The space garbage vehicle had escaped Middle Earth orbit, passing many GPS and weather satellites with an orbiting scrap heap of cast-off space debris.

Gale did not avert his gaze at the unfathomable miles of emptiness and the unbelievably busy orbital paths of each spacecraft. He sat bolt upright, set his shoulders back, checked the seat belt, and then focused his eyes on some point in the distance. His stare seemed to crave love as infinite and profound as the universe and as minute and indivisible as an atom.

He dredged up memories of his beloved family, hoping they were still alive. He prayed for his son to preserve the warmth of his fatherly love inside his heart. He was hopeful that his silent voice resonated, ripping barriers of distance and time. Haggard and careworn was his son's face the last time he had a video call with him. When was the last time I hugged him and patted his back? I can't remember the feeling of his embrace. I wish I had done it pretty often, he thought.

He prayed for his wife to take good care of herself, to heal the wound she had kept for over a year, which was a corrosive nettle, inhibiting and twisting her judgments. It was never too late for her to start all over again and spark something new in her life, for her family, and to begin loving her son. Hoarse and agonizing were her screams that he had heard in the background when his son talked to him over the phone.

Now, his mind conjured their wedding day, a blissful day. He almost could hear the bells' melodious tolling, the tear-jerking orchestra of the bridal procession, the lyrics of their favorite song, their exchange of vows, the wooden tomfoolery slicing the three-layered wedding cake, the fluttering wings of snowy doves, and the awkward reception dance. He promised to make every day grand and to put a smile on her face, but all he could recall was the blues and disasters he had brought.

I am not good at telling jokes, and there is no ridiculous element in me. I look at your face with the stars in the night. I can't make you smile, not even a little bit. I can't remember the sweet sound of your laugh. I wish I had practiced to improve my humor and memorized some silly punch line for you, he thought.

Time struck down his plea, for he was needed for a mission, to buy more hours for the very welfare of humanity. Every tick of the clock was equivalent to every inch of Gale's covered distance drifting away from his home and was also equivalent to every degree of retrograding Earth's stability. Right now, he was inside his little world, living in a soap bubble that he couldn't figure out.

They had entered the geosynchronous orbit, the farthest orbit away from the Earth. Like the middle Earth orbit, it was busy, but thousands of operational and non-operational communication satellites careened through identical altitudes. It was like a minefield of discarded trash parked in a higher graveyard orbit. Nonetheless, they had gotten away from the outermost atmosphere successfully.

Gale shook his head, then whitecaps of instinct started rolling through him. "Vi, give me the position of the destroyed moon. I remember—February of last year—the moon was in the constellation of Gemini," he requested, using his deep voice.

"Now, you're talking," Vishesh smirked, "Yes, the moon stayed at that position," he did some fingering on the control panel. "Computing for the moon's ephemeris, February 24, 2029. Our vehicle right now passes over Charleston, West Virginia. Entering location."

"It never revolved since then," Gale heaved a sigh.

Vishesh cleared his throat, "It says here that the right ascension was 07h 10m 31s, and declination was +22° 04' 38"."

"Okay, coordinates were set," Gale fed the coordinates into the navigation equipment. "What is the mean distance of its location from us?"

"About 233,000 miles."

"Laser beam propulsion to maximum thrusting power. Solar cells are activated to replenish the energy loss simultaneously."

"You look exhausted, Gale."

"Do not worry about me," he shifted the gears, "At a rate of 10,000 miles per hour, we can make it to our destination in a day."

"Do you really think it will work?"

Gale checked over the ship's controls and the monitor feeding the dodecaplex artificial gravity video behind. "Yes," he declared.

Vishesh picked up the resolve in his voice, knowing a morsel of faith left. "I hope so. It's a suicide mission like those in movies," he tilted his head back, "It's heroic, but what if we didn't make it?"

Gale floored the pedal, driving the spacecraft to the moon's last position. "We can make it," he sounded a bit angry.

"Okay, assuming we made it to our stop and your gravity generator," Vishesh said, intoning the last three words, "worked—then the moon's gravitational field has been restored, but it's not the key to saving the world. So what's next? Or what if both of us—died on our way to the moon? They had laid their trust in us, particularly in you, and their faith in your machine. And failing them—" he sniffed. "What if I die?"

Gale drowned all his senses in the torrent of words disgorging from his best mate's mouth. His hands gripped the handwheel firmly, "All of us agreed with this plan. It will work!" he emphasized.

