An Absence Of Gravity

My mother told me that I was born with my head in the clouds and my eyes always up at the stars. I think if she realized just how true that fact was she might have told me to spend more time worrying about what was going on around me; to keep grounded. The day I told my family I was going to space, it was like I'd sprouted a second head from my shoulders. My mother cried, my father was understandably upset, and my younger sister...she was jealous.

"You'll get killed up there! It's not safe! It's not a job we should have to take!"

It was the age-old argument, ever since they started sending humans to space over machines. Sure, the emotional attachment to a hunk of metal tended to be pretty lackluster, but running the risk of spending millions of dollars to send something into space with the chance of it never coming back, that was something quickly becoming a problem.

AI, robots, varying machines, as time went by they kept getting better and better. With improvement however came the need for more complicated components, and with those requirements came the need for precious and limited materials. Gold, diamond, rhodium, platinum, plutonium, and a myriad of other resources all go into the makings of our digital workforce. With some of those materials being limited resources and getting increasingly expensive as the years go on...it only made sense that space would once again become a frontier for humankind to adventure into.

Or at least that is how the brochures make it sound. Some noble thing to aspire to rather than simply finding work that will put food on the table. No company that can help it hires actual people anymore, not that I blame them. Why hire someone that can get sick, not be worked 24/7, and has rights? It just stopped being cost-effective to be human, so unless you went into business for yourself or had the luck of being born into money, most people looked to the stars in hopes that the next gold rush was waiting overhead.

“And we’ll starve if I stay down here, the benefits are gonna stop coming through for work displacement by the end of the year….if I go up now, we’ll have a chance and it’ll be one less mouth to feed.”

I wasn’t overly proud to use those kinds of tactics against my parents, my family, but it was the truth. It was often the best weapon to use in these situations. The government only covered displacement benefits for up to a year, and the deadline was coming far too quickly for my liking. Mom was a nurse, she still had her job, but it wouldn’t cover the mortgage and bring food into the house. I refused to be one more strain. I had done poorly in school and couldn’t get a prestigious job even if I wanted to.

Sure, I could have done what many of the rich folks do, bribe my way in and not risk my life going into space...in truth though, I stopped being a dreamer a long time ago. Getting a loan for a good bribe just tightened the noose all the more, I’d seen it fail more than once, people getting buried in interest and debt, tossed into prison. So I took the option of signing with a Corporation.

Now, Corporations run the gambit between being top of the line to rundown startups that operate as bare-bones as possible. Your chances of survival seem to be higher with established groups...most startups aren’t deemed viable until they’ve successfully sent and brought back a living thing from the maw of space.

Back in the days of the first commercial launches, it was a spectators sport, watching to see if a new ship would even make it...there were a lot of crashes in the beginning. I remember people used to cheer, thinking all the deaths would stop the work displacements. All that really happened was proof of concept for those in power. When one person died trying to go into space, another simply stepped in their place to try again...and it cost them next to nothing to do it.

So here I am. My family understandably refused to come out and watch the launch. I couldn’t tell if it was because they lacked faith in the Corporation I signed with or if they really had written me off as lost already. My younger sister, she gave me a good luck charm before I left the house. She told me it would be a reminder of what I was leaving behind, but more importantly, it was what I had to return to. She was far too wise for a ten-year-old.

The ship I’m boarding doesn’t really inspire much confidence. It would be nice to think that the new paint was there out of pride rather than covering up scuffs or hiding dents and dings from forceful landings. I’m not riding up alone at least. There is to be me and two others aboard, not counting the pilot. They look to be about as nervous as I am, but our pilot assures us that we have the easiest job.

“Leaving the planet is way easier than coming back, I might be tempted to stay up there with the rest of you.”

It earned a few shakey laughs, but before we really realized it, we were all strapped in and ready for launch. In those initial moments, all I wanted to do was to be sick, but we all sat together in this silent anticipation. Within a few moments, one of two things would be our reality. We would be in space or we would be dead. Shakily I broke the silence before the roar of the engines would drown out all other sounds.

“Is this a bad time to mention I’m afraid of heights?”