[Short Story] These Beautiful Lights

Please enjoy this short story and accompanying soundtrack, written and performed by the author of Future Conscience, Robert A. Gordon. Header image from NASA.

The experience of being out in space provides a gift of witness.

Witnessing the exhilaration of take-off and its mix of liberating anxiety. Witnessing the magnificence of seeing the Earth as one unified whole. Understanding, in a small but instantly appreciated way, a bit more about your role in the world and both the importance and insignificance that you inhabit. These are perhaps the most well known gifts provided, but amongst everything else it’s the lights that stay with you. The lights that you remember as the anchor of each of these experiences as they act as messengers of your witness. Mesmerising in their chaotic consistency, each tells a different story that emerges from many different sources.

There are the million pinpoints of our own galaxy that stretch out into infinity. Unlike the view from the ground, they don’t twinkle in space; but they make up for this by arriving with reinforcements. Sheer numbers you never anticipated. Showcasing the brilliance of the cosmos, yet only hinting at its complexity.

There are the shifting lights and flashing terminals of the space station itself. The environmental lights provide illumination, shifting with the rhythm of an Earth day to provide the body and mind with some sense of biorhythmic normality. The flashing status lights are comforting in their predictability, speaking to you in a language that quickly becomes second nature. They assure you that everything is functioning as it should, something to be truly grateful for when the veil between life and death is so thin. They also send warnings of any issues before they become catastrophic, like a close friend that is able to calmly steer your course when you go astray.

Other lights on the terminal are welcomed because they announce an update from command, or even better a message from home. Delayed communication feels detached and doesn’t fully pierce the isolation of your celestial mission, but you inevitably rely on the connection all the same.

Passing satellites and other man-made space objects have their own lights. These ones tend to twinkle and flash, marking their location as they move. Some of them look like the expected winged machines, but most look like floating air conditioners shot up through the atmosphere by some unknown force.

Will they collide with the station?
The radar screens flash with updates assuring you that they won’t.

Earth itself provides the most beautiful show. The observation window hangs over a cosmic precipice. There is no up or down, but the planet’s rotation still feels like it is far below. Hours can be spent watching it slowly move by. Seeing cities light up like a series of neurons firing as the planet evolves its own consciousness.

When facing the Sun, it is the magnitude of the landscape and the vast oceans that are most striking. The natural formations speak a language of a different scale to the individual flora and fauna that inhabit it. 

When turned away from the Sun, it is humanity that speaks with its collective yearning. The landscapes fade away and the future of Earth’s cosmic destiny lights up as it plots its course through another day. This combines with the green glow of the magnetosphere aurora as it soaks up solar radiation, dancing before your eyes and bringing with it a deep hypnotic peace.

At other times the storms swirl and fold, building on the oceans before breaking along the continents like Titans. Flashes of lightning crackle seemingly at random over the curvature. A different dance to the graceful flow of the aurora. Violently ecstatic, speaking of the secrets of formation at the core of the universe. The lights on Earth have their own rhythm that lies between nature and humanity.

Immediately humbling while inspiring the viewer to dream of everything that could be.

These lights shield your sanity against the claustrophobia of the tight station spaces and the cosmic terror of the infinite expanse that lies behind its walls. Watching them from the viewing window is a spiritual experience. Losing oneself in their glow helps to balance against the vital work that keeps the station functioning; wrapping the moments of free time spent together with other team members with the comforting silence of being alone. Images flashed through small screens help remind you of who you were before being elevated out of the Earth’s atmosphere. The newest films are delivered in a slow digital upload package that arrives each week. Expanding the realms of science and our knowledge of the universe, while also looking forward to the new superhero movie before it hits cinemas and the public eye. Watching the first Alien movie on the last night of every month.

Everybody needs traditions.

These beautiful lights make a lasting impression.

