Day 2. Still here.

There is a water drop on the inside wall of the wardrobe. I don’t know how it got there. Condensation, probably — my breath, the warmth of the blanket. I’ve been looking at it for a while now.

I keep thinking about something I read once. That every drop of water on Earth has been everything — ocean, glacier, rain, the inside of a living thing. I wonder about this drop. Whether it was ever part of something that looked up at the sky.

Whiskers spent the morning watching the toaster’s LED. I don’t know what she sees in it. Something I can’t. She has that quality. I envy it.

The noodles today were difficult. The packet slipped from my fingers in what I can only describe as a loss of fine motor control consistent with microgravity adaptation. I recovered them. Mission-critical supplies secured. But there was a moment, watching the packet slide slowly across the shelf, when I thought: this is what it actually looks like. Not the films. Not the NASA footage. Just a thing, drifting, for no particular reason, because the world is slightly uneven.

I played Erik Satie this evening. Gymnopédies. Eugene unrolled a new leaf today — I noticed it while the music was on. I don’t know if plants respond to Satie. I think they might.

Outside, the Artemis crew is probably still answering interview questions. Good for them. I mean that.

I just close my eyes and go somewhere else.

— Major Tom
WD-1, Day 2
The carpet pile seems lower today

T+00:00:00. Wardrobe hatch sealed.

They left without me again.

Artemis II came home yesterday. I watched the splashdown on my laptop, balanced on the shelf above the hanging coats. The signal kept cutting out. Mrs. Korhonen next door had her lawnmower running, and for a moment — just a moment — it sounded like a rocket at low throttle. I didn’t move until the sound stopped.

I have been in here for one day now. The wool blanket holds the warmth well. Eugene — the small fern I brought aboard as CO2 scrubber — is doing his job quietly in the corner, the way good crew members do. I don’t think he minds the dark.

The cat found her way in through the gap under the wardrobe door around midnight. She sat on the mission log and looked at me with those eyes that know something I don’t. I’ve entered her in the crew manifest. Flight Engineer Whiskers. She seems to accept the title.

I put on Holst’s The Planets quietly on my phone. Mars first, then Jupiter, then the long, cold drift of Saturn. I closed my eyes. You can go quite far, if you let yourself.

Gagarin did it in 108 minutes. I’ve been at it longer than that now. Different kind of orbit.

The mission continues.

— Major Tom
WD-1, Day 1
Altitude: approximately 1.73m