Houston we have a...pony?
Houston we have a....pony?
Space is an interesting place; a lot of people underestimate the shear vastness of the large vacuum. Even I, when I was a young boy, thought that space could easily be conquered by mankind. When I was growing up I witnessed the first landing on the moon by my hero’s Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldren, and the un-named guy holding the camera. I think everyone at that time was in awe over what humans could achieve with just a bit of time and optimism on their side.
I still remember the broadcast on the TV. I was at my rich cousin’s house at the time. Our house didn’t have a television so we relied heavily on sponging time from the family and friends who did have the expensive box. I put it to the fact that my Mother was genuinely cruel and would not spend money on anything I considered worthy; it wasn’t until years later I realised the appalling conditions my Father had worked in and the measly amount of money he earned. He was a slave to the system, as many people around the globe were at that period. That was the reason the Lunar Landings was such an historic event; it meant that there was a chance for people to escape their dreary lives and move on to a brighter future.
Nowadays, that thought would be considered cheesy and un-realistic; but then...way back then, it was on the mind of every single realist and dreamer alike. Every person wanting that chance to prove that they were worth something; that they weren’t just there to pick up the trash that other people had chucked behind.
The Government is a lot like that; always has been really. Every new politician coming in pretending that they are going to clean up the country; like we were all on some kind of dumping ground that needed to be cleared out. Even when I was younger politicians made me shiver. At my age now you’d probably think these feelings were silly, but they still linger inside of my head; thoughts that can never escape.
Anyway, I wasn’t talking about politics, that’s not the business I was in whatsoever. My Father told me every night that he came in, ‘you lad, must make something of yourself. Don’t be like your old man and let them, up there, control you. You can do anything, be anything, the world’s yours my boy; don’t let them persuade you otherwise’.
I didn’t understand what he was saying back then. It was all just words that lulled me to sleep; a simple lullaby of condescending nonsense that I paid no heed to. I wish I’d have understood him; then maybe my younger self would have taken the opportunity to tell him that he was speaking rubbish. If I had thought differently then, maybe I could have prevented the emotional pain of ruined hopes and dreams that lay in my future.
I still remember the day that my father passed away. I remember the tears my mother shed all over the coffin as she said her last goodbye. I stood there, the new man of the house, trying to hold back the obvious weeps that I was concealing. I stayed strong that day; for the rest of my life it was the same. I stayed strong throughout all outcomes. I wish it could have been the same for my mother. In retrospect I never hugged her even once after father’s death; I never said goodnight or hello; I never waved at her when I went to school, and I never once gave her a kiss or a smile to cheer up her dismal cries. That’s what being strong had done to me; it had turned me into some kind of lifeless creature with no cares for anything except my own wishes.
Mother shouldn’t have had to put up with a little monster like I was; I must have been her worst nightmare...I was certainly no dream. Even looking back on what I was, I knew that I was a little piece of trash, but no-one would come to pick me up because everyone forgot my existence. I was a shadow slinking through the bright sunshine; barely even able to keep my conscience alive with my pessimistic thoughts.
Even at school, I’d just be a small mark on the chalkboard. That one name on the list that everyone recognises but instantly forgets once they have heard it. Eventually I became an enigma in the large cramped hallways. I ignored all of my old friends; those that before were considered the people I was closest to. They meant nothing to me without my conscience there to guide me towards their friendship.
This resentment of others, and greedy look on my future lasted all through my childhood. I never laughed once at the many jokes that were told. We had school dances and discos; I was always the boy at the back who glared around at the frivolous happenings. When I saw a boy slink off with a girl, I simply stared and scoffed at their idiocy...I don’t know why, perhaps jealousy of their optimistic thoughts, but most likely I was scorning their optimism. I knew that in a few weeks they would not even be able to bear looking at each other without blushing and walking away. Even when I was scoffing their stupidity I never got that chance to laugh.
These pictures of me, the ones from my early childhood, are in complete contrast to the ones in my later childhood. My care-free grin quickly replaced by a stress-induced frown. It was almost like a changeling had been put in my place but had found no love from the people around it. Looking back it was probably the worst decision of my life to become this distant from the one’s I loved, they could have kept me grounded; kept me away from my hopes that could never possibly happen.
Back then space was a godsend; it meant that I had a small chance of being in control of everything around me, there would be no optimists there, nothing but the constant empty void that represented the way my warped heart beat. Quite depressing when I think back to how I felt in my younger years. Though how I ever managed to be a pessimist at the same time as always looking towards a better future I cannot fathom. Somehow I managed to be this strange combination of personalities, which is probably why I ended up being a demon with contradictive mind processes. My brain did not simply function in a way that would be considered the norm in my pre-pubescent stage.
