by Stephen King
“I’m not convinced,” he said, feeling emboldened by it, suddenly, as if having Mom to argue with was exactly what he needed in order to believe in what he was saying.
“Well, do. Do be convinced. Fixating on life out here is as silly as fixating on death at home.”
But Steve brought his nose to the glass and stared deep into the miasma beyond. He pressed one hand against the wall and, for the first time, wanted to touch Jupiter, wanted to actually feel what the planet felt like, to smell it taste it hear it without the protection of the Glasgow walls.
He thought he could hear Mom breathing, through the speaker, or like she was in the room with him, behind him, so clear that he turned to face her and then after finding nobody no Mom he turned to face the wall again and thought maybe it was the sound of Jupiter breathing, the planet itself, and all this pigmentation, this iridescence, was the effluvium of a single intake held, then released, his apartment riding the living waves of something so large, he couldn’t see it.
Mom told him he’d reached the equator but Steve didn’t need to hear her say it; it’d been a month in the apartment and the world outside his walls went solid white, solid blue, then colors too deep for his human eye to process. He knew that the core of Jupiter was hot, sun-hot, and he knew too that it was larger than the Earth, much, but the jets had steered him far enough away from the ice and rock to be safe, leaving him momentarily in a sort of interstellar purgatory, a less interesting, less colorful limbo.
And yet …
It was here, level with the center of Jupiter, that Steve saw a form so complete, so perfectly made, that there was no way (to him, for him) to credit a random crisscrossing of mists.
It was a man, something like himself anyway, with two legs and two arms, no apartment to speak of, though Steve looked for one, thinking (perhaps crazily) it was a fellow Dropper. He asked that the lights be turned up, brighter, but was informed that they were set at their maximum luminosity, and there was no greater vision to achieve.
That was okay. Steve believed he had seen it; swarmed by piebald worms, flashes of frightening gales, swallowed by a gob squall, an inhuman blizzard at Jupiter’s equator.
Or below it now. Steve wasn’t sure. As the colors began to resemble the hues he’d seen days prior, still on his way to the equator, perhaps he was seeing their mirrored selves from.
If you think you see life on Jupiter …
A touch on his shoulder, cold fingers, and Steve turned to see an athletic woman, full lips, her belly showing beneath the fabric of a loose fitting half shirt. He glanced once more through the wall, suspicious in that moment that someone was trying to distract him, then faced her again.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” she said, and Steve kissed her, held her close and tried not to think of Amy driving away from the house, the silhouette of the kids in the backseat, their small heads, Amy driving up Miller, away from him, the same street he’d been driving when he struck (no, nicked ) that poor man who was kind enough to smile after averting a much worse accident only to discover it hadn’t been averted; still falling back, dropping, south of the equator now, toward a tree that would connect just hard enough to kill him.
How could Amy take that street? Of all the streets in the world to drive away on … how could she take Miller, the very street that had delivered them all their problems to begin with?
“Hello,” the woman said again, her voice a hair too tinny, just unreal, justifying perhaps the death-creed of The Jupiter Drop, the “YOU ARE MISTAKEN” that rattled in Steve’s mind like loose teeth, extra marbles, rolled for the noise of it, the roll of it, entertainment in place of television, a computer, even the cosmic masterpiece beyond.
Steve got on his back as the woman sat up, he inside her, he looking at her, watching the rise and fall of her small breasts, the way her rubber lower lip hung loose when she opened her mouth to moan, watching her, no doubt not looking past her, not above her, not beyond her, not intentionally, to the ceiling, lit up, but finding himself staring there indeed, because something had moved, yes, something was crouched upon the glass ceiling and was peering into the apartment, into the life within.
