TINCAN ELEGY 01

//LOCAL TRANSMISSION: ONLINE(click: "ONLINE")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ SIGNAL DECRYPTION: 20%(click:"20%")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ SIGNAL DECRYPTION: 53%(click:"53%")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ SIGNAL DECRYPTION: 78%(click:"78%")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ SIGNAL DECRYPTION: 100%(click:"100%")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE IN A RUSTING TIN CAN]]]]]]]

haha, just a bit of satnav humor for you.(event:when time>2s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[there’s no way of knowing if you can actually hear me.]]]]

but the green light isn’t blinking now, which SHOULD mean that the recording is stable. i think we’re live. [[i think we’re good to go here.]]

it’s the same two dozen meal packets on rotation, they told us back in training. just add water to your packet, seal it, put it over heat. they’ve got different ingredients and textures. some of them turn out as more of a paste, some of them are more of a chalky cake, some of them are just an energy bar. it’s a mixed bag.(click:"it’s a mixed bag.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ you’ll quickly discover your favorite, they said. two dozen flavors isn’t nearly as much variety as it appears, and everyone learns pretty quickly that they have a preference. i remember the advice that tennyson gave us during training.(click:"the advice")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[you might be inclined to burn through your favorite, first.]] [[you might be inclined to hoard your favorite, for later.]]]]

it’s lonely work, [[but it’s very straightforward.]]

i had reservations about taking a solo mission. i’ll be the first to admit it. as the only person aboard the satellite, what happens when you’re asleep? what happens when you’re not monitoring those vital signals? they told us, during training, that it wouldn’t be a concern. that a lot of the work isn’t instantaneous in that way. this kind of work requires [[consistency, but not immediacy]], that’s how they always phrased it.

this satellite maintains a stable orbit around the centralmost black hole in the stellar cluster hypatia 27, which is in the process of slowly collapsing in on itself. there are a dozen other microsatellites, all unmanned, stationed around this black hole tracking the process, and sending their findings back to me. my job is to keep the entire system running. i check the primary infrared radiographs to monitor the black hole’s vitals once a day. i check the ancillary radiograph chain relay once a week. the inbox light for the relay blinks when there’s a new intake from one of the microsats, and it blinks with a chirp [[if there’s anything urgent.]]

[[there’s never anything urgent.]] (set: $exercise to false) (set: $cards to false) (set: $guitar to false)

“you don’t have to worry about being woken up in the middle of the night,” commander tennyson told us during our very first lecture. “these things are designed with failsafe measures in mind. there’s no risk of imminent collapse.” “unless a freak miscalculation sends you spinning into the celestial body you’re monitoring,” he joked. “but these things are engineered to maintain a stable orbit above atmo. even if you started to fall, you’d have about 72 hours of slow descent to reroute yourself, [[before things really turn south.]]”

these rations are meant to last for ten years, after all. what difference does it make if you just prioritize what you like, for now? i worked out the math, the first time i took inventory. the first week on the job. and if i really wanted, i could gorge myself on nothing but flash-dried eggs benedict for a month, two months straight, and i would still have [[plenty left over.]]

save the best for last, you know. they told us, it’s a marathon and not a sprint. if you’re going to be stuck in this satellite by yourself for ten years, you have to savor the little things, find a way to treat yourself, to make it to the next day. and that final leg is when it’s most crucial to keep yourself going. but imagine putting yourself through nine years’ worth of [[delayed gratification]]. imagine prolonging that feeling of novelty, of wonder, for as long as you possibly can.

no, it’s better to stick to a routine. i’ve got it all figured out. three meals a day, on rotation every eight days. there’s enough emergency rations that i could dip into the backup if i really needed to, but it’s nice to have [[a sense of consistency]].

that kind of moderation is important, when it’s nothing but you and the empty void. that’s what you always told me.(click:"what you always told me.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ i never really listened to you, back then. but i guess it must have [[finally sunk in now.->i eat. i work. i sleep.]]](set:$eat to true)

i eat. (click:"i eat.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[i work. (click:"i work.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[i sleep.(click:"i sleep.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[i eat.]] [[i work.]] [[i sleep.]] (if:$eat is true and $work is true and $sleep is true)[[i dream.]]]]]