They become the milestones by which you measure each day. The landmarks that let you know you’re heading in the right direction. They fill your dreams with colours and unique rhythms. Nightmares predicated by a slight shift in their patterns indicating that something is wrong. Even though you don’t realise you are dreaming, you notice the change in the pattern of daily existence. When the lights change, it means that reality is shifting with them. The experience is deeply unsettling as the subconscious mind works through whatever it needs to. More than one night’s rest has been interrupted by those flashing warning lights, which fade away into nothingness upon awakening.

Yet they only invade your dreams because at other times they are pressingly real. When one of them tells you that there is a system fault, it usually means a full day slowly diagnosing the problem and then pulling out schematics to make sure that the repair is successful. Thankfully, most of these are done inside the station. Occasionally, they require suiting up and being tethered to the lines on the outside of the station. 

Slowly and purposefully moving towards whatever needs to be fixed.

Floating in space brings its own awe-inspiring mix of beauty and terror. Beauty from the infinite expanse of the universe watching you with an all-seeing eye. Terror from the insignificance that your tiny body represents and its complete subservience to the forces that surround you. There is no freedom to improvise in space, only the routine and precision required to ensure that you survive its fatal indifference.

But the lights today were different.
It started with a flashing message.
The bright blue of data arriving after its minutes-long journey from Earth.

The kind of light that sometimes goes unnoticed or ignored for hours until the day’s activities are conducted. Yet today it drew attention because it arrived during the silent hours when activity was normally at a minimum.

Pressing the light brought up the glow of the small screen above it. There was no video or audio in this message, just the Space Force logo and some running words below:

Global Emergency Declared. Government Continuity Protocol in Operation. Cease Regular Activity and Assume Contingency Planning.

The words kept running by in a loop against the dark blue background. It took a moment to process them properly. A moment broken by another flashing light, this time indicating that the data channel with home had been severed.

For the communications console, at least, this would be the final message received. There would be no more lights linking one back to the comforting reminder of home. The light itself stopped flashing once the message was read, the console coming in and out of vision to the rhythm of blinking eyes that were the only movement of a body frozen by the significance of what had been displayed.

Global Emergency Declared. For those circling the Earth in orbit, these three simple words contained the infinite void that lies at the end of existence. There would be no help arriving, nobody coming to bring you home. It was difficult to look away. To do so would lead to acknowledging the fatal situation. This floating metal coffin on the outskirts of humanity, without a hope or a prayer of return.

Without further information, there could be a number of different disasters behind such a simple message. Government Continuity Protocol meant that there was an immediate threat that would quickly lead to the deaths of millions; Global Emergency meant that it was an extinction level event. Unfortunately, there was no real contingency planning to speak of when it came to a space station removed from contact and any hope of further supplies.

Seconds stretched out into hours as the low, murmuring sounds of the station’s HVAC unit began to stretch out into a droning expanse. It wasn’t a flashing light of any kind that finally broke the spell, but rather the sharp intake of breath that had to come at some point.

A moment’s panic and dread quickly replaced by the purest calm.

At least experiencing the end out here will be a beautiful experience. Whatever is taking place on Earth, it won’t touch the station directly. The only question that remains is how long to hold out before the inevitable.

There is deep peace to be found in accepting the inevitable.

A flash in the peripheral vision drew attention to the wide viewing window that overlooked Earth. The beauty of the planet marked by a new and growing light source over the East Coast of North America, followed by another on the West.

Detonations. Thermonuclear.
Growing in number. Expanding in reach.

The intricate dance of a thousand warheads all carefully designed to respond to one another in unison. Mutually assured destruction always meant there would be no return and hopefully that would give everybody a reason to step back. The flaw with the theory was that, at some point, somebody was going to feel they had no other option than self-immolation.

When you see lights like this your breathing continues, but your chest begins to tighten. Shock takes over quickly and brings a semi-catatonic state. Internally you feel calm, because there is no other way to respond. There is no action that can be taken to overcome the event being witnessed, or to give yourself a better chance of surviving its aftermath. Certainly not out here in the first buffer of space holding the universe and humanity apart.

Eyes cease blinking as the events witnessed bring apocalyptic visions of nothingness. 
The bright atomic lights continued until the clouds covered the Earth.
The communications panel never flashed again.