging a glance at the camera he knows is transmitting his image to mission control.

“Thank you, sir.”

Another pause. Curt fans out his hands at the camera, as if begging for the CAPCOM to say something. What was the point of this call? he wonders.

“So… We’re good for the moment, then?” Curt asks.

“No, ah, sorry I’m working through secondhand notes here,” the CAPCOM says immediately. “Sorry. Sorry, commander. FAO has asked that you… go ahead and get Dr.. Costa up for a shift. Mr. Robb and Ms. Lodge need to be assessed for clearance to begin maintenance activities. Their vitals have been up and down overnight, we assume from vomiting.”

Curt snorts a laugh.

“Wyatt Robb, maybe,” he says. “K.C. Lodge has an iron stomach. You should tell Lydia to look at the readouts closer.”

Another pause.

“You’re right, sorry, I’m misreading the notes she gave me. It’s my mistake. Dr. Costa and Mr. Robb have… definitely been vomiting,” he says. “Ms. Lodge is sleeping like a rock.”

Curt smiles at that. He’d expect nothing less from his protege, K.C. Lodge. She’s a chip off the ‘ol block.

“And my vitals?” Curt asks after a moment.

“Elevated BP and pulse up until about two minutes ago,” the CAPCOM says. “You’re evening out now.”

Curt nods. Maybe the laugh had done him good. He could really use someone to talk to that’s at least on the same planet as Jeanne.

“I’m not a doctor, sir,” the communicator says after a moment, “but I’d say you look very tired.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Curt says, frowning and making an excuse to push off, away from the view of the camera. He’d asked for vitals — not a once-over from some stranger.

“If you’ll please wake Ms. Costa, the FAO has no other duties scheduled for you for the next nine hours,” the CAPCOM says. “You ought to try and sleep, Mr. Larkin.”

“I’ll sleep when I have a real update on Jeanne,” Curt says, bristling a little. “Or until my FAO orders it. Not your judgement call, kid.”

“Right, you’re right,” the voice says almost immediately. “I’m sorry. I understand.”

Curt feels instantly guilty for snapping — even if it was only a little rude. And called for. And only a fraction of the temper Curt is capable of. He works in silence for a minute, back to the camera, willing his jaw to unclench. Between the launch and Jeanne, it had been a terrifically stressful first day. He takes a deep breath. Maybe he can defuse this tension.

“CAPCOM, I’ve got a question.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the weather?”

“Excuse me?”

“Outside. What’s it like today.”

“It’s clear, sir.”

“That’s not — . Hm. Right, it’s clear,” Curt says. “Tell me what it’s like there.”

“I’ve been inside for the past 20 or so minutes,” the CAPCOM says, sounding a little exasperated at the line of questioning. “I can pull up a report if you’d like.”

“No, no report. I just want to talk. What was it like when you were walking in, CAPCOM?” Curt asks, massaging the bridge of his nose. He wonders if his BP is spiking. “Give me something to work with here.”

“It — ... the sun was rising when I was walking in,” the voice says. “Hot but still pretty pleasant, I guess.

“Good, here we go,” Curt encourages him. “What did the sky look like?”

“The clouds were… breaking up a little. I can’t remember what it’s called but they looked like patterns in beach sand when the tide is rolling out and — ” the voice breaks off. “I should really know what those clouds are called.”

“Cirrocumulus,” Curt says. “Go on.”

“Sorry if I’m — I should brush up on my meteorology, maybe. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Christ, no, just. What color was it? Paint me a picture, CAPCOM.”

God, Curt thinks. This is like pulling teeth.

“Red. Then orange.”

Curt sighs loudly.

“I don’t know — how would you describe a sunrise, sir?” the voice says, going sharper.

“Well, I’m afraid I didn’t see it,” Curt says, crossing his arms and frowning into the cam.

“It was red like a rose and orange like an orange,” the voice snaps. “Better?”

