by Adam Moon
DEEP
ADAM MOON
Deep Copyright Adam Moon 2013
All rights reserved
Launch
Captain Sarah Miller did another quick systems check. It was becoming an obsession that she couldn't afford to indulge in. If she let this paranoid obsession dominate her thoughts she'd lose her marbles before they even set out.
Within half a minute the monotone computer generated female voice said, "All systems are fully operational."
She slumped in her seat, drawing in a deep lungful of cold conditioned air.
Behind her, a deep baritone voice said, "The last of the colonists are on ice. We're running ahead of schedule."
"Did anyone give you any grief?"
"Some dude hit Johnson on the jaw but there's nothing unusual about that. I plan on hitting him in the face at some point during the ride too."
Johnson was the gear-head of the flight crew. If everything went tits-up, Johnson could rig just about anything to get them by. He was one of those rare geniuses that knew how to apply his ideas to reality. But he was also an egotistical asshole with no social graces to speak of.
"Is Johnson alright?"
"He was belly-aching until I closed his pod and freeze dried his fat ass."
"What about Emma? Is she in stasis already too?"
"Yep. She was the last to go. She was a little jittery so we need to make sure to comfort her when we revive her or else she could get space madness and kill us all."
"You know that's not a real thing, right?"
"Just trying to lighten the mood. If you're done with me, I'm gonna get in my pod now too."
"Yeah. I'm just waiting for ground control to give the word and then we're outta here."
"Goodnight Sarah."
"Goodnight Jack. Sweet dreams."
Jack said, "Yeah, sure," without a trace of joy to his tone.
Sarah assumed he was secretly afraid of going into stasis for such a long time. What they were about to undertake had never been done before so he had every right to be apprehensive; even fearful.
The longest any man had successfully been put into stasis was seven years. They were about to go to sleep for four thousand years. There was no telling how that would work out. Would they all die horribly during the thaw? Would they remain conscious the whole time and go mad?
But the risks were worth it. The colonists were to seed another world. The earth had become barren and almost completely unfit for life. The oceans had dried up, the plants were withering and dying. Land animals were next. The deadly storms alone made it worth the risk.
Sarah was thankful she'd been chosen but right now she almost wished she could go back home; put feet to terra firma and breathe in the hot, putrid air of home.
It was cold in orbit, but not in a good way. She'd assumed it would be refreshing, and it was at first, but they'd been stuck, attached to the docking platform for nine fucking days, and the cold had permeated through their bones.
She sent a message to ground control stating that they were ready for departure. Then, out of habit, she ran another systems check.
A tinny voice said over the speakers, "Flight crew of The Seeder, this is ground control. You're a go for departure. All controls have been released to you. Good luck."
Sarah shivered. "Thank you ground control. All systems are go. Preparing for launch."
She turned the speaker off and readied the ship for launch. The trajectory had been preset and all systems were operational so she just had to set the mission in motion.
As the boosters came to life, she had one last look around the control station and then headed for her pod. Hers was not clustered with the other ones below deck. Hers was right in the control station, just in case of emergency. If something happened that needed fixing, she could be woken early and get right to it from here. But the fact that she had to go into stasis all alone gave her an empty feeling. She pushed the fear deep down, stripped naked, attached the IV's and lowered herself into the coffin-like apparatus. The lid closed and sealed over her. Once sealed, it issued an audible sucking noise. Right before she lost consciousness from the lack of oxygen, the cold rushed her senses and locked her in its eternity.
Awake
Her vision was blurred at the edges. Her ears were ringing. A figure stood before her, dark and ominous. A deep, rattley voice said, "What happened?"
Sarah swallowed the lump in her throat. Where was she? Who was this irate person before her? Her skin itched and her head was pounding. Her muscles felt like they were on fire. She fell to one knee and the pain almost caused her to scream. The dark figure pulled her to her feet and wrapped a towel around her shoulders. His face was close and she recognized it. Then all the memories flooded back like a tsunami.
She said, "Where the fuck are we? Why did you wake up before me?"
"Those are my questions too."
"Who else is up?"
"Just us, but we might need to wake the flight crew to get to the bottom of this."
