Re-entry

He was alone.

The capsule opened with no dramatic hiss as he had felt it should have when he first saw it.

Science fiction had always been a great love of his.

It was the reason why he had worked since adolescence to become a part of the NASEI: New Age Space Exploration Initiative. But as he had discovered over his career the real thing was not so glamorous in the details. As a cadet he had learned that space exploration was about science and the advancement of knowledge.

It was governed by protocol, regulation and hard work.

But, this did not temper his imagination nor let him ignore the thrill of living his dreams. The little moments like lift off, manoeuvring the shuttle manually or being the first man to lay eyes on an alien planet from orbit…

He lay there a moment, beginning to shiver and letting his body work out the stiffness with small movements and tensing of his muscles. He was not cold, but the body had to catch up biologically with the effects of the cryo sleep. His imagination and this feeling of being in an adventure is what kept him sane during the 2 years he was awake in the 16 year mission.

A numb smile tried to force its way onto his face, feeling crooked. He realised that he was 41 years old. Though his body had aged only 4 years during the mission. Cryo slowed the bodies’ processes down to a near imperceptible level; you were dead, apart from the nanytes within you preventing any slow decomposition. The irony of Cryo is that your greatest fear is that something would go wrong during travel time and you would never wake, but of course you would never know if the thaw process was not initiated.

He had felt that fear.

He made his peace with a god he didn’t believe in and let the tranquiliser send him to the unknown.

Still shivering he began the long process of removing all the IV tubes and electrodes attached to him in the correct order. This process served to loosen his joints and muscles and wake up his mind. ‘Like a personal diagnostic’ they had told him. The Nanytes would already be dissolving with the heat of his body and he would be at the mercy of technology no more. Removing the last IV connected to his femoral artery he left the connector in as ordered. Removal would result in him bleeding out in seconds. The line in would dissolve and heal quickly, but he was very careful not to rupture it nonetheless.

Another boyish glimmer of glee as he pushed off and floated slowly through the length of the shuttle towards the command module aft, weightless. Artificial gravity was a luxury only available for 3 hours a cycle while on mission. It was costly in terms of energy and had served only to slow the process of muscle atrophy and osteoporosis, also providing some normality to being lightyears from home and so totally alone. But he had never gotten over the novelty of weightlessness. He was slimmer than he had been when he boarded. His muscles had faded during the 2 years he was awake and he would feel weak when he touched down.

On he floated, through his living quarters, past the narrow ablutions and over the lab deck where his precious findings were recorded and where his even more precious samples were stored.

Reaching the command module he made contact with his index finger on the head cushion and swung around and over it perfectly and into a seated position, as he had hundreds of times while on mission. The room was flooded with blue light as he strapped in.

The deep space sail was folded and before him was Earth. The shivering had abated but he began to shake once more. His jaw and lip began to tremble and the flood of emotion he had been expecting washed over him like the great oceans he now observed, and had missed like no other human ever had. Tears ran freely from his eyes creating a pattern of shining blue droplets in front of his face as the light of his planet shone through them. As he sobbed with joy he caught them and continued to rub his eyes with his sleeve to prevent any water getting on the equipment. It would not harm the electronics of course but the inevitable and bizarre shame that comes with crying as he was caused a need to do something, to move apologetically. He tasted his salt tears and felt the deepest longing to be immersed in the ocean that was the mother of all life on his planet, of himself. His breathing ragged, he began to get a hold of himself.

Long deep breaths.

He had trained for this.

But actually feeling it was very different.

In front of him could only be the Pacific Ocean. He saw a sliver of green that must be the Americas on one side and the edge of a yellow landmass that must be Australia. The recognisable island off that coast was New Zealand. He was not looking at the planet ‘the right way up’, though, the south pole glistened white on the far right of the sphere and NZ lay in the far ‘south’ of his perspective. But it was much closer to Antarctica than he remembered and covered completely in white…

He had been away too long… his mind was playing tricks on him, he thought, but he stared for a moment longer before initiating the handshake protocol.

He continued breathing and going through the motions of activating the interface, his hand hovered over the touch screen for a moment before he initiated radio contact.

This was it.

He was about to hear another human voice. The thing he had craved for so long. 2 years was a long, long time to be alone. He had had his work and the latest in virtual reality to entertain him, but he had gone back into Cryo for the return trip with a deeply profound understanding of the need for other humans. For company and contact. He hoped so strongly that the first voice he heard was a woman’s. To hear those soft tones would be ecstasy for his longing ears.

He touched the screen and waited.

 

After 20 minutes of anxious waiting that felt like the two years all over again, he ran a diagnostic on the radio systems.

All green.

He hailed and re-hailed, sent multiple messages, attempted to contact individual satellites and drew blood biting his lip. In this time the planet had loomed closer and the shuttle had spun and begun to move into orbit. The landmass of Australia moved under him and he noticed that something was wrong. It was turned slightly… Papua new guinea had merged with the north western tip of Australia and all the islands of Indonesia seemed squashed together. The planet moved in slow motion below him and all the landmasses seemed warped. Closer together or further away, he recognised nothing after Australia. The shuttles electron compass defined longitude and latitude and it was taking him to mission control at NAISC, the New Age International Space Centre, England.

After the global recession and the subsequent revolution almost two hundred years before he was born, the UK became a centre for research and technology. With no resources except their position at the forefront of scientific discovery, corporate government became a reality and the UK was born as the international communities science department. The revolution brought consciousness on a global scale and humanity pooled their resources, striving together as one to build a better future and to move forward in the nature of the human spirit, to explore.

A waypoint popped up on the screen, his LZ was in twilight and it would be night when the recovery team arrived for him.  The sun shone over the curvature of the planet hiding the alien geography.

The shuttle began its re-entry through the atmosphere. Auto-pilot was in control so all he could do was sit back and grimace in G-force, alone with his thoughts.

Have I been alone too long?

Am I still sane?

His view filled up with fire as the shuttle entered the atmosphere of his home world.

He felt sane…

A sure sign of madness, he thought.