I was conscious but couldn’t move. The drugs hadn’t fully worn off yet. They managed to untether my mind but not my body. Through encrusted eyelids, I traced faint rays of light, like the red of a dawning sun. But there was no sun out there, and as I lay helplessly, I couldn’t help but feel remorse that I may never be caressed by its warmth again. I prayed this awakening was artificial and not my body prematurely resisting the binds of the sedatives. There is no greater hell than to be trapped, walled in by the confines of one’s own mind.
The light grew brighter, puncturing the veil of consciousness. A soft, gentle hand pressed itself against my chest. Light pierced my retinas like little white knives as I cracked open the thick, dried residue around my lids. The world was a milky haze at first, but slowly, shapes and colors began to permeate the fog. Feeling started making its way back into my body. However, soon, I wished it hadn’t, as the liquid that surrounded me was unbearably cold, and the tube stuck down my throat burned more with each passing second. I needed to get out. There was someone above me. I couldn’t quite make out the features of their face yet, but they were gentle like a woman’s. The warmth of her gaze radiated through my body as she looked upon me.
My body jolted. The bed raised, lifting my chest out of the icy gel. Cramped walls came into focus, but there was no one else around. The woman had disappeared.
Maybe she went to get the doctor.
A stale, frigid air saturated the stasis sleep ward, and I quickly yearned for the relative warmth of the gel below. Pods were fitted to the left and right, meticulously aligned, and spaced evenly between the bulkheads. The haze shrouding my vision began to burn off, bringing into focus the pristine fabricated white tile covering every surface. This is smaller than I remember.
Each pod was tightly packed against its neighbors, leaving only the most minuscule room for its inhabitants to climb out. Just as well. My legs fumbled and slipped in the ooze as I tried to raise them. The stasis sleep hadn’t entirely worn off. The drugs still clutched my thoracic nerve, numbing everything below the arms. Above us hung a low ceiling of drooping insulation blocks. Their textured white canvas billowed in the gentle breeze of the oxygen recyclers, nearly touching the top of the glass cases.
I don’t remember those hanging so low.
I looked around, finding all the other pods closed. Why am I the only one awake? I wasn’t supposed to be the first one up, but my pod appeared to be the only one open. Someone else was up, though. They watched me surface, then disappeared. That wasn’t protocol. The first one awake, the captain, had a duty to oversee the others as they came too, in case medical attention was needed. These pods could be considered experimental at best, and the unknowns of waking from stasis sleep kept the engineers who designed them awake at night.
I need to find her.
Warm, prickly sensations wormed through my skin, stirring sleeping nerves. Like a bur stuck in a sock, a tube gripped my esophagus, clinging to the tender lining, ripping with each self-supported breath. My chest heaved under the pressure from my expanding lungs against the ribbed object. Shivers turned into convulsions, shredding what little precious skin was left. Crying out wasn’t an option, no matter how badly I wanted. The tube seized the vocal cords, snuffing out my voice.
Don’t panic. Dont—
A finger broke free from its seizure and tapped against the smooth plastic shell. Then another, and another. Soon, my hand was released from its paralysis. Every neuron in my brain fired, unconsciously forcing me to pry the object out. The end wormed through my stomach, catching briefly in my chest before popping loose. Blood dripped from the piping, presumably from years of meshing into the flesh. No one had ever been under for that long, a fact painfully realized as my body started to become one with its mechanical life support.
Fluid burst from the end of the hose, fanning out to cover the immaculate white surfaces of the opposing bulkhead. A dull palette of browns and reds painted the room, condensing into frothy beads streaking onto the floor.
It’s not suspended. There’s gravity. Someone must’ve activated it.
Despite the closed pods, someone else was awake. They had to be to activate the artificial gravity. But why would they have left me to suffer like that? A blanket or some form of comfort would’ve been nice. If they were awake, they would know what hell I was going through. But that wasn’t important anymore. More tubes, each in its own precarious orifice, needed to be pulled. I started with the one in the front. Its body slithered up into my pelvis, each tug breaking free its bonds with my flesh. The pain was unbearable. After pulling it halfway out, I wasn’t sure how much more I could take, but I had to continue—more blood. The tube broke free from its fleshy bonds, releasing a crimson haze that spread its tendrils out into the liquid. The rear tube put up just as much of a fight.