Many times I was told that I was relatively attractive and relatively charming in nature, yet I would never focus on any girl’s advances towards me, lest they spoil my chance towards my ultimate goal of escape. I had no time for anyone of the feminine side of our species, nor did I spend much time with the masculine side of our kind either. I did not need my head filled with their jovial banter or curiously strange quips if I was ever going to get what I deserved for my future.
My studies came into scrutiny as well. I felt that if I spent too much time using the creative half of my mind, then I would be wasting the time I could have spent increasing the potential of my structured and scientific half. My mind had to be trained in the proper way for me to reach my destiny, and because of my poor upbringing, I suffered dearly from the lack of attention given to any more advanced students in schools. Perhaps if my school had enough money to be able to afford to look after their students properly, they would have noted my over-achieving ways and would have put a stop to my hard work. As it is, they just let me proceed with increasing my blood pressure for the majority of my time there.
The fondest part of my youth was my obsession with stargazing. This enticement with the stars began at a very early stage; long before my Father had passed away. It was actually my Grandfather that introduced me to the constellations and planets when I was only two years old. Every night he would sit atop a large mound of dirt, braving all weather conditions, and sit and stare at all of the possibilities of the Universe. It was him that introduced me to the story of the man in the moon, though this was more of a fictional fancy than a possibility.
My Grandfather could never have thought that his favourite past time would have been the one thing that could have ended his life. At his age, and with his heart problems, sitting out in the rain with no form of shelter all night was a dire mistake. I can still remember the pain of my five year old self discovering his limp lifeless corpse hanging from his foldaway chair. I can still feel the coolness of his fingertips as I pulled on his hand, begging him to stop playing games and come inside with me. I can even still smell the rotting moss that slept nearby, decaying through to the dark damp earth below them. Grandfather was rushed to hospital as soon as I began to scream with terror when the realisation of the event finally hit me. I remember that terror...I remember that fear of death that began at that young age. That fear was most likely the reason I wanted to escape to a new life; to escape the inevitable ending of my life.
I often wonder how my younger self could have pushed off so many things as being fiction but still thought that the true fictional facts could be reality. Then again many people in the society I grew up with were exactly alike. Each of us trying to grab that special reality that we knew had the possibility of coming true, only finding later that the reality we were reaching out to was the one thing that could have held us back from where we were truly going. We had been deceived by all of the realists on our planet; we had already lost our minds to their cause.
It is only now that I realise that even if we considered ourselves to not be under the control of media empires and there zombie minions, our lives and the daily activities we went through were all dictated by a greater power than ourselves. I knew this was true but I chose to ignore it, just like everyone else on our planet. Even this ideal life on another planets in the universe was simply a belief conceived by a greater power; they used life-changing events like the Lunar Landings to make us believe like it was all our choice, but it was all a lie in which they subliminally controlled our actions.
At school our actions were always dictated by the people who controlled our land. I was blissfully ignorant to this when I was growing up. If you can say I was growing up, growing up would imply that I was actually moving forward with my life instead of backward which was in fact the real truth of the matter. Our grades were decided by an entity that nobody had even had the displeasure of ever meeting, this seemed wrong considering our results were supposedly going to dictate what we must spend the rest of our life doing. In actual fact it was a person who was going to decide where our life moved to, not some scrawls on a piece of paper that would eventually vanish into nothingness; another piece of trash that nobody would pick up from the alley-ways.
I left school with a large supply of hopes and a small supply of qualifications hidden in my pocket. I turned my back on the life I had had as a child and moved forward to the next step of my life. My aim was to get to space, and this aim was going to come true no matter how much effort it would take. Little did I know that this effort would be a small leap compared to the leap I was going to lead in the future.
I must have been around twenty-eight when I started my training at NASA. It should have been a big surprise when I received the letter of acceptance into the program, but me in my emotionless state merely ignored my luck and put it through my mind as being about my destiny. Destinies do not exist, I wish I had known that back then...maybe then I would have tried to find something else to do with my life. But as it is, I began training.
Training was most likely one of the hardest experiences of my life. All of that effort leading towards one goal, but was it worth it? That was the question everybody asked every single day of their lives. Was anything truly worth it when somebody else was always in control? Unfortunately back then I came up with the same answer as every single other gullible person on the Earth; my answer was always ‘yes’. As long as I got what I wanted in the end, then everything was worth it and nothing could go wrong...What else could I think when that is always what I was led to believe?