“Not even good enough to be a cliche,” Curt says, frowning. He wants for it to come out as a joke but it sounds meaner than intended.

“I’m sorry — maybe I can brush up on my synonyms and prepare an essay for you about tomorrow’s sunset,” the voice says through what sounds like gritted teeth.

“Hey, now, part of your job is to help me keep my sanity — ”

“Must have missed that in the job description,” the voice snaps, truly angry now.

“Asking you to describe something is not asking that much of a spacecraft communicator,” Curt snaps back, bristling at the sudden resistance and not sure why, not willing to do any soul searching right now. “Whoever decided to put you in charge of anything with communication in the title apparently hasn’t spoken to you much.”

There’s a long pause.

“I’ll be sure to make a note. Is there anything else?”

“No, CAPCOM,” Curt says. “You’re dismissed.”

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Hermes I Mission Day 2

0705 Houston time

Patrick vomits neatly and quietly in a bathroom stall during his first break.

He’s forgotten how to log a goddamn thing at his station — not that he was ever properly trained in the first place. He’s managed to snap at a fucking astronaut, at Curtis fucking Larkin for christsakes — and now the closest thing he’s ever had to an idol already knows for a fact that Patrick is an incapable moron. He’s made so many mistakes since he showed up this morning that he’s lost count of them all.

And the longer Patrick has sat actually using the technology he’s designed, the more convinced he has become that not only is he utterly unprepared for this assignment but that he was never even good at what he’d originally been hired to do as an engineer.

His comms systems are effective — but only barely. Patrick had been so proud when his designs were utilized, head over heels when he’d gotten the news that his technology was going to form the basis of what went up on the Hermes mission.

But sitting in front of the new technology feels vaguely like looking at an old assignment from high school. Yes, he’d felt at the time as if he were designing to the best of his abilities.

Looking at it now, the ideas are childish. The technology is woefully inelegant. Even the software feels backwards now, in hindsight. There are huge holes in implementation, entire arenas that Patrick had always figured he’d go back and fix but never had.

He is, quite frankly, embarrassed by the thing that’s gotten him here, and as he pukes black coffee and toast and bile, he’s now also embarrassed by how badly he’s handling his nerves.

If there’s an actual emergency, that’s when they’ll need him most. That’s the most vital part of the job of communicator — and if he can’t even handle the desk jockeying parts of his new assignment, there is absolutely no way that he can be trusted with the lives of those professionals in orbit if something important happens.

Christ, he can’t even handle being asked to describe a sunset without freaking out.

Patrick does what he can to clean himself up with toilet paper before flushing and exiting the stall. Thankfully he’s still alone in the big bathroom, and he crosses to the sinks, wishing he had something better to wash his face with than handsoap.

He scrubs and dries off before propping himself on the counter, peering at his reflection in the mirror that spans the room. His reflection looks back at him: the skin of his face flushed pink from strain and washing, strands of straight dark hair askew, light green eyes looking wild and more than a little panicked.

In his wrinkled button-down and weeks-old haircut, Patrick looks like an underfed kid that should be bagging groceries — not someone who should be in charge of lives.

He wills himself to take a few deep breaths before swallowing several ibuprofen and washing them down with tap water. Patrick says a silent prayer to any deity who might be listening, thanking them for keeping migraines and vertigo at bay — though with stress like this, it may only be a matter of time before the room starts spinning, before he feels that familiar sharp ice pick driving its way into his skull.

And then he truly would be useless. Dangerous.

He’ll talk to Laxmi. He can’t do this.

Allan Perez intervenes before Patrick gets Laxmi’s attention — stepping quite literally between the CAPCOM and FIDO as Patrick approaches.

“Patrick Harte,” Perez says, holding out his hand. “Thanks for coming in on such short notice.”

“Of course,” Patrick says, hoping the former astronaut won’t notice how clammy his hand is, the fact that he’s still sweating a little from gagging. Christ, he’d have cleaned up better if he thought Perez was going to cross his path before he could quit. “It’s an honor. I — uh, I need to speak to the FIDO.”

