Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 117177 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117177 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
The truth was, I was so involved in the daily tasks set by NASA that I didn’t really allow Tom’s look to sink in until Anton advised me to send a video to Darce. But it was strange. In fact, surely it was a terrible sign she didn’t answer my first call from the ISS or any of my calls in the six weeks since. NASA had assigned an escort to my family to keep Darcy, my father, and my aunt informed of my continued safety. And our arrival on the station was televised, and I’d agreed to send videos and photographs to NASA that they could share on an Instagram account they’d set up for me. I wasn’t a social media kind of guy, but I’d do whatever the PR team thought might bring interest to our mission. They’d posted my arrival to my Instagram. Besides, I had talked to Darcy and my family during a press conference, so they both knew I’d arrived safe and sound.
Still.
It was definitely a little off that Darcy didn’t pick up when I called from goddamn space. Her emails arrived regularly, and she explained she was busy with a massive case against a large corporation for noncompliance with their environmental impact. However . . . Christ, even my father had picked up when I’d called. Yet, it was possible Anton was correct. Perhaps Darcy was more afraid of me being in space than I’d considered. Though we were encouraged to talk it through thoroughly with our loved ones while we trained for a mission and while I knew my aunt was excited but afraid for me, Darcy had seemed . . . fine.
Thrilled to tell people she was dating an astronaut.
She’d even come to Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a few days before launch, though her schedule meant she’d had to leave early.
Did she really have to leave early? Or was that just an excuse?
And shouldn’t I care more if it was?
I didn’t say any of this into the video. There was no time or space in my life to feel resentful and confused. For now my focus was on the day-to-day tasks and the greater task of staying alive in space. At any moment something could go wrong on the space station, and my focus needed to be on keeping me, my crew, and the other three astronauts on the station alive. Darcy and I would talk about our relationship in four months when I returned to Earth.
Returned to Earth.
I grinned at the thought and then remembered I was supposed to be making a video letter. “So that zero-gravity training . . . tip of the iceberg, Darce. It’s taken me six weeks to get a handle on moving through the station with some swagger.” I chuckled at that. “I’ve missed handrails, bumped into walls—thankfully not destroying anything because the walls are packed with experiments and wires and pipes. Everything does something. The noise you hear . . . Loud, right?” Hence the reason I had to speak up to be heard. “That’s the fans and the pumps. Everything we need to survive. Keeps us warm and provides us with oxygen. Takes some getting used to. Don’t know if I ever will, to be honest, but it’s worth it for the view. I wish you could see what the world looks like from up here, Darce. The world you’re fighting to protect. I get that more than ever now. It’s so beautiful. I know you asked me in your emails to describe it. . . . For the first time in my life, I wish I was a writer so I could describe it to you the way Tom can. He writes it all down so that . . . you can almost feel what it’s really like to be here. I’ll give it a shot for you though.
“Nighttime is my favorite. It’s mesmerizing. All the lights . . . sometimes it looks like gold dusted across black marble. Other times the lights are fiercer, like fire burning across the surface of a black river. I think daytime would be your favorite though. Blues and greens and silvers and grays and purples and then suddenly rusts from the desert, smog over the cities, and the rivers of the Amazon can seem like liquid gold. It’s an ever-changing landscape. I’ve been in the Cupola only a few times—that’s the observatory module.” The Cupola was my favorite place on the station. Through its trapezoidal windows, it provided a 360-degree view of Earth.
“To enter it, you dive into it and then pull yourself up, like diving into a cave. There are cameras in there so we can take photographs. NASA assigned me to take some a couple of days ago, and they posted them to my Instagram so you can check them out. Good thing I got a handle on zero gravity. Some of those cameras are expensive.” I joked; everything on the ISS was expensive. The station weighed in at a million pounds and was the most expensive object ever built.