by L. S. Wood
Most of the meals they were accustomed to in space had been small meals, mostly vacuum wrapped in freezer dried meal packets. These along with the bare minimal of fresh produce mostly leafy lettuce and a hand full in green bean sprouts which easily grew in the experimental gardens flourishing in the space stations west wing garden. There, the bright sun would shine through the craft’s portals half the day to bring the gardens plants their needed sunshine to assist in helping the plants flourish with life. The sun’s rays enhanced by arranged mirrors along with the use of solar powered sun lamps to assist the plants when the craft drifted in its orbital course back around the Earth’s dark side, and away from the sun half the time in their orbit.
The experiment in growing assorted plant life aboard the space station was twofold, supposed to generate oxygen for their life support systems as well as some food for stables. A variety in uneatable plants were also living there in the west wing to produce oxygen for the sole purpose in extracting carbon dioxide produced by the astronauts out the air in the space station and produce it back into usable oxygen by the plant life through photosynthesis.
The water they all had to drink toward the end was becoming bland and had an awful tasting substance to it. It all having been reused so many times over and reprocessed through the huge distilling and charcoal filtering system onboard the space station which supported their lives for so long out there in space. The reuse water system not been designed to support as many for so long a period in time along with their many friends onboard the earthly situation held prisoner in outer space.
No one knew for sure just how long their imprisoned friends of space would last out there without any further fresh supplies sent to them from someone down on earth. Possibly a few more months or possibly less. No one really knew for sure, but it would not be for eternity that was for sure.
The spectacular new officer’s nightclub had been barely finished being built beneath the ground like a castle with all the provisions of a palace. It had all the necessary blood flowing supply of electricity alive in its wired veins. With all its many electrical wires encased in thick PVC insulated piping to protect the inner flow of the precious flow in electricity from the Dracula like electricity sucking creature living in the atmosphere.
The neutron-saturated atmosphere of the earth did not seem to affect electricity buried in cables below twenty feet in the earth and encased in plastic as an insulator. All the water and sewer piping inside and outside the facilities seemed to be doing a fine job in sustaining life well below ground grade. The facilities did a fine job in protecting the individuals down in its structure out of harm’s way.
The crewmembers of the Twitchel including Commander Anderson took their turns at dancing with Ann. She was a good sport about it too, and it was a wonder she did not pass out from total exhaustion from all of the dancing they put her through that night. But it was a fun filled night for her enjoying all the fuss and attention. She felt like a brand new young woman again. They all thought of Ann as a sister and not that of a sex symbol, but tonight she sure as hell looked beautiful enough to excite the hell out of any of them.
The bonding together they all had established between them in outer space was like that of twin babies living together in their mother’s womb. Everyone having established some kind of bonding only siblings would have had for one another. They all knew this night was the end of a long last beginning. Their once well-established closeness as a unified family’s nucleus of all living together as close friends had finally come to its end.
They would not be living together as a single-family unit never again, and that was all right with most of them, especially Ann. She had her family to return to and couldn’t wait to see them all again as a unit.
With only one more minute to wait for her loved ones was just too long a wait, but she had no choice in the matter. She would have to wait at least one more day until they could get there on the next day’s or the following day’s bus.
The year-long stay for them trapped together in space created a closeness a family tie for them none would ever be able to replicate or want to ever forget but now being back home on planet earth, they each were all going in their own separate, and various directions around the country to be with close family, and friends. They had all talked of their loved ones in simple happy conversation, while at the dining room table at the officers club, knowing happily well, some of their relatives were already waiting for them at the Florida facilities.
How anxious everyone was to be back on earth and able to be going home and seeing their loved ones the next day. Throughout the night, the crew carried on in serious happy conversation about their many close and other friends still stuck in space. All hoping one day they too would all be as lucky as this crew had been and be able to once again return back home to Mother Earth.
To be with their loved ones someday, except for Bill who had already lost the closest family members he had to him. He was not in attendance at the club with them to say his goodbyes to their new old family ties. Each astronaut wished he or she could help him in a way to make things better, but did not know quite what or how to go about helping him cope.
As their wonderful evening together wound down and soon coming to its end, so did the good times they were all sharing with one another being the separate family they all were. In parting company in the main lobby of the Kennedy Space Center’s living quarters, not a single eye among them was dry. Every one of the men, including Commander Anderson who was supposed to be the alpha male among the crew, was reaching down into his rear pants pocket for his handkerchief. Ann pulled out a white tissue from her black sleek purse she was carrying as the others all pulled out a clean cloth to wipe their own weeping eyes as well. Ann felt the worst about the ending of their yearlong relationship or at least she showed her emotions the most. She soaked down everyone’s dry shoulders with her sad parting tears of sorrow, as she rained down tears on everyone from her free flowing misty weeping tear canals. She kissed everyone on their already red sad cheeks like siblings do, while squeezing them tight as a clamp on a fire trucks hose before she would let them go one by one. She only wished Bill could have been there with them to share in their happy, but sad time of farewell.