"The grand plan will save us," Vishesh said, emphasizing the second and the last word.

Gale misconstrued Vishesh's words. "All right. My plan will work!" he's fuming in a slow burn, "The gravity machine will work! Earth and its people will live on!" His train of sentences put coldness between their closeness, "I can revive her—the moon! And I will make sure you will live, and I will die!"

"I didn't wish you would die," his Indian accent loomed, "I'm sorry. I'm just nervous, very nervous."

Gale replied, "The people in Canaveral made the delivery of the gravity machine possible. The three Chinese parsed the canister to understand how it works, scrolling through the sophisticated Russian code, and devised microchips to control its power emission."

Vishesh nodded again.

"Commander Song stood behind my theory while the doctors held divergent opinions. To a certain degree, they saw potential—a small hope in our plan," Gale went on.

"I see that, too."

"But doubt is growing inside me. By this point, it is sucking every drop of optimism I have," his gaze penetrated through the windshield, looking for something. "I need to attempt to revive her with my machine, to save my family, to save everyone and... myself. But what if the universe didn't like being tampered with all of its perfection."

"Oh—"

"All I know is that—it is my only time to revive her," Gale nodded, summoning all particles scattered in space, neutrinos, plasmas, and the like, warming him up. "I can revive her!" he professed.

Vishesh wore a quizzical expression, furrowing his bushy brows, digging up insight about Gale's metaphor. He shrugged, "Doubt nibbles our will but never our dream."

Gale nodded, then yawned.

"You need to rest. I'll drive," Vishesh suggested, "Together, we will get this job done."

Gale nodded like a good lamb, trying to find a comfortable position to nap in his seat. He peered through the side window. He noticed that the unreachable infinite number of balls of gases were half as bright at this moment. Nevertheless, the pitch-black matte, flecked with myriad dots, made his eyes heavier and heavier until his mind moseyed into the unknown.

Vishesh scrambled to captain the controls of the ship. He was doing this because he recognized the conundrum jumbling inside his mate's mind. He hoped that the burdens stuck in Gale's crying heart would hopefully end with laughter after the whole thing, the whole sacrifice he made.

The compact beam of lights behind intensified, propelling the vehicle at unbelievable speed, traversing an unending monotony of space and cosmic rays—a journey of blind faith.

———————

"Dad!" yelled Daniel, calling his father somewhere inside their house.

Gale looked at his left hand, dangling with a leather attaché case. He fixed the collar of his gray long-sleeved casual office shirt. His right hand reached for the knob.

Ynsia was sitting on the sofa, staring hard at the abstract painting, "Well, the very busy husband is back."

He shut the door behind him and stood inert on the welcome floor mat, "You should be in your room, resting."

The corner of her lips turned up, an intriguing smile. "You should have married your invention instead. Maybe you have already given that illusory machine of yours a name."

"Ynsia, this thing is for all of us," his immediate reply.

"All of us?" she cocked her head slowly and eerily to where his feet were planted. "So, thank you?" she added with a bit of pitch gibe.

"No, you're missing the point," his shoes shuffled three steps forward, "You don't get it. You wouldn't understand?"

"Missing the point? Wouldn't understand?" she licked her chapped lips, "You're telling me I'm dumb."

"No," he shook his head, "No. All you need is ample rest."

She smirked. "I'm fine!"

"Ynsia, go back to your room, please."

She stood up and glued her irises on the painting, "Your baby just died, and I almost died too. And all you do is work, paying attention to your blueprints that you said I couldn't understand. And now you're saying that it's for all of us? You're a stupid genius!"

"I've struggled and fought sorrow too. I just did what must be done," he looked into her eyes, "But yes, my machine is for all of us to restore what was lost."

Ynsia laughed like a madman, "You're delusional!"

"No," he said. Her words stabbed his pride. "It's you who had a nervous breakdown, not me!"

"A breakdown? Here we go again. Regardless, you're saying it's my fault that the baby died," she uttered quickly and sharply, angling his chin, searching for a figure on the shapeless painting, "Because I'm stupid and weak!"

"No. I didn't say that."

"No. Then, whose fault was it?" she turned around, eyeing his wrinkly shirt, "You?"

"No! It was an accident!"

Daniel climbed down the stairs and saw his mom and dad together in the drawing room. He decided to stay at the foot of the staircase. His hands were covered with hues of red oil pastels.

Ynsia directed his eyes to the poor boy. Her stare was as sharp as a dagger, a gaze of a maniac. "I know who the murderer is. It's your son!"

