I could spend days dreaming like this.

When the breeze blew, it was like Mum’s soft, fresh biscuits were pressed right against my cheeks. It was a kind of warmth that felt like you were never going to be alone again. Smelling the air was like caressing each individual petal of the dancing lilacs.

“It’s just sensory overloadin’, don’t get ahead of yourself,” Avery tried to remind me. I had a Mark 22 Arcanius Personal Protection Pod mounted around my body, decorated with the flags of many powerful governments and millions of US Dollars and Euros alike spent to build it.

“I… like the colors…” I mouthed, I think. I wanted to tell him just how much I loved spending the time out here with him. “I didn’t know I’d get to see something like this in my lifetime.”

“Eris, you’ve got to set down the cryo-meds,” Avery’s voice boomed in my comms again. “It’s just a gas giant. Nothin’ much more. Enjoying the surveillance route though?”

I was floating, now. Floating just off main airlock back into The Phoenix, with a long, white cable, keeping me attached to the vessel. I kept my hand stretched out and wondered if I would ever be able to tell Mum about all of this.

“Pops would be proud of me, I think,” I mumbled. I swallowed at the tears that I couldn’t keep back that muddied my eyes, making it difficult to see the shuttle behind me. “Avery I can’t-- I can’t do this--”

“It’s all right, Love,” he called me. “I’ll suit up and pull you back. It’s external, I’ll have to come ‘round the long way, so just hold on a minute, and keep lookin’ out there, yeah? Remember the pretty… biscuits…”

“I mean do we have to go back to cryo? We’ve… we’ve been in it for so long… When do we get to go home? I want to see my Mum, Avery-- I want to go home…”

“You won’t be able to hear me while I suit up. Just take deep breaths, please, just look at the gas giant and take deep breaths. I’m sure your Mum would love this, right?”

Looking out at it all was like seeing  your very dreams come to life. This was no simple gas giant. This was the personification of a reality beyond life itself, the very heavens where creation was birthed, where every aspect of our imagination could come true. I saw it down there, in the infinite plains, the storyland that my brother had imagined for us when we were kids. We were always into tabletop games like that. He would send me and our other friends into a wondrous world of adventure and wanderlust. I would play the Sorceress. I had a temper. I would cast spells that tricked the enemies into fighting each other, and I even had a tea party with devils. I missed my brother. I watched out into the expanse of the impossible and saw Tatiana, my sorceress, riding alongside Alador, his paladin, and all the other compatriots, our stallions soaring to the other side of the world in time to stop the darkest of evils from spreading across the land.

“I’ve got my suit on, Eris, I’ll be out there soon.”

“I’m all right,” I breathed deeply. “I think I’m okay.”

“Can you get yourself back here? I’ll keep the suit, just in case.”

I felt my suit administering my anxiety medication automatically, even though it wasn’t supposed to do that, not right now. I knew the effects.

“Give me just a moment,” I asked Avery. “There’s… I think there’s something…”

“I’m telling you, it’s just some side-effects from the deep sleep. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I can finish the shift I think,” I made the promise anyways. “I’ll give you a holler if anything goes wrong.”

“Better be long before that. Right, I’m gonna take the suit off again and put some tea on the kettle for when you get back. Just take a good look. We know nothing’s there, but reports have been funky, and I can see why now. Keep a sharp eye, will ya?”

I took a sharp, deep breath, and pressed the button on the middle of my suit to let the cable expand another thousand feet. Away, and away, and away I saw that little space shuttle become but a glimmer in my mind as my perception shifted through the vaster regions of a glassy landscape, dotted with beautiful blankets of orange, white, red, yellow, blue, purple, green, and colors beyond that which I could imagine in the moment. They all swirled, and spiraled, and collided before separating again. I felt the anxiety medications pump again just as all the colors began to pull away from each other rapidly, expanding, creating a wider, farther --no, a more detailed image. I could see it in a thousand refractions across this beautiful land, the things that I could’ve been, the person I could’ve become, the world that could’ve known… me. I saw my graduation, not for a doctorate in  biomolecular engineering but a bachelors for creative writing. I would’ve become a professor, and then a world class author. I would’ve had the time in my life to relearn how to play the piano. I would have met somebody; somebody I had a crush growing up with as a kid. We would’ve had children. My Mum would’ve helped me take care of them every Sunday, and teach Little Emily how to code and Little Jeremy how to cook. There was this little sense of a draw… this allure to the endless. As if I could jump out and join them at any moment.

“Eris, you’ve gone a little far on the cable there, you should pull it back a little….”

I could barely even remember pressing that button on the center of my chest again to extend another thousand feet into the nebula.

“Eris, you’ll go out of range, you’ve got to get back--!”

There was something familiar about all of it. That constant glow that reminded me that I wasn’t in a cold, dark part of the universe. This place --it was warm! It was comforting, inviting, and giving me the chance to see something new. There was a whole new kind of reality out there, and it could be the perfect one, the one how it was always meant to be, the one where nobody dies, where cancer never happens, where family never dies, where friends never leave, where I never have to cry alone in the dark again. 

