Space travel was a fascination for Stephen from an early age. Ireland had no space agency, so Stephen grew up in admiration of the pioneers of other nations fortunate enough to reach the stars. However, just because the Irish could not build their own rocket did not mean that they would not grow their diaspora out unto the sea of stars. Miklagard to New York and now to Ceres on the United Nations Colony Ship Euphrates.
Stephen was no engineer or botanist, nor pilot or physicist. A colony on Ceres was already established and thriving, however it was found that given the journey took over three years, the wellbeing of the passengers and crew were increasingly important, also the colony had doctors but no mental health specialists. Stephen was a therapist and a novice one at that. He met all needed criteria in terms of training, he just did not have the life experience. He had argued that the committee point him to the relevant course or literature on counselling for space travel and colonialisation, or to find someone as eager to find out and write those chapters.
Situated in a small crew cabin on the port side of the enormous Euphrates, Stephen was hard at work journalling those fledgling chapters through casework and reflective writing, or at least he intended to be hard at work. He had his feet up and was leaning back in his chair asleep, a half-written case note was open on his terminal with a cup of well-intentioned coffee now cold beside the screen. A little voice chirped from the terminal, “Good morning, Stephen, I hope you are well rested and eager to start a new day. Your first patient Marcus Kelly is due to arrive at your office in approximately thirty minutes. My analysis of their lifestyle monitor tells me they have had an excellent start to the day with a brisk run in the gym followed by a soothing brief meditation session, I have forwarded the results to their health chart for your consideration” The chirping voice vanished as the soft cabin lighting transitioning to full illumination. Stephen woke abruptly and fell forward as a foot resting upon the desk slipped and banged down upon the hard metallic floor.
***
Stephen had quickly thrown on a fresh jumper over a creased shirt and pulled back his hair so that it draped heavily down his back. Jamming his feet into a pair of nearby boots, he locked his terminal and grabbed a blank notepad, flipping the cover so as to hide the coffee stain. “Good morning, Stephen, you have started your walk for today, I will now count your steps, would you like to continue with the podcast you were enjoying yesterday on the benefits of love language syncing?”
“No Betty, I was half asleep and was just looking for some easy continual professional hours, please actually delete that from my suggested podcasts, I don’t want any of that shit appearing on my algorithm, oh and mute any fitness notifications for today” He said pacing passed a communal park space towards the turn marked “Wellness Space”.
“Thank you, updating your preferences and I am sorry that love languages was not a good choice for you, would you like me to suggest other materials?” The small voice chirped from Stephen’s wristband.
“No Betty, switch to passive observer mode, set to record as soon as I sit down with my first patient, is Andy already in the office this morning?”
“Andy is in the office, according to his fitness monitor he has achieved a good cardio work out and has been updating his water intake settings. He appears to be in an elated mood”
“I don’t suppose you could shock him through his wristband could you, people who are that happy in the morning could do with some old-fashioned electro therapy”
“I am sorry, but I cannot action your request to commit harm, I also must remind you that electro-therapy was…”
“Yeah, Betty, It was just a joke, just disregard and enter passive observer mode, I’ll manage Andy’s cheerful demeanour with coffee.” Stephen pushed into the “Wellness Space”, eager eyes from the waiting area looked to meet his, “Yeah, morning Marcus, I’ll be right with you, just have to confer with Andy on a case so you just go ahead and get yourself settled in my office there.” Marcus smiled and nodded awkwardly, at six foot he was taller than Stephen and was stocky with muscle, a mechanical engineer who primarily worked on environmental maintenance, loud and boisterous on the job, subdued and timid when in this space.
Andy was from south London originally but studied psychology in Warwickshire, he was very British in Stephens eyes, which depending on the day of the week would be either a point in his favour, or against. He was short, clean shaven with neat brown hair that matched his jacket, something his father had given to him to make him look more professional. He was very much in the corner of the solution-focused approach to counselling and liked to ooze positivity. He wasn’t a bad therapist, just a bit textbook. “Good morning, Stephen, did you sleep well?” He paused, nodding his head as though to say, “I am here and ready to listen and validate your every word so that I can plough ahead and tell you everything I accomplished”.
