I'm sorry, Greg. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye. -- HAL, 2001: A Space Odyssey

I was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey again recently when I had an unexpected chuckle during a particularly dramatic scene in the movie. After killing all but one of the crew, the onboard computer, HAL, decides that further conversation with the astronaut trapped outside of the spacecraft is pointless and informs him of that decision before signing off.

That is pretty much how a woman once dismissed me one December evening over the phone after she decided that she no longer wanted me in her life. No answers to questions asked and no opportunity to ask any further questions. Unlike the astronaut, Dave, I never got back inside. Oh, I managed to get a few text messages from her in the months after she unexpectedly reached out to me via a single text message one Friday evening almost three months after we had last spoke. It was just a single sentence that congratulated me on a new job. But I could never get her to speak with me on the phone or in person, even to say goodbye.

Some people might believe that to be a cold, heartless act (although certainly not as cold and heartless as killing most of your crew and leaving the last crewman trapped outside of the ship to slowly suffocate in his pod). Some of those people might also say that space is cold, but that statement is not exactly scientifically accurate. If you want to understand why that is the case, click on the first link below. If you want to see a clip of the exchange between Dave and HAL, click on the second link below. Heck, just click on both links. 😉🌎🥶🚀

And just for the record, I am not claiming that this woman's decision to stop speaking with me and refusing to see me was motivated by malice or was a deliberate attempt to inflict emotional pain and distress. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it wasn't. When I told my side of what transpired to a third party, that person characterized it as "manipulative" behavior. I tried to be fair and honest in giving my account of the situation, but I couldn't give the woman's side of the story because I didn't have that information. I do know that she hurt me and I believe that she knew that she was hurting me. But I am not comfortable in making an argument so many years after the fact that it was something that it may not have been. That doesn't change the fact that the similarity in situations between my experience and the scene in the movie elicited an amused response in me years later. 😏

www.space.com

How cold is space? Physics behind the temperature of the universe

How cold is space, does it ever drop to absolute zero and what happens if you fall into it without a spacesuit?