December 30, 2017 [16]

The emergency alarm shrieked and the escaping air whistled as James pulled the bulky EV glove over his hand.

"Artemis 1, do you copy?" mission control pleaded over the radio uplink. "Artemis 1, we are detecting a loss of cabin pressure at an accelerating rate. As well, the catastrophic rupture will compromise fuel cells two and three. Detonation is unavoidable. Be advised to don your suits and proceed to the airlock ASAP."

Way ahead of you. James lowered the pressurized helmet over his head and clicked it secure, then looked at Martha. She floated, frozen but for the slow rotation her inertia generated through zero gravity. She'd donned her own suit but her head was bare. Her eyes stared off blankly, then blinked. She was alive, but lacked the urgency one tended to have when facing certain death.

Their historic mission as the first married couple to co-pilot a spaceflight had been cut short by a sudden collision, tearing a gash along the side of the shuttle. It was thin, but too long and irregular to repair with the tools available. It was also too small to pull objects larger than water droplets, but that was changing and the force on the hull would eventually reach a tipping point and burst in a violent rupture. James was curious what NASA's post-incident analysis would find – probably a hunk of unaccounted space junk – but that would come long after Martha and he were floating corpses. He would be more discouraged by this piece of tragic bad luck if this were his only life. And when a life hands you lemons...

"Artemis 1, do you copy?" mission control repeated.

James pushed off toward Martha, grabbing her floating helmet on the way. "Hey!" he shouted through the polycarbonate bubble. "Earth to Martha! Get it?! Because..."

"Artemis 1, do you copy?"

Martha looked at him but appeared unamused by his joke.

"Just humor me?" he said and gave her the helmet. She sighed then held it over her head and he helped secure it.

They maneuvered through the airlock opening and shut the interior door. James activated the depressurization process.

"Artemis 1, do you-"

"We copy, mission control," James answered at last. "Dr Beckett and I are donned and secure in the airlock."

"Be advised, Commander Quinn – the airlock will also be compromised by the rupture."

"Understood, mission control. Only time will tell," James said, then used the console strapped to his arm to cut his transmission to Earth.

Martha continued to float lifelessly, staring off at nothing in particular. In the lifetimes since their meet-cute at Disneyland, they'd found sunken treasure off the coast of Spain – good to know if we ever need 500 million in silver and gold – worked as FBI agents – didn't find any aliens unfortunately. The truth is still out there – and nearly made Martha the second female President of the United States – only nearly because... well, I'm still not sure why. In said lifetime, Martha left her campaign abruptly, months before the election and without explanation to her millions of supporters or to James.

He maneuvered in front of her. "Everything's going to be fine. Either we die in spectacular fashion or we survive, do something awesome, and then die in spectacular fashion. So, you know. Just a typical night out with James Quinn."

Martha smiled modestly, raised her eyebrows and nodded. She was patronizing him. But at least she reacted at all...

The airlock shuddered as the gash in the main compartment began to buckle. James wasn't sure if it would hold long enough for the airlock to fully depressurize. Opening its door with fully pressurized air on one side and a vacuum on the other was not humanly possible. But with partially pressurized air... What have I got to lose?

He moved to the circular hatch and turned the wheel handle counterclockwise. Now comes the hard part. Gripping the handle, James braced his feet beside the door, closed his eyes, and thought of his children.

Excruciating flashes of Oliver's infectious laughter, Suzanne's toddler meltdowns, checking Joseph into rehab, walking Rebecca down the aisle, Kristen scoring her first and only goal, and Mallory looking up at him with Martha's eyes – gouged a searing hole in James' center and sent adrenaline to his extremities until he heard a pop and slammed back against the airlock wall. He opened his eyes to see Martha deflecting off the rim of the hatch as the vacuum pulled her out.

James followed, using his suit's nitrogen thrusters to guide himself through the hatch and up to Martha. As he passed her, he latched a safety tether onto her suit then aimed them just right of the James Webb Space Telescope they were up to repair in the first place. When they were level with it, James angled the thrusters to make a hard left, Martha trailing on her tether. A silent flash reflected off the side of his helmet bubble.

The fuel tanks had detonated.

