No Particular Night or Morning (Bradbury)
Two men, Hitchcock and Clemens, were aboard a spaceship, billions of miles away from Earth.
Hitchcock expressed his disbelief in anything he couldn't see, hear, or touch. He argued that when he couldn't see something, it ceased to exist for him.
I don’t believe in anything I can’t see or hear or touch. I can’t see Earth, so why should I believe in it? It’s safer this way, not to believe.
Clemens tried to convince him otherwise, but Hitchcock remained adamant. He believed that only the present moment and his own existence were real.
One day, a meteor hit their spaceship, causing a brief loss of air before the damage was repaired. Hitchcock was deeply affected by this incident, believing that the meteor had specifically targeted him. He became unresponsive and was diagnosed with shock. Despite attempts to bring him back to reality, Hitchcock remained in his state of disbelief.
In a brief moment of lucidity, Hitchcock managed to put on a spacesuit and walk out into space, leaving the spaceship behind. His last words, transmitted via his helmet radio, reiterated his belief that nothing existed except for space itself.
Only space. Only the gap.
He denied the existence of his own body, claiming that he was just a part of the vast emptiness of space. Hitchcock was left drifting in space, a million miles behind the spaceship, lost in the nothingness he so firmly believed in.