Way in the Middle of the Air

Ezekial sees a wheel a rollin’ way in the middle of the air.  Huge and solitary,  spinning alone in the Universe. Dull silver and dead on the outside, twirling slowly in the perpetual motion of zero gravity.   Ezekial must find out… what lies within?  A single oily protuberance pokes from the central axle.  A nipple at its end. Something black seeps from the tip, one drop at a time.  Is there life inside this wheel? No air in space, but does the dripping and the substance indicate a world within?  He and all the scientists and overseers watching from earth wonder.  It’s taken years to arrive here, to send an astronaut this far out in space. 

Ezekial bobs near, encased within his space suit, a tiny soul examining this humungous silver thing…. attached cameras all over the outside of his space suit beaming back to earth what is discovered.  He’s a fly on the wheel, a piece of white dust against the brown. He applies X rays and close microscopic focus to the silver covering, the images shared instantly with those on earth.  Then he digs in with his drill.  Right into the black protuberance shining oily, many colours as he works, flowing out now, dispersing, disappearing. Behind Ezekial the vast gulf of space shimmers with stars.   He knows “The whole Universe is watching,” and stops for a moment.  What is the purpose here?

He must find out what’s inside everything, it is like that with all explorers.  They are never content the way things are.  But changes happen, and then we must either go on or give up.  After the death of his wife, Ruth, Ezekial felt like ending it all.  His mission to space stopped him from going over the edge.  Discovery, challenge, risk, that’s why they sent him up there, the winning volunteer for this edgy job.  He wanted it! To escape earth, fly away into nothingness.  No jumping off a bridge, with seconds between the leap and the landing.  He launched into the vastness, his first mission.  This change in his life a miracle. To launch off the edge.  What was left, after Ruth’s suicide?  She made her decision, and left him and the whole world behind.  That took courage.  He’s following her example; grateful the overseers chose him.  They measured his will, and it was strong.

In the medical centre they implanted his brain with new electrodes, to enhance the leap into this mission. Electrodes giving power to his mind, to his resolve and his endurance to survive.  He hasn’t felt much different, only long hours of sleep and dreams on the trip from earth. 

 When his wife lived, he existed for her.  Now he imagines that she’s somewhere in this vast arc of space, waiting.  His forlorn hope is that he will find her.  Maybe not her earthly self, but a sense of who she was to him,  the connection and closeness.  Had he said or done anything to cause her death?  Put her over the edge? On the long trip out from earth, he contemplated the circumstances over and over, without resolve.

All he knows is this:  The physical time with her lies behind him now, like the stars, so far away.   But the meaning of who she was, that would be there with him, moving through the Universe eternal.

He lifts the long steel blowtorch from the floating kit behind him, begins to widen the drilled hole in the wheel.  Funny how the gap parts so easily.  Within that jagged hole, a blackness, yet from that blackness he perceives a form.  It takes on a shape that he does not see with his eyes but feels with his mind. Is it imagination?  Is he really inside a dream, like he’s been so often on this voyage, or is this the reality, here in space two million miles from earth?  This shape whirls and twists, it is a face. Ezekial is sure.  What else could it be but a face within the wheel.  He wonders if this is delusion, but only for an instant.  He peers closer.  His eyes and his consciousness tell him this is the face of Ruth, his dead wife!  How miraculous!  Yet the face stays expressionless. Perhaps bloated somewhat.  A bit spooky.  Drifting across that hole in the wheel, a shifting form.  He perceives his whole existence all around that misty, yet unmistakeable face, his life in relation to the wheel that spins around it.  What was the meaning of coming this far?  Was this the purpose of his whole life, to arrive here at this moment? There’s an infinitesimal chance that his consciousness came to exist along with trillions of expanding stars, then this moment came to be out of an exploding Universe once the size of a human heart…..As he watches and contemplates, his wife’s face becomes an eye… then his own eye looking back at him piercing through the vision of his wife…Ezekial lets his mind go because inside that eye he sees everything.

When you care for someone, that’s all that matters.  What you feel for another is the meaning of everything.  Then if you are lucky the other will feel the same way for you.  From moment-to-moment things will change, the good times and the bad, yet underneath there’s the feeling, of one with another.  It can seem like this harmony will go on forever.  If you are lucky.   But it ends, maybe only after a few turns of the wheel, perhaps after many.   The voices you thought brought you all the significance in your life disappear. Then, the sorrow and the loneliness.  Ezekial knows.  How life can change in an instant. Here though, within this apparatus floating in space, there’s a place that’s eternal. And Ezekial’s been allowed inside.

He’s been here dreaming for some time.  Longer than he realized.  Maybe days, if measured in earth time.  The oxygen in his suit is almost out.  Voices from his radio come in through the suit speakers “Where are you, Ezekial, what’s happening?”

Their voices don’t matter.  They’re from another place, another existence.  He’s ready to transfer now.  His previous life behind him is far away as the stars.  What lies ahead is the deeper meaning. He will let the turn of the wheel draw him out, into this other place.  Is there a sound?  He listens.  Yes, there is something.  Some kind of music, perhaps the murmur of God?  He lifts his head one last time and finds he’s singing to himself, “Ezekial saw a wheel a rollin’.”

 He’s heard that one before, and he lets himself go, every molecule of his body draining, disappearing as says the words.  Yes, he thinks, I sense my body and mind seeping through my space suit, escaping from the physical, one soul drop at a time. First a drop, then a stream, a cascade, a waterfall. This is where he was meant to be, flowing into the wheel, joined in its turning.  This circle in space waited for him his whole life, as he spun and whirled through the years, this always the end point.

He falls into this void, containing nothing and everything, part of the wheel.  He exists and he does not.  He appears and he disappears. 

What do the cameras record?  Better yet, what do the overseers back on earth perceive? A bright flash. Then views from an empty space suit spat away from the hole where Ezekial vanished. The wheel still turning, way in the middle of the air.

Another black drop bulges, then plops out of the closing nipple in the axle, where Ezekial explored and pondered purpose just moments before.

∼ Harrison Kim

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