The Thing That Happened To Lucy
The thing that happened to Lucy happened on a Sunday.
The thing that happened to Lucy was something that she had been planning for quite a while. Well, not so much planning as much as sitting patiently in the back of her mind, her brain subconsciously adding bits and pieces until it had enough shape to vaguely resemble a plan, or idea, or notion. Lucy was infamously indecisive, and so how her inner monologue referred to it was dependent on what day the calendar in the common room told her it was; Mondays and Tuesdays were ‘plan’ days, Wednesdays and Thursdays were ‘idea’ days, Friday and Saturday were ‘notion’ days, and on Sundays Lucy preferred not to think about it at all.
The thing that happened to Lucy happened on a Sunday. Her bunkmates, Sarah and Julie, were snoring softly above and below her respectively. Lucy pulled back the covers smoothly and slid out of her bunk. She changed out of her nightclothes and into her recreation wear, pausing for a moment to put up her curly blonde hair in a ponytail before making her way towards the door. There was a soft hiss as the door slid open. Lucy turned around to see if she had woken her bunkmates- she hadn’t- and made her way down the hallway.
She did not leave a note.
As Lucy plodded barefoot through the corridor, she didn’t consider for a moment how easy it would be to simply turn around, change back into her nightclothes, slip into her bunk and pretend that nothing had ever happened. She could maybe see the community shrink if she wanted to. But Lucy was far too enraptured in trying to remember which of the illuminated lines in the floor would take her to where she wanted to go to think about silliness like that, and she was too full of adrenaline to turn back anyway.
It was a tossup between the green line and the yellow line, so she took the yellow line. Lucy’s mind was still and silent, the only sound the soft patter of her feet on the hound’s-tooth floor and the hum of the ship beneath her. She paused when she came to the common room.
Lucy had been born on the ship 16 Earth years prior. One might think that Lucy’s life was flush with adventure and excitement and become envious of the games of Space Tag she surely engaged in as a child, but one would be incorrect to do so on both counts. Not only Lucy’s life was an endless cycle of classes and experiments, but Lucy had never been outside the ship. Her view of the universe came via the common room window. It was not a large window by Earth standards- about the size of a basketball- but it was big enough for Lucy. She had spent much of her free time there as a child, first employing older children to give her a boost and later utilizing haphazardly stacked piles of her roommates’ clothing. It was through this window that Lucy first saw infinity.
She pondered the significance of the window for a moment before continuing on her way. Lucy wondered if her conscience should be protesting, but she found it in silent acquiescence when she finally came to the door. She entered the pin on the adjacent keypad and stepped inside. The door slid shut behind her, and Lucy’s conscience timidly suggested that her plan/idea/notion was maybe not the best idea after all, and maybe the two of them should get together and do something nice like play chess instead. Lucy’s mind quietly squashed that underneath its mental boot and, as anyone else would have done, closed her eyes as she pushed the Big Red Button.
As one would think of a child brought up on a spaceship, Lucy’s safety education focused heavily on airlocks and what happens when you get thrown out of one. The number one rule Lucy had always been taught was never to push the Big Red Button. So, of course, that is what Lucy did.
At first, she panicked, but then Lucy looked down and saw the entire universe below her and felt awed at the everything that was happening beneath her. And the amazing potential of every atom, every cubic nanometre of the universe suddenly became clear. She realized how wonderfully insignificant she was, how everyone and everything was, and that something so indescribable simply could not have been created and tooled. Had she any air, she would have been moved to tears by the power of it all. Surrounded by infinity and the whole of time and space, Lucy was happy.
Happy as she was, she could not ignore the urge to breathe in her chest any longer. Her vision was starting to darken at the edges, and Lucy fought. She refused to close her eyes even as the whole of time and space faded away. There could not have been a more beautiful final sight. And as her eyes closed for the last time, Lucy thought to herself that this was the best thing that could have happened to her.
The thing that happened to Lucy happened on a Sunday. Her bunkmates, Sarah and Julie, were snoring softly above and below her respectively. Lucy pulled back the covers smoothly and slid out of her bunk. She changed out of her nightclothes and into her recreation wear, pausing for a moment to put up her curly blonde hair in a ponytail before making her way towards the door. There was a soft hiss as the door slid open. Lucy turned around to see if she had woken her bunkmates- she hadn’t- and made her way down the hallway.
She did not leave a note.
As Lucy plodded barefoot through the corridor, she didn’t consider for a moment how easy it would be to simply turn around, change back into her nightclothes, slip into her bunk and pretend that nothing had ever happened. She could maybe see the community shrink if she wanted to. But Lucy was far too enraptured in trying to remember which of the illuminated lines in the floor would take her to where she wanted to go to think about silliness like that, and she was too full of adrenaline to turn back anyway.
It was a tossup between the green line and the yellow line, so she took the yellow line. Lucy’s mind was still and silent, the only sound the soft patter of her feet on the hound’s-tooth floor and the hum of the ship beneath her. She paused when she came to the common room.
Lucy had been born on the ship 16 Earth years prior. One might think that Lucy’s life was flush with adventure and excitement and become envious of the games of Space Tag she surely engaged in as a child, but one would be incorrect to do so on both counts. Not only Lucy’s life was an endless cycle of classes and experiments, but Lucy had never been outside the ship. Her view of the universe came via the common room window. It was not a large window by Earth standards- about the size of a basketball- but it was big enough for Lucy. She had spent much of her free time there as a child, first employing older children to give her a boost and later utilizing haphazardly stacked piles of her roommates’ clothing. It was through this window that Lucy first saw infinity.
She pondered the significance of the window for a moment before continuing on her way. Lucy wondered if her conscience should be protesting, but she found it in silent acquiescence when she finally came to the door. She entered the pin on the adjacent keypad and stepped inside. The door slid shut behind her, and Lucy’s conscience timidly suggested that her plan/idea/notion was maybe not the best idea after all, and maybe the two of them should get together and do something nice like play chess instead. Lucy’s mind quietly squashed that underneath its mental boot and, as anyone else would have done, closed her eyes as she pushed the Big Red Button.
As one would think of a child brought up on a spaceship, Lucy’s safety education focused heavily on airlocks and what happens when you get thrown out of one. The number one rule Lucy had always been taught was never to push the Big Red Button. So, of course, that is what Lucy did.
At first, she panicked, but then Lucy looked down and saw the entire universe below her and felt awed at the everything that was happening beneath her. And the amazing potential of every atom, every cubic nanometre of the universe suddenly became clear. She realized how wonderfully insignificant she was, how everyone and everything was, and that something so indescribable simply could not have been created and tooled. Had she any air, she would have been moved to tears by the power of it all. Surrounded by infinity and the whole of time and space, Lucy was happy.
Happy as she was, she could not ignore the urge to breathe in her chest any longer. Her vision was starting to darken at the edges, and Lucy fought. She refused to close her eyes even as the whole of time and space faded away. There could not have been a more beautiful final sight. And as her eyes closed for the last time, Lucy thought to herself that this was the best thing that could have happened to her.
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