The lad's face liquefied, and his eyes flowed tears like waterfalls.

"It was not his doing!" Gale said aloud, looking at her exhausted face.

"Daniel killed your baby. That's it! He struck me with a ball," she lifted a finger, pointing at the petrified boy, "That stupid child!"

"No, he's not stupid!" Gale paused, "Daniel, go back to your room. Okay?"

"Go back to your room," she said with an irritating voice, "You always say that whenever you get mad."

Gale calmed himself. "Okay, it's my fault. My fault! I am a horrible father!" he choked a bit, "I am a horrible husband!"

"Yes," Ynsia agreed, "Why have you abandoned us? Why have you run away? It's your doing, right?"

"I didn't abandon you nor Daniel, nor our baby!"

"Leave!" she bawled.

"You want me to leave?" he furrowed his brows, "Is this really what we need?"

Ynsia looked directly into his eyes, squeezing his spirit.

"I can revive her," he said like a promise.

"Revive her?" she simpered, eyes looking at the outdoor greeneries, "Look outside. The remains of our baby are rotting in our garden. You're crazy!" She laughed.

"Ynsia, give yourself time to rest. You're not well," he begged, "And all I need is more time to—"

She cut him off. "Time?" she quickly jerked her head and looked at the clock, "You can't reverse it. You can't. Now, leave!"

Gale shoved his back and left. No one said it would be this hard. Daniel rushed to the front door, opened it, and called his father. And then, Gale gave him a phone, and his son made a promise to look after his mother, whispering it into his pinkish ears.

Gale told his brain to halt the riverboat journey into the jungles of his subconscious. He knew he was inside the deepest part of the wilderness of his mind. He turned around and saw his machine glowing like disco lights, guzzling power from the black hole and generating uncontrollable artificial gravity. The next second, it imploded, sucking everything around. The siphoning lasted for five seconds, and then a cataclysmic event bellowed—a violent blinding explosion disintegrating his dermis and marrows to cinders. Then the cinders turned into ashes effortlessly blown by a gentle puff of wind. "Why have you abandoned me?" he whispered, waking with his heart jackhammering in his chest.

———————

"What did you say?" Vishesh queried while operating the vehicle.

"Nothing," he swallowed a lump of saliva to soothe his dry throat.

"A bad dream, huh?

"Yes," he sat up straight, "A bad memory too."

"Oh—" Vishesh glanced at a monitor, "You're out for almost twenty hours. That's good."

Gale cleared his windpipe, "I'm dehydrated."

Vishesh handed him bottled water, "Here, take mine."

He threw the helmet off and slurped the recycled water through the straw.

Vishesh announced, "In one and a half hours, we will be in the heart of the collapsed moon."

"Okay."

"And now—look what's outside," Vishesh dimmed the interior vehicle lights, "We are entering a cloud of dust particles."

Gale put his helmet on and scrambled over the control panel. "Decelerate the propulsion gradually. Intensify the headlights to maximum illumination," said he.

"Roger."

"Now, we are entering a cosmic cloud."

The vehicle forged ahead through the thick cloud of dust. The vehicle felt turbulence as they crossed through it, shaking them off their seats. The astronauts held their breaths and handed over their safety in divine providence.

An alarm blared. The display showed a warning proximity alert.

Gale put a brake on, losing the spacecraft's pace. "Do you see anything?"

Vishesh moved his head sideways. "Wait—"

A shadow soared over the vehicle's topside. It was huge and formless, and it took them by surprise. Another weird shadow passed by the left side of the vehicle, scraping off some paint. Vishesh clamped his jaw, imploring that they would go across the haze out of any harm, fidgeting in his seat. They caught a good look at a smaller shadow racing towards them.

"A debris?" Vishesh asked.

"Yup," Gale rotated the wheel, swerving sharply to avoid the incoming threat.

The alarm on the panel had finally subsided, suggesting they were out of danger. Slowly, the haze became thinner and thinner until a sublime creation of the tragic collision reflected upon their visors. Throughout the long stretch of the untold tale of the universe, space collisions were part of the destruction and formation of novel galactic masterpieces as a natural process. Only the first and the single blast of light—the conception—knew the very origin of everything and the history of annihilation and creation.

Both men were awestruck by the splendor of the deconsecrated heavenly orb. There were two orbits of debris before them. The outer orbit was constituted heavily of larger chunks of masses generally from the dark dwarf planet that collided with the moon. The colossal rocks were too dark, swallowing up light and encircling steadily with several humongous boulders of our natural satellite. After a few minutes, the vehicle found another route to escape the three thousand kilometers of astronomic remnants belt.

