The Great Beyond

by A. K. DuBoff

“That means you, fatty,” came a nearby voice.

  Sven’s cheeks flushed warmer than my own, though the words were aimed at me. They always were, and I focused on my breathing as our steward continued. “Suits for other heights and…er…sizes are available in your cabins.”

  “What if we’re out and about, and something happens?” asked Megan, who’d made her way up toward the front to stand behind me.

  The steward’s perfectly straight teeth gleamed in the overhead lights, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “During non-sleeping hours, you’ll be directed to the nearest escape pod by a steward such as myself or another staff member of Omega Travel Authorities.”

  He rattled on as Megan leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “Unless you’re on the budget level. Level E: where staff is sparse and the comforts sparser. Better be state-of-the-art escape pods!”

  I clenched my hands together and stared straight ahead. If I didn’t respond, maybe the woman would stop running disaster scenarios through my anxiety-driven brain.

  “All passengers on this trip, including children, must be at least forty-four inches in height. The accordion-like knee joints of the standard-sized Z300 suit will accommodate passengers up to six-and-a-half feet tall…”

  At this, Seren stretched her neck upward. Somehow, I doubted she met the height requirement, though her gangly body came pretty close. In contrast, her mother slouched as she pursed her lips.

  “—need a volunteer. Anyone?” A shove from behind sent me forward and under the gaze of the smiling steward. His eyes widened as he noted my ample figure. “We’ll make this work, don’t you worry.”

  The fabric breathed easily enough as Sven removed the suit from its case. “In the event of a suit-level emergency, you’ll want to don your suit first before assisting others, including any children in your party. The Z300’s a two-piece suit with helmet.” He rattled on about the procedures of suiting up as I stepped through the lower torso ring and into the overly large feet. I ignored the laughter from the onlookers.

  As I pulled the suit over my calves and then my thighs, its fabric clung to me tighter than my mother yesterday when she’d hugged me goodbye. The metal ring used to seal the two pieces together stopped when it collided with my hips. “Um…assistance please?”

  “Apologies for the closeness.” Sven grabbed the ring, his breath too sweet as his nose bumped mine. He gave the suit a good tug, but it remained firmly in place. “Perhaps we can stretch the upper torso down to meet this.”

  I shoved my head through the neck ring as he slid the upper piece over my shoulders. The arms were snug, but they fit. My sigh of relief lasted until the laughter reached me, and Sven’s flushed face gave a small shake. I couldn’t see myself, but I didn’t need to. The upper ring brushed against my belly button, much too high to form a seal with the bottom piece.

  “Let’s get you out of this,” Sven whispered as my knee throbbed and sweat rolled down my face. Now that the suit had me, it didn’t want to let go. Sven tugged and wrestled with the suit as I stood there, rotting in my panic and pain.

  Once free, I stumbled off the dais and into a nearby privacy booth. A soft, female voice sounded from the walls. I dropped into the cushioned seat and ignored it.

  Inhale. Hold—3…2…1. Exhale. Even with my eyes closed, the small booth tilted as my breath came in ragged gasps.

  “Would you like a mild relaxant?” asked the same female computer voice.

  “Do you…have something stronger? Something coupled with a Jupiter-sized pain killer?” I held out my wrist, then cursed as the scanner errored out. My medical bracelet remained unreadable. I fumbled for my identification card, and once scanned, the dispenser in front of me popped out a capsule and some water. I swallowed the pill like a good patient and focused on breathing.

  At least breathing didn’t hurt.

  By the boarding announcement, my heart rate had slowed to keep time with my pounding knee. Megan and Seren stood at the boarding doors where the child stretched to reach the minimum height marker. Sven frowned when he spotted me, and waved the mother and child through. Before he could mumble some lackluster apology, I flashed my identification card at another set of scanners and hobbled after Megan.

  Seren pried her face away from her mother’s thigh long enough to furrow her brows in my direction. “Why’d those people laugh at you?” she asked, and I gripped the wall’s railing for support.

  Her mother shushed her, then turned to me. “I’m sorry. She’s just nervous.”

