The Station, Part 29

I can’t tell you just how free I feel right now. I’m a human being again. And it’s a wonderful feeling. After I removed the excursion suit my two small companions seemed to look at me in, I dare say, a more approving way even if I’m clad in this white undergarment. It’s not much protection against the elements but it’s still clothing. Oh, I can still talk to you via the commlink obviously. And without the helmet. I took it apart and removed the commlink and its attached power pack. I’ve slung that around my neck and positioned it so that it is in range of my mouth. Pretty ingenious of me, wouldn’t you say. Almost. Without the suit’s recyclers, there’s going to be that small problem of water. Getting to what remains in the suit was rather difficult, but my audience actually gave me some incentive to succeed there too. Couldn’t disappoint my audience even if they had no idea what I was doing, or any expectations. That being done, I drank the last of the water and silently thanked the stars that at least on this particular day, the temperature is rather pleasant. And I can smell the breeze. There’s a sweetness to it, some kind of pollen I suppose. Without the visor the day is brighter. And what I think I appreciate most is that, without the suit, I feel so much lighter. I have noticed something. I’ve lost weight. The almost inevitable paunch gained from too little activity and a superior officer to enforce it is gone. I haven’t seen my abdomen this flat for the better part of ten years I would think.

Now here I am, feeling all but naked, light and free, waiting to see what these man apes intend to do next. Our roles were temporarily reversed in that I became the leader in this game of “follow the leader”. I don’t think that’s the way it was supposed to go. I know. More baseless speculating on my part. Don’t get on my case about it. I’m just taking in the improbability of it all. Let me have my moment.

Standing here does remind me of my two friends from childhood. Two boys, brothers, from the next home over. They were younger than me, and shorter as well, which is where the reminder comes in. Why, for the life of me, can’t I remember their names? I played with them for at least two years before their parents were transferred offworld. I can remember their faces, that time we found the tadpoles in the shallow pond, but I can’t remember either of their damn names. The older one, he was the more adventurous of the two. His younger brother was kind of shy. How can I remember those things and yet forget what I had called them nearly every day for those two years? Memory, the absence of it, can be such a cruel thing.

It shouldn’t bother me this much, but it does. I want to be celebrating my newfound freedom, and yet I should be dreading it. Frontier is still nowhere to be found, and the more I think about the dream about her, the more I think I’m telling myself that if I find her, she’ll be just as overgrown as Sam’s station was. Then what? Where do I go? What do I eat? I wasn’t meant to live here at all. Is that what Sam was thinking? Is that why he gave himself the shot? Fuck me; I don’t even have that option.