The Pedestal

by Daniel Wimberley

  I think I’m sharing real estate with some sort of oversized pipe fitting; my fingertips explore what feels like a merging of short pipe sections, budding with bolt heads around their union. Plastic banding spans the cubby in a stiff web, binding the freight to the bottom of its crate. The protrusion against my back gouges my ribcage incessantly as my weight shifts to the jerking of the vessel.

  As far as nonlethal hiding places are concerned, I couldn’t have chosen a more uncomfortable one to stow away in.

  The moment the aircraft becomes airborne, my predicament escalates from haphazard to lethal. As the landing gear retracts, the air begins to jettison from the fuselage, depressurizing the bay. The gap between my crate and its unlatched lid hisses with the outflow of my modest air supply. Forget about the freight digging into my back; that’s merely an inconvenience. The ship’s cargo bay may have protected me from a brutal death at the hand of a cold-blooded killer, but its price of admission looks to be equally fatal.

  I struggle to leverage the lid back against its rubber seal, but with only slick surfaces to grip from the inside, I’m just wasting precious time and energy. I’m guessing I have less than a minute before the air is sapped completely from this enclosure. If I’m still curled up here when that happens, I’m dead.

  I give an experimental heave against the crate lid. Though it’s already open a little, it resists opening farther; either the exponential increase in hull pressure is weighing it down or I’ve already grown weak from oxygen deprivation. Frantically, I try again, putting every ounce of strength and stamina into a single, desperate effort. My heart soars as the lid grudgingly lets go, releasing its compression with a muffled poof. Suddenly, I’m gasping in a vacuum. In my panic, I forfeited a brief and valuable opportunity to catch a good breath; thanks to this oversight, my lungs are now starving. I’ve got to get out of here.

  Now.

  In spite of these frightful circumstances, I’ve been granted a small favor. The fuselage, which was cloaked in complete darkness earlier, is now dimly lit by a series of tiny beacons lining the walls. On its own, the light doesn’t save me, but without it, my doom would be a foregone conclusion. A variety of freight containers form a neat, forklift-sized corridor through the bay. It seems to extend for miles, terminating in a blurry pseudo-horizon. It’s too far, I know. Yet what else can I do, but try? Flailing down the path like a wounded animal, I feel as if my chest is pressing in on itself, squeezing out my last bits of life like a twisting sponge. I’m down to seconds, I think. My skull is stinging at its core, infusing with a sweet fog—Sleep, it seems to say; It’ll all be better if you just sleep. Spots appear before me, dancing with colors that can only be the conjurations of a dying brain.

  And then I see it.

  Straight ahead of me is a hatch—it’s right there, so close I can almost touch it. Like a runner digging deep in the last few yards of a marathon, my will to live transcends my weakness. In a final bound, I surge forward, drunkenly stumbling against the coveted exit.

  I pull at the lever, summoning what little strength I have left in me—which is frightfully scant—and it proves just enough. With a hissing release of suction, the door opens. Just a little, but I’ll take what I can get. Clean, breathable air sucks past me into the cargo bay, along with the shrill whine of an alarm. I drop to my knees and cram my face into the makeshift airway. My lungs drink greedily, slurping oxygen like a heavenly brew. The fog in my skull thins, burning off a little with each breath.

  That was close.

  I’m surprised at how little time it takes to regain my strength; in less than a minute, my body has all but forgotten its near-death experience. I turn my attention again to the hatch; like my crate lid earlier, it’s been unlatched, yet hijacked by the immense hull pressure. With fresh air in my system, I’m reinvigorated. I lean hard against the riveted steel, pushing with the heels of my hands until it eventually gives. When the space is wide enough to accept my head, I wedge my body firmly into the gap and begin wriggling therein, gaining a centimeter here, an inch there. Cool atmosphere screams past me into the vacuum of the cargo bay, whipping my hair painfully about.

  And just like that, I’m through, plopping into the tail end of a short hallway. At second glance, I realize the end of the corridor doesn’t terminate immediately, but adjoins a perpendicular hallway. I take a few steps into the passage, passing a deep cubby inset into the wall; the space is lined with orange storage lockers, the floor littered with all manner of cordage and packing materials.