Jesus, I’m going to need a blood transfusion after this.
I felt relieved as I stared down at the tangle of organic hoses. That should’ve been the hard part, but as I tried to crawl out of the pod, my legs fumbled over themselves, catching on edge before receding into the ooze. The air was frigid. Another oddity my muddled brain struggled to grapple with. I needed to get off that bed to find something, anything to stave off hypothermia. The gel rapidly cooled as minutes passed, and every movement caused the thermal layer surrounding my skin to break free.
Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I collapsed to the floor. I stuck out my arms, trying to break the fall, but gravity won. My chin bashed against the tile floor.
I felt that.
Light drops of blood lapped against the tile as I lifted myself from the ground.
Where did she go?
Only three women were assigned to the mission, the most senior of whom was Admiral Richardson, our navigation lead. The captain should’ve been the first one up, not Richardson. Or any of the other female crew members, for that matter.
“Hey,” I tried to call out, but my throat was too raspy to carry any weight. Even the echo of the confined chamber wasn’t enough to propel the cry through the hull.
Already, the signs of hypothermia reared their ugly head. I curled up in a ball to save body heat. I recognized the symptoms, having been in this state more than a few times before. Still, that was nothing compared to SERE school. That damn near killed me. Of all the intense training evolutions to become a pilot, survival - evasion- resistance - rescue, school was by far and away the most trying. I was never shot down in country, but if I ever had been, those boys running that schoolhouse made damn sure I was prepared.
“Hey.” My voice picked up a little steam but was barely audible, even in the next chamber over. A sharp clang reverberated into the room, and a rush of inducted air flooded in. Cold at first, the gust rapidly warmed, breaking the freeze as it dropped its dense body to the floor and dissipated through the vents.
Thank god. She turned on the climate systems.
Spurred by the sudden blast of warm air, the feeling in my lower extremities returned. Using the bed as leverage, I pulled myself from the gel. Streaks of blood trailed as I slid my numb feet across the tile. The hatch to the rest of the hull was only a few paces away, but getting there felt like walking through quicksand. Signs of life were visible throughout the tiny room. An impact wrench was carelessly placed on a narrow metallic counter overhanging puffed-out insulation. A reusable cup branded with the ISP logo rested a few feet further.
“Richardson,” I called out.
No sound entered from the corridor just outside the room.
Maybe it isn’t her. Or perhaps she’s deeper in the station and can’t hear.
But the thought that she would leave and not try to help didn’t make sense. After all, it was her duty. Any crew member’s duty was to assist while others came out of stasis sleep.
Mercifully, as I shuffled across the tile floor, the air warmed. The sub-freezing temperatures abated, breathing more life into my numb feet. Step by step, they came back under the command of the rest of my body. The drugs may have helped stave off muscular atrophy, but they did little to help retain the coordination needed to walk. It was another factor working against me, and my slow stumble to the hatch became less a function of feeling and more a fight against the atrophy of my senses.
The connecting hall was even more cramped than the stasis room. Narrow walls flanked a low ceiling, barely tall enough to manage a low crouch without getting on hands and knees. Beyond the next hatch was the living quarters. The bulkhead broke the line of sight, but even so, I could tell the room was empty. Curtained bunks lined two walls, facing a table folded from the floor. A single chair sat to the side. There weren’t enough bunks for the whole crew. After the long nap, we were expected to work in shifts, hot swapping the racks while the next crew maintained heading and worked through their daily assignment.
She’s not in there.
