I felt them die. They had said these damn keys they bonded us to were just to help control the ship but I felt them die. The entire outer layer of the ship tore itself apart passing through that last solar storm. There was supposed to be nothing between the galaxies! Nothing but emptiness, but they were wrong. Or they lied. It wouldn’t be the first thing they’ve lied about. Storms, creatures bigger than planets, even the Star-Eaters followed us out here! I swear if I get my hands on the ones that sent us out here I’ll kill them myself.
-Log Fragment 34 - Te’chik
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It turned out that pods were like little studio apartments contained in boxes, all stacked up on top of each other with catwalks and metal stairs connecting them. R-38 was full of them, stacked all the way to the ceiling. And considering that it was a converted docking bay like the one they had landed in, the ceiling was pretty damn high. They were greeted at the door by a bored looking man in tiny guard booth like pod, he looked them over, resting his chin on his hand. “Welcome to R-38, resident ID please.”
“I’m actually setting up my friend here as a resident. Her name is Maggie, Doc Tomas sent us.” Theseus set a hand on Maggie’s shoulder, forcing a smile.
“Sure. Place your hand here please. This is a human-only residential sector so we have to scan you.” The man slid a small square of what looked like gelatin across the worn counter to Maggie. She stared at it, slowly reaching out to poke the substance. It felt like gelatin too!
The man behind the counter sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yes, it looks like a dessert. No you can’t eat it. Yes you need to put your whole hand in the goo. No, it won’t hurt you. No I can’t read your mind, I’ve just met a lot of newcomers.”
Maggie blinked, opening her mouth to say something. But she forgot what it was before she could get the words out, and just pressed her hand down into the goo. It oozed around her hand, a cold tingle running through it as it lit up. The man behind the counter glanced at a crystal screen. “Human. Slight genetic drift. Uhm...”
He paused, his eyes darting first to Maggie, then to Theseus. “Doctor Tomas sent you?” For the first time since they got here, he didn’t sound bored. In fact, he sounded a bit nervous.
“Yes.” Theseus leaned on the counter, lowering his voice. “He knows about it. Flame knows about it. Lets make sure word doesn’t get around to a whole bunch of other people, right?”
“R-right. But should she really be here? Maybe someplace more private would be better?”
“What are you so nervous about?” Maggie pulled her hand out of the gelatin stuff, looking at it and wrinkling her nose. She couldn’t see any on her hand, but it felt like there was still some on her.
“Nothing! Nothing. I just- it’s good to be cautious.” The man shrank back slightly, and cleared his throat. “I’ll be right back.”
He slid his chair back as he said it, turning his back to them as he pressed buttons on a second computer in the back of the small room. Theseus rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache and closed his eyes. “I should have known this wouldn’t be easy. Nothing in life is ever easy.”
Maggie reached up and awkwardly patted Theseus on the back. She couldn’t think of what else to do, she didn’t expect to feel sympathy for her kidnapper, but he just looked so stressed.
Theseus looked at her in surprise, eyebrows raising. For a moment, they just stood there awkwardly. Then the man in the booth turned around, looking up at them nervously. “Maggie, you’ve been assigned Pod L-37. Left side of the bay, third floor up, 7th door down. It’s labeled, the door will be coded to your palm. The only ones that can override it are in security or medical so you don’t need to worry about anyone coming in unannounced.”
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“Thank you.” Theseus said in relief before Maggie could talk. “I’ll take her there now.”
“Err... Commander Flame is going to want to talk to you when you’re done, Sir.” The man shifted uncomfortably, unable to meet his eyes.
“Of course she is.... Come on Maggie.” Theseus’ shoulders slumped, and he started down between the stacks of apartments. Maggie shrugged, and settled in to follow him. She was curious about the place anyways, and the idea of a nice soft bed was sounding better by the moment.
