It is 5 o'clock AM, and the station is sick. Or at least, I think it is 5 o'clock. The interior lights are paler than usual, with an unsettling feeling to them. I rise from my bunk and find the control panel for the environmental controls. It says the station is at a chilly 18 degrees Celsius and the humidity is higher than normal. I believe it is a glitch in the rotation of the settings matrix; nothing a few restarts would not fix.
"Good morning, Doctor Howard," comes the station's sterile feminine voice. I have named her Miranda and imagine the woman whose voice they stole was a brunette with slight curls and blue eyes that glowed like the buttons on the control panels on the walls and each piece of equipment. She comes from the suburbs, loves fireworks, and long nights ending with beautiful sunrises. But she is shy and quiet, only talking to me when the station's fuel or oxygen is low, when a meteor shower is inbound, or any part of the station demands something that cannot be put into a maintenance message.
I leave the warmth of my bunk behind and move to the door to the master control room, the featureless doors and walls of the station spreading its arms as I step into its brain. A small window looks out into nothing, an empty pool infinitely deep, wide, and long, painted black and splattered with specks of white, blue, and red. The occasional colorful streaks of distant nebulae are smeared across the expanse.
This is my portal to the universe, a small piece of glass that, if removed, would mean my catastrophic death. If I were to reach out, even if my arms were millions of feet long, I would not be able to grasp even the closest object. And even though I know better, I think that if I were to space walk out there and disengage my jetpack, I would fall forever into nothing. What is worse, aside from the oxygen farms attached to the exterior of the station, full of organics to absorb the nearby starlight and convert it into oxygen, there is no life of any sort within relevant distance of these steel walls. Even if I screamed until I tore my windpipes apart, no one would hear me, not even Miranda. So I keep quiet.
This is Ghost Station, and I am her sole caretaker.
The feed of messages that accumulated during my sleep cycle sprawls out in front of me. I eat breakfast, but I do not taste. The only properties of the meal that I care about are the nutritional facts. I could select any food I want from the protein assembler, but I cannot remember the last time I had a craving for anything in particular, so I stick with something basic. The messages continue to file in and out of my attention.
Sometime during the night, Assembler 1 subcontracted out some its work orders to Assembler 2, due to what the software calls a "resource allocation discrepancy". The English translation would be that the delicate and complex thruster components I had ordered from Assembler 1 would be several work cycles late.
There was an argument between the main refinery unit and a series of conveyor tubes that lead into a conveyor hub. I mark it mentally as a networking problem and will address it later, since there is nothing critical to station operations being refined this work cycle.
I open the Graphic User Interface for the communications array protruding from the top of the station like a set of fingers reaching out for something. I am not surprised to see there are no new communications coming through. After all, if there were, Miranda would have sent a message to me through my suit.
I inspect the four small reactors that power the station before checking the gravity generator, medical station, and finally, the oxygen generators. I work on the components for the large ship that floats just below the station, using the assemblers for the mass production of parts while I install them onto the frame. I finish my work on a pair of proper wings, the ones designed for in-atmos flight, mounting them to the sides of my fighter, in the hopes that someday I will go to a planet with an atmosphere.
I visit the refinery unit, but am unsuccessful in resolving the dispute between the refinery and the conveyor system. I will try my luck with it later.
Five rest cycles ago, one of my drones detected a large deposit of ice, clawing into one of the craters of a nearby asteroid, a mere 24,000 kilometers away from the station.
I slowly move down to the hangar, fully aware that I am incapable of wasting time, and unload a miner drone from its holding station. With a small cart, I move it under my fighter and secure it to the undercarriage. While I strap myself into the cockpit, I fire the fighter's main reactor and use the on-board computer system to remotely connect to the station's controls, and activating the hangar ventilation sequence. The oxygen is removed from the hangar so when I activate the airtight hangar doors the decompression does not tear apart myself, the fighter, or half the station.
The hangar's teeth retract, revealing the nearly blank canvas of pitch black and pale spots of dulled colors. I slam the visor on my helm all the way down and become nothing more than an object, limbs covered in layers of synthetic material indistinguishable by color or pattern from any of the materials on the station, my entire face nothing more than a large, heavily tinted lens to the universe which reflects upon its surface. I throttle gently forward, and the spacecraft slides out of the hangar.
I ease the nose of the craft this way and that, until my x, y, and z all match with where the drone's signal came from. I turn once more to Ghost Station and tell the dogs I will be back soon. The twin canines, their six barrels locked and safe, sit loyally on the lighted side of the station. They swivel to and fro protecting the station, their Identify Friend or Foe systems scanning the space around the station for meteors and debris. They know my scent, so I am safe.
On Earth, or at least from what I can remember, the nearby star brought warmth, light, energy, and comfort to the world as it moved across the sky, making sure every square meter of its precious blue and green marble was coated evenly with its gifts.
The light from the station's nearest star is the same in nearly every aspect, that is to say, there exists no significant scientific difference. It has the same wavelength, the same frequency, the same velocity, the same color, and the same temperature. But it falls upon the dull steel armor of the station the same as would a stone. It does not spread along the great asteroids near the station, but rather buffets them with an eerie and sterilizing glow. Nothing is as dim as this star. There is something crucial missing from this starlight, but I cannot determine exactly what it is, even with all my instruments and sensors.
