by Sam Renner
Eat, fight, and watch these inane videos. That’s all this guy does.
Malvaughn punches the keys harder. Anything to drown out the noise coming from that datapad. His keystrokes get progressively louder until it feels like he’s going to put his fingers through the keys and bury them deep into the circuits and boards that are underneath.
A crowd laughs. A pinched voice makes another joke. Maldonado chuckles, and Malvaughn wants to rip at his hair. Anything for a distraction.
Then. Suddenly. His datapad chimes. He snatches it off the cushion beside him. It’s a message from Zulu.
“Begin phase 2”.
FOURTEEN
Lebbe stares into the space where Sarah had stood just a moment before. Was she really a vision? Just a figment of an imagination stirred by time locked in this ring?
It doesn't matter. She needs him, whether she was here on this station or is back home on Earth. His girl needs her dad. That means he has to find a way out.
Think, Jim.
His mind begins to turn, the right way this time. Away from visions of a daughter who was light years away and back to his current situation. Back to this station and these rings and how he was going to get back to the Zulu’s main floor.
He could hear the thoughts begin to pick back up. It was a slow groan at first. Something like an animal in pain. Then it sped up, and the pitch got louder and more complex, there were more animals now. They weren’t groaning. This wasn’t pain. They were talking. Then it got louder and higher still. Yips and yaps. Excited calls as everything that had been broken before was coming back together, falling back in place.
His thoughts are better now. Clearer. He knows what he has to do. He has to get back to his bare little office.
The screen on his pad gives just enough light to let him find his way back into the cramped halls of the area inside the rings. The tight spaces make the pad was more effective. It helps him quickly find his way back to the small room that he'd claimed for his own.
He finds his door and powers his pad down. Conserve battery. He runs a hand along the wall and feels for a corner. He finds it then slides to the floor, his back resting against the wall.
Think, Jim.
He mentally walks himself down to McKibbon's launch bay and flings himself out of the wide open bay doors. He floats out and away from Zulu. He swims his arms like he's trying to get to the other side of some infinite pool. He spins over and onto his back. He kicks his feet and pushes himself farther out, and Zulu starts to present herself to him. She takes up all his vision and spreads out even beyond his periphery.
She really is beautiful from this angle. He kicks his feet and swims his arms again and carries himself even farther out. He looks at his home. He studies the main column that sits at Zulu's center. Lights polka dot its surface, indicators that mean nothing to someone charged with station security.
Four long spokes shoot out from that column and connect Zulu's big ring to its center. Only one ship is connected to this big space wheel.
He kicks his legs twice and slips out farther. He can see all of Zulu now, her whole profile. And that's the first time he notices the additional spokes that attach from the main column out to the ring. They look pencil thin from here, barely wide enough for two grown men to walk through side by side. But those tiny little walkways are his hope. He has to find them.
Of course, this could all just be his addled mind playing a trick on him, seeing how far it can get him to go. Let him feel better. Let him think the whole Sarah thing was just a moment. A brain juice blip. Then it gets him to go exploring a place he doesn't know anything about and to do it essentially in the dark.
Think, Jim.
Lost is the last thing he needs to be, especially if it means getting lost in parts of Zulu he’s not sure anyone else knows exists.
But does it matter?
He has no breadcrumbs to lead him back here if this search for these spokes doesn’t work. And if his pad dies he has no way to see his way anywhere, much less back to his little office.
But does it matter?
He floats outside of Zulu, studying her. He tries to focus on her rings, and where his little office sits. He swims his arms and pulls himself closer to Zulu. He floats closer, so close that he can’t see all of her anymore. Closer still that he can’t see all of her center column. Closer still that he can reach out and touch the metal on the outside of her ring.
He kicks his feet and lets his palm run lightly across the surface, Zulu’s skin is cold and smooth. These were parts likely assembled at some asteroid-based station between here and Mars. These pieces, this metal, has never known anything but the relative protection of space. They are still as pristine as the day they came off the line.
Lebbe swims on top of them. He kicks his legs again and gets himself moving faster. He looks out in front of him and to the ring as it extends around the main column, disappearing around a turn. That’s where he needs to be. He kicks again and moves even faster. The center column blurs in his periphery.
He passes over one of the main junctures where the giant spokes connects the ring to the main column. He orients himself. If the bay doors are behind him and this is the first juncture he’s seen, then it’s the south point. This one is empty, nothing attached.
He reaches for a bit of structure that helps hold the ring to the main column and pushes himself off of it. He’s moving even faster now. The west point comes up quickly and he pushes off the structure there too. Now he’s flying like some kind of superhero he read about in his comic books as a kid. Everything is a blur. The north point comes up on him before he knows it.
