Sofa Space

by Tom Cheshire

  About the Author

  I write books and I make games. In the event that Sofa Space doesn’t immediately make you want to jettison me out of a conveniently placed spaceship airlock, you can find out about more of my projects on my website:

  http://www.tomcheshire.com

  I’d like to dedicate Sofa Space to my family, my friends and that one weird dream I had about caffeine and robots.

  1

  Imagine the worst hangover of all time. You know the pain, when it feels like your head is on fire? Imagine that, only twice as bad. Now combine it with the fatigue of being locked in a prison cell for a couple of decades. Losing all sense of self, forgetting what it feels like to be alive. Having no concept of who, where, what, why or how, but knowing for certain that something must have gone incredibly wrong at some point to end up in such a sorry state. This was going to be one of those days…

  I’d woken up. Where? I wasn’t entirely sure. Having fumbled around for a non-existent alarm clock, I eventually realised that waving my arms in the air was a rather fruitless exercise, so I let my arms go limp, and… ah… that’s strange. My arms made contact with rounded metal accompanied by a comically audible ‘thump,’ and instantly I knew that this wasn’t my bed. Hell, this didn’t feel like any bed I’d laid in before. I let my arms slide along the surface, the metal curving cylindrically either side. Was this some kind of medical device? Hard to tell; my arms were extremely numb and hardly even in sync with my thoughts. From what little sensory input I had, I was able to deduce that whatever I was lying in was extremely narrow, and probably not all too comfortable for the downstairs region.

  Had I been in some kind of accident? What was that burning pain? After spending a few moments clarifying that my head was not actually on fire, I tried to move my legs but my lower body hadn’t woken up. Give it a minute, I thought. I tried to open my eyes - big mistake. The resultant flash of light penetrated my poor unsuspecting retinas. In its wake, a lingering afterimage danced, mockingly, across my eyelids, continuing long after the instinctual reaction to shut both eyes as quickly as humanly possible.

  Minutes passed and I began to suspect that whatever had caused the piercingly bright light was, in fact, nothing out of the ordinary, that I’d just been out of it for so long my eyes had forgotten to adjust. Just a bit of sunlight creeping through the window, surely? Slowly I eased my eyes into a narrow gaze, locked in an odd-looking position of perpetual squinting until I could finally make out something vaguely resembling a ceiling. Grey? Definitely grey, I thought. That or my eyesight had deteriorated to the point of rendering everything in monochrome.

  Slowly but surely my other senses returned to me. There was a faint whirring sound that seemed to be reverberating all around me. The cool air smelled of a certain freshness that was probably supposed to be welcoming but… hang on, was that coffee? Delighted that I had apparently recovered my senses enough in order to correctly identify the scent of coffee, I began floundering my limbs around like an idiot, trying to find a way to force my body up and out of whatever I was in. Yes, time to get up, lazy boy. Can’t lie here forever. A few seconds later my head had introduced itself to the floor and I immediately regretted that train of thought.

  “Damn that coffee!” I swore aloud, although my lack of muscular control reduced those words to meaningless grunts. It seemed odd to blame the coffee for my current predicament, but I couldn’t think of anything else to use as a scapegoat. I’m not sure how long I stayed face-down on the floor, but it was long enough to induce a whole new set of aches and pains by the time I rolled over.

  Finally I was able to stand. That coffee again… it was still there; the scent was much stronger now. The deliciously caffeinated aura filled my nostrils, guiding me forwards. I was nowhere near balanced, stumbling around like an intoxicated fool. I found myself slamming into pipes and walls and pieces of equipment I couldn’t identify. Everything was just an indistinct haze at this point - the coffee was the only thing I could focus on. My whole brain was preoccupied by the goal of reaching it; I wasn’t even paying attention to where I was. I followed my nose and limped through some sort of corridor until I could start to hear voices. Voices! That should have been cause for me to forget about my blind-sighted objective, but it wasn’t. I tripped through a doorway vaguely aware of four agape faces staring back at me. I took a few more steps in the general direction of the coffee scent until my legs gave way. I suppose I passed out a few moments later. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

  “That’s why I thought he was dead!” was the first sentence I caught as I returned to consciousness.

