The Dead Room Trilogy

by Stephanie Erickson

“None,” Selam answered flatly. “Neither Ashby, nor the United States Military, could come up with an EMP large enough to control the nanobots before the bots became united as they are now. What makes you think we can?”

  “Desperation.” He said it with such conviction that Vega almost believed him. They’d find a way out of this; they were smart enough. Any normal human would fight their way out of a deadly situation and win most of the time, right?

  “You think that three and a half centuries ago, people weren’t desperate? You think they didn’t have some of the brightest minds on the planet working to end the problem?” Selam walked to the table and leaned forward by placing her hands on it, taking time to look at all the assembled crowd.

  “Well, some of them did okay. We’re here because of them. Not all of humanity fell to Ashby’s bots,” Vega offered.

  The pilot snorted. “Not yet, anyway.”

  Four

  “I understand your concerns,” Burridge said.

  Vega snorted, and the major ignored it.

  “Tomorrow, a brainstorming meeting will be held here at eleven hundred hours. Please be prompt. There will be several important people in attendance to help us work through this problem that is now our number-one priority. In the meantime, please keep this information to yourselves. I know you have your own support systems, but I will not be responsible for widespread panic on this ship. There isn’t anywhere for people to go. The escape pods aren’t meant to sustain life for long periods of time. People would be hurt, if not killed. Try to remember that when the urge to speak about the coming hurdles seems overwhelming.”

  No one responded, but everyone in the room seemed to be pressing their lips into fine lines. Vega couldn’t tell if they agreed with her disapproval or were just holding their mouths shut.

  “Sir, I’m on livestock duty tomorrow,” Vega said hesitantly, not sure what the protocol was for missing duty.

  Some people didn’t care for the weekly mandatory duty days, but Vega liked them. It broke up her workweek, and it helped her feel like she was a part of keeping the ship running. Livestock duty was her favorite. Working with the animals fed her soul.

  The other duties were okay, too; she’d done them all at least twice by that point. Working in the fields, cleaning and maintaining pipes, manufacturing—which included making clothing, furniture, and other goods they needed from the things they’d grown—food packaging and distribution, and repair—fixing anything that had broken, and that did mean anything from couches to electrical systems. She’d gotten fairly well rounded in her years of serving duty days as she learned everything from shearing sheep and milking cows to safely repairing a bad wire. She loved it.

  But a few people, her roommate Jo included, weren’t suited for hands-on grunt work, and that was what duty days were all about. Getting the passengers’ hands dirty to keep the ship going without a hitch.

  Duty days started on her thirteenth birthday, but were only once a month back then. At eighteen, it went to twice a month, and at twenty-one it became weekly until age sixty, then it went back down again unless someone just really wanted to help. Lots of people on board kept it up, saying it helped them stay active. And once they retired, they didn’t have anything better to do with their time.

  But getting out of a duty day was nearly impossible. They were mandatory, unless someone was too sick to get out of bed. The guidelines for being excused for illness were strictly outlined—fever of over one-hundred degrees, vomiting, or diarrhea. That was it. Anything else and people had better be there.

  So, she wasn’t sure how she was going to be in two mandatory places at once the following day.

  “All crew duties are excused tomorrow.” He said it as if it wasn’t the most uncommon thing to ever happen on the ship. Duty days were almost never excused. Everyone had to do their part to keep the ship running. “This extends indefinitely until this issue is resolved.”

  “What?” she breathed, unable to grasp the severity of the situation.

  “Finding a solution now is more important than daily maintenance on the ship, Captain Fowell. Hopefully, we will be able to get back to normal very soon.”

  The room was silent as they tried to absorb the gravity of the situation.

  “You are dismissed,” the major said. They stood in unison, eager to get out of there, all except for Vega. Her head swam with what was coming.

  “Captain Fowell. You should return to your post. You only have a few minutes left in your shift.”

  She nodded at Major Burridge before automatically standing at attention.

  “We’ll work this out, Vega. I swear it,” the major said.

  Something about his tone made her turn to him. “We better. Or we all die, Major. This isn’t some simulation screw-up, where we can go back and try again. This is fifteen thousand souls we’re playing with here.”

  “More than that actually.”

  “What does that mean?” Vega asked, suddenly afraid to consider how deep it went.

  “Nothing. I apologize. I misspoke. You’re absolutely right. It’s a serious problem that we will iron out tomorrow. Until then,” he said, and Vega could tell it wasn’t a casual goodbye. It was a firm dismissal.

  By the time she wandered back to her post, the crew who would relieve her was already in place.

  “Figured we might as well get to work since we were already dressed and ready to go,” Steve, the replacement captain, said.

  “Fair enough. See you tomorrow,” Vega answered as she gave both Steve and the FO a halfhearted salute and turned to go.

  “Hey, Vega?” Steve called to her.

  “Yeah?” She forced herself to turn around.

  “What do you think?”

  She looked at the controllers, blissfully unaware as they monitored their screens, humming away as if everything were normal. As if the world as they knew it wasn’t about to crumble out from under their feet.

  “Nothing, Steve. I don’t think a damned thing.” She nodded once to him before she slammed into the heavy metal door that led to a world that wasn’t flying, and was simply living.

