Eliot Schrefer

Nowhere is truly empty. The thought makes me feel lavishly alone. Somehow, space is so deeply melancholy that it’s not at all sad, like a note so low it ceases to sound. Even my sorrow about my insignificance feels insignificant.

Here, isolated in space, it’s especially unnerving. This operating system, which has no limbic system and therefore no emotions, and which has my life in its hands, can lie.

“This is all that’s separating us from annihilation,” I say. “From dying in that void.”

“Please avoid the nihilistic tendencies in your personality profile. And ‘us’ is an inappropriate pronoun in this situation. I’d survive a hull rupture just fine.”