  “Thought who was dead?” I yawned, groggily. As I rubbed my eyes I got the sense that several people quickly shuffled away from me, alarmed at my sudden awakening. I sure as hell hoped they hadn’t been trying to revive me through some form of close bodily contact.

  “You, obviously!” came the first voice again. I turned my head towards the source, spending a few moments trying to determine if I knew who it was. I quickly realised that was too much effort, and focused on just examining features. Facing me was a slightly overweight man, probably in his early 30s, wearing a baggy shirt and jeans, leaning on a burgundy-coloured sofa at a slightly awkward angle. His ginger hair was long and looked pretty unkempt, curling off in random directions. He also had a silly looking goatee - still ginger, but with a mismatched hue compared to the rest of his hair. Instantly I could tell that he was in a bad mood.

  “Well, no. I’m not dead,” I said. The ginger man turned away, as if trying to think of some clever remark to bark back with.

  “You stopped breathing,” came a woman’s voice. “Are you sure you feel alright?”

  How my declaration of not being dead had somehow implied that I was feeling alright, I did not know. I turned to the woman planning to say something sarcastic about my head being on fire, but her face seemed genuinely sympathetic, so instead I was honest.

  “I’ve got a hell of a migraine. What’s going on?”

  The ginger man did a fake-sounding chuckle, as if that was a stupid question. The woman looked down at the floor, dark hair flowing across her face, which she brushed out of the way incredibly slowly, giving herself time to think. She was pretty, I suppose, or perhaps the unkempt ginger man had been such an eyesore that I was ready to accept almost anyone else. The stripy, charity shop-esque jumper she was wearing certainly wasn’t doing her any favours.

  “We don’t know what’s going on either, but we’ve been awake for a little longer than you have. We think…” she paused. “We think we’re on a spaceship.”

  “What?” I gasped, suddenly taking in my surroundings. It didn’t look much like I’d expect a spaceship to look; there were a few pipes and odd metallic bits and pieces, but from what I could tell we were in an ordinary-ish 21st century living room. There was the sofa the ginger man was leaning on alongside a coffee table, a couple of empty bookshelves and a large monitor that I assumed was a TV.

  “Are you pulling my leg?” I asked. “Is this some kind of practical joke? It’s not a very good one. You haven’t exactly gone to town on the set design...”

  There was an awkward pause. I tried again.

  “Seriously? Is this a joke?”

  “Afraid not,” came a different woman’s voice. She was wearing glasses and a smart black dress with her hair tied up in a neat bun, suggesting a sort of authoritative confidence I couldn’t see in the others. “This is just the common room. I think it’s supposed to look like Earth, to make us feel at home.”

  “Yeah, feels real homely don’t it…” came the ginger man’s sarcastic tone.

  “Okay, fine, how did I get here?” I asked, smirking in disbelief.

  “You came in through that doorway and collapsed. Started
muttering something about coffee…” replied the ginger man.

  “I meant how did I end up on a bloody spaceship?” I asked, getting frustrated. I knew it wasn’t really a spaceship but I thought we’d get to the point quicker if I played along. Being reminded of that damn coffee didn’t help.

  “Um…” came a new voice, which startled me because I’d forgotten there was another person in the room. I turned around to see an older, timid looking man, probably in his 60s, with greying hair and a tattered white shirt. He had a somewhat awkward demeanour. “There’s… c..cryo pods…” he mumbled, stammering slightly.

  I followed the others through a slightly more convincingly spaceship-like corridor back to the room where I’d first woken up. The older man was right, this was a room filled with cryogenic pods. By which I mean, things that looked like cryogenic pods, but couldn’t possibly be cryogenic pods because that’s stupid. Still, I couldn’t knock the authenticity of the design. They were human-sized cylindrical chambers with glass windows coated in a thick layer of condensation, connected to some sort of large vat reinforced with steel. Anyone who’s ever seen a science fiction film before would have guessed they were cryogenic pods from just a quick glance.

