Sofa Space

by Tom Cheshire

  “You know what I miss right now?” Dom asked.

  “I do not know what you miss right now.” Bob replied truthfully.

  “Sex?” snickered Chloe.

  “That too… but it’s not what I was going to say.”

  “Could have fooled me…”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Alcohol… I miss alcohol.” Dom was melancholic. “I could sure use a beer right about now…”

  “How do you know?” asked Chloe. “You don’t remember anything about yourself, right? So how do you know you miss alcohol?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Dom said. “Of course I do.”

  “But you’re the one who keeps saying things like ‘how do we know we miss home,’ or, ‘Chloe, how do you know that’s your real name’…”

  “How do you know Chloe’s your real -”

  “Maybe I don’t. But if I don’t, how do you know you like beer?”

  “Because there’s some things we know, and some things we don’t,” Dom responded after pausing to think. “We all know how to talk, don’t we? We can understand each other, we’re not just communicating like a bunch of cavemen.” (Ironic of Dom to say something like that given his current posture.)

  “Exactly…” Chloe said. She was talking like she was giving Dom some sort of lecture. “But you can’t know for sure.”

  “Yes I can!” Dom almost spat out his water. “Give me a beer right now and I’ll prove it! Bob have we got any beers on board?”

  “I do not believe so, Mr. Dom.”

  “Great!” I shouted sarcastically. “There’s no point arguing about it then, is there, because we’ll never know.”

  “I like beer!” Dom shouted defensively.

  “How do you know?” Chloe asked again.

  “Because it’s beer! It’s… it’s primal!”

  “What if you were teetotal in your formal life? What if you’ve got some crazy allergy or something?”

  “Come off it…”

  Well, looks like my attempts to diffuse another pointless argument had gone to waste. I looked at Emma and she looked back with a glint of awareness in her eye. She wasn’t going to get involved, and neither was I at this point. I remembered the sachet in my pocket. I found myself wondering if I’d even enjoyed drinking coffee in the past. Chloe was right, how were we to know what we did or didn’t like? We’d lost every trace of our former selves.

  “What about you, Bob? Would you like a beer?” Dom asked, having endured Chloe’s argument stamina.

  “I do not follow. I am not a human being.” Bob said.

  “Right, right, right. But let’s just pretend you are, yeah?”

  “Pretend?”

  “Yeah, pretend. Like a game. You like games, right?”

  “A game? Oh splendid!” Bob bounced up and down in joy.

  “Humans like games too, you know. Well, maybe not all the time…” Dom said.

  “I understand. Humans may not always like to play games.”

  “Yes, Bob. Yes. Keep telling yourself that…” Dom glanced over to me and winked as if to say, ‘I’m making progress here.’ He turned back and cleared his throat. “So, Bob, if you were a human…”

  “I am not. However, I can emulate a variety of human emotions and actions.”

  “Right… so, let’s say you’re a human. You see a glass of beer in front of you. What do you do?”

  Bob seemed to take a while to think about this. “I seek out the owner of the beer.”

  “There’s nobody around, Bob. The beer is yours.”

  “But where did it come from?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s er… ah…” Dom started to panic as he was starting to notice symptoms of a logic meltdown. “It’s… you made it Bob, you poured the beer.”

  “How did I pour it? Can humans secrete beer?”

  “What? I mean, no, no, you’re in a bar, ok, you’re standing in a bar right now. There’s nobody around. You poured yourself a beer. What do you do?”

  “Where is the bar owner?”

  “YOU’RE THE FUCKING OWNER, ALRIGHT!”

  “Oh my, this is exciting.”

  “So, Bob… the glass of beer is in your hand. What do you do?”

  “Which hand is it in?”

  “Either.”

  “Please specify the conditions by which I should determine which hand.”

  “Oh for god’s sake…” Dom found himself standing up and miming the actions. “Your right hand, Bob. You’re holding the glass in your right hand.”

  “I am holding the glass in my right hand.”

  “And?”

  “What am I doing with my left hand?”

