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Make him proud, he always said.

I turn back towards the blinking red light that's casting its lu-
minescent glow down the hall way and across the windows and, finally,
onto my skin-tight World Space Program uniform, the WSP insignia
stitched on my left shoulder, I pull the collar down, away from my neck,
its constricting fabric seeming to suffocate me.

"I'm here;' I mutter into the transmitter. "And can you stop
yelling, Trey? It's too fuckin' early in the morning for that."

.I brace myself for the irritated response. It comes. "While you
were in your quarters sleeping, I've been out here fixing the shield plat-
ing!" yells Trey.

"Sorry man;' I say,walking up to the blinking computer screen
stuck to the corridor wall. "It'll be done in a couple minutes."

I start typing away,letting my fingers think for me. I've done
this same routine thousands of times. Whenever there are repairs taken
care of on the shield plating of the hull, there is always a decompression
malfunction somewhere in the space station. Since I'm the technical
engineer, I'm always the first one called. Everyone else is usually sleeping
or pretending they are. No one wants to get up this early for this.

When I press down hard on the enter key, a wealth of digits
and date scrolls down the screen. Although it might look like gibberish
to the next person, it looks like lines to a story to me. And, according to
how this reads, all I have to do is vent the third circuit hallway to fix the
error. It's probably just a plating shift that caused a little bit of pressure
to reach the hull. All I have to do is input the order to vent after I seal
the doors and everything will be A-OK again. I can already feel the
warm embrace of my heated blankets now.

I input the order to seal the doors, speaking into the intercom,
"OK, Trey. Doors are sealing, double-check that for me before I put in
the order for venting procedure 132?"

"Puck it;' I hear his voice say. "Checking now.... OK, it says
here on my data pad you're good. Proceed with the venting."

"OK;' I drag the sealing order off the screen and pull up the
order for venting, pressing enter. "OK, venting no-"

"NO! KANEDA, THE DOORS ARE REOPENING!

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