GIRLS IN SPACE BE WARY — MEGHAN PHILLIPS
/There are 53 known humanoid species in the galaxy for you to fall in love with. Moody boys with scowls and deep forehead ridges, who don’t have words for “I love you” in their language. The closest thing sounds like a threat. Beautiful girls with powder blue skin and silver-white hair. Two perfect antennae that wave like corn stalks in the wind. You fall in love with a red-headed engineer from Indiana.
Maybe you work hard to attain a position on the flagship of the Fleet—top honors from the Academy, a notable first encounter mission. You still have to wear a skin-tight jumpsuit, the brass pips of your rank glinting along your collarbone. Crewmen watch the curve of your ass as you bend down to check a thermocoupler. You have the highest accuracy in your squadron with a phaser pistol, yet they can’t remember to call you by your rank. The shine of your pips draws their eyes to the swell of your breasts. Like lights on a landing deck, your lover says when you’re finally alone. When she can run her tongue over those little bumps. When she calls you lieutenant commander as she peels the jumpsuit from your shoulders.
There are so many ways to die in space. Ways to lose oxygen, to asphyxiate—small tears, a loose hose, a slow leak. You can freeze to death in a shadow. Cosmic rays could eat away at your soft insides. Away missions go wrong. First contacts turn hostile. Your lover goes to her bunk one night with a headache and just doesn’t wake up.
Maybe you leave the Fleet, turn in your jumpsuit, resign your commission. Take command of your own ship, a small freighter running supplies from Lunar 1 to Jupiter Station. You program the onboard computer with the voice of your lover. Her voice reciting nav coordinates, announcing incoming hails from other ships. Alone in your bunk you imagine your lover at the helm steering you through the stars. You stroke yourself wet to a digitized version of her voice. Grief’s lonely algorithm.
There are so many ways to get lost in space.
Maybe you leave space altogether. Leave your ship in a space dock and return to Earth. Move to Indiana. Program your virtual assistant to call you lieutenant commander. At night, you stand on your porch and look at the stars. Try to find familiar paths. You think about all the ways you could die on Earth. Wonder if you’ve only exchanged one set of dangers for another. You think about the 53 known humanoid species you could have fallen in love with, and mourn the one human you did.
Meghan Phillips the author of the flash fiction chapbook, Abstinence Only (Barrelhouse). She is a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. You can find her writing at meghan-phillips.com and her tweets at @mcarphil.
