by Alex Deva
"Not that I could see," said Aram. "We're in a big, empty ring of rooms, stacked on top of each other."
Mark looked up.
"Well, if it's really a ring, there must be something between the far side of the ceiling and the next floor, something that's thin on one end, and thick on the other."
"Like a wedge," confirmed Aram. "You're right. Otherwise they'd make a cylinder and never meet."
"So where's the engine room?" Mark wondered. "Or the command room, or all the other places on a normal ship?" As if I know what a normal spaceship should look like, he continued in his head.
"I have no idea," said Aram. "Why don't you ask? And also, how did you make water?"
Mark looked at Doina, who touched the wall and then the ADM symbol.
"How many rooms are there in the ship?" he asked.
"Twenty-four," came the immediate answer.
"Why are they all empty?"
"The ship was designed to adapt to the configuration decided by its crew. Each room can serve any purpose. They are all interchangeable."
"Where are the engines?"
"Propulsion systems are in the walls and the hull."
Mark had a ton of questions about propulsion systems that could accelerate a ship to near light speed, but that could wait for another time.
"How do we configure a room to serve a specific purpose?"
"I shall do it for you," the voice said.
"Show me how you made water," intervened Aram, curiously.
The ship obliged. Grey gel appeared and immediately transformed into a bowl filled with water. The whole thing took about five seconds.
Aram watched in wonder.
"I told you," said Doina, smiling.
The Dacian took the bowl and drank, then offered some to the other two. Doina refused, but Mark had some more, and then he was left holding two identical, empty bowls.
"We'd better figure out what to do with these," he mumbled. Then, out loud:
"ADM, can you dispose of the objects you have created?"
"Yes," said the voice, "if you put them back where I created them."
Mark did so. Gel oozed again and completely covered the two bowls, and in a few seconds, evaporated together with them.
"Oh, shit," said Aram, "that's great!"
Mark just looked at him.
"No, I mean, really," the Dacian insisted. "Hang on," he said, then touched the symbol that opened the ceiling. "I'll be right back," he said with a smile, then launched himself upwards.
Mark and Doina were left alone, staring at each other.
"Where did he go?!" she asked.
At first, the Englishman had no idea. Then, as he mentally rewound through what Aram had just said, a thought dawned in his mind, and a smile on his face. "I think I know," he said. "Just wait a minute."
The ceiling opened about a minute later, and Aram floated down, doing a flourish in mid-fall and looking very content.
"Your turn," he said to Doina.
"What?" The young girl didn't understand.
"Go up, ask for a bowl, fill it, then make it vanish," the blond man said. "It's the best thing ever."
Finally, she caught on.
"Oh," she said, blushing. "Thank you."
She stepped in the middle of the floor, again clutching her dress, and Aram simply threw her up. She gave a little yelp, but did not lose her balance and arrived safely.
"Hey, I'll use the room underneath," said Mark.
"Go on," said Aram.
When Doina and the Englishman returned a couple of minutes later, feeling quite relieved, the Dacian was sitting on a large cube in front of the wall, frowning at the handful of symbols that always appeared when either he or Mark touched it. Seeing them back, he got up, stretched and asked:
"What now?"
"Now we get organised," said Mark, glancing at the custom-made seat that Aram had ordered for himself. "Priority one, we control our surroundings. Priority two, we find food. Three, we plan our next move."
Aram watched him appreciatively.
"You should go piss more often," he said. "It really gets your mind rolling."
Mark let it pass. "You said all the rooms were identical?"
"They seemed all alike to me."
"Doina, will you please call the ADM?"
She touched the wall, and then the ADM symbol.
"Show us the ship's schematics," said Mark.
A complex image, drawn in thin, black contours, immediately appeared on the wall, in front of them. It was a large torus, with three massive spokes emerging from a central cylinder, which was only as tall as the torus was thick. It rotated slowly; whether for their benefit or because it was actually rotating in space, it was impossible to tell without reference.
"Well, look at that fancy map," said Aram. "If those spokes are shortcuts, some of the rooms must have doorways into them, but I didn't see anything."
In the drawing, rooms were delimitated by semi-transparent markings. Mark counted them. "Twenty-four rooms," she said, "plus the one in the middle."
"I don't think that's a room," said Doina.
They looked at her. "Why not?" asked Mark.
"Well, didn't you ask how many rooms there were, just now? And the voice said twenty-four. So, that's not a room. Besides, I can tell it's not a room."
"What is it, then?"
"I'm not sure, yet."
Mark tried to give her an encouraging smile.
"You know you're way better at this than either of us are, Doi. Don't worry if some things don't fall into place, I'm sure you'll figure it out," he said, with a little more conviction than he felt.
"So where are we in this drawing?" asked Aram.
One of the compartments turned darker. That became the single feature that made it in any way different from all of the others.
"We're gonna get lost like this," said Mark. Then he had an idea. He was about to explain it, then checked himself and asked, a little worried:
"Can you both read?"
Aram looked at Doina, who looked back at him.
"Read what?"
"You know... letters, writing."
