by Lauren James
My brain doesn’t seem to be listening. It skitters away from my insistence that I’m safe. Without any warning, I’m on the edge of a panic attack. I push my head into my sweaty palms, trying desperately to stop myself from doing this. My lungs seize up like there’s a strap around my chest. I can hear myself making thick wheezing noises.
I won’t do what they’ve asked. But even as I tell myself I won’t, I know that I will. I’m the commander. I have to do anything it takes, even if it’s a sacrifice, to look after my ship.
I’m going to have to turn off the lights.
My horror is so large it fills the room, pressing into every corner until there’s no air left for me. There’s no space to move. I can’t breathe, can’t make my limbs bend, can’t even blink. I’m drowning.
I’m not strong enough to do this. Why couldn’t someone else be here, in charge of this ship?
Anyone would be better than me.
That night I turn off the lights two hours earlier than usual and lie in my bunk, unable to sleep, straining my eyes to make out any traces of the ceiling in the black.
After an hour, the creeping panic gets too much for me and I fall into a fitful sleep.
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
99
I wake up too early and can’t make myself go back to sleep because I’m desperate for the toilet. I’ve been getting into the habit of turning on the lights while I run to the bathroom, then turning them off again until the extra hours of assigned power saving are up.
But when I try to turn on the lights this morning, they don’t work. The UPR’s new lighting schedule is automatic. It must not have an option that lets me override it.
I reach over to the side of my bed, fingers searching for the shaft of my torch. When I turn it on, it glows a dull yellow for a few seconds and then switches off. Out of charge. There have been so many power cuts recently that I’ve been using it almost every day, and I must have forgotten to recharge it last night.
I’m stuck in bed until the lights come on, then. My tablet is in the living area, so I can’t even use that as a torch. The ambient light routine has been deactivated completely, so there isn’t the usual dim pink light of simulated dawn. It’s pitch-black, completely and utterly. I’ll have to lie and wait.
My bladder complains insistently that it’s achingly full. I cross my legs, shifting onto my back and trying to focus on anything other than my desperation to wee. I don’t know how much longer it will be until the lights come on, until I can finally get out of bed. It might be an hour or more. I’m not sure I can make it.
I pin my fists to the bed and squeeze my eyes shut, pretending I’m still asleep, I’m still dreaming and I’m not ready to get up yet anyway.
My breath is shallow and quick. I’m asleep, I am, I am, I am.
I count to two hundred, then four hundred. I can’t wait much longer.
I let out a frustrated sob. Every time I breathe in, I’m certain that I’m about to wet myself.
I have to go to the bathroom.
Carefully standing up, I curl my toes against the floor. I take a hesitant step with one hand reached out in front of me. I’m overcome with a desperate certainty that if I move now, I’ll end up walking right into some rotting creature, or trip into a bottomless hole in the floor that wasn’t there before.
I picture the layout of the furniture, hoping that I know my own bedroom well enough not to trip over anything. The five metres across the room feels like miles.
I catch my foot on the edge of a cabinet, and the impact ricochets up the bones of my calf. Ignoring the pain, I carry on walking, but my fingers touch a wall somewhere I didn’t expect a wall to be. I think I lost my sense of direction when I crashed into the cabinet. I can’t think, can’t reorientate myself.
In my blindness, I start imagining hands curling up over my shoulders; the moist breath of something standing just in front of me, motionless and waiting; the tickle of fingertips gliding only micrometres from my face.
Suddenly I can’t breathe. I’m desperate for the lights to come on, to show me that the monster I’ve invented isn’t real.
I stagger along the wall, hoping that somehow I’ll find the entrance to the bathroom without falling into the pit of the living area, but I can’t think about anything except slimy fingernails and rotten breath.
My knees give out beneath me and I collapse against the wall, gasping and straining my eyes in the darkness. I hope desperately that the lights are seconds away from turning on, but nothing happens.
I curl up on the floor, my nightmares creeping towards me in this blackness. Frozen astronauts touch me, coming for me with eyes bulging from their sockets. Sobs rack my chest, tears spilling from my eyes. Before I can stop myself, or crawl any further towards the bathroom, my bladder lets out.
When I feel warm liquid flood over my legs, I’m so ashamed that my crying increases. Urine stings the inside of my thighs, smelling sharp in my nose. I can’t handle even a few hours in the dark.
I try to ignore the pins and needles trailing across my skin. It feels like fingers are stroking me; like the astronauts have finally come for me. I don’t have the strength to stop them. I close my eyes and let them take me.
The astronauts.
They had only been in stasis for seven years when the torpor technology started failing. The problem might have been something to do with the space radiation interacting with the oxygen-rich liquid that filled their lungs, or the artificial gravity microclimate, or something else completely. My parents never found out. It just happened.
Without any warning, without any way to stop it, the astronauts started dying in their sleep. One by one. Lights flicked off, as lives passed silently into the night.
I was only four, but I can remember it. My parents tried desperately to hide their worry, but I knew something was wrong.
