Out in the Lights

My mind, it’s dying; I can feel it. The pulsating, brilliant and blinding lights, they eat away at me each second I float out here, abandoned by the very machines I depended on. I don’t know how much longer my oxygen tank will last. I don’t know if I even want it to take me much farther out into this void.

I screamed until I almost fainted when it first happened. I don’t know, I thought it might help, I thought it might mean something. No one heard me. There’s no one out here that could’ve heard me. I left everyone that would’ve cared back on Earth. I was an explorer, a pioneer confronting the greatest unknown the human race ever dreamed to question, deep space. Now I’m a corpse, patiently waiting for the end, too tired to even put up a fight anymore. It’s a shame, the lights out here are beautiful. I can see stars dying and coming to life in the most beautiful displays of creation. Bursts of rainbow lightning, clouds of twinkling, glittering dust wafting through the airless places little ones dream of canvasing; I pray, don’t let this accident hurt their spirits. We need this, we need the pursuit of understanding things far greater than ourselves. We are so young in the grand scheme of existence, we have too much to learn but we can be devastatingly cautious at the slightest hint of danger. Fortunately this out here, these lights and the awe inspiring majesty of being, this is worth it.

I know I don’t have much longer, my HUD has started flashing its “caution” warning before my very eyes. In a bit of a grim realist way, I don’t want to shut it off; I need to know when the end arrives for me. Death, that’s another great frontier we haven’t traversed. But then again, maybe we have. Maybe we chose to learn of other worlds and beings, and unknown things before we went after the biggest unknown of all; maybe, out here in all of these lights, we’ll finally have the courage.

Next Chapter: There’s the Sun