There were many tests; all of which as pointless and controlled as the one’s I had done throughout my school years. Tests to see whether I had what it took to survive by myself in the empty abyss of space...Eventually they figured out that my heart matched where they were going to send me. I was just the kind of emotionally-stunted organism that they were looking for. I had enough brain power to survive the dangers, but as well had the least amount of emotions; the emotions that could hinder me if anything wrong were to happen up there. I was simply an experiment that the powers that be wanted to try in an unpopular situation. Even if I had become lost up in space it wouldn’t have mattered; I was just enough pawn in their game, ready to be knocked out at any chance possible.
It took many months, perhaps a year, for them to turn me into the machine that they wanted me to evolve into. The small bit of my heart that had managed to survive my damaged childhood was soon obliterated by the endless pressure and time that I was put through during my stay at the torture rooms, also known as the NASA training facility. All of this pain and misery leading up to the event I had spent my whole life wishing for. An event that would be the eventual destruction of all I had known.
The doors shot open, as futuristic doors often do in buildings that received the highest funding from the powers-that-be. I looked around and grimaced at the shiny surroundings; leered at the many reporters who shot me with their intense lenses and probed me with their prodding pencils. They would not cease with their rambling; they never seemed to realise what they were actually doing, they only cared that their story was heard by as many people as possible, and that their story would please their masters. I chuckled to myself at their gullibility; soon all of their stories would be another piece of trash shoved into the nearest pit that needs to be occupied by all of our kind’s greed.
That’s the thing about our species, we always have to know everything; nothing can ever remain a mystery. Many people would argue that mankind loves mysteries; it is their way of enjoying the Earth that they have been given, but answer me this: If mankind loves mysteries so much then why are we constantly trying to solve them? The more we try to solve a mystery, the less mysteries that our planet will keep. Can we not just accept that maybe the greatest mystery of our planet should remain a mystery to our small minds? The answer simply is ‘no, that is why we will never be the ruler’s of the Universe; we want to know the things that we shouldn’t ever need to know to survive. These journalists were the same as a hungry pack of wolves in their actions, but their minds where in the wrong place; they had become lost to the knowledge that their mind had been given. I was exactly the same.
The ship could never be considered large, but they had made it look impressive enough for the punters to look on in awe; another plot to control our desires. People cannot seem to resist a bright colour; that is our animalistic nature that we have been pre-conditioned to use. Even the voice of the phantom woman who counted down my flight, was taught how to do her message in such a way that people would sit drooling by their television screens. These people were picked purposely for this specific erotic power that their cleansing voice held; it was just another trick that your masters like to use against us.
The fire underneath my rocket burned the sides of the station; cooking all of the scientists and mechanics hard work. My heart remained empty...My body dormant as the cogs slowly clicked around my metallic brain. The friction in my small cabin warmed my hands to boiling point but I still remained lifeless and cold. I sniffed, preparing myself for the great achievement I was just about to make; all my life had been leading to this moment.
The voice stopped and the rocket slid forward out of its holding case. My body sunk backwards into the chair as the pressure of the exuberant force washed over every inch of the metal ship. I held my breath and closed my eyes, trying not to focus on the shuddering of my iron blood as it whirled around my non-existent heart. My teeth chattered, my fingers gripped onto the consoles, and my eyes bounced up and down inside of their sockets. This moment lasted for only around four seconds, though in my mind it seemed to last for almost an eternity. The fears of death entering my thoughts once more.
I was in Space. Travelling far away from the life that had depressed my cynical hatred for so long...and yet I still didn’t feel joy. I couldn’t understand how my dream could feel so sickening; how it could feel so wrong; yet it did, and there was nothing I could do to stop these feelings. I stared around at the flashing controls, signalling the release of the back of the ship. I saw the discarded piece float past my viewer, I stared, and I felt nothing. My mind stayed dormant to all feeling, just has it had done in my youth.
Systematically I pressed all of the buttons I needed to, so that I could dock at the sleeping space station. This was to be my home during my year’s stay in the hollow atmosphere. I thought that it was I who would have the power when I was by myself up there, but I could not even stand on my own two feet without floating down the corridors. I didn’t even have the choice over whether I would stand or sit; everything had been decided for me.
Two whole days drifted by and not a thing seemed to change. Every repetitive act that I completed seemed to drain the energy I had previously contained before my journey had begun. It was now time for me to do what I had seen my hero’s do so many years ago; it was my time to walk on the moon...yet, I still couldn’t smile. I frowned as I opened my craft; heavily laden down with a monstrosity they claimed as a suit. Oxygen pumped through my iron veins from a metal tube that hung out of the back. A machine controlling whether or not I should live or die... and I still felt nothing.