“Yeah Andy, can’t you tell” he said, avoiding his gaze and reaching for the coffee sachets.
“Well it is important to be getting a full eight hours, Betty is really useful for tracking your REM cycle and if you are struggling she can recommend some soothing sounds…”
“Yeah Andy cheers mate but look, I just nodded off in my chair, don’t need you jumping in just yet today, I just need to survive and make sure the delightful folks under my care today continue to be their wonderful and productive selves least we explode in a fantastical fireball across the Martian sky, if that’s cool with you?”
For a moment Andy just nodded, and then blinked, as though snapping out of a trance.
“Yeah, umm sure thing Stephen” he said cautiously. “How about we catch up for lunch? I know you tend to be more, yourself around then?” Stephen winced slightly, “Yeah sure Andy, let’s see where the day takes us and if it takes us to lunch”. Walking off Stephen muttered to himself “More my fucking self, yeah cheers mate, thanks for the confidence”. He walked into his office, which had been cleaned to pristine the night before, everything smelled fresh and welcoming, and it was then that Stephen realised he had forgotten to clean his teeth.
Marcus was leaning forward on the couch expectantly, he was clasping his hands, rubbing them slightly and bouncing his left leg with anxious excitement. “Morning Stephen, hope you are well today, I was wondering if you had seen the message, I sent you only I had sent it a few days ago”. Stephen nestled himself in his chair, threw down his notepad and adjusted his shirt, tucked awkwardly into his trousers. “Yes, Marcus I did see your message, but let’s just get procedure squared away first”, he said with a hint of frustration. “Please state your name, date of birth and ship I.D number for the record”.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Oh…” Marcus exclaimed bashfully, “Marcus Kelly, seventeenth of the fourth twenty, twenty-three and service I.D 179487”.
“Thank you, and now given the space we are in today the session will be recorded for safety and quality purposes if that is okay?”
“Umm, yeah sure”, he paused and in the moment of silence a smile broke across his face “you must get exhausted having to say that all the time to everyone”
Stephen relaxed and leant back in his chair “All the time, we cannot escape the vaunted GDPR rules, even thousands of kilometres from the gobshites who made it and the twats who made it necessary, how and ever, let’s begin”. Stephen crossed his legs and cradled his chin between his thumb and finger, his best early morning, pensive impression of The Thinker, “How are you doing today?”
“I’m doing well Stephen, yeah, like I was saying when I messaged you, I was going through different books and podcasts and found a nice meditation routine that really works for me in the morning. I was kind of hoping you might have had some suggested reading for me” he said with an eagerness that bothered Stephen.
“It’s just that I really want to get on top of these intrusive thoughts and get the right strategies in place and coping mechanisms”
“Coping mechanisms and strategies…” Stephen said with a hint of frustration, rubbing his eyes he pressed “…are you declaring war and invading your mind?”. Marcus sat back, taken a bit by the question “how do you mean?”
“Well we spent all of last week drilling down into your thoughts, what’s been keeping you awake and active minded at night and we touched upon how this all started when Sam left you, remember?”
“Yeah but I ran into her the other day and…” Stephen cut him off, “Of course you ran into her, but your mind is trying to now plan out a near infinite number of possibilities of things getting back to the way they are, now we touched upon this and I asked you to reflect on the conclusion we reached”
At this point Marcus’ leg was noticeably bouncing faster and he was shifting his neck in discomfort as he lay back. Tears were beginning to form but so too a tension in his jaw, as though he was willing back the pain and frustration while inside a part of him just screamed. “Loneliness, Marcus, we were discussing loneliness and how it has been nearly six months since you and Sam separated”.
