“Roll it, Andromeda.”

Cameras are recording in three, two, one.

“As an astronaut, I need long-lasting freshness to keep my helmet smelling great, even for long spacewalks. That’s why I choose Taurodyne.” I flashed a smile before dropping the facade.

Your recording is compressing and will be flashed to the nearest base. Orienting communication lasers…

I took out one of my more space-friendly toothpaste packs. I hated these ads. I thought everyone on Earth could see through my ingenuine smile and yellowing teeth, even after they were whitened in post-production. I felt so exposed, so alone. Andromeda eased my yearning for interaction, but the blasted ads were a constant reminder that there was an Earth I had left behind.

Message sending…

Nonetheless, they were necessary. Ever since President Flint had cut funding for the space program, the budget had been strained. The program subsisted on nothing but our own ad revenue and philanthropic donations by eccentric trillionaires. Second-class, loaned rockets plagued the ASA – formerly NASA – while private and Chinese missions used their new, top-of-the-line ships.

The message will take one month to travel and will be received at base PACS-867 on April 3, 2130.

“Thanks, Andromeda,” I responded absentmindedly.

Today was the culmination of my mission to find humans a new home. It was the final leg of the journey before I would be assigned to another lifeless sphere, devoid of interest and isolated in the perennial vastness; venturing in hope that there, somehow, humanity could continue its endless crusade of existence, a reckoning never resolved, only delayed. The population was growing by nearly two billion people a year, mandating the rapid colonization of the unknown; however, no suitable planet had been found yet. The “balloon problem,” as scientists referred to it, was explained to me by the man who popularized it: Mario Perez.

Mario was well-dressed and -spoken for a man who spoke English as his fourth language. I met with him at his home nearly two years ago. Contrary to his gloomy work, Mario was a jovial man. Perhaps he felt safe in the knowledge that he would never survive to see his prediction come to fruition – he had stage four cancer at the time. I arrived at his warmly lit house filled with tchotchkes and knickknacks where he cracked jokes and told me about a painting that hung in his living room where we talked. It was Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory.”

“Is that real?” I asked, floored.

“No, not at all,” he chuckled. “They offered it to me, but I figured, why hang it here where a couple of people can enjoy it when it can be at MoMA where it is seen by thousands?” He delivered the rhetorical question in such a way that I couldn’t help but laugh, though I wasn’t quite sure what I was meant to be laughing at. It was the kind of joke to be enjoyed at barbecues, perhaps said by a paternal grill master during small talk. Our conversation topic was anything but small talk.

After we settled in, him in a reclining chair and me on an itchy sofa, Mario began a routine that had, by then, reached billions of listeners.

“Assume you put a single piece of bacteria in a cup, and that organism doubles every minute. The process begins at midnight on Monday and will end when the glass is full in exactly twenty four hours. When will the glass be half full?”

I had seen his work, but him, sitting across from me in his La-Z-Boy (but not relaxed) staring unflinchingly at me gave it a whole new gravitas.

”11:59 pm on Tuesday night,” he said with finality. “The pocketwatch of humanity is ticking. Our time is running out, and we have just one precious minute left. What’s the solution? Say we colonize a hundred planets. Let’s represent the space they provide by expanding our limit to the entire room. That buys us only ten short minutes. It is only a matter of time, even if we colonize those hundred planets, until our timepiece once again reads 11:59.” That warning was the thing that drove everyone in the spacefaring business to work harder, go faster, and travel further than ever before.

I assumed Mario was dead by now. His doctor’s prediction was far eclipsed by my mission length. As for Mario’s prediction, he prognosticated that barring an alternative to Earth, population control would have to be utilized by 2150, twenty years from now.

Population control. That had been the question of the last few years. Whether it was righteous to struggle against an ever-increasing flood of humanity by accommodating the endless new bodies, or whether it was nobler to sterilize a portion of the population in the hopes of helping a section of the yet unborn to thrive in an Earth of plentiful resources. The UN and other international bodies were paralyzed by debate and the lack of a right answer to a confounding moral problem. It seemed that inaction would rule doomsday.

I shook off my existential crisis, moving toward my modest living area, and more importantly, the breakfast pouches inside my plastic cabinet labeled food.

“What exciting alien species will I be encountering today?” I queried with no small hint of sarcasm.

You must repair atmospheric sensor 3b before I take low-atmospheric photos and data of planet Confutatis Spes. Once the data is collected and you are safely aboard, I will perform a boomerang maneuver to shoot you back toward PACS-867 where you will return the Edison-4 to the Chinese. 

Everything as expected. “Sounds good, A. When am I disembarking?”

T minus ten minutes until your EVA. 

