A S W I M I N E T H E R Mayday, mayday. Hello, hello? Man in distress. Mayday, mayday. Copy? Anyone listening? Once again, echoes of nothingness. Nothing but the inky black about me, a sea of unattainable stars in which I swim. Nothing around me, no one to hear my radio. I am lost. My watch has gone dead. Where, oh where does the time go? I'm talking to myself more and more. I might as well keep the radio on; at least I can pretend that someone is in range, receiving this. It keeps my thoughts even, my mind sane. Ah, the sad illusions we create to keep ourselves whole... How, why did I get here? I was the engineer on our ship. You know, kept the 'ware running, all the programs and the GUI's that let the rest of the crew command the robots and engines. I was hardly the physical type, not large or strong or fierce. I didn't stand a chance when they threw me out, left me out here to die in the null, the void, the endless realm of absolute zero. I was not prepared; I was not a man of action. Why am I using "was"? Is it all over that quickly? I might as well tell all, on the off chance that someone might be listening. What are the odds? Given my speed, my trajectory, my location in the uncharted, unexplored depths of the Frontier....very slim. Still, I must confess. I did it. I killed the doctor, the one most vital man to our mission, the only person who could keep us alive through harsh environments and alien atmospheres. But I saw what he had been doing to our rations, what he planned to do to our air. Those drugs, mixed in with the vitamins...we were to be working on his agenda, that's for sure. They didn't believe me, they thought me mad, but I knew what I had to do. It had nothing to do with our nineteen months of isolation. I had found him out. I'm so hungry. Why have I not died yet? The suit recycles my oxygen, ejects my waste, feeds me a seemingly endless supply of vitamins; the stars themselves power me through the cellular film that coats my suit, a silvery-green synthetic chlorophyll. How long can I go on? Even if I find a planet, there's no way I can land on it. I must be lonely; I keep laughing to myself. Ah, but it is so beautiful out here, just like in the brochures. The wonders of the uncharted reaches of space....You can almost breathe the subzero air as you float, weightless, an endless landscape exploding about you in three dimensions. The bright jewelled glare of stars but a few light-years away, the pinhole gleams of their more distant cousins, the sandgrain clouds of the boundless galaxy, trailing forever into the distance. Nebulae and gas clouds as well, vague splashes of color that break the monotony of this oh-so-formal white on black scene. But nothing moving. Nothing. It dulls my senses, makes me hallucinate, visions of planets and faces and the taillight gleams of spaceships floating across my visor. I don't mind. Seeing things may be my final form of entertainment; perhaps, towards the end, I may start hearing things, voices and responses to my broadcast. That would be nice. Has it been days? Weeks? Months? How long can a man live like this? I've memorized the stars, renamed the constellations, created myths of their origin and retold them to myself in the finest of oral tradition. God, do I miss the human voice. The latest: some of the stars are missing. Either I've lost track, or something is blocking them, a black Rosarch inkblot drifting towards me. I must have lost count; it's not easy to quantify infinity. Oh, I remember skin, and eyes and hair and touch, to smell, to taste, to listen....What have I to listen to? If I release this button, static. If I hold it, my own breathing. In, out. In, out. Nostrils, mouth. Will somebody help me? WILL IT HELP IF I SHOUT? Is there anybody out there? It's getting larger. I see it, by the gods. It'll be here soon. I still can't quite make out what it is. Must be a meteor of some kind, an asteroid, a lifeless form cast out to drift through eternity. Like me. If it's a spaceship, it's dead in the water, and I still won't be saved. Gotta be a rock. What else can be out here? Face it, as places go, this is as damned near the middle of nowhere as you're gonna get. I wonder if it'll have enough gravity to hold me down? Barely. Nowhere near enough gravity to make me fall. It's worse than walking on the moon; one step and I'll be a mile away. It is a rock, one the size of Chicago at least, plenty of room for me to walk around on. No dirt, no sand, just little patches of ice that I'd slip on if I were actually walking. As it is, I'm kind of floating next to the rock; there's enough of an attraction for me to pretend I'm standing or squatting, but that's