Author Information
Into Emptiness
Alexis Prado Martínez
Into Emptiness
The air was heavy with a morbid tranquility. His radio meandered silently above his head, its monotone voice never to fall upon attentive ears again, as he drifted aimlessly from compartment to compartment. The subtle airy whistle within the rubber veins of the life support system caught his attention. The needle of the gauge resiliently advanced into the red, like an inanimate Sisyphus. A jolt of pain ran through his hand as he replaced the depleted canister. An involuntary sigh escaped his lungs. Clinging to anger was futile, as the fist-sized craters on the aluminum wall made evident. It could not have been more than a few hours since he had torn the cramped capsule apart, in a frenzy, as he put his lifetime’s worth of training to use, all in vain. The deafening silence was only interrupted by the sporadic whirring of the thrusters far below. The mechanical coughs waned into a feeble whimper. An eternity later, the echoes of his breathing escorted him into a coma-like sleep. He awoke to a violent jolt that flung him against the quilt of wires that lined the walls. His ears rang from the bass explosion that reverberated through the titanium skeleton of the ship. The bloodcurdling, dissonant wails of the siren sent a shiver down his spine. With a hollow thud, the emergency blast door behind him sealed off the rest of the crippled ship. Through a small round porthole, he could see a gaping maw vomiting sparks where the power reactor once was. Greedy flames licked at ceramic panels and suffocated in the vacuum. It must have overheated somehow, but that was now irrelevant. He knew what was to come and, for the first time, the malevolent grip of terror seized him. The familiar hum of the shuttle decreased in pitch as it succumbed to its injuries. The faint glow of the cabin flickered out and he felt a dark embrace blanket around him. He made his way to the dimly lit porthole and stared for, what seemed to be, hours. His dazed eyes focused on the speckled expanse before him. Light gleamed off the trail of debris in the distance. He thought of home. Surely by now an image of the smiling, spacesuit-clad men would be beamed into millions of screens accompanied by somber eulogies. A melancholy smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He gazed emptily at the star-lit silhouettes of the three bulky suits next to the airlock. The face staring back at him through the shadows on the gilded dome was that of a stranger. He was a mote of dust, whisked by entropy’s callous will, drifting through everything, through nothing.