  Somehow, Vega found herself standing in front of her own door. She shared her living quarters with a friend from school, and she had no idea if Jo would be in. Vega looked at her watch, but had trouble comprehending what time it was.

  Jo opened the door and looked startled to find Vega standing there. “Ashby! What are you doing out in the hall like that, Vega? Come inside. I was just about to send you a message. Want to go out with us tonight?”

  Jo had always been a ball of energy. Usually, Vega liked that. Actually, she always liked that. But in that moment, Vega couldn’t keep up with her. Her mind felt sluggish. Why was Jo asking about drinks?

  “I’m not thirsty,” Vega said as she walked inside and took a seat on the cream-colored couch in the living room. Vega thought it had been white at one point, but after so many years, it was a solid cream color with patches on most of the corners. But it had recently been restuffed, so at least it was comfortable.

  Vega’s room was off to the left, and Jo’s was on the right. Kitchen and living room were in the middle. They each had their own bathroom. It wasn’t a bad setup, which Vega supposed was why neither of them had been eager to get their own places.

  Neither Vega or Jo had any decent marriage prospects, and while both could afford to live alone, they liked each other’s company. Vega enjoyed her jubilant friend. She was a good complement to Vega’s more serious nature. Not that Vega was negative; she was just happy in a low-key way.

  “What do you mean you’re not thirsty? Vega, are you okay?” Jo asked, taking a seat next to her on the couch.

  Jo was blonde with beautiful blue eyes and a full figure. She was the opposite of tall, thin, dark-haired Vega. Jo worked as a kindergarten teacher at the school they attended as children, and she was great at it. She had so much energy for those kids. And her compassion bled through into her adult relationships too.

 
; Jo took Vega’s hand and shook it, trying to force Vega to look at her. “Vega?”

  “What?” Vega looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time that day. She must have already changed out of her work clothes, because she was dressed to go out. “Are you going out?” Vega asked.

  “What the heck, Vega? I just asked you if you wanted to come with me.”

  “I’m sorry. My mind is just…elsewhere.” Vega wanted so badly to tell her exactly where it was. They didn’t keep secrets from each other. About anything.

  “Where?” Jo asked, fully expecting an answer.

  “I…” What could she say? That she wasn’t allowed to talk about it? Saying that would only beg more questions. But then again, anything she said would rouse Jo’s curiosity. After almost twenty years of friendship, Vega knew she couldn’t successfully lie to Jo. And she didn’t even really want to try.

  Oh, hey, Jo. The airship is going to have to land in a spot where we’ll probably get eaten alive by Ashby’s nanobots before we can even open the doors, which haven’t been opened in over three hundred years. That’s all. It was such a head cannon. Vega wasn’t even sure she understood what was happening. Land? Bots? It was all so abstract, as if it were happening to someone else entirely.

  “Hey, listen, I can’t go to duty with you tomorrow.” They’d gotten lucky enough to have duty days together for the last few years. It was one of the reasons Vega loved her duty time so much, even if Jo hated getting dirty. Livestock day was among her least favorite, probably because the cows loved to nuzzle her with their noses. It made Vega laugh every time, seeing the flat-out disgust at the snot they inevitably left behind on Jo’s outfit.

  “What?” The shock in Jo’s voice made her wince.

  “We have a meeting tomorrow. All crew has been excused.”

  “But…there’s no excusing from duty days. What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure I understand what’s going on. Just that a change is coming,” Vega said, her voice unsettlingly even. It didn’t even sound like her own.

  Jo searched Vega’s deep brown eyes. “Would you rather I stayed here with you?”

  Somehow, instinctually, Jo seemed to sense that Vega wouldn’t be going out for drinks or anything else with her.

  Vega shook her head. “No. Go, have fun. I’m sure everything will be fine.” She forced a smile they both knew was fake, and Jo stood slowly, clearly caught between what she wanted to do and what she’d already made plans to do.

  “Really, Jo. Go,” Vega tried to assure her friend. “We worked hard this week. You deserve to blow off some steam.”

  “Right now, it seems like you do more.”

  Vega shrugged. “I’ll be fine. Don’t you worry.”

  “Very convincing.”

  “Go before I push you out the door,” Vega insisted, and it was only then that Jo started to move. She grabbed her discarded purse off the floor and walked for the door, but before she walked out, she stopped.

  “You sure you’re ok?”

  “No. But I’m hoping I will be.” Vega offered her a slightly more genuine smile, and Jo gave her a small wave in return before she left Vega alone in the apartment.

  Vega wanted that drink, make no mistake. But she knew it would make her too relaxed, more likely to spill a secret she couldn’t afford to let loose.

  Instead, she sat alone in their apartment. But before long, the walls closed in on her, and she needed to walk. Without thinking to change out of her uniform, she left her apartment and wandered aimlessly through the Perseus.

