For this one: You must convince your captain to let you fly home with the rest of the crew.
OXYGEN (any gender, late teens to late life)
Don't look at me that way. None of us knows how much it's going to hurt. Once my oxygen runs out. Once the pressure inside my suit drops. You don't know, do you, Captain? And you'll never have to know. You and the rest of the crew get to use premium oxygen and cabin pressure all the way home. Thanks to me.
What I'm saying... do I really need to stay behind? I know I volunteered. Captain, I wasn't THINKING. Yes, I care about the rest of the crew surviving... but... but... I started thinking and maybe we could ALL survive, after all. It wouldn't be comfortable... low oxygen, lower pressure. We'd all be kind of banged up by the time we got home. But we'd be alive. We'd recover.
But no... fine... I get it. I'm going to be the hero. But I won't get to enjoy that. Not one bit. While they're showing a bittersweet montage of my career on the news... I'm going to be on a silent planet. My lungs will start sucking at my own flesh, trying to find any remaining air. My skin will start to expand like a balloon, my bones will crunch outwards and you don't know, you DON'T KNOW just how long it'll take before I finally die. I could spend HOURS before...
And you know the strange thing? You never insisted on taking my place. I know how to fly the ship, the rest of the crew know how to maintain it... your duties as a captain are somewhat moot, aren't they? Except that one thing. Dying the hero. It's not too late.
Copyright 2016 by Matt Haynes. If you would like to use this piece, please credit: "Courtesy of Matt Haynes and The Pulp Stage"