“Get off me!” Steve cried. He gripped the woman by the waist. His fingers sank into the rubber too far, unnaturally, and he pulled her aside. He rose, standing on the bed, pointing to the ceiling, crying look! LOOK! But he wasn’t (couldn’t be) sure himself, as the colors sifted again, the tendrils of murky fog dispensed then returned in the form of a new shape. No. He couldn’t be sure he’d seen anything at all but as the woman spoke and as Steve stepped from the bed to the floor, racing for a different angle, a fresh view of the receding pattern above him, he couldn’t shake the image of something crouched, followed by that something sucked up, vacuumed, into Jupiter’s cruel sky above.
Steve wondered, is this what it’s like, dying and being dead?
Six weeks deep and falling through a planet alone had gotten as lonely as advertised. And yet, Steve did have a hobby; the continuous staring through the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Most nights he’d wake, call for the lights, look under his bed, find a cluster of clouds approaching, maroon shapes that might have been larger than the Earth or as small as the mattress that held him. Sometimes he’d cry, from the sheer awesomeness of it all; other times he’d stare, waiting to see something staring in return.
Mom told him they were level with the Great Red Spot, though the apartment was much too far from it to see.
“I’m going to take a shower, Mom.”
Up and out of bed, Steve couldn’t be sure if it was night or day and these terms didn’t mean much to him now. He felt buried, buried alive, and wondered, with alarming regularity, if this was what death felt like; the dark colors, the emptiness that wasn’t really an emptiness, the vast and brilliant existence that he couldn’t touch.
No more than Dennis Coleman could touch another tree.
“Go ahead, honey. Make sure to wash behind your ears.”
Steve crossed the apartment and felt a slight tremor, turbulence, though it was never as bad here in Jupiter as it was in the simulated apartment on the flight through space. He paused, waited for it to pass, and continued to the corner bathroom. There he disrobed and ran the water, able to see the currents swirl down into the drain and leave the apartment immediately, falling into the abyss below, as if Steve were responsible for the tiniest raincloud in all this storm.
He stepped inside and closed the white curtain though there was nobody to see him showering. It was all beginning to be too much for Steve; the onslaught of impossibly gorgeous images, the endless run of brilliance, zenith sights, the apex of human observation. Sometimes it felt good to draw the curtain on that.
Steve lowered his head under the hot water. He closed his eyes and opened them to see the bar of soap was down to a sliver; he’d need to open a new one soon, next shower. He ran shampoo through his hair and hummed a tune. He closed his eyes. He opened them, watched the water rain out through the floor as if there was no floor at all, as if Steve showered without an apartment, just a man standing above it all, falling, cleaning himself on the way.
Steve washed his face, rubbed his eyes, closed them, opened them and saw a shadow, something obscuring the light beyond the white curtain that cocooned him.
“Mom?” It was the first word he thought to call.
Yes, he thought. It looked like the shadow of a person.
Steve held the edge of the curtain. All he had to do was pull it aside, fast, and see what was there, what was pressed to the glass, what blocked the light.
“Yes, dear?”
Mom’s voice, Mom talking, asking after him, asking if he was okay.
Steve pulled the curtain aside and was sure, sure, that he had seen it move, tear itself from the glass, allowing the atmosphere of Jupiter to reclaim it, to vacuum it back into obscurity.
But Steve saw nothing against the glass. Nothing remained.
“Mom,” Steve sa
id. “Did you see something, someone, outside?”
That smiling breath from the speakers.
“There is no life on Jupiter, honey. If you think you saw life on Jupiter, you are mistaken.”
Steve turned off the water but did not step out from the shower. Instead, he stared long through the glass, imagining something capable of flying out there, something strong enough to withstand the storms.
And the isolation, too.
Steve knew it was the worst thought he could allow himself to have.
I wanna go home.
It was a thought he’d had in Germany, when he and Amy had taken a trip, this before the kids and long before the accident on Miller Street. They’d scheduled three weeks but Steve got the itch, the bug to leave, ten days deep. Almost involuntarily he’d voiced it. A fight ensued.
I wanna go home.
Bad thought to have while falling through Jupiter.
Sitting at the table, Steve laughed.
Oh, Amy, he thought, if you could see me now. You thought Germany was a mindscrew?