Ann saved her saying goodbyes to Commander Anderson lastly, and when she had finished hugging him the tightest and longest of them all, she bolted up along the tall stairway crying heavily. She ran sobbing into her tissue not wanting to look back on the family of friends she knew she would miss so dearly knowing very well that they were all standing there in the lobby looking up, watching her bolt her way up the stairs crying like a little baby. She fumbled feverishly in her purse for the damn door key to her bedroom quarter’s door, and then tried unlocking the damn foolish thing. The damn key just would not fit properly into the slot. She was attempting it upside down, as she tried several times, with her eyes flowing out a misty stream of tears, clouding her vision in seeing what she was doing wrong. Turning the key over the right way, she finally managed to get the door opened, and threw herself on the bed weeping.
She could not help but to think about poor Major Bill somewhere in the compound trying to sleep alone and suffering emotionally, with him stewing over his own unbearable heartfelt grief that very moment. She cried a couple of very hard sad heartfelt tears for his demise. She felt extremely guilty for not going to him in his living quarters, and trying to comfort him as best a true friend might, at a time in his life he could get no lower in his feelings of guilt for abandoning them.
Probably blaming himself for being on that mission in the first place, for if he had not gone, his wife and his two little ones would not have been on that plane that went down and would not have died.
Ann’s logic said better to leave him well enough alone for him to grieve by himself in peace and solitude. Bill’s other close crewmembers from the Twitchel felt as Ann did about his situation, wondering about the sadde
ned condition he must be in, as they all slowly rambled back to their own rooms. Thinking quietly to themselves about everything that had just transpired in their lives over the last year, and years before, when they were not in the military. They wondered what their lives would be now without the space program, for that was what they had all dreamed about ever since they were all small and had read about John Glenn, and the first ones on the Moon, and all wanted to be a bigger part of space exploration when the time came, and now it was gone.
It was as though they all had mental telepathy thinking the same thoughts at the same time along with thinking about this very emotional last goodbye of the evening. They were all sorry in their own way to have to say goodbye to their friends and the space program.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Long Wait
Saturday morning came suddenly for Ann and slowly went away longingly for her as well. Most the other crewmembers’ families had all arrived at the cape to be with their loved ones. Ann guessed she would just have to wait yet another day before seeing her loving family.
It seemed to Ann all day Saturday that Sunday morning seemed to have some brakes applied to it. The hours of the night before Sunday morning went by like someone or something was making the coiled up spring in her Big Ben alarm clock turn its tiny hands ever slowly for her as she watched it clicked out each second, wishing for time to fly by more quickly.
She lay awake most all night long worrying about the arrival of her family, wide eye opened on her bed wondering if the younger of the two girls, Sarah, would even remember her mommy. She fretted over and over and over in her countless thoughts of the night if her other little girl, Amber, would run up to her with arms stretched wide open or hide behind her daddy’s legs cowering for protection from this horrible looking stranger standing there before them as their mommy.
“Could it possibly have been that Ben was one of the unfortunate many thousands of human beings left simple minded as a two-year old child from the neurotic caustic results of the many wild neutrons had on him. Could it possibly be Ben or one or both of her children might possibly need someone’s care around the clock to guide him or them around by his or her hands like a puppy dog on a leash. Was that why this was taking so damn much time, so long for them to get her family down there to her from all the way up from Vermont? Maybe they had to send a chaperone along with him and the children just to watch out for her poor Ben, and what about the children? What if they, too, were simple minded?” Ann had to stop her constantly negative thinking about everything for she was driving herself absolutely mad.
Saturday evening for Ann turned into a frightful anxious time of nightmares. When she did finally fall off to sleep, it was into a restless thrashing quick hour or less of fidgety sleep. All night she lay mostly awake thinking and dreaming about her husband Ben and how she was going to cope with him in this sort of condition. If he or the children are in such a poor simplemindedness condition, her swift speculative mind of imagination was working overtime. Her mind was trying to reveal the truth to her in coping with him and what about her two poor little girls and their conditions.
Ann thought for sure she had been gone away from earth too long. If he was still sane and mentally stable, surely he would have gone off and found himself someone else, some other beautiful woman to have and to hold, to love him during her long unforeseeable stay away from him. He surely had all the right in the world to do it if he had the need. The night turned into a living hellhole of fantasizing bad dreams and nightmares of her own making, and doubts of what to expect when everyone came together again for the first time.
When morning arrived, Ann lay awake on her disheveled bed in her nightclothes soaked from nervously perspiring with worry she experienced of her own making all night long thinking the worst of everything. Someone would have had to have told her by now if something happened to one of her family members, the same as it had to Bill’s family, or would they?
