Summer 2025 - Vol. 22, Issue 3

Earth is too crowded. It’s not just the billions of people that take up every available surface that vex me, but the billions more that have dearly departed and now crowd every inch of atmosphere. It is inescapable; I’ve summered on space stations and contracted across the colonies, but the dead still haunt such places. Violently, more often than not, matching the anger and pain of their sudden, vicious deaths that always befall those that dare wander off-Earth.

I’ve tried everything to escape the dead short of joining them on a more permanent basis. As part of my “condition,” I sometimes find myself outside my body, walking through walls like the ghosts. These wanderings have led me to believe that there is no other form of “afterlife,” due to the sheer number of spirits that have accumulated. And if I were to join them, there would be no guarantee that they’d finally leave me alone.

That's all I want, after all. For some peace and fucking quiet, for once in my pitiful life. To not be constantly surrounded by these unseen multitudes, tormenting me like a shiny, new toy. The closest I can ever get to the peace I desire is the cold storage of long spaceflights, where I’m supposed to be free of dreams. And yet they still plague me, the whispers of past occupants who died when stasis failed them, trapping them within the ship, begging me to avenge them, to pass on a message to loved ones.

I’m the only one who suffers this way, it seems. There are plenty who say they are "sensitive" to such matters, but they only catch the vaguest of gestures, murmured gossip behind brick walls. They are useless in communicating important messages with any precision. The dead are just as bright and alive to me as the living. The main difference is the translucent sheen they all possess, denoting they exist on a plane just separate from our own, one wholly removed from logic and reason.

And then, one day, a way out appears before me. A blazing advertisement seeking colonists for Pluto, the last rock in the solar system of any real note that had yet to be inhabited.

"What a load of shit," one ghost groans, joints immobile from the cold of their slow death from the Martian atmosphere. "More horrific ends for some capitalist's gain." His space suit bears the logo of a company long gone, likely devoured by another business that has perished as well. Other ghosts draw near, enamored by my intangible, infuriating connection to their realm.

"Pluto, how quaint!" exclaims another. "I would have loved to visit." Her dress is old, her language older still, unfamiliar to my ear yet clear in my mind. Something about the world of the dead dissolves arbitrary barriers like "language" and "time." The colonies of Mars are old, old enough for museums to possess artifacts shipped from Earth. Some spirits would inevitably become attached to their prior belongings and become forcibly resettled, left to wander a place very different than the land they died.

But all Pluto holds is the metallic remains of never-living explorers, mapping the surface and gathering data for the eventual entrance of humanity. There was plenty of time to do so, as its erratic orbit kept it too far from the heavy industries of Earth for centuries at a time, making large voyages impractical. But 2214 is rapidly approaching, as is the golden window for such a long trip.

It's the out I’ve been seeking: a piece of barren rock where no life had ever exerted or expired before. Colonists would die, of course, but they’ll have their chance to know me in life, so let me rest in death.

A claw of cold slices through my chest, shocking my lungs into a stutter. I turn to glare at the owner of the arm that had phased through me. “What do you want?”

It’s another colonist, its body in wavering tatters, likely pulped by some machine long-gone. The swell of the head tilts down and more ribbons of flesh snake out.

“Don’t…leave us….” The words are a wheeze. It tries to grab me, but it’s all in vain; no spirit can handle a living thing. But its malevolence radiates, drawing in others, shambling and dragging and barreling towards me.

“Kill! Kill him, or—”

“My baby, please, you must help me find—”

“Sir? Are you all right? Sir?”

A hand is on my arm, from a living person. I recognize the vest; they’re a member of the street crisis response team that patrols the area. Or a “concerned citizen” didn’t like my demeanor and called it in. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Explaining myself would only give me more trouble.

“I’m fine.” I jerk away from their touch and leave, walking fast enough to outpace the most mangled of ghosts. Staying here, in settled space, is untenable. Pluto is my salvation.

It would be at least a century until that backwater planet grew crowded, which is plenty of time to rest, think, and, perhaps, find a truly permanent solution. Perhaps I could find a way to attach myself to a satellite and be shot to some desolate star and never see another soul ever again. Or maybe plunging into the fusion reactor of a solar heart would destroy whatever intangible matter made up the "soul" and it would all finally, finally, end.

