Everything in space–from planets, exoplanets, stars, and moons–is made from junk. Everything comes from the universe’s clump of garbage. Hydrogen combines into Helium; chemical reactions happen far beyond anyone’s imagination from a cataclysmic event, and here we are. The Moon. A byproduct of the Earth after being hit by Theia. The child of the Earth, a remnant of the Great Pacific Basin– the Moon.
Many gods loom over the Moon’s glory. They attempt to reign supreme over the power exerted by it. Commander is no fool– he knows their system fights under such a god who controls the moons. However, the moon is unpredictable and completely and utterly vulnerable to anyone who tries to control it.
This chunk of a young Earth, forgotten through time, is something Commander has fought to protect. Along with his coworkers–no, friends–he led a squadron. A squadron that failed against its enemy, and now, Commander plans to sneak through the compound that once housed the last bits of humanity to steal any of his stuff back.
It’s a tricky process that Commander isn’t used to–breaking into his old home. However, the werewolves are sloppy–ill-prepared as they always have been, and haven’t restarted any security systems since the last battle. They believe he is dead. They believe everyone is dead. That belief is one Commander does not wish to crush.
He’s made his temporary home in a small aircraft. He prays it's temporary, but if this operation goes south, he might as well count his blessings and die there.
There’s nothing left to fight for anyway. The Earth, however small yet dangerous it is, unlike the Moon, is gone– overtaken by the wretched beasts. The Moon suffered the same fate just a week ago.
Commander pulls back from the screen he’s glued to, putting the finishing touches on his plan to infiltrate the base. His ship still has the capability to open the airlock to the docking zone. He hopes no one is in there as he sneaks in, but just in case, he’s already implemented multiple grenades mounted to his suit full of Acepromazine and Nitrous Oxide. He rubs his fingers against the smooth metal of the grenades and takes a deep breath.
Sneak in, knock them out, shut down all the security, put gas in the vents, grab the stuff, and get out. It’s an easy plan– too easy, but considering Commander is still healing from the sustained wounds from the last battle, he’ll need it to be as easy as possible.
Commander knows that. He’s not an idiot like someone in his system. He understands when he should back down, regroup, and heal.
Hell, Commander has even implemented multiple modifications to his suit, fixed the broken glass on his helmet, made an invisibility system on his ship, and created a toxic gas that’ll knock out even the strongest of werewolves in a matter of a week because he allowed himself to heal.
However, he’s not invincible to anxiety. The tightness in his chest has become an increasing problem over the past hour as he frantically makes the last improvements on his ship. Time is ticking down, and before long, he knows that this fragile Moon will no longer be his home. He’ll have to plant his own roots somewhere else, not somewhere everyone else wants to go. It’ll just be him.
He finds the thought terrifying.
Commander has always relied on the people around him. He loves humanity to death. However, everyone is gone, even his friends. What do you do in a world where you’re the only one left, and such a world isn’t real? What would you do if you found out that everything you have been fighting for your entire life–the continuance of humanity, the perseverance of Earth–has been in someone else’s head? You’re a human being– yes, but all of your memories did not happen in the real world.
The Earth is still alive and beautiful. Commander has seen it with his own eyes, so why does he try to continue for something in here, like making an elaborate break-in plan, to hold onto what does not exist?
Null Hypothesis: He knows.
Hypothesis: He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything anymore, and it’s terrifying. He thought he would have his friends to rely on, but even Frenchie–Jean-Paul, wasn’t really Jean-Paul. He wasn’t a member of a squadron that Commander led. Jean-Paul was a friend of the system. He flew a helicopter and had a boyfriend, but now all that is gone. Here, Jean-Paul is dead. Marlene is dead. Everyone is gone.
Are they alive in the real world? Commander doesn’t want to know.
Instead, he shakes his head and puts on a sharp look. It’s time. It’s time to grasp onto the last bits of his life and move on to something new– something unpredictable. Something vulnerable. Something as dangerous as the wonders on planet Earth.
He wonders if that Moon-god the system serves ever planned for something like this to happen. He wonders if any god, even his G-d, oh how glorious he may be, planned for the world to get destroyed by werewolves and the hubris of humanity.
Commander clicks a button to start his ascent to the base. He shifts in his seat uncomfortably–he will not miss the leatherback seats–and grabs the throttle. He jams it forward and shoots along the Moon’s floor, covered with blood, bodies, and basins with lava flow named Maria’s.