I remember Dad patting me absently on the head and telling me to stay in the living quarters when I asked if we could play hide and seek in the stores. It was obvious his mind was full of other things.
I followed him and watched from the doorway of the sick bay as they tried to wake up the astronauts, one after another. Most died before ever regaining consciousness. Later, I found out that the men and women who did survive the stasis were brain-dead. Humanity’s cleverest minds had been wiped away.
There was nothing that could be done.
The only thing that survived was the embryos. The undeveloped cells were only ever supposed to be a way of ensuring genetic diversity on the new planet. Now they are Earth’s only hope.
My parents didn’t stop trying to save the astronauts, not until they’d woken up every single one of them and run MRI scans, searching in vain for brain activity.
I left when my mother started injecting the brain-dead. I crawled under my duvet and waited, eyes closed, listening as hundreds of souls left their bodies. It was the loudest silence I have ever heard.
My mother gave a euthanasia injection to every astronaut who survived torpor sleep. She killed almost the entire crew of The Infinity and she didn’t cry, not once, the entire time. I couldn’t understand why, back then. Now, I know that there are just some things so terrible you can’t cry about them, because if you start, you will never stop.
After the astronauts died, the three of us were alone. The ship was empty.
Before, it had been the best place in the entire world: filled with music and coloured lights, and secret hiding places that were perfect for a little child to curl into, giggling as her parents searched for her.
After they died, it was dark and full of shadows, and so, so quiet.
When the astronauts left, so did the light from my mother’s eyes. Dad told me that she just couldn’t handle the trauma – not on top of the pressure, the isolation and the confinement of being in space. My mother watched all their closest friends die one by one. She put them to sleep, unable to save them.
She developed an adjustment disorder – her mind r
ejected her reality.
I didn’t understand that, not then. Not really now, either. How can a child understand that their mother has left them when she is right there in front of them? I used to cry and beg and plead for her to see me, to just look at me instead of at the astronauts she saw in her mind. But I could never bring her back to us. I wasn’t good enough.
Dad tried to help, but there was nothing he could do. She was beyond help.
He tried.
There is a trail of bodies in the wake of The Infinity, and every one of them is watching me.
At night they enclose the ship, peering in through the portholes. Every dead astronaut – skin bleached white from radiation and leaking drops of greasy, iridescent cooling fluid from their nostrils – follows me when I sleep. They peer around corners, run their shrivelled fingers down my spine. When they touch me, their desiccated flesh crumbles into dust, coating me in layers of sticky, ancient corpses.
The astronauts all hate me for doing what they couldn’t and surviving. They whisper my name, shuddering, groaning, telling me that my parents’ failure is my failure, that I’m cursed because they couldn’t save them.
The dead crew of The Infinity gather together in clusters, forming a writhing ball of bodies, limbs entwined. They whisper threats in the vacuum of space. They grab on to the outside of the ship, trying to block the signal to the transmitter and cut off my messages from J.
The ghosts of The Infinity want me alone, so I have to pay attention to them. They want to crawl inside my head and inhabit my worst fears.
Dad’s death was the first punishment. One day they are going to kill me too.
When the lights finally come on, I pull myself to my feet and stagger into the kitchen. I carefully don’t think about how clammy and cold my pyjamas feel, how my cheeks are sore with salt. I get changed, wishing desperately that this was a shower day.
I fall onto my bunk, staring up at the ceiling as I force down a cereal bar and try desperately not to close my eyes again.
From: The Infinity Sent: 18/11/2067
To: The Eternity Predicted date of receipt: 25/11/2067
J,
I’ve been dreaming more recently. I imagine the astronauts clinging to the outside of the ship. I know that logically there are no corpses in space – my dad put the bodies of the astronauts in body bags and froze them until the liquid evaporated. Then they were vibrated until they shattered into dust, in a kind of space cremation.
There are no corpses following me. If there’s anything to be scared of, it’s not their bodies. Those are just dust, hidden away in the stores.
But I keep dreaming about the astronauts, more and more. The same nightmares I’ve been having my whole life. I can’t stop myself, however much I try.
I don’t know why they scare me so much. I don’t know why their memory just won’t leave me in peace.
I hope I stop dreaming after you arrive. I hope that when I’m not alone any more, my brain will be less determined to scare me in any way that it can.
R xx
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
90
I’m finally getting used to the hours of darkness. I’ve got a bowl under my bunk for emergencies, and a charger for my torch, plus two spares. As long as I make sure not to open my eyes, then the lack of light doesn’t trigger another panic attack. It isn’t so bad.
I’ve also memorized all of J’s emails, so during the black hours I can whisper them to myself, going over everything he’s ever said to me, from the first “Dear Commander Silvers” to “Sometimes I feel like you’re the only thing in my life that I can depend on”.
I’ve saved so much energy from the extra four hours a day I’ve been sitting in the darkness. Energy that will go to the lights and computers.
I won’t let this ship fall apart around me.
I can still hear the scratching outside the ship. There’s something out there. It’s trying to get in.
