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enjoy this writing from Janet Kuypers in the cc&d free 2015 PDF file chapbook: Resistance is Futile of Star Trek (never-before performed) poems live 3/20/15 at Chicago’s Chi Fi 2015 convention Click the title or the cover to download the free PDF file chapbook.

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Outer Space and the Sound of Silence

Janet Kuypers
1/18/15 (1/19/15 IST)

The one thing
astronauts talk about
when they speak of outer space
is about the deep blackness of the universe.

That without
our atmosphere giving
the sun particles something to bounce
off of, the vastness of space is an empty void.

But the one thing
they never talk about
when they speak of outer space
is the sounds they hear when they’re out there —

who knows, maybe
they’re too preoccupied
seeing through the universe,
maybe they’re only hearing their heavy breathing

while trapped
in their space suit.
Maybe all they hear is the
motion of their bodies against the sides

of their mini—
atmosphere in this planetary
existence created for each astronaut in their suit.

And sure,
Captain Kirk
or Jean Luc Picard
may not have needed space suits
when commanding the star ship Enterprise

because each ship
was it’s own little planet
with a fully—supported ecosystem
but the question begs itself: how could sound

travel through space?
I mean, I know light does,
how else would we see sunlight
travel through space to get to planet Earth?

But sound,
that’s a whole different
ball game, so to speak, sound waves
travel like light or heat waves, be here’s the catch:

sound travels
by making molecules vibrate.
If there aren’t any molecules in outer
space (or too few to make any difference), sound

can’t travel.
Now, I know it’s all acting,
and I know the whole crew has to
all lean the same way when the ship gets hit.

but the one thing
that the directors want,
and the sound effect guys have to
add in post—production, is to give movie—style

explosions.
And that probably goes over
the top. We’ve suspended reality
with every ship’s gravity, and we even accept

transporters
duplicating any person,
down to every molecule including
their clothes, to magically be re—assembled

somewhere else.
(which only existed
because in the original shows
they didn’t have props for travel, so they

just made up
the “transporting” idea.)
So over the years we’ve been willing
to suspend our beliefs for science fiction,

and I know
some places claim to hear
noises from our sun, but they’re
actually inferring the vibrations within the sun,

which generate sound
so low humans can’t hear it —
that they have to speed the sun’s vibrations
by fourth—two thousand times, so forty days

of vibrations
are converted to five seconds
so that we humans can ascribe
sound to anything outside of our atmosphere.

Because resonances
inside our sun is sound
bouncing through the gases inside
of the sun, not the sun relaying music to our ears.

So okay, Gene
Roddenberry, we get it,
make the mystery of outer space sound
bigger than life by giving us a sense we lose in space.

And Jean Luc Picard,
and you too, James Tiberius Kirk
we’ll thank the Foley artists as well as the actors
for giving us more than science alone ever could.

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