Slip into a corner, press your back up against the wall, close your eyes, and it’s almost like you’re there. “I’d rather have gone to the Moon.” That’s what he had said under his breath, a long time ago.

Astronauts roamed the halls back then, too, across catwalks suspended far above salt deposits. Moonwalks for beginners. Some of them were veterans, they had already won. They traded salt lakes for metal crates high above the atmosphere, for craters reflecting light from the sun.

Did you know that it gets very, very, hot on the lunar surface? In the day-time, at least. He heard that on the radio once on the drive to work. However, in the night-time it is freezing. He shivers as a draft sweeps through him and settles around his shoulders, along the floor. It is always night-time here.

He heard once on the radio, too, (or maybe it was in passing on one of the catwalks,) that after a spaceman had come down from his visit he felt enlightened, more compassionate. His time away from Earth yielded a metaphysical reset in his synapses, nervous impulses that after being decompressed felt more inclined to guide his mind to stop and smell the roses, to treasure each day.

That sounds like an advertisement. Maybe he really had heard it on the radio. He sniffles into the crook of his arm. Traces up his sleeve and with a finger or two, taps his bicep absent-mindedly. Absent-minded, not absent-intentioned. Something comforting. Somewhere in the walls gears click themselves away, machine filth. He screws his eyes shut and imagines it’s the hum-drum of a spaceship, as if they really did take him with them.

It is easy to pretend. He drags fingerprints across grey metal panels. (He prays that the mothership will not hear him through the walls somehow. He helped build her, he should know if they implemented something like that. But then, he has grown unsure of a great many things. Who is to say there aren’t things she learned by herself?)

“They should be coming back soon, yes?” he ponders aloud to his companion.

“I don’t think so," it tells him. “I believe we’re on our own for now.”

He frowns and cocks his head towards the cube, expression waning. “My fellow astronauts, they should be coming back for me. They went out there, I think,” he taps on the wall, flinches.

“It seems you’re the last one left,” it replies.

“Except the ones in hypersleep, of course,” he says.

“Of course.”

It’s so easy. That last part wasn’t even false. None of it was, not in practice. He slumps over and takes a breath before heaving himself to his feet.

“You don’t suppose space boots should have more arch support?” his companion offers. He groans. With the cube tucked against his spine, he sets off for somewhere else. Charting the course for somewhere he has visited many times, when it felt safe to do so. You never know when the atmosphere might suddenly become inhospitable.

He slips between walls and wires and metal pipes, a stray screw catches on his lab coat. Someone should see to that, maintenance has been rather neglectful as of late... The corner of his elbow edges its way into an open space, the body follows and dutifully disappears down another corridor. He traverses the dark crevices with as much grace as his aching body will allow— things atrophy in zero-gravity, you know.

Aboard the Sputnik 5 they sent two dogs, one rabbit, forty mice, fifteen flasks of fruit flies— and two rats. So one is himself and the other is...?

He crawls up onto a ledge created by a broken ceiling panel, and scurries across the floor after reaching the top as it erodes under his meager weight. He hears the debris fall and crash against the ground below. He sees it float off. He exhales. That one he should probably take into his own hands. Spaceships probably don’t have this much verticality, in reality. Excluding the natural verticality that comes with a total lack of gravity, that is.

He wonders if back in the day Aperture ever sought to manufacture zero gravity environments back on Earth. It sounds like the kind of minimally applicable science they would have taken interest in. Although if they did, they’d probably find some way to convert that technology into a gel form... somehow. That’s one department he is complacent with not having been assigned to.

In a relatively large room there lies panels facing inwards, with murals scratched and painted on their surfaces. The reason he traveled here exists upwards, a hole in the ceiling inexplicably reaching all the way to the sky. Tonight the moon can be seen through the gap, it appears to be gibbous but whether it’s waxing or waning he hasn’t been observant enough to know. They should’ve built more skylights. It is big enough to fit through, yet too high. “You came to try again?” it asks. He shakes his head in response, eyes affixed to the ceiling.

