Space sector 2N was bad, Clean Space X-2 promotional musician Enyan thought as he stared at his reflection in the cockpit window, but The Pull’s sector 3A conjured depressing effects.
Crow’s feet had become sags of flesh. The hair on his temples had rendered from a compound of black and silver to cream white.
He turned an aching neck to his right. Pilot Tanimoto was still clung to his chair, arms gripped tight on the arm rests and mouth opened wide as if trying to catch a kernel of popcorn in mid-air.
Enyan patted his widening forehead and stroked his lengthening arms. A receding hairline was something he had feared the very first time he had gone on tour with his band The Moon Whiskers, and now it had receded all the way to the middle of his scalp. A compound of deformity and quick aging made it clear that he would no longer have a singing career after returning to Earth.
A blinding migraine came violently, his vision flashed white, and he wretched between his legs.
Tanimoto, like the rest of the crew, were the fortunate ones.
They were no longer in this reality.
Enyan got up and walked past a frozen Hans, aka Bullwhip, which was still standing and pointing at the billiards table-sized holo-analysis module that was positioned in the middle of their ship’s main deck.
On the opposite side, lead engineer of the space debris cleaning technology, Haley, was standing with her arms crossed and lips pushed out. Enyan was sitting next to Tanimoto when the flash came out of nowhere. He could only remember that Hans and Haley were having an argument about their course of direction. Hans was arguing that they had come too far out of orbit, and it wasn’t safe on account of the recent asteroid belt interference. Haley heated up and was yelling that playing it safe would give them safe numbers. She said they had to push the clean space X-2 and the only way to do that was go bigger and find larger debris outside of the safe zone.