He flips over quickly, now on his back and feet forward. He drops his feet down just in time, and his heels catch the same structure that he’s been using to power his flight forward.
He jams them into the metal and the shock shoots up his shins and into his knees. It settles there with a shake, and even in this vision he can feel the ache.
He pushes himself up to a standing position and takes a step off the structure and onto the surface of the ring like some kind of barnstorming wing walker. He walks confidently across the top of the ring and looks forward toward the area where he believes his office should be. He stands on top of it and reaches down. He grabs a handful of Zulu’s metal skin and pulls it back. It comes off Zulu’s structure like a piece of cheap fabric. It’s peeling away like cheap ribbon. Lebbe flings each handful behind him. He pulls more and more of the outer coating away, littering space with each grab, until he finds himself.
He’s sitting in his office, back slid into onee corner with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head tucked between them.
He’s standing on the only piece of coating left on this quarter of Zulu. He kicks his feet and pushes himself off the top of the ring, and that last bit of skin peels off and floats away.
He swims his arms and pushes himself up and away from Zulu. Bits of the floating skin catch on his back and wrap around him. They cling to him like they are covered in static, and he begins to flail to shake them loose. They fall away, but now he’s spinning. He shoots out his arms and legs, making himself a big X. It slows him, but now his spin is wobbly. He’s disoriented and struggling. When he wins his battle with inertia, he’s looking out into open space, a billion stars blinking back at him. He pushes with one arm and slowly turns himself back around.
There she is. There’s Zulu. Farther away than he expected, but he sees her. He flips over and kicks his feet slightly. He creeps toward Zulu slowly. He spots himself in the now-naked quarter of Zulu’s ring.
He’s inching closer and waves his arms in front of him to bring himself to a stop.
He looks at himself and begins tracing a path from the room where he’s sitting through the halls of Zulu’s ring offices.
Out and left. Walk a ways. Pass three halls and then another left. Short walk there to a right then one more left. Follow that hall to … no.
Back to the office. Out and
left. Always out and left. Then the pass two halls and left. Right. Right. Left. No.
One more time. Out and left … there. That’s the door to the smaller spoke. It’s his way out.
He flips himself once more, head first. Face forward. He puts his arms out in front of him and stretches them with all he has toward Zulu. He pulls them back once, hard. Then twice more. He’s rushing now, Mach 1, toward the station. He focuses on himself, the real himself. He’s still crouched over on the floor in his office. He was a small spot earlier, but he’s growing quickly now in the center of his vision.
He swims his arms one more time and then puts his hands out in front of him like he’s diving into a pool. Everything becomes a blur. Everything except for him. That’s still in focus.
The station and its structure are all around him now, and it’s disorienting. The openness of space. The closed in walls of Zulu. He tries to stop himself, but can’t. Not quickly enough. He crashes hard into the floor of the office. His shoulder hits first and he feels it roll under his chest. He tumbles into the wall and stops.
He stands and sees himself, the real Jim Lebbe, sitting in the corner. He steps toward himself and shakes his own shoulder.
+++++
Lebbe opens his eyes. He looks around, but can’t see a thing. Its all black, like he’s floating out beyond Zulu. He feels around. A wall. A floor. More floor. There. His pad.
He swipes a thumb across the screen and it comes to life. A chirp reminds him to login, but he doesn’t need it for that. He sees the office, and everything comes to him.
He knows what to do. He knows where to go. He steps out into the hallway and turns left.
The glow from the screen on his datapad lights his way down these halls. It gets him to the first left and down that hall. Then to the right turn and the short walk down that hall to the next left. More twists and more turns. Lebbe is walking confidently, but he’s also walking quickly.
With each turn the light on the screen grows fainter. It’s almost non-existent now, only lighting a few inches in front of him. He aims the pad at the walls, not wanting to miss a hall and get turned around in these tunnels.
He sees the light from the pad blink red off the metal walls, a warning that his battery is desperately low.
Only two more turns. A right and then a left.
The light from the pad blinks red again.
Or is it a left then a right?
Lebbe continues to walk. Quicker now.
The light blinks quickly three times then everything goes dark.
He stops.
Left then right, or right then left? He thinks.
Right then left. He knows it. He’s sure. He puts a hand out and starts walking, his palm brushing the cool metal. His fingers hit a junction and he grabs the corner. He turns and feels for the wall again, left hand out this time.
He walks what feels like forever, what feels like too far. He’s tempted to turn around. This isn’t what he remembers from his dream. The isn’t right.