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“--Eris-- --Eris please--”

But people do die. But at least we’re together now! 

At least we get the chance to be a family for once! 

We can be happy now, we can be a real family now. I can’t say it anymore, Pops can’t be proud of me from beyond the grave, Mum! He just can’t! And he isn’t here, and neither are you! 

You’ve never been there when I’ve needed you most!

 Even when I became the most important chemist on the planet you barely noticed, huh? What now! If I made a lot of money would that make you happy? Would that make Sean finally smile when I’m at the dinner table? 

It wouldn’t change anything now, huh? I would have to just undo everything, because I just cannot be your perfect daughter, and I’m sorry!

“Eris I’m pulling you back now… stay calm… stay with me now…”

No! I want to stay here! I want to stay where I can be happy, where I can see the lilacs and the daisies and see myself for something I actually wanted to be!

I want to write stories!

I want to play games with my brother and find somebody to love me!

I want to grow old with somebody.

I want to grow happy with somebody.

I just want somebody in this damned world to notice me.

Is that so much to ask? Can I just please be happy for once in my entire life? Please, let something good happen to me? Is that so much to ask for?

“Eris everything’s going to be okay just please focus on coming back into the airlock, please.”

Jeremy was baking pies for Thanksgiving dinner with Mum. Sean was geeking over his new mobile with Emily that he bought during Black Friday. Pops was helping me with the Turkey --he was awful at it, and I had to teach him a few pointers, such as what to stuff the damned thing with. Ryan --my partner-- was making little paper crochets with our youngest, Daniel. Auntie Marie and Uncle Curt even managed to drop by. 

I decided then. I knew what world I wanted.

And I preferred where the air was warm.

And I detached myself from the cable.

And I fell and I fell and I fell.

…

I want to see them.

Please, I want to be with them!

PLEASE! Let me be with them! My babies! My… My everything! Why can’t I have it? Why do I just have to look at it?

Please?

“It’s okay, Eris... I am The Tasenova…. You are safe here with me….”

I spoke out loud, now, even though nobody could hear me as my body hurled through the NGC 6537 nebula. I spoke to the drugs in my head, the ideations in my mind, and banished what reason was left in my mind to hope for anything other than an empty desolation.

“I want to leave, Tasenova… Can I go now?”

“You are like all of us now. You cannot live, for you can only… observe.”

My body tumbled, round and round and round, The Phoenix becoming farther and farther away. I saw it all around me, those dreams, but I realized now that’s all they would ever be. They would always, forever, be dreams. I would never make my mother happy. I would never have love. I would never see my father again. I would never have children. I would never do what I truly wanted to do…

“Do not fear, child. You are with us now. You are safe, in the warm embrace of The Tasenova.”

There was a time, I think. A long time.

“I need my family back,” I said sternly. “I need them... now.”

“You already have them,” The Tasenova replied, its gem-like voice echoing in my central nervous system. “Even now, even if your family was truly gone, they could always see you now, and they would always, always, be proud of you. I know and allow the hearts of the departed to see past the barriers of life, and those who are not lost… find their way into my arms…”

“Eris,” Avery’s comms blinked again. “It took a lot of fuel to make it happen, but I can reach you. I need you to come in. Do you read me? Eris?”

…

Avery dragged my body back into the airlock. He sealed the doors, opened the way to the main chamber, and dragged me to a small table where I strapped in and enjoyed some vacuum-sealed instant-tea.

“You scared the hell out of me,” Avery began. “The way you were talkin’, I… I really thought…”

“Look at me!” I spread my arms out wildly. “Still alive. I owe it to you.”

“Just don’t scare me like that again,” the ever-so smallest smile appeared on his face. “I really wouldn’t have known what I would’ve done without ya.”

Something tells me that the universe may have gone on, in an endless loop, my very existence inconsequential. But another part of me knew that was just not true. I see it now, every moment I thought I wasted, everything I did I thought I should just throw away, the things I’ve done, the people I’ve talked to… it all matters, now. Even Mum. I know you care about me, Mum. You just care in your own way, and probably have all the weird quirks that I do about it. And Sean, oh dearest Sean. He was happy. He was so, so happy, Mum. He just couldn’t find the right way to say it, and that’s okay. He loved you. He just never had the chance to say it to your face. Now Pops, I don’t know anything about him. I was too young. But I’m sure, if you loved him, then I loved him, too. And he better damn well be proud of me! I didn’t come this far to be shown-up by a ghost!

I think I’ll marry this Avery fellow once we’re out of cryo, if he lets me. Diego is his first name; he’s no Ryan, but he’ll do. Maybe one day we’ll have children, but one thing at a time. Mum always said I had a wild imagination. I think I’m a few years too late to get the Bachelors, but hell, why not give the writing a go? I’ll try it, and you’ll see --it’ll take time, but I won’t stop anytime soon. You’ll see.

Because Tasenova showed me what I was up against.

And I think I’ve got a better dream in mind that I wanna make come true.