A Spaceman

Chapter 1: The Talented Mr. Card

Titus
Hello.

Who are you? 

I wonder how you can see me.

I can't see you, but I can feel you here with me. this is interesting. It's never happened before to my memory.

Oh well, you don't seem to be doing any harm. I wonder if you're in my head or I'm in yours. I could be a complete figment of your imagination, or you of mine. I really don't know. but then both of us must exist, mustn't we? Because I'm here talking to you, and you're there listening to me. so even if I'm only in your head or a chimera, some shape of a phantom in time, then I must be real. And you must be as well. for if we believe that something exists, then it's real. Even if it isn't. take the quintessential concept of love. It's nothing tangible, yet we believe it exists. We don't use it to describe a feeling, feelings are lust and cupidity and romance, those are feelings.

Love is something else. Something like you or me.

Something we believe in and feel and may even hear or see in our heads but it doesn't exist by most practical definitions. That's what love is. And that's what you and I are. There aren't any words to describe me to you because I simply don't exist nor do you to me. but we both know the other is there. I wonder if we couldn't exist without the other? Could we have before, or can we fail to exist without the other now? I'm sure not. now that you've met me, you can't get away from me. you'll remember this conversation so I'm imprinted in the fabric of your being and you in mine. Scintillating this. I do love a good enigma.

I'll think about you sometimes when I'm bored, and I do get bored often, you'll find. So do you I fancy. So think of me, won't you?

Is it only me? am I special to you in some way, or can you see the others? I don't know. you're the only one I've ever known about. but maybe you're not unique. Maybe there are dozens of you and I can't tell you apart from the other. So I'm speaking to mass or an individual, and I can't tell the difference. That would be good for stage fright, if I had any. I don't. I'm not frightened of things. If I can't tell you apart, can you tell us apart?

I wonder if anyone else knows about you? probably not. I'm not like most others, but you'll find that out soon enough. if you can't tell us apart, I'll bet you can tell ME apart from them. I'm not like them, I've found. In fact I'm nothing like any of them at all. I sincerely don't know why. I'm amoral, a renegade, always the outsider even in my own circle. I never fit in. I'm cut from different cloth than the rest of them, I don't know why. And I hate it. I hate not knowing things. I don't mind being singular, sui generis if you will, but I don't know why I am and that irks me, because in all these years I still can't figure out why. At least, I don't think there is anybody else like me.

As I said, you can be the judge of that. see what you think of them as opposed to me. it looks simple to be them. and I don't like simple things. But come on. it's time for me to go now, no more ruminating.

Come along with me, won't you? I promise, it will be a fun ride if nothing else.

Intrigued? I know I am. Let's go.

I line up with the rest, chin up, eyes forward, hands tight, there is shoving all around me shouting of corrections from our officious MTIs. Cries of explanation from befuddled cadets. I am not phased by either.

Because I know I am right. I have studied endlessly for this. Never have I wanted anything in the universe but to be a spaceman. But more than that, I want to be a pilot. I want to fly through the stars. A voice booms in my ear followed by a string of insults, that would be a chastisement for my unfortunate, bunkmate, a Logan King, a rather rotund, palled individual who is mastering failing at nearly every course of study presented to us here at Kepler's officer training school for future Spacemen. For the past eight hundred years, humans have settled Kepler 52b, and fleeing an overpopulated Earth in droves, to form a nice, neat society here, in New America. There's New Russia as well but we don't like to talk about them in the history books. we've done pretty well by ourselves as a race, we aren't polluting this planet half as much as we did the last one, and we've succeeded in fending off the locals, alien life forms known to us as Isylgyns (somebody without an affinity for vowels christened them that). These creatures call Kepler and the surrounding planets home, have their own space ships, which look faster than ours though I haven't proved that yet, and seem relative innocuous, other than their tendency to squirt acid at things and suck the blood out of people. But that's what we're here for, the Space Forces, we defend Kepler from the Isylgyns and human smugglers and if necessary New Russia, keeping the skies free for new refugees from Earth, and for us to settle other planets in the fabled 'Goldilocks zone' capable of supporting human life.