It is just a reflection in the glass, anyway.

After a moment he places himself again on the ground and unloads the cube from its tethers, and sets it beside him. He notices how pale it looks, the only light source washing out everything below. It is as serene a moment as this facility can presently offer, were it not for the sickly buzz of anxiety between his ribs. That doesn’t tend to go away, especially not out in the exposed air like this. He presses his nails against his forehead and runs them against his scalp.

No, he came here because one needs reminders. Perhaps, an astronaut would look out of a porthole and look down at Earth, and be reminded of what they are here for, who they are fighting for. The betterment of science, for them. Maybe that’s what is supposed to make them come back more compassionate and caring.

He does not feel more compassionate. He feels bitter, jaded, and exhausted. Look where the betterment of science got us now. Tonight he does not desire the embrace given to a moonwalker coming home from any of his compatriots.

No one has even noticed he is up here.

He does not suppose there will be much left of him when he gets to touch base on Earth again. If, of course, that will even happen.

It’s too easy. The surface down here may as well be just as foreign as what lies above. Empty and dormant like the face of any number of orbiting satellites, thrumming with energy like the machinery encasing a spacecraft. The solitude never had a chance to be anything but loneliness, and it is crushing. It is a meteor. It is catastrophic, it has killed everything here, except the select few.

A subsidized death-trap. A black hole to house wormholes. No beating that.

He recalls occasions where he spent multiple days underground here, of his own volition, without so much as coming up for air.

A favored pastime for employees enjoying a free moment was to take the elevator back to the above-ground portion of the facility and step outside onto a particular fenced-in patio to smoke, either by oneself or in small groups. The “secret” that everyone was in on, if you had worked at Aperture for not longer than a week, typically.

He realizes now that had taken things like that for granted, considering each moment he spent alone in the lab after-hours, tweaking equations in regards to the ASHPD instead of breathing fresh, non recycled air.

It makes him dizzy thinking about every second he wasted voluntarily down here, and what would have happened if he had merely not ridden to work that day, not heard any commercialized 50 second glimpses into happy astronauts’ lives on any car radio.

It’s just not easy in the slightest.

He shudders and stuffs his head nearly between his knees. It’s too overwhelming, there’s nothing good here. It was stupid to come and look at this. He does not take the precaution of stifling the heaving shudders that arise slowly and eventually overtake him as his mind pings from one unfortunate circumstance to another.

Sobs claw their way out of his weak lungs and waste precious oxygen, pulling his bones closer into orbit. His conviction is too shattered and his body is too heavy and weak.

His ears ring. There’s a strange quality to it. The frequency outputting from the base results in garbled communication– only the best for him, that’s how it always is –but it tells him he’s leaving the safe radius, which is no good.

384.4, 384.3, 384.4, 384,5, 384,6. No, no. 4000. 4001, 4002, 4001, 4000

Somewhere in that, along the way, it becomes more quiet. He’ll have to write a letter to the station staff detailing his thanks once he gets back.

The brain zaps just hurt.

The strength of his shaking begins to subside, it passes, and he’s eerily still now. He's exhausted again. His uneven eyes get caught staring through the scalene triangle made by his coat, arm, and leg. It’s dark. The floor is grey. His vision produces static, which clears when he moves his eyes, because someone was trying to say something about what he just did. But it’s not their business, not right now.

He turns his head to look out the other window, and sees the corner of the Companion Cube sat next to him through the gap.

He rubs his dirty wet face on the sleeves of his tattered coat. “I lied to you,” his stiff jaw clicks as he speaks, “I’m sorry.”

“Shh,” the cadet attempts to soothe him, “I’m sure they’re coming soon. We can rendezvous then. We should go back to hiding now, you’re tired.”

It works, and it’s right, unfortunately. This is not a good place to be. Not today. He will make the trek back to the cabin.

Free floating in the vacuum of space. What’s the point in that? The nervous thrill? Stupid. Already enough of that on a good day.