Proxima B Vacation: An Absurd Physics Sci-Fi Short Story
Bob of Nobody finally made it to Proxima B, the planet of the perpetual sunset and the even more perpetual gravity anomaly. His flight was paid for in tear-stained dollars and mango juice, a testament to his grueling tenure as a piss-sic tutor. The resortāif you could call a cluster of interconnected anti-gravity pods a resortāwas a lonely outpost perched on the terminator, the thin line separating the planetās blistering day side from its eternally frozen night side.
With only a flimsy kite and a thermos of lukewarm Tang, Bob stepped onto the non-existent beach. The twin suns, Proxima Centauri and the distant Alpha Centauri A, cast a pale orange glow across the sky. The wind, a constant, gentle current blowing from the hot side to the cold, was perfect. Bob, however, was a problem. At 6'2" and 115 pounds, his malnourished frame was a perfect sail. The resort manager had warned him, handing him a lead-lined backpack. "You'll need this. The local gravity, it's... whimsical. You're a walking kite, son."
He strapped on the 40-pound pack, its weight a familiar pressure, like the collective existential dread of a dozen physics students. With the new weight, he was grounded. The kite, a simple rhomboid made of recycled starship foil, caught the wind and soared. Bob smiled, a thin, rare thing. He was a man-made satellite, his orbit held by a string, his anchor a bag of lead.
Suddenly, a gust of wind, a rogue fluctuation in the gravitational constant, lifted him. The kite dipped, but Bob rose. He soared, a stick figure against the twin suns, his lead backpack a useless anchor. He was a kite himself now, a human kite, and for the first time in a very long time, he felt a certain, ridiculous kind of freedom.
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Bob of Nobody stared at a weathered poster, āVacation to Proxima B: The Only Planet with a Sky that Cries Lollipops.ā It mocked him from the lamp post outside his tiny apartment for three months, a fluorescent beacon of unattainable escape. To buy a ticket, he needed more money than a Dyson sphere could generate in a decade. His only hope was tutoring, a task more depressing than watching a black hole slowly evaporate.
"It's justā¦ soĀ much," whined Emily, her voice muffled by the textbook she'd buried her face in. "Professor Eldridge said if I don't grasp the unified field theory, I might as well try to juggle black holes. He's scarier than Moff Tarkin!"
Moff Tarkin?Ā Bob thought, scribbling furiously on his notepad, then looked up at her. "Emily, focus. The unified field theory is about bringing disparate forces together. Like how you bring drama to every tutoring session". Emily's tantrum was just the start. He'd suffered through three more similar meltdowns before. Each tear, each hyperbolic complaint, was a fraction of a dollar closer to that lollipop-crying sky.
Then came the first-year, Leo. He cried about "the existential dread of quantum mechanics," especially after glimpsing the poster for Proxima B. "Itās too much! The universe is too big, and my brain is too small! Professor Jones said my understanding of basic kinematics was 'a quantum entanglement of ignorance and overconfidence'!". Leo then offered a single, crumpled dollar bill, sticky with tears and what might have been mango juice.
That single, pathetic dollar was the last piece of the puzzle. He had enough. Just barely. Bob had a ticket to Proxima B, and he didn't care if the sky actually cried lollipops, or if the gravity made him perpetually float two inches off the ground. He just wanted to be very, very far away from the human race and their physics-induced meltdowns.
And maybe, just maybe, heād send Professor Eldridge a postcard. One with a picture of a really intimidating alien.
Bob of Nobody, PhD in Piss-sics, stared into the swirling orange haze of Titanās atmosphere. He had been happy for a week. A glorious, delirious, seven-day stretch of pure, unadulterated joy. It had come after five years of grinding, soul-crushing work to earn his doctorate. Five years of late nights, caffeine-fueled panic attacks, and the constant, nagging feeling that he was an imposter. And for all that, he got one week of happiness. He sat on his checkered picnic blanket, a single sandwich untouched beside him, and asked the empty, methane-laced air, āWas it worth it?ā
His spaceship, a generic model with scuffed paint and a dented hull, was parked a short distance away. It wasnāt a status symbol; no oneās was anymore. Everyone had a personal spacecraft, much like everyone on Earth had once had a car. It was just how you got from one place to another, whether that was the local grocery or, in Bobās case, the largest moon of Saturn for some much-needed cosmic solitude.
He took a bite of his sandwich and looked out at the tranquil, rust-colored landscape. The liquid hydrocarbon lakes reflected the faint glow of Saturn, a beautiful ringed jewel in the distance. He had chosen this spot to contemplate because it was so profoundly, impossibly alien. The suffering of his PhD suddenly seemed so small, so terrestrial. Five years was a fleeting moment in the grand cosmic scale of things. A week of happiness was a triumph.
He finished his sandwich, packed up his blanket, and headed back to his ship. He still didnāt know why he had only been happy for a week. But on the surface of Titan, with Saturn on the horizon, he realized the question didnāt matter. What mattered was that he was happy now, on this quiet picnic, and that he had a PhD in Piss-sics. He smiled and took a deep breath of recirculated air. It smelled like freedom.
