Incomplete flash fiction. August 2010.
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Water. Water is vital to everything in life. Air is vital. Food and shelter are vital. Love and companionship are vital.
Space is harsh. Traveling through it, doubly so. It is cold below decks, where the “economy” travelers are sequestered. Families sit huddled in every layer of clothing they can squeeze into, swathed in blankets if they are fortunate enough to posses one, and – for the very lucky few – huddled around the scant heaters which cycle in the barest dregs of warm air from the decks above. Food and water rations are as scant as the warm air, as likely spoiled or bug-infested as not – stale and tasteless, and likely made up of nutritionless fillers, which serve to sate the belly if not the body. We have heard that luxury liners serve the finest champagnes and rarest cuts of beef, clean water… even real chocolate. This was hardly a luxury liner. The richest travelers aboard might get an extra ration per day, a slightly warmer deck.
Most of the room on the ship was preserved for cargo space, and since the cargo was worth more to the captain than the lives of his passengers, even the cargo had better environmental controls than the people. If a person died, well the ship had already made its money from them. If the cargo were ruined, it’d fetch nothing at port.
I was one of the unlucky ones traveling alone. I had no family to huddle with, to share body heat. I had been forced to find space near the hull, the coldest part of the deck, where heat slowly bled away through the metal bulkheads. I sat, knees pressed as closely to my chest as possible, breath misting from beneath the tattered blanket draped over my body and hooding my head.
(August 23, 2010)
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