Palpable fear triggered the stimulation-response module in my amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, accelerating my heart rate, raising blood pressure, secreting sweat, cortisol, adrenaline. Trust me. I’m familiar with fear, and this was that most primitive fear evolved over billions of years. No one can suppress it no matter how brave.
And certainly not me.
I floated like some giant bag of trash. My reason understood that fear consumed oxygen faster and as carbon dioxide levels in my blood rose this would further accelerate my fear in a vicious circle. But I couldn’t help it.
Like a mad man, I burst out laughing at the stupidity of humanity’s design.
I had no idea how much time had passed. In such extreme situations, no one has a clear sense of time. I figured I’d die in my endless drift, finally debtless. I had no clue that my body was about to crash into some vast, solid surface. And then, something caught me.
It was the inner surface of the Mother Whale asteroid. Its centrifugal spin had somehow landed me here.
Though there was still no water or oxygen, I at least was able to regain a sense of direction. My fear calmed slightly, allowing me to reallocate computational resources for attention and perception, and draw on memories of past experience for behavioral decision-making.
Unfortunately, I had no past experience being thrown into space.
I fixed my hands and feet to the inner wall of the asteroid. The black sand in the rocky wall reminded me that rock layers here contained a certain proportion of iron and nickel. Though it wasn’t high grade, it was enough for my magnetic boots to function.
Now that I could just barely stand, I began making my way toward the head of Mother Whale. The odd pleasure I felt in that moment must have been similar to the exhilaration an ancestral ape felt when it stood upright to take its first step as a human.
Overhead, the cabin revolved around its axis at one cycle per minute, too fast and too far. I didn’t have a chance. The axis was, in fact, a superalloy bearing pipe piercing both sides of Mother Whale’s skull. It was braided with titanium, chromium and carbon fibers, sealed and hollowed out as a pipeline for energy and resources.
Then again, perhaps there was still a sliver of a chance.
My remaining oxygen would last just seventy-two minutes. I began taking advantage of the skill tree in my brain. Analysing the nearest distance to the pipe opening, mass, step length, heart rate, oxygen level, ground magnetic force and friction, I calculated the optimal speed to reach my destination before oxygen depletion. I also identified an airlock where I might be able to get in.
The analysis didn’t make me especially optimistic. If my speed were too fast, the attraction generated by the magnetic boots wouldn’t hold my mass. If too slow, my oxygen would deplete before I even got close. For that sliver of a chance, I had to execute my little space run with precision to two decimal points.
From the edge of Whale Mother’s star-devouring mouth gleamed a distant ray of sunlight. I had to rush to the entrance of the pipeline before the sun reached me, or its high temperatures would deliver an early death sentence.
Without starting gun or spectators, I began my race against death.
If my life weren’t on the line, I would no doubt have enjoyed the scenery. Imagine a vast stone ping-pong ball five kilometers in radius with a third of its surface sliced away. The inner surface of that thin shell was my racetrack. Overhead, an unfathomably dark starry sky watched over me like an eye in the rock wall. Above I also could see the revolving cabin containing the mining crew who had lived beside me day and night before voting me into exile in space.
The people I had saved, loved and slept with, like all these vast cold objects, were now perfectly silent.
Beneath the boundless darkness, I was an ant racing alone. Next to eternity, all debt becomes meaningless.
I’d never been much of an athlete – not out there and, I imagined, not on Earth. At the halfway mark, I was overcome with a splitting headache, sore joints and muscles. My heart pumping beyond all limits. My chest was a wheezing furnace about to pop.
All I wanted was to give up, lie down, float away, whatever. Anything for a breath and a brief rest.
But the numbers wouldn’t stop for me. They would just continue their free fall back to zero.
I heard strange sounds like whispered songs. They surrounded me, guided me, urged me to stop, urged me to continue. I suppose it was all a hallucination caused by lack of oxygen. Rhythmic flashing red numbers showed just eighteen minutes left, and the pipe that was my finish line seemed to be getting farther away. Yellow and blue colors floated across my field of view like the mating dance of fireflies in a cemetery.
—You see my nose growing longer?
The voice sighed quietly in my ear. I woke with a sudden start. My hair stood upright. It was Freckles’ voice.
I had almost forgotten them all. My dying dash was not only for myself, but also for all those names now deleted.
Distant sunlight slanted into the mouth of Mother Whale, smearing its gray inner surface with golden hot color. Its energy was so beautiful yet so lethal. It would soon awaken ice sleeping deep in the stony cracks, transform it into vapor that would spear out from the surface. I had to reach the pipeline before the sun caught up with my shadow. If I failed, I would be either burned alive by the sun’s heat or impaled on its spears of steam.
I imagined the ground behind me like popcorn in the oven, erupting in crisp explosions that
