I sit with my back to the window. I don’t know when I started doing that. Maybe something about staring into the vast abyss of space was becoming depressing. I don’t know. I think…I think I’m just tired. 

The radio softly crackles in my ear. 

In the days after the crash, we resolved to use it as protocol directed–only in case of emergency. Battery was spare, and, as the Captain said wryly, it wasn’t as if we didn’t know where everyone was. I forced out a chuckle, then, but it doesn’t seem funny anymore. 

I don’t remember who went silent first. We noticed the Medic–there one minute, gone the next–but that doesn’t mean anything. Disappearing was an easy trick. We couldn’t know until the roll started, and the gaps between names got longer, and longer, and longer. 

There’s no point in calling roll now. I know who’s on the other side, and she can’t hear me anymore. 

She’s crying again. 

I think, at some point, she forgot to turn it off. It doesn’t matter now. 

We talked a lot after everyone went silent–she told me about herself, her family down on Earth, the dog she’d rescued who’d died while we still up here, the twin boys that–and this went unsaid, but we both knew it was true–she wouldn’t get to see again. I didn’t know what to say at first. Eventually, though, it just poured out of me–the stories, increasingly random, with growing desperation to match. Soon the stories turned to confessions, and the confessions turned to secrets, secrets that neither of us wanted taken to our graves. In time, we ran out of secrets. Soon, she fell silent. 

I knew she was still alive, but she hadn’t talked–really talked–in days.

I still talk to her. Just in case she’s listening. Maybe because I think the silence will drive me mad otherwise, but who knows? I click my microphone on, wonder if her head turns at the sound. 

“When I was a kid, my family used to drive down to my godparents’ house for lunch after church. It’s been years since we’ve done that–everyone’s all grown up and moved away now–but I remember. Memory is a funny thing, though. 

I was so small. I only really remember doing it one time. I mean, we must’ve gone down there a hundred, maybe a thousand times. And if I try hard enough, I can remember stuff about their house–the big spiral staircase, my godmother’s shoe rack, their daughter’s room. It just doesn’t feel real to me, you know? Like something I was looking at through someone else’s eyes.” 

I stop to clear my throat, notice how dry my mouth is. I resist looking at my water supply. I know there’s nothing there. 

“That’s what this feels like now. Like…life down there is a million miles away, and I…” Bile rises in my throat as I stare at the blank, gray wall in front of me. “This is the only thing that we have, now. Are…are you listening?” 

Silence. Then–the low, near-imperceptible sound of someone breathing into the headset. 

“I can’t do this,” I say softly, half to myself. “If this is it–I can’t go out like…” I watch rays of light slowly begin to stream across the wall, a mocking imitation of the transition between day and night. I can’t do it. I can’t turn around and see the same empty expanse staring back at me. 

The radio crackles, hesitantly. I hear her breathing again. “…Is…the sun.” She pauses abruptly. “…Is it…can you see it…?” 

I 

turn 

my 

head.

I see blue. I see green. I see clouds. I see the sun, silhouetted against its distant shape. “Get up,” I breathe. “We’re going home.”