by Tom Cheshire
“Bob, you know the cryo pods…” I began.
“I do know the cryo pods, Mr. Joe.”
“What would happen if we were, to, like, you know, use them?”
“Use them in what way, Mr. Joe?”
“To, like… freeze someone…”
Dom perked up. “Joe, you’re not thinking about…”
“No, no, no, don’t worry. I’m just curious, that’s all,” I said. Emma gave me a funny look, then avoided making it look like she wanted to join in the conversation.
“I do not believe that would be imminently possible, Mr. Joe,” replied Bob.
“Oh, why’s that?” I asked.
“There is unlikely to be enough power in the cryogenic distribution cells to initiate the freezing process. The last freezing procedure undoubtedly drained a large quantity of said cells.” Bob explained in his typical upbeat fashion.
“There’s no power?”
“Shall I elaborate?” asked Bob.
“Go ahead.”
“The cryogenic freezing system runs on an anti-matter quincunx fusion nano-destabilisation reactor. Any freezing procedure performed under a considerable duration of time must take into account the underflow proximities of the zero amplification sync-wave reverse cooling flow.”
“Alright, alright, get to the point,” Dom muttered.
“All cryogenic freezing pods must endure a recharge period of approximately 30 to 40 Earth-days for all freezing reactions of 50 Earth-years or greater.”
“50 years? I thought we’d been frozen for 25 years!” Dom pointed out.
“The last recorded freezing reaction was a total of [ERROR] years,” Bob stated.
“It’s 25. That’s what it said on all the dials,” Chloe said.
The dials… When Emma had tried to freeze herself, the dial read ‘7 years,’ but I recalled the words she’d used: ‘I turned the dial as far as it would go.’ We’d already seen that the dial could go at least as far as 25 years, what was going on?
“So, the dials aren’t accurate?” I asked.
“The dials are perfectly accurate, Mr. Joe,” replied Bob. Travis coughed. We all looked towards him.
“Can you elaborate, Bob?” he asked.
“Certainly! Oh, I do love to elaborate! The dial screen uses a low-cost 240x192 pixel RGB monitor for the primary purpose of displaying the number of Earth-years the freezing procedure has been set to. It displays an 8-bit unsigned integer capable of accurately…”
“Does anyone have a clue what he’s on about?” asked Dom.
“What was that last part?” Travis asked.
“It displays an 8-bit unsigned integer.” Bob repeated.
“What?” said Dom.
“A byte,” said Travis.
“Uh… nope, still lost,” said Dom.
“Byte definition – the byte is capable of accurately storing eight bits of data permitting integer values up through two to the power of eight…” Bob continued to elaborate.
“And for someone who doesn’t speak gobbledygook?”
“It rolls over after 255,” said Travis.
“Wait…” said Dom. He paused and started laughing. “So, you mean that 256 is the same as 0, 257 is 1… Are you telling me that…”
“We’ve been asleep for 25 years… plus some multiple of 256,” Travis stated.
“We’ve been asleep for…” Dom took a longer-than-average pause to calculate a very easy sum “281 years?!”
“Or 537. Or 793. Or 4294967321. Aren’t numbers fun!” Bob remarked joyously.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me…” Dom growled in disbelief.
“I do not shit,” said Bob.
“Tell me… just tell me how long it’s been!” Dom shouted.
“ERROR years.”
“God dammit!” Dom yelled and stormed off, knocking over his Travis-chair on the way. There was a long, uncomfortable silence as usual. So… we’d been asleep for far longer than we’d first thought - and I’d thought 25 years was a bloody long time. The ramifications of this were huge – it now meant that there could really be no way, no possible way, that we’d be able to see our families again – they’d have died years ago, generations ago. The Earth we once knew, but had forgotten, wouldn’t be the same Earth that existed today. If it even existed… God knows how long it had been. I felt sick. I imagine Emma felt even worse.
Chloe cleared her throat. “Well, Joe. I hope you’re happy. Maybe if you’d been busy on chipping duties like you’re supposed to be, you wouldn’t have thought to destroy all of our hopes again.”
“I did my shift Chloe. I did it last night… and then some,” I said coldly.
“Is he telling the truth, Bob?” asked Chloe.
“I am afraid I cannot answer, Miss Chloe. I passed out playing Mr. Dom’s drinking game,” said Bob.
“Oh yeah.”
“He’s telling the truth, Chloe. I saw him,” Emma said, shakily.
“Are you saying that just cos he took your shift for you? Why don’t you do it, it’s your turn!” Chloe stated, getting flustered.
“Enough, Chloe. She’s been through a lot,” I said.
“Are you two gonna stop defending each other? It’s getting really tiring. Fine, I guess it’s my shift then. I’ll do it…” Chloe sighed. She stood up and walked out.
When Chloe was out of sight I went over to Emma and gave her a hug. I think she needed it. Travis made an odd little noise.
