Flashing: Space Opera

This is what I call throwing myself into it. I’ve never done sci-fi, let alone the obscure subgenre of Space Opera, a genre which, by definition, takes years and books and movies and generations to truly develop. A Space Opera is more concerned with the slow exploration of space than the quick action, laser fights, and alien wars you tend to get with basic sci-fi. Star Trek is a Space Opera. So how do I encapsulate a lifetime’s worth of space travel into a single 1000-word story? That’s what I kind of struggled with and came up with, “Space exploration gone horribly wrong.” I also tried to capture a truly omniscient voice. One that was lofty and filled with a sense of purpose.

As a reminder, this is all part of a writing experiment where I’ll be recreating the same story in different genres and forms every Monday through Friday for a full year. Some stories will be direct translations, some work off of the major themes, and some will focus on minor threads in the story. These stories are being published as I go. I’ll try my best to edit and rewrite but I can’t promise that any of these stories will be perfect in any sense of the word. This is all for fun and, ultimately, to improve my writing over the course of the year. You can track my progress here.

I hope you all dig it; I had fun writing it.

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What We Left Behind (863 words)

Steven grabs the leather satchel and turns to his mother. The satchel was his father’s. It’s old and worn and smells of ghosts. It’s filled with pictures and family recipes and various other keepsakes and knickknacks. The satchel was his mother’s idea. When Steven returns, thousands of years from now, he can track down his familial descendants and let them know what their long-dead and far-distant ancestors were like. Steven knows those conversations will never happen but he agreed to taking the satchel never-the-less.

“Goodbye, mother.” Steven stands at the door, one hand on the knob and the other clenched white and shaking around the satchel handle. His words are rehearsed and heavy. “I’m going to see the stars. By the time we reach our first destination everything I know in this world will likely be gone. We’ll have hundreds of stops after that. I’m going to see things that, until now, man has only dreamt of seeing. I’ll age a couple of decades in the process while civilizations crumble and rebuild here on earth. It’s hard. I think about the consequences of this journey every single day. I am going to miss you the most, but I need you to understand why I’m doing this.”

His mother wraps her arms around her son and falls into him. She’s warm and wrinkled and mortal. There are a million things she wants to say, one thing she knows she should say, and the one thing she actually will say. She kisses his cheek and tells him to go to the stars.

Mission Control. Steven boards the EX-02, brimming with excitement. His crew calls in their final farewells. One of the scientists, Craig Thigpen, is leaving a wife and kids behind. He’s so focused on the mission and history and science that he doesn’t spare any of them a second thought. The countdown begins. The EX-02 launches. They escape the earth’s atmosphere. It’s impossible to predict what the earth will look like if and when they return.

The crew enters their temporal-physical stasis chambers. Before they sleep, before they plunge into near-light speeds and traverse countless miles of empty space, Craig turns to the rest of the crew and says, “Wouldn’t it be ironic if we created a warp drive five years from now?” Everyone has second thoughts as the chambers seal them in.

Steven sleeps. In his dreams he visits his mother at the hospital. She is on her deathbed, no-one by her side. He reaches out to touch her cheek and she collapses into space. She goes from protostar to zero age to supernova and spreads out into the cosmos and destroys her immediate existence while laying the foundation for a new one. The process repeats. His mother is reconstructed and deconstructed over and over and each time he does nothing except observe and record.

Steven wakes. He spills out of the chamber and vomits. He is emaciated. He can not see, he can not hear. He can not stand, he can not kneel. He lies on the ground in a pool of his own excrement and tries to make a sound. Someone speaks, and he hears it clearly. “Just think. I can hear you.”

“Who are you?”

The stranger’s voice is mechanical and distant. “We were you, close to a hundred thousand years ago. You would not recognize us now. Your ship is legend. Your light drive is primitive. Your mission was incredibly irresponsible and pointless. Your sustaining chambers were flawed and inspired by lunacy, as well.”

The stranger’s words leave Steven hollowed and broken. “Where are we?”

“You would know it as the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy.”

“This was supposed to be the end of our journey. Can I see it? Can you get me to the window?”

“You will die soon.” There is no sympathy in the voice. “No-one else in your crew lasted more than five minutes.”

“Please, just get me to the window.”

Steven feels his body rise off of the ground. He floats on nonexistent streams, his world is darkness.

“I can’t see.”

“No, you can’t.”

Steven continues to move. His lungs are broken. His kidneys are failing.

“You are at the window, now.”

Steven sees nothing.

“Do you see my satchel? It’s brown leather.”

“Picture it.”

Steven pictures his father’s satchel. His father used that satchel for as long as Steven can remember. It was always filled with papers and books and pipe tobacco. He would bring it with him to family functions and hand out copies of classic literature to all of the cousins. Lewis Carroll, Jules Verne, and Isaac Asimov – they were all blessed gifts of escape and promise and progress. After a while it was also filled with his father’s medications. Now it’s filled with family heirlooms that should not have left earth.

The bag falls into him. It’s cold and smooth and eternal. He thinks, “I’ve learned nothing from my father.” His heart shuts down and collapses into itself. His father’s satchel is so heavy it feels as if it is being pulled into his chest. Like no memories can escape. No dreams can exist. Everything is lost forever, even the stars.

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