Commander parks his ship in front of the airlock. The invisibility system is working smoothly; the tranquilizing grenades are readily available against his chest; his new plasma blasters from his gloves work without melting the glove off; his helmet is on, and oxygen is flowing through it steadily. He has three hours to do this, no less, and if he fails, well, it’ll be better than being turned into sand, he believes.
His hand looms against the button to the airlock. It’s now or never, and he has never been this anxious since the day his boss sat him down and prompted him to be a squadron leader– or the day he got a boyfriend– or that day he decided to kiss–
Commander shakes his head and hastily presses the button to the airlock. If he stalls any longer, the oxygen will run out, and he’ll have to replan for another week. Not that his brain doesn’t enjoy that factor–his brain hopes to do anything to stall more. However, he wishes he never had to do this, but this is for himself. Indulgence, perhaps.
Commander spins around and pries the door outside open. He hops out, being careful to land on his feet, and ventures into the tall, metal-encased room with multiple battered and destroyed ships. Humanities ships. Not the werewolves.
Honestly, he’s seen better days inside; dried blood leaks from the shattered glass of the cockpits where humans lay frozen and bitten to shreds. The werewolves got to them before they could escape. The same goes for the bodies Commander nearly runs into, venturing to the security room, piled in a corner. However, those had no suits on, and their gashes looked like they could’ve nearly decapitated the bodies. Innocents, he presumes.
The sight has Commander pushing down bile in his throat and dragging himself to the next room, up a bloodied stairwell, and to the right. The path is an all too familiar one. It’s of a time when he trained new cadets to open up the airlock and reboot the security systems in case of a system failure. It was a time he loved. He was practically a father to those in the lower ranks. Everyone would go to him and not the others. They said he was “safer”.
Commander opens up the security door. He sighs, ignoring the body torn on the ground as he shuffles to the computer.
Nothing has changed in this room except for the body. Commander suspects the werewolves exterminated everything and everyone inside after winning the last battle. Nevertheless, he clicks the computer on, and while it boots up, he drags the old, rusty chair from the desk and props it under a vent. He steps up, shoots the vent cover off with a plasma blast, and chucks a few grenades inside. As it begins spewing sleeping gas, the computer pings on, and he’s back to work on the screens he’s known to love and hate.
Thank goodness he went to college for a few years before the werewolves completely invaded Earth. At least he knows the ins and outs of the ventilation system enough to reroute the fans to pilot the gas to the main areas of the complex. From there, he’ll book it to his old quarters, gather his things, and book it back. There’s no time for mess-ups or old nostalgia trips.
There’s no time to run his fingers along the keyboard, frowning as he remembers the times when multiple kids would come in and play. They’d pretend they were playing a video game like one’s on Earth and have fun. The keys show wear and tear over the hours of kids mashing their fingers onto them with full force. Commander recomposes himself and pulls away, redirecting his attention to the continuance of his plan.
He barges out of the security room, slamming the door shut. The nostalgia is quickly replaced with unbridled rage, burning in his stomach. His body aches from the force of the anger flowing through his veins.
Commander continues his way down the halls, shooting glares and flipping off the knocked-out werewolves he passes. They killed his brethren, they killed humanity, and now he’s the last one left. It’s all their fault.
It’s their fault that children and adults alike cannot run through the halls, chatting, crying, and yelling like it’s their last day alive. Children cannot play sardines or hide and seek along the nooks and crannies they find themselves in adjacent to these halls; college students cannot cram for finals with their friends, holding stacks of textbooks in their arms as they walk down these pathways; no adult can praise one another for working well that day; and elderly are no longer helped with a gracious hand because all of them are gone. They’re dead. Humanity is no longer human because they’re all ash on the Earth and Moon’s surfaces.
Commander rushes past the cafeteria, not wanting to remember Frenchie and Marlene singing Karaoke on Wednesdays, never failing to embarrass him. He wishes the emotions running through his body could only be embarrassment and love for those he’s befriended. Instead, it’s a messy cacophony of anger and unrelenting sadness.
Airports see more sincere kisses than wedding halls. The walls of hospitals have heard more prayers than the walls of churches. Why?