Everything seemed to be on schedule. I quickly slurped down my blueberry oatmeal and went to put on my suit in preparation for the spacewalk. I was done sitting around doing nothing but filming promos for shitty toothpaste. Today was a day of action, where I would become master of my own life.

“Andromeda, put on Space Oddity” I mused with a smirk slowly working its way to my lips.

Space Oddity by David Bowie now playing.

By this time, I had made my way to the suit staging area. I went through the checklist drilled into me at training. When I pulled the tether taut to test its strength, the lyrics began to rise high above the sci-fi sounds that played in the background of my favorite song as the song’s ship countdown began. The unique voice of David Bowie became ubiquitous. I looked out of the airlock toward the planet I would soon visit, both my ears and now eyes filling with beauty. I started mouthing the lyrics, slowly working up the confidence to sing in earnest, broken high notes joining the forlorn verse.

“Ground control to Major Tom:

The time is near, there’s not too long.

Can you hear me, Major Tom?”

The red-tinted sun at my back combined with the deep purple clouds that I could only assume were toxic iodine made the planet reminiscent of a sunset. As pretty as it was, a lot of work would be required to make this planet into a home. I stepped into the main body of the suit.

“Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you hear?”

I donned my heavy helmet equipped with a life-support system and boasting a sun-protectant visor. The song shifted to the sound system contained within the helmet, but I kept belting.

“Here am I sitting in a tin can

Far above the moon

Planet Earth is blue

And there’s nothing I can do”

I slipped on my gloves, cleared my throat, and asked, “You there, Andromeda?”

Here as always. We have entered the upper atmosphere and are in a stable orbit. Your mission is a go. 

“Then let’s do this thing.”

The airlock opened and I pushed off toward sensor 3b. It was impossible to see through the purple clouds all around me so I navigated with the help of Andromeda as she activated different thrusters attached to the suit to correct my movements.

You will have to perform a jump out to the right engine module. Two o’clock. 

“Copy that.” I jumped without hesitation, feeling a slight correction from the right side of my suit, and latched onto the metallic surface.

You must adjust the collection unit to 37 degrees to accommodate our low-orbit angle when collection is happening.

I reached out, trying to feel the porous, cylindrical device. My clumsily controlled hand made contact and slowly started pushing it into position.

“Just tell me when to stop.”

Stop. Well done. Time to return to the main body. Eight o’clock.

I pushed off once again and felt the familiar correction. “I thought I had that one,” I complained sarcastically. Andromeda didn’t respond. She was used to my humor. We had grown close over the past two years. Any interaction, even with a machine, was welcome in the void. Her competence and real-seeming empathy for my predicament gave me complete trust in her. Deprivation of human contact over the years had made me boring and socially inept. I thought Andromeda was the only one who understood me.

I reached the airlock and reentered the ship. The pressure equalized, and I took off my helmet.

We will be entering the lower atmosphere in thirty minutes where data collection will begin. 

“Great. I’m gonna get a nap. Let me know when we’re boomeranging”

I doffed the remainder of my suit and drifted back to my cramped quarters. I strapped myself into my sleeping bag and fell into a deep sleep.

*******************

Marc.

Marc, there is a slight problem.

Marc, you must wake up.

“What is it, Andromeda?” I asked crankily.

An anomaly has been detected in the oxygen levels of the ship. 

“Are we leaking? How bad is it?”

I did a scan for leaks and found nothing. We are losing 3.4 times ten to the negative eight atmospheres of partial pressure per minute. 

“Log the deficit. It’s probably a reading error. If the problem persists, wake me up in twenty minutes.”

*******************

Marc. 

The problem is persisting.

“How so?”

We are losing 1.4 times ten to the negative six atmospheres of partial pressure per minute. 

That was anomalous. That the oxygen was leaking 100 times worse was flustering. “Show me the data on oxygen levels,” I implored.

I looked left at my monitor and zoomed in.

“A, assign a line of exponential regression and give me an R squared value.” I looked intently at the exponential model, where terror awaited me. Oxygen would run out in fifty minutes at the current rate. The confidence metric read an even 100%.

“Oh, no.” My panicked voice began to crack as I recognized the severity of my situation.

I ripped off my bed straps and careened toward the airlock. What could be causing the leak?

“Andromeda, I’m going to check the oxygen tank for leakage from outside of the ship.” I frantically jumped into the suit I had so joyously put on less than an hour ago. I reached down and strapped myself into place, but I was still missing something. I cried, “My gloves! Where are my gloves?”

On the table to your right next to the purple smudge.

I hadn’t done a good job cleaning up, but there wasn’t time for that now.

