Another step forward, towards the edge of the open hatch door, and he would fall, and the abyss down there would swallow him.
A fire escape ladder, or even another room in the form of an extension module would have been extra, and Corby Dallas didn't have the dough for it. He was broke. He couldn't afford it. So he got a gaping hole in the wall instead, leading nowhere. On the other side of the hole, he had a tiny little cubicle of an apartment. It was a shithole!
It was so small, at any particular time, whenever something wasn't in use it was retracted, and neatly folded away. His toilet, for instance, transformed into a shower cabin. And his kitchenette, when it wasn't being used, transformed into a bed. He was allowed to have one or the other at a time, but never both. In his apartment, that was the general rule of space efficiency. Otherwise, there wouldn't even be room for air, it was so painfully cramped. In time he got used to it though. Well, sort of. He had to. It wasn't a choice.
His severance package from the military was long gone. This was all he could afford at the moment. And since going back to the military wasn't an option anymore, and where he was at at the moment, there could be no further career prospects for him, and because he didn't have any good recommendations from his last employer, he couldn't get a decent job of any kind, wouldn't be able to. Let alone doing again what he did before, what he loved doing, what he was good at, real good. And thinking of doing something else for a living made his temples throb, and there was tension forming between his eyebrows. He rubbed the spot but it did nothing, it wouldn't go away.
He couldn't just go fly a cab after he'd flown a spacefighter, had been flying a spacefighter for a number of years now. That would have been humiliating, undignified, for someone like him. He'd much rather just jump off the ledge he was standing on right now, and be done with it. It'd make his headache go away, at least, because after a fall like that he'd no longer have a head to ache. It would have been pulverized, simply disintegrated.
Going forward from here, he didn't know what to do, he was afraid he wasn't given many options. And he'd developed high standards for himself and his living too, over the years. Couldn't easily give up on those. He was a space marine for twenty-two fucking years and all that time he was paid well for that. Having been accepted into a flight academy at the age of sixteen, he since had a very prolific career. Well, that is until recently.
Coming into the doorway, the wind howled on its way in, stumbling into his body, making him lose his balance a little bit. His apartment was at the two-hundred-and-fiftieth level, after all. Inching his way closer to the edge, he peered over. It was a long way down from here. He took a firm grip on a safety bar, steadying himself. He didn't really want to find out how long exactly.
How did he get here? That was the million-dollar question. Only he'd been asking himself that for a thousandth time, and he still didn't have the answer. He really didn't know. Or, at least, he didn't think he had.
Ever since he was a teenage boy all he dreamt of was becoming an astronaut, a spaceman. Preferably a pilot of some sort, but at the time he thought anything would do if it had to do with space. And as he grew older his dreams hadn't changed in the slightest. Even well into his early adulthood, it was all he could think about. And, one glorious auspicious day, it all came true. He did become a pilot, after all, eventually, starting off with simple cargo missions, to the moons of Jupiter and back, and working his way to a top-shelf military. Making his way slowly along his career path, the one he'd chosen for himself, nobody else, he never complained about anything. He had an objective before his eyes, something to do, every day, the path to follow. It gave meaning to his life. It made it clear what he had to do. And he loved doing it to boot. He felt privileged doing it.
He was flying his top-notch spacefighter some twenty years later, handling politically sensitive missions and high-profile espionage. He was regarded as one of the elite soldiers, highly decorated, top-class. He'd been to the edge of the galaxy and back in his time. He was at the top of his field, at the top of his game, professionally, and otherwise. Only now he wasn't. It was all gone as of two months ago. His brilliant career, his incredible life, and his space traveling were no longer. He couldn't just go from that to driving a cab. Could he? Was he supposed to? He didn't think he could get over himself. He'd rather die. Literally. And that, he thought, might have been his only option.
He looked wistfully at the night sky, dark and star-less. Sighed. Stepped forward, teetering on the edge. Then stepped back again.
Space…That was all he ever wanted. And the kicker was there was anything but space in New York, absolutely anything. Metal, and glass, and those ginormous buildings made of it. Some five hundred million people too, according to the last census. But absolutely no space. It was the hot commodity here. Too many people in one place, if you asked him. Down here they surrounded you, the people and the buildings, and the ubiquitous flying transport, suffocating you until you couldn't breathe, as opposed to up there, where you were free, unencumbered by anything. Sometimes he thought he liked the city. Other times he didn't think he could like it at all. And now, he was afraid, was one of those times. But maybe, just maybe, it had nothing to do with the city.
