The Crew of Apollo 13 Reports from Lunar Orbit

Houston, now that your radio waves can’t reach, all we hear is the regular beeping of life support, pathetic buzzing of an alarm like a metal aria with lyrics intoning that we have little water left. We ignore the dying alarms, ignore the silence that follows them, ignore the cold. Jim says he sees a moon-monster in the shadows. He keeps yelling there it is! and then floats away, doubled over laughing. Jack watches the dials in case we orbit ourselves into gimbal lock. Our radio waves shift the dust on the still surface of the moon. Old jokes are suddenly funny again. Fred slaps his knee, says tell it again—the one about the talking dog. And we tell it again, because here we remember only three jokes, and in the other two, everyone dies alone. If mission control could reach us here, they would say curl up in the cold capsule, leave consciousness behind a while. We open another pack of caffeine tablets. We don’t sleep, but we still dream—all of us, the same fevered caffeine-dream: palimpsest of a childhood day and the roadside’s mangled baby deer. Fractals of spilled strawberry jam on cold concrete. Even then, now, realizing no earth-thing goes on forever. And you were there, Houston, pacing in meetings, flipping switches attached to nothing. Houston,

we dream of you.