{"id":237,"date":"2011-07-29T15:51:05","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T20:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foreignersview.wordpress.com\/?p=237"},"modified":"2021-08-20T16:56:54","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T21:56:54","slug":"weightless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2011\/07\/29\/weightless\/","title":{"rendered":"Weightless"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer: This is the first piece of fiction I’ve ever written in English, and the first I’ve written at all in five years, so don’t judge me. It’s for \/r\/writingbasics<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not sure how long I’ve been floating in space untethered. The accident may have been a few hours ago, but it seems like days. A small piece of debris, probably from an old commercial satellite, hit the space station. It was too small to be detected by our sensors, but travelling fast enough to cause severe damage. Soon after it hit I could hear my colleagues screaming through the radio, but now it’s just silence. I can no longer see the station either, only the blue of our planet and the black, starry sky.<\/p>\n

Human problems seem so petty from up here. The woman in a business suit worried about some numbers on a screen. The man screaming at the TV screen: “It was goal, it was goal!”. The people fighting over which gods to believe in, or over what piece of land belongs to whom. The Earth still spins, the stars don’t care. From this vantage point\u2014if I didn’t already know\u2014I could have never guessed that the creatures that live down there have built cities, dams, and roads, or waged disastrous wars over who controls them.<\/p>\n

I’m starting to get sleepy. I think of Julie. She probably hasn’t heard of the accident yet. I can almost see her big green eyes, her dark curls, the tiny mole on her right cheek. Maybe she’s at school, doing what she loves. Maybe one of her students just asked a question and her eyes lit up, like they always do when she manages to spark their interest. I remember my parents. I’m glad they won’t have to mourn me like I mourned them. I remember going camping with dad when I was twelve. And that time we fell off the boat and had to swim to shore because we couldn’t flip it back up. And when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer: This is the first piece of fiction I’ve ever written in English, and the first I’ve written at all in five years, so don’t judge me. It’s for \/r\/writingbasics. I’m not sure how long I’ve been floating in space untethered. The accident may have been a few hours ago, but it seems like days. … Continue reading “Weightless”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[36,80,84],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-fiction","tag-short-story","tag-space"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3A68f-3P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":427,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/04\/22\/a-modern-secular-argument-for-the-immortality-of-the-soul\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":0},"title":"A modern, secular argument for the immortality of the soul","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"April 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I had meant to write this post a few weeks ago as an Easter\/Passover\/etc. present for my religious friends, but the first half of this quarter's been pretty crazy. Anyway, here it is, better late than never! We normally associate arguments for the immortality of the soul with the likes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/lf.hatworld.com\/hwl?set=bkgrnd[%23e6e7e8]&set=LN[1],txt[SOUL],txtlen[4],txtfnt[20],txtsz[75],txtclr[%23000000],txtout[0],pos1[C]&load=url[file:dlab\/text_S]&set=LN[2]&call=url[file:dlab\/text_blank]&set=LN[3]&call=url[file:dlab\/text_blank]&call=url[file:dlab\/render_to]&set=fw[400],fh[300],sku[20013623],img[3],cw[308],ch[156],cx[166],cy[130]&call=url[file:dlab\/draw_product]","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":745,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2013\/05\/07\/cultural-appropriation-or-why-cant-i-wear-a-sombrero\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":1},"title":"Cultural Appropriation, or: Why can’t I wear a sombrero?","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"May 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This post was written for\u00a0The Protest. If you're a Northwestern student, you've probably received an email from ASG and Alianza calling for a \"respectful celebration of Cinco de Mayo.\" The letter explained what the date actually means to Mexicans, and among other things, contained the following statement: Unfortunately, instead of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"HA1194350","src":"https:\/\/foreignersview.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/ha1194350.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":275,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2011\/10\/09\/the-classroom\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":2},"title":"The classroom","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"October 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I had a very unsettling dream last night. It seemed oddly poetic, so I thought I'd share it. I was a little child, around seven or eight years old. I walked into a classroom and took a seat in the front row, to the right of the two boys that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fiction"","block_context":{"text":"Fiction","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/fiction\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2011\/02\/06\/first-post\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":3},"title":"First post","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"February 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"So, I have been thinking about starting a blog for a while and kept procrastinating or convincing myself not to, so I've decided to make my predicament my first blog post. That I wouldn't be writing anything original, but I've decided I don't care and that not everything I write\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other"","block_context":{"text":"Other","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/other\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":233,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2011\/08\/28\/do-we-have-free-will\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":4},"title":"Do we have free will?","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"August 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"For context, see part 1 and part 2. It's been a while since I've written, but I thought I should finish this series before I move on. In\u00a0the previous two posts I concluded that all human action is completely deterministic. Psychology, given enough time (and research grants), is reducible\u00a0to neuroscience.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":651,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/10\/18\/daily-columnist-dangerously-shortsighted\/","url_meta":{"origin":237,"position":5},"title":"Daily columnist dangerously shortsighted","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"October 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This piece first appeared on The Protest. You can also read it there, the formatting is way fancier. If you haven't already read the latest installment of Northwestern racism, courtesy of The Daily Northwestern, take a deep breath and read it now. The piece is so awful from beginning to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1089,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions\/1089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}