  I’m not sure where to go from here, only that I can’t remain static for long. The shrill breach alarm blares around me, filling me with a new sense of trepidation. I’m retracing my steps to the open cargo bay, reaching out to shut and latch the door behind me—I wasn’t born in a barn, after all—when I hear something new. From beyond the corridor, approaching footsteps thump a deep, sinister cadence below the noise. I shouldn’t be surprised by this development—of course the ship would be manned, and the alarm continues to cry for human attention—but my opportunity to think this through fell into neglect as I was fighting for my life. As a result, I have no plan; I’m at fate’s fickle mercy.

  Almost immediately, a lone, grumbling voice joins the choir. It sounds close, and it sounds angry. On impulse, I throw myself into the storage cubby, where my body lands in a hapless jumble amidst a pile of loose netting. I’m not at all hidden, here; at best, I’m slightly camouflaged by clutter.

  “Of course I’m sure it’s closed,” says a man just as he bursts into the corridor. “We couldn’t have taken off if it was open!” He’s dressed in a flight suit, his facemask dangling on a tassel from his helmet. As he nears me, he exclaims: “What the—it is open. How’d that happen?” For a terrible moment, his words seem directed to me. But then he scurries past me and I realize I’ve gone unnoticed for the moment.

  He regards the open hatch and throws up his hands. “I’m telling you, it was shut and latched.” With a stiff yank, he grizzlies the door open and peers inside. He’s a short guy, but there’s no question he’s strong—stronger than me, anyway. I hear his voice again, but this time his words are absorbed into the intense cross-breeze rushing from the ship’s interior into the low pressure of the cargo bay.

  I’m not sure what I’m waiting for; this guy is perfectly preoccupied—with his back to me, at that—yet I lie frozen in this corner, where I’m vulnerable for discovery at any moment. Abruptly, the man secures his facemask and hurls bodily into the cargo bay.

  This is it, I realize. I won’t get a better chance to make a move.

  I climb hastily to my feet with my eyes locked on the open door. Suddenly, the trajectory of the aircraft lifts and topples me back to the net pile. At once, the man reappears through the door and latches it in a tantrum of exaggerated motion. The alarm silences. I flatten myself into the netting, as if I might will my body into a state of invisibility. “You trying to kill me, or what?” he snaps. “Give me a second to get back on deck, would you?” He storms past me, disappearing into the small hallway from whence he came. When he’s gone, I can’t help but laugh.

  Holy scrap, that was way too close.

  I’m not out of the woods just yet, though. Any second now, the craft will change slope again, this time almost vertically, to punch through the atmosphere. Once the shift is in motion, I’ll go bowling around like a piece of trash in the wind. Milliseconds after this realization hits me, the floor pitches again and the craft’s engines graduate from a low whine to a deafening hurricane. Without really thinking about it—almost instinctively, really—I enable my NanoPrint’s inner-ear stabilizers.

  See how easy that was, Adrian?

  I’m in mortal danger, yet all can I can do is bury my fingers in the netting and hunker down to weather the storm. As the ship accelerates, I begin to slide toward the rear of the vessel. Our trajectory is rising acutely; with a stab of fear, I discover that my grip won’t be able to support my weight for more than a second or two. Whi
le I still have the strength, I begin to loop the thin strands of netting around my hands. I hear the roar of friction against the ship’s hull as we accelerate even more.

  I’m not sure why, but the interior lights are fading; it’s almost like—

  When I come to, my feet are afloat in midair, hovering eighteen inches over the floor. My hands are entangled painfully in a chaffed knot of vinyl netting, anchoring my body to the floor. The g-force must’ve knocked me out; without an oxygen mask or a flight suit, it’s a minor miracle that I’m alive at all. Nevertheless, I haven’t survived unscathed: my head is spinning and my stomach is threatening to follow suit. Sure enough, the slightest movement causes me to vomit, soiling my little nest with miasmic bile.

  The room is spinning so fast. Why won’t it slow down?