It’s because love gets felt most when it’s leaving, and Commander has been torn from the inside out by love– his love for humanity– his love for Earth– his love for the Moon– his love for life.
He’s given out so much love, yet there’s none back to give to him.
Commander opens the door to his room. It smells of burnt plastic and blood. He scans over the remnants of what is left. There’s barely anything left, but he grabs a spare bag from his old–now broken–chair and begins gathering. A few blankets–Frenchie gifted one– a torn-up pillow, old blueprints, plushes, a bag, a few articles of clothing, and one lonely potted plant on the desk. He grabs everything he can carry and more. He wraps the blankets around his neck, cradles the potted plant that cannot fit into the bag, and stuffs as many books, pictures, blueprints, and posters as possible.
He doesn’t care if everything is crumpled. He just wants something to feel like home. He wants things to remind him of his life. His life that is not real.
The potted plant Commander grabs–as he rushes out of the room when his timer hits an hour–came from his muter before she died during the werewolf invasion on Earth. One blanket wrapped around his neck was bought by his tate before, during a battle, he died as an innocent. Frenchie gifted him the other blanket wrapped around his tates for his birthday. Most of the clothes shoved into the small bag were gifts from Marlene. She always complained that he needed better fashion. He would love to hear her complaining now.
However, Commander knows it isn’t real. It’s not as authentic as the real world. He knows that his past is just a figment of a brain's capacity to survive in the hostile world–Earth. He knows his relationship with his parents is not reality. He knows that Frenchie–well, Jean-Paul, is not dead. He knows Marlene is not dead. Commander knows the system has a daughter. He knows they serve a moon god.
Commander knows he shouldn’t hold such memories and artifacts of a past life so near and dear to him, but he can’t help it. He’s human, after all.
He skids to a halt at the docking station. Surprisingly, everything went well. There were no casualties–although he would’ve been the only one–and it was a success. He ignores the obvious signs that he broke into the compound as he rushes down the stairwell and out the large doors to the hostile world of space.
His ship is still invisible, so Commander clicks a button on his left arm, making the invisibility disappear briefly, and hops into his temporary home as it flickers back on.
Commander gently puts the potted plant–a spider plant, one of the more resilient plants that got brought onto the Moon–onto his desk in the back of the ship. He dumps the bag beside the desk and throws the blankets off his neck. Once again, there’s no time to lollygag in a situation that could compromise his position and life.
Commander slides into his seat, turns the ship around, shoves the throttle forward, and pulls upward on the collective, flying him into the air and away from the place he once called home.
From beyond, a circle illuminates his journey– a small world complete with water and wonder: Earth. To Commander, it looks more beautiful than anything he has ever seen. He shoots along the rocky and desolate world of the Moon, looking upon one with bountiful life. Both homes– now gone and invaded by werewolves– are no place to be for a squadron leader–for the last member of humanity.
The place to be is with everyone else. To venture into the unknown of life and the uncertainty it brings. Commander pulls further up on the collective. It spins his ship into a 100-degree tilt, making things not stuck down to be flung into the back. He hears the spider plant’s pot shatter. He cringes and continues into the starry abyss.
Everyone is surrounded by space junk all the time–
Time. Hm.
Time is the factor for everything and anything. It took time for the hydrogen to combine into helium and for the stars to tell their tales in the night sky like they do now. It’s a burning fury of gas and heat. All of this takes time, but with time comes love.
Everything gets powered by love. The biological “law of everything”–everything in life needs a parent. Everything in life needs a union, with love, sharing their bond, and making a new being.
Where is he going now? He doesn’t know, and maybe that’s okay.
Hypothesis: It is okay to not understand. It’s okay to look at both homes you’ve once had, close your eyes, and breathe. Take time to remember; take time for yourself. It’s okay to echo a sentiment of love, even if you don’t understand it. It’ll take time for you to know why.
Commander will roll with the punches like he has his whole life. He will look upon the vulnerable worlds he is a part of in fierce love. Commander will protect them, and they will protect him through memory. Even if he knows those worlds weren’t real.
Everything is space junk in the end. So, why not live life to the fullest, loving everything as you go, always uncertain about where it’ll bring you until you become garbage? He enjoys that sentiment.
As he breaks the barrier between his old home and the new world to explore, he feels his anxieties bubble away and get replaced with excitement.
He cannot wait to start exploring.