The Pod Will Explode in Five Minutes

The pod will explode in five minutes. 

It carries myself, the last remnants of a deadly disease, and humanity’s salvation. The dash, lining the pod's perimeter with buzzes and whirs, twinkles. Exploding supernovas, streams of colors over the screen like my hours spent in the corner of my parents' room, staring at their idle computer screen, my heart malfunctioning, the cord pulled out of my body. Among the emptiness of space, my pod more alive than the universe, I feel myself grow idle, left for nothing, dead, dying. It’s peaceful. The projection glitches over the dash, fizzling like onions in an instant pot, like her voice humming along to the pop and sizzle, until only the caramelized final phrase remains. 

“Thank you for your sacrifice” 

A clock. Old. Analog. Its ticks echo. The projection is singing to the beat. 

Five minutes. The last stars bleed out. With the darkness, soon my parents would call, tell me I should be asleep, as soon as the sun set, no exceptions. I take the blankets from the cabinets. Stacks of quilts and insulation, thrown about until they blanket the soda can I live in -  it's more like home now. No longer am I the lost coin they lost between the consoles in the break room. It had rusted ridges, copper edges lining the green like the sun traces the treetops, like the park I wandered across, parents chattering about issues I would later wonder if I caused. 

Five minutes. I fish the coin from my old sweater. Hello Kitty smiles with worn, dead eyes as I steal my treasure from her. A lollipop and a small photo album - I kept losing my phone - tumble out afterwards. They join the coin at the windowsill - celestial objects dotted among the darkness so I can enjoy myself. The clock ticks. The projection repeats itself, now stuck on one word as it buffers and loads. 

“Thank. Thank. Thank. Thank.”

It loses meaning without ‘you’

Five minutes. I sit in my nest of blankets, and pretend like the passkey - an electronic circle of metal that reads out information of the room before entering, so that I wouldn’t painfully embarrass myself with questions everyone else knows; I almost convinced myself the others cared about my mental miscalibrations - as it hums and warms, settings on mute, is a cup of tea. The dash’s light reflects off the coin and onto the window. The paper stars dance. 

The projection glitches to nothing with a garbled scream. Did it want me to join it?

Four minutes. 

The last minutes of someone’s life are for a recollection. Everyone else will move on, have moved on already. I’m waiting now, a cat in a box, dead and alive.

  I should’ve finished that quantum physics book. I could’ve been a theoretical scientist. I sip my tea. 

Someone with a sweet laugh and hugs of autumn mornings told me I’d love space exploration. Ten-year-old me sat at the windowsill, stars reflected like her freckles in my eyes. The spider in the window’s corner had bundled up its ruined web, legs, striped with orange and yellow and sharpened to a point, twirling a ball of yarn and knitting one of my grandma’s itchy sweaters.  It was the most focused, purposeful creature I’d ever seen. Within an hour it had built an invisible stage. From some angles the spider floated on the sky. The stars, the backdrop to its show. 

The autumn mornings and worried murmurs and sweet laughs to the not-so-funny things I said pointed to the constellations, all the while stirring the milk and honey over the stovetop, heated with lullabies, poison swirling in the golden depths. She explained the heavens, all warmth and love as I downed the liquid, scorching my throat, rattling down my frozen body, the old computer alight with sounds and colors, idle no longer.  I leaned myself on her side. 

Stars it was. 

The window in my pod holds no stars, no spiders. My treasures line the sill. The dash shuts down with a click. The pod rumbles to a stop. I grip my treasures on the sill so they don’t tumble  into the vast void of space. The coin whispered gentle nothings to my burning fingertips.

  The clock haunts the nothing, the ether, the death I am. My skin itches, infection creeping up my arms, my neck, slowly gnawing away at my flesh, a swarm of insects. ‘A side effect of space travel, of the warping effects it has on your mind,’ they said, the white lab coat melting off their shoulders. I had blinked, shook my head. ‘But you promised my safety, that’d after this one I’d be done’. 

‘I’m sorry.’

My skin burned, exploded. Maybe the sayings on the fortune cookies and home decor she bought held some truth to them - I am made of the same materials as the stars. To the stars I would return, a supernova of pain and longing. 

How I wish a spider would come, some celestial being with careful, tender limbs that would spin me a blanket, a web, a solace from the bugs in my code, the static and sparks within my flesh, my body’s short circuiting. Shrouded in darkness, one with space itself, my body floated as the only celestial being, the only living thing in all the world. How I wish for spiders.