"How long have we been in stasis? How close are we to the seed planet?"
Jack shook his head. "Sarah, we passed the seed planet a long time ago."
Sarah gasped.
Tears welled up in Jack's eyes.
"Wake the fucking flight crew."
Lost
"Sarah said as evenly as she could, "Computer, what has happened?"
The computer did not respond at first. Several seconds passed before a handful of panel lights came on, indicating that the computer was coming online.
She repeated, "Where are we?"
"Onboard the space vessel Seeder."
"Where is the vessel now?"
A few seconds ticked by. "The Seeder has veered off course. According to my clock, it has been traveling for eighteen million years."
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
"No."
Sarah started to hyperventilate. Her mind was doing somersaults. She had the sudden urge to stand up and run away. But there was nowhere to go.
Jack came into the command station with Emma and Johnson in tow.
Johnson said, "This had better be good."
Sarah said to the computer, "Tell them how long we've been in stasis."
"You have been in stasis for eighteen million years."
Jack said, "Fuck," and Johnson mumbled, "Shit." Emma shook her head and took a seat beside Sarah. She was repeating the same thing over and over, "That can't be right. It can't be right."
Jack leaned on the back of her chair and said, "That can't be true. The computer's malfunctioned or something. We don't even have enough fuel or life support for a trip that long, do we?"
The computer said, "Life support is not necessary while all occupants are in stasis. We have reserves of fuel because we've been coasting at top velocity."
Johnson did some quick math in his head, furrowed his brow and said, "Where the fuck are we?"
"Unknown. This region of space has not been charted."
"I don't need coordinates fuck-face, I just want to know where we are in general."
"According to my calculations we are in deep space, untethered to the Milky way galaxy."
Johnson nodded and said absently, "Then we're fucked."
Jack shook his head. "Not necessarily. We made it out here without depleting our fuel supplies or using up life support. We can make it back."
Sarah cut in, "It'll be another eighteen million years before we get back to our region of the Milky way."
"So we go back into stasis. We won't feel time pass us by."
Emma said, "It won't matter. To slow this ship down, turn it around, and then get back up to speed will take all the fuel it has left. If we set course for the wrong kind of planet, we'll be screwed. We'll never make it to another one if we're wro
ng."
"What do you mean, the wrong planet? Just set course for the seed planet."
Emma said, "By the time we get there, almost forty million years will have passed since we set out. When we left, the planet was optimal for human life. But a lot can change in forty million years. The star it orbits might have gone supernova or simply burned down to a weak-assed brown dwarf. The atmosphere will have definitely changed by now. There's no way to guarantee that the planet is still hospitable."
Jack laughed. "If you know of another world we should head to, now's the time to speak up. Otherwise we have to go with the information we have. The seed planet isn't just our best option, it's our only option."
Sarah said, "He's right. We need to try. We'll die out here in the black unless we turn this boat around."
Jack was pacing when he said, "Better yet, let's set course for the edge of the Milky way, then have the computer wake us up, and then we'll see what's up. We can evaluate the situation better once we get closer."
Johnson said, "I agree. But can we trust this fucking computer anymore? It didn't wake us up last time. What makes you think it'll wake us next time?"
Sarah said to the computer, "What happened last time? Why didn't you revive us?"
"I don't know. But judging by our trajectory, we were thrown off course long before we came close to the seed planet. Perhaps a wandering black hole's gravity well nudged us off course. Maybe there's a glitch to my navigational systems. I don't have enough information to give an informed answer."
Jack said, "Let's hope it wasn't a glitch."
Sarah said, "Run a systems check."
A moment later the computer said, "All systems are optimal. However there appears to be a problem with the stasis pods below deck."
Gone
Emma was the first to emerge into the pod chamber. She rushed towards the first pod and tried to peer inside but the frosty glass obscured her vision. She wrenched at the handle but it didn't give. Johnson and Sarah went to the next in line and did the same, all to no avail.
Jack yelled over the top of everyone, "Computer, open this pod."
The pod hissed and a moment later it hinged open wide. They gathered around as the mist cleared away. But it only revealed an empty concave space.
Sarah said, "Open the next two."
