by Matt Hollingsworth
He was a hermit who lived aboard a derelict spaceship orbiting a red dwarf star, light-years from the closest human being.
There had been others at first—his mother, father, grandparents, brothers and sisters, cousins—but all were gone now. Only he remained.
Wrench in hand, he lay underneath the engine that hadn’t worked since before he was born. A tablet with a cracked screen displayed the tech manual. The room smelled like rust.
“Father God,” he prayed, “you are the God who works miracles. Please, let this engine work. But may your will be done, not mine.”
He twisted the wrench, and the engine sputtered to life, humming for just a moment before dying. The Hermit shouted in fury, slamming his fist into the machine which sliced through his skin. He screeched in pain.
He spent the next hour in the med bay, stitching up his hand. Once, the ship had had medical supplies that could heal a wound in a moment, but that had run out years ago, leaving only the old method of needle and thread.
“I don’t know what to do, Father,” he said. “Please help me.”
He’d been born in this room what had to be fifty Earth-years ago, though he didn’t know the number specifically. The ship was originally supposed to go to a colony world, but they’d left the main path to refuel their solar cells with light from the red dwarf, and that’s when the engines died. There had originally been three families on board, each with young children, and they’d waited the rest of their lives for help that never came. Those children had grown up aboard the ship, intermarried, had kids of their own, and finally became old and died—three generations, and he would be the last. He’d been born aboard the Theseus, and unless he could get that engine working, he would die on it, leaving the empty ship to orbit the star forever.
“God…” he began, but he couldn’t finish. How many times had he prayed for this miracle? Yet the engine never started.
It hadn’t been bad when he was a child with his family, when the ship had been his whole universe, but when his sister had died of cancer two years ago, he’d known he couldn’t bear to live the rest of his life without seeing another person.
***
The ship’s computer had more films and books than he could ever watch and read. He read his Bible for a while, pausing in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus was speaking to his followers after his resurrection.
He mouthed the words, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
If God was with him, why did he feel so alone?
***
The next part of his daily routine was exercise: pushups, sit-ups, laps around the ship. For the past few months, he’d felt himself growing physically weaker. The ship’s artificial gravity systems were beginning to show their age. Gravity was down to 90% of standard, and he was losing muscle mass as a result.
***
That night, he toyed with the ship’s radio.
“This is the Theseus. Anyone out there?”
The speakers crackled.
“Mayday, please help. We need assistance.” The device was short ranged. A ship would have to pass through the system to hear, unlikely but not impossible.
Outside, through the shielded window, the red sun obscured nearly the entire view. His mother had told him that the red dwarf was far smaller than the sun of Earth, but the Hermit couldn’t imagine anything larger than the star. Nor could he imagine what it would be like to live in a world bigger than his ship (only 1,000 feet long), a world with a sky overhead instead of a roof.
***
There was no place to bury the dead aboard the Theseus, so they’d been forced to send the bodies out the airlock. They’d scratched crosses into the wall for each person they’d lost. Underneath each cross lay a few of that person’s treasured possessions—his grandfather’s sketchpad, his aunt’s diary, a small flower welded from scraps of metal that his father had given his mother.
The Hermit knew there would be no one left to scratch a cross for him, so he’d made one for himself with his name beneath it, just in case, hundreds of years from now, someone found his derelict ship.
He knew he’d be reunited with his family when he died, that he’d see his Lord face-to face—but it was hard not to doubt. If God was good, why had he left him alone for so long?
***
He’d almost finished lunch—the same genetically engineered moss from the ship’s garden that he ate for every meal—when he heard the voices.
Dropping the plate, he raced to the control room, shouting into the radio, “Mayday! Mayday! This is the Theseus in need of assistance! Can you hear me?”
Static.
“Please, I heard someone speaking. We’ve been trapped here for so long. I need help.”
He had heard voices. He knew he’d heard voices. He wasn’t making it up. The Hermit started imagining that they had heard him but were choosing to ignore him, laughing at the poor man on the derelict.
“Fine! Laugh all you want. I’ll get my engine fixed. I don’t need you!”
All was silent for a moment, then:
“… you say, Theseus? Theseus, do… copy”
“Yes! Yes, I’m here! Please help me! I’m at coordinates…” He read the numbers off the display. “I’ve been stranded so long. Help me. I’m so lonely.”
There was a long pause.
“… repeat that, Theseus.”
He started repeating the numbers when suddenly the control panel sparked and sputtered then went dark.
“No! No, please no!”
He dropped to his knees. “God, please, I need you. I beg you, please.”
But no help came that day, nor the next. He spent nearly every waking hour that week trying to get the radio working again. Eventually, it returned to life, but once again, there was nothing but static.
“Mayday. This is Theseus,” the Hermit said into the radio for the millionth time. He hadn’t talked this much in a long while, and his throat was getting hoarse. “Is anybody there? I need help. Somebody.”
The static hummed.
In his loneliness, he thought about the Trinity, about how in some mysterious way, the one God was three persons—the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This meant that, for all eternity, God hadn’t been alone. Each member of the Trinity enjoyed a beautiful relationship with the other two. God is never alone—and human beings, made in his image, aren’t meant to be alone, either.
He spent that night inside the airlock, staring miserably at the button that would open the door and send his body into space.
“He’ll forgive me for it, right?” the Hermit asked.
He didn’t press it.
That evening, as he sat in the control room, he reminded himself of Jesus—God made flesh—hanging upon the cross, giving himself as a sacrifice to save us and bearing the crushing weight of human sin. Bearing my sin, the Hermit reminded himself, because of his love for me. He didn’t know why God was letting him go through this, but he knew one thing—it wasn’t because God didn’t love him, for God valued him more than the very star he orbited. God had proved his love on the cross.
And the Hermit knew something else, knew that however awful his loneliness was, it was nothing compared to the pain Jesus had gone through, bearing the total weight of human sin on the cross.
“God understands what I’m going through,” the Hermit whispered. “He knows personally what this feels like.” The eternal God could relate firsthand to the Hermit’s pain. Pain God had endured out of his love for those who least deserved it.
And as the Hermit listened to the static, that knowledge made him feel a little less alone.
Matt Hollingsworth has been previously published in an anthology from Owl Hollow Press, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, and Agape Review, among others. He currently resides in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Agape Review 