by Tom Cheshire
So, there in the common room we stood, five complete would-be strangers with fake identities introducing ourselves like a group of students on freshers’ week, discussing fake details of our fake lives as if any of us had a clue what we were talking about. None of us stopped to question what we were doing, because there was something oddly cathartic about being able to make up details of our past lives without feeling any guilt about lying. Before the end of our conversation I had become an engineer, Emma a teacher, Chloe an investment banker and Travis (after much prodding by Dom) an artist. Dom changed his mind about his backstory and instead gave us an elaborately constructed tale of how he was the ‘top dog’ of a world renowned ‘pimping agency,’ owned a whole chain of strip clubs and was ‘banging thirty hoes’ a week, because ‘wouldn’t that be awesome?’ ‘Dom the Schlong,’ he called himself. Suffice to say he really enjoyed fleshing out that story, while Chloe and Emma were horrified.
On the whole though, I began to warm to the group. Part of this was undoubtedly tactical, as in: ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be stuck with these folks so I better bloody get on with them.’ Part of it must have been genuine, however. None of the people were grating on me yet, not even Dom, whose cocky arrogance had somehow swung so far into the realms of tastelessness that it had almost become charming.
I’d zoned out. Dom was still going on about his pimping business and Chloe and Emma were having a jokey argument with him about the morals of prostitution. I groaned.
“What is it, Joe?” Emma asked.
“What are we doing?” I sighed. “Let’s look at the facts. We’re stuck on a spaceship.”
“Supposedly,” interjected Dom.
“We don’t know why we’re stuck on a spaceship-”
“Supposedly…”
“And instead of trying to find out why we’re stuck on a spaceship-”
“Supposedly…”
“We’re sitting around talking about 12 inch dildos.”
“Human nature,” Dom shrugged. Yeah, human nature, or had we already lost our marbles?
“How come…” I began, trying to come up with an observation as I spoke, “…we’re all wearing casual clothes? I mean shouldn’t we all be wearing space uniforms or something? If we’re really in space…”
“That’s right,” said Travis, who hadn’t said much throughout the whole conversation. “It’s kind of… o… odd, isn’t it?”
“Well we woke up in them, so who knows,” replied Emma. “Obviously doesn’t do any harm to the cryo pods.”
“That’s weird,” Chloe pondered. “Must be a new type of cryogenic-”
“Do you know something we don’t?” Dom snapped. “Because the last time I checked, cryogenic pods in space were the stuff of bleeding sci-fi!”
“When was the last time you checked?”
“It’s a figure of speech!”
“Well for your information, Dom the self-proclaimed pimp…”
“Dom the Schlong.” Dom corrected her.
“Right, Dom the Schlong, I think you’ll find they’ve been doing cryogenic freezing tests for years in labs and such,” Chloe paused. “I think.”
“Yeah but not in space,” Dom retorted. “God knows what year it is now, but I remember the turn of the millennium like it was yesterday. We’re from the early twenty-first century! This shit doesn’t exist!”
That nobody piped up after this comment implied that we were all indeed from the same time period, which as Dom stated, must have been some time in the early twenty first century. Maybe. Putting aside the amnesia for one moment, it was almost impossible to recall definitive dates after half an hour of irreverent strip club discussion.
“So let’s see here,” I began. “We’ve woken up with no memories wearing non-futuristic clothes and we’re in a non-futuristic looking room with a sofa and goddamn doors with brass handles. And that means we’re in space. Why?”
“Have you looked out the window yet, Joe?” Chloe said, as if I was being stupid.
“No,” I replied, dumbfounded. “What window?”
I followed Chloe’s eyes over to the large rectangular black object I had previously assumed was a TV. As I got closer, my jaw hung wide as it suddenly dawned on me that I’d missed something obvious. There were no stars, maybe one or two max, but somehow my brain knew instantly that I was looking out into deep space. The same way that when you look up at the night sky, even when there’s nothing visible, you get a sensation of openness, of vastness. Standing here, looking horizontally out at the great black nothingness I got a sense of vertigo. I suppose it’s a natural feeling. You’re used to seeing space as this thing above your head, not in front of it.