Both of those were also devoid of human bodies in stasis.
She said, "Are there any life forms aboard this vessel besides me, Jack, Emma, and Johnson?"
"I detect no other life forms."
Jack whispered, "A thousand people are missing. What does that mean?"
Johnson replied, "It means we're screwed."
Emma said, "But where did they go?"
"Maybe they were woken up during a rescue mission and evacuated," Jack offered with no real conviction.
Sarah shook her head sadly. "Then why not take us too? In fact, why not just tow the whole damn ship to safety? That would be easier."
Sarah yelled at the room, "Computer, what happened to the colonists?"
"I have insufficient data to answer that question."
"Then guess," yelled Johnson.
"I can not. I went off-line when Sarah went into stasis."
"Why didn't you wake us up in time?" Jack blurted out.
Emma added, "And why wake us now?"
"I can only assume that there is an undiscovered glitch in my systems somewhere."
Johnson shook his head and spat on the plastic floor. "Bullshit. Are you saying one of those egg-headed geniuses who programmed you just forgot to carry the one? Do you think we're idiots you fucking bitch?"
The computer didn't respond.
He added, "That God damn computer has killed us all."
Emma whispered to no one in particular, "Where did the colonists go?"
Sarah had no answer to that. Even her best guesses were so wild and out of touch with reality that they were useless.
Jack said, "Even if we get to a planet perfect for human life, we're all dead. Our botanist is gone. Our chemists are gone. We needed them to survive."
Johnson added, "And don't forget that a colony is doomed to failure when it consists of only four people. We could never hope to propagate the species ourselves. The colonists were a perfect genetic mix to spread humanity and they're missing."
Emma said, "Is it out of the question to just set coordinates back to earth?"
"Of course it is," Sarah sighed. "The earth had maybe five hundred years of habitability left when we set out. It's a dried up dirtball by now."
Johnson yelled out in anger and kicked over a supply crate that was nestled against the opposite wall. When it tumbled end over end, the lid fell off. There was nothing inside it.
Jack knelt down and read the label. "This crate should have an air handler in it. Where'd it go?"
Johnson walked to the next nearest crate and popped the lid off. It was supposed to have a dozen water purifiers inside but it was empty too.
Sarah said, "Those mother fuckers ditched us."
Emma was crying as Johnson said, "No way. Why would they do that?"
Sarah thought for a moment and then said, "Maybe because we're useless to them. They were the colonists. We're just the crew designated with the task of getting them to the colony. Maybe the computer woke them up once we touched down on the seed planet, dropped them off with everything they'd need to prosper, and then took us out of the equation by sending us so far away we could never safely get to them."
"But why?" Jack asked as his face screwed up. "We're not completely useless. Johnson's smart as hell and pretty handy, I'm a physician, you're a pilot and Emma's got six masters degrees. I barely know any of you but I know enough to say that we're hardly chumps."
"They already have people like us amongst them. We weren't essential."
Johnson shook his head and said, "Nope. It's a stupid explanation for two reasons. For one thing, they'd want as many mating pairs as possible to ensure the colony thrived. And secondly, they'd never let the ship leave just to take us away. The ship has life support systems and hardware that can be repurposed. If they wanted to get rid of us, they could've just told the ship to keep us locked up in stasis, or better yet, just run a sharp knife across our throats while we were immobilized."
Jack nodded but he said, "You're right but I think Sarah's on the right track. This whole thing stinks of sabotage, or at the very least, deception."
Emma agreed and Johnson said, "I'm not arguing with you there. This is fishy as fuck and the only thing that has any answers is that lying computer. Emma, how are your hacking skills these days?"
"Probably not good enough to open up that computer."
Sarah asked, "Could you try anyway?"
Jack sighed. "What could it hurt now? The mission failed already."
Before they left the pod chamber Sarah told the computer to turn them about a hundred and eighty degrees and make for the edge of the Milky way galaxy. She had a feeling the command would end up being a futile effort. It was so far away she had a tough time wrapping her head around the distance involved.
Jack was all doom and gloom but he probably had the best handle on their predicament. Just because he was negative didn't mean he was wrong.
Reverse Course