  Closing my eyes, I attempt to consult my NanoPrint settings—my inner-ear stabilizers are enabled, aren’t they?—but my implant isn’t responding. I know it’s still running, because I can feel it tingling beneath my skin as it calls out to the nexus. Yet, try as I might, I can’t get it to acknowledge me.

  This can’t be good.

  I get almost no time to contemplate the meaning of this, because the ship’s reverse thrusters suddenly engage in sequence, slowing the craft for docking. The pilot is a surgeon with the controls, so deft that I don’t even realize it when we’ve finally docked. My only clue is that the outer cargo door begins to retract as the telltale clatter of forklifts and pallet jacks resounds through the nearby bay.

  I keep expecting the pilots to burst into this area—if they do, I guess I’ll be completely out of luck—but after fifteen or twenty minutes, I decide that the ship’s crew has exited by some other route. The spinning in my head has slowed considerably; it’s not altogether gone—I feel like I might toss my cookies again without much provocation—but it’s much more tolerable now. My muscles quiver like gelatin as I disentangle myself from the nylon web and scramble to my feet. I’m tempted to reenter the cargo bay, since I’m at least somewhat familiar with the lay of the land; the sound of human voices within dissuades me. There’s really no other choice but to follow the nearby hallway into the depths of the ship, trusting that a way out will ultimately reveal itself.

  With every bound, my nausea abates; I feel almost human again—for all of two minutes. Just as I’m congratulating myself for so expertly dodging the proverbial bullet, faintness begins to take hold of me again.

  I just can’t catch a break.

  I’m not sure, but I think I’m breathing the wrong kind of air; I feel it moving gingerly past me, as if the entire craft is being purged of its atmosphere. Is it just me, or does this ship seem unusually determined to kill me? The hallway funnels through a narrow hatch into the control room. I slip inside because there really is no other place to go; thankfully, the space is unoccupied. With the engines at rest, the ship is dead silent, save for the gentle breeze rustling my hair.

  At first, I’m unclear what the air is moving toward, until I see the door. I’m not sure how I missed it, actually; it’s just ahead of me, situated directly opposite the one I’ve just entered through. More notably, it’s boldly placarded in large, green letters:

  EXIT.

  My heart quickens; my mouth hikes in a dumb grin. The door is ajar, beckoning me like a beautiful siren.

  I ought to be grateful—if not downright excited—to have found a way off this deathtrap; instead, though relieved, I feel my smile falter, bending under the crushing weight of cynicism. If I step off this craft, it won’t be onto the safety of an airport tarmac, where shuttles and city trams idle in wait for someone to please. Outside this cosmic portal, a spiraled umbilical intercourses with the Unified Space Station. I can easily discern the bizarre, slinky-like structure through the door opening.

  I can’t believe I’m in freaking space, dang it. Not on some orbital pleasure cruise, mind you, but skulking around on a GFL freighter like a diseased ship-rat. I don’t have any business out here, disconnected from my world.

  And I’m pretty sure I’m not in for a pleasant reception.

  On the other hand, I know what awaits me if I stick around for the return trip. It’s not the sort of trade I like to make, but I’m forced to weigh probable disaster here over certain death back home. Either way, I can’t remain here for long; I need air—real, life-giving air—and I have my doubts that I’ll make it off this ship at all if I don’t get some right now.

  Wheezing, feeling weak—and a little confused—I forget for a moment that gravity has more or less abandoned the equation of walking in space; carelessly, my leading foot pushes off with too much vigor, launching me into a flying leap. My head rebounds off the ceiling with a dull thunk and sends me flailing back to the floor. My hands extend instinctively to absorb the impact, but instead skate down the back of the copilot chair. The friction flags my velocity; I still hit the floor with bone-jarring violence, but it could’ve been worse.

  I sit up and blink as my body begins to gently levitate from the floor. My scalp smarts and my neck is rapidly stiffening, but my pride is perhaps damaged worst of all. I’m reminded of a time when I fell down the escalator at the downtown Hyatt. Arthur was there, along with close to a hundred gawking bystanders, who apparently had never fallen in their life; Arthur was never a fan of slapstick, but I remember he laughed his butt off as I bounced down those stairs like a beach ball. I realized then that even the best of friends will laugh at your expense; that doesn’t mean they aren’t still your friends. At least this time I looked miswired without an audience.

