Strange Galaxy #1: Travis
Travis, Era-2 Space Station
While I had initially intended for my stop on the Era II Space Station to be nothing more than a pit-stop for some tax-free relaxation on my three-month trip to the Wilkes System from my home on Edna I, sometimes the best interviews just happen. The station from afar looks a lot like a sort of cold medicine pill, with two half oval shapes of different colors attached at the center by a thick black band. The top oval has a sort of distinct yellowish tint to its infrastructure, a bi-product of its age-old production process, this part of the station is thus practically named, “Old Side” and below the thick black line of interconnected corridors, a brighter, busier region of the station designated for the all of the station’s new interstellar business sectors, and state of the art ship terminals. That is much more recently built and known to the locals somewhat disdainfully as, and you might have guessed, “New Side”.
I met Travis in a bar on the “old side” of the station, a more pleasant way of referring to the station’s more dilapidated modules that were used initially as the base of operations for the station’s constrictions. The bar was just a few blocks from the station’s fuel processing stations, tucked tightly amongst the smaller domiciles of the station's crewmembers and more long-term guests.
As with most first days of arriving anywhere in the Galaxy, I had intended to just dock my small cruiser, find a quick place to nap, and organize the rest of my trip, but as I sat down in Space Buck’s Bar and Grill, Travis who must have seen me walk in and haphazardly read the menu in a way that only out-of-towners do, asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a journalist on a mission to “capture the Galaxy and all of humanity's uniqueness”. He laughed, I laughed, and then I asked him what he did for a living. Only a few seconds after he started talking I stopped him and grabbed my recorder whilst asking him if it would be okay to include him in my book. He grinned, nodded, sipped his beer, and said that if that was the case, he’d “try and make it more dramatic”.
“I remember suffocating. It’s always brief, but I remember it. Every single time. Just as they put me under into cryo I can always feel the air leave my capsule as they initialize the life support systems. They say hold your breath and count to three, but I never do it. I’ve been doing this job for about fifteen years now. Well, hm,” He paused for a moment and took a generous sip of the lager in his glass, “I guess that’s not exactly right, for me, it has been fifteen years, but I suppose for everyone else I’ve been doing this for half a century.”
“How would you describe what you do to someone who had no idea, explain it like I was born yesterday,” I asked as he stopped again to finish the last of the beer in his glass.
“I’m a courier” he started, ”which usually involves carrying important messages for private firms, companies, and other certain not-strictly-above-board organizations between the prime worlds and those of the outer rim. I usually only cryo-sleep on trips that are gonna take over a month because screwing around in VR and staring out at nothing gets boring after a while, but lately, I’ve even been going to sleep on the one or two-week ones. I guess having the choice is nice, when you go into cryo it’s always disorienting waking up a month later and having to read up on anything that might have happened. Frick, I’ve had times on longer trips where I’d wake up and the people who wanted me to deliver the message are dead or the company I was working for got bought by someone else, or the stock tanked and they closed up shop. A lot can change in only a few weeks’ time, so whenever I have a long cross galaxy three or four-month journey… well, I mean it’s hard to even explain how that feels. I don’t know how those shipping folks do it every day of their lives; I hear some of them have been working for decades and haven’t aged more than a few years.
I guess I’d say the hardest part about the job is the missed connections. I’m not just talking about love, but that certainly is a factor. I’m talking about everything, everyone, anyone. I mean think about friendships ya’ know. The thought that I could have met my best friend, my go-to guy, the guy I’d share stories and breakfasts with, only if I had just stayed put back on Centrus II. It breaks my heart a little, and that’s not even thinking about the wife I could have met or the kids we could have had. I mean sure, I’ve still got a good hundred and twenty years or so before I kick the bucket, and that isn’t even counting if I get cryo-poisoning or not, that’s always a gamble. Yeah, I mean I’m sorry to get so dark on you, a total stranger.”
I paused the recording as I could tell the conversation was bringing up some things that he might otherwise have not been inclined to share. I ordered a couple more beers, and we made some chatter about the goings on in the station, and how things had changed since the last time he’d been here. At one point he gently grabbed my arm, and got a serious look on his face again, “If it isn’t too late, I guess. It’s just… actually, you know, I wanna change my original answer. The worst part of this job… the really awful part is that no matter how much I want to stop, I never will. No matter how appealing those things… a life, sounds. This life is just all too amazing to give up. I’ve been to all one hundred and twenty-seven colonized human worlds and I’ve even been to the frontier. I’ve delivered to scientists, rock stars, generals, assassins, politicians, scholars, and artists, and no matter what I’m delivering or to who or to where it’s a different experience every time, and that, well that’s what I live for.”
He got quiet and finished his beer after that. It took some prodding and jovial ribbing, but eventually, he lightened back up again. We joked and laughed for a bit longer. I bargained with him and told him the rest would be off the record. He told me more stories than I could ever possibly write down or even do justice to. His was an encounter I will treasure forever, and Travis, wherever or whenever you at least made a friend on the Old Side.
