Dis/Connect

Along the spin of Earth's orbit and within an auxiliary wing of a space station, the switchboard lights up with a call from the far reaches of space. Obra grabs a handle and pushes herself through the weightless air with ease. The best part of working outside the atmosphere. She stops at the foot of the machine and sighs. Headphones on, she pulls the cable, connects it, and with practiced tone says, “Operator.”

As the person on the other line talks, her face scrunches up, casting her gaze to the planet outside the window. “Mother’s Day on Earth?” Obra gently glides along the room, a little more tense than before. “No, you’re a few days late. Oh, you still want to patch through? No, no. I’m just surprised is all, just give me a moment.” She realigns herself back to the machine where she stamps the information and pulls a wire to another socket. Even the little lights on the dashboard flickering in morse to each other.

From another corridor, Chris, a coworker, drifts in to get ready for his upcoming shift. “Any calls from your mom?”

“No, thankfully. We still have opposite sleeping schedules,” Obra lifts one part of the headphone off her ear to hear him better. Once those little lights stop talking, flicks their switches off and returns each chord. Back to how they were. Back to being in silence even with how close they were together. If only she could become dormant, inanimate as they.

“Can’t avoid her forever,” Chris says as his voice floats from one shoulder to another. The carefree attitude only undercut by how terse his tone is.

“I know. I know. I... want to talk to her, but...” she can’t phrase how awkward it feels. How with each word she speaks with her mom there’s something being silently judged. And how her mother also talks in the same way. Even before the big fight before Obra left to be spacebound. If one could call that announcement and the quiet, reluctant, confused acceptance a fight. Neither of them able to understand what the other wanted from another.

But here, things are clear. The callers know who or at least where they want to talk to. Like the one along the outer edges of humanity ringing from the generational spaceship that launched when Obra was still a child. Though they already made a recent report back to Central and it was far too early for them to have settled onto the planet. Something was wrong. She fixes her headset to listen to them properly. Wires connected, she says, “Operator.”

Her frown only deepens. “Hold on, hold on. Let me patch you to Central right now.” Obra’s hands fly across the switchboard. Ringing, ringing, connected. Her voice is steady. The grooves of enough practice make the initial steps easy like cracking open the first part of the conversation. “Central? This is Operator Obra. The Centauri generational ship is on the line. They found aliens and...” Then, she hesitates, “and they’re trying to talk to us.”

Over the next few days, the station buzzed with non-stop chatter about aliens from all the other people on it. There were theories overheard in the common area, the bedrooms, and the various corridors. Obra found it incredibly exhausting to be bombarded with questions asking if she got to hear the aliens, or thought about what they looked like, or basic questions that she had to answer multiple times over. So, she hid away along the edges of the station with a peanut butter and honey tortilla.

Earth hangs outside her view above. Lit up along the dark side of the planet is South Carolina. Obra taps it on the window, her fingerprint stained over the state. Obstructed by more than a single invisible barrier. She has since stopped counting the days that she left. Too many have passed. Even her reflection stays only in the planet’s orbit as though it too was a mere onlooker.

“Thar she be,” Chris’s voice calls out as he swings around the corner with one closed eye and a hook curled finger.

“Nay, ‘tis naught but doom ye found,” Obra says back with another bite into her tortilla, “my breakfast over already?”

Chris grabs onto a set of holds, stopping him perpendicular to his friend. “Aye, yes. Central also called that you’ll need to help the person coming in on the loading ship move their stuff to the switchboard. They won’t be long, maybe a few days.” 

A request that colors odd on all the lines of Obra’s face. Most people stay on the station for months or even longer depending on what they are here for. Chris laughs it off, saying something about giving those extra days to get used to no gravity. As he’s grabbed onto a hold to pull himself away as quickly as he arrived, Obra speaks to him in a tone she learned from her mom.

“Up-bup-bup, before you go...”

“Uh oh...”

“Why did you go on and tell the whole ship about the aliens? There were only two people in that room and I know I didn’t spill it,” she points to herself.

“Okay, okay. First off, in my defense, I only told one person. But, also, because it’s exciting. It’s new. It’s- it’s the one extraordinary thing that has happened here since we’ve started working,” Chris says back holding his hands over his heart. “Come on, Obra. Aren’t you excited?”

Obra cannot find the same enthusiasm. What she finds is a cold and touchless emptiness, a worry that they have somehow broken some unspoken rule, that the only repentance available will be silence, that somehow she has done something wrong. Her face scrunches up enough to make Chris stop his next escape.

He tells her, “Sorry, it’s just... I can’t find a good a good reason to keep things like this to ourselves. Aren’t there just things that want to bubble out your throat? It’s like that.”

Obra lightly shakes her head. There has only ever been a stone that wants to sink back down. “I should probably head down to the loading bay. Have a good sleep, Chris.”

There's only a brief goodbye before she hauls herself over to the loading bay. Soon, she slowly makes her way back towards the switchboard before pausing every so often to look behind her. "Take your time," Obra tells the new guest. "It took me a while to get in my head that there's not really an up in space."

Lana, with her awkwardly shaped machine and twice as awkward movement, shakes her head, "Forgive me. I mostly planetside." She grips every hold to pull herself up as though she was scaling a cliff face. There was no weight, but the wait to get to the switchboard was much longer. Until the two of them eventually drifted their way into the correct room. Here, Lana easily pushes along her machine and straps it against a surface. Her wedding ring clicks against the various bits and surfaces of the station as she settles herself in.

