The Tin Can

A Tin Can

The smell of wet grass after a heavy rainstorm was always my mother's favorite. The nostalgic scent eludes me, though her face does not. It haunts my mind with a loving gaze and the warm smile that I always brushed aside during my late-night studies. The sound of the glass of milk clinking down onto my desk, and her softly closing the door behind me had been an annoyance, nothing more. I had dreamt that one fateful day I would be able to wake up, not to the view of our field, or our cows, or the single, dusty, pothole-filled road that stretched towards the horizon, but rather to the spherical wonder of our planet before me, painted against the black canvas of space, with the light of the sun in its full, fiery, non-distorted form seeping through the darkness. That's what I'd thought a sunrise should be like. But now, as I float in orbit of the blue planet, I wish for nothing more than to feel soil beneath my feet, the rasp of a dog's tongue against my palm, or the sound of birds twittering in the morning. A man who puts his work above his friends, above his family and above himself suffers the same fate as one who dies young. That was the first realization I made in my time alone, sitting in this tin can.

The second was not a personal one. I like to think I made a realization for humanity as a whole. New technology, new horizons, new cultures, new possibilities... they're all thoughts that come to one's mind when you think of extraterrestrial contact. All my life I had dreamed to be the first. All of humanities life had we dreamed that one day it would happen.

Silently I watch as the ominous shadow, darker than the deepest depths of our oceans, and blacker than the void itself approaches my planet. I was the first to see them and I will be the last.

Ground control will think I cut off my communications. They will think it was my intention. I can almost hear them. "This is ground control to Major Tom. Major Tom, respond. Major Tom, we aren't getting any signals from your craft, is everything alright?"

If only they knew. If only we all knew. But rather than enjoying the life we have, the world we've been given, we relentlessly search for more. Thus, when the swift, silent end comes, it is no surprise that we will not be ready. We will not be ready to fight, nor will we be ready to die. All our lives we spend preparing for the next day, unaware of the possibility that it may never come.

This is Major Tom, signing off.