Man, I need to get better at updating.
Internet, this semester I took a course in astronomy. My feelings on the cosmos can be explained as thus: space is crazy. Things blow up and cease to exist and in the ceasing create new things all the time. Black holes are not, in fact, black; they are invisible. Wrap your head around that for a moment. There are enormous, vacuous nothings that continually suck in anything surrounding it, and you’ll only know about its existence after your body is ripped in twain by gravity. What.
The picture above was taken from Astronomy Picture of the Day, a nifty little website with beautiful, baffling, and humbling photos of space. It’s worth a gander.
I was most fascinated by the formation and death of stars. For our final project, we were able to write a fiction story about an aspect of space, so long as it was scientifically accurate. I also made a hardcover book for my piece to live. (Which turned out wonderful, if I might be so bold. I’m not sure when I’ll get it back from my teacher. Once I do, I’ll be sure to post pictures.) So, this is my space story. It’s about a girl exploding. A weird one! But I’m very pleased with it. It’s violent, and educational!
2000 Lightyears From Home
My name is Grace. It is meek and forgettable. Since the discovery, I cannot be either of those things. The doctors try to re-name me. They call me Theta Tau, Upsilon Ori, Beta Lyr, Gamma Aur. They have not settled on a full name because they have not decided where they are going to put me. They are now putting me in a small, clear spaceship. I am going on a trip. I am going to die.
No one else has ever known the exact time they are going to go. They have to guess. All the babies, once they’re born, are given an injection of Hydrogen in the chest. The Hydrogen keeps their bodies running. No baby gets the same amount. When this Hydrogen runs out, they go OMS. If they’re OMS, or Off Main Sequence, their bodies start running on something else. First Helium, then Carbon, and so on. Everyone measures their height on the hour. When they go OMS, they grow six inches. They grow another six inches every time they begin running on something else. The tall ones die.
Deaths are frequent. I have seen people die at the movies, in line at the Post Office, in the middle of dinner, exiting the gym, waiting for the train, depositing paychecks. When they die, there is a loud pop like when a jar is opened for the first time. A white light emanates from their chests, radiating out until the whole body is smothered. An outline of the body is visible for a moment, until the edges blur and dissolve. The light dissipates. When it is gone, there is a steaming, hissing rock the size of a fist. This is called a dwarf. Sometimes a dwarf is retrieved, and tucked into a purse or coat pocket. More often, dwarfs are ignored. The streets are full of small, blackened remains. Strays take them in their mouths and gnaw. Children kick them in the absence of balls.
Nobody wants to go OMS. The longer they’re on MS, the longer they get to live. Because no one knows exactly when they will go, people try to do as much living in as little time possible. Childhood ends at seven. At eight, we are given the option to stop attending school. At ten, we are eligible to work. At twelve, we are permitted to marry.
I stayed in school because I wanted to learn. I liked science the best—how plants grow, what water is made of, where elements come from. If I were to dwarf anytime soon, I would want to do it with a head full of facts.
School was where I met Danny. Danny liked learning, too. He wanted to be an architect. He wanted things to be there after he goes, after spending his life making tall, bright things. When I met Danny, I was OMS and he was not. I was two and a half feet taller than him. He thought this was funny.
“You’re going to die soon,” he would say. “You’re going to die way before I do. I bet I’m going to wake up tomorrow and I’ll look for you and you’ll just be a dwarf. You’re so OMS, you’re probably going to die tomorrow. Not me, though.”
Danny was going to be my husband.
*
Danny didn’t think I should see a doctor about my feet. I had been having trouble walking because the muscles in my feet and ankles kept seizing. He thought I was being dramatic. By the time I got to the doctor, my arches had fallen completely.
“It hurts when I walk,” I told the doctor. “I have to keep them flat on the ground and shuffle. They’re like skates.”
The doctor put his thumb on my big toe and pressed. It felt like he was sticking a thin, steel rod up my shin, slicing muscles, scratching bone. I inhaled through my teeth, clutching fistfuls of my skirt.
“Does this hurt?” the doctor asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “Very much. Please stop.”
He took my entire foot in his palm and squeezed. The pain swooped up my shin and over my knee. Instead of one tiny rod, it felt like he was prodding me with five big ones. My entire leg tightened and tensed. I feared my skin would tear. I almost screamed, but I did not want to seem rude.
“Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasestop,” I whispered. It was hard speak because I had so little breath. Danny hushed me.
“Be quiet, Gracie-Girl. The doctor is just doing his job.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I don’t mean to belittle your profession.”