She was perplexed about the situation she being the only female aboard the Twitchel. Maybe they thought she would not be able to handle it until one of her family members showed up with him. She was driving herself insane, trying to figure out what might be if anything was and why, doing absolutely nothing good for her mentally, or physically concentrating on this matter. Ann did not want to be that stranger from long ago coming back into her family’s life. The dreams of that night had frightened her to the point of madcap with anxiety she was feeling down deep inside her mind and were almost overwhelmingly intolerable.
The light of the new Sunday morning sun’s rays shining through Ann’s window stirred her awake after finally having falling asleep late into the next morning. It was almost 0900 hours, 9 a.m., in the morning when she awoke. “9 a.m.” Ann shouted out at her Big Ben alarm clock on the night stand. She bolted from her soft down-filled bed to take a quick shower without hardly touching the floor. She developed goosebumps the size of ostrich eggs it seemed to her being so excited forming all over her tired body, her stomach churning wildly like a butter churn, full of soured cream, as if she were again pregnant and experiencing morning sickness from being pregnant a third time, but she was not.
The strange feeling in her stomach was most likely caused by the rich food of lobster, steak, and sea food soup she ate the night before or possibly by the two strong Bloody Mary’s she had.
Every time she thought about seeing Ben and he girls for the first time, her stomach would churn wildly, almost to the point of making her want to vomit. All the while, more goose bumps would form all over her, even though she was now standing in the soothing flow of very warm almost steaming hot shower water, trying to calm her anxious nerves from jumping out of control. It did not seem to matter how hot she turned the shower up to, the goose bumps the size of ostrich eggs still formed all over her body.
Before the chilling nervousness cooled her down, she thought she was beginning to have a nervous breakdown or was she developing lung or body disorders of some sort do to the massive assembly of many neutrons surrounding her.
Being back on earth was wonderful, but the experience of having so many people around her again was nerve wracking. She was beginning to think she was a candidate for going to see Chaplin Captain Trainer.
Ann made herself a lukewarm coffee from the warm hot water spigot from her sink. She slowly walked toward the curtains and peeked her head out of her bedroom quarters’ window located in the front of the building so she could watch as the people came and went from the facilities. She then began pacing back and forth across her bedroom floor with her coffee cup in hand thinking with anticipation of the consequences this day might bring either good or bad, and she hoped only for the good.
It was a beautiful summer’s day outside it looked to Ann anyway. The sun was shining brightly down over the salty seawaters across the bay reflecting its brightness back into her beautiful eyes with its bright rays of light.
She thought about the many frightening things about earth now and its people told to her and the crew all while sitting in the debriefing room just two days ago. God it seemed like months with Colonel Fretters rambling on and on at the podium with such horrific sounding information about how the earth was then and how it is today. She questioned everything about anything. What was she to expect from herself thrown into this madcap new distraught world she was so unaccustomed to living in, and was now ruthlessly dumped down into it and had to learn to survive in it all over again.
Were all these new changes that had taken place to the earth as bad as everyone was trying to make them all out to be, or had they all really become this awkward in way of life over a period in time? Would a simple chore like going to the local store to pick up a few groceries or an article of clothing changed? Would all these simple little chores still be as pleasurable an outing she once enjoyed doing with Ben and the kids or turned into an unpleasable experience for everyone? What if the ones she loved doing it with were gon
e not physically but mentally and her life was about to turn into a nightmare from hell when everybody showed up that morning?
There was no more television to watch from the comforts in one’s home on a Saturday night. There were no more radios to listen to in order to cut through the boredom of a long restless day, along with no more modern electrically operated conveniences in toasters, irons, or anything to help her or anyone else with around the house to make life just that little more simpler in everyday chores.
She could not imagine it being so even though it was the new way of life on earth now, and this really bothered her. This being the new way of life on earth, unless one lived well beneath the hard surfaced crust below the earth’s outer skin where all was the same as before, except that everything was now underground. The entire civilization of the world had been put back in time a couple of hundred or better years, living the old fashion way of days gone by without any of the modern conveniences of using electricity to make their lives that much easier to cope with.
Ann drifted more slowly from her quick walking down into a sauntering back and forth across the room thinking about the day and then slowly turned into the bathroom. She proceeded to wash more and make herself more beautiful than she had looked the night before, if that was at all possible.
This was Ann’s big day, her special day like her wedding day was a few years in the past. Today she would be seeing her two little precious girls and her most wonderful husband for the first time in such a very, very long lonely time away.
When 1200 hours came to Cape Canaveral, it found Ann prancing again back and forth nervously across the main lobby in the guests’ compound. She continually snapped her fingers in progression with her marching back and forth across the lobby as if she was on guard duty if front of the main door of the facility securing it in secrecy from anyone in anticipation of her hopefully soon to be arriving family.
