Project Erid - EVA Training
“You have to learn sometime.” Marc crosses his arms and watches as I somewhat aggressively clean off my desk and workspace. Thankfully my mom had thought to put a lab full of experiments needing to be done on this ship. I would have gone crazy without it.
“There is literally no reason for me to need to know how to do an EVA. That's why you’re here.” I shove my glasses back up my nose. I’ve really got to fix these things or else I’m going to lose them.
“What if something happens while I’m out and I need your help? You won’t even know how to put on your suit properly.” He sits down on my desk, successfully blocking all reorganizeing that could have been done on it.
“Nothing bad’s going to happen, and I’m never going to have to do an EVA. End of story.” I rip my newest notebook from underneath him, sending the papers resting in its pages everywhere.
“What’s so scary about it? It’s no different than being here.” He thinks for a moment. “Or is this a weird American thing again?” God you make one stupid niche reference and suddenly everything is a weird American thing.
“No, it's not a weird American thing. I, along with people from all the countries, don't exactly feel comfortable floating around in a complete and total vacuum that could kill me if even the slightest thing is wrong.”
“That’s essentially how we are living right now.” He sifts through one of the files on my desk before fishing out a ship spec list.
“And how is that?” I sigh, walking back over to him. I guess if I’m not going to sleep tonight it better be for a good reason.
“Read” He holds up the paper for me to read. “The entire ship is essentially just a few layers of metal. How is that any different than going out there?” I grab the paper and read the specs even though I already know that he’s right. There are only a few layers of metal between me and instant death. Rocket ships are terrifying. Like did you know the Apollo 11 was able to land on the moon with less tech than we have in a modern phone.
“Look, if I let you show me how to put it on, will you leave me alone for the rest of the day?” God I sound like my mom…
“And let me depressurize the airlock.” Look, I know if he does that he’ll just end up talking me into going outside of the ship because logically I’m already that far, but dammit let me have the delusion that he’ll actually be a decent person for once.
“Fine but only the airlock.” With a rare smile he leaves my workspace finally to go find where mom stored my EVA suit.
That's how we ended up here. Floating in the airlock, with Marc flat out refusing to let it pressurize until I:
“Take a quick float around the ship. Would be a waste if you didn’t really.” I swear to god I’m going to kill him. Like actually kill him. There's nothing Erid (as we’ve come to call the ship) can do about it. And I’m going to enjoy every damn second of it.
“I’m fine floating in the ship thank you very much.” I hold onto my tether, trying to disguise exactly how tight I’m clutching it with the large EVA gloves.
“Suit yourself.” With that he opens up the outer hatch of the ship and floats out, using his tether to stay connected, but still climb onto the side of the ship.
“Marc wait-” I make the mistake of moving forward and end up moving far quicker towards the exit than I had anticipated.
I float straight out of the door before my tether snaps tight and brings me back in again. This time Marc grabs onto my arm and places my hand on the outside of the ship.
Holy hell I’m actually in outer space.
“See? Nothing to worry about.” I move my tether next to his and glare at him through the helmet.
“Nothing to worry about? You just basically kidnapped me into the outside of our ship. If something goes wrong to both of us Erid will literally have no way to continue or get any of the stuff we brought for Mr. Grace-”
“Grace.” He cuts me off. “He refers to just being called Grace.” He starts to move off, forcing me to follow him. I could just wait for him to come back, but knowing Marc he’d probably hide out somewhere until I got bored enough out of my mind that I came to find him.
“My point still stands.” I shuffle after him, begrudgingly letting him show me how to properly move along the ship, and not float away into the vast expanse of nothingness.
Once we find a good spot, he flips around and stares out.
“This is why I really like it out here.” I do the same move, almost floating away but Marc gently puts my hand back on the rail.
I peer out and sure enough there's nothing.
But describing it like that doesn’t do it justice. There's not nothing. There's billions of stars and we’re just sitting among them, watching them. There's no sound other than our soft breathing coming through the coms.
Nothing moves for light years and light years. Not a single inch. And here we are. Drifting gently among it all.
We are nothing but little specs of dust passing by these giant stars. Little blips of life and time. We are nothing more than ants compared to them.
“This is the only place you can feel true peace.” Marc’s voice filters over the coms. “It’s what you would call a ‘happy place' for me.” We take one last look at the light pricked blackness that surrounds us before he motions for me to start heading back. I think I understand why he really wanted me to learn how to EVA. It had nothing to do with if something went wrong, he just wanted to share something that you can’t find anywhere else…
“Hey Marc?” I pause my awkward side shuffle to look back at him.
“Thank you for showing me this.”
