The little capsule shelters her far out in the dark, hostile, endless space while circling around earth with zero gravity.
Houston doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know where her signal would connect to, until she links into an AM radio wave, probably while being over Chinese territory.
She hears the voice of a man whom she doesn’t understand, nor does he, and of course not the crying baby that must be next to this man.
Out there, in the ultimate loneliness, everything reduces to connect. It happens. When she hears the howl of a dog she’s tuning in perfervidly. Ooooooo, oooooo, oooooo…. all tension is leaving her face.
She is connected. To the howl of a dog who is longing to connect to his pack, somewhere in China hundreds of kilometers down on the earth, where she might never be again.
The howl, essence of craving to belong to someone, to somewhere. The defenseless beauty of admitting this.
Moment of silence and human kindness.