  “But… this doesn’t explain anything.” I said, still going along with this prank. “Who put me in there? Why can’t I remember?”

  “We’ve all got this amnesia,” said the confident girl. “It must be a side effect from being frozen for so long.”

  “So long? What do you mean, so long?” I asked, ignoring what the words ‘cryogenically frozen’ implied. The ginger man pointed towards a small numerical dial on the top of one of the pods.

  “25 years, every single one of them,” he said, bitterly. “We’ve been asleep for a quarter of a century.”

  That was a funny old premise, being asleep for so long. Let’s think about this for a moment. 25 years. What would it mean to lose out on such a long amount of time? All the important stuff I would have missed back home… What about my parents? What was the last thing I said to my wife? My kids? Would they even be alive? Wait a second; did I even have a wife? Hang on a minute. There’s something really wrong here… That’s when I realised.

  “I don’t remember my family…” I said, softly. “I… I don’t remember my name.” It was true, and the fact that I had only just realised was petrifying. I was straining myself to remember these basic details but the only picture I could paint was blank. This prank was getting more and more sinister by the second. “What the hell did you guys do to me? Have I been drugged? Tell me what’s going on!” Before I knew it I had an arm round me. It was the dark haired girl.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” I yelled. It wasn’t like I’d had my memory completely wiped, because surely I’d have woken up having forgotten how to speak and spent all morning crying and rolling around on the floor like a newborn child. On second thoughts that wasn’t far from the truth, but that’s besides the point. I couldn’t remember who I was, or what I did for a living, yet somehow I knew in my heart that I’d lived a productive life. I must have. The Beatles, Jackie Chan, Super Mario. Every now and then a pop culture reference would flicker annoyingly into my head, and hell, I recognised the smell of coffee, so clearly not everything had been wiped.

  “Alright, that’s enough…” I said calmly. “The joke’s getting tired now, guys, this isn’t funny.”

  “Now now, let’s not start thinking irrationally,” said the confident girl. “Nobody drugged you. It’s just a bit of cryogenic amnesia, we’ve all got it. Something must have gone wrong with the process. None of us can remember our families or our names at the moment…”

  “And I’m supposed to believe that, am I?” I responded.

  “Look, take all the time you need, but please just trust me. We’ll all on the same page here,” she replied.

  “It’s true. I don’t know who I am, either,” the other girl said despondently. The tone of her voice was genuine.

  If that was supposed to make me feel better, it wasn’t very effective. The ginger man sensed this, and decided to make the most of this opportunity to wind everyone up.

  “My name’s Dom, I’ve got a wife and family in Texas. I’m 33 years old and I drive trucks for a living,” he stated, grinning idiotically. It was obviously complete bullshit, and not just because his accent was clearly British.

  “You’re l… lying,” stammered the old man, eyes down at the floor.

  “No sh… shit of course I don’t remember who I am!” yelled the ginger man, his imitation of the old man’s stammer causing a ripple of disapproval among the others. “Not only that, I didn’t even remember which gender I was this morning until I looked down and was like, woah, dude, what’s that dangling between my legs? It’s huge! I mean we’re talking about morning wood 25 years in the making right here…”

  Stunned silence.

  “Oh come on!” he continued. “You don’t honestly believe this horse shit do you? 25 years, my arse. Look, guys, we can cry all we want, but whatever’s happened to us, someone’s obviously responsible. Let’s not jump to bullshit sci-fi conclusions.” Finally someone was starting to talk some sense.

  “Ginger guy has a point…” I said. Ginger guy seemed to take offense.

  “Really? Ginger guy? Wow, okay. We’re gonna resort to adjectives now? Male pattern baldness…”

  I nervously started feeling around for my hairline.