It takes every last credit, every pitiful favor and meager connection I’ve sustained in the land of the living, and forge some anew in the land of the dead, to assemble the falsified credentials to ensure the application turned in my favor. The position isn't a glamorous one – electro-mechanical technician, type D – but it’s my one-way ticket from the "civil" worlds to the last true unknown.

As the Sleipnir began its 10-year journey, I once again fall into the cold grip of stasis, and, for the first time in countless years, it is a restful void.

#

The quiet of the sleep shifts into the quiet of the ship. Some souls had been lost during the trip, as one expects, but the craft is large and new, so their wails of anguish are easily masked by the scrubbers. The only perceptible noises are born from the living. There are no whispers of fear or overwhelming screams for help or pleading for release.

The calm was all-encompassing. Who could have imagined the universe is this quiet? That one could truly be alone? Even if this only lasted but a few short years, or if our lander exploded and brought thousands to a fiery end, it would be worth it. Just knowing that such peace and calm exists in the universe was worth it.

Pluto is beautiful, barren and grey and lifeless, save for its pockmarks of a few shiny buildings. Machines crawl around its surface, autonomously building the shells and skeletons for the structures that would become our home. It would grant us dozens of minutes if our suits fail, which was more than the cruel grip of raw space could ever give.

As the lander touches down onto the dusty soil, the rumbling of machinery welcomes us. I follow the others in disembarking and daydream my simple life that awaited, of crawling around tunnels and mindlessly following directions on what to connect to where and not being expected to do more than simply exist. No longer would I be pressed into speaking for the dead.

"Ah, finally, you've arrived!"

I pause mid-stride. It was a voice, but not through the radio. I look around, but everyone is still fully suited. The other colonists bump into me and part like the tide. Some call back, but it’s not their voices that I had heard.

"Who was that...?" Mine is as sparse as the atmosphere that clings around me, desperate to find any weakness and snuff out the tiny spark that grants flesh life.

In floats over a man, as if ripped straight from an ancient film. A shirt with too many buttons, pants pressed into possessing stark lines, and the superfluous straps to hold them up. Behind him several others follow, people of all ages, in all manner of dress or mutilation, and all of the same translucent sheen that marks a dead soul.

"Why…how are you here?" I demand.

"Got here the old-fashioned way,” the first ghost says. “With our feet."

They walked? To fucking Pluto? That was entirely impossible, no one could “walk” three billion miles from one tiny floating rock in the infinite dark to another.

"Ibsen?" That had come through the comm line. "What's the matter?"

“Vivien, are you feeling all right? I’m detecting irregular vitals.” It was one of the medics that had helped me out of stasis, but their words didn’t—couldn’t—reach me.

Some sniveling little kid smugly sweeps forward. "Jealous you're not the first one here? Turns out you don't need a space suit, or even speed anywhere close to c, if you want to go someplace bad enough. Floating works in all three dimensions. Surely, even you knew that."

"You can’t be here! No one is supposed to be here!" I’m still alive and every part of my body is making me aware of it. Even my suit feels the need to join in, scolding me for consuming too much oxygen in my panic.

"I know how you feel, son," the first ghost says. "After that cosmopolitan lifestyle, I wanted some peace and quiet. So, I said to myself, why not go to that new-fangled planet they just found? I could never dream of affording a telescope that good, so why waste a golden opportunity? Swing by the moon and the sun and check all those sorts of things out first, now that I got nothing but time."

I find myself falling, my legs useless even in this feeble gravity. The descent is slow, weightless, but inevitable, like the ever-encroaching fangs of death. But the hands of the living grab me before I hit the ground and drag me onto my feet.

"Ibsen, speak to me. Are you stuck in stasis?"

I attempt to speak, but nothing comes out. What can I possibly say? There was nothing left, as nowhere is safe.

They drag me off somewhere, to whatever serves as a med bay, and even more ghosts join the procession, curious to learn more about their new conduit to the land of the living.