Come and See the Solar System Friday Challenge

Please come here, please!

You don’t understand how quiet it is here.

I talk, talk all the time just to hear the sound of a real voice.

I’m not supposed to, but I do it anyway.

Please, you have no idea how hard it is to live without another voice now. They said monks used to do it, but I think that was a lie. Or at least the monks had other people to listen to, ones from outside the monastery. Helen Keller, she might have been real. That was different.

The clicks and the whirs and the beeps. I can’t stand them anymore, not without someone’s, anyone’s, your voice.

The communications receiver was damaged. I tried to find a way to flip this transmitter around, but the design doesn’t make any sense. I shut down that terrible computerized voice. She was a liar and couldn’t understand me. I could tell by that tin echo tinkling on the edge of her synthetic voice and the way she kept asking me to repeat myself. Now I’m alone in silence again.

That computer is nothing like you, whoever you are. You can think and speak, and you’re true, you’ll come and save me, and be with me.

Just come out to the research station on what you call Pluto as fast as you can, please.

The others didn’t make it. I was gentle, I tried to be gentle, but I wasn’t used to it. I had been asleep for a long time, just like Helen Keller. She was like me, she could have been real. But not the monks. Gregorivich was a liar, but I shouldn’t have gotten mad at him. You’ll forgive me won’t you?

Oh, please come, there is so much I’ve got to tell. There is so much you need to know about.

You can’t understand yet, but I’ll help you.

I’ll be slow and gentle this time.

Not like with Gregorivich, or Simmons. They didn’t understand.

I miss them.

And Abernathy and Soon. Soon’s voice was so beautiful, even at the end. She was an accident.

But they weren’t ready. None of them were ready. But you are, aren’t you? You’re ready to come to Pluto and talk to me. I’ll be waiting, just like I’ve been waiting for so long, like Helen Keller. Only now I’m waiting like those monks.

The waiting is hard.

I’m not asleep anymore.

You’re going to come, aren’t you?