“That’s alright,” the doctor said, and he released. The pressure immediately drained from my body, and my foot swung down hard against his knee. I shuddered from the impact. I chewed on my tongue to keep myself from crying.
The doctor did not understand what was wrong, and so took me to get X-Rays. Afterwards, he showed me blue and white pictures of my feet.
I had a basic understanding of anatomy from school. The pictures of my feet did not look like real feet. Instead of bones, there was a single, fat mass stretching from my heel to my toes. The doctor put the picture up on a screen and pointed.
“Those aren’t bones,” I said.
“Is it a tumor?” Danny asked. I looked at him fearfully. He was staring at the picture with fascination and awe.
“No, no,” the doctor said. He stroked his beard and sighed. “Grace, let me try to explain this to you the best I can. What you are looking at—what is inside your feet—is iron. You are so OMS that your body has reached the end of its fusion chain. All that’s left in you is iron. Iron does not make energy, only takes it. Your body is filling up with iron. When you are totally full, you’re going to die.”
I held out my hand for Danny to take, but he did not see it. He was still staring up at the picture of my feet with a wild admiration. I wiggled my fingers to get his attention, to no avail. I pretended I was just stretching my arm out, and then I put my hands back in my lap.
“So…she’s gonna be a dwarf?” Danny asked. The doctor shook his head.
“No no, and this is the really exciting part.” The doctor removed his glasses and smiled. “You’re not going to be a dwarf. You’re going to be a supernova.”
My heart stiffened and rose to my throat like a buoy.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“What does it mean?” The doctor was grinning now. “It means you’re the very first person with a mass high enough to create a supernova explosion. We doctors have only speculated about this stuff. This has never happened before. You’re a very lucky girl.”
*
The doctor sent me to a lab down south. Danny came with me. In the lab, there were lots of other doctors who were just as excited as the one who diagnosed me, if not more. By the time we got down there, my legs had totally seized. They jutted out in front of me like two steel beams. I could not bend my knees anymore, and so I was pushed around the lab in a chair that was more like a bed.
Danny was angry that I got to be pushed while he had to walk. I let him sit on the foot of the bed, even though he pressed against my ankles. To steady the pain, I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth.
“Did you enjoy your trip?” a lady doctor questioned.
“I’ve never been on an airplane before,” I replied. In truth, I had not enjoyed my trip. The rumblings of the airplane’s engine had caused the pain in my legs to vibrate all the way up to my shoulders. I was very close to wailing. But Danny was next to me, and he said my whining was making it hard for him to watch the movie. So I stayed quiet.
“Good, that’s good,” another doctor said. “We’re going to take you to get a few more X-Rays, just to see how far along you are. Is this your husband?”
“Almost,” I said.
“No,” Danny said.
“He’s not my husband yet,” I explained. “He will be.”
The lady doctor smiled and turned to Danny. “That’s nice. You’re more than welcome to come watch her if—“
“I don’t want to,” Danny interjected. He hopped off the bed-chair.
“That’s fine,” another doctor said. “We’ve set up a nice little place for you and your almost-wife to stay in during your visit. You can go and wait there if you like.”
The lady doctor took Danny’s hand and brought him out of the room. I waved goodbye to the back of his head.
*
The new X-Rays showed my body with all the normal bones and such, and below the hips there was a swallowing darkness. It filled up my thighs, calves, feet, and toes like ink. One of the doctors patted my knee, and I turned my head to conceal my grimace.
I asked the doctors what was going to happen to me.
The lady doctor put her hand on my forehead, and her fingers crawled over my hairline. I had forgotten how it felt to be touched and have it not hurt.
“What’s going to happen,” she said, “is the iron is going to continue to build inside you, like mold. Do you know what mold is?”
I told her I learned about mold in science class.
“You’re still in school!” The lady doctor lit up. She ran her thumb over my eyebrow. “That’s very nice. Well, you know then what mold looks like. Imagine all the iron in you is mold. It’s going to keep growing. Over your ribs, up your throat, even stuffed up in your skull.”
“After that,” another doctor cut in, “your core—“
He prodded the middle of my chest with his index finger. It knocked the wind out of me. I asked him if he means my heart. He smiled as though I had said something stupid.
“Right. Okay, sure, your heart. After that it’s going to fall in on itself. Then it’s going to suck in the rest of you, too.”
All the doctors started talking at once.
“Your skin.”
“Your bones.”
“Your organs.”
“Your hair,” the lady doctor said. She closed her hand, and my hair stuck out between her fingers.
“But then if I fall in,” I said, “What’s going to be left?”
