Space For Sale

by Jeff Pollard

  “I don't think so, I don't think that has to be a true story for that movie to work,” K replies.

  “So you want movies to have less cool stuff in them?” Arnold asks.

  “That's it exactly,” K says sarcastically. “Like for example, at the end of Terminator 2, when the T-1000 melts into a puddle, and then you and the Connors just run away and give it time to form back up, why the hell don't you just find a broom and sweep his liquid metal ass apart. If they ended that movie with a terminator defeating another terminator with a broom, that would have been amazing.”

  “A sweeping montage to end an action movie,” Caroline agrees sarcastically.

  “Are you guys nuts?” Arnold asks.

  “He's nuts if he thinks I'm going on a spacewalk,” Caroline says.

  But by the next day, K managed to talk Caroline into the spacewalk.

  And so Caroline and Kingsley enter the airlock on the bottom of the station and pull themselves into the two SpacEx EVA suits. Tim helps them both as they are shrink-wrapped into their suits, and then the airlock is evacuated. The door opens and the robot arm reaches into the airlock. K attaches safety lines so both he and Caroline are tethered to the arm and each other. The grappling mechanism then takes hold of the grappling spot in the center of Caroline's backpack.

  “Lower your visor,” K says, as he does the same. Their fish-bowl like helmets are now covered in a reflective gold sun-shade that totally obscures their faces from each other.

  With the two astronauts secure, the arm tugs them slowly out of the airlock and away from the station, with their backs to the Earth.

  Caroline is quite nervous, breathing rather rapidly, her heart racing. K can hear her breathing on the radio.

  “Just relax, it's not scary at all,” K says. He puts his gloved right hand near hers and holds her hand, but she pulls away.

  “I'm fine,” she says.

  “You guys ready?” Michael Hopkins asks over the radio. K looks over at Caroline, seeing only her visor.

  “You good?” he asks. Caroline takes a few deep breaths.

  “Yeah,” she says, scared.

  “Let's do it,” K says to Michael. The arm slowly rotates, revealing the 400 km abyss beneath them as they float over nothing. Those afraid of heights might not have a problem with the sensation, as there is no feeling that you are looking “down,” as there is no sense of up or down, but some find the lack of an orientation and the wide open space deeply unsettling.

  Caroline gasps as the Earth is revealed. She thought that being in the space station, looking down on Earth from the Cupola, was going to be comparable and that this spacewalk would not be much different. She was wrong. The hairs on her neck stand up straight at attention. Her brain gives up on trying to figure out which way is up or even what it is she is seeing, leaving her in a dazed, euphoric haze of astronomical bliss.

  Kingsley raises his left arm, looking at the small touch-screen display. He turns off his radio-link to the station, which means only Caroline can hear him now. He raises his visor.

  “I knew you wouldn't believe me that I had changed, that's why you had to come out here,” K says. “But I have changed. After the things you said to me the other night, waking up on that yacht, spending an hour out here, I've realized some things about myself.”

  K looks over to her, again seeing only the golden visor.

  “I reduce all of humanity to numbers, all relationships into a utilitarian equation; what can I get out of this person? I realized that I do treat people as just a resource, something to use. Lovers are just women I see as adequately providing what I want from her. I don't open up. I don't love, I don't care about other people. It's like I'm so afraid of being embarrassed or rejected that I just never put myself out there, never open myself up to the possibility of being rejected. And so, I never would do anything that didn't fit the numbers. Never did anything just because a person was my friend. I was always doing the math, seeing what I could get. But you're right. You get what you give. People sense this. People who I thought were my friends, they can see me doing the calculations in my head. They can tell I'll toss them aside if they stop being useful. People are keenly aware of it. That's why Dexter betrayed me, he knew I'd get rid of him at a moment's notice if he stopped being exactly what I wanted him to be. It's a defense mechanism. That's why he left, and that's why you left.”

  K reaches over and turns off Caroline's radio link to the station. She raises a hand up to raise her visor, but K stops her. “I might not say what I need to say if I can see your face.”