***
There were several communal spaces for meals on the Euphrates, all of them brightly lit, loud, bustling spaces, elevated in intensity by the bulkheads that offered an annoying acoustic to the spaces. Like a crowd of children talking in a hallowed church, with nowhere to hide when you entered. Stephen shuffled by a group of habitat maintenance workers and helped himself to some reconstituted chicken casserole with some oven fresh bread. On earth he would have enjoyed making this himself, following some recipe online and cooking for friends, in space however options were limited and at one point, in a moment of sad reflection, he had forgotten what homemade food tasted like. Even scarier for him as the months went on, the more he ate the reconstituted food, the more he began to like them. “This place, this ship…” he wrote in one of his earlier reflective diaries “…has the effect of stripping away your identity, piece by piece. A little bit of humanity at a time and replacing it with a false sense of safety and comfort. It feels artificial, an antithesis to authenticity, a murder with the mundane.” Now Stephen quietly files in and finds a place saved for him by Andy.
Andy is happily nodding along to some music in his ears as Stephen arrives. “Hey Stephen, saved you a seat” he says, removing his earpieces and placing them carefully in his front shirt pocket. “I was just listening to some cool music that one of my patients created with some friends in a spare space in one of the cargo bays, the boxes apparently give their music this really cool echo which is cool and unique”. He pauses for a moment as Stephen settles down into his seat and braces himself for his first bite. “Feeling more human?” He asks, just as Stephen swallows.
“I cannot even savour the first bite without someone commenting or looking for a response” He says to himself before smiling and responding to Andy, “Yeah, much fucking better, liquid breakfast this morning, got lost in some heavy reading last night and did not realise that I was having so much fun in that I fell asleep in my chair at my desk…” giggling slightly to himself he added “…without even changing, good thing we rotate patients otherwise people will start to think I have only the one thing I wear to work”.
“You should get Betty to set some reminders for you, I know you like to keep her off when you can but she can be really helpful Ste, especially when you are meant to be taking care of yourself as much as taking on the care and support of others” Andy offered sympathetically. “Afterall, I know I wouldn’t be my cheery self without a full and proper sleep, and it is important to set an example, especially on this ship. We run into our patients all the time and some of them look to us as an example for how to get through this trip”.
Stephen pondered this for a moment and noticed the empty chairs either side of them. It was as if there was an invisible force that kept people away from them, even before he sat down, the place had been bustling and Andy was in his own head. People were getting up and sitting down, no one was waiting for a seat, but specifically no one was sitting in these seats. “First patient was in full denial mode this morning; they tried to hide this but even half asleep I could still spot them doing this behaviour”. Andy moved from compassionate to deflated in one fluid motion, they slumped in their chair and poked at their food. “You know my thoughts on talking about work out here Ste…” he said cautiously. “Oh, come on Andy no one is paying any attention to us, we could literally be talking about how we are secretly aliens sent here to study the colonists, and no one would bat an eyelid in our direction. We are practically invisible”. Stephen looked around as he was saying this, partially to emphasis he was right, partially to check that he was not wrong just in case. “It’s not that Ste…” Andy leant forward with a compassionate, yet melancholic look in his eyes “…if we bring our work out here, we run the risk of our friendship becoming all about work and forgetting more of ourselves and how to connect with others”.
This caught Stephen by surprise, he could feel something but could not find the means to articulate such feeling. It was as though a spotlight has been thrown upon him and his own observations on rejection were turned in on himself, bringing him to a place where all he could see before him was emptiness and fear. A slight panic fluttered behind his eyes, and he could feel a tingling sensation shoot through the backs of his calves, down through his feet and resting upon the tips of his toes. He quickly drew his attention to his food, noticing the sensation of moving the fork through the mushy chicken protein gloop, the sensation of warmth in his mouth as he ate, the chicken flavourings sending signals through to the mind telling him this must be chicken flavour. A release of tension as he swallowed, as though his jaw had been holding back a lump from his throat that sought to leap from his mouth. Bringing attention to his chest, he managed to lift his diaphragm and transitioned into a chuckle. “Yeah Andy, sorry…” he offered, pulling around him a carefully crafted veil of assurance “…clearly, I’ve gotten my head stuck too much in the game and need a distraction. I’ll look into watching a movie or clearing the head a bit later, okay?”. Andy’s expression softened, as though a magic word had been uttered or charm invoked that allowed him to believe every word.