[ WP ] Write me that one story you 've always wanted to tell . The story that 's stuck in your mind , but never really got onto page .

*Work Away* 
 
 It was Sunday night and Judy was in her box getting ready to call her mother. She had once looked forward to it, but it was getting to the point that Judy hated the weekly call home. 
 
 It always started the same. Awkwardly confirming that the connection was good, waiting for the digital fuzz to settle on the screen of her tablet as the data flooded from her childhood home in Nova Scotia, Canada into her tiny billet on an asteroid orbiting some distant purple planet she could never pronounce the name of. 
 
 After at least three or four rounds of “ Can you hear me? ” “ Can you see me? ”, some greetings, and a comment on how long her hair was getting, the laying out of the bad news would start. 
 
 “ Oh, didn ’ t I tell you? ” her mother would say, knowing perfectly well she had not. She saw it as a kinder descent for the knife for reasons Judy could not fathom. One of her helpful little lies, as she called them in her daughter ’ s childhood. “ Tracey passed Wednesday. ” 
 
 After five months, she had hoped that her stomach would one day stop clenching. But today would not be that day. “ You mean cousin Trudy? ” 
 
 “ Your third cousin I thought you would have seen it in the news, they say you get all the usual sites up there. It was in the Herald. ” 
 
 “ Sometimes the connection is bad. ” A helpful little lie of her own. She stopped reading local news about a month ago. They never reported the names, it was always an Unidentified Female or an Unidentified Older Man. They filled her with dread until the next Sunday call. 
 
 On Earth, or at least in Nova Scotia, grief was dealt with in a rigidly prescribed manner Everyone knew it had happened; everyone had read it in the Hearld or else heard it through the telephone wire, and everyone knew they were your cousin or in-law cousin because that was just the sort of thing that everyone knew. They brought food, they offered beers, and everyone came by and took a little off your job for a day or so and told you the best about the deceased, and wasn ’ t it a sin for their poor mother, oh yes, what a sin to die before your poor mother and/or father. 
 
 There was none of that up here. No one knew your mother or father let alone all your cousins and your cousins-in-law. When they died up on Earth their cloud of grief was supposed to be contained in Earth ’ s atmosphere. Except apparently human emotions were not contained in that particular vacuum. 
 
 How exactly could you be honest with your mother when every single day you woke up and you wanted to loop a belt around your door knob and hang yourself to death? Except here there weren ’ t even door knobs, just buttons. Maybe the last race they had recruited had used them for self-termination purposes too often. 
 
 “ It was a fall, poor thing. They were at a party, they went on the roof... They were all drinking. It was for prom. They don ’ t think it was... Well, you know. It wasn ’ t high enough, but then again she wouldn ’ t have been in her right mind if she... Anyway. She was in her dress. They think she tripped. ” 
 
 Another pang of her stomach. Looming grief realized perhaps. She had not known Tracey as well as some of her third cousins, but she had been a good kid who had received all her Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter novels when she ’ d asked for them. 
 
 “ At least it was quick, ” she attempted. 
 
 “ Well... That was Friday night. They just pulled the plug this morning. ” 
 
 “ Jesus, Mom. ” 
 
 “ What am I supposed to say, Judy? Just let you read it in the papers? Like with your poor Great-Aunt Elaine when she drowned? ” 
 
 They, the ones used to working away from home, had told her that only the first death would truly bother her. The rest would be sad, yes, but she would stop feeling the insatiable grief of being in mourning so far from her home planet and province. That stabbing anxiety would only wrack its way through her chest once, and in time it would heal, and the next loss would be manageable. 
 
 The fuckers had lied. They probably lied to themselves. Otherwise they ’ d have chosen to let Earth fry. Or let some other region take a crack at this. 
 
 But the aliens, they had wanted English speakers who would survive the separation. And who else was that but Maritime Canadians? 
 
 “ Anyway, how ’ s work? ” her mother stated, never one to let silence linger. It had to be filled, otherwise someone might start getting emotional. 
 
 “ Same old same old. No major mishaps. Everyone ’ s impressed with my work. A young female crane operator is a novelty in itself I guess. Everyone on my crew is real friendly. ” She repeated some variation of those same sentences every Sunday. 
 