“Wow,” was the only thing I could say. I glanced towards the edges of the window and could just make out some of the exterior of the ship, a textured grey that appeared to extend outwards at perfectly straight angles. I got the impression that the ship was shaped like a box. A big grey box drifting alone in a much bigger black ocean. The exterior was casting some kind of light somehow, as there certainly wasn’t a nearby sun shining our way. I wasn’t going to even begin to contemplate where all the power was coming from.
“Do you believe me now?” Chloe asked, wearing her best ‘I told you so’ face.
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, wanting to just keep staring out into the emptiness.
“Seriously?” Dom huffed. “You think they can build a spaceship with goddamn cryogenic freezing pods, but they can’t build, say, a 3D monitor with a bit of snappy head tracking? You know, like the stuff that already exists…”
“You seriously think someone would go out of their way to fake this?” Emma asked, joining in with the debate.
“It’s a lot more believable than some of the shit you guys are coming up with! Jesus, I thought you’d have gotten the hint after my pimping story. Everything here is bullshit. Someone’s playing us.”
“Playing us?”
“Yes, Emma, playing us. I’m telling you, we’re being watched.” Dom started shifting his eyes around the room suspiciously. “You guys want to know my theory?”
Nobody said anything, but we let him continue.
“I think we’re on some kind of crazy reality TV show. Japanese, I’ll bet. They probably gave us some pills to make us forget everything, then they put us in those tacky pods and started rolling the cameras.” Dom started imitating a reality show announcer voice. “Five contestants wake up with no memories. They think they’re on a spaceship. Which one of them will lose their mind first? Find out on next week’s episode of Numpties in Space!”
Dom was really getting into his mad little piece of role play, as he started humming a silly made up theme tune and running around like a five year old impersonating an astronaut. The rest of us shook our heads.
“Dom, would you cut it out?” Chloe asked.
“Why should I? This is the stuff that brings in the ratings,” Dom smiled, “They’ll be lapping this up, the public. Ginger twat goes crazy and rumbles reality show on day one! Think of the headlines,” he started laughing maniacally. “BIG BROTHER! I’M A GINGER TWAT GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
Again, more pop culture references I didn’t particularly want to recall at this moment in time.
“THERE YOU GO! I’VE RUMBLED YOU! YOU CAN KICK ME OUT NOW! SHOW’S OVER!” Dom continued yelling with glee. Chloe and Emma both covered their ears.
“Must be a way out, it’s only a TV set after all…” Dom continued, combing the room for secret exits. He started tapping on one of the walls. “Let’s see how well they built it.” Dom started banging on the wall, lightly at first, but gradually harder and harder until he was punching with all his strength.
“Dom, please stop punching the wall…” Chloe sighed.
“Right, okay, guess they did a pretty good job. YOU HEAR THAT, MR. PRODUCER? YOU BUILT A DAMN GOOD SET!” Dom stopped pounding on the wall and began nursing his hand. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d busted a few bones.
&n
bsp; “There’s blood on the wall now,” he said, softly, but with an aura of pride. “I should sue them for that.” I glanced over to the spot on the wall Dom had been punching. There was a small sprinkling of red, but other than that, not a mark in sight. Whatever these walls were made of, it would take something a lot stronger than Dom’s fist to make a dent in them.
For a short moment, we thought Dom had calmed down. Chloe and Emma sat down on the sofa, Travis resumed his default state of ‘looking at the floor,’ and I continued to gaze thoughtfully out of the window. Before long, however, it was clear Dom had other plans. He slowly turned his eyes in my direction, stared at the window and smiled triumphantly. Then he walked over to the coffee table and tried to pick it up. It wouldn’t budge.
