joethegediot

(illustration and story inspired by @ILikeSoup) ------------------------------------------------------------ Black. Total, pitch-black, blackness. The kind that makes one wonder if they had their eyes closed. The kind that overwhelms, drowns out, suffocates. Vast stretches of blackness, devoid of any light, any matter, anything. No information anywhere. Uniform, complete, with zero entropy. It is the perfect definition of Nothing. A universe without the galaxies, without the stars; without the tiniest fraction of its volume occupied by matter, blackness consumes all. As such, the universe we know is Mostly Nothing; the pitiful amount of matter it holds, the atoms they are made of, are also Mostly Nothing. Does Something define reality, or does Nothing itself? "Hey Bob, did you forget to take off the lens cap again?" "Um, no! I, uh, I didn't!" Bob Kerman replied, hastily taking the lens cap off. He peered into his little telescope again. There, among the soft velvet darkness that is space, he saw the stars and planets he was familiar with. Guess that existential crisis was for nothing after all. He turned a knob carefully, and the vast green fuzziness that had spread across half the view from his eyepiece was thrown into sharp relief. Jool, with its myriad bands of clouds, with its chaotic swirls and gigantic storms that could swallow Kerbin whole, and the oval shadow thrown by its nearest moon, Laythe. Space, he decided, was worth the g-forces and nausea after all. "Laythe atmospheric entry, ETA two minutes," announced Valentina, from the cockpit up front. With the press of a button, the heat-resistant covers on the windows were deployed, blocking Bob's view of the Joolian system. He very reluctantly stowed away his telescope. Bob was never the type to be into thrills. He hated risks, and did whatever he could to avoid them. He respected the statistics that others scoffed at, ignored. He had the lowest stupidity ratings of the entire crew; he was the scientist, he assured himself. Not stupid, not forgetful, just a little... absent minded. Yeah. Absent-minded. He had always been fascinated by the stars and planets, the pretty lights shining above Kerbin's clear skies. His dream was to get up there, somehow, and watch them all up close. Preferably without loud rocket engines that made him nervous. Well, that's how I got into the space program, he thought. At least he fulfilled the first half of it. "Entry ETA 90 seconds! Fasten seatbelts everyone!" came the announcement up front. The SSTO they were in, the Pheonix, pitched up in anticipation of the entry. Bob's mind, without his telescope, started to wander again. He wondered how the two pilots controlling the plane, well, controls the plane. Lots of buttons and dials, he assumed. He wondered what they were thinking. Jebediah was grinning. Not that there's anything very funny to a regular kerbal about the situation. He just likes to grin. Grin too much. Like a maniac. Indeed, the general consensus around the KSC is that Jeb was, indeed, more insane than not. But given his impeccable record flying rockets, planes, landers, stations, and glorified space lawn chairs, nobody doubted him. This led to the ultimate cancellation of the "mental health and sanity" test at the kerbonaut entry requirements, which some say was one of the worst decisions they had ever made, and the others, who presumably only got in there at all because of this new policy, disagree with. But Jeb cares not about pesky policies. The life of a kerbonaut pilot was what appealed to him. The feeling when being pressed into his chair at 5 gs of acceleration due to the KSC deciding that "Moar Boosters" was a good idea. The feeling of engine cutoff, followed by gentle, welcoming weightlessness. The feeling of making a close swing of the Mun, barely clearing the hills, and watching the rocks and impact craters rushing by. The feeling of a final burst of the lander engine, followed by the bump that indicates another successful landing, on an alien planet or moon. He couldn't live without that. He grinned some more. "ETA 60 seconds!" Valentina called. She was only smiling. Not because she was somehow less insane than Jeb, no; quite the opposite, in fact. More insane, in a different way. The mission had been going through quite a bit more smoothly than she had hoped for, and that slightly disappointed her. To Val, there was a special charm to risk and danger. Like docking a reentry craft and an orbiter together while falling rapidly down the atmosphere. Like starting a suicide burn one second after the burn indicator lights up. Like jumping out