Albedo 0.39
The insistent beep beep wakes me up. Another day starts. I wonder whether it will be the last. It doesn’t matter.
I get out of bed and go to the refectory. Station has supplies for hundreds of people, but I’m alone here. Therefore, I basically will die before I run out of food. The downside is that eating is boring, but I’ve got used to it. I try not to think about any real meal, and I know Station will give me the nutrients I need.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
Water could have proved a problem. Water was going to be mined from asteroids brought into orbit. Pulling it from the surface would have been impractical. However, only one asteroid was ever captured, and it was attached to the Station, where its drones keep mining for ice. It’s purified and that way I also have enough water for a lifetime.
Exactly for a lifetime.
Oh, of course I considered suicide. For a long time. But in the end, I decided it wasn’t fitting. And I had the whole of the station for me. At first, it was fun: so many things to see and do. But slowly I came to realize that all the functions necessary are automatically handled by Station.
I had nothing to do.
I decided to write.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
But what kind of human being would I be, if I had committed suicide? No better than any other, that’s what. Not that there’s anyone to complain or to make me feel guilty, of course.
Must be my conscience.
I contemplated ways to do it. The first one that comes to mind is walking out without protection. Easy and relatively fast. Or I could go to the kitchens and use a knife. Or I’m sure I could concoct some lethal combination of drugs from the medical unit.
I laughed thinking of falling from a certain height… Station’s rotation gives me gravity, but doesn’t give me heights. That was fun. For a while.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
Energy. The reactor was designed and supplied to last more than a hundred years. For a full compliment. And have I mentioned I’m alone? So, again I have all the energy I may need, and then some.
Why write? It’s absurd. Who’s going to read this?
Well, myself, in a few years’ time.
I don’t know. I don’t know.
Perhaps I should write down what happened.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
Sometimes I ponder the possibility of a system failure. What would happen then? My food could get contaminated. The drones might stop their mining and I’d run out of water. The reactor could have a meltdown.
Yet, in all these years, only the music player broke down. I’m not a real engineer, I cannot find where the fault is. And truth be told, after a while I have to say I don’t really hear the phrase any longer. I suppose it would be different if it played every minute or so.
I’ve considered this problem as well, and if it ever happens, I’ve decided I’ll destroy all the speakers. That could take at least a week. Perhaps I’ll do it anyway.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
The problem is that Station used the same speakers, and the system seems to be completely locked: it cannot do anything about it. So I no longer have anyone to talk to. I can chat with Station using any of the terminals: she’s everywhere, after all.
Did I just write “she”?
She’s everywhere. She may see what I’m writing now.
What if she lied? What if there’s no failure, but she simply got bored and didn’t want to talk to me? Alone us two, and she rejects me.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
The question.
The question is, I really don’t know what happened. I was part of Station’s last non-official crew when… When it happened. We supposed it had been a war. Fast, dirty, total.
The end of everything.
Almost.
They forgot about us, up here. We were spared, no weapons spent on us.
We tried hailing someone, anyone. Damn, the noise of the static was terrifying. Nowadays I spend hours seeking patterns in it. I don’t know what’s worse: not finding any or thinking, as I often do, that I have found one.
Makes you consider what’s sanity.
They killed each other in the end. Nobody thought I’d be the last. Perhaps that’s why I’m still alive, after all this time.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
We saw grey clouds crawl everywhere, then become black. We saw hurricanes grown to gargantuan proportions engulf continents. We shivered thinking of what was going on on the surface we could no longer see.
We didn’t think there were any survivors but us.
And now it’s only me.
Alone.
The observation deck used to offer amazing vistas. Now all I see is a dark globe spinning below me. I close my eyes and see it the way it was, before.
Before.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
I instructed Station not to show any dates. I doesn’t matter. Not any longer. And she has done it.
All I have is my alarms, just to maintain a daily routine. The rest doesn’t matter.
Ha. Routine.
I’m now considering destroying all the speakers, starting immediately. I think I‘ve had enough, and that single line from the stuck song seems to be mocking us. Us, as in Humanity. Only I’m the only one left to stick it to.
Albedo: zero and three nine.
And Station laughs.
The planet’s albedo is no longer 0.39. Not for such a dark place.
It must be lower. Much lower.
As befits the dead world below.
I feel drowsy. I think I’ll get some sleep.
If I can.
~~~~
This is my entry for this week’s Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Song Lyric Story. The challenge this week consisted of writing 1000 words inspired by the lyrics of a song, complete or in part.
I’m sure I’ve heard tens of songs in my life that could have inspired me. I considered and discarded Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. I thought of some Spanish songs and didn’t really like any. On Monday Dolores O’Riordan passed away and I had the idea of cheating and writing a non-fiction piece using Cranberries songs.
And somehow, in the end I thought of Vangelis. Albedo 0.39 is one of the early albums of the electronic musician, and the titular song has a spoken lyric that consists of a series of astronomical facts about the Earth. It ends with its albedo, the fraction of solar light it reflects: 39%. And so I decided to write a scifi story inspired by this.
