Writing Through VR Vision | First Draft!

“You’re going to space again,” Jack Ullman had said to me, voice crackly from the end of the phone line. He had been in Houston, a long three hundred miles from my home in Dallas, “Three months on the I.S.S. You’ll do good, Georgi.”

Two months had passed since then.

‘One month and you’ll be back again.’ I’d said to myself as Torrance and I pulled on the heavy material of our spacesuits. Torrance was a tall man who barely passed physical examination back in Kennedy. On Earth I remembered him having slicked back hair and plaid shirts tucked into large brown belts with silver buckles. On the space station his hair was weightless. It reminded me of Sideshow Bob in a way; if Sideshow Bob was in his early 50’s and spoke with a heavy southwestern accent.

Mission 54 consisted of 3 scheduled spacewalks, the first of which was about to occur. Ullman had taken me through the procedure many times through the crackly radio transmission. Torrance and I had listened intently.

The stratosphere had been calm that morning. The solar wind was gentle against my spacesuit and allowed Torrance and I to exit the space station with ease. The task was simple in theory. ‘Measure the total amount of sunlight the Earth receives,’ had been scrawled at the top of my notebook for the past week and a half.

Mission 54’s first spacewalk proved to be anything but simple. The TSIS-1 sensor; which was “revolutionary”, according to Ullman, took over the estimated time to calibrate and required the undivided attention of Torrance and I. By the time we were prepared to make our return to the space station, seven and a half hours had gone by.

Standard procedures were put in place and Torrance’s tether began to retract. Mine followed quickly, a sharp tug in my lower back and tightening around my waist.

A ‘whooshing’ noise quickly began, sending my heart to race as always. It had been a trait of mine ever since my very first spacewalk back in ‘99. It would happen while the tethers retracting and last for a few seconds as the space station opened up.

“Signing off, Georgi Boy.” Torrance’s voice said through my radio. He had reached the space station, quite obviously.

It soon came to my attention that the whooshing noise had not ceased. I frowned, counting to five. That was when I realised that the noise was much different than before - lower pitch, subtle vibrations on my helmet. That was not supposed to happen.

“Tether cable broken?” I said into my microphone, before awaiting that fateful ‘beep’ that signalled my transmission had gone through. A few seconds passed, but no beep sounded. An unusual feeling pooled in my stomach; a cocktail of panic and fear arising to my throat to emerge as a tiny whimper. The tether was still retracting, but it was weak.

“The tether’s too weak.” I murmured into my microphone, head spinning, as if I could faint at any moment. My palms were sweaty inside my thick spacesuit and toes were wrenched in my boots. I faded in and out of a state of reality and dizziness, mentally screaming at myself to keep it together.

No beep.

“Torrance!” I remarked, voice bouncing around my helmet. It was laced with anger and frustration, somewhat shielding the true emotions I was feeling at that very moment.

“Torrance! Oh god where are you! Answer me!” I screamed, followed by nothing but silence and a fuzzy crackling.

“Georgi-”

Signal lost.

“NO!”

It was the sound no astronaut wanted to hear.

Followed by nothing but the eerie sound of solar wind and his own panicked breathing, it had been the final sound Georgi Dobrovolski had heard before the infiniteness of space swallowed him up, never to be seen or heard from again. He’d had no chance of survival. His transmission radio signal was lost and tether looped back on itself like a snake, sending him floating into space like a human satellite in orbit.

Emotions only portrayed by anger, fear, confusion and betrayal were the beasts feasting at the back of my mind. They were interrupted by only the nausea in my stomach and horrific sight before my eyes.

The sky was littered with stars; some gold, some white, some blue. They illuminated the dark abyss of space, sending gleams of light to stream across the thick fibreglass of my helmet. It was dark, almost tranquil, although the solar wind was heavy against my suit.

The almost blinding light of the sun shone to my left. I could feel the heat even through the heavy material of my swimsuit, sending ripples of pure heat and an eerie buzzing down through the stratosphere.

The sun wasn’t the only thing in front of me. Earth sat right in front of my eyes, spinning slowly as if showing all of it’s beauty to me. White patches of cloud surrounded the planet, pale in comparison to the deep blue oceans and green rolling hills of the continents.

For thirty years I tread across its soil, climbed its trees and swam its oceans. It felt as if only yesterday I was spread across the golden sand of the beach, accompanied by only my dog and wife, Leila. The warm sun had washed over us. Those memories were once something to fall back on; relax my mind. Now they were a painful memory of what I was leaving behind… Leila and my parents, and my two children Austin and Jayden. My name would be plastered across the headlines, online and offline and everywhere in between.

The astronaut who died in space.

They were the last thoughts I had before reality became overwhelming and the air became thin.

The beast of emotions towered over me and sent me into unconsciousness. They tore and clawed at me as my screams faded into sobs and my nausea twisted into sharp pain.

“Don’t let me die like this, Torrance! Oh god please tell me someone’s there-”

“N.A.S.A has officially released a statement following the death of Georgi Dobrovolski, who failed to return to the International Space Station today following the first spacewalk of Mission 54…”

This is the first draft of a piece of writing I wrote, inspired by a 360 video I watched via Google Cardboard. This was a unique experience I had no experience with prior, and so I am excited to see if it has improved my writing at all.