Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: MUSIC (04/02/20)
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TITLE: When the Music Played | Previous Challenge Entry
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04/08/20 -
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Was it my imagination, or did the shaft contract another half meter? My suit fanned cool air onto my cheeks. I pressed my palms against the steel walls hemming me in and depressed my call button. “This is Shaft Cleanser Dyana. Help!”
My comms crackled as they’d done this last half-hour after Forward’s waste expulsion section suddenly gained gravity and I’d plunged into the deep shaft and busted the airlock. Effective immediately, shaft cleanings no longer topped my list of bonus pay options.
I tugged on the tether, my umbilical cord D-ringed into the wall, and the tool belt at my waist. I sat crooked beneath the shaft seal and pressed my shoulder against it. White lighting shook through me. Easy on the shoulder. The seal wouldn’t budge as long as the airlock beneath my boots malfunctioned.
Wiggling, I extracted my multi-purpose dissolving solution cord and nozzle. The chemical dispatched all kinds of nastiness clogging the shafts; it could handle a seal. But…one drip on my suit in these close quarters, and I was good as space junk. I retracted the cord. I’d find another way—there was time.
Except my air meter slipped into yellow, indicating ten minutes of life. Heat filled me. A tune from Karn’s old playlist blasted Go / go as though in mockery. Because the only way out was outside.
Images of meteorites turning my suit into Swiss cheese filled my head, but there he was in the song, my brave Karn, reminding me of what i shouldn’t do by what he would. My suit wasn’t rated for spacewalks. Yet the singer insisted go / I am with you.
The words opened like hot petals. How it happened, I don’t understand, but daring bloomed. I could do this. The next waste shaft was two meters away. If I hooked my D-ring along the hand-holds of Forward’s underbelly, and popped the outer seal of the undamaged airlock, I’d be okay.
But then, the playlist was Karn’s.
He was a lion. I’d begged him not to risk everything to feed folks in a war-torn zone, and he did. My spark wilted, and rapping the player with a finger, the song skipped on.
I slipped through the airlock without fanfare and swung in a sickening arc. Oh, God! My tether caught. An untethered hammer slipped off my belt, pinged against my helmet, and floated out of reach into the black desert. Fear rose to crush me as on the mighty wings of solar wind.
Words surged in my ears: He shields the tender flame….
“He shields. He shields,” I whispered, and using my fingertips, I swung toward the airlock.
But if God shielded, where’d He been when Karn needed shelter from hostiles who attacked our embassy? Karn died alone in space’s vacuum. My heart squeezed. Reaching Waste Airlock 16, I peered into its mirrored glass at my own dark bubbled helmet. A tremble in my soul started the day Karn died, and I’d been hiding down waste shafts ever since.
A tiny hole appeared in my suit arm, and my HUD went berserk. Meteorites. The next one might take a boot, a hand—or worse. I had to get inside. The tune changed: Cast your cares on Him / When everything looks dark….
Dark? Losing Karn was dark. This was dark. But my ordeal neared its end. Tapping out the airlock’s code, I pressed the release seal—and it didn’t budge. I went cold.
Pebbles showered Forward’s hull meters away. My pulse tumbled.
A singer whispered, Lift up your cares….
When Karn died, I lost courage, but I’d spent time fearing, not praying. Lord, You’re the restorer of lost things. Please renew what’s broken inside and help me.
My dissolving solution came to mind. Fitting the nozzle against the seal, I applied the chemical without the worry of self-contamination. A new meteorite shower drove in. My heart roared. I punched the airlock open, scrambled inside, and sealed the shaft behind me. Dragging in the fresh air, I hummed along with the tune. My near-death experience was re-training in courage: to walk with you, Lord, and banish fear. You’re my strength. Karn’d be pleased.
Shelter in me, crooned the singer. Rest.
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