Featured in Farrago Magazine Edition Five 2026

Design by Caitlin Sim

The ship was four light-years away from Earth when you received the message from command. It stated that scientists on Earth figured out how to make Exonite in industrial quantities, so you no longer needed to fly off into deep space to find another planet to mine it from. Your mission to the exoplanet Gliese 887 was thus terminated. 

 Reggie was enraged. He spluttered about his cut of the profits, then about the sacrifices he’d made, spending four years in space with you fuckers, and all for nothing. You reckon Tom was feeling the same way, but he didn’t let on. Anything beats the ego-blow of agreeing with Reggie. 

 That night, all three of you had the privacy curtains fully drawn around your bunks, but you could still hear the other two rolling around under the linen. The news from command pissed you off, but it didn’t affect you like Reggie and Tom. They were both in it for the money—Tom because he wanted it, and Reggie because he needed it. But that was never your motivation. You just wanted to see the stars. You’d only ever seen them in photos. Hardly anyone alive remembers them, but the few people from the golden space age remember them as beautiful. In some sense, you’d already got what you came for. 

 The next morning, you and Reggie silently ate nutri-jam on toast in the rec room, sitting as far away from each other as the small space allowed. Reggie finished his breakfast before you did, and, for lack of anything better to do, started complaining. God, you’d heard it all before. He misses his kids, Tom is getting on his nerves, the food here sucks, blah blah blah. Reggie could fuck right off. Though he was right about the food. Before launch, all three of you—still friends at that time—predicted something like aeroplane food. Aeroplane food would taste like fucking caviar right now. 

 You just nodded along in silence as Reggie continued to run his mouth. You weren’t really there—you were thinking about snapping off the metal handle of the captain’s chair and breaking Reggie’s shins with it. You learn how to zone out like that when you’re stuck with the same three people, every day, for years. You learn how to keep your crewmates calm. It’s survival. You’d seen how Tom and Reggie get when they’re angry, as if they’re physically pulsing, every heartbeat hot and visible and capable of tipping them over the edge.

Tom was downstairs, looking through the viewing window at the stars. You and Tom didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but you both agreed that stars are beautiful. The only thing that rivals them, according to the few people who’d ever seen one, is a supernova. When a star is unable to fight off its own gravity, it dies, imploding then rebounding outwards into a cacophony of colour and light. This, they said, was the most beautiful thing in the universe. 

 Reggie finally finished his tantrums and acquiesced to the orders from command to reroute the ship back to Earth. That’s when Tom, who had been watching on with laser focus, started yelling at Reggie, screaming that we can still be rich, we can sabotage their machines, we will find new crystals! Reggie continued the reroute in silence, patiently waiting for Tom’s hoarsening voice to fail. 

 But he waited too long. You saw it coming. The lunge forward, hands wrapped around his throat. You chose not to intervene—Reggie had it coming. He couldn’t put up much of a struggle. Tom was the ship’s mechanic. He had big arms and strong hands. Reggie only programmed the computers. 

 Now that Reggie was dead, Tom started threatening you, demanding you terminate the fucking reroute, or else. You were okay with going back to Earth, but you didn’t want to be strangled, either, so you got to work. Of course, you lacked Reggie’s skillset with the ship. He had the best knowledge of the spacecraft’s programming. So, you took your time. You had to. It was your last line of defence. 

Eventually, sleep-deprived and sick of watching you tinker with code you understood only slightly better than him, Tom retired to bed. You really didn’t want to die, and you’d seen what Tom was willing to do. Lucky for you, Tom didn’t hear the metal snap as you bent the arm off the chair. You repeat to yourself that, really, your hand was forced. That it was self-defence. You don’t like recalling the details. But you’d never seen so much blood before, especially not in zero G. His head just shattered, and red exploded out in all directions. It was like a supernova in slow-mo. It will forever flash across your eyelids when you close your eyes. You’ve seen one now, a supernova, the death of a star. You’re still floating in a sea of slowly dying stars. You’ve seen one now, in red. And you know that they were right. It was the most beautiful thing in the universe.