A Voice in the Static

The splice holds. You cup the headset to your ear with fingers that no longer feel like fingers, and through the wet hiss of the carrier wave you hear breathing. Then words. Your words.

"This is Vostok-9, do you copy, over." A pause of exactly half a second. Then the same sentence, in your voice, in your cadence, with the small catch you make on the word copy because your throat is raw from the dry air.

You try a different phrase. "Identify yourself." The half-second yawns open like a crevasse, and then it comes back: Identify yourself. Not an echo. An answer. Patient. Curious. As if something on the other end is learning the shape of your mouth.

Ninety seconds. The splice will not hold forever. Neither, you suspect, will you.