“Huh… Seems to be fused to the floor. Okay then, I’ll have to use something else…” Dom looked up at Chloe and Emma. “Excuse me ladies,” he said calmly. It was clear that he wasn’t asking to sit down, as there was plenty of room on the sofa. Instantly I clocked on to what he was trying to do.
“No… you can’t,” I warned.
“Shut up, Joe! Ladies, would you mind?” He was gesturing for them to stand up. Emma moved right away, but Chloe remained seated. “Chloe just stand up for one sec.”
“No.”
“Chloe, please.”
“No!”
By this point Dom was practically wrestling Chloe out of the sofa. Travis suddenly stepped into action.
“Stop it Dom! Let her s…sit!”
“I’m getting us out of here, Travis, if you people would… just… co-operate!” Dom finally managed to force Chloe out of her seat. She looked back at him, eyes filled with fury. Dom clearly didn’t care, as he was too busy trying to pick the sofa up.
“Dom, what the hell are you doing?” Emma asked, agitated.
“Getting… hnnnghh!!... out!” The huge sofa was clearly much heavier than Dom had predicted, but before long he had started to lift it. The floor underneath was surprisingly spotless.
“Dom! Oh my god!” Emma yelled, then placed her hands over her mouth in shock. Dom half-dragged the sofa over towards the window, and I rushed to the other end trying to push it back.
“Joe, would you please let me do this!” Dom shouted.
“If you smash that window, we’ll all die!” I yelled. “We’ll be sucked into the vacuum of space!”
“We’re not in fucking space!”
I looked to the others for help, but Emma was crying, Chloe was in a sort of hate-fuelled trance and Travis was cowering in the corner. Dom’s strength was unfortunately much greater than mine, and I fell to the ground, hitting my head on the coffee table.
“It’s the only way!” Dom screamed, as he lifted the sofa as high as he could, and launched it towards the window with all his might.
“NOOOO!!!”
In the few milliseconds before the impact, I somehow had enough time to mentally contemplate several potential scenarios. One, that the window would be strong enough to withstand a direct collision, the sofa rebounding and landing squarely on Dom, perhaps killing him or at least incapacitating him to the point where he would never try something so stupid again. Two, that the sofa would go flying straight through the window, thus creating a hole into space, immediately sucking all of us out with the pressure and killing us all. Three, that Dom was actually right, the window really was a fake all along and that after smashing through it we’d be greeted by a film production crew wearing headphones, sitting around with video monitors and clipboards. I found myself greatly preferring scenario number one. Even though three would technically put an end to this nightmare, in the end of the day I just couldn’t stand to see Dom victorious.
Actually, all three of these scenarios were wrong. As the sofa collided with the window it smashed straight through, but before the vacuum of space began to take its toll, a blue flash of light appeared where the window once was and the glass magically repaired itself. No broken glass on the floor, no damage at all. The sofa, however, carried on its trajectory, very slowly rotating its way out into space. All five of us watched in silence as it gradually span into the distance, slipping further and further away. We continued to watch it glide out of reach for what must have been several minutes. Chloe sighed.
“Now we’ve got nowhere to sit, asshole!”
3
The lack of seating didn’t exactly help group morale. Perhaps we were overreacting. I gazed out at the sofa, now but a tiny gyrating cuboid, trying to imagine how we’d all have managed to sit together. I quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn’t possible for all five of us to perch upon it at the same time, although with a bit of effort we might have been able to squeeze on four. The sofa had only been a double seater, but the girls and I were slim enough to have easily sat together without brutally violating each other’s personal space in the process. Travis could have climbed up onto the armrest, though it would have probably been a bit uncomfortable for his old bones. Dom? No combination of body positions would have allowed for his bulky frame to fit on there too, I decided, picturing the disturbing image of a collapsed sofa with human limbs protruding outwards in all directions. It might be possible to fit a couple of dozen people in a Mini, but as far as comfortable seating arrangements go, I wouldn’t exactly call it practical.
