The hands were raised and counted and before you know it, we had all voted to exit the space station. Sure, oxygen rationing sucked, and our elected representatives always seemed to end up in the fanciest space suits with the shiniest, radiation-reflecting face plates, and the most responsive booster jets, but I didn’t think that meant it was a good idea to just leave.
But that’s how the vote went, so we climbed into our patchwork suits and filed to the nearest airlocks.
From outside the station, we had a terrific view of the purple planetary expanse we orbited around. No way to get down there anymore, though.
Did you know that when otters sleep, they hold hands so they don’t drift away from each other? We had to do the same thing, lashing limbs together and tying ourselves to the station to make sure none of us drifted off into the void.
Sure. Everything we ate going forward was going to come out of an external-facing pipe from the station and was going to come in liquid form. Sure, we had no way to clean ourselves.
But we had freedom. We had the stars for company. We could do whatever we wanted.