The bottom row of pods seemed to all be shops or hang-out places. Christmas lights, paper lanterns, papel picado and streamers were strung up across the space between pod rows, and music blared from different pods. It sounded like they had a huge selection of music, from country to death metal, all at least six years out of date. It sounded as if it had been pulled right off the radio, commercials and all. One pod held a big crystal screen that was playing an old black and white film, and another had a crowd grouped around Playstation 2, a pair of people playing some game with hoverboards. Another booth was grilling some meat that smelled absolutely delicious. People were laughing, talking, shouting and even crying into their cups.
In short, people were living.
Maggie stopped in the middle of the walkway, staring around. It had sounded like all these people were abductees, or at least the descendants of abductees, but they weren’t acting like she expected them to act. She had expected to see miserable people held against their will, not some kind of party.
Theseus stopped when he noticed she wasn’t by him and backtracked until he found her. “Maggie, you can’t just stop like that!”
“They’re having fun.” She said dumbly, her eyes lingering on a group of people playing some odd game with a floating ball and three cups. It wasn’t quite beer pong, but whatever it was when the ball went in the cup, the whole table took a drink and cheered.
Theseus was silent for a moment, looking around the busy residential sector himself. “Well... yeah. Life doesn’t stop because something unfortunate happened. It goes on, and you find ways to keep going as well.”
Maggie focused on Theseus, feeling a spark of irritation work its way up through the warm cloud the drugs had left her in. “Being kidnapped is a bit more than unfortunate.”
Theseus sighed, his lips pressing together as if to hold in the immediate response. When he finally spoke, his voice was cold and hard. “I am not going to keep repeating myself, so for the last time: I’m sorry. It was my fault, I made a stupid mistake and you’re suffering the consequences. I can’t take it back, and there’s only so much I can do to help you. At least here you have a better chance of surviving having that damn thing in you, which is more than a lot of people get! Find your own way to your pod. The numbers are easy enough to see you should be fine.”
And with that, Theseus turned and strode off into the crowd. Maggie stared after him, her eyes wide and heart pounding. She took a few steps after him, but he was already long gone, she couldn’t even see his head over the crowd. “Theseus?” She called, hoping maybe he was just out of sight.
She looked around the crowd, trying not to panic.
She was alone.
She had pissed off the only person she knew here, and he had left her alone. The realization made anxiety bubble up inside her, but failed to trigger a full panic attack. Her head was just too fuzzy for that.
“Third floor. L-37.” She repeated and looked up at the catwalks and stacks of pods. She stumbled back as she stared up and up at the things stacked like wooden blocks above her. At least hers wasn’t all the way up by the ceiling, and Theseus was right about the numbers. Each pod had a letter and number painted across the front, easy to see even from a distance. “L-20, L-21... So up ahead a bit and one more up? Sounds right.”
Maggie started to push through the crowd again, staring at the numbers, focusing as hard as she could on her goal.
Pod L-37.
She stopped for a moment to stare at a cat that appeared to be playing chess. “Oh, we’ve moved on to hallucinations now. That’s fun.” She mumbled to herself, earning a curious look from both the cat and the human boy it was playing against. She offered them a small wave, before she continued on her way. Was hallucinations one of the things she was supposed to be looking out for? Or could that be a side effect of the drugs Doctor Tomas had injected her with? She had never hallucinated before.
“First time for everything. Never been abducted by aliens before either. Or I guess space-humans? Spumans? Spacemans? No, it would be Spacemen if anything.”
Maggie caught a few odd looks as she walked along, mumbling to herself like some kind of loon. But she finally spotted L-37, and the stairs up.
Relief and exhaustion flooded through her as she climbed the stairs to the third level and finally pressed her hand against the door to the pod. It slid open to reveal a plain room with a desk, single chair, bed and dresser.
Home sweet home. Apparently.
The door slid shut behind her, and Maggie dropped down onto the bed. It was oddly like a dorm room, only maybe just a little bigger. It was at least better than a prison cell. Tears gathering in her eyes again, she laid down, curling up around the single pillow.
She just wanted to go home.