text: December 11th, 2022 Today’s the day we find out if Orion’s fancy heat shield works. This is the part of the mission that was so dangerous that NASA didn’t want real people aboard Orion. Now we’ve got five. I’m back to being this quantum function, both alive and dead at the same time, just waiting to be observed to determine my state. I decided to write this entry before we re-enter. You’ll know what’s become of me from the news, and this is the moment to end this diary. The more I think about things, the more I feel I’ve been thinking about life wrong. It doesn’t matter what happens next. Good luck, or shitty luck, however those quantum functions resolve, I’m not some particle with either an up-spin or a down-spin waiting to be observed. The Alex Whelm who had shitty luck and didn’t get accepted to astronaut training is the same Alex Whelm who pulled off an impossible intercept and spoke with the President of the United States. What I’ve done are just the details of some combination of opportunity, luck, and means. They’re not who I am. I’m every thought in my head whether that’s from something I watched, something I read, or something that popped into my head and made me laugh at random. I’m the imprint in an old pair of my shoes. I’m a voice. Maybe that voice goes and does great things, maybe that voice goes and does nothing, but it’s the same voice no matter what. I’m the same Alex who realized he could sneak aboard Artemis I and saved Dragon’s crew, but I’m also the same Alex who skipped a VR gaming session and just kept working his job at NASA. Why didn’t things work out with Jess? Because we weren’t right for each other. There was nothing wrong with me, there was nothing wrong with her, we just didn’t fit. What about Sarah? Who knows. Once we’re down on the ground though, and I’ve had a chance to shave, shower, and brush my teeth, I’ll ask her if she’d like to go mountain biking together some time and get my ass kicked. We probably won’t fit either, and that’s ok. But I know enough about myself to know that I’m a person who asks a girl out even when he thinks it’s hopeless. But her saying yes, or no, isn’t something I need to know the answer to in order to be happy or know who I am. There will be a time to ask, and I will. This just isn’t it. Maybe the heatshield fails, maybe we all burn up on re-entry. Or maybe I land and spend the next two months doing endless interviews as the big damn hero. But I’m still just Alex, the same guy who got rejected for his dream job and dumped by his girlfriend. We spend so much time judging ourselves by what we’ve done and how luck turned out, that we fail to see the person under it all. We see celebrities who are only exceptionally lucky, or have an exceptional talent at one thing, and transmute them into omnipotent beings. They’re not, I’m not. So take it from the quantum entangled versions of a guy who both saved the lives of four people stranded in space, who saved the Orion mission from a critical computer glitch; and at the same time from the guy who snuck aboard a ship he had no business being on, and then changed absolutely nothing because that ship burned up on re-entry. Hero, and loser, at the same time, at the same moment, the outcome to be decided by forces outside of my control. None of that stuff matters. That’s why it’s ok that it be decided by a roll of the dice. What matters isn’t how things turn out, what matters is who we are, what we try to do, and how we try to do it. So fate, chance, god, quantum entanglement, whatever you want to call it: do what you must, I’m good. \* Sad the story’s over? Want more? I’m Nathan H. Green a corporate lawyer who left his firm job of 8 years to write. It has been a hell of a journey for me and in the last two years I’ve put out three full length novels, a novella, and Artemis I Has A Stowaway. Follow me on reddit (u/authornathanhgreen) for updates about what comes next and, buried at the bottom of my posts is a free audio drama time travel story. If you want to get really wild, check out one of my books! Woe to the Victor came out last week and is getting amazing reviews. \*\*\* I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen). Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. © 2022 Nathan H.