 “ I imagine everyone on the ship is friendly once you all settle in. Have you seen your cousin John yet? Or Rosie? ” 
 
 “ He ’ s an engineer and she ’ s a lawyer, Mom. They ’ re pretty busy. ” 
 
 “ You ought to plan a dinner. Your Aunt Pam said Roslyn was looking a little down last time, said she was tired. You ’ re all first cousins, you ’ re lucky to be together. You and John saw each other all the times in camp in Alberta. ” 
 
 “ That was a little different, Mom. ” No, it was entirely different. But she couldn ’ t understand. She had never lived outside the little province she had been born to. Her father had only moved down the street when he got married. 
 
 She didn ’ t want her mother to understand. It would just upset her. 
 
 “ Why don ’ t you move the camera around the apartment, Judy? I see pictures of the cabins but never th whole thing at once, you know. ” 
 
 Her mother sounded a little too curious. Another thing that would upset her. 
 
 “ They ’ re... more of billets, Mom. Like in the Navy. It ’ s just all white metal, okay? Not much to see. And the lights are mostly off for the night. ” Never mind that she could only actually stand up in one corner of the room by the knobless door. The rest was storage and her tiny lit bunk where she was curled for her non-working hours. 
 
 She didn ’ t want to see that she hadn ’ t put up the small amount of posters she ’ d brought. She didn ’ t want her to see the only decoration was a work shift calendar. Any more and it might start to feel like home, and she never wanted to feel like that. 
 
 “ You have your own room though, right? You don ’ t have to share with... You know, men? ” 
 
 “ I have my own room, yeah. Everyone does. Don ’ t worry. ” 
 
 “ I saw in the news there was some trouble up there recently with... ” 
 
 “ There ’ s trouble everywhere, Mom. There ’ s five thousand strangers up here trying to get along. It wasn ’ t a big deal. It was sorted out. ” 
 
 “ I wonder if Rosie worked on that case. ” 
 
 “ I don ’ t know, Mom. I don ’ t think she can talk about it. ” 
 
 “ So you two do talk? ” 
 
 “ When we see each other. ” Her stomach still ached. Sometimes in the darker nights she imagined she had some kind of cancer. One that meant she had to go home. No money, yes, but no shame either. But she knew it was just anxiety. 
 
 “ I just want you to be safe, and... ” 
 
 “ I am, Mom.... The connection ’ s getting bad, it does on the longer calls. I might lose you soon. ” 
 
 “ They can bus you five lightyears away but WiFi is beyond them? I love you, Judy. Sorry I can never get your father to join me for these... ” 
 
 “ I know, Mom. I love you, too. Tell Dad I love him. ” 
 
 “ Night, night, love you. ” Her refrain from childhood. 
 
 “ Night, love you, too. ” 
 
 She mashed the cancel button on the screen and resisted from throwing the tablet the four feet across her tiny room. Sometimes she could forget she was living in a box. This tiny stupid fucking box she had to live in for at least the next year. 
 
 Everthing on this stupid drilling ship was all about boxes. 
 
 The box you could afford to rent, the boxes of stuff that could fit into that box and where you could possibly store those boxes once the door of your box was closed. The box you went to work in each day. The box of your neighbour and how it was a little bit bigger than your own. The size of the box you could afford to buy on Friday night to take back to your box and drink alone. 
 
 On the other end of the rig, Roslyn was drinking box wine tonight. They actually had bottles on the spaceship but they were expensive. She was a lawyer but she wanted to save all the money she could while getting as drunk as possible. 
 
 That was why her cabin was small, to. Little else but a bed, a few feet of floor, rings above to hang her sparse clothing and some shelves to store precious few keepsakes. The hunk of labradorite her fathers had given her as a child. The most recent card from her grandfather. Her diploma. 
 
 And of course, her box of wine. 
 
 She sat scrunched up on the firm foam mattress, laptop on its little tray before her. She was three plastic glasses of wine in and still had not settled on anything to watch. She needed a distraction, but everything reminded her of something. The wine would sort that before too long, but for now there was nothing that did n't make her think of home. 
 
 Or the fact that the aliens had executed a man for bringing child abuse images onto the ship. And that she had prosecuted him. And that no one had told them termination did not mean a dismissal from employment. 
 
 And beyond her, John was in his box and he was just crying. He had worked away every summer since he was eighteen but he was crying. Because this was different. It would always be different. 
 
 Below the crew cabins the third shift drilled for a substance they were not allowed to know the name of. Adding up hours, paying off the Earth ’ s debt for saviour from utter destruction. 
 
 It had to be worth it. Had to be. 