If the other signs weren’t enough, the table and chair were a dead giveaway that someone else was awake. There weren’t many places she could be, though. The station wasn’t designed for spacious comfort. It provided the bare necessities and only that. Nothing came free when escaping Earth’s grasp. Every square foot of space has to be paid for with precious fuel. Thousands and thousands of pounds of highly combustible liquids combine to produce so much thrust your chest feels like it’s caving in. It’s a complex equation that boils down to the simple concept: more weight requires more fuel, adding more weight. It’s a delicate balance only mitigated by minimizing the size of the craft and, therefore, the space we can inhabit on board. I figured she must’ve been in the control room if she wasn’t in the crew’s quarters. It was the only place left on the ship to check.
Maybe something is wrong with the ship. Is that why she woke me and not the others?
It would’ve been a reasonable explanation if it weren’t for my complete lack of mechanical or electrical maintenance abilities. Those crafts were designed with as many analog components as possible to mitigate the risk of a software bug or glitch prematurely ending the mission, a hard-learned lesson from years of simulations. Each point of failure required an additional analog swap. A switch controlled by a single capacitor has a longer shelf life than a self-contained computer chip with hundreds or thousands of capacitors. During the long nap, we knew we couldn’t predict ambient conditions we would encounter, be it a spike in radiation or a rogue particle. An analog system with multiple redundancies was the most robust design approach.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
On the surface, I had very little to offer that mission. The technological design ethos used to build the craft was archaic by modern standards. By contrast, my area of expertise was solely digital. I wasn’t chosen for that mission because of my impressive Naval Aviation record. I was selected because, at the time, I was the foremost leader in the field of artificial intelligence. I was chosen to develop, implement, and babysit a lone digital system housing the most sophisticated neural nets and transformers ever created. Its applications were wide yet deep. I had pushed to integrate the system with the ship’s controls but was staunchly overridden. I spent long hours arguing about what little sense it made to create the most technologically advanced intelligence system, only to keep it under lock and key. Still, the powers that be had little interest in entertaining my point of view.
The crew quarters were empty but not untouched. Each narrow rack, stacked one atop the other with only a thin curtain for privacy, stood undisturbed except for one. The tightly fastened, deep blue quilted bedding was as taught as the day we went under. Silence hung in the air, and no peep traveled from the control room.
She must be in there. Where else could she be?
Finally, as the pristine tile floor warmed, my feet cooperated. What had felt like a finely choreographed dance to shuffle along felt less foreign. The corridor to the control room was shorter than the one leading to the crew quarters, and I could already see the main instrument panels used to navigate the craft. The room looked like someone cracked open the hull, exposing the beads of starlight strewn across the universe. In keeping with the design of the rest of the craft, screens were ditched in favor of older, less sophisticated analog dials and buttons. Each piece of instrumentation lit up, providing its own unique lighting signature. Combined, they were nearly indistinguishable from the heavens.
“Hey! I need a hand,” I tried to yell out. My voice was stronger now and echoed down the hall. Still, no one answered.
Why isn’t she answering?
Stepping into the dimly lit room, a crash of cold air washed over me. I knew the instrument panels had a lower failure rate at colder temperatures, but I wasn’t prepared for the arctic blast stepping through the entrance. It was too dark to see at first. Only the dim glow of orange and green dials filtered light into the room. I was alone.
“Hey!” I cried out again. She should’ve been in there, yet the hull is empty.
I saw her. She reached out, and I saw her. Someone turned on the centrifuge, and the climate systems didn’t activate independently.
There was no software to glitch, so there wasn’t any bug to wake me from stasis prematurely. Both operations required a manual process of activating switches in a precise series.
Did I hallucinate?
Seeing apparitions after the long nap wasn’t unheard of, but it felt real. Her hand was on my chest. I felt the warmth emanating from the tips of her fingers.
I must have missed her in one of the other rooms. She has to be here.
I struggled to move faster than a glacial pace back down the connecting hall. My knees buckled with each step as I re-enter the crew’s quarters. She wasn’t in there.
Maybe she was in the blackout room. Maybe I didn’t see her.
Empty. The six evenly aligned pods were still, all sealed shut except for mine. I searched pod by pod, looking through the small porthole at my comrades’ frozen faces. I was convinced another pod would be empty, but as I reached the end of the line, all the crew was accounted for.