  The living quarters on that floor flanked her on either side, making the corridor feel a bit closed. She never did like wandering the halls. Quickly, she made her way up a few floors to where there was more breathing room. She’d skipped the cafeteria, as well as the trading floors where people bartered goods they’d made like specialty clothing, dishes, furniture, and things like that, and gone straight up to one of her favorite floors—the library. It was surrounded by windows on two sides, and had texts from the time before, as well as new books people on board had digitally written. Some of them were even quite good. They weren’t classic literature, like J.K. Rowling, but they were entertaining, nonetheless.

  Often, Vega found solace among the words of others. Except for that Shakespeare guy. She couldn’t make hide nor hair of what he was trying to say. Maybe it was her mood, or the circumstances, but she found herself pulling out the records of Charles Mendhelson and his work. It was all they had on Ashby, since Mendi—as he was called by those close to him—was supposedly off-and-on friends with Ashby.

  His work had been astounding. Many of the scientists on board longed for the resources he had so they could continue his work, but they were kept busy by the spread of disease in such close quarters on ship, among other things.

  As she read through the many articles they had in the archives of his successes, she found herself wondering what a man like him would’ve done in their situation. He’d created a solution to a worldwide problem. Although he was thwarted by the fame of his friend, Vega thought of him as the real hero of the time. His solution was elegant, noninvasive, and practical. Ashby’s destroyed the world as they knew it.

  As they faced the insurmountable odds before them, she wished Mendi was there to help puzzle it out. She wasn’t a scientist, or even an engineer as Ashby had been. She was a pilot, tasked with keeping the ship in the air. And the Perseus was sinking.

  She stared at a photograph of Mendi. He had a huge, kind-looking smile on his face. As she stared at the glass screen in front of her, she muttered aloud, “What in the sky are we going to do?”

  Five

  Vega was piloting the Perseus on their way down to Earth. Things weren’t going well at all. The first master alarm had come from altitude control.

  “Ma’am. We’re losing control here.”

  “What’s happening? Is it instrumentation?” she asked, despite feeling the drop herself as she momentarily floated up out of her seat.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Okay, switch to manual control. See if it’s a problem with the autopilot system.” She sat at her station, taking control of the ship. Keeping her hand on the yoke, she felt a bead of sweat drip down between her eyebrows. She wanted to swipe it away, but didn’t dare take her hands off the yoke. It was fighting her, and she didn’t know why. But at least, for the moment, she had control back.

  Then another master alarm sounded. “Now what?”

  “We’re losing power, ma’am,” someone from her left shouted.

  “Okay, how do the engines look?”

  “One and two are looking good, but three through six are sputtering,” came the report from engineering on her right.

  “Fine. Cut engines three through six. Then try to refire them.” She could feel more sweat forming on her face, and she was anxious to swipe it away. Desperation filled her as she watched the instruments in front of her. Thirty thousand feet. Twenty-five. Twenty. She’d made it a controlled fall. She wasn’t sure the landing gear could handle their descent rate, but she supposed it didn’t matter. Vega knew they wouldn’t be taking off again.

  “Shit,” she said as she used all her muscle to hold the yoke in place. “Get those engines going again. We need power.”

  “We’re trying.”

  “Try harder!” she shouted.

  “Four is back online!”

  “One out of four isn’t great, but I’ll take it,” she said, willing the ship to work with her. To stay in the air just a little longer.

  As it was, they were already on their way down when the systems started failing. But it was supposed to be a gentle landing, not a suicidal fall from forty-five thousand feet.

  With three engines, she could slow their descent rate, but not by much. Soon, they were at ten thousand feet and still falling. She reached forward and hit the landing gear, much earlier than normal, just to make sure it had time to deploy. Doing so triggered another master alarm.

&nbs
p; “Hydraulics, ma’am.”

  “Let me guess, the landing gear isn’t down?”

  “No. Visuals from downstairs confirm that.”

  The ship was equipped with mirrors on the bottom, and crew down there could confirm or deny whether the gear was down. The system hadn’t ever been needed since the ship had remained aloft for over three centuries.

  “Shit,” she said again through gritted teeth.

  Five thousand feet, the ship’s automated woman’s voice chirped happily. As if she was pleased to be at five thousand feet.

  “Why is that a woman? Perseus was a man. His voice should be a guy,” Vega shouted in frustration. “Damned ship. Don’t you give up on me now.”

  Four thousand feet, the perky computer voice continued.

  “Deploy emergency chutes,” Vega commanded. “On my mark.” With one hand on the yoke, she used the other to pull a key out from under her shirt, and then inserted it into the lock in her instrument panel.

  “Emergency systems, go for deployment?” she asked

  “Go,” a young woman’s voice answered over their headsets.

  “Mark.” She turned the key, illuminating a red light around the light.

  Three thousand feet.

  “Chutes deployed,” the same woman who’d told her the system was go said.

  The entire room of people held their breath while the seconds passed, waiting for the next update of their altitude. The more moments passed, the slower their rate of descent.

  “Ma’am, two of the chutes on the north side didn’t open,” the woman from emergency systems announced.

  “We may start to list soon,” a man from control announced.

  “Copy that. Comm?”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Make an all-call for passengers to head to the south side of the ship. Distribute the weight.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Two thousand feet, a woman’s automated voice proclaimed.

  “And make a separate announcement on the bottom three floors of the ship to evacuate to higher levels immediately.”