If he squinted hard enough he could just make out tiny people outside gallivanting around, going about their day-to-day business. He looked at the lot of them disparagingly. He'd hate it being one of them, as tactless as it sounded. He just wasn't made from the same dough. He always thought he was meant for something different. Like he wasn't meant to be down here, he was meant to be up there. And up there he wasn't. Something must have gone wrong. He inched a little closer towards the edge again, trying to make out what was happening down there. He wanted to look into the eyes of what awaited him. And it was darkness that awaited him, he saw, down at the very bottom. But he might have never reached the bottom at all. There was a lot of stuff in the way. Crosswalks, passageways, tunnels. Any number of vehicles could be passing by at any time. He could have easily landed on one of them if he wasn't very lucky, and if he decided to jump. Traffic lanes were stacked one on top of the other in this city, like layers on a wedding cake. They were going both ways too, parallel and perpendicular to each other. And then there were also the trains, zip-zapping between the buildings constantly. And God knows what else… At the very least, there were going to be other people. He could have landed on any one of those too. In a word, it was going to be a hard way down–if he jumped.
He considered it. Winced. He didn't like the odds of taking out other people on his way down. He was trying to off himself. He had little intention of killing other people. Though God knows, he'd terminated plenty in his time. He had no qualms about it then, so why now it was suddenly a problem? He guessed he was executing other people's orders before, as opposed to now when he was finally acting of his own volition. And choosing to kill someone without rhyme or reason didn't sit well with him.
He stepped away from the ledge, then moved closer again. At least, he thought, if he jumped he wouldn't be falling on an empty stomach. He hated doing anything on an empty stomach. Luckily, he just had his last meal. He spent the last of his money on it too. And it was delicious, the best ever, the way he always wanted it, as far as the last meals would go. Any number of fast-food joints you could find in this city, whatever pleased you, easily accessible last meals. But him, for some reason, it'd always been McDonalds.
And he knew most people hated it. But when it came to fast food, he just couldn't help himself. It was probably the size of their meals that did it for him, the extra-large combo servings. All things considered, he wasn't a small man. He just wasn't built for a salad. He was bulky, and his calories were important to him. And he was a foodie too. He liked food. Good-for-you food, bad-for-you food, whatever. He used to spend big money on food. Healthy food, organic food, restaurant food. But the truth of it was he always preferred McDonalds.
And now that he had no money, he could have it too. It was cheap as fuck. And if you asked him, it was delicious. He sighed though. As much of a comfort food as it was, it wasn't particularly comforting. It was just there in his stomach filling the void, and it was nice. But it didn't make him feel any better. He'd screwed up his life, that's what it was. He made some bad choices. Had he gone differently about spendings, he probably wouldn't have been in the mess he was right now. It just dawned on him he'd survived a hundred combat missions for nothing. He battled aliens and dodged bullets all his life, and it was all going to be in vain now just because he failed to balance his checkbook. Out of a hundred things that could have killed him, it was going to be financial laxity that did him in. And it was almost funny when he thought about it like that. Touché! He was never really good with money. All he was ever good with was a gun. Looking down now, into the abyss, he wondered if shooting himself was a better option.
Maybe. Probably. Only he wasn't exactly looking for an easy way out. The only hard thing about jumping was to make yourself take that step, convince yourself you needed to do that. And the thing was he still didn't think he had a choice. Sure it was going to hurt but he wasn't a stranger to pain. At this point in his career, he was very much used to it. Stabbing pain, bullet hole pain, ragged wound pain, burns, fractures, you name it. Twenty-two years in the military, he had it all by now. Besides they always told him he had a high threshold for pain. He guessed it was true. He wasn't afraid of pain. It didn't bother him, not particularly. The only thing that bothered him was ignominy and humiliation.
He had no fear of dying either. Wouldn't have been any good at his job if he had. Because when you die, and he sort of believed it, you just stop living. He didn't think there was anything more than that. He believed it. Well, he made himself believe it. He killed people, he'd seen them die before. He made bullet-sized holes in their brains. It just didn't look to him like they, in any shape or form, continued living after that. They were just gone. Death was terminal.
It wasn't very comforting thinking about it like that but for a soldier, it was the only way. He wasn't always allowed the privilege of comfort. When you'd seen what he'd seen you knew life wasn't about comfort at all. Everybody dies. He too was going to die one day. Just die. That's it. And it wasn't a problem. It wasn't a problem that the day was today, apparently, either. The problem was, the only thing eating away at him, was that he wasn't a quitter, was never a quitter. Giving up, for him, wasn't okay. He never gave up. It was just something that he wouldn't do. He never quit anything. And he only ever failed once really, on a mission, by accident, bad luck, whatever it was. He winced thinking back on it. It was enough though for him to get booted from the military altogether. And the thought of it was still causing him pain, more pain he thought than crashing his skull against the pavement.
