Exploring Titan

~8~

It took about 8 solid hours to get all my braids done, but I was pulling it all back and putting it up in a high ponytail with the hair band I'd stuck in my mouth. I'd finished just in time for front-row seats to the maelstrom.

"Looks like this one is gonna go almost all the way down boys!" I boasted to the chat.

I stood at the edge of the door, staring down outside my ship as it began to hover over the water as waves upon waves continued to sink down below and collapse in on itself.

It was honestly so fascinating.

"Are you getting all this Carol!?" I yelled over the loud whir of my ship's engines. Two ears pressed against my ear device.

"In 4k, bestie." Carol responded. "It would've been 8 if you weren't so cheap." She snidely adds at the end.

I roll my eyes.

"The human eye can barely perceive a difference between 2k and 4k. Going all the way up to 8k is pretentious." Yes, I'd drawn my line in the sand a long time ago, and I've already made peace with the fact that this is the hill I'm choosing to die on.

"Oh boy, here we go." Carol braced herself.

And suddenly, all my chat got consumed in the argument. Even verified accounts of TV and electronic companies were jumping into the fray, and I didn't hesitate to call them out on their bullshit with trying to capitalize on the situation.

No one manipulates my audience into doing what they want except me!!

The ship jiggles a bit as one of its hydro tubes hadn't retracted into the ship completely and was getting picked up into the high speeds of the water's swirls.

"Whoa!" Good thing I held the door's side rails in a pseudo-death grip. Otherwise, I would've tripped and fallen to my certain death.

"CAREFUL! CHRIST ALMIGHTY!!!" The small image of Carol playing back to me in my visor clutched her chest with a vice-like grip and began breathing heavily.

I couldn't help but cackle at her.

She wore a bright red jumper sweater, the ugly kind you'd get from a deceased grandmother and refused to throw out. But Carol's looked new and 5 sizes too big.

She was swimming in it and her two-toned auburn-caramel hair was tied up in a messy bun.

Her thin face and body frame, coupled with chubby cheeks, was a stark contrast to her brittle personality.

She looked like an adorable humanized chipmunk, but had the personality of a drunken sailor in a constant bad mood.

"I guess one of the hydro tubes must've malfunctioned. I made extra sure to charge up the ship last night so no more shenaniganary occurred." I informed her to calm her down. "It looks like most of it is out of the water as we gain altitude. I wanna take a look to make sure but I'm guessing some of you will have heart attacks."

"Mel, I swear to God Almighty, don't you fucking dare-aaahhhh, AAAAHHHH!!!"

I swung down to the bottom of the ship like they were gym school monkey bars, and proceed to climb through and support myself above a 200-foot -and climbing- drop.

[SHE'S FUCKING TARZAN BITCH!!!]

[My grandma ran out of the room in FEAR!]

[The sheer 💫confidence💫 you have in not falling is astounding, Mel.]

"You guys need to relax. I always got an A in climbing Monkey Bars. And my upper body strength is INSANE!" I tried to reassure chat.

I climb over to the problem area, peel open a side panel and manually input the command code sequence for the tube to retract into the ship, and climb back to the entrance.

I pull myself back up onto the ship door and sit on the edge.

"See? That wasn't that bad!" I tease.

[FUCK you!]

"Go to hell!" Carol climbed out from her hiding spot under the desk and pinned me with the most lethal of glares as tears rimmed the edge of her eyes.

What a glorious sight.

"You are downright ADORABLE when you cry."

"You are SADISTIC!!!"

"Trapping myself on a space rock-ocean as the sole person with no other form of human contact wasn't the first hint for you?"

As Carol began to hurl insults at me, I let my legs dangle off the edge of the ship door. I started to find it more difficult to breathe as the ship began to break through the first layer of Titan's atmosphere.

I cup my plastic oxygen mask around my nose and mouth and breath in deeply as I stared down at the ginormous maelstrom that looked like a dot the size of my feet.

The ship nestles itself within the acidic clouds, and I feel the pores of my skin begin to burn.

Time to go inside.

I bring my knee in closer to me onto the floor and push myself up.

But then I pause.

"AND FURTHERMORE-"

"Did you see that?" I cut Carol off, barely paying attention to her ramblings.

"Erh-!?" The words died in her throat as she looked at me, then looked to her other screen to look at what I was seeing as well.

Her brows frown in concentration.

"Are you sure one of your tacky badly done braids didn't come loose? Cause I see nothing."

Some of my braids had come loose from my ponytail, but I confirmed to myself they definitely weren't it as I tuck them back.

"Unlike your hair, mine doesn't look like an alien lifeform. So no, it wasn't my hair."

[The both of y'all are a LETHAL combination. I want more.]

[How are you two even friends?]

[^ They aren't. Mel and Carol were forced to work together. You can barely even classify them as coworkers.]

[I know it's kinda wrong to do so...but am I the only one that ships them???]

[^ BUT MEL IS STRAIGHT!?!?]

[Uhm, she isn't? She's confirmed Bi, and you can't take that away from us 🤼]

[Mel is the most chaotic bisexual I've ever seen in my life. The fact that ANYONE could think she's straight is asinine.]

[While y'all fight over Mel's sexuality, we'll be chilling over here in Carol's confirmed Lesbian status ✌🏽]

[Just because she had a wife doesn't stop or make it any less possible for her to be bi as well.]

"There's someone down there," I announce. Cutting through everything with a sharp ring.

I'd focused my eyes down on a singular spot right next to the swirling water, and I definitely saw something. I enhanced it with my visors but even at full magnification, the vast blackness of the water could only allow me to see so much.

Nothing but heavily pixelated garbage.

If I'd even seen anything at all... A small doubtful part of my brain chimes in to sow the seeds of doubt early on.

"I'm gonna go check it out," I say definitively as I straighten up.

I run to the other end of my ship, and make a break for the door to jump down with a running start.