Turning back toward my readout with my plotted course, I throttle forward as the craft accelerates from 0 to 110 km/s in a blink of a human eye. I have gotten used to not feeling the inertia, the sudden gain of momentum, but the near silence aside from the slight vibration in my cockpit is the stuff of nightmares.
At the craft's maximum speed, I pull back on the throttle and the thrusters stop producing force. I roll and stare up at the asteroids within sight. They are titans, gods, unmoving and uncaring, solitary mountains upon which I have settled. I, my station, had been mounted onto an asteroid's breast like an awkward heat sink cinched onto a motherboard. Yet the rock's stillness remains, regardless of my gravity generator or my activities on station. After all, asteroids do not concern themselves with the motions of one man, as does the rest of the universe.
It used to bother me that I am no more than a hamster inside of a fragile and minuscule bubble of life, rolling about to the whims of a world infinitely larger than myself. The moment it stopped bothering me was the moment I realized the true nightmare. It is not the fact that I am at the mercy of the universe, but rather it is the fact that I realize and understand the futility of my existence amongst the massive and awe-inspiring celestial titans. The silence that oozes from the space here is permeated with their singing, a grim and echoing chorus that beats like a heart.
Miranda shakes me from my trance with a curt beep, and I turn back to the nose to see the asteroid creeping closer. When I am close enough, I activate the inertial dampeners, which spurs the on-board computer to orchestrate the maneuvering thrusters like a cold electrical conductor to bring the fighter to a swift and safe stop. I flick a switch on the flight stick, releasing the drone from its harness. It soars away, powered by its own thrusters under the command of its own on-board computer receiving information from its forward sensor, following the scent of ice like a hound until it finds a deposit to sink its hardened steel teeth into.
I wait for several minutes until Miranda tells me the drone has found its mark. The battery life on the small craft will last for about ten work cycles, but it should run out of ice to mine just before it runs out of energy. I make a mental note to check it later.
Unceremoniously, I swing my fighter around and head back to the station.
My sleep cycle approaches, but there is a task I need to complete first. While towing the drone to the asteroid, a small piece of debris struck the starboard atmos wing of the fighter. With the hangar fully pressurized, I set to work removing it. I take a set of large wrenches and a drill, assaulting the rock the size of my foot that embedded itself in the layers of steel and the web of copper wire.
Ten minutes later and I have still not removed the foreign object. I have managed to get the teeth of the wrench almost halfway around it, awkwardly biting into the surface. I put all my weight behind me and pull as hard as I can. A loud metallic bark and the wrench slips off the rock, sending me reeling hard onto my back as it hits the hangar deck. I scramble to my feet and drive the wrench back into the wing, cinching it around the rock and leveraging it against the metal. Again, the teeth slip, and I nearly lose my balance. I have hurt my arm in the process.
I consider how infuriating this is, a simple rock lodged into a space that with sufficient force and a little change in its environment should be easy to remove. I think of the rocks that I have moved much larger than this. The construction of this station, along with every single component and unit, simple and complex. The construction of the fighter. The resources that I stole with tooth, nail, and clash of steel from the gods outside. Compared to those, this is a trifle.
But it is obviously not just a trifle. I stare at the piece of rock, pitted from minuscule collisions that might kill a human, and cold to the touch. This came from the universe, my universe. It embedded itself in my wing not as a coincidence, but as a spiteful message. I had designed, constructed, and installed those wings to cut through atmosphere, to soar through clouds and open sky. And now…
And now the universe had thrown a rock into one of them.
I swiftly take up the largest wrench and swing down savagely, impacting the frame of my fighter just between the wing and the fuselage. The steel creaks and splits under the impact. I swing again, and the steel separates even more. I swing again, again, and again, until the wing breaks free and clashes against the floor. I move to the other wing, repeating the process, using every muscle, tendon, nerve, vein, and bone in my body until the wing snaps off and lies on the steel hangar deck. A bit of oil drips from one of the disconnected hoses and small metal pieces are strewn about the work space.
Miranda's voice comes from the speakers next to the hangar control panel, telling me there is a meteor shower inbound. In a single motion, I use every part of my body to hurl the wrench at the control panel. It misses and instead strikes a camera mounted into the wall, shattering the lens and some of the components inside. Fragments of glass, silicone, and various metals scatter onto the floor, and Miranda's voice vanishes.
I slowly calm my heavy breathing, reminding myself that I am burning more oxygen and organic energy than needed right now. I place the wrench onto a tool cart and spent the next hour cleaning up the mess.
Before every sleep cycle, I like to take a space walk, to survey the dome onto which the universe is painted, and remind myself where home lies. I stand at the edge of the station's roof on the lighted side and stare off at a distant asteroid formation. The dogs sit behind me, silent after the meteor shower at which they barked fire and lead. The asteroids I gaze upon are arranged like a semicolon, and that is where I look to every sleep cycle. Each time, I focus between them on a bright white star which has a precious blue and green marble orbiting it along with eight other celestial bodies.
It would give me great comfort to look upon that solar system and smile. But I cannot. Because it reminds me that I have long forgotten which direction Earth is.