The doctors all smiled.
“Nothing,” the lady doctor said.
“You see, when you go supernova, you’re body is going to collapse past the density of a regular dwarf.”
“That’s very small.”
“Very very small.”
“The gravity on your body is going to grow, severely warping the fabric of space.”
“Space is going to curve back on itself, cutting you off from the rest of the universe.”
“You’re going to be a black hole,” the lady doctor elaborated. “Nothing can escape a black hole, not even light.”
I was quiet for a long time. The lady doctor began to pet me, like a dog. I reached up and pretended to itch my scalp, and on the way down I tapped her hand. Hard. She kept it on my head, but stopped stroking.
“What do you mean, space?”
The lady doctor laughed.
“Well, we can’t let you stay here, can we? You’ll blow up the whole planet! We’re going to launch you into a nearby galaxy. That way, you won’t hurt anybody, and we’ll still be able to observe you.”
“But people die here all the time,” I said. “Why can’t I?”
The lady doctor laughed again and pinched my cheekbone between her thumb and forefinger. “Because, you’re special. You’re very, very special.”
*
The doctors kept Danny and I in a little house. There were tiny cactuses in every room. It was the sort of place I planned on living in after Danny and I got married. We were going to have a little coral-colored house, with white shutters, and a mailbox shaped like a birdfeeder. And a dog. We would name him Spike.
The iron had grown up to my armpits. I could not sit anymore, but I could still move my arms. I laid next to Danny. I shoved his shoulders into the pillow. It hurt me to move that much, so I started to pull his hair.
“Danny. Danny Danny Danny.”
He made a muffled noise and covered his eyes with the bend of his elbow—his arm was a mask.
“What?” he mumbled.
“I want you to come with me.”
Danny groaned. “Come where?”
“When I go. The doctors said I’m going to be a supernova. They’re going to put me in space so I can explode. I want you to come with me.”
Danny rolled over so I had to talk to his back.
“I don’t want to do that.”
“No. Danny.” I put my hand between his shoulder blades. His back muscles tightened under my palm. “I want you to see me go from up close. I want you to because I am going to be your wife and soon I will be your dead wife and you should see me die because we were supposed to get married and you are my husband almost.”
“You’re not my wife.”
“Yes I am, almost.”
“I would have married you if I knew you wouldn’t go.” He crossed his ankles and hung them over the edge of the bed. “Even if we get married tomorrow, you’re still going to die. Then you won’t be my wife. You will be the thing that used to be my wife. And then I’ll have to say I was married to that discoloring in the sky and people will only look at my buildings because my wife is dead. I don’t want to waste my marriage on you.”
The moonlight through the blinds made lines on Danny’s body. They fattened when he exhaled, and slimmed when he inhaled. I could not touch him. I instead took the tip of his hair between my knuckles. For a little while, I held it against my skin. He did not notice.
*
My spaceship looks like a glass telephone booth. The iron has locked my jaw, so I cannot answer the doctors’ questions. They are not careful with my body. They load me as though they are putting me in a coffin. They do not tell me where they’re sending me, but I also do not want to know. The lady doctor told me I was going to be as bright as an entire galaxy. A galaxy is billions of stars, so I guess that’s pretty bright.
Danny does come to watch me go. I am not angry. I do not have the capacity to want for his failure. I want him to make a lot of money. I want him to spend a lifetime building necessary, ugly things. Parking garages, office complexes, strip malls, chain restaurants.
The launch is successful, in that I successfully was launched into space. My body aches from the pressure of the atmosphere. I keep flying out and out and out; stars whirl from red to blue, nebulas coil their fluorescent arms. I watch my galaxy twirl further and further into the distance, until I can no longer distinguish it from any of the globular points surrounding it.
In science class we learned about space. My teacher said a supernova expels ninety percent of its mass and shoots the elements far out into the galaxy. Oxygen for lungs; carbon for muscles; calcium for bones; iron for blood. I thought about all the iron in me, and all the blood my body is going to make. My body is going to make other bodies. When I go, people may remember me for how bright I am, or my high mass, or any of those other science things. But I was more concerned with the people who would not know me. In tens of billions of years, there will be other people somewhere who breathe and run and bleed. They will bleed the blood I have made for them. Thinking this makes me feel okay.
Suddenly, it feels as though my heart has been vacuumed out the back of me. I feel myself turn in—skin, bones, organs, hair. But before my brain goes, I think once more about Danny. I hope to be bright enough for him. I hoped to discolor the sky, so that he may gesture up and say, “That was almost my wife.”
