Found in Space

**Originally written and submitted as a contest entry on Boing Boing (link). Archived here.**

Air leaked, drifting him in gentle circles. Ice crystallized in a gentle spray as it hit vacuum. The gauge dipped to red.

The odds of finding someone adrift in space are astronomical (excuse the pun). Even if you have telemetry on the collision, ejection, primary and secondary explosions the simulation takes hours to build. Survivors usually have minutes.

And you can’t swim in space. Nothing to swim against. Without thrust there is no way to control trajectory or speed. You inherit it from everything that can pass kinetic energy. Like your last breath, exhaled just so.

A final kiss, blown.