Chapter 1: Astronauts

You look out the floor-to-ceiling windows and see a dead city. The museum has been abandoned for several weeks. Dark hallways remind you of a forest at night. A girl lies under a transmission tower and dreams of mech battles. You solve the torch puzzle and look in the mirror for what feels like the first time.

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Transcript

Chapter 1: Astronauts

Welcome to Planet Radiant

Type “S” to start a new game

>_ 

Begin new game:

You wake up in a dark room on a long wooden table. Above you is a vaulted ceiling with four skylights nestled between exposed joists. A cold, red moon glows with ethereal light.

You rise, stretch, and look around. To the north is a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. To the east is a closet. To the south is a set of wooden doors.

Nothing about this place feels familiar. Nothing about anything feels familiar: your hands, your clothes, your shoes. Your mind is empty. You don’t know who you are or how you got here.

You breathe deep and try not to panic. Maybe exploring will jog your memory.

>_ 

The windows offer a panoramic view of a bleak city skyline. Buildings stand in silhouette against the horizon. Without electric lights flooding the night sky, the stars shine brighter than you’ve ever seen.

You remember stars.

You remember a bathroom in a large suburban house, with white tile and towels on the floor. A skylight above the toilet reveals that same black, glittering void. You feel like you’re peeing in a spaceship.

Your boyfriend walks down the hall to his bedroom. Three weeks ago, after his mom finally relented, you helped paint his room crimson. You loved the clean look of the bare red walls. But now his Nine Inch Nails and Ministry posters are back up, just crooked enough to gnaw at your soul.

A plane flies over the house. You wash your hands in the bathroom sink and reapply your lipstick. In the mirror you see a sixteen-year-old Black girl wearing a black vintage dress, all velvet with lace. Alone, she forgets to hide her cheeriness with a pout. 

She has a beautiful face. But it’s not your face.

This isn’t your memory. But for now, it’s the only one you have.

>_ 

You find a whiteboard in the corner. In the middle of an indecipherable flowchart, you see a short list that reads:

what we can carry

objects vs. books

ask Maxine for Polaroid

>_

You head to the closet and find an assortment of cleaning products, office supplies, and branded merchandise. A pile of tote bags catches your eye, each silkscreened with a drawing of a camcorder and the words:

MUSEUM OF 

CONTEMPORARY

NARRATIVE ART

>_

You sling a bag over your shoulder and take a cleaning cloth, a long-reach butane lighter, and some hand sanitizer. They disappear into the bag’s impossible depths.

>_ 

Sensing there’s nothing left to find in the conference room, you walk through the heavy wooden doors into a windowless hallway. The doors slam shut behind you, and you hear the click of a lock sealing them shut. 

You are in total darkness. Your boyfriend holds your hand and guides you down a vague forest path.

Her boyfriend.

The girl and boy make their way to a footbridge that extends over a shallow creek. They climb over the guardrail and sit, dangling their legs over the edge.

It’s peaceful here at night, away from headlights and streetlamps. Crickets chirp. Animals walk on dead leaves.

“Do you believe in UFOs?” the boy asks.

The girl tries to look meaningfully at the sky but sees only tree branches.

“Ninety-percent of the time they’re just weather balloons, right?”

Her boyfriend chews on that for a spell.

“Okay,” he says. “So even if just ten-percent are real: what are they even doing here? Imagine developing the most sophisticated technology in the universe and then visiting a shopping center and some dude living alone in the desert.”

“Imagine being that bored,” the girl says.

“Oh god, I’m always that bored,” the boy says.

Somewhere, a bat flaps its wings.

>_ 

You grope at the southern wall of the hallway and head west. After a few dozen feet, you stumble through a doorless entranceway and trip over what you think is a chair? You land hard and hear something snap. Thankfully, it wasn’t you.

Maybe you should find some light before you really injure yourself.

>_ 

You dig through your bag for your lighter, pull the trigger, and produce a small flame. It’s not much, but now you can see two feet in front of you.

You stand up safely and inspect your surroundings.

You are in a small break area. On top of a linoleum counter is a Keurig machine and box of coffee pods. In the southeast corner is a circular table. There’s a three-legged chair on its side, with its missing fourth next to it. On the south wall is a framed poster for an exhibition titled Lie Detected: Surveillance Culture in Art & Design. 

Sure enough, you spot a security camera mounted to the ceiling.

To the north is the hallway.

>_ 

You would adore some coffee. But with the power out, the Keurig machine is useless.