“Can it wait until you’re both off shift?”

Laxmi has seen him now and Patrick throws a pleading look over his shoulder at the woman.

“Not, well… I want to give you as much time as I can to — ” Patrick begins.

Laxmi is getting up from her desk and crossing to where they’re standing.

“What’s up, Allan?” Laxmi asks.

“I don’t know,” Perez begins — and Jesus this whole thing is cursed, Patrick is crashing and burning so spectacularly, he’s practically the goddamn Hindenberg —

“I think your replacement needs a replacement,” Patrick says.

“Patrick,” Laxmi says, “I already told you — there is no replacement. You’re it.”

“I’m sure there’s someone you can fly in — ”

“Wait, no, excuse me,” Perez says, cocking his head. “You’ve only been on the job for a few hours. You’re not quitting.”

Perez turns to leave.

“Mr. Perez, I’m really — I’m an engineer, I’m not a comms guy,” Patrick pleads.

“So sit down and solve a problem,” Perez says over his shoulder. “You’ll feel better, Harte.”

“Mr. Perez — ”

The man turns, looking legitimately angry now.

“You’ll sit down, you’ll solve a problem, and then you’ll prepare a report on it,” Perez says, pushing wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You’ll work the rest of your shift and you’ll go home and get some sleep. There’s no flying someone in. You are our chief capsule communicator, so do what you need to do to keep it together and stop thinking of yourself as a replacement.”

Allan Perez is more intimidating in person than Patrick had anticipated.

Every element of this day has been more intimidating. Simply being assigned a desk in that big goddamn room full of monitors and middle-aged men in ties and women in smart clothes and people being quietly effective and competent — it was all much more goddamn intimidating than Patrick had ever dreamed.

And to think that people assume the scary parts are reserved for the real astronauts.

“Yes sir,” Patrick says, finally.

Patrick feels two inches tall. Perez turns to Laxmi, frowning.

“He made me use my mad voice, Laxmi,” Perez says. All of the anger and authority has drained from his tone. “Is he going to keep doing that? I don’t like doing that.”

Laxmi looks back and forth from Patrick’s face to Perez’s before puffing a laugh.

“I’ll talk to him,” Laxmi says quietly — and it makes Patrick feel even worse that they’re talking like he’s not standing right there.

Perez disengages, goes to continue his rounds. Laxmi puts an arm across Patrick’s shoulders and begins walking him down the aisle and Jesus fucking Christ on a jumbo jet this is the worst. He’s got Laxmi treating him like a crying kid at his first overnight camp in the middle of mission fucking control — but trying to shrug her off is only going to make it worse.

“Patrick, you are capable of this job. You’re doing fine. You got zero practical training — we all understand that. You can ask us questions while you get up to speed.”

“I’m 27 goddamn years old, Laxmi — I can’t — ”

“And your mission commander was 22 when he went to space the first time,” she says with a smirk. “I’m sure Curt was shitting his pants on his first day, too.”

“Twenty-three,” Patrick says.

“Hm?” Laxmi releases his shoulders.

“Mr. Larkin was 23 on his first mission,” Patrick says. “And clearly braver than I am.”

Laxmi rolls her eyes and sighs.

“Listen to Perez,” she says. “Take a deep breath and solve a problem.”

Patrick hadn’t paid attention to where Laxmi was leading them, but suddenly finds himself back at the CAPCOM desk.

“Yeah, OK,” Patrick says, feeling defeated — feeling like they’re all making a huge mistake. “I’ll try it.”

“That’s all we can ask,” Laxmi says.

Patrick nods.

“And don’t make Allan use his angry voice again,” Laxmi says.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Hermes I Mission Day 2

0913, Houston time

“CAPCOM to mission commander, do you read?”

Curt frowns at the scaled-down comm unit in the bathroom. Thank God the thing doesn’t have a monitor.