  “We can’t just sit around here for days waiting to remember who we bloody are. We’re gonna have to come up with names for ourselves.”

  The confident girl started pacing up and down, trying to gauge the right moment to say something.

  “I hate to say it…” she started. “But he’s right. We don’t know how long this amnesia will last. We have to find some way to identify ourselves.” The old man glanced up, finally, as if he was about to say something, but chose not to. The confident girl continued. “Feels like we’ve gotten off to a bad start. I think we should all have some time alone… Choose a name, and we’ll meet back later on to introduce ourselves, yeah?”

  Nobody was in the mood to question her logic. We walked back through the corridor and stood in separate corners of the common room. There was a distinct lack of furniture to actually sit on other than the sofa that nobody seemed brave enough to try out. What followed was an increasingly tense hour or so of complete silence, during which we each tried to avoid making eye contact with everyone else. Well, apart from the ginger man, who took great pleasure in walking around being as deliberately distracting as possible without actually saying anything.

  Eventually the tension was too much to bear so I chose a doorway at random and started walking. From what I could deduce, the actual living space of this “spaceship” we were on was rather small indeed, consisting mainly of the central common room with multiple exits and a single corridor that wrapped around in a sort of horseshoe shape. There were doors to the ‘cryo room’, a couple of smaller, featureless rooms that I assumed were supposed to be bedrooms (minus the beds), a bathroom and a door that wouldn’t open, not that I was trying very hard to open it. Despite the ever-twisting pipes and railings in the corridor, nothing on this ‘spaceship’ looked very sophisticated to me. The doors were all on hinges and had physical handles, and not even the clean, modern sort. I’m talking tacky, half-rusted brass handles that were so stiff you could hardly turn them. Certainly not the sort of thing Captain Kirk ever had to put up with. There’s another reference for you. I’d have congratulated myself on the ability to recall another element of popular culture, but the thought of William Shatner being one of the only faces left in my memory was demoralising, so I let it pass.

  Before long, I found myself in the bathroom, transfixed by my own reflection in the mirror. I felt a certain sense of recognition, but not a clear one. The ginger man was right, my hairline was receding. Well, that’s great, I thought, unsure whether I should laugh or cry. I went for the
latter, because it seemed to be the normal reaction to being told you’ve been frozen for 25 years with no memories of your former life. No, that’s still stupid, I thought. I wasn’t ready to start believing that crazy story just yet.

  Before long I found myself daydreaming, trying to invent my own past history in order to justify the ridiculous setting I found myself in. I started to figure that if everything the others were saying was true, as ridiculous as it may seem, maybe there was some logic behind it. Maybe we were all astronauts on some experimental mission to explore the deepest regions of space, and like the confident girl had said, something went wrong with the freezing process resulting in us losing our memories. No, that does sounds bonkers. Space astronauts? Cryogenic freezing? How could any of it be true? And further still, would I really commit to a career like that? I didn’t fancy myself as much of a spaceman. Maybe a banker or accountant or something really boring like that. But what did I know? I could have been a convicted criminal. Maybe this was some kind of mental asylum. I shuddered with the thoughts of things I could have done in my earlier life to deserve this.

  I still had to choose a name. Jack? Sam? Paul? Mark? I glanced up at my pathetic tear stained face. Guess I was just your average…

  2

  “Joe? That’s the best you’ve got?” asked the ginger man, doing his best to make me resent my newly chosen identity.

  “Uh… yeah, there a problem with that?” I responded.

  “No, no… just… never mind.”

  “Why did you stick with the name Dom?”

  “It’s easy to remember.”

  “Well there you go.”

  The dark haired girl had chosen the name Emma, while the confident girl was extremely confident that her name was Chloe and ‘couldn’t possibly be anything else’ no matter how much Dom pushed her. That left the old man, whom when pressured for a name couldn’t come up with anything so Dom gave him the name Travis. Because it made him laugh.