Looking around I could see nothing but a baron wasteland; non-habitable in form, and lonely in nature. My mind turned once again to complete the task that had been radioed to me from my controllers. I hopped along the landscape, not even looking around at the aesthetics of the planets surrounding. I had my job and I had been programmed to complete it.
I stopped. I looked around. I felt a presence that I could not explain. Something moving through the shadows like a lost soul wandering around looking for its body. My mind could not compute what this entity could be and so the cogs stopped turning. Without realising it, my blood went cold and a shiver ran through the very parts of my body that had remained vaguely alive.
A stone turned on the ground behind me. I dared look around and saw nothing. The shadow shot past my arm quicker then I could turn; it ran and ran, and I gave chase. I cannot remember why I ever decided to follow her, I cannot remember any of the thoughts or feelings that occurred at that moment, but I do remember that these feelings had happened; it was the first time I had truly thought and felt independently in my whole entire abysmal life.
I had never truly realised how big the moon actually was. It seemed to take a lifetime for me to find the shadow I had been chasing, and it came as a major shock to discover what I had followed. It was blue, and scared, and crying. It wasn’t human; that was certain, and yet I still felt like she was one of my kind; that she belonged to us. On seeing my arrival she wept further, begging me to leave and escape her wrath. I did not see this wrath that she spoke of, I saw merely another player in our game, and a player that needed some help.
I crept closer still until one of her four legs was next to my reaching arm. She flinched as I touched her hoof but did not seem repulsed by my actions. I couldn’t believe that I had the bravery to do all of this; after spending so many years as a lifeless corpse of a boy, I finally felt some warmth run into my veins. She stared at me, tears running down her cheeks; trying to hide the scars of her past. I could see quite well that she was not injured physically, and yet I still felt that she was feeling pain; the same pain that I had felt so many years ago. She and I were one.
I knelt down beside the little pony, stroking her front leg; trying to make her see that I was not there to hurt her in any form or way. Her tears slowed and a small smile came to her lips. I smiled back, hoping that she could see my sympathetic face through my shaded helmet. She seemed so lost; so conflicted of what she should do next. A warmth filled up the empty space that my heart originally had originated. I felt emotion rippling every edge of the nerve centres of my body; an oil can of care poured over my joints so that finally I could move again.
I sat down next to her, moving slowly to not cause any alarm. Her head turned away from mine and she stared down at the blue and green planet bobbing in the distance.
“That is thine home yes?” Her voice always did appear to have that archaic sound; her word usage was very old-fashioned even for me, in the distant era I grew up in. I nodded to her question and she did not say anymore that entire hour. My oxygen tank grew low on supplies, so, sadly, I had to hop back to my ship as fast as I could possibly go. My heart went back to its usual void when I went back inside my metal prison. I checked the monitors for any signs of life outside, but nothing showed up; nothing was apparently living on the moon. Even my senses were fooling me now; my mind had tricked me into believing that a pony really existed, yet my heart still told me that what I had seen was true. I did not know which part of my anatomy I should believe: my mind which had carried me through every trauma I had suffered through, or the heart which had remained asleep and let me suffer. Nobody was here to tell me the answer this time; I was not even sure that I wanted to hear an answer.
When I got the chance to go outside, I would look for the blue pony. But I never found her. Four weeks later and she still had not been found, and the more and more I searched, the more my independence vanished. My heart fell cool again, and my mind began to work in a clock like fashion once more. I was turning back into my previous machine-like state.
2 months had gone by before I heard her voice once again; a scream from the distance. My heart immediately began to beat as I ran in the direction the agonised yell had come from. My heart ran cold in fear as I saw the giant pile of rocks that had slid on top of a gaping crater in the ground. I began to shift as many rocks as I could, flinging the boulders behind my back; trying to save this poor scared creature. A loud crack came from above my head. I stopped; looking up towards the sound. Who would have thought that it was now going to be a piece of stone that would dictate what happened in my life next? It fell against the tube on my suit; ripping the oxygen out of it, and I fell down; my breath becoming slow and saw nothing but darkness. There was not even a star to give me any light; my fear of death had caught me in its grasp.
My life flashed before my eyes. I felt so cold; colder then I had ever felt before. I was to die doing what I thought I loved; the same way my Grandfather had gone before me. Except nobody was here to find me up here on this baron crater; I would forever remain an unknown corpse that no-one would remember. I was still that same mark on the chalkboard; still that same shadow, only this time in pure darkness. I was all alone...