  A young couple stared at me, their laughter a rude reminder of my broken body. Wincing, I crouched down in front of Seren to distract myself. “They’re laughing because I’m fat.”

  “Why are you fat?” Megan clamped a hand over the girl’s mouth.

  “Some people just are, I guess. Why do you have brown hair?”

  Seren pried her mother’s hand away. “Because Momma has brown hair, but that doesn’t mean people should laugh. They’re big meanies.”

  “I don’t think they can help it. It’s what hyenas do best,” said Megan.

  After the relaxant, I joined Megan in a good laugh.

  “What’s so funny, Momma?”

  We could only shake our heads as we boarded, our paths splitting once we reached our budget cabins on Level E. Anti-slip linoleum, rather than carpet, made up the flooring of my extra-wide cabin, and the walls bore standard hand railings at distinct intervals.

  My special spacesuit hung near the door, and I eased myself into the corner’s large cot. Damn spacesuit had added an extra $600 to my ticket, but at least it was mine. “Usable on any future trip!” the travel agent had stated.

  To offset the cost, I’d opted for a cabin directly over the ship’s engines. The rumbling during take-off, while louder than anticipated, vibrated like the subway cars of home.

  I was asleep before we even left Earth.

  ­—

  Two weeks was enough time for anyone to settle into the rhythm of a ship, be it one that travels on the water or through space, and I was no exception. I’d spent the night before playing cards with a woman from New Galveston and had stumbled into E6 at a time I’d thought was way too late, but the number of pod-mates making similar crawls for their beds had promised me that this was normal behavior for a space cruise off-world.

  Despite my fatigue, the shift in engines brought me out of sleep with a growl and the flinging of sheets as I sought to right myself. There was rumbling, and then there was a grind-y-whine that set my teeth on edge. Dissonance blared out of the overhead speaker a moment later, announcing a ship-wide evacuation.

  Feet still tangled in one sheet corner, I tumbled face-first against the gray linoleum floor as my knee woke up with a sharp twinge. Outside my room, footfalls sounded as people headed portside toward the evacuation pods.

  This time, I untangled myself before attempting to stand, which took two tries and half-a-dozen swear words. I pressed the button to release my space suit, which remained firmly bolted to the wall. I slammed the button. Nothing. Bracing myself, I gripped both sides of it and tugged, wrenching my knee a second time. The suit remained firmly in place while the emergency alarm blared overhead.

  My granddaddy would’ve blushed with the creative trail of words I uttered as I slammed my hand against the door’s panel to release its lock. Hopefully the pod was functioning.

  Outside my room, dragon-clawed pajama slippers greeted me as Seren waved at me. “Momma says we’re taking a side trip.” Behind her, Megan’s wide eyes darted to the overhead lights, which flickered twice.

  “Do we know why…?” I asked.

  Megan shook her head as we trailed behind five other passengers. When the line ahead of us stopped, I nearly stumbled over Seren’s dragon tail. The overhead lights flickered again as the ship groaned, and thickness filled my throat. Ships shouldn’t sound like my granddaddy wheezing. I glanced around the huddled group. “What’s the hold up?”

  “Hey, you were paying attention pre-
flight, right?” A young man in an emerald-green plaid suit with garish, ruby cufflinks half-smiled at me. “Which way to the pod?”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, okay. You know the way, so which way is it?”

  I pointed to the right. Again. “That way.”

  When no one moved, I sighed and set out down the corridor, the line of passengers trailing behind me. We reached our escape pod as a loud hiss barreled through the hall. The emergency lights flickered constantly, and Seren screwed up her face to cry. Everyone waited one heartbeat, then another.

  “I think they’re waiting on you,” whispered Megan.

  I pressed my hand against the pod’s plate with a sigh. The door slid open four inches and stopped, leaving a gap not even Seren would fit through, let alone me.

  “Oh, great. The pod’s door must be afflicted with whatever’s got the ship,” said suit guy, who hovered at my elbow. “How do we get it open?” He continued questioning me at an increasingly rapid rate, while a young woman hovered nearby.

