The Countdown

The suit recording of an unnamed astronaut who died above Mars after the Martian Space Station was destroyed.

It’s quite strange watching a timer countdown to your death. My oxygen timer says I have about ten minutes left before I hit critically low levels, after that I have maybe another five minutes before I go unconscious and then, well die. I’m not even sure that anyone will get this but if by some miracle my body is recovered, don’t play this at my funeral.

This quite honestly feels like the longest ten minutes of my life. This was meant to be just another EVA outside the space station. Something happened with the airlock and well let’s just say that it exploded. Bye bye space station, NASA is going to be pretty upset that we blew up their space station above Mars. I guess it’s a good thing I won’t be around to see the bill. As of right now I am the last one, everyone else got lucky and died in the explosion. I was the unlucky b*****d that got thrown out into space to die slowly. At least the view is nice. Mars, Earths second colony, there is about thirty thousand people down there, most of them are probably looking up trying to see the station right now as they probably already heard from mission control what has happened. Hello fellow Martians, for the record I am waving right now. I am also really glad Mikey can’t see me, I probably look like a lunatic right now.

Most of this recording is just me babbling as I watch the countdown tick away. I have roughly six minutes left. Talking is making it go down quicker, but hey it is inevitable by now. I just wish I could say goodbye to my family, now this part you can play. Just not where I say you can, just the sentence before it. Only play that part and say that was all you were able to recover.

It’s quite fitting that I die up here seeing that I was actually born on the way to Mars 25 years ago. Born in space, die in space. Three minutes now. I wish I can say I wasn’t scared but I can’t, this is probably the scariest thing anyone can ever do. The countdown doesn’t help much either, I’m not sure it would be this bad if I didn’t have it. At least death would come somewhat as a surprise. I think this is probably where I apologize to everyone I’ve wronged and wish I could turn back the clock and do it all over again but you know what? I don’t want to apologize for anything and I don’t wish I could turn back the clock because I loved my short miserable colonial life. Yea, it wasn’t much but it was mine. My life was its own unique experience, no one has ever lived my life except me, and if this is how it ends so be it.

 I’m down to the seconds now, I can already feel it getting harder to breathe. My vision is starting to go black at the edges. If there was one thing that I can say before die is this, don’t worry about what other people think of you. It’s there opinion and you want to know something? Their opinion means absolutely nothing in the end, take it from me, the man who is dying alone in space. Just live your life how you want to, don’t worry what other people think, let them live their lives and live yours the best way you see fit. No one else is going to live your life, so live yours to the fullest. Also one last thing… damn it’s hard to breathe… but just know this… I stole the cookie from the cookie jar…

Author's Note

This is just something I wrote will on duty earlier this week. This is the first time I have done anything like this so let me know how I did. Thank you!

Reviews

[ZJC]

Enjoyed it. Like the settle message in there, and it's always good to have an ending that makes the reader laugh. I'd just suggest you go back over and do some fine tuning with editing and perhaps altering some of the sentence structure within the piece, but overall, very minor changes.

[Samuel Dickens]

This is very good, showing us the last moments of an astronaut with his inner thoughts. A more dire situation, I can't imagine. I spotted a few minor errors, but you can fix those with a bit of editing. Nice work, Kyle.

Oh, that bit of humor at the end is a nice touch.

[Kyle Wynn]

Thank you! It was my first time writing in a first person perspective.

[SquinklaPsyOps]

Interesting structure and composition... with a message.

[Kyle Wynn]

Thank you!