Staring at one another, there is an innate sense of attraction between the two.  They might as well be from a different species, but there is something that brings the two together, a common thread that pulls them towards each other.  Curiosity.  Intense, meddling curiosity.  They walk to each other, neither entirely sure what their purpose is in approaching the other, but pray that they find something before this multigenerational game of chicken comes to a head.  It was two different brands of curiosity that were felt: the astronaut had a knowledge of the explorer, but only a conceptual knowledge.  She never expected that she would come face-to-face with everything she slept through in Mrs.  King’s world history class.  The tangibility of it all frightened her.  The explorer’s only frame of reference for this encounter was that of basic instinct.  He knows the woman dressed in the puffy white bodysuit was a human, he just wasn’t sure if she was anything else as well.   
This wasn’t what she had expected either.  When she had been told that her mission would eventually lead her to a place where “the concept of time is null”, she pictured a white platform in a jet-black backdrop. Something sterile.  She wasn’t prepared for the absence of, well anything.  No platform.  No Background. No colors.  A true void.  The human body is not built to process absence of this magnitude, and as a result neither of two could look down without their stomachs entering freefall.
When you’re in a place where time and space do not apply, every experience is a first experience.  So as the explorer reached out to touch her arm, emotions ran high.  The astronaut began to cry, as she was intensely unsure of what she should do at this point.  Any questions she was ordered to ask seemed invalid at this point.   She continued to bawl along with the explorer.  He believed that this would be it for him.  He would never see his loved ones again.  His pain wasn’t that of doom or despair, more so red-cheeked embarrassment.  His intrusive desire for knowledge of the unknown had finally caught up to him.  
Her pain was that of guilt.  She knew what she had to do in this purgatory of chronology.  Coming face to face with that who will soon be exploited was not something she was emotionally prepared for.  Her mind raced, a life was to be taken, but there was no telling how many other lives will be gradually dismantled. All for what?  So middle-schoolers could make gay jokes on a field trip?  The depravity of the human museum business had always been in the back of her mind, but now she could no longer ignore it. 
Humanity is the greatest bonding agent, she thought as the explorer knelt down to comfort her.  The cried together in an embrace, neither entirely sure why they were reacting why they were, but reacting nonetheless.  They each reveled in their ability to relate to one another.  She welcomed the moment.
She never was good at multitasking, so she struggled with clumsily dragging his limp body to a pick-up point while fighting back tears and yanking a syringe out of his spine was task that required focus.  Focus that she did not have, as the consequences of her profession barged their way out of her subconscious and into her immediate attention.  Maybe one day she’ll get over the morbid feelings brought of all this, but not today.