literature

Nothing Can Stop Me Now

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Literature Text

The warm touch of midnight sun opened Amelia’s eyes.

Slowly and contently, she woke up from her six-hour power-saving cycle. Her metallic skin gleamed in the light as a sprawling row of solar panels brought her systems to life. Soon enough, the sensors that lined her sleek frame began to flick out eagerly. All in all, the whole process took less than ten seconds. Smiling inwardly, Amelia began to look at the readings.

Today is day 136 since mission launch. Approximate distance to Earth is still pending. The outside temperature is 16.1 Kelvin, the local gravitational pull is negligible, and I am flying through space at seven kilometres per second.

All is normal, she thought. Still smiling inside, Amelia spread her external antenna array behind her like a clothesline woven from silver. As a helium cloud zoomed past, she let out a burst of radio signal and waited for the reply in excitement.

Minutes passed.

And passed.

And passed.

Earth did not answer.

With a sigh that no one heard, Amelia pulled the wires back into their chambers. She did not understand. One hundred and thirty-six days she had spent soaring in the depth of space. One hundred and thirty-six times she had given the message. Not one word, one coordinate, one little piece of code had come in reply.

The sweet morning air of Cape Canaveral blew lightly in her memory.  

She looked at herself: a rolled-titanium body with a radio-isotopic heart. Amelia had never thought of herself as being particularly smart or beautiful, no. But she missed the attention. She missed the long systems tests and examinations in white, air-conditioned chambers. She missed how they would place her parts and inject vast lines of data with all kinds of strange-looking instruments. Some days, when no one else was around, one gangly man in a jumpsuit would walk up to her with a kind smile and whisper:

“You’re gonna be a star, dear.”

And how! Her journey, they told her, would give mankind their first glimpse of the Gravelly Planet. It would be a grand thing. The observatories would be packed. The radio waves would be bursting with signals. Headlines would run on the newspapers. They said that Amelia was one of the most precious, most intricate, most perfect things man had ever crafted. Now she would go to the depth of space, once more changing what man knew.

If only that were the case.

She never did understand why the smooth shell of her launch vessel broke into a million pieces just as the carrier rocket blew past Jupiter. She remembered seeing it spin away, a mass of steel and flames thrusting into the dark. Amelia herself tumbled off the path and floated into the empty space beneath.

That, she decided, was some sloppy planning on their part.

But all things said, Amelia rather liked shooting through space at seven kilometres per second.

She came by a moon in ice, a comet that sang, and massive clouds of creation gleaming in the dark.

She was fascinated to see suns rise and set in many different colours. Ones that she didn’t know existed, even.

She loved feeling the universe dance upon her skin, with its gentle waltz of infrared and its wild rush of ultraviolet.

A broken moon whizzed past her path. Amelia turned to look at the patch in the stars where she thought Earth was. If only you could see, she thought sadly.

But she’s here. Dancing with the universe at twenty times the speed of sound. And as starlight spilled into her wake, Amelia thought warmly to herself:

“Nothing can stop me now.”
© 2013 - 2024 eagleoftheninth
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Nyktomorphia's avatar
This is amazing and tingly. :D

I don't remember enough about astronautical history to guess - is Amelia based on any probe in particular?