A Gift to the Abyss

We shouldn't have gone to that place. They lied to us. They lied about so many things. We weren't the first to land on that "newly discovered" dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt. They knew what was there. Our families were not informed of our whereabouts, and they'll probably lie to them about what happened there as well. We did not know of the true nature of our mission until it was too late to turn back, and I think that was intentional. Our mission was not one of scientific exploration, as we were told. No, our mission was to be an offering, and it was a success.

I was so naïve to think that I would go down in history. The idea of my name being mentioned along the likes of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin captivated me as a child and spurred me on a path towards the heavens. I was so consumed by the excitement of exploring the stars that I had pined for since childhood that I failed to consider any ulterior motives the administration might have had for sending us where they did. Not once during the years of my training could I have foreseen what would become of me. Hindsight truly is 2020 as they say. I went through the motions for most of my career. I started off as a lowly Space Force cadet. Slowly and diligently, I worked my way through the ranks, eventually getting reassigned to more prestigious and specialized programs. After years of training and experience, I was finally selected to embark upon a new kind of voyage, or so I was led to believe. I thought it was to be the great defining honor of my life. I was to be part of a crew manning the first vessel to land on a dwarf planet found in the Kuiper belt utilizing a new cutting-edge form of space craft, with a state of the art internal gravitational and balance system capable of landing on objects in space previously thought impossible, such as that dwarf planet. Of course, all this was decades after the exploration of mars, and a few years after the last of the moons of Jupiter had been mined for all useful mineral resources. We were told our primary mission objective was to determine if there were mineral resources on that dwarf planet worth mining, but the greater significance was that we were going to be the first to set foot there. For the first time in years, we would be venturing where no one else had before. 2123 would be the year that we were to expand the realm of mankind yet another step further into the great unknown. It sickens me even more to know how I believed all of it without a second thought. Maybe it was because that's how they wired you during your academy training for the Space Force. Through constant repetition, you're trained to follow orders without question, to be a thoroughly oiled and efficient gear in the machine of the larger operation. For a cog to question its assignment is absurd. I think I realized far too late that the way I was taught to see myself would be the seed of my demise. Of course that's not how I saw it at the time. I didn't think of myself as an obedient gear in a dubious machine. I saw myself as a pioneer of the new era, one of the brave few willing to go farther than any man had ever set foot. At least I could say I did that, but at a greater cost than I could have ever imagined. The price of swallowing so much propaganda was so much steeper than I could have possibly fathomed.

We had a small crew; there were only four of us. We were to land on that strange, misshapen exoplanet, collect a few mineral samples, take some measurements of atmospheric quality, plant the flag and be on our way. It was supposed to be simple enough. We knew the temperatures there would be colder than anything man had endured before but thankfully space suit technology had advanced quite rapidly throughout the late twenty second century and the technology we had to insulate ourselves from such a hostile environment was more than adequate. All preparations had gone according to plan, not one thing had gone wrong. I had undergone simulations of the launch hundreds of times, I'd even been a part of numerous physical voyages between mars and the various moons of our solar system to further prepare, but despite all my experience, I felt as though I was piercing the heavens for the very first time once again when we launched for the Kuiper belt. The exhilaration I felt at the thought of it reminded me of the very first time I saw the horizon of our world give way to the majestic deep blue of the heavens, like I was embarking for the very first time all over again. Maybe it felt that way because I knew we were going where no man had before, and it gave me goosebumps to know I would be among the first. By the time I had first launched from earth to Mars, the experience had lost any semblance of novelty. Hundreds had been to Mars by that point. Wealthy benefactors had even begun the construction of a tacky theme park to transform the red planet into a source of tourism revenue. All majesty, all the prestige of such a voyage had long been sapped away, leaving me feeling deprived of the feeling of accomplishment. But being among the first to set foot on what was effectively a large asteroid, that was something new, and I relished the thought.