I bring this up because for a considerable amount of time after Dom’s little outburst, all that the others and I could think about was that bloody sofa, as if having something pleasant to sit on was the be-all-end-all solution to all our problems. Yeah, it does seem silly, but perhaps it was the manner in which the damn thing was still just about visible to the naked eye. Every time the cosmic couch rotated fully on its axis it would catch the light coming from the ship, reminding us that it was still there, just out of arm’s reach, taunting us with its soft plush burgundy cushions that would now go untouched for millions of years.
But yeah, we were overreacting. The floor of the common room had a soft, textured feel to it that was fine for sitting on, probably even passable enough as a last-resort sleeping location. The empty bookshelves in the corners of the room were rather pleasingly rounded and fine for leaning on, probably even fine for lying down on. The coffee table was just about high enough for people to sit on without it a) breaking or b) putting an unnatural strain on the pelvic muscles. Nevertheless, we weren’t happy.
Travis sensed this, and, perhaps out of fear of some future explosive incident, proved himself to be quite adept in coming up with solutions to our seating predicament. He fused a few plastic sheets and loose pipes together to make something vaguely resembling an armchair, and quickly fashioned up a couple more. For something so obviously hacked together, I was surprised to find that it actually wasn’t all that bad to sit on. He claimed he got all the materials from rummaging around in the walls of the ship’s corridor, but honestly I have no idea how he managed to build it all so quick. I hadn’t even thought about looking through the ship’s innards (there were metal gratings all over the corridor holding all kinds of bits and bobs) because I didn’t have a clue what any of it was; I figured I might accidentally blow up the ship in the process. Perhaps I’d been a technophobe in the past. As long as Travis knew what to do, that was fine by me.
I wasn’t in a position to suspect Travis was some kind of imposter or anything like that. He’d certainly been the quietest and most reserved member of the group so far, but his age was quite telling. This was a man who’d been around long enough to know how to knock something together from spare parts, and we were very grateful to have someone like that with us, even if we couldn’t quite admit it.
“Thanks Travis,” I said, slumped on one of his improvised chairs and trying to sound sincere, although something about the name Travis didn’t seem to lend itself well to compliments. Travis made an odd nervous squeak of acknowledgement, then sat down on the floor. This was odd, because one of his makeshift creations was unoccupied, and neither Dom nor Chloe (who were both standing up, arms crossed, having
said nothing since the sofa incident) looked like they wanted to try it out.
“You sure you don’t want to take a seat?” I asked tentatively.
“Nah… nah...” Travis mumbled, shaking his head and looking at the floor. I waited a few moments before launching into another half-arsed compliment.
“It’s good, this,” I said, rubbing my hands along the angular armrests. “Very comfy.”
“O...oh… I’m glad.” Travis smiled weakly.
“You must be tired after all that work. Why don’t you try it out?”
“I’m good.”
That was all I was going to get out of him, clearly. I could have taken the Dom approach and forced him to sit in the chair but I didn’t want to start getting aggressive, especially after all the drama from earlier.
Not long after this little exchange, Chloe decided she was going to sit down in the unoccupied chair. I’m guessing it was to make sure Dom didn’t get there first, although he was never going to make a move. I highly doubt he was in the mood to damage his reputation any further. Once Chloe had gotten settled, I tried to get a conversation going.
“You alright, Chloe?”
Instead of looking towards me, Chloe turned in completely the opposite direction, resting her hand under her chin. Not a good time to chat, clearly. Travis shot me a look as if to say ‘let’s just sit here keeping ourselves to ourselves.’
Actually, no. I was starting to feel light-headed. I wasn’t in the mood to sit for another few minutes in dead silence. I needed to talk to someone before I collapsed out of sheer boredom. I figured I’d have more success if I tried with Emma.
“Hey Emma.”
“Hey…”
“You alright?”
“Yeah…”
It was one of those automatic ‘yeahs’ that is always the default response to being asked if you’re alright, even when you’re clearly not.
“Good good…” Well, great. There goes another potential conversation. Why did I have to ask such a stupid question? Guess I’d have to shut up now, before things got any more awkward.