The ship is enormous and state of the art and unbearably inexpensive and perfect and it is sinking.
The human next to it is barely worth noticing. He’s sinking too. Already the rim of the ice is towering above him, his arms straining to grip its lowermost edge, frictionless and scrabbling. He’s very good at math, his eyes have been checked many times in his life; he can measure and determine the exact velocity of his doom as it’s swallowing him.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
***
The idea was natural. Nobody worth knowing had been there, and he was worth knowing, so he would go there. He would go there and learn things and experience danger and come back and be a hero and a bringer of fresh new wisdom that everyone would love and could be used to remove the tawdry old musty wisdom they had lying around the place that nobody liked.
***
Danger was a word to him back them which implied not problems, but a certain looseness of safety caused by an increase of uncertainty. An untied shoelace was dangerous. A dark wood was dangerous. Forgetting to wear gloves in low temperatures was dangerous.
His current situation is not dangerous. It’s perilous. Peril sounds higher-pitched than danger, more alarmed, more immediate. Piranhas in the pool with you. A lightning storm outside your airplane. A close-quarters gunfight. A close-quarters gunfight in the piranha-filled pool inside your airplane in a lightning storm.
Peril sounded very distinct back then, something that could be avoided by common sense and good preparation, both separable and distinguishable from the danger that he was to consign himself into. Now he’s starting to think they’re just points on a gradient, and that he might have misread it. Yes, peril is in the ice’s creak under his nails. But it had been creaking for ages before this moment. Maybe he should’ve listened closer.
***
The planning was beautiful. A wonder-swirl of dreams sharpened and filed and measured and remeasured and plotted onto files and studied until the construction happened and they became real.
Having become real, there was no way for the plans to fail. That was how it worked. It was simply impossible for it to be any other way.
***
A deep, heartfelt groan that makes his hands shake and his body slide another unmeasurable too-far distance. The ship is settling farther. Sliding deeper. Listening to gravity.
He really wishes it wouldn’t. He really wishes he wasn’t. He really hates gravity, which is something he’s never experienced before. Feelings this strong about basic physics should belong to professors.
***
The voyage was miraculous. Transformational. Imagine spinning in a little circle, eyes open, and everything you see is new – not just for you, but for anyone. Nobody else has ever seen it, nobody else has ever known it. Just you. Just you.
Oh, he couldn’t wait for it. He loved it. Loved how the cold crackled along the outside of the ship, how with every second more and more of the fingerprints of its makers flaked away and were left in his wake. Cleaning it. Making it less theirs, cutting the cords that little bit shorter, stretching the distance that little bit farther. It was alone now out here, which meant it was also him. He was enormous and state of the art and unbearably expensive and he wasn’t sinking.
It wasn’t going to be like that.
***
The ice isn’t quite as slick anymore underneath the manic grip of his fingers. That’s because pieces of it are coming off. The pieces he’s holding onto. It’s rough and jagged and sharp and his own weight is cutting into his gloves. Luckily it’s cold enough that the pain is barely there; sucked away the moment it registers in his palms.
***
The disaster was caused by the same thing as usual: something small and unworthy of attention. A defect in the ship, but what caused that? What put it there? The underpaid, overworked factory employees who sealed it? The management that refused to pay them or give them free time? The world that encouraged both of those things in profusion? The history that made the world? Small things unworthy of attention.
Anyways, the ship hit a bump. And the bump turned into a drag. And the drag ended in a lurch. And the crew were in the right place at that wrong time and now look what’s happened.
Small things unworthy of attention.
***
Which makes it even funnier that he can’t get all of those small things out of his head right now, at this precise moment. Even as his fingers – without apparent cause – cease functioning.
Your brain really WILL try anything in an emergency. He’s almost calm by now.
And so he slides over the edge with relaxed muscles and slackened grip, into the abyss, off the icy roof of the garage through six feet of cold December air into a wet December slush heap where the plow has piled an entire street’s-worth of grey gunk into a towering monument to hubris – a Christmas tree that finally receives its topping angel.
His ship goes after him and bounces off his head. The plastic goes ‘donk’ when it does that. And it goes ‘crunch’ when it lands.
“Fuck!” he says very loudly without thinking, at precisely the moment a large, irritated human parent opens his and their front door to see what the fuss is about.
***
And so the expedition went down in infamy and disaster, a warning to all who had not participated in it – a somewhat smug little tale of good judgement’s necessity for those who’d naysaid it from the start; a prudent reminder of pitfalls to be avoided for those who’d felt a bit of wistfulness as they watched it leave safe harbour.
The sled, alas, was cracked right down the middle. Totally useless.