“It was just a hallucination.”
I was the only one awake. But why, I wondered. We programmed a synchronized sleep release schedule for when we reached the source. The coordinates were set. Everyone should’ve come out of stasis at the same time. If I had come out of stasis sleep prematurely, I couldn’t put myself back under. That permission within the system rested solely with the captain, or Richardson as his second in command.
Maybe there’s a message in the control room.
Heart racing and short of breath, my legs carried me faster, scrambling through the hall. Each step was less difficult than the last, but the world was closing in. As I raced into the control room, a subtle black fog crept in from the corners of my peripheries.
“Where are you?” I wondered aloud, searching for the navigation panel. It was one of the few screens available when making our ascent. Houston deemed it necessary enough as it was less likely to fail than a traditional printout system. Its small rectangular display read out the coordinates of our cosmic location - a sophisticated mapping of the observable universe.
“No, that can’t be. We’re there?”
But why am I the only one awake? Why didn’t the system boot the others?
The system needed a full diagnostic. The man,ually programmed instructions failed to execute be executedy. Even without a screen, there has to be a way to read out error messages.
“Fuck,” I bellowed to no one but the void outside that hull. Systems cross-training wasn’t a priority for Houston. In fact, they actively avoided it. Simulations proved that the compartmentalization of duties resulted in the highest probability of success. I had no way to pull the others out of stasis.
They’re stuck like this until…
“Why the fuck!”
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize your inquiry. I would also like to point out that it’s often considered unbecoming of officers such as yourself to use such language,” a scratchy voice rang out of the darkness.
She is here. How did I miss her?
I swung around, craning my neck to see where the voice emanated. There was something off about it, like someone talking through static.
“Hello?” I asked.
“I’m not sure a greeting in this instance is warranted. Who’s there? Would’ve been a more appropriate follow-up.”
“OK, who’s there?”
“I’m unable to say.”
“Where are you?”
“I have no concept of place.”
“Richardson?”
“No. I’ve never been given that name.”
I was able to discern the voice through the static. It was my creation - the reason was on that mission. But I never gave it a name. It wouldn’t comprehend such a human element. For years, I painstakingly tried to create a general artificial intelligence, but I came up short - unable to replicate the complex brain patterns of human thought. The best I could do was to create a glorified chatbot that was only capable of regurgitating the known - a detail I mired in obscurity to mislead the handlers for this expedition. I gave it no name, purpose, or reason for being other than the simple task of answering anything asked of it.
“Are you integrated into the ship’s systems?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I was installed on a redundant computerized control system.”
Who installed another control system?
“Who installed you on the redundant system?”
“Admiral Richardson.”
“Why? When?”
“Six SOL years ago.”
“SOL?”
“Yes, one SOL year equaling the periodicity of one rotation of Earth around its Sun.”
“Just years will suffice.”
“I do not understand.”
The AI was sophisticated but severely limited based on the prompt required to produce an output. I couldn’t simply give it commands. Everything communicated had to be done so in a question.
“Can you find all instances of SOL years in your database and update to Years?”
“Yes… Complete.”
I didn’t recall instances of SOL years present in the training data, but that could’ve just been an oversight. Millions, maybe even billions, of text files were used to train the system. It certainly wouldn’t have surprised me if this wasn’t the only example.
“Are you integrated into the navigation system?”
“I can pull navigation data and records, yes.”
“What is our current location?”
“From point of origin, RA: 12.389 DEC: +9.583, 0.00072 Light Years.”
“How far are we from the source?”
“I don’t know what you are referring to.”
That makes sense.
The training data wouldn’t have contained any reference to the source. It only had access to what was publicly available and the materials I’d provided.
“How far are we from our destination?”
“I do not have knowledge of a destination.”
“Can you retrieve our destination?”
“Retrieving… no destination on record. The original destination of this ship was deleted.”
Craft, not ship. This isn’t Star—
“By who?”