[[in my dreams, i see gardens.]]

a standard emergency-class orbital relay takes just over 36 hours to travel from one satnav communicator to the nearest satellite. you can always daisy chain an SOS all the way back to central command, if something gets TRULY dire, but the only hope of a timely response comes from [[the other satnavs out here.]]

72 hours. one opportunity to send an SOS to your nearest neighbor. one opportunity for them to respond. if you’re lucky. if you only had one chance to truly connect with someone, [[what message would you send?]]

if you only had one chance to receive an answer, [[what question would you ask?->i eat. i work. i sleep.]](set:$sleep to true)

spool drum replacement, testing, testing. microphone check one, two. is this thing online? (event:when time>2s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[are you there?(event:when time>4s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[can you hear me?]]]]]]

man. one whole spool finished. one whole spool of recordings in the can. six months’ worth of data, ready to truck on down to encoding. they always said in training that the first spool always starts out slow, but it turns into a routine after too long. that you stop counting in terms of months or years, and start counting in spools instead.(click:"counting in spools instead.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ i’m certain the routine sinks in eventually, but it’s still feeling [[very novel for now]].]

six months of findings and data, condensed into a single canister.(event:when time>2s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[ [six months of sitting inside this tin can.(event:when time>4s)[(t8n:"dissolve")[ six months with no company, [[except for the black hole outside.]]]]]]]

i’ve had a lot of time to myself in this satellite. that probably goes without saying. but the thing they always told us, the thing they said in training, about solitary missions, is that you have to set up your own discipline. that you have to build habits. the thing they didn’t tell us was that breaking those habits is just as difficult.(click:"breaking those habits")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ but recording these logs works pretty well. i’ve worked myself into a pretty solid system, [[these past few months.->i eat. i work. i sleep.]]] (set:$eat to false)(set:$work to false)(set:$sleep to false)

but the favorite always runs out faster than you think.(click:"faster than you think.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[and then it’s back to the grind.->stick to a routine]]]

[[imagine how you would feel if the payoff fell short.->stick to a routine]]

i remember when he told us that, a nervous titter rippled through the lecture hall. most other folks didn’t know whether to treat it as a joke or a threat. me, though, i remember seeing you across the room. i could tell, even then, that you were [[doing the math in your head.]]

the entropic stomach of the black hole hovers above me, as it always does. hypatia 27 looms, hungry and all-encompassing, as she always does. but she doesn’t draw me in.(click:"she doesn’t draw me in.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ she doesn’t arrest my attention, doesn’t threaten to engulf me in darkness, doesn’t dare me to cross the threshold, the way she does in waking moments. no, instead the void pulses — i feel the pulse in my blood, like a heartbeat, a steady, regular rhythm. no fluctuations. no discrepancy.(click:"no discrepancy.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ and with each pulse, tiny sprouts of greenery emerge. it hurts to look at them directly. i have to squint, to watch them grow from the corner of my eye; one leaf at her periphery, then two, then four, then dozens, then hundreds, pockmarking the void like tiny green stars.(click:"tiny green stars.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[they spread like moss.]] ]]]

still, i find ways to entertain myself between all the research and the maintenance. there’s(if:$exercise is not true)[ [[some exercise equipment]]](else:)[ some exercise equipment], which i use pretty much every day. there’s(if:$cards is not true)[ [[a deck of cards]]](else:)[ a deck of cards], which is starting to wear down. there’s(if:$guitar is not true)[ [[a guitar]]](else:)[ a guitar], which i have not gotten any better at playing. (if:visits >= 3)[mostly, though, it’s research and maintenance, and staring through the portholes at hypatia 27,(click:"hypatia 27,")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ monotonous(click:"monotonous")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ and relentless(click:"and relentless")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[and all-consuming.->i eat. i work. i sleep.]]]]]](set:$work to true)

(set:$cards to true)at this point, i’ve played enough games of solitaire for the rest of my life. the glue on the little box that holds all the cards is coming apart at the seams, and all the corners are worn down. still, it could be worse. during our initial training, tennyson told us about a story of a satnav who went on one of these deep space solo missions, only to discover that her satellite came pre-stocked with a chessboard.(click:"a chessboard.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ [[central command has a sick sense of humor.->there’s never anything urgent.]]]