  Her dress matched his suit, and when I glanced at the two again, hyenas sprung to mind, though I couldn’t be sure in the poor lighting. I flipped open the panel to expose the door’s manual override. Suit man slapped it, and I wedged my arm through the gap to the shoulder. One good shove, and stale air hit my nose.

  Suit guy pushed past me into the long pod, then set to coughing. I tugged him by the sleeve until he fell backward into the corridor. “What’s…with the pod?” he asked.

  “Bad air mix,” said Megan as she gripped Seren’s hand. “I read about this once…”

  Like a behemoth, The Ursula moaned before shaking us about, and I grabbed hold of a safety bar along the wall. The faint smell of smoke tickled my nose. My eyes fell to the suits stacked at the pod’s entrance, and I sighed. “We’ll have to use the suits.”

  “Are there enough?” Megan asked as she glanced at Seren.

  “Twenty people per pod, right?” I asked. When she nodded, I pointed at the two large cases. “Fifteen suits per case.”

  A blur of emerald-green pressed the case’s button, which opened the seal around the first set of suits. His feet made it into the bottom torso piece before I’d done more than blink. Megan and I ran conveyor until everyone had a suit. Tears threatened to escape my eyelids as I stared at the suit intended for me, and for a moment, the ship tilted—but only for panicking me.

  It wouldn’t matter that my anxiety left me breathless as the others stuck their feet through standard-sized legs. I wouldn’t be able to breathe in the pod. Not without a suit. There wasn’t any point in trying to cram my hips into something standard. As if there was such a thing in the diversity of space.

  Seren’s body swam in the child’s suit as Megan fumbled with the top torso. At least she will still fit. Too short isn’t a problem.

  Someone tugged at my sleeve. “Do you know how to do this?” Suit guy held the upper torso of his suit by the water tube. “I don’t even know what these are.”

  A sea of people stood like frozen deer in the flickering lights as I pulled the suit’s inner belt from his waist and strapped it across his shoulders like a pair of suspenders. He shoved the upper piece at me and like a child, held up his arms to await it as I lifted the top over his head with a grunt. For a moment, his head tangled in the tubes, and he bumped into me in his momentary panic. My knee wrenched right as I lunged to catch myself. Fire spread across my knee as the smoke thickened in the corridor. In the distance, footfalls bounced around with cries and shouts for help, for spacesuits, or for missing pod members.

  Megan had been right. Not a single steward or Omega Travel Authorities employee could be found in the budget wing of Level-E-for-expendable.

  Bile burned the back of my throat. I took a deep breath to calm myself, then sputtered as smoke threatened to choke me. The young man’s hand touched mine. “Get your suit on first, right?” he said and then flushed. Perhaps it was the reddened cheeks or the way his eyes widened, but even in the dim lighting, the scenario betrayed his identity. When his girlfriend snickered behind her hand, it confirmed my earlier suspicions.

  With a sigh, I pulled the tubes through the neck where they dangled. Standing this close to him, he couldn’t be more than sixteen. I snapped his helmet into place with a strained smile. Resentment wouldn’t save anyone today. Once he was breathing suit air, he stepped into the pod, and another person filled his space.

  One down, eighteen to go.

  My motions fell into a steady rhythm. Strap the lower torso into place. Slide upper torso over a pod mate and snap. Thread through the tubes. Place helmet on top. Cough or wince at my knee. Start again.

  I lost count after the fourth person, though I spotted Sven for a brief moment before he disappeared again in the smoke. Somewhere halfway through the line, The Ursula rumbled from deep down in her belly, and I picked up my pace despite the fact that I stood almost exclusively on my left leg now.

  A coughing fit left me momentarily breathless. When I glanced up, no one else stood waiting. The escape pod was almost full, though it was near impossible to tell as the emergency lights had gone out.

  It was time then.

  Tears burned my eyelids. Would my mother be told why I died? Would she fight the authorities over their asinine spacesuits? Something brushed against my elbow, and I yelped as my heart tried to tear its way out of my chest.

  “It’s Sven,” he said, his voice barely audible as it crackled its way through his suit’s external speaker. He set something on the ground, and there was a slight hiss as something brushed against my calf. “Step into the feet.”