As they approached the bulky instrument module on the back of the telescope, James grabbed the tether and pulled Martha into him. He reached his free hand to the module and grabbed hold of a support bar as they crashed into its side. Before they had time to recover, there was a second collision as debris from the shuttle crashed into the opposite side of the telescope.

James held fast as they spun end over end through glittering shrapnel in violent chaos. He wasn't sure if Martha had been hit; if debris had breached her suit and she was suffocating as they spun. But then he saw puffs of nitrogen from her thrusters. She was aiming them to counter their rotation and slowly, they began to stabilize.

Martha squared herself to James. Her face was pale though its color had paradoxically returned.

"Holy shit," she said, panting. "That was intense! Are you okay?"

Was he okay? He wasn't sure. He couldn't think past the life exploding in her eyes. "Yeah..." he managed, finally. "Yeah, I think so. You?"

"Yeah. I mean, I'm really glad I passed on that tube of corned beef earlier or else..."

"Ew."

"That would have been rough. But here we are, safe and sound after our daring escape. Well done, Commander Quinn."

"Oooh, addressing my rank is such a turn on," he said, inching his helmet bubble to hers.

"Down, boy," she said, laughing. "But then... we're not exactly safe out here, are we?"

"Oh, no. No, not at all. We're toast."

"So then... why go to the trouble?"

"Because we've got five or six good hours before we run out of air." James pushed off of the module and turned back to face Martha as he floated away. "And all of space to ourselves." He aimed his thrusters to propel Martha and himself further away from the telescope. Once their momentum was established, he began to pull her closer. "May I have this dance?"

"Do I have a choice?" she said with a flirtatious smile. On the surface, her answer killed the romance. But this was Martha – the love of all of James' lives – and sarcasm was her native tongue. James was overjoyed to hear it once again.

The pair took turns spinning and circling in every direction as the telescope wreckage, the Earth, the Sun, and the rest of space looked on. It was an exhilarating experience for James in all its Kubrikian glory. But moreso, the sound of Martha's laughter made his chest twinkle like the stars surrounding them. It was a sound he hadn't heard in quite some time. And all I had to do was take her to outer space...

It had become more and more difficult life after life to keep her engaged with their existence. Disneyland had rejuvenated her for a few lives until she needed another outlandish adventure. The high wore off quicker and then quicker still – an addict building a tolerance for the extraordinary.

"Okay... Okay... Let me catch my breath," Martha said as she brought their rotation to a slow drift.

"Good call," James agreed, panting himself. "Having fun?"

"Are you kidding? You made a figurative romantic cliché literal."

"How's that?"

"You took me to dance among the stars? No one's ever done this. No one in their right mind ever will again. It was wonderful. You're wonderful. I'm..." She paused and James saw her eyebrows twitch and her lips tremble. She took a breath, then her face settled and her smile returned. "The view's not bad either," she said, then turned to face the Indian Ocean looming on their right.

"Yeah. It's beautiful," he said, taking her hand and turning with her.

"How bad do you think they're freaking out in Houston right now?"

"Pretty bad, I'd imagine. They lost the shuttle, the telescope, and not to brag, but you and I were kind of a big deal, all over the world-"

"The world will get over it," Martha said, her voice suddenly cold as space.

James regarded her face, now blank as before the dance. She'd defeated gravity at last, yet the triumph had left her hollow.

At a loss, James offered, "It sure will. Speaking of, what should we do next?"

Martha shrugged, her vacant stare still focused on an Earth that was done with her and she with it.

"We could... Explore the rainforest – something uncharted in Brazil or... or Indonesia?" James tried. "We haven't done that yet."

Again she shrugged. "I guess I'm over exploring. Like... we've already explored exploration."

"Is it because I took you to space?"

"Maybe. Because everyone knows you take a girl to the rainforest, then space. Not the other way around."

She made a joke! I can work with this...

"Yeah," he said. "Classic mistake. I'm a total amateur. Okay. No exploration. We could... join the circus?"

Martha scrunched her nose.

"Uh... we could be... professional wrestlers?"

Martha stared at him blankly, the sun casting a severe shadow across the left half of her face.