  “Oh, you stupid wanker…”

  “Sorry?”

  “You heard me!”

  “Oh, I understand. I am masturbating with my left hand.”

  “NO! God no. That’s not what I meant,” Dom head-butted the wall in frustration. “Okay… how about… let’s say you just poured the drink with your left hand. You let go of the tap and now your hand is just down by the side of your body.”

  “Which side?”

  “The left side. About half-way down, just swinging loosely. Do you understand?” Dom wiped his forehead.

  “I just poured the drink with my left hand. My left hand is swinging loosely half-way down the left side of my body. I understand.”

  “Right, so you’ve got a glass of beer, Bob. What do you do next?”

  “Elaborate - at what distance and angle is my right hand holding the glass in relation to my body?”

  “I give up.”

  “Oh, that is unfortunate. I was most enjoying this game.”

  “I just wanted you to tell me you’d drink the beer, Bob, that’s all I wanted. Just a regular pint of beer, it doesn’t matter. The details don’t matter… ” Dom sat down and stared dismally at the ceiling.

  “I see. In that case I shall drink it.” Bob made a very brief gurgling sound and then went completely silent.

  “Bob?”

  “I appear to have consumed the drink.”

  Dom perked up again. “Oh really? How long did that take you?”

  “Approximately 0.00003 seconds.”

  “Hm, that’s got to be a record…”

  “Oh my, that is a nice surprise. What shall I do now?”

  “You could have another drink. Remember you own the bar.”

  “Excellent! I shall continue!” Bob continued to imitate the sound of pouring beer and drinking it. A few minutes later, he finally spoke again. “This stuff iss reallyyy good! I amm soo happy.”

  “You see, Chloe? He likes it! Happy Bob!” Dom smiled triumphantly. Chloe however, had other concerns.

  “Bob, are you drunk?” she asked.

  “I like gamesss… Mmmmm… Beeerrrrr… Wheeee!!!” Bob was rolling around and crashing into things. For a small, inanimate piece of plastic, he was unnervingly convincing in his role-play.

  “He said he could emulate human reactions…” I postulated. “Guess that includes intoxication.”

  “Bob, how many have you had?” Emma asked, suddenly fascinated by the whole situation. Bob wasn’t listening, he was too busy humming some incomprehensible tune to himself, and then began imitating the sound of pouring another drink.

  “Oh no…” I muttered.

  “What’s gonna happen if he imitates passing out?” Emma asked worriedly.

  “Down it! Down it! Down it!” chanted Dom.

  “Shut it, Dom!” Chloe shouted. “Bob! Listen to me! Don’t do it! Don’t have another drink! You can’t handle it!”

  It was too late. A few seconds later, Bob hopped a few drunken paces, convincingly imitated the sound of violent projectile vomiting, flopped over, and went silent.

  “Well, that was amusing.” Dom said.

  At that point Travis walked in. His panel-chipping shift was over. He could sense something was up.

  “Did I miss something?”

  “Nah, Travis, ju
st a bloke who couldn’t handle his drink.” Dom laughed.

  “Riiight…” Travis wandered over and tapped Emma’s chair on the back. This had become our unspoken code for telling the next person on the chipping rota that they were up. As she stood up I quickly grabbed her arm.

  “Wait up, Emma. I’ll do it.” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll take your shift for you.”

  “Really? You don’t have to…”

  “Yeah, I’m positive. I’d be glad to.” I stood up and made my way to the door.

  “Oh, wow, that’s really kind of you. Thanks,” she smiled.

  As I was chipping away I found myself listening in on the conversation in the common room. Dom and Chloe were arguing like usual.

  “This isn’t funny, Dom, what if Bob never wakes up again!”

  “He’ll be fine, Chloe. It’s just a bit of role playing.”

  “This is all your fault Dom! He takes everything you say literally!”

  “Well, actually, Chloe I think you’ll find that it’s your fault. At the end when he took that last imaginary drink, you specifically told him he wouldn’t be able to handle it. Look what happened. He took it literally.”