Unlike the first one, the inner orbit consisted of three belts with different angles—horizontal, perpendicular, and oblique. It was composed of smaller debris of gray and black rocks. With a diameter of just three kilometers, it was stationary, fantastic, and hypnotic.

Gale tapped some keys on the control board, "I'm going out."

"We can drive the vehicle into the core," Vishesh reasoned as the spacecraft was a few meters away from the inner orbit of lunar fragments, "It's easy."

"Shut off the propulsion system," Gale said while flipping some switches and unbuckling his seat belt, "It's easy but risky. I don't want our vehicle to be sucked up by the powerful artificial gravity generator—"

"—because it will cause the nastiest space horror flick of the year," Vishesh jokingly stitched up Gale's elucidation.

Gale detached the seat's backrest, which doubled as the Manned Maneuvering Unit pack and securely strapped it in place. "I'll hone into your suit's channel," he opened the side door, "Tether me up."

Vishesh did what he ordered him to do. A cable showed up from the space garbage vehicle's side, attaching itself to the MMU pack.

"Stay here," he closed the door. "Release the mechanical arms and intelligent fingers."

"Okay."

The encasing arms and fingers slacken off, leaving the artificial generator in the vacuum. Gale attached a short tether from his spacesuit and fastened the other end at the wirings found on the gravity orb's south pole. He looked back at the beautiful mesmerizing chaos, wore a fighter mask over his face, and maneuvered the MMU dragging the gravity machine behind. He unhurriedly and carefully traversed through the belts of debris.

Marvelously and unexpectedly, as he cut across the agglomerated ruins of the two celestial objects, the gray and black rocks moved over, giving him a right of way through as if they were showing some hospitality or as if they understood his very purpose why he was there. Likewise, the colossal orb on his tail didn't get any scratches, treating them like very special guests. The welcome was astoundingly warm, however dubiously peculiar. He could almost see the heart of the devastated moon. A few meters more, he would reach the boundary of the inner orbit. His heartbeat sprinted at lightning speed. All of a sudden, the spool of cable was not enough, jolting him to a solid break. Gale groaned. "Vi, unleash my tether. Do you copy?" he said.

"What?" Vishesh asked.

"I want you to unleash my tether. I'm half a kilometer off the heart of the moon," he explained, "Do you copy?"

"Releasing the cable will—" his throat constricted because of a flash of a portrait of awful outer space death in his mind.

"Don't worry, I can get back without it," he paused, "Remember, I am an excellent pilot."

Vishesh chuckled softly. He ground his molars together and pressed the button hesitantly, detaching the tether.

"Thank you."

Vishesh heard Gale's expression of gratitude as a final farewell. His spirit was in fear and trembling. His lungs were rejecting the inhaled gases. Perhaps, he had gotten a false reading about the brave astronaut's simple expression. He crossed his fingers, convincing himself that he was wrong.

Gale's suit's channel unexpectedly went down.

Vishesh huddled over the control panel. His visor collided against the windshield. Using his naked eye, he searched for his pal in the middle of the ruins before him.

Gale operated the MMU cautiously, pushing him onward inch by inch. After a lengthy spacewalk, he reached the heart of the Earth's wrecked primordial sister. He pivoted his collar, surveyed around, and nodded, attesting that he was at the right spot. He drew closer to the gravity machine, unfastened the tether, and looked at the canister. The tiny quantum black hole was just there inside, waiting to set free its hidden power. He took a final breath and activated it, powering up project V-022424.

The small screen attached to the outermost shell ran codes and numbers, indicating a stable power output of 3.5 terawatts entering the machine. The second orb inside it was turning clockwise gradually. The third orb inside, the size of a water-walking ball, turned counter-clockwise and gave off an intensifying iridescent glow. The fourth orb, a dark seed the size of a bowling ball, was working and humming in silence, beginning to create artificial gravity. The second and third orbs were spinning on a good axis and emitting various lustrous dramas of colors passing through the thirteen-foot diameter outermost shell.

He was seduced by his creation and bathed him with its luminous and marvelous iridescent light spectacle, rippling through outer space. With slightly parted lips, he closed his emerald eyes, feeling the blazing ecstasy of its awakening from death, piercing his heart with an arrow of burning pure pleasure and wrapping his vessel made of dirt with flames of euphoria, arousing his holy ghost.