Congratulations Asteroid Kid!

“This is a terrible idea,” your commander’s voice will crackle at you through the headset.

“You are!” you’ll shout back, even though your microphone will be turned off at this point.

You’ll flash back to all of those moments during your training where you thought about giving up, where you didn’t think you’d make it here. Then you’ll remember where you are: with a lasso tied to the surface of an asteroid, your feet planted on it, swinging a cowboy hat around as it begins re-entry. Everything you’ve done has all been to this end.

“Yee-haw!” you’ll shout as it starts getting warmer around you from the friction of entering the atmosphere.

“Shit!” you’ll shout as your suit begins to melt away.

You’ll die horribly a few seconds later, every ounce of your body burned away, but in the future you’ll be held up as a legend to other astronauts, an example of the dangers of chasing your dreams, but a handful of less-bright students will hold you up as a legend, as someone who never took no for an answer and never stopped dreaming. They’ll think you’re still out there somewhere, riding another asteroid, but the reality will be that you aren’t, of course, that you’re dead and that your body was burned so horribly that it’ll never appear again, which is just as good as being immortal if you think about it.

Congratulations Asteroid Kid!