  It was hard to argue with that last point, I had to admit. Still, the arguing continued. I found myself losing interest and found it much more entertaining counting my individual chips. One. Two. Three. Four. Was this ever going to work? It didn’t look any different to how it looked an hour ago. Fifty-five. Fifty-six. Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. As monotony set in I found my mind drifting, and then remembered the reason I had offered to take the shift for Emma in the first place. Something subconscious, burning at the back of my mind…

  Knock knock... Perhaps you haven’t been able to hear me yet. Is the kettle on?

  8

  I waited until the argument in the common room escalated into another crescendo of insults and then scurried away to the kitchen. Before, I’d thought I should hold on for longer, but all this talk of drinks…

  I stood facing the coffee machine, and cracked my knuckles. It was time, I decided. I took out the sachet, stepped forward hastily, opened the lid, and… wait a minute, what?

  There was nothing in there. I was stunned. Turns out nobody had thought to check, but there it was. Mountains of coffee, enough for all of us to have a cup by the looks of things. I put the sachet back in my pocket – guess that would have to wait for another time after all. In went the water, down went the lid. I pressed the power button and an orange light flicked on. I wondered if I should actually share it around, or keep it to myself. After all, this was my discovery, and it’s not like the others had shown any interest in the stuff. No, I was being selfish. I would at least have to share it with Emma...

  Something was wrong. The coffee must have brewed by now. It sounded like the water had boiled, but when I opened the lid it was if all the water had vanished. Not just the water… all of the coffee had vanished too. Wait… that can’t be right, that coffee couldn’t have possibly been there in the first place. I must be getting ahead of myself. The promise of caffeine from the sachet in my pocket had been so strong, maybe I just imagined the rest of it. Must have. Surely?

  Weird. I tried to lift the machine but it was tethered to the surface it was on, much like how the coffee table had been tethered to the floor in the common room, and the seats in the kitchen. I took a closer look inside, but couldn’t see anything. Was there a hole? Was the water draining through the middle? Was it even turning on to begin with? Like I mentioned before, I had no sense of how all the equipment was powered – there are no mains connections in space. I had to assume that this stuff worked ‘just because.’ It was there. It had to.

  I tried for several more minutes just trying to get some water to boil, playing around with the settings and the lid and a weird flappy thing on the side that didn’t make any sense and might have just been there for decoration… Okay, I had no idea what I was doing. I just couldn’t get the damn thing to work and there was definitely no coffee in there after all. Damn coffee. Damn coffee indeed. After about the fifth try I’d finally just about given up. I heard Chloe calling for me.

  “I’m in here, Chloe! Just getting myself a nice drink of hot… ah… hot water, you know. Very tiring work…” I quickly tried to hide any evidence of what I had been doing.

  Chloe walked over. “Uh-huh. Hey listen, we’re all going to bed now, so uh… good night, I guess.”

  “Oh, yeah, right, good night to you too.”

  Chloe mimed looking at an imaginary watch. “Emma’s shift is over now,” she said, turning to walk down the corridor.

  “Oh right, who’s turn is it next then?” I asked.

  Chloe turned back to me with a smirk. “Yours.”

  “Ah…”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.”

  A few hours later I found my face pressed against an uneven surface. As I sat up wearily, rubbing the painful imprint on my cheek, I noticed the godforsaken panel I’d been chipping away at for so long - I must have been going at it until I’d passed out. For some reason I’d decided to carry on long after all the others had gone to sleep. That stupid non-bloody working bloody goddamn coffee machine had put me in a depressed trance, and as a result I’d let my chipping shift continue far longer than it should have.

  As I crawled my way to the common room, I heard Bob groan. He wasn’t dead then, no surprise to anyone.

  “Uh… I don’t feel so good…” he said, lacking his usual reliable enthusiasm.

  “It’s called a hangover,” muttered Dom, lying on his back.

  “Did… did I win the game?” Bob asked.

  “Yeah, you won mate, you won…” Dom replied.

  “It seems I am not enjoying winning as much as I anticipated,” Bob admitted.

