After being physically removed from office I was roughed up and beaten and bound. In the darkness caused by duct tape covering my eyes, I was transported to the loneliest place in the inner solar system. Dactyl prison colony, on the tiny moon that orbits asteroid 243. 

There was a military coup in my country and, for the first time in my life, I felt lucky to be low ranking as a government official. It kept a bullet out of my head. Instead, I am the first and only person ever sent to this prison which was shuttered before the building was even completed for obvious humanitarian reasons. I think everyone assumes I’m dead but instead I’m alone on a tiny rock over 180 million miles from home. I’m not even sure anyone cares. That’s the beauty of being childless after a bad divorce. 

My only companion here is my giant rock Ida, the planetoid that I orbit. It fills most of the sky. It is close and always present. It’s strange to call a floating rock your friend and partner but that is all I have.This strange pull is what keeps me going even when I’m frustrated.  

Last night I dreamed that Ida held me close and whispered in my ear. She told me not to worry and then pushed me with resistance back to my cell and reality. My eyes opened and everything was raw cement and thick glass again. I sat up and looked out the dust covered window of my cell and saw something unusual. I thought I saw a dot of blue light move across the sky and then disappear behind my loving rock. I tried to wipe the glass clear with my sleeve but it just made things worse. Most of the dirt was on the outside. I assumed it was just another asteroid and hopefully not a hallucination. 

When I was thrown onto the white surface of this moon by the men who smelled like sweat and cheap cologne, I was left with two orange suits and years worth of food. I don’t think this was an act of kindness but rather a way to prolong my suffering. Lengthen a lonely life.

When I say that the moon is tiny, I mean it. It is less than a dozen city blocks at its widest and made of a dusty white rock that seems to be moulded and then broken several times. This doesn’t give me  much diversity or stimulation. I have nothing for entertainment in the prison. All I have are my memories from home, which are not always great, and the constant and sometimes irritating pull I feel from Ida. For some reason I still shower and shave every morning and try to keep regular sleep hours, though there is no reason. I guess It gives me a meaning and a false sense of purpose. 

I suit up and walk outside to say hello to my giant rock. I feel it’s love and irritation. I greet the small dots of light in the distance, asteroids or stars, I usually don’t know unless I see movement..They are the only thing that ever changes. 

I go on my daily walk for exercise which includes the strenuous up and then down of a large crater. In too short of time I find myself at the other side of the prison building having completed a circle. I make myself a lunch of whatever food has rotted the least and mix it with a can of something… I wish I had a cup of coffee. This is the excitment of my days.

When I finish doing my dishes, looking out the kitchen window, I see the blue light in the corner of my eye again. The light has grown bigger and is now brighter in the sky. I think of the glass globe fixture that was in my office bathroom in the government building. A bright blue. It is hovering in the sky and casts a spotlight down on the white rock. It is soft and glowing.

Whatever this was, real or not, I know I must acknowledge it. I put on my orange suit and go outside not knowing what to expect…

☾

About Dactyl–

Dactyl is the first natural satellite to be discovered orbiting an asteroid. At its largest, it measures just shy of one mile in diameter.

Ida could always feel her moon’s pull across her long body. The moon wasn’t large, about 1 mile at its widest and shaped like an egg. Its constant presenesence and pull was comforting most of the time. It felt like love to Ida. Or at least companionship. The gravitational pull was like a warm embrace always tugging, creating a closeness. A warm blanket wrapped around two bodies that squeezed again and again. 

Most of the time this was beautiful but sometimes this loving embrace was almost too much. At moments it became overwhelming. As stifling and anxiety provoking as being smothered by a soft pillow. Thats the Duality. Ida feels this contradiction and wants to pull away from her tiny lover and breathe as much as she feels she needs to settle in and enjoy the warmth. Her feelings often don’t make sense. Ida is comfortable but becomes distant: drowning in awkward affection. 

Was the constant circling and pull of this little moon making them happy? Or was it just suffocating?

(243)

About 243 Ida…

243 Ida is the 243rd asteroid to be found and the first asteroid to be found with its own moon. Ida was discovered in 1884 but the presence of its tiny moon, Dactyl, wasn’t detected until 1994 when NASA scientists spotted it in a photograph taken by the Galileo spacecraft. Ida is small in size and irregular in shape measuring about 35 x 15 x 13 miles in diameter. It’s moon, Dactyl, is much smaller.

She can not remember where she started. It was somewhere below the crust. Long, thick and clumsy, she skid bumping across the pebbly surface, looking for a hole to slip into, wanting to return home.

The two times she finally made her way into a crevasse, water sprayed up like a volcano, bringing her back to the surface. Cold and harsh and bright and alone.

Her eyes were simple. She could sense only bright light and fields of color. When looking toward the sky everything was deep black or stinging white. All of the time. 

When she lived below the crust, it was warm and damp. She was squeezed lovingly by smooth tunnels that she wriggled through. She had three children who followed her and made quiet, echoey, chirping sounds.

Water bubbled softly in the distance always, until it became a rushing sound.

Everything was muffled and a pressure became forceful on the tender insides of her ear flaps. Warm water pushed against her stomach and the bottom of her tail. (It made her pee). She was pushed up. Her back forcefully hit a sharp surface as she quickly rose until jammed against the stabbing rocks of a cave ceiling. Everything happened both quickly and in an endless amount of time.

When the pressure became unbearable, and she was certain her body would collapse or break in two, she was hurled straight up and into bright light. She was floating free, touching nothing, until a force pulled down to the crust in a painful, nauseating belly flop.

It was cold and her damp belly skin cracked and tore on the icy surface as she squirmed.  No more comforting squeezes, just cold and rough and white and black…

She scanned the crust over and over again, looking for a hole leading back to her home.

⚴, ②

About 2 Pallas-

Pallas was originally discovered in 1802 and was immediately understood as a planet… until 1845 when it was downgraded to the then new term “minor planet”. This mini world is close to a perfect circle, has water ice and possibly liquid deposits with the dirt under its surface that sometimes leak out. It may have at one time had oceans. Anything is possible.

Pallas is now considered both a minor planet and an asteroid.

Pallas is the second asteroid found in the massive asteroid belt that consists of over one million mini worlds. The first was Ceres. These objects orbit the sun in the huge gulf between Mars and Jupiter, a space that 18th century astronomers thought should hold a planet. Instead, over the next two centuries they found millions of worlds. Some are as small as dust particles, some hundreds of miles across. Pallas falls into the second category, nearly 300 miles in diameter.