Then he hears it, a voice. Sarah’s voice, but not from earlier. This is the voice of a younger Sarah. One who was lost and screaming for her dad, fear and desperation coloring her cry. Lebbe stops. The voice is louder now. It’s clearer, and it’s bouncing off and echoing down the long and winding corridors of Zulu’s ring.
“Daddy,” the small voices shouts. “Where are you?”
Lebbe walks again, hand on the wall. He picks up his pace and the tears start falling down his cheeks.
“I’m coming, Sarah,” he whispers. “I’m coming.”
He turns at the next junction and runs down that hall then stops.
There in front of him, faint but real, is light.
FIFTEEN
Keys clack. Rebecca and Keith are heads down, their attention buried in their computers. Keith has projected his monitor up onto a portion of the big screen and Grey watches his work. She hasn’t taken her eyes off of it since he broadcast it.
She’s fascinated by the empty spaces where the dashboards should be. Not mad. Not frustrated, She’s past all of that. It’s a puzzle now. One that she has to solve.
Grey was never an athlete. Couldn’t catch a ball if it floated to her. Couldn’t make a basket. Couldn’t shoot a shot. But she has to imagine that this is what it felt like to be there at the end of a game with time running out, some internal clock ticking like thunder in your ears and the ball in your hands. It’s up to you to do whatever it is that needs to be done to get the win. Throw a strike. Score a goal. She knows the terms even if she doesn’t know exactly what they mean.
But this heavy weight that she feels, like all of Zulu is balancing on her shoulders, this is what it must have been like for all of those kids who were good at sports. Except that this ball that’s in her hand, this responsibility that rests on her, really is life and death. Her station is dying. Zulu will be gone if she doesn’t figure this out. So that’s what she’s going to do. She’s going to sink this shot. She’s going to score this goal. She’s going to save her station.
So she stares up into the wide screen to the image of Keith’s machine and concentrates on the open spaces where dashboards used to live and begins to ask questions.
“What used to go here?” She points to the open space in the lower right. The dashboards have disappeared in a counter clockwise order, and this was the first one to go.
Keith looks up from his screen. “Air.”
“And next to that was water?”
Rebecca doesn’t look up but answers: “Yes.”
Grey puts a hand to her face and lets her fingers rub small circles on her chin. “I assume then that the next thing we’d expect to go is power.”
“If the pattern holds,” Keith says.
Grey is quiet again. Keys still clack behind her. She walks down the steps to the empty desks that cover the area that sits below the control room’s main platform. She pulls out a chair and sits. She leans back and the chair tilts with her until she’s nearly laying down.
The main screen from this angle really is all consuming. It’s above her. It’s in front of her. She looks away from the image of Keith’s desktop and over to the map of Zulu’s space, the area of the galaxy that she’s been charged with protecting. Indicators blink. The one constant is the light in the center of the screen that indicates Zulu’s location. It’s the brightest light on the screen. Grey stares at it. It doesn’t blink. It doesn’t waver. It’s there always. Mentally she turns the light down by half then looks at the screen. Better.
Then, no. Not better. She mentally turns the light back up, turns it brighter than it was before. Then brighter still. That’s her Zulu. That’s her station. The brightest light at the darkest edges of the galaxy. That’s what it’s always been. That’s what it’s going to be again. This isn’t anything but a blip in Zulu’s history. This whatever it is, it’s just a moment. Zulu will glow again, a beacon to those who dare to have enough imagination and curiosity to venture out this far.
No, it’s not as many people as humanity may have expected. Definitely not as many as the people who designed this network of stations expected. But there are people who come out here, either to earn their fortunes mining minerals out of some far-flung rock or to take people and gear out to those rocks. And when they come out here they want a meal or a bed or just a place to spend a couple of hours that’s not the ship that they are already trapped on.
Dammit, that’s Zulu. That’s what this place is. No, it’s not the biggest station in the chain. It’s not the most important link. But that doesn’t mean Zulu doesn’t have value.
Grey stands. Zulu’s not dying. Not like this.
“How are you two doing?”
“Still digging,” Keith says.
Grey walks the steps back up to the control room’s main platform. “I’m going to step out for a bit. When I come back, I want some answers. I know that’s asking a lot. And I see how hard you two are working. I appreciate the effort you’re putting in here, but e
ffort can’t be good enough. We need to solve this. And we will. I believe that, but the first steps toward that solution need to start happening now. I’m asking for those steps to come from the two of you. So, you’ll have something ready when I return, yes?”
Both Keith and Rebecca have lifted their heads from their terminals. Their keys are silent. Neither of them answer.
“You’ll have something …” Grey says again.
“We will,” Rebecca reassures her. “We’ll have something.”
Grey nods then turns and heads through the double doors that lead out into the hall that will take her to the heart of Zulu.