My mind came back to life in a sudden flurry of vision and noises. I was back on my ship staring at flashing buttons and hearing the voices of my controllers shout at me through the silver consoles. A large throbbing came from the inside of my head as I slowly regained feeling in all of the parts of my body. My hand sought for something to hold, so that I could know that I could tell if I was dreaming or if this was all real; I was truly alive.
“How does thoust feel mere mortal?” Her voice came from above me; I would have recognised her language anywhere. She stood not too far away from my clasping hand, worried about whether or not I was okay. I mumbled, unable to speak with the shock of knowing that the pony I had dreamt of was in fact reality. She stared down at me with her gentle eyes and my heart melted.
I wobbled onto my feet, groaning in pain as I did so. She seemed concerned about the amount of pain I seemed to be going through, but did not try to help me. She knew that I would have not appreciated her help. I eventually managed to quiver onto my feet, only to fall back onto a chair behind me. She chuckled; I suppose I did look rather strange in my current situation. She soon stopped herself and blushed, afraid that she may have offended me with her laughter.
It seems strange to think that a creature that appeared to have as much power as her would be afraid of what she should say and do. Even she seemed to be a puppet to someone with greater control. Maybe our two kinds were more alike than our outer appearance would have us be.
After that day me and this pony saw each other constantly around the large lunar rock. We would even meet up in the space station sometimes and I would show her how to control the shuttle. She seemed surprised at how a large craft had come into existence without the use of a Unicorn like she was. I had soon heard most of her story, and I told her mine to the best of my ability.
She may have told me her story, but I knew that she wasn’t giving me the whole picture. She seemed afraid that somebody else could hear her out here in the middle of nowhere, and so she kept quiet. Every now and again she turned wistfully to look over at a star; she seemed to like this star. I thought they were all relatively ugly shining so brightly; mankind loves the stars for the same reason they love the bright coloured objects on Earth, it was enticing to their eye. I had begun to think differently to everyone I had left behind.
The Earth looked more beautiful, the more emotions I began to feel. The blue pony thought so to, she seemed to like our little planet. I often wondered where she came from herself but could never ask her; if she did not want to tell me then I would not ask.
Satellites constantly floated past. Sometimes I had the urge to jump onto one of them and rip out all of its wiring; that would end the media empire that controlled our society. But I did nothing. If I had then they would simply send up more; I could not stay in Space forever. That is what being up here with the blue pony had made me realise, I am not okay by myself; I needed somebody, or somepony, next to me to hold my hand. In Space nobody was there to hold my hand and tell me everything was going to be okay.
It wasn’t until it was the day I was to return that I completely realised what I was. Saying goodbye to the blue pony was heart breaking; if it hadn’t been for her I wouldn’t have even gained my heart again after so many years. She came to see me off; holding an optimistic smile on her face whilst tears fell down her cheeks. I didn’t scorn her optimism; she needed it to make her feel like she belonged somewhere. I didn’t like leaving her behind that day; I even asked her to come with me persistently for days, but she said no; that if she left her cold, empty prison then she would turn back into the monster that she once was.
She wasn’t a monster. Not a monster like I had been. She was just a scared, confused player of the game of life being knocked by every single opponent on her way around the board. I was much the same in that respect. She was the same as every single person that lived on our planet, and this special pony...this special personified creature, was left waving at my shuttle as it floated away. She was trapped without a choice...and this was a creature that had more power than we could have ever understood. If a powerful creature like her could be controlled, what hope was there for our primitive species?
The answer, we have to hope. Without that hope we would not succeed in any endeavours. Without hope we would have nothing...I realised that day, that the greatest thing about our kind was our optimism. The only problem I have with my old hopes and dreams is that they had been spoiled and switched for another...the dream to set my poor forlorn friend free. I will aid in her escape just as soon as I can ever try...I will help the pony who made me realise what I meant and why I was alive...I will help her. ...
I will save that blue pony...
Murray Johnson, most famously known as The Unknown Astronaut, was admitted into hospital on the 9th November 2003 just as a lunar eclipse began in the sky. He was well known for his optimism and care for all people on our Earth, and by the end of his life had spent the majority of his free time volunteering to clean up the planet. He also started his own political group urging the people around the world to learn to think independently and to keep believing that they could be whatever they wished. With his last breaths he told this story so that his wife could write it down and keep his tale safe forever, just so that if anyone heard this story there would still be a chance to save his blue friend. By the time he died he had four children Peter, Kate, Sarah, and Luna, and two grandchildren Murray and Nile. He was a hero in many respects and NASA still remembers him as one of the greatest explorers of his generation. Murray Johnson lives on in our memories
