"How does a young Jewish Man like you end up floating in the vacuum of space towards his atmospheric doom?", Schlomos' mind wondered. I mean it was real obvious how his little slip-up in hitting the BIG RED BUTTON that screamed "Do Not Hit! Do not Hit!" got him into this situation. But really, He shouldn't have been up here, in this void where only satellites dream to dare. I mean it was ridiculous that replacing the crystal lens of the Excalibur array had to be done manually. Oh, it was cheaper! Cheaper? Cheaper. Silly government. Silly government scientists. Fucking Rothschilds. Schlomo cried a bit. "If I was a Rothschild..."

He would've been richer, much richer if he stayed on earth. Photonics was very lucrative for research and he would've been able to remain on earth in a comfortable air-conditioned research lab surrounded by beautiful JAPs. But no, Schlomo thought, I needed to be more important. Schlomo had the urge to bite his fingernails, but unfortunately, he was wearing a stuffy spacesuit. At least he would die looking important.

Schlomo had an inferiority complex. He knew it. He was a part of a people who survived in the face of empires, who saw them rise and fall, they survived the worst and nonetheless were able to go from peasants to peddlers to pioneers to prophets and back again. Edward Teller was one of those guys. I mean he was a crypto-Jew, unlike Schlomo who actually practiced on all the high holidays, but I mean Teller did say all his prayers on the Day of Atonement, so he was Jewish. And scientifically, he was the guy who Schlomo was constantly compared against. "Did you know what Teller was doing at your age?"

So that guy Teller had this great idea: Why don't we go ahead and blow up ICBMs by putting a giant X-ray laser array in space powered by nuclear explosions; Great Idea Teller! And hey? Do we even need a giant explosive blast, We could make it reusable by charging it up through super-heated tessellated titanium. Great Idea DARPA! Only problem: testing melts the X-ray lens and everyone knew military leadership just loved testing things; So they needed to be replaced. And someone had to take a rocket into space to put the new lens in. Someone who knew some engineering and photonics. Someone who wasn't too busy with their head in important research. Someone expendable. It was cheaper than designing an entire autonomous system to install the lens after all!

And so they chose Schlomo, told him he would get a great career going, maybe even greater than ol' Teller. They nagged, nagged away at his worries. Told him he was a great guy, the best guy. And well it worked, it worked and so he took the astronaut course then hooked himself up to a rocket to work on those big nicely-funded Space Lasers! Him, A nice young Jewish guy was going to save the world from those rogue ballistic missiles by going above and beyond in replacing a crystal lens. Yet what does he do? What did he do? He pressed the goddamn big red button that they told him over and over again not to press? God... Who the fuck designs these "things"?... Schlomo sighed. He knew them all back on earth. And now he was beginning to feel the heat as he made his return.

Well... it could be worse. I mean... He could've been holocaust'd.