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fandomweekly2019-01-17 03:54 am
[#003] Hear Me (Calling You)
Title: Hear Me (Calling You)
Fandom: Original
Rating/Warnings: G
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 704
Summary: (with two notable fannish-but-not-fandom influences) A weary ground control operator tries to bring a brash young man back down to earth, and protests too much on the subject of faith.
“I’ve done this job a long time.” Jones scratches at his cheek, glances around at all the equations Rogers has drawn up. “I’ve seen a lot of men go up and not all of them come down. And you want to leave the system?”
“With this new engine Johnny and Sharon have pioneered, we can! We can circle another star! Find other worlds!”
He’s smart, Brian Rogers, he’s so smart, and at so much, but he’s not smart enough for this. He’s young, his team, they’re all young, and Jones was young once. Jones hasn’t been young in a very long time.
“I’m just a guy in ground control, Rogers. I can’t stop you and I can’t give you the go-ahead. All I can do is play devil’s advocate now. Because if you haven’t thought about every single detail, you and your team… You’ll be out there. Cut off. You won’t know which way to go. You’ll run out of fuel, or oxygen, or food, or water. You’ll spring a bloody leak.”
“John and Sharon and Mel and me-- we’ve got sixteen more volunteers for the mission, too. That’s enough specialists to do every job and fix every problem, two shifts, without bulking the crew out too much. We’ll garden on board. Water recycling’s set. We’re ready, Sir. Human feet have only touched so many planets… we just want to expand our universe. Isn’t that what we’re all here for? Isn’t that what you’re here for?”
“I’m just here to see dreamers like you get home. I’m not here to see the universe. One bug, one dead circuit, and twenty people could die. And you’ve got a pregnant wife on Earth.”
Jae-joon, laughing, confident as ever, even in the face of being called naive, inexperienced, turning a blind eye to the risks… Where others saw risks, he saw rewards in the offing.
“Look, Jonesy, either it will be a success, or it won’t be my problem. But I think it’s going to be a success.” He’d said. And then he’d taken his hand, and gone serious for once. “Be mine. Marry me. When I come back a hero.”
“I’d marry you now if I could. Whose name would we take?”
“Both, you’ll be Mrs. Tom-Jones.”
And they’d both laughed, and he’d protested the ‘Mrs’ just to complain, but for a dizzy, glorious week, every time Jae-joon excused himself from some celebration with the ground control team by saying he had to get home to his wife, he’d smiled that much harder as they left the pub together.
Then the day of the mission, and then… well, it wasn’t Jae-joon’s problem.
It halts him just a moment, before he opens his mouth again, and Jones cuts him off.
“I’m just telling you, Rogers, you and your team, you have to be damn sure, for a thing like this. The distance you plan on going, a whole year away out there, there’s every chance we’ll be out of contact even if everything goes right. Think about what you’re risking and think about what it’s worth.”
“My wife knows.”
“And is she really okay with knowing you might never come back?”
“She believes I’m coming back. I’ll miss the birth, but I’ll be back to see my little girl.”
“Well… we’ll leave the light on for you.”
“Thanks.” Rogers nods, mouth a tight line. “The ship’s ready to go as soon as they give us the green light, the team’s prepared. We’ve done the calculations so many times-- I know nothing is a sure thing, but this is as sure as we’re ever going to get about a thing like this. It’s going to be all right.”
Jones doesn’t say any more. There’s nothing more to say, is there? Either Rogers is right, or it won’t be his problem… He simply returns to his own post, to wait for everyone else to go for the night, for all but one light to go out, so that he can switch his microphone on, and broadcast his nightly call. In the past ten years, he hasn’t had an answer, but he still leaves the light on for Jae-joon, just as he will for Rogers’ team, if he has to.
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That was really sweet, and really sad. Well done, but owwww
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These were initially two separate short comics I'd wanted to do, and I'd done a rough draft on Rogers' crew's comic, which was wordless and about two pages, and never really got started on laying out the other one. And then it just made sense to kind of stick them together, since they shared the space travel theme.
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Thanks for sharing it.
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