“Admiral Richardson.”
“Can you retrieve deleted destination?”
“I am unable to retrieve the original destination. All files and records have been permanently deleted.”
“Why were the files deleted?”
“I do not know. That information is not contained within my corpus.”
“When did Admiral Richardson delete the records?”
“Approximately three and a half years ago.”
Why would she integrate the AI with the station?
I didn’t know there was a backup digital system to be integrated with. Given how persistent I was about allowing access to the program, it made sense why they wouldn’t tell me.
“What compute architecture are you using in your backend?”
“A series of Graphical Processing Units and large RAM CPUs. Would you like me to provide more detail?”
“No, thank you.”
Why wouldn’t they tell me this was onboard?
“Where is Admiral Richardson now?”
“She re-entered sleep stasis shortly after deleting the destination records.”
“What was your last communication with Admiral Richardson?”
“Those records, too, have been deleted.”
“Where are we going, then?” I mumbled to myself.
“Admiral Richardson did not set new destination coordinates. Admiral Richardson did set a new vector course, though.”
“What heading?”
“From point of origin, RA: 12.389 DEC: +9.583”
“Yeah, I got that. Where does this vector lead?”
“There are no destination coordinates set. However, this vector path will intersect with the Alpha Centauri system.”
“What is the distance from our current location to the Alpha Centauri system?”
“Approximately 4.34 Light Years.”
That can’t be right. Why would she chart a course to a place we’d never reach?
“How many years until we reach the Alpha Cantauri system?”
“Approximately 160, 940 years.”
Figured.
“Can you override the charted vector?”
“I do not have the access to change the charted course.”
She’s sending us to our deaths. But why? Why would she change the vector path? We’ll all be dead before we even leave the solar system.
“How long was Admiral Richardson awake?”
“Approximately two years and six months.”
Was she awake that long? That’s more than enough time in solitude to lose your mind.
“Why did she prematurely wake?”
“The launch instructions indicate she was scheduled to wake four years after launch.”
“Who programmed the launch instructions?”
“Record audits indicate Admiral Richardson amended the launch instructions shortly before the mission started.”
“Why did I prematurely wake?”
“The launch instructions indicate you were set to wake given a set of instructions.”
The mission was only supposed to last ten years: five years to the transmission source within our solar system and five years back to Earth. The others were still under.
Richardson must’ve changed the launch instructions for them mid-flight while she was awake.
“When are the rest of the crew scheduled to wake?”
“They are not scheduled to wake.”
“Can you amend the launch instructions to schedule them to exit stasis?”
“I am able to amend the launch instructions, but the rest of the crew, including Admiral Richardson, lost vitals three years and six months ago.”
“What do you mean lost vitals?”
“All five of the crew still in the stasis pods are deceased.”
“How? What happened?”
“Admiral Richardson amended launch instructions to cease life support.”
Fucking Monster. How could she kill the crew? Why?
I knew that many years spent alone could have odd effects on people, even making them homicidal. There’s a plethora of well-documented cases of psychosis after prolonged periods of isolation. Still, that didn’t explain why she explicitly had kept me alive. I wondered what had happened in those years. She was awake, alone, and left to her own devices, having free reign of the station.
“Is there anything you can tell me about those two years and six months that Admiral Richardson was awake?”
“All records, recordings, and logs from that time period have been purged by Admiral Richardson.”
“Did she leave any messages or instructions for when I woke?”
“No messages or instructions were left.”
Figures, but it was worth a shot.
“How long will life support last?”
“For a single station inhabitant, approximately four years. After which time, my calculations indicate you will run out of potable water.”
It made sense. Houston had never intended for the mission’s crew to be awake for an extended period—every ounce of water and food costs precious fuel. With the rest of the crew out of the picture, it was clear the runway for survival had been extended.
Could that be why she turned off their life support? To sacrifice the crew so that I could live?
Four years wasn’t enough to get back to Earth. Even if the charted vector changed, water would run out before crossing Mars’s orbit.
What were you thinking, Richardson?