Wednesday - October 15th, 2121:

Our home away from home hovered aloft in the void of space. Gravitating around the beautiful ball we called home. The Orion Space Station [O.S.S.] spectated the stars and the changes on our wondrous planet Earth. It remained a constant and stable reminder of humanity's achievements and the lengths they would go to to achieve them.

Granted, I did not care much for the grand history or the long list of accomplishments. For me, it was all about the freedom. And the peaceful days and nights—all sixteen of them daily. Ever since I could remember, I had wanted to be free, and now, finally, I could live out my dreams.

Today, I had a day off and was supposed to be free from my duties. But, of course, things were never that simple on Orion. Catherine begged me over the comms to do her spacewalk today. Please, oh, please! I'm so not feeling well! Her voice cut through my head between both ears from the comms.

I could envision the carefree smile that spread across her freckled face. Cute as it may have been, I knew it was a veil to her lies. Catherine was a special case aboard the Orion. She was lazy, incredibly so. She knew it. We all did. I never could figure out why she hated the Orion as much as she did or even why she resented doing anything worthwhile while on it.

But frankly, it had stopped mattering long ago.

Reluctance overcame me. These weren't my duties to perform, not today, at least. You really shouldn't go out there. Something gnawed at me in the back of my mind, a gut feeling or a mental one, to say the least. Inevitably, I decided to go ahead with the spacewalk despite the disgruntled buzz in my head. After all, being in the open vacuum of space. Just you and your lone thoughts. It was a feeling that one could never get sick of.

I came to the airlock and strapped into my spacesuit, one piece after another. The cumbersome weight quickly added up and bore down on my shoulders, but I knew it would turn into weightless bliss the moment I stepped out.

You always end up looking the best with that helmet on. It's a good way to hide that mug of yours. Roger's mischievous laugh broke from the comms.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes, even if Roger couldn't see it from the helmet's reflective visor. "Are you spying through the monitoring systems again? Not even a spacesuit can hide your stench, geezer. One of these days, you're gonna get Catherine's boot up your ass if you catch her changing into her suit."

Roger's laugh broke into a howling cheer. Yeah, right. Catherine would need to be willing to go on a spacewalk for that to happen.

By that point, I couldn't even retort and merely sighed. Roger got me there. To my dismay, I knew the painful grin he would have stretched across his leathery face. "I'll be off now. We can continue this in the meal hall. Save me some grub from that black hole you call a mouth."

Yeah, yeah. Sure thing. Go out there and be a pain in somebody else's ass. Roger said with a simple chuckle before silence returned.

I double-checked everything from my comms and SmartScreen to all the latches on my helmet and suit before checking that my tether was fastened securely to the eject point. It was a practiced chain of events. One that I'd done countless times in my six-year tenure. I started the sequence up, and the chamber began to decompress.

Once done, my body drifted out into the open void of space, surrounded by the shimmering translucent stars stretching beyond comprehension. The ethereal mists of space swirled freely around the Orion, and I drifted momentarily at peace, thinking of how it was still as beautiful as the first time I witnessed it. Even the buzzing, gnawing, anxiety-riddled chirp in my head seemed to fall into a serene trance as the solitary embrace of space wrapped around me.

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I craned my head toward the Orion, taking in its splendor. The O.S.S. was humanity's largest exploit to date. It was something our ancestors could only envision in their dreams. We went from a world where cars couldn't leave the tar-riddled roads to one where technology advanced by leaps and bounds with every passing quadrant, and the depths of the stars were only a journey away.

It was distracting being out in space alone. No matter the tasks I had to perform, it was so simple to get caught up in the sights and delay my work. But finally, I got to work. My body propelled itself from one satellite unit to the next. Inspecting and recording. The biggest hurdle was not processing the data but hurdling from one unit to the next due to the time it took to traverse the metallic titan.

Peaceful as it may have been, that peace could not last forever.

As I made my way across the final unit for the final circuit toward the entrance, a sudden change occurred in Earth's atmosphere. Pillars of light pierced out like porcupine quills, dotting the sphere endlessly. The quill tips swirled with an ethereal mist that floated innocuously with its greyish-blue desaturated hues.

The buzzing in my head resurfaced with a ferocity unfelt of before. It raged and gnawed and ate at my insides. If I could jump frantically, I would, yet I floated in the void with only my tether as a lifeline. "Roger, are you seeing this? Roger? Don't play games with me now, old man!"

"Captain Dostoevsky? Mayday! Captain, mayday! Can you not see this, Vlad? What's the status? Report! Dammit!" Silence mingled with the gnawing dread in my head. I pulled myself toward the Orion, but I couldn't help myself. I had to glance at Earth.

The spiraling mists enveloped the globe in a dense cover of greyish-blue, and from the ethereal mist covering Earth, a dazzling light began to glow. Intensifying with every moment as it began to spread toward the stars.

"Catherine? Jora? Steph? Roger? Vlad? Yuzu? Anyone respond? Guys! Respond! We have a crisis out here! Please, anyone, respond!"

My panicked cries stifled as the light erupted into a visceral flood of stimulation. I slammed on the emergency command on my SmartScreen, expecting the transportation sequence to begin. Instead, the robotic system aide nailed into me with its monotone voice.

[Anomaly Detected - Descent Protocol Engaged]

[ORION DESCENT IN: 10-9-8...]

I gawked at the message, thankful that my helmet covered my stupefied face. Descending meant an emergency landing on Earth. The same Earth that was screaming out with its painful light. "Captain, we cannot descend! Captain!"

Before I could even mutter another word of complaint, I felt the Orion envelop me in the transportation light. And I flew into the airlock, slamming against the wall.

Suddenly, screams and wails cut through my head. Why? Why are you doing this?

Think about this! You can't. You can't escape from this!

"Catherine? Roger? What's going on?" I cried out, the shakiness in my voice mimicking a wounded child. Something was wrong, terribly so! I tried to push myself up off the wall, but the Orion jolted, and I slammed into the wall again.

Everything spun out of control. I did not even know if it was me or the room spinning after a while.

Then, the light enveloped the Orion. It gave me no peace to collect myself. It gave no freedom to move or to find out what was happening aboard the station. It just came like the scorching sun. Searing the eyes and burning the flesh in its all-consuming grip.

All I could see was the light before me, behind me, and side to side of me. It wrapped everything in its eerie greyish-blue, and then everything stopped. Time, memory, even my very breaths seemingly halted into a spine-chilling stasis. I could not see the airlock or the O.S.S. I could not even see my hands fumbling in front of my face. What remained was deathly calm and silence that weighed like a thousand blackened stars bearing down until my consciousness blurred.

[3-2-1... Descent Protocol Established]

[Orion Down!]