  I shook my head, which he couldn’t see in the dimness. “Standard suits…don’t work,” I muttered between coughs.

  He took my hand and led me to step forward into the spacesuit’s feet. “This isn’t standard. It’s the suit from your cabin.”

  My mouth fell open to speak, but no words came out. Had he really gone back for my suit? How had he gotten it to detach from the wall? My vision blurred as the metal ring cleared my hips. Every inch of me ached, including my lungs. Sven lifted the upper torso over my head, though he struggled with the tubes with his suited fingers. I tried to help, but my head swam, and he batted my fingers away.

  “It’s time for someone to help you,” he said as he pulled the food tubes through the head opening. The helmet clicked into place, and a rush of clean oxygen brushed across my face. Sven guided me into the escape pod where he belted me into a seat before claiming the last one as his own.

  “Thank you for going back,” I said into my helmet’s mic.

  “Thank you for helping to save everyone in this pod,” said Sven as he buckled himself into place. “The least I could do for you was make sure you lived after…well...”

  The spacesuit hid the emerald-green of her dress, but not the snarky look on the young woman’s face as she spoke. “If she wasn’t so fat, you wouldn’t have had to go back. What woulda happened to us if you hadn’t made it to the pod? Stewards are tasked with saving as many lives as possible.”

  Despite my aching body, I was pretty sure I possessed the energy to kick her. As my leg twitched, a nearby woman spoke up. “If you had spent less time fat-shaming the poor woman at the spaceport, you would have known how to assemble your suit. You should be suffocating right now.”

  A few other voices popped up in my defense, including the boyfriend in the emerald-green suit, and I couldn’t help but grin at the irony. When Sven pressed the button to detach the pod, I held my breath as I waited for it to malfunction, but a mechanical squeal cut through my helmet as the pod successfully detached from The Ursula. As we drifted away from the ship’s gravity field, we lifted a few inches in our seats.

  Seren squealed in delight. “Look, Momma! We’re weightless!”

  Yes, we are. I grinned beneath my helmet.

  —

  Five years since The Ursula’s disastrous maiden voyage, I found myself willing to try another trip into outer-spac
e, as the archaic digital drives called it. Either way, it still amounted to strapping myself into little more than a tin can with no guarantee I’d escape in an emergency. Houston Spaceport resembled a sardine packing plant as travelers prepared for holiday voyages. Though this time, my medical bracelet scanned and I zipped through check-in at record speed. While The Ursula had been re-commissioned, my tickets led me on a trusty old model named The J. M. Barrie, and much like my knee, it had a record of taking a few licks and flying straight on ’til morning.

  The crowd of people who would be my pod gathered around the dais as we awaited our pre-flight instructions. A familiar figure scrambled out with an equally familiar briefcase. “The name’s Sven, and I’ll be your steward this trip. From here on out, you’ll be Level E, Wing Three, or E-3.” He spotted me as I squeezed my way toward the crowd’s front, and he gave me a quick thumb’s up before launching into our safety instructions.

  When it was time to walk through the dreaded “donning of the spacesuit,” Sven grinned at me as he unveiled a small, blue suit that shimmered in the overhead light. “This is the Z600, a suit developed in the last year to fit the ever-changing populous traveling the stars! The suit’s material is more flexible and adapts to the wearer. Based on an old hydrogel, it’s tough and can easily stretch up to twenty times its length without breaking or splitting.”

  He stepped into the suit’s feet, which were much smaller that the Z300. As he pulled the legs up his torso, the fabric stretched around him as promised. Sven gave me a wink before strapping himself into the suit. “Originally, it was developed as research into artificial cartilage back in the day, but with Ursula I’s disaster, Omega Travel Authorities sought to ensure the safety of all of our travelers, no matter what their size. In addition, the suit’s flexibility makes it easier to step inside for those with ability challenges, and added straps make it simple to pull the suit up or down.”

  No giggles or comments reached me as Sven finished the demonstration, though even if they had, it wouldn’t have knocked the grin off my face. Imagine that, a more accommodating spacesuit! About damn time.