"I can read Roman numbers," said Aram.
"I can read them too," said Doina. "And I can write my name," she added smugly.
"Roman numbers will do great," said Mark. Then, speaking to the walls:
"ADM, we shall need a way to tell these rooms apart. I want to have them numbered. I want large symbols that we can understand, to appear on the wall of each room towards the edge of the ship, and remain there. Aram will describe the symbols we need for each room. Understood?"
"Yes," said the voice.
"And where are you going?" asked Aram.
"I'm taking Doina for a walk to see if we can find those spokes," he said. "Something tells me she'll know how to access them." Then he turned to the young girl. "How about it, Doi?"
"Sure," she said, simply.
They touched the symbol that opened the ceiling and went to the centre of the room. Preparing to jump up, Mark took Doina's hands into his.
And suddenly, that simple gesture forced out memories that he had long been trying to keep buried. His mouth went dry, and his eyes instantly watered. Memories of another girl, far away, whose hands he had once held, telling her to be brave, that he would protect her, filled his mind. Memories of big eyes that sought his help and assurances and that offered him her trust. Memories of a decision that, whatever would happen, whatever the cost, he would always be there for her.
And then, memories of deep, sour, complete and utter failure.
Fighting for control and avoiding the girl's eyes, he curtly said "Let's go!" and they both pushed up.
But Doina, with that unerring instinct that children have, asked him in mid-flight:
"Do you have kids?"
"No," he said. "I was never married."
"Why not?"
"I never had time, I suppose." Then, as they landed on the room above: "Will you please touch the wall and
see if you can somehow access those spokes from this room?"
She did as he had asked, and inspected each symbol. He was grateful for the change of subject.
"I don't think there's anything like that here," she said.
"OK then. Up we go, next room."
Doina didn't find anything in the symbols that appeared in the room above that either, but in the third one she placed her hand on the wall and saw something that hadn't been in any of the rooms so far.
"I think this is it," she said, pointing at a new symbol. "Should I?"
"Go on!"
She touched the circle and, to their left, a large portion of the curved wall split into three vertical panels that swivelled around their median axis. They revealed a corridor that went up at quite a steep angle, and as they stepped in closer they saw that, after a short distance, it curved sharply, becoming almost vertical.
"That must be one of the spokes," Mark said. "I think the next few rooms will have passageways like this, leading into the same spoke."
"How are we going to climb that?" she wondered.
He took off his right shoe and, standing only a short distance from the door, threw it through the opening.
The shoe floated for an instant; then, very unexpectedly fell on the right wall, climbing to the middle of it.
Gravity changes again, he thought. So the middle of the ship, whatever that is, will be rotated ninety degrees. Makes sense, he judged, remembering the schematics.
Doina was startled at first, then she seemed to understand too. Just like with almost everything related to the ship, she caught on with unnerving speed and ease. Mark thought that someone from the Middle Ages, suddenly transported a thousand years in the future on a space-faring ship would likely have a nervous breakdown and be completely unable to cope. Something in the young girl, however, seemed to make her a better fit for the situation than he was.
Hell, to this technology I'm pretty medieval myself, he had to admit.
"Wait," she said. "I'll bring your shoe back."
She stepped between the panels and stretched her arms to keep her balance, as the artificial force gradually pulled her laterally. She made a tentative step forward and to her right, then simply turned right and stepped on the wall, perpendicular to Mark. She looked back at him, unsure whether to laugh or be scared.
"How is this possible?" she asked.
"I have a feeling you'll be the one to explain that to me," Mark answered.
She picked up the shoe from the floor -- her floor.
"Come on," she said.
Mark raised his eyebrows, then stepped through. Immediately he felt the direction of the pull begin to change, and it made him slightly nauseous. He stepped forward and it felt like he was climbing the right wall, but the next instant, he was standing upright in perfect balance, looking ahead at a funnelled corridor.
To his left, the wide entrance of the corridor seemed to end in a concave wall, where the next rooms would presumably open.
"Doi, wait," he said, while he put his shoe back on. "Let's go see how many rooms can access this spoke."
They approached the curved wall, noticing slim, grey contoured rectangles that marked access panels into adjacent rooms. There were four more. Doina touched the nearest one, and from the symbols that appeared, she picked one after a little thought. The panel split horizontally and each rectangle swivelled on its axis, perpendicular to their current floor.
They immediately felt a new gravity pull, and they realised it was meant to help them move into the rooms coming from the spoke. They stepped back and, shortly after, the panels swivelled back in, closing up the door, only its grey contour remaining.
"So, there seem to be five rooms to a spoke," Mark concluded. "If there are twenty-four rooms in total, and three spokes, that means fifteen of them have direct access to that thing in the middle, and nine don't."
They were now walking through the corridor, away from the curved wall of rooms, towards the centre of the torus. The gently lit walls closed in as they finally approached the end, where another blank, nondescript wall blocked their way.
Mark touched it, and the black circles sprang from under his palm.
