A place you know well becomes something wholly and utterly different when no one is there and the lights won’t turn on. It shouldn’t be that simple to so completely transform a place but it’s true all the same. In the dark, those halls I knew so well, that I’d traveled up and down hundreds of times, were eerier than the caverns I’d been trapped in just a few hours ago. There was something of hell in this familiar place, the first home I’d known, hollowed out, full of shadows, and freezing cold.

I hated it so much. I’d have given anything to hear laughter from someone I recognized in those halls. For the lights to flicker on, the survival suit I wore to fall away, and everything to be normal again. The muscles in my neck and shoulders were tight with the longing, my teeth clenched together like I could bite through this reality and into the one in my memories.

But, of course, I couldn’t. My home was gone. My friends, the first family I’d ever known, were dead. And if I wanted to survive and escape I’d had to rob the only monument to their existence that there would ever be.

It was hard not to hate myself in that moment. I couldn’t even tell myself that all of the people who’d been on this ship with me wouldn’t want me to feel bad about surviving. I was sure that at least some of them would have gladly switched places with me without a second thought. Probably most of them.

But not Rip. He at the very least, I could be sure would be happy to know that I was still alive. That he hadn’t sacrificed himself for nothing.

The halls twisted in on themselves. I tried to act as though I didn’t know where I was going, taking wrong turns from time to time. But I took every opportunity to go further down. Now that I was here I wanted this done. It was all I could do to stop myself from running at times. The darkness seemed to carry me, pulling me with the same kind of inescapable gravity that had brought The Reliant down on Persephone.

But I knew where I was going. It wasn’t long before I stood at Rip’s door.

The doorway was made from a single piece of metal that slid into the walls. The crash must’ve damaged it because it was partially open. I’d had to use the suit’s extra strength to get through a lot of doors on my way down.

I pushed this one open as though it had just caught my eye. What I saw inside though my headlamp’s narrow beam, sent a spike of pain through my chest.

Rip had to be dead. There was no way he would have allowed his room to stay in this state if he was alive.

He’d been a meticulous clean freak in his own living space. He said it came from being dirty all day doing his job. His favorite part of the day had always been that first cold beer after a long scalding shower. He’d sit in his well ordered room and pop on a movie or crack open a book. That’s what he called it anyway. He read off his data pad, the one I now carried in the survival suit’s pack.

His desk had been meticulously maintained. His few real books had been kept on it, organized and in a row; more a decoration than actual reading material since they were so delicate. Small tools were in his desk drawers for when he wanted to tinker with something in his off hours.

His clothes had always been hung in his closet, despite basically consisting of his uniforms and two identical, threadbare suits. I could practically hear him chuckling and saying about the suits, ‘Gotta keep them nice in case I find a hot date.’ He even made his bed, despite it being basically just a hole in the wall with a thin mattress and a heavy, scratchy blanket.

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“Euclid?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve been looking at that bed for a very long time now. If you need rest, you should rest.”

Had I been staring that long? I guess I had.

“No, I… I can keep going. Cyrus needs me.”

“Cyrus can wait while you get some sleep.”

“Yeah, I’m only inching closer to starvation with every passing minute but sure. My problems aren’t that big. Go ahead. Take a break and get some sleep.”

“Euclid, you have been awake for approximately thirty one hours,” Ai said, somehow adding the mental image of giving Cyrus a sidelong glance with her tone. “It would be a very good idea for you to go ahead and get some sleep. Cyrus should have enough food that this will not meaningfully affect his survival. If anything, he should be glad to let you rest as it will increase his chances of survival through increasing your chances of success.”

“I don’t know, if I have to eat much more of this crap it might meaningfully affect my sanity. Probably not going to be worth it to go to all this effort to rescue a crazy person.”

“The only crazy person here is me for trying to rescue you in the first place,” I muttered.

“Fine. Fine. Get some sleep.”

“Good. I’m glad you can see reason, Cyrus.”

“He’ll probably sleep better if we aren’t talking, Ai. I’d hate to keep him up with our chatter.”

Ai’s anger at that comment was palpable in the silence. I desperately wanted to pinch the bridge of my nose. I considered taking off the helmet to do so. I had trouble deciding if the fact that it would probably kill me to do so was a pro or a con. Thankfully, Ai seemed to see the conversational trap Cyrus had put her in and stayed quiet.

I crawled into Rip’s bed and shut off my suits’ lights. The darkness could not have been more absolute. It was as though I had fallen into a giant vat of ink. A thought struck me before sleep could claim me. I pulled out Rip’s data pad and flicked my light back on. It took me only a moment to find the charging cord for it. I couldn’t charge it back up using the ship’s power but the survival suit had plenty to spare.

That done, I turned the light back off and sank into the black. Basically all of the beds on The Reliant were the same. I could have been lying in my own nook a few floors from here. But I had no real attachment to that room. I’d spent little time there and most of that had been in my own sleep. I didn’t want to be there.

But I did want to be back there. I wanted to fall asleep here and wake up there, roll out of bed, flick on the lights and get dressed for my day helping Rip repair busted machines. I wanted to hear people walking through the halls, talking, laughing, yelling at each other. I’d have given anything to be there again. To maybe stop everyone from dying.

A thought occurred to me though. If The Reliant hadn’t crashed I wouldn’t have been able to be here to help either of my friends. Would I give up Ai to have my old life back? Cyrus?

Well, I might give up Cyrus.

But if I hadn’t crashed on this planet, who knew if Ai would ever have been found? She’d have been stuck here, waiting, maybe for centuries. Maybe forever, till her ship finally lost power and she was gone forever. I didn’t think I could have traded the lives of everyone on The Reliant for the chance to save her, but now I did have that chance. And the chance to save another human life.

That was something I would never have had in my old life. I’d have never wanted it either. The idea that their survival, or at least continued existence in Ai’s case, hinged on me was terrifying. It weighed on me every single minute of the day. But the Euclid who’d lived on that ship would never have been able to bear it at all. He would have been driven into gibbering incoherence by the very idea of that much responsibility. He’d have run and cowered in some dark corner, praying that no one would find him, that someone else would take that responsibility so that he wouldn’t have to.

Here I was, closer to success than I had ever been and my biggest concern was whether or not I should sleep or get it done now. I’d gotten this far. There was no more ‘if’ in whether or not I would succeed. It was just a matter of time. Had I really done that?

It really sank in then that I had. That simple, strange thought that I had no fear of failure now. That couldn’t be something I had achieved. And yet, I had. Maybe just through sheer luck but I had. Sleep crept in on me then, maybe even the closest thing to true rest I’d had since I hit this planet.

But my last thought was that if I’d been lucky enough to get this far, my luck had to run out soon.