  At once, I notice my periphery shrinking, which I figure can’t be a good thing. I should make a frantic dive for the door, yet it doesn’t seem that important anymore. Plus, it seems so far away, and it’s sliding farther and farther into the horizon. My mind seems to detach from reality, floating over a fuzzy plane of existence where everything’s trivial and time is a fixed point. Or a circle. Or a point in a circle.

  Here we go again.

  I’m seated in a folding chair at the center of what might normally be a conference room; the furniture has been removed, but its feet have left behind subtle impressions in the carpet. I count the former locations of twelve chairs and a single long table. My head feels better. Similarly, all traces of nausea have vanished, though my stomach now cries out in ravenous neglect.

  I can’t say for sure how I came to be in here, but I must have been carried; I certainly didn’t walk in here on my own, anyway. I’m not restrained, which doesn’t actually mean much, when you think about it. Not many prisons require restraints these days; the landscape of the moon, for example, is enough to deter escape from its penal colonies. Likewise, I’m as good as restrained here. Beyond these walls is infinite, empty space—as good a deterrent as any desert or glacier.

  I’ve been pouting for several minutes about my sour luck when I notice an unopened bottle of water at my feet. My lips are dry; my stomach feels like a sprung steel trap in my belly. With trembling hands, I rip open the bottle and drink greedily, downing more than half the bottle in one long pull. My tummy gurgles with delight.

  “Good, you’re awake,” says a disembodied voice. The odd shape—sort of ovalish, only bisected off from center—and emptiness of the room makes for an interesting set of acoustics; I can’t place the origin of the voice, because it seems to have spawned from the air itself. I drop the bottle and stand in one startled motion, poised to—well, I’m not sure what I’m gearing up for; it’s just one of those primal reactions that prepares your body for fight-or-flight while your mind flips a coin. At least, that’s what mine is doing.

  A man steps into the room from a side door and approaches at a distance, careful to stay well outside of my reach. It strikes me as humorous that anyone would think me worthy of such caution, yet my amusement doesn’t reach my lips.

  There’s no telling how long he’s been there; I didn’t even hear the door open, and that bothers me. I wonder if others are standing by invisibly, watching
me like a rat in a death chamber.

  “You gave us all quite a scare,” he says. He’s reedy-framed, I note, built for perching over a microscope rather than grunt work. Even in my weakened state, I know I can overpower him if I need to. Still, glancing into his eyes, I see a fierce spark of intelligence that warns it would be a grave mistake to underestimate him.

  I haven’t spoken a word yet, in part because he hasn’t actually said anything requiring a response, but moreso because I’m busily processing my surroundings. I steal a glance through the open door, preparing to bolt the moment an opportunity arises.

  The man smiles—not unkindly, but knowingly. “The crew’s out there,” he assures me in a calm, reasonable tone. “You won’t get far.” Abashed, I nod my understanding and then, unsure of what other options remain, I drop back into the chair. My water bottle lays empty on the floor; its spilled contents have left an oblong spot on the carpet.

  “Name’s Hollister, but everybody calls me Hal.”

  I nod and open my mouth to speak, but for a terrible moment, I can’t tease my name from the slush of my fragile mind. Ah, but there it is. I’m still me.

  “Wilson,” I reciprocate.

  He takes a couple of timid steps deeper into the room, peeking over his shoulder as someone passes by the open door. “So, Wilson. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”

  I laugh humorlessly. “Trust me—you wouldn’t believe me if I did.”

  “Try me.”

  I pause for a beat, then offer a noncommittal shrug. What can I possibly say? We lock eyes and I sigh; for a split second, frustration flexes in his jaw. “Just so we understand each other,” he says with sharp annunciation, “you aren’t walking out of here until I’m convinced that you aren’t a threat to this facility. So I suggest you start talking.”