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Ellipses
    On Earth, they measured distance in miles and kilometers - very small units - but it is, as they say, a small world. He’d seen bigger in his time, almost in person. And out here in this vast solitude, things went on in every conceivable direction for light years. Miles and kilometers had nothing on light years. There were galaxies that he had travelled through which were hundreds of thousands of light years across. Those numbers, given in terms of miles and kilometers, are inconceivable. He travelled across these expanses of stars and dust at equally inconceivable speeds. The distances, the speeds, the numbers too large to contemplate - these things didn’t bother him at all when compared to the solitude.
    On Earth, they had music with singers that crooned about the loneliness of space. They always sang about the miles and kilometers of nothingness surrounding anything. The truth was there were light years and astronomical units of nothingness surrounding nothingness surrounding more nothingness surrounding... ad infinitum.
    But the worst part of it all was the dreams.
    The dreams about why he was here. Alone.
    All that was here, all that was going to be here, was him surrounded by his satellite, surrounded by nothing, surrounded by more nothing surrounded by dot dot dot. Dot dot dot is not Morse code. Morse code cannot describe dot dot dot. Dot dot dot is infinity. Where does it end? It doesn’t.
    It doesn’t end. It doesn’t end. It

just won’t stop! Jeannie won’t stop yelling! God, make it stop! There is nothing I can say that will make her shut up! Because if I try to interrupt her, she’ll just go on and on about interrupting her! Because she can never seem to get a word in edgewise around here, and she just wants her Goddamn voice to be heard!
    All I ever hear is her voice, and no matter what she’s actually saying, all I hear is the maniac talking. And it does talk. It talks and talks and talks and dot dot dot.

He had a light year in miles of different ways he could kill himself on this manned satellite called the Prophet. The loneliness made him want to sometimes. The dreams, too. He could cut himself with myriads of different things. But that was a boring way to go. His history would imply that he was obsessed with death.
    He could eat some glassware or ceramic dishes. Overdose on over-the-counter migraine pills. Loosen the main valve to the satellite’s oxygen tanks and inundate his air with enough oxygen to poison him. Expunge himself into space. Bludgeon his head on the walls of the satellite dot dot dot.
    But the beauties of deep space prevented all this. Nebulae in the distance (measured, of course, in light years), uninhabited planets (still habitable, however), stars exploding (suicide) dot dot dot.

“I want to discuss something with you, Mr. Weiss,” says my boss.
    I am so nervous. So scared. I want to crawl up in a ball and suffocate.
    “I’m going to be up-front with you. I want you to man the Heaven Project.”
    Heaven. God. I want so badly to reverse things so that I may know these words that float above me in the spheres. In the Heaven Project, I will be alone. I will take pictures of nebulae, planets, supernovas...
    “You will have to go alone, and you will be gone for twenty years. You will take pictures of places in the universe that have never been seen before, hopefully finding something habitable and similar to Earth’s environment. It will be hard being up there for twenty years, but I think --”
    “I’ll do it.”
    I’ll do it before anybody finds out about my sins. And I will be so far from them for twenty years. I will be alone. No one to judge me. Alone. All alone.

Though he had broken free of Earth and its gravity, he had not reached Heaven. God made sure to judge him everyday. Every time he slept, he dreamed of that morning. Every time, without fail. When his telescope honed in on a planet, Jeannie’s face was spelled out in the lifeforms. Every supernova sounded like Alan’s rib. And that morning... Oh, God, to not have to relive that every day would be Heaven.

She’s standing there next to the sofa acting like she’s the one who can’t stand being with me because we married, not in love, but out of pregnancy. She should have had an abortion, she never should have had sex with me dot dot dot. She won’t quit running her mouth. And if I interject, bad things will happen.
    But I do interject.
    “SHUT UP!”
    And bad things do happen.
    “Excuse me? No, sir, you do not get to tell me to shut up because --“
    And I hit her. I punch her in the mouth. She flies back and crumbles to the ground. I could stop, but her annoying Excuse me? rings in my ears like church bells at a funeral. And before she can open her mouth again, I am on top of her, bashing my fist into her face. I am so full of fury and rage that I cannot stop to think about what I’m doing. In fact, it’s a couple of minutes before I realize she has stopped breathing. My hands are covered in blood from her face. Her nose is broken, her jaw. Oh, God. Her forehead is caved in.
    And Alan is watching me from the entryway. I can’t see him, but his eyes are like knives. When I look, his jaw is dropped, his eyes are wide open, and tears are running down his face in steady streams. His eyes embody every emotion he knows how to feel.
    I crawl to my son on my knees because I’m finding it too difficult to stand. “Alan.” He’s got his lunchbox in his hand and his backpack slung over his shoulders. He’s nine years old and ready for school and gaping at his dead mother. “Alan. Oh, God.” He takes a small step backwards, but can go no further. I wrap my arms around him and hug him. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.” He gives little resistance. And I’m squeezing him. I am squeezing way too hard, but God help me, I can’t stop. I love him so much. So I keep squeezing. Harder and harder the embrace. He’s thrashing, but I don’t think he can breathe. And when I hear his rib burst, I know it is over. I know he can’t breathe. I know he won’t breathe. I know. I know. I know I’m going to Hell. To Hell. I know.
    But this is already Hell itself.

Read the Rest in NHM #1!