Controlled Descent

A story about holding on when everything seems to be falling apart. It’s one of the more reflective pieces in the field.

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I was born here — it’s the only world I’ve ever known, and it’s burning with me in it. Everything is shaking, me most of all. The alarms are all sounding but I can’t switch them off: I’m being crushed into my seat and the static is hissing in my ears, hateful. But the old watch on my wrist winks like an old friend. I come into my body and press my feet into the floor. My hands reach for the controls.

His hands, bandaged. The meds were all gone by now. They hurt—sometimes he’d cry out at night, deep in a fever dream. I’d change them every morning, his face flushed but set like granite. After a point, he wouldn’t let me change them anymore. “I’m fine!” he barked once, an angry staccato that was unlike him. I think he knew.

Back home, he used to say I’d get to visit the sea one day. Looking from up high, he said close your eyes, and I did. Now imagine, all those hills and valleys covered in water. From up here it looks blue, but down there it’s green, and it smells of salt. It moves in waves, and underneath, there are fish. But the sea was always too huge for my mind, and I’d burst out laughing. He’d laugh too. Sometimes, at night, I try to fill my mind with the sea, the waves, the glittering fish. Sometimes I see it.

There was a fire. We put it out, but not before it got to the computer and corrupted the files. We fixed what we could but there was only so much we could do. We managed to save the memories, though. Video, audio. The things that mattered.

When I woke, he was lying on the floor, arms folded on his chest. He’d been crying. But when he saw me, he smiled. His eyes, though…. He didn’t say anything. Then he slept. He didn’t wake.

I place my hand on the wall to brace myself. It is small, but strong. The watch ticks steadily. Through the viewport, a sphere:
white, green, brown—
and the blue.

The wide, wide blue.

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You might also like the reflective flash fiction Deep Blue Sky or the observational piece On Saturday.