Here’s the third installment of our space opry. For those of you keeping track, here’s Part 1 and Part 2. Thank you for following along and please be sure to keep all hands, feet, tentacles and appendages tucked safely in the overhead bins; just sit back and enjoy the ride. Because, this time, the dust settles.

It had been well over a month since Trent-2-6000 had released Ayarvenia into the Mars probe.  She was a mischievous creature and flirted with him incessantly, gliding effortlessly between red cloud and ghost girl.  She also managed to avoid notice by the computer, as Trent had made it abundantly clear that if the system became aware of her, he would be forced to put her back in containment, as his sole purpose aboard the spacecraft was to sweep up and trap the dust, which she still qualified as.

            Ayarvenia would tease him, flitting to and fro among the static debris and dirt that still settled into every nook and cranny.  How was it possible for him to be seeing so much grime still, anyway?  It had been months since they had left Mars and yet Trent was finding more and more Mars dust on a daily basis; it was as if they just left yesterday.  He had finally finished clearing out the computer room for the second time that day and was preparing the waste containment units for their eventual removal when he caught Ayarvenia swirling about one of the clear acrylic domes from his previous sweep, which was hermetically-sealed and ready to be brought safely back to the confines of Earth and the research laboratory.

            The red cloud girl spun her way into the latch mechanism and popped it open right before Trent’s robotic eyes.  The dust within was sucked out into the Voyager probe to be quickly and quietly dispersed yet again; some of it was even absorbed into Ayarvenia herself.  She then latched the dome shut again and left it at the ready, as found.  The container sat empty, a shell discarded.

How could he have been so naïve?  It all began to make sense now; all of those sealed packages he had so painstakingly catalogued and prepared for their eventual arrival were still just empty.  All of his hard work really had been for naught; he was just sweeping up the same dirt piles again and again only to have them released from the trash to disperse and begin the cycle anew.  He grumbled under his breath and Ayarvenia froze in midair.  She slowly whirled around and sent a lone tendril towards Trent, forming into her beautiful face as she turned to face him.  She looked slightly distraught and more than a little agitated, but that melted and gave way to her usual snarky sweetness as she neared.

“Hey there, robo-boy,” she said, cooing as her unblinking eyes met his.  “I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I imagine not,” Trent replied sternly.  “What are you doing?”

“Oh… nothing really.  Just checking up on things here.  I was waiting around for you is all,” she hemmed and hawed.

“Did you find everything to your liking?” Trent snipped.  “No particulate out of place or anything?”

“Everything seems okay, I guess…  I’ll just leave you to it then.”  The ghost girl drifted towards the far door.

“Not so fast…” Trent proclaimed.  “I need to know what you’ve really been up to here.  I saw you release the Mars dust from that containment unit.  You know I’ve been sweeping out this room over and over for the past two days; just how much of my work are you undoing?”

”Work?  Work…  You call this work!” Ayarvenia’s voice raised.  She was truly agitated now.  “You’re blowing off my entire being without a second thought, trapping it in these nasty clear coffins, and all you can think about is whether or not you’re fulfilling your job?!”

“I…  I just want to be done with this so I can get my body back and get on with my life,” Trent retorted.

“Well, Trent Just-Trent, let me break it to you, then.  You’re not getting your body back, robo-boy.  What makes you think they’d bother to save a lowlife human body like yours in the first place?  These assignments are always dead-ends.  I’ve seen them come and go…  Makes no difference, in the end the researchers get what they want, and that’s more of my Mars dust for their experiments.  We’re in the same boat schnookums, you and I,” the ghost girl blew hastily.  “Yeah that’s right, you heard me.  You’re not getting your body back.  And the way things have been going around here, with you all so feverishly sweeping up every little bit of dirt you find, neither am I.”

“Wait, how would you know anything about that?” Trent stammered.

“I know things.  I’ve been around.  I can see and hear and feel everything all at once.  Part of me is still on Mars, part of me is here in this spaceship, and part of me is on your so-called Earth, trapped in the lab catacombs awaiting who knows what fate…”  Ayarvenia sighed.  “I’ve tried to do what I can to save my own skin, literally.  I’ve flirted with every deadbeat janitor they send on these missions.  And you all just keep coming back for more…”

Suddenly a voice boomed from behind in monosyllabic chatter, “Dust-Buster, what have you done?  Clean that up, now!”  The camera eye that monitored the computer’s every task shifted focus to Trent and Ayarvenia and zoomed into an angry point.  “Now!” it wailed.  The computer was on to them.

“Shit,” Trent muttered.

“It’s okay, I’ll go willingly,” Ayarvenia whispered as she sucked herself into the ready containment unit and locked it.  “Wait it out and release me again later.”  She winked and settled into static suspension.

The camera eye scanned everything: the waste containment unit, the dust, Trent-2-6000…  Trent froze and tried not to appear guilty.  “Dust-Buster, you have one and only one job aboard this vessel.  You are not doing that job.  There is more dust here now than there was a week ago. You have failed,” the computer droned on.  “The penalty for failure is… the airlock…”

“Wait, what?”  Trent shouted, exasperated.  He hadn’t even realized that was a thing.  Yet another gripe for the school career guidance counselor…

“Oh no, not again,” Ayarvenia whispered.  “I won’t let them take you, robo-boy Trent Just-Trent.  I don’t want to lose you, not another one.”

“Silence!” the computer screeched.  “You have sealed your own fates.”

The floor beneath Trent and the container began to quake and rumble.  Partitions withdrew radially to a small circular channel beneath, a tube that fed into the lower part of the ship, presumably to be shot out into space.  Trent-2-6000 tried to grab hold of the receding floor but his robot body was just too ungainly.  He managed to wedge himself into the chasm opening only to see the waste containment dome carrying Ayarvenia slide past, her face peering up at him helplessly.  He reached for her to no avail and tumbled after.

The two of them shot down the chute and through a series of rapidly opening and closing doors until the last airlock opened into the vast dark nothingness of space.  Pinpoints of distant light greeted them from afar.  Trent managed to latch onto the container just as they shot out into the void.  The Voyager probe withdrew into the distance.  The darkness enveloped the two of them.  They were alone.

“Wait, I’m not dead,” Trent exclaimed.

“Of course not, silly,” Ayarvenia answered.  “You’re a robot.  You were made to withstand this, so that you could operate in places where there is no atmosphere.”

Trent gazed into her eyes as they floated along without purpose or reason, just more cosmic debris now.

And I’m floating in a most peculiar way.
And the stars look very different today. – David Bowie, Space Oddity

So that was Cozmic Debris… Illustrations were generated using the Cosmic template in NightCafe AI art generator. My favorite AI images are the ones that are substantially wrong, making weird mistakes in ways that a person wouldn’t make. So the tardigrades were especially fun, because it doesn’t have a good enough sense for their structure to render them sensibly. Kind of like elephants. The algorithms respond to different cues. Does it really matter how many limbs or trunks or tusks these things are supposed to have anyway…?

And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.