Space Angst

 I am thirteen. Whatever that means.

They have told me what a year is, duh. I know about the sun and the Earth and the people who, like, basically worshipped both. I know a day was when the Earth spun so it looked like the sun was crawling across the sky. I know about the shapes of the moon. I do pay attention to my Tutors…

But to be honest, a year makes no sense up here. So so what if I’m “thirteen.”

The ship replicates seasons, because humans evolved with the Earth, and apparently we'd lose our minds without fake seasons. One of the Navigators lost his mind, and like, we all had to go into lock down. It was weird…

Personally, I like the cool air conditioning when “autumn” comes around. I like the network of lights shifting to golden-orange in the halls. The Gardeners and the Historians and the Librarians tell me that the Earth was covered in trees. Unlike our “special” Trees, their leaves would turn brown and fall to the floor until the whole world was covered in leaves.

Sounds pretty cool, I think. I've read a lot about Halloween.

They all knew Earth. They lived there. All of the adults. Before getting on the ship and taking off. They didn't want to bring any kids from Earth because they thought their heads might explode during takeoff or something, so I was born here. I was the first born.

So obviously, I’m the oldest kid on the ship. The next oldest is Shirley. She's eight, whatever that means. It definitely means she doesn't get what I'm going through.

Nobody gets what I'm going through.

My dad has gotten angry. He yells at my mom. He yells about small sounds she makes. She sniffs all the time, because of the dust in the vents, and he yells at her. She coughs softly. He yells. She hums nervously. He yells more.

I can't sit down when he's around. When I hear him coming I get up and pretend I'm busy doing math or reading or cleaning the windows...

I imagine the stars are fallen autumn leaves that, like, got old and fell off a big bright tree. The ship rakes them as it flies endlessly through space. The star-leaves swirl in its wake. I guess people used to pile the leaves up and then dive on top of them…

My dad yells at me for smudging the windows. Our living quarters needs to be perfect, he says. Immaculate.

I cut down one of the trees.

One of the special trees.

I found an axe. I hacked, and hacked till my arms and face were caked in sweat and dirt. The Gardeners are angry at me. They say I ruined a whole food cycle. They have to re-do the records. My dad's angry too…

I don’t want to talk about it. Whatever.

I walk the halls, know them by heart. I have my, like, routes… Past the training rooms and the engineering docks, kitchens and navigation hulls…

Everyone’s started to look at me differently. Some look with sad eyes, and I hate them. Some glare. Some shake their heads, disappointed in the ship’s first born. 

I hate them all.

I pass one of the Libraries-- one of the smaller ones. I hear my name. “Joey!” I stop. Back up.

Rebecca, a librarian, is sitting in front of her monitor and scrolling through records. She says come in. She doesn’t look up, just keeps scrolling past line after line of files looking for something…

I say nothing, ready for, like, a lecture or whatever. But she calls me closer, closes her eyes and rubs the bridge of her nose. “Heard you pissed off the Gardeners. Good for you. That’s what you’re supposed to do at your age, believe it or not.” 

I say nothing. She smiles. I realize I’ve been clenching my fists. I stop and rub my hands.

“Look, I made something for you.”

“What?”

“This is a playlist. Put your buds in.”

I shove the bits of soft plastic into my ears. She syncs them to her system and music fills my head.

It’s abrasive, wholly unlike the wavy harmonies they play over the hum of the ship. It kinda hurts my ears. Kinda hurts my head.

I pull the buds out of my ears.

“What is this?”

What she says next will change my life.

“This is The Smashing Pumpkins.”

“What is that?”

She tells me they’re a band from the Nineteen Nineties. She tells me that if I don’t like it, that’s okay. I tell her I don’t like it. I leave.

But later that night, I can’t stop thinking about it. So I put my buds back in. And I turn on the music. I start to make sense of the instruments… his whiny, high-pitched voice… the drums, the orchestration. And it’s so weird…

So foreign and exotic.

It sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard.

It sounds so real… and beautiful and…

Earthy.

Apparently, Rebecca has a Library of all the Earth oldies. Okay, maybe not a complete archive, but like, a ton of it. 

And she has all of these pictures too! So she prints me out a big poster of the cover of “Melancholy and The Infinite Sadness” which is my favorite—they called it “album"—of their songs. And I put it on my wall.

And my dad hates it. He rips it off the wall, but I don’t give a fuck. Fuck him. He yells at me and tears through my room, and he’s got those eyes. Red and bloodshot. The eyes they told us to look out for. The eyes they told us to report to the Doctors. But I don’t even care.

He’s panting, breathing heavy, sweating and tired, and he leaves my room, and I’m crying, I lie back…

And in my head is “Tonight, Tonight” which is so beautiful and it’s my favorite fucking song I’ve ever heard. And I cry. And I sob and sob. The tears soak my hair. 

So I shave my hair. The Tutors and Historians don’t like it, and The Gardeners don’t get it, and even Shirley—who’s nine now—is scared of me, and I think I like that.

Because now, I am Billy Corgan. He’s so cool. No one else has even heard of him. But I’ve read everything about him.

I go to Rebecca’s Library every day now and tell her what I’ve learned and what I’ve been reading and what songs I think are so good. And she’s been listening too, and researching. She’s a really good friend and I love her a lot.

I have learned about so many other bands! They don’t sound exactly like the Smashing Pumpkins, but they’re all from the same time period… bands like The Toadies, and Bush, and Cranberries, and Nirvana (they’re just okay), and Green Day! Oh my god. All of these bands—long dead and buried on a planet I’ll never know—they get me and they get my pain and they get what I’m going through.

My dad isn’t allowed to bunk with us anymore, and I don’t know… I think my mom is okay with it. But her smiles are sad. I try to cheer her up sometimes. I’ve even played her some of the music I’ve found, and she doesn’t get it, but that’s okay. 

I like it better that it’s just mine.