"Okay. Okay." James flailed. "Uh... well, what if we were... rival chess prodigies? But I... I defect to Russia. And you stay in the US. And we're trained by national grandmasters until we meet for a climactic match for global supremacy!"

She furrowed her brow and tilted her head slightly. Her eyes danced with thought.

"Really?" he said. "Chess prodigies moved the needle?"

Martha smirked. "No. It's not about the chess. Though you wouldn't stand a chance."

He scoffed. "That's not... Well, I don't know what you're basing that off of." He shook off the playful slight. "Okay, if it's not the chess, then what? Clearly it's something..."

"Lifelong rivals competing for global supremacy," she said happily.

"Oh, you mean like... political rivals?"

"God no. Don't make me barf in my helmet. I told you, never again, James!"

"Okay, okay," he said, raising his hands in surrender. "No more politics, I promise."

"What I mean is cops and robbers. Good guys and bad guys. One of us tries to take over the world or destroy the world or whatever and the other one tries to stop them."

"Ohhh." James understood. It was an interesting idea with a mission that would take decades of focus on a myriad of capabilities. But then again... "So you're talking supervillains – Lex Luthor... Dr Evil... Scar?"

"Exactly!" she said with glee. "Well, neither of us are lions, but yes, that's the idea."

"But for real? Like committing actual crimes?"

"Actual big crimes." Martha said, nodding.

"I don't know," he said. She hadn't thought this through. This wasn't make-believe or a video game. Real people will suffer. "Won't there be collateral damage? Casualties?"

She shrugged. "Yeah. Probably. But we can limit them – get creative. I'm not talking about dropping nukes. Just... disruption, mischief."

"But on a global scale?"

"Yes."

"Global mischief?"

"I think we're up to it," she said then sighed. "Okay, yes. You're right. There will definitely be casualties. Villains gotta vill, after all."

"Not a word."

"Don't care. It flowed. Anyways, we'll just have to forgive each other or ourselves and know that anyone we may hurt will soon live again and remember nothing."

"I don't think it's that..." He paused. Martha waited anxiously. She still didn't understand. Hopefully she never will. The atrocities he'd committed while under nihilism's spell haunted him still, hundreds of lifetimes after the fact. He wanted to keep that from her at all costs. But her face... There was so much life in her smile; so much hope in her eyes. He didn't have much of a choice. "Okay."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. But! I get to be the bad guy."

"What? Why?"

"Because I say so. That's my condition."

"Come on," she argued. "Don't you want to be a super spy? Think about it. The name's Quinn. James Quinn. You know you wanna say it!"

"That does sound fun. Tell you what, we can swap roles in the following life. You can be the bad guy to your cold, cruel heart's delight."

"Fine. Whatever. But you have to commit. It won't be fun if you pull your punches."

"Well then, I'd better start planning," he said. "Ooh! Will I get to make a big speech where I explain my evil genius plan to you?"

"I mean... That would be pretty cliché. Also kind of sad since you'll be giving it behind bars..."

"Ha! As if. Maybe while you're suspended over my pit of electric eel / spider hybrids, I'll show you the Quinn Conundrum."

"What in the world is the Quinn Conundrum?"

"It is a chess opening that has only ever existed in one universe and is impossible to defend."

"Hmm... Did you play me in that universe?"

"Well, no. But-"

"Then there's a defense for it."

"What? Uh-uh. You don't-"

"All right. Okay," Martha said, waving her hands. "Your Quinn Cannoli is unstoppable. But all this yapping has used up most of our oxygen. We've probably got an hour left." She thrust herself away, then extended her hand toward him. "I say we make the most of our celestial dance floor."

James didn't want to waste a second of his time with Martha and her joie de vivre so he merely smiled and took her hand. Together, the lovers criss-crossed the stars, twirling and gliding as one until their last breath.

Author's note:

This is the last new chapter I'm adding.  If you've finished the first draft of DATIS already, part of it might sound familiar.  Upon reflection, there was way too much that happened between Disneyland and Hawaii.  There were so many flashbacks and so much exposition that I felt there needed to be a bridge between the two. 

And duh!  Of course they have to go to space!

Thanks for reading!!