(set:$guitar to true)it started going out of tune pretty quickly after this satellite got in position, which i found a bit strange. you would think it would lose its tuning with a change in atmospheric pressure. but the satellite is fully pressurized, and the air in here hasn’t changed since the initial launch — and the guitar was working just fine, then. chalk it up to overuse, perhaps. or disuse. both are pretty likely to leave the instrument [[in need of repair.->there’s never anything urgent.]]

(set:$exercise to true)it’s a treadmill you hook yourself into, and a set of pedals like an exercise bike, and mechanism that functions pretty similar to weightlifting. back during training, they told us we needed to use the equipment every single day in order to keep our muscles from atrophying in zero-g. truth be told, i’m still not convinced that’s not just a lie they made up. they always did like looking for [[excuses to keep us busy.->there’s never anything urgent.]]

and with each heartbeat, [[hypatia sings.]]

those dreams make me remember being on gardens, back on earth. i miss the feeling of sticking my hands in cool, crisp dirt. i miss the sharp snap of the weeds as i twist their roots while i clear the garden beds. i miss the birdsong overhead, cut alongside the soft kick of a shovel in the soil; the gentle pressure of my boot resting on its step; the rocking creak as i push on the handle, digging it deeper. this satellite doesn’t even have a greenhouse. on some of the other missions, the ones where they have two or three or five folks across the entire station, they have enough folks and enough resources that it’s worth the trouble to set up a greenhouse, rows of green orbs, blooming in all directions. tennyson showed us that set of photos in class, once, of the snarl of bean sprouts without a clear idea of “up”. like a jungle gym, a rat king with [[no end in sight.]]

they told us we wouldn’t have room to grow any food of our own, if we got assigned to the solo missions. i remember august scoffing at that, under her breath. later she confessed to me, “that lecture was the moment i knew i was going to stay on [[this side of the console.]] you mean i get no say over the next time i get to eat a homegrown peach? hard pass from me.” i have to wonder, whether you had made your mind up at that point. were you just as dead-set as she was? [[or did you make your decision later?]]

approximately sixty percent of the candidates who go through the satnav program end up transferring to central command instead, and another twenty-five end up requesting very reduced commitments for their first mission before they’ve even gratuated. the only ones who actually end up on these solitary missions are the folks too bullheaded to quit, and the folks who don’t have any attachments they consider worth holding onto. i always thought i was the first of those two options, [[i’ll always have that memory burned into my mind’s eye.<-but now i’m not so sure.]]

i don’t know why i’m talking to you as if you’re going to hear these. i could just as easily be treating these recordings as if i were speaking to tennyson. or august, or pepper, or treating this microphone as if it had its own personality. but instead, here i am, speaking as if you’re on the other end, listening to everything i never told you before i left.(click:"everything i never told you")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ perhaps this is my anchor, talking out loud. talking as if you’ll hear me. there’s no therapy out here in the void of space — if the exercise equipment and the cards and the guitar aren’t enough to keep me grounded, then i suppose i need to find something — anything — to keep me tethered. to keep me from [[getting sucked into the black hole.]]]

i remember finding those rat kings so impressive, the tangle of greenery unbounded by gravity, but tennyson went on to explain to us that they’re actually self-destructive. without proper gravity, he lectured, these plants have no way of maintaining a proper root structure. each clump of soil, held together with fine mesh, contains a seed inside, which burst upward and spread in all directions — but its roots all tangle inwards, competing with each other for nutrients.(click:"competing with each other")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ eventually, the roots use up all the arable soil, leaving behind nothing but dry dust and a tangle of roots that quickly die out. when a cluster dries out, its remains are fed to the mulcher, turned into new soil, and the cycle continues.(click:"the cycle continues.")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ an anchor which eventually devours itself. [[i’ll always have that memory burned into my mind’s eye.]]]]

but i have to ask myself: for how long can these roots sustain themselves?(click:"can these roots sustain themselves?")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ what will happen when they turn in against each other?(click:"when they turn in against each other?")+(t8n:"dissolve")[ and is there anything to be found [[in the husk of what came before?]]]]

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