  K just hears Caroline's breathing.

  “You can have all the epiphanies you want, but you're not going to just be a different person in a day,” Caroline replies after a pause.

  “I've really changed. I started thinking, where would I be if I was born just five years earlier or later. Either way, I wouldn't have made PalPay, someone else would have done it. And there's only one Kingsley, so that guy would have retired on his yacht. There'd be no SpacEx. So what would I be doing? Part of me wants to say that if it wasn't PalPay, it would have been something else and I'd be a billionaire regardless, but I don't know. I don't think I could have made Facebook. Seems like nonsense to me. I'd probably just be an engineer, working at some company that only cares about the bottom line, working for the man, for the machine. There'd be no electric cars right now, no SpacEx, no SolCity. So I thought, really, where would I be? I'd probably be making six figures as an engineer, living a decent enough life, probably married with some kids. I'd make a flight simulator in my basement, not the awesome motion-control one I have now, but a few flat screens, a couple hundred bucks on some nice joysticks and pedals and such, and when I wasn't helping with the kids I'd be pretending to fly planes or driving expensive cars. I'd be pretending to live the life I have now. With this success, this money and power, comes responsibility. Not to stockholders, but to myself, to that other Kingsley who never made it big, who could only ever dream of being where I am right now.”

  “And then it hit me,” K says, “I'd be Josh. I'd never have become cool without the money. I'd just be a boring engineer who had no way of changing the world and so I would just dream about reusable rockets and escape into some video game. But what if I was doing that, and then some billionaire came along and made SpacEx, I would do anything to go to work for that company. I would be Josh. And I would idolize whoever it was that made that other SpacEx.”

  “I guess you don't care,” K continues, with no idea of how Caroline is reacting. He looks over at her, but her she keeps staring forward. “I mean, you've always been royalty, that's always a given for you. But if things went slightly different, things out of my control, I would be a totally different person. I called Josh yesterday and unfired him, and I apologized. You were right, he did the same thing I would have done if I was in his shoes. And he's the closest thing I have to a friend right now. Even if he was wrong, it shouldn't matter. He's my friend.”

  “Could you open up your visor,” K asks.

  Caroline doesn't react.

  “I have post-traumatic stress disorder,” K says.

  Caroline finally reacts, looking over at him, her visor still down.

  “Since when?” Caroline asks.

  “Since my parents died in a plane crash,” K replies.

  “And you're just now telling me?”

  “You are the first person I've ever told. I became an orphan. That's...that's why I didn't want kids. I didn't want to be a father. Because I fly in space and fly planes and drive fast cars. I like those things and I know what it's like for a kid to lose his father. And I just couldn't bring myself to risk doing that to my own kids. But I realized that this stuff, it's not more important. Coming out here made me realize I was valuing cool more than I was valuing life. I mean, this should have been the culmination of my life, going into space on a rocket I designed, going on a spacewalk. This should have been so fulfilling. But it wasn't. I came out here and realized how small th
is all is. Who cares about rockets and firsts. I don't have a family. And I want to change that,” K says as he tries again to hold her gloved hand in his. This time Caroline squeezes back. “I love you,” Kingsley says. “And I'll do anything to get you back and keep you.” He stares into the reflection of the Earth on her gold visor. “Okay, I can't stare at my own reflection any longer,” he says, reaching over and raising her visor out of the way, unsure of what he would find.

  He discovers her eyes bugging out of her head like she's a praying mantis. He's taken aback for a moment until he realizes her eyes have welled up with tears. In zero-g, tears don't go anywhere. The surface tension of the fluid keeps it together, forming a bubble over the eye. Caroline tries to blink the tear bubble away, but it just stays attached at the corner of her eyes and flows back into the center of her eye when she opens it again.

  “What's the deal with these tears?” Caroline asks.

  “There's no crying in space,” Kingsley replies as he feels his eyes welling up too. Caroline instinctively reaches to wipe the tears away, but her hand runs into her helmet and they share a laugh, a precious moment of levity. She blinks repeatedly, trying to dislodge the orbs of tears obstructing her eyes.