about it. Still, with a horizon to orient yourself on, this is a pretty nice place. Even though the stars keep spinning overhead, like you're on the surface of a plastic globe that some schoolboy is spinning on its axis in the library. "You're"? Sorry. I'm. I guess I'm taking this talking-to-yourself thing a little too far, here. The weird thing is that I can walk around this thing and never notice that I'm upside down. It's like proving the world is round the easy way; I'm now on the bottom of the rock, relative to where I originally landed. The landscape is rather strange as well; this is raw rock, pure rock, untouched by atmosphere or erosion, a hunk of cooled lava with lots of airholes and sharp edges. You know, standing here I can almost picture the moon hanging over the horizon, pinned against a backdrop of slowly spinning stars. Surreal landscapes. Once in a while I realize how hungry I am, how lonely, but for the most part I'm too excited about all the places I have to explore, the faults and peaks and crevasses that could occupy my attention for weeks. I hope I die before the novelty wears off. Something there in the distance. It's awfully symmetrical; I suppose I better check this out. Can't be more than a few hour's hike. Farther than I thought. This thing is huge; wore me out getting here. It's an entrance of some sort, a giant rectangle of shadow framed by the rock of the asteroid itself, smoothed and shaped into a three- sided frame. No markings so far, no trails or tracks. Nothing at all to guess on, so I'll have to kick on my headlamp and venture inside. Do I want to? Might as well. Not like there's anything alive on this dismal hunk of rock. The proportions of this place are unbelievable. The entrance must have been at least forty feet tall, if not fifty or a hundred; it's hard to tell with nothing to compare it to. And this room I'm in, the antechamber, is unbelievable. I cannot see any of the walls, they are so far away, and the ceiling is invisible. Definitely artificial, though; everything is carved, or rather shaped, like this was a room. Not just a cave. I am amidst the blackness, alone. No stars this time. I found the next room, just by walking straight back. The far wall must have been a full mile from the entrance. Anyway, I think this is it; I've turned my headlamp up to full, and am trying to make some sense of the back wall. There's a lot here, but luckily it's not language--its not even hieroglyphic, just a very detailed picture. A graphic. What the hell, graphical interfaces are my specialty, I might was well give this one a whack. Not like I've got anything better to do. Seems petty straight forward, but there's just so much to look at. I wonder if it's a map, with a "You are Here" label somewhere. Probably not. I see stars, none of them labelled, but the layout familiar. There's a ten foot strip of carvings--etchings?--by my feet that appears to be a legend or key. If I remember my science correctly, these symbols are the atomic structure of the elements, though there's far more than 108. Their symbols are represented on the wall next to stars and planets, probably denoting composition. Could this be a catalogue? Are we merchandise? And who the shoppers be? Some of this looks familiar. Stars, solar systems, life forms. Like a blueprint, a design plan. Those elements...a recipe? My god, this place is a studio. The wall is a vast thumbnail sketch, the kind you do before you begin a painting or sculpture. I recognize quite a lot of this. I can almost picture some vast cosmic being, holed up in this simple shack and doodling on the wall, brain all fired up on coffee or whatever metaphysical beings drink to get wired. Hands twitching. I wonder what happened to him? It, her, yeah whatever. Did he die? Did he abandon his plan in disgust? Is he off vacationing, working on other projects? I've never known an artist to make just one piece... Blueprints, alright. There's Earth, Sol, Sirius, all the galaxies we know and quite a few we don't. Each location has its component lifeforms, and some of them surprise me. It's amazing how much we don't know about the universe. If I were not already crazy, the implications of what I have found would surely drive me mad. As it is, I can't stop laughing. Or are those sobs? One problem. This plan's got everything, plants, rodents, insects, even the slime molds we found on Vega. But no humans. Apparently, we weren't meant to be. Not made in the Creator's image; far from it. We were spontaneous, circumstantial. We were an accident. So that's what it all comes down to. And laugh I must. The deists were half right; the universe was planned. But we weren't.