“CAPCOM, you know very well I’m busy. Unless we’re crashing, it can wait.”

“I’ve got the head physician from Williams’ stroke unit on the line,” the voice says calmly. He sounds more confident than he had several hours ago, speaking clearly. “She could only give us five minutes and I knew you’d want to talk to her. Can I patch the doctor through?”

“You can — can you do that? Jeanne said there wasn’t — ah, landline compatibility? With the new system.”

“I figured it out this morning,” the voice says. “The landline capability was built into my original design but I never got a chance to troubleshoot it enough to make it workable. Please — should I patch the physician through?”

“Yeah, yes, shit — yeah, thank you, yes,” Curt says, scrambling to get out of the bathroom even though he knows it won’t matter.

“OK,” the voice says after a moment. “We are both on the line. Dr. Gomez, you’re speaking to Mission Commander Curt Larkin. Please go ahead.”

True to the CAPCOM’s word, the doc stays on the line for five minutes before excusing herself. She answers each of Curt’s questions and praises him for his quick response to the situation, saying his actions will ensure Jeanne makes the best recovery modern medicine can afford her.

The voice of the communicator stays with Curt even after the doc is gone.

“I cleared it with the hospital and the FAO,” he says. “You have a standing appointment each day at 0900 Houston time from today forward to speak with the physician on call from the stroke unit until Williams is released or you tell me to cancel it. So you can… plan around that better.”

“Roger that, CAPCOM.”

“Will you get some sleep now, sir?” Some of the professional polish has dropped out of the kid’s tone now. He sounds personally invested in the thought of Curt getting some shuteye.

“Sure,” Curt says. “Yeah, I can do that.”

As he floats, Curt searches for a moment, trying to remember where the nearest cam is. He locates it and vaults over toward it.

“Listen, this, ah — the whole thing has me at my worst,” Curt says, looking into the cam. “Thank you. For doing that.”

“Of course, commander,” the voice says, going professional again. “Like you said: keeping you sane is part of the job description. Rest well.”

Solving a problem had helped.

It really had.

Patrick had found an elegant solution to an inelegant problem that he’d left years ago when he’d gone hands-off with the comm technology, and it felt somehow very right to put that puzzle piece into place.

Helping Curt Larkin sleep was just a bonus. Not, he tells himself, his primary motivation.

Strapped safely into the bizarre stand-up sleeping bags that passed for beds on the shuttle, Larkin sleeps for the rest of Patrick’s shift.

The astronaut snored softly — not that Patrick had checked. Thank Christ he’d gone to sleep.

During his shift, the rest of the astronauts on the Hermes I mission are easier to deal with. They don’t stare straight into the cams like they’re on some sort of reality show. They don’t demand descriptions of sunrises. When they joke, it’s to each other and the jokes don’t include Patrick. They don’t curse at him. Their pulses and blood pressure aren’t all over the goddamn map when they speak to him.

They stay on task, and it’s easy to understand what they need and how their duties fall in line with the notes in front of Patrick.

It helps, too, that with the rest of the crew, Patrick doesn’t find himself bringing up every single detail he knows about them every time they say something to him.

He doesn’t think and re-think every word that comes out of his mouth, wondering if he might sound like a moron to them.

He doesn’t have to bite down the 50 thousand questions he’s rehearsed on the off chance that he’d ever meet pilot K.C. Lodge or team physician Carmen Costa. He wasn’t running on two hours of sleep because he’d been up late re-watching the “America Tonight” episode about payload specialist Amal Bassett.

He wishes, vaguely, he could say the same about mission commander Larkin.

Patrick shuts off his mind — his eye on the notes Williams had left at her desk — and he lets himself work.

It’s hardly the smooth first day he would’ve hoped for, but at least no one has died.

Yet, his mind adds grimly.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Hermes I Mission Day 2

2103, Houston time

“Mission commander to CAPCOM, do you read me?”