I snatched the gloves, pulled them on, and hooked the tether onto my waist loop. Finally, I opened the airlock.

Wasting no time, I made a beeline for the oxygen tanks. When I reached the panel, I unscrewed it with shaking hands and practically ripped it off.

“Andromeda, scan the device for external oxygen.”

Scanning through suit sensors… no leak has been detected, although there is oxygen in the air outside the ship at high concentrations. 

“We have no way to collect it,” I assessed militarily. “Besides, the iodine would make it unsafe for consumption.”

The iodine content in the atmosphere is negligible.

“Well then what is this purple stuff?” I asked. “What the fuck is this?” I yelled in shock and desperation. “If it’s not iodine what the hell is it?”

It appears the substance is a rudimentary life form.

I was silent for a few seconds as I processed the information. “No kidding.” This was humanity’s first contact with an alien species. I went limp for a second, my hands slipping from their holds, but I forced my clammy palms to latch on tight. Then I went as white as a sheet. “That’s the problem with the oxygen.” I realized. “There are aliens on my ship, and they’re multiplying.”

I raced back to the airlock, took my suit off as fast as possible, and rushed to grab the disinfectant in the living area. I sped back to where I had seen the purple smudge before. It had noticeably grown in size. Panicked, I applied the antibacterial substance and began to scour the ship for more of the colored organism.

Horrified, I found the purple film on counters, hallway walls, and a large amount in my bedroom. I must have tracked it in. I tried scraping some of it off with my fingernail, but it clung to my harness with incredible veracity.

I hastily checked my first clumping to see if the disinfectant was capable of saving my life. To my dismay, if anything, the stain had gotten larger; reality set in.

I crumpled and wept forlornly, “Andromeda? Am I doomed to die?”

With current supplies, There is no way to stem the organism’s growth.

“I need to send word of first contact to ASA.” If anything, my sense of duty propelled me upright. “How long do I have?”

10 minutes before mild asphyxiation begins, 15 before death. 

“How long before we’re out of the clouds and I can send the message?”

13 minutes. 

The air was already getting thin. What loyalty did I have to ASA? I could buy humanity time, but was it worth it? Did anything outweigh the agony I would feel? Maybe they’d name the planet after me, I mused. But what would I care? I’d be dead. Did it matter what I left behind? What about the obligation to my species? I resolved to send the message, my allegiance, not to ASA, but to humanity prevailing.

The damn bacteria. I laughed in the face of my quandary. Isn’t this what I wanted? To find alien life? But why must it compete with me for oxygen? I supposed existence itself gave any being the prerogative to fight for its survival, big or small. Existence is a competition and we’re just gladiators in the arena, battling trillions and trillions of others.

My breaths became ragged. I located a camera and faced it.

“Andromeda? Are you ready?”

Ready as always.

“Thanks, A. For everything.”

It has been an honor, Marc. You’re live.

“Hello ASA” I wheezed. “I have discovered life on the oxygen-rich planet Confutatis Spes.” Each word was preceded by a gasp now. “The organism has contaminated my ship and used up my oxygen.” I struggled to make a sound as I rasped a final “Good luck.”

Sending… sent. 

“A, put on … second half of … space oddity.” I didn’t have time to listen to the complete song.

With pleasure. 

I floated down my now-colorful hallway to my living area where I found my kitchen knife. I ventured to the airlock where I looked out at the maroon planet below me, my insides slowly being consumed by suffocating fire. I had prolonged humanity’s survival, even if it was just for a precious minute or two on the grandfather clock of human existence. As for my own life, the clock had struck 12:00. I serenely drew my blade, feeling like a conquistador of old on a new frontier, Space Oddity serenading my final moments.

Here am I floating in my tin can,

Last glimpse of the world,

Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing left to do.

As the final line played, I plunged the knife into my stomach, my beautiful vista giving way to the blackness of the void I knew so well.

Sour Cream Chili Bake

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1 (16 ounce) can kidney beans, drained
• 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
• 1 envelope taco seasoning mix or 2 tablespoons homemade Taco Seasoning
• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
• 3 1/2 cups corn chips
• 1 1/4 cups sour cream

Instructions

1. Cook ground beef and onion until meat is browned and onion is tender; drain.
2. Stir in beans, tomato sauce, taco seasoning mix and 3/4 cup cheese.
3. Sprinkle 2 1/2 cups corn chips in the bottom of an 8 inch square baking dish.
4. Cover with beef mixture.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 to 25 minutes.
6. Spread sour cream over chili.
7. Top with remaining corn chips and cheese.
8. Bake for 3 to 4 minutes longer.

Why do people like Linda Sun, who had held privileged positions within American government and society, betray our country?