A Keyboard in the Void
The life support system was only designed for eight years, but it had been twelve since the orb departed from the docking position. Something had gone terribly wrong five years ago, and Rem knew it. She had powered down every conceivable system to conserve energy. Every breath was a cloud of frozen steam that hung in front of her frosted eyelids. When the stale air burned her lungs she knew it was time to give the heat a short five second burst. She could only hope that someone or something would pluck her out of the painful darkness, but she only had days at most.
As she drifted through the nothingness, Rem began to remember things. Like that afternoon, fifteen years earlier; an otherwise forgettable day, except for that odd, yet delightful man. She remembered that the gaunt and awkward technician approached her in the reading room of the training center. He looked around the room sheepishly, until finding the courage to make eye contact with Rem, if only briefly. Looking at the ground mostly, but with a quick glance or two up at the ceiling, he spoke with an impossibly soft tone. Rem strained to hear him and leaned closer until she could make out his message.
“I convinced him…convinced him to do it.”
“Convinced who? To do what?” She asked in a calm and reassuring tone.
“The boss man…to put in the keyboard, of course.” He grew more comfortable and made more eye contact with Rem, shoving his hands into the pockets of his filthy gray jumpsuit. “I know how you like to write the old fashioned way…” His face became flush as he realized he had revealed too much about his admiration for the explorer. “And you can send messages out by just hitting the blue button…it probably won’t go nowhere, but at least it’ll feel like you’re writing to someone.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you…um…”
“Douglas.”
“Yes, of course, Douglas; thank you. I don’t know where I’d be without a good keyboard. It is a good keyboard, right?”
“Of course, of course…I picked it out myself. Every key works…the apostrophe sticks a bit…but it works if you tap it a few times…sorry.” He put his chin closer to his chest, ashamed.
“That’s no problem. Apostrophes are as obsolete as keyboards. Thank you for that.” She smiled broadly and made sure she met his eyes, with a slight bow while bending her neck. He felt the urge to smile, but could only manage a smirk that caused the side of his face to wrinkle, revealing his age and too many years of toil on the job. With a sharp nod, he quickly shuffled out of the room without a goodbye, remembering that he needed to be somewhere ten minutes ago.
Rem could barely manage a grin from her frozen mouth, but the memory of Douglas forced it. Her keyboard had died two years ago, but not before she could write hundreds of pages about her journey, hitting that blue button after every entry, yet knowing that the words wouldn’t reach anyone. She opened the ancient laptop one last time, typing on the keyboard without any words appearing on the screen. But suddenly, a sentence blinked into existence. Her fingers quickly, reflexively, sprung off of the keys, worried that she’d delete the words; words that weren’t hers.
“We’re on our way! My apostrophe works by the way…you see?”
“Douglas!” She gasped out in a gravely, half frozen voice. She never thought she’d be so happy to read the words from such an awkward little man. Gratitude wasn’t the right word to describe how she felt for being plucked from the void.
“A simple thank you is good enough.” Douglas said softly while squinting at the back wall. Rem grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a hard kiss on each cheek. She reached back and picked up her keyboard from the table and shoved it into Douglas’ chest, holding back a smile, “Now fix the apostrophe and get it back to me on Thursday.”
“Thursday?…” He knew he could do it by Tuesday, but he hesitated, a little unsure about what to say.
“Yes, Thursday…Thanksgiving. Don’t bother bringing anything, other than the keyboard. The Company is providing everything!”
Douglas hadn’t been to a Thanksgiving since…well, he didn’t know when. Instead of shuffling out of the room, he nodded at Rem and walked with a bounce, thankful that he had a friend. Or maybe she was his boss, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But he was happy for the first time in ages.