  “Don't you drown on me,” K jokes.

  “How embarassing that would be.”

  “Try turning your head really quick,” K suggests. Caroline shakes her head back and forth and one of the tears is dislodged, floating into the side of her glass face-plate.

  “So what are you saying?” Caroline asks. “Do you want to have kids now?”

  “I want a family,” K replies.

  “If we're going to do that, then you have to stop with the daredevil act. You know what happened to my dad,” Caroline says.

  “Philippe? I've met Philippe, he's no daredevil,” K says.

  “Well, Phillipe is my biological father, but I don't have much to do with him. He was only married to my mother for two years. She remarried pretty quickly, so my step-dad was my dad as far as I knew. Philippe, he's not a nice person. He was involved with Bernie Madoff's whatever scheme.”

  “Ponzi,” Kingsley adds.

  “Right. He went off and started a new family in Montreal and forgot about me. Stefano was my real father, and is the biological father of my siblings. Stefano Casiraghi, Italian socialite,” Caroline says distantly, staring into space away from Kingsley. “He was the world champion in powerboat racing,” Caroline says quietly. “Mom begged him to stop racing, those things were so dangerous. He had a bad crash in a race in Guernsey, his boat caught fire and in my memory it exploded, it was scary. Mom begged him to stop, and he promised her he would quit. Quit racing for good. But he wanted to do just one more race, defend his title, and then retire. The race was in Monaco, he couldn't let this one go, he had to compete. I was there, I remember it very clearly. That long skinny boat, going a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, and the nose came up, and it was so slow, it raised up and up, and we thought, oh it'll come back down. But it caught the air and it flipped up in the air. I remember it hanging in mid air, upside down, going so fast, and seeing him in the cockpit. It was open canopy, there was no roof or anything, and it came down like that, right on top of him. And then it was just flash of water and the boat disappeared,” Caroline gulps.

  “His co-pilot survived somehow, but daddy didn't make it. He was thirty. I was ten. Mom doesn't like to talk about it, but if she does, she'll just say she told him so. I never ever wanted to see something like that again. To throw your life away like that, for some fucking race, when you have four kids, to do that is just ridiculous. I thought, this wasn't a mistake I would make. I'm not gonna stand over your grave and say I told you so.”

  “I don't think you've ever told me about Stefano,” K says.

  “Hurts too much,” Caroline says, choking up, her eyes welling up again.

  “You've probably got PTSD too then,” K says.

  “No daredevils, I said,” Caroline can't help but let out a little laugh. “Guess I've got some daddy issues huh? Guess that raises my difficult rating on the Kingsley women-object scale.”

  “I don't think like that anymore.”

  “You telling me one spacewalk and you're a different person? I'll believe it when I see it.”

  “I'm telling you, this changes everything.”

  “You might decide that you want me, but you still want to be this daredevil. I'm not sure this changes anything.”

  “Just give me a chance,” K says.

  “I'll be nice. Deal,” Caroline says. K grabs her and they share an immediate, forceful hug. Something in the way they moved, disturbed Caroline's senses. She tries to keep calm and re-oriented, but trying to make sense of her position only makes it worse. “Don't squeeze too hard, my head is spinning. I think I might barf.”

  “That would be bad, don't barf,” K replies.

  “How bad?”

  “You want vomit in your eyes?” K asks.

  “Oh K, you're so romantic.”

  “The burning eyes would be the least of your concerns as you inhale vomit and digest your own lungs.” K says calmly.

  “Okay, might throw up, let's go back inside,” Caroline says, starting to panic.

  “You haven't had any motion sickness.”

  “So, yeah, I might throw up now,” Caroline says, worried. “Bring us in, hey Michael, go ahead, bring us in, why isn't he bringing us in, Michael!”

  “Relax!” K says. He turns his radio back on. “Go for retrieval, over.”

