Short Story: Living in a Space Station

I sighed. You would think that after two weeks on the station (and 27 years of living) I would have no trouble drinking. Sadly I still spilled sometimes, though not as often as I used to. It was almost muscle memory by now to maneuver the wash towel and soak up the droplets that had so innocently drifted away from me. Stupid water, can’t live with it can’t live without it. At least I had learned how to move around the station less clumsily than I had. Zero gravity was not as fun or as easy as most would think and my body had had trouble adapting at first. Now, getting from one place to another was still not easy, but it was manageable.  Every other member of the crew had received extensive training months before the launch in preparation for zero gravity, while I had only received 35 days. Really it was just a happy accident  I was here; or a sad one, depending on how you looked at it.
Dr. Vance was originally supposed to be coming, not me. She had trained thoroughly, and from what I heard she was really good at her job. About a month and a half before the launch, she was in an accident with a drunk driver. She didn’t die or anything but she was in no shape to experience the kind of stress space puts on a body. NASA scrambled to find a replacement. Apparently you “just can’t launch a rocket without there being an expert engineer on board.”
You’d think NASA would have a constant stream of engineers on call. I used to think NASA was comprised completely of nerdy engineers in white lab coats chugging coffee. Turns out that’s not the case, not totally anyway. While NASA employs many geniuses, actually going into space requires not only that you be smart, but that you be remarkably physically fit. Luckily I had been, which is why I was chosen. There wasn’t a lot of typical physical exertion they put me through that really challenged me. It was the whole “leaving the atmosphere, floating in space” that pushed me. Now I was here with five other brilliant, fit, frankly intimidating spaceflyers who specialized in critical thinking.
Usually, NASA prefers crew members know each other. After all, you spend six months alone with these people. I mean we communicated with friends and family on Earth but crew members’ voices were the only voices we would be hearing for 194 days. Understandably NASA felt more comfortable if they knew we wouldn’t murder each other. Whether by luck or by necessity the crew and I got along really well. They were like family in my home away from home, away from Earth, in space, on a floating hunk of metal. So this is what being an adult feels like.
Just then Angie walked, no glided, hovered? She drifted by me, jolting me out of my daydreaming. She had a PhD in astrophysics and today, she was going to start a fire. My role on the station was mainly that of a repair man. If something went wrong or broke, I was there to fix it. I also monitored data processing, but Angie, she researched and experimented. Yes, today she was going to see if fire acted the same way in space as it did on Earth. And yes, I was going to watch. The process was long and we took a lot of precautionary measures, all for the sake of science. The results were intriguing. We found that flames burn slower than on Earth, and at a lower temperature. It was also harder to put out; That was quite an adventure. 
The next few months were challenging. There were many more experiments with Angie, and I found out a few fascinating facts. Apparently, the government spends millions of dollars sending worms into space. I got to witness and experience things most will never get to in their lifetime; like slosh dynamics, and yes that is really its name. Not to mention the view. I still vividly remember my first time outside the station. I squealed. The genius that I am squealed. It was scary in so many ways, and overwhelmingly beautiful. I was so scared both of my chords would break and I would be lost, floating in space. And yet a part of me wanted to try it. It’s strange what goes on in a mind hundreds of miles away from Earth. “Get your head out of the clouds,” I had giggled. Too late for that I had thought,”Passed them 245 miles ago”. It was most certainly a once in a lifetime experience I wouldn’t have traded for the world. Going was one of the best decisions of my life. I couldn’t wait to smirk at my teachers and friends who used to tell me to stop dreaming and come back down to Earth. If they could see me now.

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