It takes a minute to register that it’s Larkin who is talking to Patrick now, and his eyes shoot to the monitor. The man is speaking to him from the bay cabin. He hadn’t had reason to contact Larkin for the rest of the shift, working for the most part with Ms. Lodge and Ms. Bassett as he coordinated their schedules for the next 24 hours. Larkin had been up for hours.

“This is CAPCOM, I read you,” Patrick says, backing off the keyboard. He’d been catching up on logs, trying to remember all of the different acronyms for daily events he’s now responsible for.

“Well good evening, Patrick Harte,” Curt says, bright.

Hearing Curt say his name is a moment of emotional vertigo, and Patrick realizes suddenly that he never actually introduced himself. His heart is pounding even worse than it had during their first conversation. Get a fucking grip, he urges himself.

“Good evening... Curtis Larkin,” he says, not sure what else to respond with, realizing immediately that he sounds like a moron.

“K.C. told me your name — she said it was creepy that I kept referring to you as CAPCOM.”

“That’s — yeah, sorry I didn’t introduce myself,” Patrick says. “It was a weird morning. I was low on the priority list.”

“Ah, that’s hardly fair,” Curt says. “You’re the closest thing I’ll have to a friend on earth for the next six weeks — that counts for something. I doubt Jeanne wrote that on the job description, either.”

“No, sir, she didn’t,” Patrick says, smiling a little in spite of himself.

Curt takes a deep breath like he’s trying to make an important decision.

“I don’t suppose you’d describe the sunset to me, Patrick?” Curt asks.

“I — seriously?”

Patrick peers at the monitor and Curt is throwing up his hands as if to imply that he means nothing aggressive by the resumed topic.

“Hey, I thought you might appreciate a second shot!” the man says, hitching his eyebrows.

“I’ll pass if you don’t mind,” Patrick says.

The astronaut doesn’t miss a beat.

“Is it that unreasonable?” Curt says. He kicks off a wall to float further away from the cam. Patrick can’t see his face from this angle, and the commander is backlit by the large bay window behind him. Patrick is astounded by the fact that the man isn’t going to let this go.

“I feel a little put on the spot,” Patrick admits.

He props his head on his hand. This part — just two people, talking back and forth in a real conversation — he can almost handle this (if he forces himself into the extreme cognitive dissonance it requires to forget that he’s talking to the Curtis Larkin). Just… two people, he tells himself. No procedures. Nothing special to remember. God he’s tired.

“I just want to know what you see from down there,” Curt says.

“And what if I asked you what you see from up there?” Patrick asks. “You can just take all that and put it into words with no prep?”

“Ask me and find out,” the man says. He winks then and pushes off lightly to get closer to the window.

Patrick just sits and watches him for a minute.

Did that wink honestly just happen?

Is he seriously supposed to ask?

Patrick was supposed to be off shift hours ago. Today, he’s managed to keep down half a sandwich and a bag of corn chips. The joints in his neck and back feel like they’ve got sand inside them. There’s a knot the size of a golf ball on one side of his back. His contact lenses are so dry they’re clouding up. Every bit of his physical presence is screaming at him to finish up his logs and go home.

And... Patrick very much wants to know what Curt Larkin sees from up there.

“Fine,” Patrick says. “What do you see?”

Curt throws a glance over his shoulder at the cam, really smiling now, face washed in the light from outside the shuttle. He’d had his sandy hair cropped short sometime between the “America Tonight” interview and the Hermes I launch, and the short haircut makes him seem more clean-cut than the mental image Patrick tended to hold in his head before actually seeing him in real time.

Patrick has apparently made the right decision by asking him now, if the man’s expression is any indication. His brown eyes almost glint in the light — and it really is different to see him unedited rather than filtered through NASA-approved short films and talk show studio stylization.

(Or grainy iPhone footage, Patrick thinks).

The longer the silence stretches out and the closer Patrick looks at the man, the more he feels like he’s going to lose his nerve and shut down the conversation before it goes anywhere.

