Twenty-one days, twenty-three hours, three minutes, eleven seconds, and now 27 milliseconds. That’s how long I’ve been adrift. It was almost twenty-two days ago, nearly one half of a lunar cycle, that I had last seen another human being.
I had been forced aboard the Q-class Xernon. We were bound for Arrakis (named such in honor of Frank Herbert) from Nodd, and I had protested the board’s decision to add me to the crew, which was short a member; I had no other choice. A trip to Arrakis from Nodd meant at least one hundred and ninety-seven days in stasis. A long and practically undefended sleep through a vast, unexplored, and endless black where anything could happen. I was not a fan of stasis. While the crew took what they considered the easy way, sleeping it all out in one go, I did not. I had Hank, our AI portion of the crew, modify my sleep cycle so I would wake up every other week for a day or so. The dreamless sleep in stasis terrified me.
I liked Hank. He was methodical, which made him a worthy adversary in a game of wits, but, being a modern model and programmed with compassion and humor, made him what I considered a friend. While the crew was in stasis, I updated his program and downloaded a .exe file that installed the dynamics for dark humor. We were very wry together.
“Hank.” I would say, “What’re the numbers, you figure, that we actually make it to Arrakis and some unnameable terror from the dark reaches of space doesn’t kill us all first?”
He would ‘think’ for a while, the green ambient lights that activated if the crew is in stasis would flicker softly. “Well,” Hank didn’t have a mouth, he spoke via a full-ship intercom, but his voice grinned for him, “assuming some AI doesn’t kill everybody and jettison their bodies into space, the numbers run at eighty-eight percent.”
“Only eighty-eight?”
“That’s right.”
“Motherfucker.”
Every time Hank would wake me, I would cook what was ostensibly steak and eggs, prescrambled and vacuum sealed, just like momma makes it. Before I even ate, though, I would check on the crew. It filled me with an unnameable feeling, watching as the crew slept naked, suspended in fetal jelly, preserved for what could be all of eternity. It was a museum for people who are both alive and dead. Schrödinger’s people. Thinking, now, of the crew, I wonder if they know what has happened.
Way out in the depths of Space, only stray signals occupied the air, so before we left, I had Hank preload as many shows as he could allow. One of the other crew, I forget who, also had an Adult Content package he had saved from another mission. The TV wasn’t really my thing, however, and I spent most of my time on the bridge.
A lot of people think that Outer Space looks just like it does in the pictures and in the movies. It doesn’t. Sure, Space indeed has nebulae and gorgeous wavy clouds of gas and other such phenomena, but none of that is actually visible. Most of them are lights in wavelengths we can’t see or are too spread out and dissipated for us to see. That, and the fact that most of the gases making up nebulae are toxic, and exist in a vacuum.
People also think that Space is full of stuff, scattered stars, full of planets, full of asteroids, full of whatever. They don’t call it Space for nothing. The dark outside the windows are stippled with uncountable stars and other glowing things, but it’s mostly just dark. No one really knows what’s out there. No one goes to any of those stars, and honestly, no one ever will, not in his or even his children’s lifetime. It reminded me of a Ray Bradbury story about this man who chased the Messiah all over Outer Space. I don’t think he ever succeeded.
Another thing that got to me was the isolation. The silence. A lack that isn’t so much quiet as it is loud. The kind of silence that roars over all other noise and drowns out your thoughts in panic and annoyance. That’s the kind of silence that makes people go fucking mad in Space. Another good reason for stasis, I supposed.
When I was with the crew, there wAS hope and warmth and even a sense of purpose, there was no such thing as silence. Even with the others locked in stasis, there was a hum. Or even the faint ghosts of classical music that Hank played. Come to think of it, I wonder if Hank did that so the silence wouldn’t settle in. He’s smart like that.
None of that matters now. I’m stuck in a box that’s barely bigger than those forty-foot Maersk craters we used to transport. I’m trapped in a fancy coffin, whirling through empty Space at breakneck speeds with slowly dying warmth, quickly diminishing sustenance, and now, minimal power.
Twenty… two days ago, Hank woke me early with an unsettling message. There was a trajectory siren blaring from the bridge. The Xernon was off-course by a staggering three degrees. We were bound for a cloud of debris, and the Xernon’s autopilot maneuvered through it as best as it could. There was no way to avoid a collision. All I had to do was recalibrate the NavSystem, and we’d be back on course, not without sustaining some damage, though. The problem was, to recalibrate, I needed another crew member. That meant I had to take one of them out of stasis. The ship was going too fast, and the reverse thruster would waste fuel that we needed to land in Arrakis. I could attempt to take one of them out of stasis, but regardless, that wouldn’t leave us enough time to recalibrate. I couldn’t go out alone, Hank’s programming forbade it.
Hank should have woken me up much sooner. Somewhere in his program, something went wrong, and the alarm was deprioritized. Not even ten minutes after emerging from stasis, the proximity warning was sounding throughout the ship. I remember feeling strangely calm. Awful nausea from exiting stasis wasn’t something I could deal with later, so I forced myself out of the chamber, falling to the floor and vomiting. I had to get up.
I realized I couldn’t take the crew out of stasis, it would take too long. Newer, more high-class vessels such as the Z-class Tetheron had stasis tubes that didn’t have a recumbent phase where one was inactive. If I rushed the recumbent period, I risked traumatizing or even killing my fellow crewmates. I wouldn’t risk it.
“Hank,” I had said, “Put the stasis tubes on auxiliary power and route them through an escape pod. Give them provisions and a filtration system. Activate their auxiliary life support and get them out of here, and Hank?”
