"Outerspace"

By: Ria Ramos

Another rocket ship soared out of the planet again. I gazed upon it in my spaceship and pondered about how Earth is like now. Everyone was leaving the Earth. They were all journeying through the galaxies with their rocket cars or ships. My team captain asked me earlier to bring up the typewriter and type about my happiness. I was listening to Girl by The Beatles and when I came to think about it, I was actually unsure of what I really wanted to be happy. The time I felt overjoyed was maybe when I had my first love. It was mixed with puppy love and true romantic love. I was so sure of myself when i was talked with that person. My science teacher once said to me, “Romantic love is when the chemicals in your brain kick in and you feel an emotional high, exhilaration, passion, and elation when you and your lover are together.” I was a kid that time and felt disgusted, I told myself I wouldn’t fall in love.

I met Luis Benedicto in studying to be an astronaut. I started to type in the typewriter making the click-clack sound. When he introduced himself to the whole class, I asked my friend, “Do you know that Benet guy?” She couldn’t stop laughing and told me that his name was actually Bene. I was seated in front of him. I made an effort to turn my back around just to talk to him. He always told me jokes and he’d just keep trying to make me laugh. He asked me, “What kind of shoes do ninjas wear?” and he said, “Sneakers.” He became my closest guy friend in class at the same time I developed feelings for him. I kept it as a secret and saw him as my pal. One day, my friends asked me what was my favorite color, I said it was cherry red. My friends giggled and rushed to Bene and I heard him say that he doesn't have the color red. He sighed and he seemed so frustrated. Hours later, the professor dismissed the class and my friend dragged me to go outside. When I went outside, I saw Bene holding a blue plane for our project in class. He gave it to me and immediately ran away. Inside the blue plane, there was a doll holding a letter and the doll said, “Bombs away!” I opened the letter, it was all doodles on the top, on the bottom it said that he likes me. The letter said, “I like like you.” I laughed and became lighthearted. I couldn’t wait to tell him also that I felt the same. The next day, the whole class was training in the gimbal rig to learn how to recover if the space capsule spun out of control, every person had to reconnect the wires orderly to fix the space capsule. It was Bene’s turn, I told him good luck. At first he was getting really dizzy in the test and couldn’t focus at all. I was looking at him and shouted, “I like you also!” He looked at me smiling and I told him to continue the test. He looked at the gimbal rig and started to reconnect the wires. 

When his test was done, we did a highfive and we both blushed and felt delighted. I got an alarming sound from the space ship and I stopped typing. there was an announcement to deliver a package to the medical room. I got a package saying, “vaccination” and placed it in the vacuum mailbox. Back to my story time, time came that they had to recruit new people to go to missions in space. The JPGR Space Company asked me to be a recruit of theirs. I needed the money to support my mom and dad so I immediately said yes. I told this to Bene, he became depressed because he wanted me to be safe. Ever since the NASA accident, when they sent 44 people on a special mission outer space, unfortunately they died and their ships were never found. I told him I had to do it for my parents. He didn’t say a word after that. “5, 4, 3, 2,“ the people started the countdown to the rocket ship’s lift-off, my very first adventure out of the planet and I was frightened. On the last second, everything became in a slowmotion. The rocket made a roaring sound during the take off. I held my seat as tight as I could. My first stop was the moon, I was so cheerful when I landed my foot on the surface of the moon. On one spot which had a little crater that I admired I wrote, “The moon always reminded me of you, a tiny brightness in the darkness of the night.” 

My teammate caught it on her video which would be sent back to Earth in a few minutes. I told my teammate that she should delete that immediately. She refused and spent the whole time there chasing my teammate for the video. My team captain told us to get back to our station. My teammate quickly broadcasted the video in the rocket. She called me with an irritating sound. I came to the ship and covered her mouth to be quiet. She pointed at the television. There I saw Bene being interviewed by a news reporter. He was holding a poster saying, “Take care always and I hope you’d come back soon Ria!” While he was being interviewed, one of my colleagues interrupted and said, “He’s actually asking you to be his girlfriend!” Bene shooed my colleague saying not to butt in to the interview. I chuckled and suddenly it was interrupted by a breaking news, it was the one my teammate uploaded. I got embarrassed and at the same time was joyful. When I came back from the mission after a whole year, I saw Bene waiting in the station, holding balloons and a Beatles vinyl record which I’ve been bugging him to listen to. I spent the next day as my first date in the cinemas in ATC. Bene and I watched Frozen. I think I was actually in love with him. I read from a dictionary a definition of love which is an intense feeling of deep affection. I realized the meaning of several love quotes sung by The Beatles. 