  The emergency lights flicker in drowsy yellow strips, beneath the table, beneath the ridges on the ceiling, lining the floor. They aren’t stars. They don’t twinkle or sparkle. They don’t encircle outstretched arms or seem to near my face when I stare at them, descending to an indifferent earth just for my sake. They don’t cause her to smile and pat my head, wishing I’d achieve all of my dreams from her creation. These lights are so yellow that they’re white lab coats dripping off shoulders of the darkened, silver, metal walls of my tomb. 

They had sent in reports. Assurances. Kind words. Wide smiles. 

‘You served the world like no other person has’ 

‘With your research, your sacrifice, we’ll protect humanity in this new age’ 

‘It’s a common side effect of this sort of work. You’ve seen space like no other person has before, and that puts stress on your mind. You are creating the disease yourself, but it becomes contagious the moment it appears on your skin.’ 

‘I’m sorry’ 

The mind is a parasite. It’s a collection of synapses and neurotransmitters nested in my skull. It sinks its nerves through my spine like long proboscis or coiling tongues, worming through my being, my milk and honey and carmelized onions and terrarium I made out of an old blueberry container consumed and the bones discarded with spit.  She threw away my spider terrarium after all the spiders died, whispering ‘it wasn’t your fault’ to my unhearing sobs.

‘Your mother will be so proud of you.’

I brush my fingers over the treasures by the window. Outside, an exoplanet creaks and whines as it dies. A star winks away. Dead to the universe at last. Alive to the people on earth for at least a billion years more. Goodbyes will whisper in twinkles and outstretched hands, hands reaching so far it should have grasped the hollowed husk. 

Not so bad, a star’s death. Only a brief flash of light. Those left behind would catch my ghost. I could handle that. 

How many minutes left?

Stars didn’t count the ticks until their insides burst in a flower blossom of colors. Their wilt and their death scattered petals to the cosmos in the time it took for me to shudder with a sob. 

How many minutes left?

The clock’s ticks echoed in my tin can. I made my next terrarium more sturdy than the last. She had an obsession with sparkling water, so I filled an entire box with the rattling6 containers. I had cut holes with scissors and pressed tape atop, leaving the smallest spaces for air, stuffing the insides with dead insects and flower petals. For a fall afternoon, weather warming and spiders waiting patiently, I gave them a home to spend the winter in, a home they could survive in, a home that they could leave come spring, when they could build webs in a world awoken anew. 

Not a single spider survived. 

My tin can ticked. 

How many minutes left? 

My skin burned. I had long left the hope to find the pain medicine before I exploded. 

‘One side effect of this - and yes I know it sounds supernatural, this sort of exploration does strange things, to say the least - is that your cells are duplicating and bursting at a rate that would keep you alive forever. You’d be in torment forever’

I burned. My nails clawed. I should leave my home of flesh and bones. I should leave my tin can to a home of milk and honey and caramelized onions and a blueberry container of spiders and her smile crinkling her freckles like worn quilts and blankets and pillow forts where we would watch old movies and her murmurs when I had nightmares and her frantic facetime call when I left. 

Blood floated and sparkled in the flickering light like stars. She would point out the constellations. 

I miss my mom. 

How many minutes left? 

‘In order to prevent the spread of your disease, as even your remains will become contagious, we’ll have to send you in a pod and program it to self-destruct.’

‘I’m sorry’

‘Thank you for your sacrifice’

‘The pod will explode in five minutes’. 

Space doesn’t carry sound, so why did my screams serrate my ears? When I pressed my fingers against them, I couldn’t tell. My fingers and ears and body and heart pummeling my ribcage all throbbed and bled the same. 

I clutched my treasures to my chest - an old coin, a lollipop, and a photo album I could no longer see past the din. Within the battered cover rested my photos of random things - spider’s webs after the rain, glistening raindrops capturing the sunlight and playing with it across the orange blossom it lived within; her smiles on our walks, talking about nothing in particular, taking pictures with random trees and bushes like they were famous celebrities;  the only one my mom took, when I had fallen asleep in our blanket fort filled with fairy lights and that old computer, constantly freezing on the idle screen, playing a Studio Ghibli movie and I had hugged my Hello Kitty like a child. I was eighteen. 

How many minutes left?

I hope my blood doesn’t stain the photo album. 

I hope they send other astronauts to recover my treasures, lollipop and all, and return them to earth. 

I hope that if they don’t have a body, they bury my photo album. It’s all the same. 

How many minutes left?

I float as the emergency lights finally flicker and die. I hum her lullaby. Once. Twice. Three times. Three minutes each. 

I miss my mom. 

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you to take that opportunity. It’s my fault, okay, baby? It’s your mom’s fault. Please don’t go.’

With a whine soft enough to bleed, the pod explodes.