“Yes, sir?” He hummed.
“Brace for catastrophic hull damage. If the rapid depressurization doesn’t turn them inside out, the pod should maintain oxygen levels and gravity long enough for a rescue. Send a beacon to Nodd and let them know our status. Prep for the bipartisan radio silence.”
“Yes, sir. Sending a beacon now. Collision in T minus four minutes. Moving the crew now, status: in stasis. Should I set the stasis machines to Deep Dream?”
“Yes, hurry, Hank, we haven’t much time.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was no sound. No warning. Nothing. In Space, even if I had seen the cloud of debris parting, revealing the particle cannon, I wouldn’t have heard it fire. There’s no sound in Outer Space. I think now that it had to have been a leftover revenge mechanism, machines designed to attack commercial and military ships once the ruling civilization falls. That is the only explanation I have. Arrakis had been controlled by a sophisticated culture long before we had arrived. There was an unknown conflict, and it decimated civilizations. They were long dead, leaving in their wake a series of death traps whose only function was to search and destroy.
There was a brief moment of calm that occurs, I think, naturally before an event of great destruction. I, having rushed to the deck, clutching my stomach, fell through the automatic doors. I rushed to assess our situation when the light from the cannon began to fill the room with an orange glow. I stood on the bridge, all sound drowned out by the thumping of my heart in my ears. I watched as even from far away, as the machinery began glowing, superheating, the weapon charging. I was looking into the eye of my destroyer. All I felt was sympathy. This machine was no Hank. It was not capable of cognition; it could make no executive decisions. It did was it was programmed to, scything down anything and anyone who got too close. Even if somehow it’s makers returned, seeking their lost home, they too, would be devoured by this interstellar beast. It knew neither love nor companionship. It was alone; doomed to maintain a preordained function. It looked right at me as it discharged.
The blast did more damage than I anticipated. The ship shook with the force of the blow, throwing me from the bridge. Monitors crackling and electricity sizzling. The blast lanced the vessel nearly into two halves. Hank was blaring something over the intercom, but I couldn’t hear it. I was too busy watching the hall.
There was a stasis tube Hank hadn’t been able to move yet. Inside was a Noddian man who accompanied us as a gunman. The stasis tube had cracked from the explosion. I took cautious steps forward as the ship crumbled and bounced around me. I had to be careful. I was only a few yards away, but Hank was yelling how the pressure would not hold.
The door slid shut right as I got to the threshold. I blinked at the time, not understanding what had happened. Hank’s voice was blaring on the intercom. The cabin, thankfully not the bridge or the hall, had depressurized. The glass tube ruptured, and the Noddian was exposed to the perfect vacuum, and I was forced back into the bridge.
It’s a terrible, curious thing. I watched as his limp body floated there for a second. Nothing seemed to be happening, but I knew plenty well what was occurring under his skin. Ebullism set in with ferocity as the ambient pressure dropped to nothing. Bubbles developed in his blood and tissues, causing excruciating pain. The temperatures surged to the negatives, and his bowels flash froze in his body. I could tell he was awake because he squirmed, trying to find the air that did not exist. His flesh turned black and blue, and purple as anoxia deprived his tissues of oxygen. He opened his mouth, and a fountain of blood welled forth. He was twitching and fighting it, only making it worse. He coughed, and rivers of blood oozed from his nose and mouth. His eyes shot wide open as his circulatory system failed and, after flaccid paralysis, went into shock. He went still. I didn’t move.
Hank’s voice broke through the terror. I had to get into a BACH suit to get to the capsule. I looked out the window, and my heart sank. The particle cannon was charging up again.
“Hank!” I had yelled.
“Sir.”
“Deploy the pods! There are no more survivors. Override the lock on all the vacuum doors. We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
“Sir, there is data that must be preserved and-”
“Fuck the goddamn data! We have to leave right the fuck now!”
“Sir-”
“Fucking NOW! That’s an order, Hank! Emergency Override XGG981.”
“Executed, sir.”
That was twenty-two days ago. I find it funny now, that it was indeed, some robot, who might have just killed everyone. There’s no more auxiliary power in my pod, so I’ve been using the solar panels to charge the minute thrusters. Hank says that on the course we are on now, we will be sucked into the gravity of a planet called earth, at which point I will most likely burn up in the atmosphere. Hank is going offline now. He needs to conserve energy. I wonder if there is life on earth. If he survived both the extreme temperatures of entry and the impact, who or what would be there? It looks beautiful from the pictures Hank can pull up. So serene and peaceful. It seems a little like paradise. It’s a shame there’s not much more information on it. I can see it, just a tiny speck in my window, coming closer as we drift through Space. Earth. What a lovely name for a little blue planet.
It was a humid summer night in Deepcreek. The denizens of the small town in the middle of nowhere were nestled softly in a deep slumber. Fields of tall grass slosh and sway like an ocean surrounding the sleeping town. All for one, that was. A man with was standing in the crisp night air, his bare feet feeling the cold cobblestone of a patio that was not his. Blood was seeping from a deep cut on his left shoulder; it covered his hands and forearms. A cigarette smoldered loosely between his lips as he paused mid-inhale. That’s when he saw it and could sense that now, at this very same moment, a thousand pairs of eyes burned in awe with him at the sudden light. A great starry angel scarred the night sky with a streak of blazing white that sliced through the blackness, illuminating all the night sky for a glorious moment. Lo! The town was now abuzz. The town was anxiously waiting.236Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV7noe1t2Ld
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