Armstrong in bed
Armstrong looked at her lying beside him, asleep. She was grainy in the moonlight, a black and white photograph magnified a thousand times for forensic examination, revealing a pyramid on Mars, a face on the moon.

… He rubbed her flank, distant. She did not stir. The night smoothed the edges. His dull hands maintained the illusion — they lacked the sensitivity of finer instrumentation. A sand dune glowing black in the desert night, the round curves denying the reality of grit in the eye.

Gently brushing, he removed the work of millennia of slow geology, rubbing his hands softly over the hills of her until the powder was evenly distributed, the illusion gone, the grains spread back into the Sea of Tranquility. He thought of his claw reaching out, grappling, sealing away samples of the dust of her. There would be no repercussions, no consequences. Nothing matters in space.

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