Taking his glass of orange juice, Steve rose from the table and stepped to the kitchen counter.
On the way he saw a man tapping on the glass wall.
Steve dropped the orange juice. It pooled by his feet, clung to him, as if frightened of the storms below.
The man was alive, yes. Tapping on the glass.
He wore a suit. His hair flapped from the fall. Steve looked to his feet.
He was floating. Yes, nothing to support you out there.
Steve screamed. Like a child, like one of his own children, he screamed and he stepped on a piece of the broken glass and brought his foot up to his hands but did not take his eyes off the man outside his apartment.
“Hi, Steve.”
Words? Actual words? Steve heard Mom’s voice above, asking if he was alright, telling him no, he must be mistaken, there is no life on Jupiter.
Lightning flashed beyond the reach of the apartment lights and Steve saw the man in full. Thin enough to be skeletal. Like he’d worked hard all his life.
In the flashing lightning, Steve approached the wall.
The man did not fly away.
Another tap on the glass.
Lightning; rash pink clouds; green tendrils beyond the man, mindless disorganized eels in the mist.
A tap. A tapping.
“Stevie, buddy. I’m coming in.”
More assured now, and Steve, shaking his head no, no man could survive out there, no, this is mistaken I am mistaken no, Steve standing at the glass, his own nose only the width of the wall from the other’s, only the glass between them.
Then a flash of lightning, bright enough to expose storms Steve hadn’t known he was traveling through, dropping through, and in this new light the man blinked, Steve was sure of it, and his expression silently said,
Whether or not you want me to, Stevie ol’ buddy, I’m coming in.
“LIGHTS!” Steve shrieked and the lights went off and the world outside the apartment went black and Steve, trembling, inched back from the glass, one hand out behind him, feeling for the bed, finding the bed, then crawling up and onto it, under the covers, where he could hide like his children used to, crying out for their parents in the night, Daddy! Mommy! running down the carpeted hall to knock on his and Amy’s bedroom door.
We’re coming in! They’d cry.
Ready, Stevie, buddy?
“NO!”
Steve screamed it and he screamed it again and Mom came to him, Mom’s voice as concerned and wise as the real thing.
“Steve, dear? Do you know we’ve passed the Great Red Spot? Did you know we’re that deep into the planet now? Don’t worry, dear. And don’t cry. If you cry you’ll blur all these beautiful sights and won’t see a thing.”
And Steve in the dark, on the bed, clutching the bed sheet, shaking his head no as Mom carried on, in beat with the tapping, the tapping of bone thin fingers against the glass wall of the apartment.
The bowels of Jupiter, storms, endless, but only the sounds now, only the music they made.
Steve in the dark. No lights on in the box.
Do you remember when Amy told you that you smelled different? Do you remember thinking it meant she’d fallen out of love with you? You were wrong. It was dying she smelled. You’ve been dying since you nicked the knee and the head nicked the tree. You’ve been falling back, dropping, like Dennis fell back, dropped. He was smiling. You remember that? You were smiling, too, when you told the waitress you might try it out, take The Jupiter Drop. You were smiling and she was smiling and Dennis was smiling, saying without words that was close, thanks for stopping, could have been a lot worse until his expression changed, involuntary, contact with the tree, a sudden scrunching, the air sucked out of him.
The air has been slowly vacuumed from Dennis Coleman since. Dehydrated flesh. Airless body. Did you see that man, Steve? Did you see that life on Jupiter?
No no! No life on Jupiter.
So is this death?
“Steve, honey?”
Mom.
Mom’s voice in the dark. How long had Steve been sitting in the dark? Falling? Dropping without an image beyond the glass walls, nothing to see, nothing seen? He’d eaten in the dark. Pissed and shit, trembling, in the dark. Slept and woke and waited and slept again.
“Yes, Mom?”
“We’ve reached the far south temperate zone. Not much longer to go. A shame really.”
Steve nodded in the dark. Wiped his nose in the dark.
