The Astronaut's📡Summer

The lone astronaut, clad in a weathered spacesuit, finds himself stranded on a desolate, windswept alien planet. He gazes up at a swirling nebula painted across the inky sky. The landscape is littered with the skeletal remains of colossal, long-dead creatures, their bones bleached white by the harsh alien sun. The air crackles with an otherworldly energy, and strange, bioluminescent flora pulses with a soft, ethereal glow. The landscape hums with hidden surreal horror, creating a hauntingly beautiful and unsettling scene.

He imagines he sees a distant vortex, composed of countless stars and galaxies, pulling everything towards it. His suit, tattered, showing signs of wear, could not protect him from such a confrontation. Matt Voss wonders how much more of this harsh climate the protective gear can withstand. The experience is reminiscent of Giger's biomechanical nightmares, combined with the vast cosmic nothingness, creating a sense of awe and existential dread.

Matt sits on a jagged outcrop of violet stone...gingerly he removes his helmet, testing the air...what has he got to lose, he smiles. He holds his breath for a while, exhales...inhales...Surprisingly, the air here is just breathable enough - though dry as bone and tinged with metallic dust. His life, once pristine, is now streaked with rust-colored sand and the scars of impact. Behind him, the wreckage of his ship looms like a broken winged insect, half-buried in the dunes.

🪐

The sky is a languid lavender, with two suns hanging low like twin embers. The ground is cracked...brittle, frightening as it gently shifts. Beneath it, tiny translucent creatures ripple through the sand, leaving trails like veins.

- No trees, no water, no wind...just silence, and the occasional shimmer of movement below.

🌞

Matt closes his eyes and lets memory unfold...Imagination floods his senses, of swaying trees, oceans of rippling tides, wind in his hair...and laughter.

A lake in late July. The sun warm on his skin. The scent of grilled corn and sunscreen. Children laughing. His sister tossing him a cold drink. The hum of cicadas. The weightlessness of floating, arms spread wide, the sky above him endless and blue.

The warmth of Earth seeped deeper into him...like sunlight through the cracks of memory. Reverie, rich with sensory detail and emotional texture.

He leans back against the stone, eyes closed, and lets the silence of the alien world dissolve into the hum of many remembered summers.

The kind of heat that softened everything...edges, tempers, even time. The air shimmered above the asphalt as he pedaled his bike down the old road, the tires humming against the cracked surface. His backpack bounced lightly against his spine, filled with nothing but a towel, a paperback novel, and a half-melted chocolate bar.

The lake was always waiting...still and glassy, framed by pines and the occasional dragonfly tracing lazy loops in the air. He’d drop the bike, kick off his shoes, and sprint barefoot across the dock, the wood warm and splintered beneath him. Then the leap - airborne for a breathless second - and the plunge into cool, forgiving water.

Later, lying on the dock with droplets drying on his skin, he’d listen to the world: the distant bark of a dog, the low murmur of his friends trading stories, the radio playing some old song about love and highways. His sister would pass him a slice of watermelon, its juice sticky on his fingers, and they’d laugh about nothing, about everything.

The sun would dip low, casting gold across the lake, and he’d feel it then, that fleeting, aching joy. The kind that makes you believe the world is vast and kind and full of second chances.

🌞

He smiles faintly, then opens his eyes. The contrast is jarring...beauty remembered versus beauty denied.

The memory fades, but its warmth lingers. His eyes adjust to the alien dusk, and for a moment, the twin suns seem to echo Earth’s golden hour. The sand creatures stir beneath him, their movements rhythmic, almost musical.

Matt whispers to himself, “I was there. I remember.”

The memory is not just comfort, it is a balm to his soul, to his identity...to Earth, to meaning. Each recollection is a rebellion against despair, a ritual of survival. The tiny alien creatures, though strange, begin to feel like silent witnesses to his solitude.

🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐

Then...tension between despair and the sudden flicker of possibility. The static isn’t just sound...it’s a rupture in silence, a thread tugged from the void.

📡 The Crackle...

He had tried everything. Stripped wires from the rover’s undercarriage, repurposed solar panels, even used fragments of his own helmet’s comm-link to boost the signal. Each day he climbed the ridge, aimed the antenna toward the stars, and spoke into the static-less sky.

“This is Commander Matt Voss. Planet designation: Solace-9. Requesting contact. Anyone”.

Six months. No reply. Just the wind, the shifting dunes, the slow erosion of hope.

His journal grew darker. Pages filled with calculations, then confessions, then dreams. He rationed food with the precision of a surgeon, water with the reverence of a priest. The sanctuary he’d built from wreckage became a shrine to survival...and silence.

Then, one evening, as the twin suns bled into the horizon and he sat with his back to the transmitter, ready to let the silence swallow him...

Crackle.

He froze.

Crackle. Whine. A burst of static. Then—

“...Solace-9…come in…repeat…Solace-9…”

“...Solace-9…come in…repeat…Solace-9…”

His breath caught in his throat. He turned slowly, afraid it was a hallucination, another cruel trick of isolation. But the signal held. Weak, garbled, but real.

“This is Commander Voss,” he shouted, voice trembling. “I’m here. I’m alive.”

The reply came in fragments, like a dream half-remembered:

“…received…hold position…rescue en route…”

He collapsed to his knees, laughter and tears tangled in his throat. The stars above seemed to pulse with new meaning. The planet, once a tomb, now felt like a cradle.

Summers...he shouted to the silence, summers can be real again.

Matt fell to his knees in a prayer of thankfulness.

In the days that follows...he prepares, he dreams, he trusts the signal, though a bit fearful that it might vanish again. He held steadfast to the crackle itself...a voice from the void, a bell rung across the abyss!