Author’s note: Never tell me something’s impossible. It gives me ideas.

Begin Log Entry

It’s seven o’clock. I know it’s seven because of the damn speakers. Every morning I can hear them. I’ve destroyed all the ones I can reach, but it’s not enough. Through the thick glass portholes into the flooded sections of the ship, out there in that sea of methane, helium, and whatever else, the damn system keeps playing, on hundreds of speakers. And I can still hear them.

If I had an airlock, a suit that could stand the corrosion….

If someone finds my logs, I beg you to crucify the sonofabitch who set up this tour. No, better yet, drag the whole of senior management out here and put them in the space-rated rescue suits they sent on this ship. Then stick ’em out on the stardeck in that pretty blue gas. Lock them out there. Don’t warn them what will happen—they’ll figure it out when the seals begin to dissolve and that blue poison seeps inside. Let ’em scream as the exothermic reaction ignites the air in their suits and they go up like candles.

Heh.

Even now, I’m not so far gone that I’d suggest the same for the marketer who came up with the musical theme. He could never have known—it wasn’t supposed to loop every day. Someone should have turned it off. Someone alive, on the bridge. Or down in engineering. Or anywhere, except this cabin.

Who knows? I might not be the only one alive. There might be other cabins—other people who slept in, or twisted an ankle, or just didn’t want to “see the spectacular cerulean clouds first-hand.” People far enough away from…whatever blew out the hull and, I assume, killed the crew. I just assume I’m the only one, since six hours of hammering on my bulkheads with a fire extinguisher got me no response. If anyone is alive, I hope their logs endorse my punishment for Space Vistas Tourism’s senior management. I don’t want them to burn in hell—I want them to do it here. 

It may hurt when I die, but it’ll be on my terms. When my supplements run out, or the recycler breaks down, or…or if I just lose hope, I won’t wait to get sick and weak. I’m going to go to the hatch and open it. See the spectacular cerulean clouds first-hand.

Heh.

And before I die, I’m going to kill as many of the hallway speakers as I can. If anyone else is alive on this hallway, at least I’ll spare them another morning of Rhapsody in Blue.