It shouldn't have happened at all. He shouldn't have failed.
He stepped away from the door, suddenly realizing he wouldn't have any respect for himself left if he jumped because he had little respect for himself left to begin with, after he failed his mission. Besides, he had no respect for jumpers at all, so jumping would do. And he hadn't any respect for those shooting themselves in the head either, come to think of it. He growled angrily, suddenly growing irate. Was there no way out of this?
He was a space marine! He was respected. He only failed once, and only because he was reduced to blindly following orders, wrong orders. And he knew they were wrong. But he followed through because that was what he was taught, even though his gut was telling him otherwise at the time. Had he not been so spineless everything would have been different now. But he was, and now he wished he could turn back time, because, strangely, it seemed like the only viable option. And the fact that he couldn't do it, and it was by any means impossible, was driving him crazy now.
Damn, if he jumped he'd spared himself the misery. Only he wouldn't be jumping down any time soon, and he knew it. And it was adding even more to the general feeling of frustration and that like, he was stuck and there was no way out of this.
He sighed deeply, letting himself cool off in the city breeze. His job was gone. His career was over. He didn't have any money left in his account. Life no longer seemed worth living. That was what he was dealing with, and he didn't know what to do. Yeah, and his boyfriend left him too, he remembered. But he was a shitty boyfriend, thus of all the things he lost recently, he cared about the motherfucker least of all.
He wasn't the one.
He never could have been.
And Corby knew it. And he was looking for the one all his life, the perfect one. Yet he still couldn't find him, not for the lack of trying though. In all these years nobody even came close. He was pretty sure now he was never going to find him. He was pretty sure perfect didn't exist. Love was probably bullshit too. He was a grown man, he should have known better. He never believed in God, angels, or the afterlife, why in the world would he believe in love? It was just hormones, brain impulses, pheromones, just the two sexually attracted to each other sacks of meat. But love? He frowned. He did though, didn't he? He believed in love, for God only knows what reason. But he still fucking did.
There was still this lingering ache in his chest, the anguish, the longing to find him, his the one, that he wanted to get rid of. But it wouldn't go away. It stayed with him doggedly no matter what. He looked down. If he was going to jump, now would be the time because the weight of it all was killing him.
He stepped forward again, towards the ledge, almost convinced he was going to do it this time. But he hesitated yet again. He wasn't good at making decisions. Fuck! In the military they made decisions for him. But on the other hand, they blamed it on him too when something went wrong. Now though the choice was solely in his hands, and nobody else's. This time there wasn't anyone with a higher rank in command.
And he hated it! He wasn't used to being responsible for his own life.
Didn't matter! He'd do it right this time, no matter what he decided. He promised himself that, he wasn't going to fail another mission.
He looked up to the sky, just one last time. He wanted to see the stars again, even if they weren't going to be as bright, and they were never as bright on the ground as they were up there, where there wasn't any ground, or atmosphere, or anything, just the emptiness of the space, and yet it was hardly ever empty. He missed that, the feeling of being absolutely alone and yet a part of it all, like the universe, and something up there, something that he couldn't quite describe. And up there it felt like it all meant something, which it didn't down here, not for someone like him. And he doubted this feeling could have been forged, or replicated by any means, and that was part of the problem. So he looked, up at the stars, and just for a second it made him feel at home, even though the stars weren't nearly as bright, and he knew they weren't going to be, but at the time it didn't matter. And he was able to breathe again suddenly, and it didn't feel as bad anymore, and he almost felt hopeful, felt almost like himself again, and it was nice. Even if it was only for a second, and it wasn't going to last, it was nice. And then he noticed something up there, something he didn't expect to see, and the thought of jumping was pushed away to the back of his mind momentarily, freeing him, shutting down that unceasing chatter in his head, and just allowing him to see, and to focus.
It wasn't a shooting star; he could tell straight away. There was something off about it, something he couldn't quite put his figure on. And it intrigued him because he'd seen it all. But he hadn't seen this.
It was falling from the sky, whatever it was, at a great speed. Corby narrowed his eyes at it.
No, no shooting star, definitely. The speed was off, the trail was off, everything was off. It was something else falling.
And just like that, as if the gods heard his silent plea, the choice had been made for him, and his destiny was taken from his hands once again.
Whatever it was falling from the sky, it was going to land in his apartment. However small and shitty it was.