He remembered it as if it were yesterday
Because nothing had changed since that then
If one could still even measure such a thing as ‘then'
In a world without day or night
Communications disabled,
Listening to the silence
And the distant breaks of sound
Those concealed specters of the once composed
Whose disjointed montage of challenge and despair
Echoes in this fluidic chasm of desolation
A gloomy insight into the inner workings of
What he knew now to be
A single celled beast of enormous proportion
And he was alone in the pod
Moving sluggishly through this murky soup,
Steadily losing battery power and eventually his life support
Soon the amoeba would rob him of his protective shell,
Eventually dissolving the hull and exposing him
To its caustic protoplasm
The beacons had beckoned distress
And the Federation acted without prudent hesitation
He had suited up and left without delay
And now he would be assimilated
Into what appears to be the atmosphere of a planet
Or the belly of a beast
Fading away so ingloriously,
A dedicated Federation astronaut scientist pioneer of space
Exploring new worlds for the advancement of consciousness
Only to be hunted, eaten and digested on an uncharted planet
By the most primitive form of life in the universe