of a disintegrating failed SSTO prototype at mach 5 and deploying her personal parachute. She was only smiling because she expected a searing hot entry, perhaps stalling at 5 kliometers up, to spice things up. The staff at KSC often argued with each other about a chicken-and-egg scenario: which came first, the notoriously high anomaly rates of their launches, or Valentina Kerman? One thing was decided upon firmly: she had saved her fellow kerbals out of many a desperate situation, artifically created by herself or not, and therefore she remains an unshakeable pillar supporting the program. "ETA 30 seconds! Brace yourselves!" called from the cockpit. Bill Kerman double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked his seat belts, and Bob's, who was sitting beside him. He also checked the seals of the airlock, the insulation of the hull, and reinforced joints. As the engineer, he was a bit of a perfectionist. This interestingly goes directly against what seems to be the KSC's rocket-building tradition. Some say he simply wandered by the VAB one day, took one look at what they were building inside, and rushed in to get a job as an engineer, purely to satisfy his OCD-like insistence on perfection. Which is probably why he stresses over every component in any craft he is in. This was a good thing to Jeb and Val, whose lives he had probably saved quite a few times, simply by remembering to put an extra parachute or adding a heat shield. Needless to say, he was the least favorite kerbal of the four. "Atmospheric entry in five, four, three, two, one!" Nothing really happened in the first few seconds: the atmosphere was still too thin to produce an effect on the SSTO. With the windows closed, the kerbals could easily create the illusion of still flying in space, in zero-G. Then, as they dipped further into Laythe's atmosphere, Bob's notepad and pen began to float towards the floor. They began to accelerate. They made contact, and stayed there. The deceleration was becoming apparent. A flicker of a spark brushed by the fuselage. Flames started licking the sides. The silence of complete vacuum was replaced by a gradual increase of the howling of the winds. The bottom of the plane was engulfed in plasma. "Phoenix to KSC, plasma blackout in five seconds." Radioed Bill, pressed against the back of his chair. He really, really hoped the bulkheads would withstand the strain, the insulation the heat. Bob took a record of the cabin temperature and was mildly interested at the rate it was going up. Jeb was grinning from ear to ear, his hands clutched at the controls, expertly maintaining a high angle of attack. Val was reading the instruments and secretly hoped an emergency indicator or two would light up. The g-forces were significant now. The howling of the winds was starting to become unbearable. Sweat formed on the kerbals' foreheads, partly from excitement and nervousness, partly from the scorching heat barely being kept at bay by the insulating materials. The airstream threatened to tear the plane apart. The wingtips flexed slightly and groaned; the cabin shook under the stress. The stress that Bill, inside the cabin, shared intensely. Bob was sweating profusely; he hated this part of the flight, he couldn't see anything. "Velocity at mach 2, crossing the 20 kilometer line." Jeb pushed the control stick forward, pitching the plane down slightly. The flames had died down, the shaking to bearable levels, and Val remembered to turn on the AC. "Pulling out of the stall now," called Jeb. The SSTO pitched downwards violently, the nose aligning with the dropping prograde marker on the navball. Air gathered under the wings, creating lift. The windows reopened, showing a brilliant blue ocean and a clear blue sky, a significant portion of which was occupied by a majestic green Jool rising from the horizon. The oceans seem to be coming a little too rapidly, thought Bob, turning a slightly deeper shade of green. Bill opened a compartment somewhere and and handed a barf bag with Bob's name on it. Bob blushed greener. "Alright, pulling out of the dive and activating jet engines!" The RAPIERs on the back sputtered to life, choked a bit on the congested air from the intakes, then started to roar with the supply of fresh, Laythian oxygen. Jeb pulled on the control stick and the plane pitched up again, under a good five Gs of deceleration. Muffled sounds of throwing up was heard in the back. Val smiled some more. The Phoenix entered horizontal flight again, and started to pick a place to land. ------------------------------------------------------------ Next part coming soon. Probably.