"Did Central give you time off for mother's day?" Obra asks. It could have been mistaken for curiosity had it not been the curled finger pinching at her heart. Though, she tries to act as though it was not with her eyes cast along the machinery. She finds the cable for Lana's machine and thumbs through the various ports and plugs along the switchboard.

"Yes," Lana lights up, "two smallests drew pictures for each of us."

"And the oldest?"

Lana bobbed herself from side to side, "Busy. He, well, I wait for him to call me. Sometimes, I wonder if he don't waiting for the same."

Obra wonders if that same weariness, that same slight sigh and apprehension is the same from her own mother. With all the time that she spends avoiding her, with all the fear that she has holding up the end of the headset, with all this opportunity to call, she can't find the strength to make that first move. Even as her mother has been trying all this time. It hurts not to answer and it is as twisting in her head to think about opening the call.

She tells Lana, "Maybe your littlest ones will grow up differently."

"They all still be my babies," Lana laughs. The glow of the sun across the space glimmers on her face. Now that she's upright to the switchboard, she's able to point out the right port to plug into. Her machine makes a flat tone, the internal machine whirring alive as the ink and paper aligns against the printer.

Obra helps with connecting the call back to the Centauri generational ship. Something she does with practiced ease and technical precision. Waiting, waiting, the call goes through and she passes over the headset.

"This is Lana Locke. I linguist they sent from central. You still have recording of message, yes? Good. Any show of body language? Mhm. Then begin the recording kindly, if you would." She turns on the small machine that starts printing out soundwaves. Every once in a while, making notes along the empty space that Obra cannot make sense of by herself. That's all right because it's her shift anyways. She fades into the background as she usually does, this time to an auxiliary switchboard. Even as the time goes on, she glances so often because she's curious and dreading what the aliens have to say.

Lana remains a resident at the switchboard for a few days. In the downtime, she talked passionately about the aliens as much as her own children and fit right in with the crew. It eventually culminated with the station playing tag through the zero gravity corridors and rooms. So, when the day came that she had to leave, it was a bittersweet parting.

Obra is up earlier to say goodbye in private but instead of finding Lana, finds Chris first seeming more weary than his usual demeanor. As she is about to greet him, Chris says to her, "Just got another call from your mom. Just, what's going on between you two?"

She takes a breath in between her teeth, like a leak of air hissing its way out from the ship. The directness only forces out a long dragged and superficial answer of, "It's complicated. We're... I, I don't know at this point."

"Girl, you have to do something. Whatever is going on it's starting to stress me out too. And at this rate I have to tell her that Obra just doesn't want to talk to her mom."

"That's not true," Obra says quickly.

Chris crosses his arms and lets out a sigh. The space between the two of them slowly grows, drifting. "I know. I know. That's something you have to tell her though and not me."

Obra tightens her lips. Already, she sees her habits making another rift. As much as she wants to promise Chris, she can't find the words to articulate it. None of them to soothe the pain, nor reassure, nor so easily or perfectly find their way to her tongue. Not like talking through the switchboard where she knows where the wires cross and which way to steer conversations. Never as simple as that.

The silence hurts. So, when the noise of Lana clambering through the corridors approached, both were relieved that neither had to find out what to say next. "Hey," Chirs gives a small wave. "How'd it all shake out with Central?"

"Fascinating, actually!" Lana says as she rolls out the long sheet of paper with various markings on the waveform. She taps on the sounds printed on paper, continuing, "See here? There is pattern repeating with sound we not able to make ourselves, always at end of a set. We think it is suffix but I must present findings to others back down to everybody." She says with such enthusiasm that it's infectious and other two start to fill the space once again.

Obra looks over the many notes and scribbles and finds herself saying, "I don't know, I think I'd be terrified. Because, what if we say the wrong thing back or maybe the message that they're sending to us isn't what we were hoping for?"

"Obra..." Chris says.

"No, no, it is understandable concern," Lana assures as she reels the paper into form, "I believe they have made effort to communicate, no? It would only be polite show that same effort back." The three begin to get sidetracked in chatter before a different crewmate pops in, reminding them that the ship in the loading bay will not wait forever. After goodbyes are given all around despite the short time, people on the station shuffle back to their normal lives. Chris glides his way over to sleep and Obra floats back to the switchboard.

The switchboard room is empty and back to what it once was before. Blinking lights, dial tones, a view of the Earth from far away. Only the rotary dial attached to the machine has changed, moved about in its use talking between the planet and the station. Obra stares at the dial, spinning around it in a spiral. The soundlessness befitting of space cut through by the sound of a call going through and the light on the switchboard crackling. She picks up the caller immediately and plugs them into the call center, saying, "Operator."

"Obra?" She hears from the other end. "Sweetie, is that you?"

She freezes up. Her fingers pinch against the socket about to pull the call out. Static begins to fill her ears. Obra doesn't know what is going to come next when they start talking. There's a pressure that builds up between her lungs and her throat. As she looks over to Earth, South Carolina is aglow with city lights her breath is released. The nerves still sting in her fingers as she brings them back to her body. The planet encompasses her whole reflection. Her face looking straight towards it.

"Obra?" The voice repeats.

"Yeah. Yeah, it's me, mom. Sorry for missing Mother's Day."

"I miss you. Being here. Are you taking care of yourself? Has something happened?"

"Well," Obra kind of chuckles. "We found aliens."