"Can you teach me how to open these normal doors?" he asked Doina. "I remembered the symbols for the ceiling and floor doors, but which one gets one of these open?"
Doina looked at them and pointed. Mark memorised the shape, and then touched it.
Two floor-to-ceiling panels swivelled silently, and they entered into yet another round room. Much smaller than the rooms in the torus, this one had a different feel to it. Two grey rectangles, one hundred and twenty degrees from each other, marked the exits into the other two spokes.
They walked around the room, taking care to remember the door that they had entered through, as it closed automatically behind them. Doina looked up and gasped.
The ceiling was flat, not arched like in the torus rooms, and a big, black circle occupied almost the entire space.
"Well," whispered Mark. "That's different. I wonder what's up there."
He put his hand on the wall and was about to touch the ceiling-door symbol, when Doina suddenly said, loudly:
"No."
He froze with his finger in mid-gesture.
"Don't," she said again, frowning, looking at the symbols.
"I won't," promised Mark, taking his hand back. "What's the problem?"
Doina answered slowly, measuring each word carefully:
"I am not sure, but I think there's some... thing in here with us that won't let you open that ceiling."
Mark looked around, his hair prickling, suddenly remembering "Aliens".
"OK," he said, equally slowly. "What thing?"
Doina looked into his eyes and said:
"Air."
XI.
"I don't understand," she said. "It doesn't make sense."
But to Mark, it suddenly did.
"It's an airlock!" he exclaimed.
"A what?" she asked.
"It opens into the outside, into the outer space," he exclaimed. "If I were to open it, we'd've been sucked out and killed almost instantly."
Doina's eyes grew large.
"Please don't open it," she said.
"There must be a way to empty this room of air, and to fill it back in again," he said.
"Wouldn't that kill us?"
"What?"
"If we didn't have air to breathe, would we not die?"
"Well," said Mark. "We'd need special space suits. And portable air."
Doina looked at her flax fibre dress, then pointedly at him.
"But if there's an airlock, it means that's how you get on and off this ship," he continued excitedly. "And it must also mean that the ship knows how to make suits. This is very important for us to know, Doi."
She seemed to concede the point.
"We have to tell Aram," he said. "Come on, let's try another spoke."
They picked another door at random, and this time Mark opened it, to check if he'd remembered the correct symbol, asking for confirmation before touching it. An airlock isn't the best place to experiment with opening doors, he thought.
The new spoke was to their left, and as they crossed into the corridor, it opened up as expected, and soon the curved wall with five access rectangles appeared in front of them.
She went straight ahead and chose the room in the middle. She invited Mark to get it open, which he did, carefully touching the correct circle. The panels swivelled and the empty room appeared in front of them. Doina peered in, leaned her head on a shoulder and said:
"Look!"
On the far wall, in black lettering, stood the letters IV.
"Aram must've got the ADM to number the rooms," said Mark. He pondered for a second, then went on. "Assuming he's started at one, and counted floor to floor, we must've entered the spoke in room twenty-two and now we're getting back into the torus in room four."
He went through the door and immediately felt pulled
to his right. He awkwardly turned ninety degrees in the air and found himself on the floor of room IV. He turned back, looking at Doina who was horizontal to him now.
"Give me your hand," he said.
She gave him a hand, then simply jumped and landed next to him, quickly regaining her balance.
"This'll take some getting used to," he said.
"Well, we'll only need to go through there if we must take a shortcut, or if we must reach the airlock," she said. "Otherwise, we can just as easily jump from room to room."
After the panels closed, he put his hand on the wall, remembered the ceiling door symbol and touched it. The upper iris opened and they both pushed up. Mark paid more attention to the iris as they went through it, and noticed that the side of it that was closer to the edge of the torus was much thicker than the other, thus explaining the arched ceiling and Aram's "wedge" theory.
He explained it to Doina as they arrived in room III.
"That leaves a ton of space between the rooms, for all the ship's systems," he said.
They jumped again to room II and then opened the iris into the room where Aram was. When they found him, he was just spitting into a bowl, which he then threw disgustedly at the edge of the floor.
"Found anything?" he asked, wiping his mouth.
"The inner compartment is an airlock," said Doina smugly. "It can open to space if we want to get in our out, but we need special clothes and air."
Aram looked at her, then looked inquisitively at Mark, as if to ask what did you do to her?!
"She's right," said Mark. "There are three spokes, five rooms to each. The spokes are like this to the rooms," he demonstrated with one hand vertical and one hand horizontal, "so when you go from one to the other, you have to start walking on the wall."
"Whoa," said the Dacian. "I gotta see that."
"And by the way, good job numbering the rooms," added Mark.
"Did you see that?"
"Only a few, but they looked alright. The numbers will make it easier for us to orientate ourselves. Anyway," he asked, pointing at the stack of discarded bowls, "what were you doing?"
Aram smacked his lips in disgust.
"Trying to teach this thing how to cook us something to eat," he said.
"Any luck?" asked Doina. "I'm pretty hungry!"
"Well, I wouldn't call that food," he said. "Why don't you give it a go? You're much better at this than I am."