The Thing

Posted on 30 Nov 2018 @ 5:49pm by Petty Officer 3rd Class Constantin Vansen
Edited on 30 Nov 2018 @ 5:58pm

578 words; about a 3 minute read

Okay, personal log...Petty Officer 3rd Class Constantin Vansen, Operations.

Here's the thing, Computer.

And you are a machine, so I know that my organic concerns must be trivial. They're not a warp core overload or a breached hull.

It struck me at the party really, as I was talking and flirting and living. As I drank and enjoyed the pulse of the people of the ship, as I watched them and talked to them and got to know them. Here's the real thing...

We are all insignificant in the beauty of the stars.

Our universe, and I am taking about the origin for humanity specifically, is 13.5 billion years old. There are more stars here than there are grains of sands on Earth and maybe even on Mars. If you pretend that Earth's sun was a box, then you would be able to fit 1.3 millions Earths in there.

Also, there's a cloud of alcohol in the Milky Way. Just...in case you were wondering.

Now take those few facts, the stuff that we just know, and put it in context of the ship. The crew, tiny organics with set purpose inside a synthetic machine that is the only thing separating us from the life-ending and rather inconsistent vacuum of space. And I don't need to remind you how that ends for an organic.

So we are in this moment, here, in space. How does it matter? To the universe around us, not at all. We are a speck of dust, nothing more than causal spacejunk that will be over in a blink of time.

People, however, don't think like that. Truth is, we construct things around us to make us feel as if what we are doing, the daily repetitive tasks, somehow matter.

The universe would not care if, for instance, humans went extinct. It has processed so many circles of life on planets, millions of years of evolution and destruction, life-ending events and new planets. Old planets dying.

Interestingly, for all that, I am still human. I have the...what do they call it?

Survival instinct.

The things that stop you from opening that airlock, that makes you check your EVA suit, that makes your stomach flip when you stand on a transporter pad. The way your instincts heighten and you look around for danger. It is what made me as a child sit with parts of the life support system in my hands, trying to repair it so we would not run out of air. Not because I was told I needed to do it.

But because I didn't want to die.

Funny where these thoughts hit you. Like at a party after one too many drinks as I watch people, as I try to imagine that anything I do matter. I suppose if I think smaller, it does. My actions have consequences, what I do impacts other people. I am not sure who wrote it, but someone wrote about in a world-ending scenario, people would do what they could to ensure the survival of their species.

The twist is, I sort of think we should make ourselves deserving of surviving. If that makes sense.

Anyway. I am hungover and there's been meetings...and there's Gabriel. I like Gabriel.

Maybe that is enough then? Maybe the thing is just to be happy and do what feels right? And let the universe worry about itself? I don't know.

Computer, end log.

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