I follow the noise around the ship moving from room to room and listening as it scrambles across the outside hull. I’m certain that it peers into portholes when I’m not looking, trying to find a weak spot to get inside.
It’s never going to stop trying. It works at the seals on the airlock, nails digging into the rubber to force it open.
I hope that J gets here before it manages to find a way in.
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
82
From: The Eternity Sent: 05/12/2067
To: The Infinity Received: 05/12/2067
Attachment: audio-subsystem.exe [13 MB]
I have some exciting news for you, Romy! Now there’s only a few months until we can meet in person, The Eternity is currently slowing down to allow it to match The Infinity’s speed when the ships meet, so they will be able to connect.
That means the ships are finally close enough for us to audio chat! You just need to install the software I’ve attached, and it’ll let us talk via audio. There will be a little time lag between replies, but it should be quite short – less than a minute, now we’re so close. It’s worth giving it a go, anyway, right? Sadly we’re not quite close enough for video chat yet, but we should be able to do that soon.
Is it OK if I call you tonight at 7 p.m.? If it isn’t, just don’t answer. But I hope you do. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long. I haven’t been able to think about anything but speaking to you. I can’t wait to hear your voice.
J xx
My heart jumps into my throat and refuses to move. We can talk on the phone. We can talk on the phone.
J is calling me tonight!
I install the software he’s sent me, which is a subsystem NASA mustn’t have thought worth installing. There have never been any other ships to talk to before now.
I try to stay busy for the next five hours, but I keep finding myself daydreaming, gazing off into space and imagining what J might sound like. When I read his emails, I’ve always just heard Jayden’s voice in my head.
I decide to take my shower a few days early. I know J won’t be able to see me, but I want to feel clean. I want to feel ready. I need something to boost my confidence.
By seven o’clock, I’m so nervous and excited that my hands are trembling. I sit at the helm, staring expectantly at the screen.
As soon as the words INCOMING CALL appear, I panic. What do I say? Do I even remember how to speak? I can’t remember the last time I spoke aloud.
I swallow back my fear and reach out to click ACCEPT.
The ringing stops, and there’s a moment of silence.
“Hello?” a deep voice says, testing.
I close my eyes and picture Jayden: dark curls and sparkling eyes with lines around them from smiling.
“J,” I say, ever so softly.
After a delay of twenty seconds – enough time for me to gather my thoughts but less time than I was expecting, considering the distance – I receive a reply. “Romy?”
I pull in a tight inhale. “I’m here.”
My mind fuzzes while I wait for his response. I can’t focus on anything but the timer on the screen, counting the seconds since our call started. It’s hard to believe this is really happening.
“Romy. It’s so damn good to hear your voice.”
My breath catches in my throat. “Y–you too.”
His voice is stronger than I expected. I was imagining soft, gentle, emotional – like his emails. But the voice in my head was Jayden’s. It was never going to be accurate.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” I admit, after a pause when neither of us speak, just breathe together. I can’t tell if it’s an awkward silence. Have we been messaging for so long that it’s not possible for it to be uncomfortable? I don’t know.
“Me neither,” J replies. “I had all these things I was going to say, but my mind’s gone blank.”
I clear my throat. I feel hot. I made his mind go blank. Me. “How are you?”
“Well, Romy, right now I’m just desperate fo
r the ships to join up. To see you in person.”
“Me too.” I say it quietly, almost scared to let him hear something which to me feels so big, so completely life-changing.
But J just glides over it, like we’re both on the same page, like it’s obvious. “I think next week we’ll be able to have video feeds too.”
I close my eyes again, almost dizzy at the thought of seeing and hearing J at the same time. This is almost too much as it is.
“I wish time could go faster,” I say.
“I know. Is it strange to know that I’m coming? I’ve never asked before. I can’t tell how you feel. Maybe you hate the idea.”
“Not at all.”
He lets out a gust of breath. “Good.”
“Do you know when you’ll be arriving yet?” I want to work out the exact number of hours, minutes and seconds until he’s here. “Are you still on schedule to arrive on the twenty-fifth of February?” That’s the date in the mission timeline that Molly sent me, nearly a year ago.
He grunts. “Yes.” There’s an awkward pause, then he says, “Listen, the computer is telling me that I have to go. I think we’re still too far apart for long conversations.”
“OK,” I say, disappointed that this was over so fast, and relieved that I’ll have time to process this new communication method before we talk any more. “Can we— Are we allowed to talk again? Maybe tomorrow? At the same time?”
“Yes. Definitely. I’d love that. Goodnight, Romy.”
“Goodnight, J.”
After we end the chat, I stare up at the ceiling, beaming so widely that my face might crack in half. I spoke to J, and it was nothing like I’d imagined, and everything I’ve ever wanted. He’s so perfect. He’s so real. I can’t wait to meet him.
DAYS UNTIL THE ETERNITY ARRIVES:
81
The next morning, all I can think about is talking to J again. We arranged to speak tonight, but that’s hours away and I can’t wait that long. I want to call him now.