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It was terribly hot. Blood was filling up the ship, everything was dark. Evening came on the last day of his life.
Barechested, the poor little convict was waiting to die. He couldn’t find his precious medallion, the last piece of hope he had left. It had belonged to another martyr, and it had been swallowed by the blood. Although he had lost an arm, that seed was still the most precious thing he had ever owned.
The convict knew it must have fallen during all that commotion of the ship being on the verge of being wrecked. He felt something growing on his face, or his face was melting, he couldn’t tell.
And so the poor convict walked the little distance in his ship, sitting on the ground, which was not visible anymore. Everything was red.
The broken speaker hung there, dripping. He looked at the unlit indicator, but it was not going to light up ever again. They had left him there to die. No one came to save him, or offered help. No one ever had been nice enough for him to trust them, besides his kind astronaut. He had met him in a dream.
The blood fell on his long hair, which hung in soft curls around his deformed face.
Sweating, feeling thirsty and hungry, he rested his head on the bulkhead, a picture of misery, poor little convict.
Somewhere a terrible sound announced that another section of the ship had breached. He saw the blood rising faster.
The convict sat there knowing that he was, in fact, insignificant. That they would find someone else down there to finish the job.
He was more or less aware that he was also losing his own blood from the arm and slowly he started to feel colder, so he dipped his remaining hand into the blood and washed his torso with it. It was nicely warm.
Then he became too tired to do that, so he rested his head next to the light of the camera, the only light left.
To die in darkness, a horrible thought.
Oh, how much the light of the screen might give him some comfort.
He pressed the button.
How it brightened the room! It looked even brighter and as he reached to touch the screen, he saw something was strange, because the picture was not of the bottom of the sea.
It really seemed to the poor convict as if he was in another room, as clear the image was.
It was a white clean place and looked like an interstellar ship. He was sitting on a bed, a big window showed a black sky full of stars. He moved his feet to touch the cool floor, then the light went out, the stars vanished, and he was left with the dim green glow of the camera.
He pressed the button again.
A blinding light fell upon him. He shielded his eyes with his hand. The source of light was a shining healthy star! A hand offered him a cherry, it was his astronaut. They were sitting on the grass - real grass- and were eating fresh fruit.
He reached to grab the cherry but it slipped from his hand as the light went out.
He pressed the button again.
Then he was sitting under the most beautiful tree. It was much larger and much more beautiful than the one he had seen in pictures throughout his life.
He was resting on his dear astronaut’s chest. He saw hundreds of birds flying through the green branches. He wanted to touch them.
The poor convict reached a hand towards the sky and his astronaut took it in his.
Then the light went out.
But it was still burning on his retina and he could pretend he was looking at a star in space. And then it slowly disappeared, dimming out.
"Now someone is dying," thought the poor convict, for his astronaut, the only person who had loved him, and who he didn’t know if he existed, had told him that when a star dies, a soul follows. The blood had reached his neck.
He pressed the button and the room became bright again, and in the glow his beautiful astronaut stood clearly and shining, kind and lovely, like an angel.
“Astronaut!” cried the convict “Oh, take me with you. I know you’ll disappear when the light goes out. You will vanish and I’ll be left alone. Grant me this grace!”
His astronaut had never been so grand and beautiful. He offered him a hand, smiling and Simon took it.
The astronaut took the poor convict in his arms and together they walked away, rising high above the world, the stars, the universe.
But in the corner, leaning against the bulkhead, sat the poor convict, drowned.
The astronaut looked, weeping for his rescue had arrived too late.