The walls had not stopped shaking since they had left the grip of the planet. It had desperately pulled them back, not maliciously, you see. The planet spun a lonely spin and felt its mass shrinking with each ship fled it. But in a last gasp, it sort of let each one go, unfurling its gravity grasp like a hand on a ledge.
The walls still shook.
“Are they supposed to do that?” Miz glanced at the wall behind him. He could visibly see – or he thought at least – the bolts buzz back and forth.
“T’s fine.”
“Hmm.” Miz tried to forget about the wall, focused on the papers in his lap. It seemed the order of the papers was a versatile choice. Miz had explored ten different rearrangements so far. One-hundred and ten more to go. This time he put on top the one with the large blue letters that read, “THE GUIDE TO THE UNBELIEVABLE JOYRIDE.”
“What is a ‘joyride’?,” Miz turned his head towards Moz. She was slunched over a book, her shoulders melted into its corners. Her eyes, Miz awarded a medal for having the baggiest grey bags he had seen.
Moz did not pull her eyes from the page. They ate through a page like woodworm. Miz turned the page, “This.” And she left it at that.
“I mean I know that, but what is a joyride?”
Moz left it at that.
Miz tried a twelfth order.
The top of the pile now read, “Instructions for a Fresh Fruit Flight.” Miz thought about that one for a moment. He had seen this one already, its white ink against the blue paper. Ever since the meltdown of the chemical giant Epson Smogs, no paper was white again. Miz enjoyed, it was one of the first times that he realized that humanity could improve upon the beauty of the natural world.
“It is imperative for the First Flier to be aware of the abundance of various ailments onboard a spaceflight. What might surprise the First Flier is that the greatest danger in long-term spaceflight is not solar flares, radiation, little bitty meteors, or psychological mishaps like depression, insomnia, or a range of hysterias. The real killer on spaceflight is something of an old enemy of humanity. As far back as the 1700s, humanity, especially long-journey travellers, have been culled by this invisible enemy.”
From outside, if one were floating around in the vacuum of space, it would appear that a snow globe had just taken off from the surface of the planet. The front half of the spaceship was one piece of bent glass – a special material, of course, not entirely brittle glass, but with a stew of other ingredients from the periodic menu that made it more reliable under high pressures. Steel walls handled the rest of the construction, strapped together by bolts, holding on. It was these that rattled. The manufacturer had been provided their measurements for the bolt hole radius without any units by the side of the number. Rather than send another email, the manufacturer assumed, very logically, that the measurements were in the standard metric. A shame, because their customer was a country that operated in quarters of an inch – a unit of measure related the length of one of their history’s king’s forefinger five-hundred years ago. When they put the bolts in, they rattled but they fit well and everyone moved on.
The rattling of the walls found a spot back inside Miz’s mind. He had stopped reading because this is what anything he read sounded like inside his head: rattle, rattle. Rattle, rattle. Under such situations, Miz would promptly stand up, close his book or device or whatever he was attending to loudly, survey the room around him, and march out using his footsteps and the door to communicate his displeasure. Out on the street, he would then put a hand to his brow whether there was a sun glare or not, inspect the options about, and once he would raise his voice and say, “I am now off to Miz could do no such thing in his current situation. He was sat in an armchair with enough calibration settings to please every living occupant of the galaxy. It was red leather, but the back and arms were worn away to a brown. The chair, as with everything else in the spaceship, was consumable, too. Before take off, Miz had peeled off a little of the leather just to try it. It reminded him of when he was younger and had first tried the corner of his notebook paper. And the rattling, Miz could not escape it, act out his one-man show of displeasure for those around and leave. He could not do this because if his arms were twice as long than they were, he would be tickling the walls with his fingers. Instead Miz tried to push the rattling out. He used a technique that his father had called Orifice Chanting. It involved replacing one sensory input with the output of another. Miz took a deep breath and then cannoned from his lips the following sounds: Argh, Urgh, Oof, Oof, Argh, Argh, Urgh, Uhh, Ooh, Oof. Moz had not taken her eyes from her book since buckling in. She did now. She executed the manoeuvrer in the manner of a smarmy optician, who peeks over their glasses with an eyebrow raise, as if to say: “I cannot see you now because I require my glasses. This is what will happen to you should you not listen to my monologue about eye-care.” Miz did not notice Moz and enhanced his song with a few new sounds: Uuuf, Fruf, Oiif, Ooffy, Uurfa. And with the sensory ruckus, Miz was successful in drowning the sound of the rattling walls. He looked down at the blue paper, all the while oof’ing and fruf’ing. “Lemons once saved a thousand lives a year, which at the time was not short of one-percent of the world’s population. Imagine if one-percent of our fifty-billion people could be saved by a mere fruit. Imagine! Only laughs would be worthy of technology, shot down by a wrinkle-skinned sour flesh – a nature thing.” “A nature thing,” said Miz to himself, having ceased his onomatopoeia assault for the moment. Moz had restarted the digestion of her book. “Yet the irony is that this is still true. Humanity is still very reliant on the nature thing. Without the lemon, the darkness returns, we are afflicted with a terrible disease, one that has been through many names, but most prominently called scurvy. Scurvy is the body under a deficiency, specifically an extreme lack of one particular molecule, Vitamin C. Now, it used to be very simple to consume Vitamin C. Reach out and seize the nearest growing thing to you and munch down – you are stocked for at least six months. But with the consistent failure on the part of a chemical-company-we-shall-not-name-but-wink-wink-at-you, our most common sources of Vitamin C: spinach, lettuce, little green lentil sprigs, and all that, are not safe for consumption. But! There is one source which, with its thick hide, survived this chemical catastrophe. You guessed it, the great yellow lemon. And it is not just the lemon, but the orange, too.” Miz frowned, “The great lemon.” He turned to Moz who did not meet his glance. “Moz?” Moz digested her book. “Moz?” She blinked her eyes towards Miz, “Yes?” “Do we have any lemons – or oranges – onboard?” Miz asked it with an inflection, like he already knew the answer to his own question. Moz took a deep breath and let it out, then returned to her book. “No.” “Oh,” said Miz and he found a thirteenth order of the papers on his lap.