No, this isn’t death, he knew.
Right?
This was just the Drop. Surely if he’d read the pamphlet he’d have been warned of mistaking life for death and vice versa.
Maybe there had been no man at the glass. No man in a suit. No man who said hi Steve, I’m coming in Steve, are you Steve?
It was a strange feeling, the want to be delusional.
“Mom?” Steve asked, his voice so vivid, physical in the dark.
“Yes, dear?”
“What do you know about cabin fever? About hallucinations?”
Trembling, shaking for days.
“Well if you’d read the brochure you’d know that hallucinations are very common, and they usually come in the form of things that do bother you in your ‘real’ life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, honey, a man who is worried about money may hallucinate open suitcases full of dollar bills falling through Jupiter, too. A wife worried about her cheating husband may hallucinate an affair in the clouds out there. Strictly speaking cabin fever, since you asked.”
Steve looked up to the ceiling, saw lighting so far away, the quick spread of purple veins in a blue thumb, then gone, swallowed by the enormous blackness again.
“Mom.”
“Yes, dear?”
“Let me know when it’s the day we land.”
“Sure, dear. But why? That’s still another week away. You’re not planning on sitting in the dark all that time, are you, dear?”
Steve didn’t answer. He kept his ear to the walls, to the ceiling, to the floor, where he thought he heard something, a scratching, a different sort of tapping, the sound, perhaps, of cold hard fingertips pressing buttons, attempting to discern the code that unlocks a door.
“Steve, dear.” Mom said, with no visible speaker to give the words shape. “We land today.”
Still, the dark. Still.
Steve sat up in bed. He’d been teetering on the steeple of sleep.
“Thank you,” Steve said anxiously, swinging his legs over the mattress side.
He crossed the apartment fast and felt for the coffee maker then made himself coffee in the dark.
“Thank you for everything.” His genuine gratitude for all Mom had done for him these last two months.
He was close, close to the catch pad, New Jupiter Station 2, close to exiting this apartment and boarding the Disney shuttle back to Earth.
He knocked into a cupboard
and something fell inside it, a glass perhaps, and the sound startled him. Sounded something like a closed fist on a glass wall.
He packed in the dark. Feeling for his shirts and pants scattered by the side of the bed. Outside the apartment, he could still hear the storms. Mad Jupiter wheezing.
The ride was almost over.
He latched his suitcase closed, sat on the bed, and waited.
And waited.
He fell asleep this way, sitting up, then woke to the sound of a voice.
“This isn’t Dropping. Stevie.”
Steve leapt from the bed, away from the sound, and crashed against the glass wall.
Lights, he thought. Tell Mom to turn on the lights.
“Who’s there?!” he screamed.
“This isn’t Dropping,” the voice repeated. (a man, a thin man in a suit, a man who can survive out there OUT THERE!! ) “Do you wanna Drop for real?”
Steve looked down, but down was the same as up, the same as side-to-side. All dark. The distant veins of red lightning in all directions.
“MOM!”
“Mom can’t help you anymore, Stevie.”
Only a voice in the dark of the apartment.
“Who―”
“You’re a big boy now. All grown up. What can Mom do for you that you can’t do for yourself?”
But Steve heard her, in the distance. Mom was talking to him. Telling him he was mistaken.
Lights, Steve thought again. But he didn’t want to see this man, didn’t want to see him seated at the kitchen table, his legs crossed, any expression on his thin face.
“This isn’t free-fall,” the man said. And his voice the whistling of a cosmic wind over teeth. “If you wanna really Drop, you gotta step outside.”
Steve shook his head no in the dark.
“No,” he said. “No no no no―”
“Yes. Go on, Stevie. Step outside the apartment. Free fall.”
Steve slumped down against the wall. Fell to a fetal position on the glass floor. He looked through it, below, down, into the dark. And deep in there he thought he saw a light. Not the celestial light of another storm, but something more familiar. A bulb, perhaps. A man-made flicker in the abyss.