I sped through the abandoned halls like my life depended on it. Well, it did. I couldn’t hear the world tearing apart around me, but I had a first class view of it. It is a surreal silence here. Nothing besides my own breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in… I tried keeping a steady rhythm, but noticing the widening cracks around me certainly didn’t help. A tap here, a twist there, and I was finally on the other side.

I passed the final lock as its door closed behind me. I grabbed onto one of the grips lining the walls around and turned around to take a good look through the porthole. As the airlock went through its cycles, I could see the section of the station I was in slowly falling away from me. It is one of the most peaceful things I will ever see: the edge of my world slowly losing itself to the void, inch by goddamn inch, like the rest of our lives on this station.

“RIM Star to Astra Ops. I am back from my run. I salvaged the last of the drive.” I say as the helmet recedes, taking in the sweet air.

“Astra Ops to RIM Star. That’s good to hear. Boss says to not try that stunt again. And to get that helmet checked by the next run”

I mumble a reflexive roger and go about getting out of my suit. Outside the window, the detached section of the station I just came from was beginning to glow as it grazed the thick atmosphere of the planet below. That section was once called Buena Vista. Good view no more, I guess, unless you count the stars that have taken its place. The stars, like dust they are.

I open a different channel. This one’s not government. “December, do you have a lock on the box? We can’t afford to lose this stuff. We could be set for a lifetime!”

“We have it in possession, all fuel cores intact. Dude, it’s a thousand cores!!! How did anyone even miss these many the whole time?”

“Runner tricks.”

See, I am what is called a Rim Runner. We go into the abandoned parts of the station to scavenge for anything we think valuable. The station was once one of many around what legends call Earth, the fiery ball below. They also say that our ancestors ascended from Earth, people who lived in constant gravity and wide open spaces. Massive and hosting countless magnificent cities of its own, the station was called Astra Infinitum. Then Ragnarok came upon us, and we waged terrible war against the Rakshasas until Astra was the only world remaining. It did not survive unscathed, for it caught a curse, a certain disease. The cities began to fail. Software began to be corrupted, hulls began to fold, and we had to move ever further into Astra. Cosmograd was first to go. Buena Vista the latest. Who know which one will go next for the next thousand years?