The girl likes coffee, too. She likes diner coffee in ceramic mugs with those shelf-stable creamer packs. She likes all-night diners, even though she’s never been in one past 11 PM. She sits in a diner off the highway with her boyfriend, who smokes without knowing yet whether he likes cigarettes. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the waitresses laugh at them, the teen goths in the corner booth.

Candace. The girl’s name is Candace.

Candace draws a spaceship in her sketchbook while her boyfriend, Patrick, talks about making different sounds on his synthesizer. She imagines something like a scallop shell, with rockets at the base and windows running down each ridge.

Later that night, they walk through an empty field beneath the overhead power lines. Patrick squeezes Candace’s hand. Then he lets go and rubs her back. Then he slides his hand down to her waist. Then he quickly withdraws his hand.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” he says.

“No, it’s...” 

Candace trails off. 

Now they’re on their backs under a transmission tower. Candace looks at the latticed metal structure, mesmerized. It stands high like a six-armed mech. She imagines herself in the cockpit, defending Neo-Tokyo from giant monsters.

“Holding hands is okay, right?” Patrick asks.

Skyscrapers fall as the battle rages on. 

How do you explain an absence? How do you tell someone that it’s not him, it’s everyone? That you don’t need touch to feel close?

You can’t worry about collateral damage when the whole world is at stake. 

“Keep asking first,” Candace says.

>_ 

The lighter isn’t cutting it. But you have an idea:

You pick up the broken chair leg and tie the cleaning cloth to the top. Then you douse the cloth with hand sanitizer and set it alight.

The torch illuminates the whole room.

As long as it burns, you can find your way around.

>_ 

You step back into the hallway and head west to a large office area. Lining the walkway on either side are long metal filing cabinets, with reference books and bound journals running across the length of them.

Low cubicles fill the rest of the room. Piles of papers litter each workspace. Action figures and photos of children gather dust on the tiny shelves. You spot a thick disk of mold floating in a half-full mug of coffee. 

No one has been here in several weeks.

>_ 

You push through a glass door to the west and step into a lobby. Directly ahead of you is an elevator labeled with the number 4.

To the south is a railing overlooking a fatal drop to the ground floor.

To the northwest is a stairwell.

The entire north side of the room comprises a grand, open entrance blocked off with velvet rope and brass stanchions. A sign on the wall reads PLANETARIUM.

To the northeast is a pair of restrooms. 

>_ 

Nature calls, apparently. After some hesitation, you head toward the women’s room. 

You walk through the door and into Candace’s memory.

In front of two barely hidden security cameras, a lanky Beetlejuice and a girl wearing a white stormtrooper helmet climb over the cemetery gates. Drunk and laughing, they zigzag toward a mausoleum near a copse of trees. The cemetery is old, and a few gravestones have cracked and toppled over. Candace and Patrick push one across the grass and lean it upright against the mausoleum wall. Now they can reach the edge of the slanted roof.

They hoist themselves up and marvel at the quiet necropolis.

Or at least Patrick does. Candace can’t see through the fogged, tinted visor of her stormtrooper helmet. She struggles to take it off. She bows her head and pulls. She sways and stumbles. She loses her center of gravity.

And then she is weightless. 

She is an astronaut.

Do bodies decompose in space? Candace read somewhere that your skin freezes and your eyeballs explode. She imagines she is an eyeless block of ice drifting through the galaxy until, by some infinitesimal chance, she smashes into the hull of a spaceship and shatters into a million tiny shards.

Only she doesn’t shatter. At least not all of her. Her clavicle cracks when she hits the earth. Pain clouds her senses. She doesn’t hear Patrick shout her name. She doesn’t hear the security guard’s car come down the gravel path toward the trespassing minors. She only hears herself gasp inside that stupid Star Wars helmet. 

And the memory is so vivid that, for an instant, you—the you standing in the fourth floor women’s room—you feel the sharp pain of freshly-snapped bone and double over.

And when the pain passes, you stand upright and look into the bathroom mirror. In the harsh, torchlight glow, you see yourself for what feels like the first time. You see a soft Asian face with almond eyes, thick lips and a broad nose. You see a woman with a strong, ridged brow under her overgrown bangs. You see a broad-shouldered woman with a pronounced Adam’s apple and smooth, lasered cheeks.

You see a real woman.

***

Thank you for listening to Planet Radiant. Words and music by me, Sasha V., logo by Jess Hamman. 

For transcripts, and to learn more about the show, visit planetradiant.love. That’s Planet Radiant dot L.O.V.E. 

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