One quote I’d take note was from John Lennon himself, “It matters not who you love, where you love or how you love, it matters only that you love.” I had an idea what love was, it was like a sort of attachment. I spent the next years with him. It was 12 AM on June 18, 2020, my 20th birthday. I received a call from JPGR Space Company. The whole world was in a disaster, we ran out of oil and it increased the demands of astronauts to discover more oil in the other planets. Bene was recruited by 001 Corps, we didn’t see each other for 5 years. Then on March 16, 2025, NASA brought back the life of the world again, several Koreans discovered a planet which offered more resources than the Earth could ever have. They called the planet “Walrus”. With the good news, all the astronauts were able to go home. When I went out of my rocket ship, I saw Bene. He held my hand and brought me inside the elevator. He put his knee down and said, “Will you marry me?” and then the elevator door opened and everyone was cheering saying congratulations. Bene shouted, “She didn’t even say anything yet!” Everyone became breath then I took a breath and said yes. I wasn’t nervous at all with the whole situation. I was happy that I said yes to him. We first told our parents about our engagement. 

Both of our parents approved of the marriage and offered to help with the planning. Bene’s mother taught me that I also have to be ready in my faith to be able to receive the sacramentWe had to plan the weddings and everything. My parents scheduled the initial interview. In the interview, we talked to the priest and the priest talked about how important marriage is. The priest told us, “Husbands and wives share a self-giving, love-giving and life-giving relationship with their spouse and are committed to helping their spouse grow to human and Christian maturity. They seek to form a family home, and are together the first teachers of their children in Christian faith and values.” We planned that the wedding would take place in the Mary Help of Christians Church. We completed our premarital inventory, it reflected our attitudes, we also had a wedding rehearsal. Nine months passed and I was inside my room wearing this lengthy gown in a shade of pearls. I wore my mom’s favorite silver necklace which she also wore on her marriage. I took a deep breath and looked at myself in the mirror. All of the flower girls, bridesmaids kept asking me if I was excited. I smiled and said that we should leave already. 

I was entering the Church and walking down the aisle, everyone was looking at me and I looked at Bene. He was surprised with my gown. I felt so lucky. I heard the liturgy of the word and sang merrily. I couldn’t describe what I was feeling. In the rite of marriage, the priest said the words “To have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death.” and we both answered, “I do.” After that, like any other mass we had the eucharist and the mass ended. We went to BGC for our reception, my family was there and Bene’s family also. I looked at the whole place, thinking that this could be the best part of my life yest. After the reception, the first thing we did was that we went to our own apartment and listened to our favorite music by The Beatles, The Queen, Nirvana and Led Zeppelin. We danced, sung, hummed and ate with it. Two years later, the world needed help again. After the discovery of the new planet, “Walrus” the planet turned into a tremendous gas planet. The scientists tried to investigate what was the cause of it. The space companies dragged Bene and I to go on a mission to visit the planet Walrus. 

When we got there, we heard a drilling sound and all of a sudden the planet’s craters started exploding with lava. Bene got separated from me. I couldn’t find him at all with all the steaming smoke. I shouted his name over and over but no response. My team captain called my radio telling me it was time to go. I told him that I needed to find Bene, and the team captain said that he was in the rocket ship already. I looked around and couldn’t see a glimpse of the rocket ship. All I saw was the color red. I fell down and my radio went to the crater and got destroyed. I didn't know what to do so I ran as fast as I could. A crater right below me exploded. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. I sat down beside a rock, I had no legs. I wrote in the crater, “The moon always reminded me of you, a tiny brightness in the darkness of the night.” I closed my eyes thinking that I would be brought back to the time I first wrote that. I opened my eyes to see a tiny light. I was surrounded by my whole time saying what would they do to me. I saw Bene and he lied down next to me, he held my hand then I felt a distressing and pain in my lower body. He heard me tearing up. He leaned to me saying that everything was going to be ok. I asked him if he read the thing I wrote beside myself and he said he would always remember those words. I closed my eyes and when I opened them we were in a space shuttle and I was in a wheelchair. We weren’t able to return to Earth and everyone was going out of Earth. Bene was the one who’d always push my wheelchair. He changed his job. 

He always came home with something to give me. I always waited for him to go back home, I waited outside of the house when it was the time he was dismissed from his job. I was in the bottom part of the paper I was typing on and Bene opened the door. He gave me flowers and saw the whole paper I was typing on. He smiled and I hugged him. I told him that I’m glad I chose him as my moon. Another person knocked on the door and Bene opened the door. Two kids went inside, the girl was named Bea and the boy was named Lui. A married life can be tough for everyone, it would be a contented life with lots of bumps but in the end it will be ok. My ideal married life would be my parents, I always wanted a married life like theirs. My dad is a pilot while my mom was a housewife. He flies everywhere and stays home once a month for a week. My mom is always loyal to my dad, she would always wait for him to come back. She’d stay awake until 12 am just to fetch my dad from his flight. My dad would never stop messaging my mom online just to say that he loves her. Even though they always fight, my dad would always say sorry. They were the real definition of happy and romantic love.