“Well? What’s it like up there?” Patrick demands again.

Curt snorts, sounding pleased that Patrick is egging him on. He turns away from the cam to look out the window before he begins to speak.

“Try to imagine living inside of a claustrophobic grocery store on acid, Patrick,” Curt says. “Every inch of every surface has something on it and not a thing about it is organic — that’s what it’s like in here. This is all stuff that’s been fabricated. It’s got the stink of human design all over it without ever having an actual designer get involved.”

Patrick tries to imagine it. He’s seen pictures before, watched videos of course — but he’d never put much thought into what it might be like to live there for weeks on end.

“It’s visual chaos. There is no balance. There is no wasted space. You with me, Patrick?”

“Yes, I’m listening.”

“And it’s not your fault that it fills you up. We evolved to do this — to make use of everything we see and to process it all — so even when you don’t realize you’re doing it, you’re taking it in. You’re making calculations, checking things, reading. Even when I go to sleep I see valves and monitors and wires and LED lights — I dream about them — my brain can’t turn it off. There’s a point I reach where the visual input is so sustained that it starts bleeding into my other senses and I can taste how cluttered it is and I can’t find room inside of me for my own thoughts anymore.”

Claustrophobia, Patrick thinks. Or maybe not. He wouldn’t insult the man by saying it out loud, either way.

“The worst thing about it is that I’m not a part of anything anymore when I’m in here. I’m in a box surrounded by buttons and monitors that could be a mile underground instead of out where we are — and I wouldn’t know it except for the change in gravity... But when I get the chance to go to that bay window — it’s instant relief.”

Patrick can almost hear the relief in his voice, too. Clear, cool.

“The clutter is at my back — it doesn’t exist — because I’m facing the whole of earth and the stars and I see that vastness and there’s a plug somewhere in my head that gets pulled. The static clears so abruptly that the silence is loud.”

Patrick can imagine it — and in doing so, he begins to feel his mental disarray righting itself as well.

“The blue and green horizon is so definite in an endless plane of vision, of black. I feel the least alone when I look at that. It takes me from being the buzzing center of my own pitiful little universe to knowing, internalizing without a doubt, that I am not important and I have never been important and I will never be important.”

The concept shouldn’t feel comforting, Patrick thinks. But it is. At least in this moment as he watches this man, this stranger he knows everything about — down to his heartbeat — motionless and suspended.

“There’s relief in that. I am no longer my accomplishments or my failures. I am no more important than any one molecule that makes me up — and my identity, my memories, my experiences, my shortfalls are a story that I invent on the fly every moment of my life — and they’re meaningful, but only in the context that I am a piece of… all that out there. There’s no home or not home, there’s no me or not me. There is every thing and I’m allowed to be a part of it.”

Curt turns and looks at the cam.

“I don’t think I’m ever thankful for existing unless I’m looking out up here. Or thinking about it.”

Patrick doesn’t have to imagine it, then, looking at the secondhand image through the cam — the gentle curve of Earth’s horizon.

“Have I put you to sleep yet, Harte?” Curt asks, shaking him from his reverie.

“No — God, not at all,” Patrick says, remembering all at once that he’s on the earth’s surface, that he’s never been out there, that he’s never gazed down at the reflection of every single thing that most human beings will ever know. “I just — I thought you were going to make fun of me and say it’s blue and black, or something.”

“Shit. That would’ve been funnier,” Curt says, the awe dropping out of his voice. He smiles into the cam, grin crooked and tanned skin around his eyes crinkling. “Can we go back?”

“I’m afraid not, sir,” Patrick says. “I’ve already permanently logged our present communications, re: space being ineffably majestic to the point of a complete redefinition and/or erasure of self.”

Curt laughs hard, a closed-mouth rumble.

“Bad with sunrises, good with sass,” Curt says. “I take back what I said before. You’ll make a fine CAPCOM.”

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