Space is unbelievably boring. Mind numbingly, hallucination inducingly, want-to-jump-out-of-the-airlock boring! Do you know why they call it space? Because there’s nothing but that for trillions of miles all around you. Nothing but empty space. Move a few thousand miles to the left, you’re still in empty space. Move a few thousand miles to the right, it looks exactly the same. Sometimes I wish I’d finally go crazy just for a break in the monotony. All I do is sit at this console and catalog the communications that come through. In the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do.

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Back in high school, a guy from the Celestial Guard came and told the whole class how exciting it was to live and work on humanity’s last great frontier. He came with pictures and videos and schematics of spaceships. It did sound unbelievably exciting. You should’ve seen them. Those pictures of planetary nebulae had me mesmerized, with their cotton candy swirls of pinks, blues, oranges, and greens… Glowing matter thrown into space by the god-like forces of dying stars. Makes you want to sign right up, doesn’t it?...MORE