2004-11-10 11:53 p.m. When the four of us built our rocket and planned our journey into space, we knew that we'd have to be careful about how much weight we brought along. Like high school wrestling team champions, we sweated ourselves down to our ideal weight. I carried an empty soda can with me all day and every time I got enough saliva pooled into my mouth, I'd lean my head way over & spit down into the dark teardrop at the can's open top. It was me, Dr. Herge, his wife Em, and a biologist named Tim that we didn't know that well. He listened to Belle & Sebastian and wore ill-fitting button up shirts, but what he didn't know about animals you could fit in... a pretty small pamphlet. The Doc was the one who really wanted to go into space. He chose me because I had a background in robotics and in English literature. Well, more for the former than the latter. That's only notable in that I used that background to name the robots I made. Also, my user manuals are easy to read because they contain gripping pieces of short fiction about couples in the midst of divorce who face common user situations in operating robots. And the emotional storms that blow up around that robot operation. One of my user manuals won me a Best of the Bay award in San Francisco. This was when I was living in Berkeley. This was when the acclaim of free weekly newspapers was enough for me. But the Doc lured me away with his promise of a space mission to end all space missions. His idea was this: What's the one thing that keeps humanity stuck to this charming dirtball called Earth? The easy answer is "gravity." The harder to face and more true answer is "we die before we get anywhere if we try to leave." Doc Herge was going to build and steer the rocket. Tim was going to keep us alive for as long as possible, even if it meant studying aliens up close and personal to figure out which ones we could eat. The Doc's wife was coming along for, you know, wifely things. She studied communications at a community college. She knew a lot about PowerPoint and direct mail marketing. I was kinda hoping she'd be up for some side action while Herge was busy with smoking engines or gravity pools. Or, should the Doc get eaten by something, I'd be more capable on the comforting front than the indie-rock biologist. Assuming he even wanted to compete. And me? I was there to replace us all. The first of us to go down was going to be replaced by a custom robot duplicate. The second of us to go down... same thing. Same with third. Assuming, of course, that I was not among the first three. Which is what I was hoping for. But weight was an issue. So what I was able to pack, inbetween bouts of spitting, sitting in a sauna, and jogging on a treadmill, was one complete and generic robot kit. It was modular, which meant that it was easy to pack as well as easy to take apart. I figured that if we lost two people, I could take the thing apart and rebuild two shorter replacement robots with the memories of the deceased. Easy. Just... shorter. Person three was going to be difficult. But by then, I'd be able to cannibalize from the life support system, I figured. I was doing a lot of figuring. All of it came to nought. Despite all of our hard work, Doc didn't make weight. Tim ended up going in his place to the West Coast Science & Wrestling Weekend and was pinned within three minutes by a herpetologist from Seattle. And we lost our funding, just like that. Not even Tim pawning his Belle & Sebastian CDs by way of atonement could make up the shortfall in cash. We gave up on our dreams of space, of robots, of sleeping with the Doc's wife. Except for Doc, of course. He didn't have to give up on that last one. I still have our modular robot in my closet. I still have trouble holding a soda can without spitting into it. I have started taking classes at community college. Communications. I'm meeting people. They just aren't people in space. I try not to mind very much. |
1. today is nice 3. happy yesterdays 8. thanks for hosting 4. doing other things |
(Proof that I am the only one reading.) |