Immuaels Kant's antinomies of space and time; you find yourself here now but you want to be there

Immuauel Kant's antinomies of space and time; you find yourself here now but you want to be there

fiction
edward w pritchard

After a lot of soul searching I try not to think about it anymore. My life is what it is and it's all I have.

I work now in C section on a large mineral transport in space over loaded with product heading home to Earth a few light years out in deep space. I am no scientist just a grunt; I separate valuable mineral  product from chaff and robotic technicians handle the rest including steering the ship back to earth.

In my spare time if I am not sleeping I play keno with fifteen other mineral technicians  who also work in C section to try to strike it rich by hitting 20 of twenty numbers. The odds are astronomical of picking the right twenty numbers but the rewards are fabulous and  in addition to becoming an instant billionaire a special spaceship gets you back to earth very quickly.

Originally we had two hundred technicians in our Keno games that I participate in but by attrition we are now down to fifteen including me. For you see each week after scoring one's success at per cent of goal achieved at reaching a satisfactory progress toward hitting the dream hit of twenty numbers at Keno, one person, the one with the lowest success rate in our C section is removed from the team and the robotic workers who pilot the ship incinerate the poor soul for fuel to help power the spaceship back Home.

That's about it really. One of the scientists here on the spaceship says it just another one of the philosopher Immanuel Kant's antinomies; you find yourself here now and you want to be there. Of course with this space time stuff everyone knows that the longer you stay in space, here on the ship the less you age relative to someone back there on Earth. So in my case for me who wants to be rejoined with someone back there on Earth once I make good and strike it very very rich they will be extremely old not like I remember them or maybe no longer conscious even at all.

Sometimes when I am laying on my bunk before I go to sleep the inequity of it all seems a bit absurd. But just before I go to sleep, after a lot of soul searching, I try not to think about it anymore; my life is what it is and it's all I have.