Big D wasn't a very good astronaut, and he knew it, and the crew knew it, and Mission Control knew it.
Dave was known as Big D, even though he wasn't big. He was the opposite of big, five foot two, which was appropriate since his life was defined by opposition. He was an underachiever who accidentally achieved, a depressed mind inside a hyperactively optimistic person.

His hands were like spiders crawling over the controls. Every knob, switch and dial so familiar, like the moles on the arm of a lover, or the back of the toilet door at your parents house.
When he was younger, Dave didn't know what he wanted to be when he grew up. Now that he was older, he'd forgotten what it was like to be young, and he was surprised to find himself in the life that he had. He couldn't remember if he wanted to be an astronaut, and he was sometimes astonished to find himself doing this job.

Earth spun slowly below him. The air inside the Space Station was tired and stale, it had been breathed in, then out, then in again dozens of times already, filtered by the five sets of lungs that inhabited the cramped quarters. Dave wanted to go home.

Dave was too indecisive to decide when to stop, with the end result that he kept getting better at things. This culminated in honour degrees, Air Force medals, NASA training, and now this.

He was sitting inside a machine assembled by thousands of the best minds in the world, he was staring down from orbit, and he was constantly surprised that he was Big D.

But the world keeps turning below me, he thinks, so I must be doing something right.


(c)