  “Roger,” Michael replies. Caroline feels the slow but steady mechanical tug of the arm pulling them in and it helps calm her rapid breathing.

  “Good thing your radio was off,” K says. “You were gonna break the first rule you learn in flight school.”

  “Yeah, what's that?” Caroline asks, taking rapid shallow breaths.

  “No matter how bad it gets, no matter how scared or worried you are, you must always sound cool on the radio,” K says. “Your plane could be about to crash and kill everyone and all you'll hear from the pilot is, 'this is your captain speaking, the left wing is experiencing some rapid unplanned disassembly, but we'll be on the ground shortly and everything will be sorted out with percussive maintenance, over.'” K looks over and finds Caroline has her eyes closed. “Nope, don't close your eyes, don't do that, makes it worse.”

  “Why?”

  “It's like getting the room spins when you're drunk. Motion sickness is caused by your brain not understanding the spatial and movement information it's receiving. Most people think they have five senses, well, first, I should have asked you, how many senses do you think you have.”

  “Not five I guess,” Caroline says, her eyes darting from side to side, avoiding the Earth in front...below, above?

  “Nope, depending on how you define a sense, you've got something like twenty. You have sense of motion, sense of position, that's called proprioception, that's the one where you can close your eyes and touch your nose. Of course, if you're drunk, this apparently results in you just punching yourself in the face.”

  “What are you talking about!?” Caroline demands. Motion sickness can be alleviated by distraction, but for now, K can't tell her that he's just trying to distract her.

  “Senses. So you have motion, position, then your inner ear has a level, like the bubble in a fluid thing, you have one of those in your ear. So your brain is taking in all those things and if it can't make sense of them, then you get motion sickness. But why? The Space Shuttle had a similar thing. The shuttle had four flight computers, and they should all match each other, and if so, then everything’s fine. But when the computers disagreed on their velocity or position, then a fifth computer had to figure out which computers to trust. If all but one said the same thing, then it ignored the outlier. But if a computer had already failed and they were down to three, and then all three gave different answers to the same question, then it wouldn't know which one to trust. That's what's happening in your brain ri
ght now.”

  “K. Just be quiet.”

  “Open your eyes! Are you closing them again?” K asks.

  “No,” Caroline lies, pushing her visor down, obscuring her face.

  “Caroline, open your eyes,” K says. “Come on, just open them.”

  Caroline opens her eyes for a split second, discovering that they are almost back to the airlock, but in that glimpse she saw the Earth a few hundred miles below. “Nope,” she sums it up as she closes her eyes again.

  “Just open them,” K says. Caroline barely opens her eyes, like a terrified child peeking at a horror movie. They're back in the airlock. The arm releases them and retreats. The outer door closes by itself and the chamber is repressurized.

  “Why the hell were you giving me a science lesson in the middle of that?”

  “Well, to explain that, motion sickness is caused by your brain not being able to make sense of the differing information. But that's only if your brain is being pushed to find an answer. If you're thinking about something else and not pushing your brain for an answer, it'll just ignore the discrepancy. It's only when you demand answers that you'll get sick.”

  “What a cruel joke,” Caroline says. “Does nature like kicking people when they're down? That's like making people who are trying to stay awake just pass out immediately.”

  “I mean, that happens too,” K says.

  “Why do that though? What's the evolutionary benefit of that? Your brain can't tell which way is up, so let's vomit everywhere?” Caroline asks.

  “Do you really wanna know the connection?” K asks.

  “Do I?”

  “I'm going to tell you anyway,” K says. “If your senses aren't working, then it's somewhat likely that you've been poisoned. Alcohol dilutes your blood and causes your inner ear to stop working. That's why you get the spins. So if you try too hard to make human, earthly sense of which way is up and where you're going, then your evolved ape brain tries to do the math, realizes it doesn't make any sense and assumes you ate something bad. So your body is assuming that it's more likely that you ate some bad shrooms than you have somehow conquered physics. We're evolved to be hunter gatherers, we're not-”