  “Moderation, pal. Moderation.”

  I shook my head. I decided to turn back and head towards the kitchen – maybe I’d try to get that coffee machine working again, but on the way I heard a strange sound. It was a buzzing sound coming from the cryo room and it was different to anything I’d heard so far. Trust me, I’d had plenty of time to hone my hearing senses to this point – I knew when I was hearing something new.

  I curiously stepped inside the cryo room and did a double-take. Emma? Was that Emma inside one of the pods? My heart nearly leapt out of my chest when I noticed that the glass window of the pod had closed - she was illuminated with a blue light and the counter dial on the top had been reset to 7 years. I ran over and banged my fist on the glass.

  “Emma? Emma!” I yelled, or rather, tried to yell, my voice being sore and hoarse from my rather uncomfortable sleeping arrangement. I frantically looked for some sort of release button and tried to claw at the glass to get it to open. What the hell had she gone and done? We’d never talked about re-freezing ourselves to this day, it was like an unspoken agreement we’d had to never try such a thing.

  “What have you done?” I mouthed breathlessly, collapsing on the floor, gasping for air…

  The sound had stopped. I looked up. The glass was rising. I looked up at Emma, and she looked back with a sharp-eyed gaze. Soon after, her expression crumbled. She leaned out, eyes filling with tears, and let herself fall towards me. I stumbled back in surprise, while she grabbed hold of my arms and cried into my chest.

  “I’m so sorry Joe…”

  “What… what the hell was that?” I stuttered.

  “I can’t… I just wanted to… so I tried… but it doesn’t work,” she sobbed.

  “What are you talking about? What doesn’t work?” For one deluded moment I thought she was going to mention the coffee machine.

  “The cryo pod… I… tried to freeze myself.”

  I took another look up at the now-empty pod. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  Emma let go of her embrace and climbed to her feet, taking a few nervous steps to the other side of the room. She had her back to me.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” I pleaded.


  “I wanted a way out,” she said eventually. “This place… I’m sorry, Joe, I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “None of us are,” I admitted. “How can we?”

  Emma paused to swallow hard.

  “I turned the dial as far as it would go… I thought if I froze myself for that long I could… I could wake up and… you never know, we could all be home… back the way we’re supposed to be… not in this… prison,” Emma dissolved into tears again.

  “Hey, hey, listen,” I said reassuringly, standing up and reaching out as if to place a hand on Emma’s shoulder (I didn’t quite manage it) “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to make it home, I promise. But we all need to work together…” I cringed at the non-imaginativeness of my words, but what more was there to say? Clearly I wasn’t the comforting type.

  Emma turned around, staring at me piercingly. Tears were still dripping from her eyelids but her expression was empty. She seemed contemplative. I reached into my pocket.

  “When you gave me this,” I held out the coffee sachet. “You told me that I deserved it more than you, that wasn’t true.” Emma laughed apathetically. I continued anyway. “Because you’re the only other person who believed that the coffee was real. I think that says something.”

  “What does it say?” Emma asked. I don’t think I had a response ready, which was frustrating, given how close I may or may not have been to declaring some sort of potential romantic feeling. Again, potential. Stop getting funny ideas.

  A bell chimed three times. Breakfast.

  “Never mind.” I said.

  Emma wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m gonna go eat,” she said. I nodded silently. On her way out of the door, I stopped her.

  “Emma…”

  “What?”

  “It’s your choice. If you want to go through with it… with freezing yourself… I get it. I won’t stop you again.”

  Emma sighed. “It doesn’t work.” With that, she left. “Thanks again for taking my shift, Joe…”

  So the cryogenic freezers were busted. I suppose I should have been happy, because it meant Emma was still here with us, but I was bemused. Part of me understood where she was coming from, the idea that we could just freeze ourselves now and wake up some time in the far future when everything was sorted. Of course, we’d also risk never waking up again, and the fact that she’d considered taking that risk in lieu of soldering on like the others made me realise how low she must have been feeling. Later that day, once his so-called ‘hangover’ had cured, I put the question to Bob.