“What’s the matter, Travis? Do you need a hug, too?” I asked.
“Uh... nah… nah… m’good, thanks.”
I sat down and sighed deeply. My head felt like it was on fire again. I suppose I was starting to get used to it.
Knock knock... I figured it out. I know where they are now. Do you? I wonder how much longer it will take for us to be on the same page? Perhaps the time will come sooner than you think.
9
Chloe screamed. Instinctively, I bolted across the common room (tripping over a Travis-chair but successfully readjusting my balance to compensate). I found Chloe in the corridor; still clutching the chipping scalpel, frozen in a half-guilty, half-shocked stance like someone who’s just knocked over a highly precious vase.
“What happened?” I asked. “You’re trembling.”
I then observed the more immediately obvious observation that the metal panel – the same metal panel that a few minutes earlier looked like it barely had a scratch on it – had given way to a dark hole. A window into what appeared to be another room, dimly lit but nonetheless definitely real.
“Oh, right then…”
The others had caught up.
“What’s going on here?” asked Dom, somehow also failing to immediately notice the huge not-exactly-inconspicuous hole in the wall.
“It’s done!” Chloe beamed. “I did it. I finally did it… After all that hard work… Phew!”
“Hard work? You’ve only been at it for a few minutes!”
“Yeah, well, actually, it looks like I managed to achieve more than you did in a few hours.”
“Guys, come on…” I groaned.
“Oh really? You did that all by yourself, yeah? Sure it didn’t just fall off all by itself?” Dom sneered. The panel was lying on the floor, fully intact.
“Uh, no. Don’t be silly. I had to force it out.” Chloe attempted to justify herself, to little avail.
“With what? With that?” Dom pointed towards the pathetically small scalpel. “And your puny little girl-hands?”
Chloe made like she was going to attack Dom, but she was obviously feeling too smug about herself, and wiped her forehead instead.
“Yeah, that’s right, Dom. Me and my puny girl-hands. Just accept that I actually beat you for once.”
Travis appeared behind me, holding Bob.
“I do not understand, Miss Chloe. Why did you scream?” asked the hungover robot.
“Huh?”
“You screamed, Miss Chloe. I am wondering why that is the case.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did,” Dom chuckled. He then went on to deliver a poor impression of Chloe’s high-pitched scream. His voice broke halfway so that it sounded less like a female scream and more like a distressed horse’s mating call.
“It wasn’t a scream,” Chloe said.
“Oh, I see. Then what was the origin of the high-decibel auditory response I measured?” Bob asked, in typical Bob fashion.
“It was… It was…” Chloe found herself stammering with the eyes of everyone else squarely on her. “It was the sound of the…”
“Go on,” Dom egged.
“The sound of the panel…”
“Yeah...”
“As it…”
“Ffff…” Dom was smiling devilishly at this point.
“Fell off.”
“Uh-huh,” Dom grunted sarcastically.
“That is an odd sound for a falling panel to make.” Bob stated.
“Alright, look, maybe I did scream, just a little... Jeez, you guys.” Chloe sighed.
“And the panel did just fall off by itself,” Dom smiled.
“Well, I did touch it a couple times first… Yeah whatever.”
“Sorry!” I shouted. “I don’t want to interrupt this wonderfully insightful conversation, but isn’t there something we should be checking out?” I asked, gesturing towards the hole.
“Oh, right, yeah…” Dom took a few steps towards the opening. He then swiftly changed his mind. “Actually, I’ll let one of you ladies go first.”
“What’s the matter, Dom? Scared of the dark?” I teased.
“Shut up.”
So I decided to go first. Whether or not Dom was actually scared of the dark didn’t matter, because as soon as I poked my head through the opening, an automatic light was triggered above me, illuminating the entirety of the hidden room in unprecedented detail.
It was a bigger room than I’d expected. Much bigger, and much more sci-fi. There were rows and rows of slanted box-like objects jutting upwards from the floor, a whole bunch of bafflingly oblique shelves holding all sorts of bizarre equipment, a sturdy looking steel door with some sort of bulkhead. In the centre, pretty damn hard to miss, was an enormous, shiny, spherical object, supported from all directions by several dozen physics-defying cables.
“Wow, okay…” I said confusedly, taking a deep breath. Dom followed me through the opening, taking a longer-than-is-dignified time to squeeze his torso through. He was followed by Chloe and Emma.
“Wow, okay…” Dom said, with much the same inflection as me.
“This must be where the ship is controlled from.” Chloe declared in confident mode.
“Or something.” Dom added.
“Yeah, or something.”
“Bob, what exactly am I looking at?” I asked, fixated by the huge spherical object before me. “Bob? Hey, Travis, hurry up and get in here, will ya?”
“What are all these things?” Dom asked. He was looking at the slanted objects on the floor. They were organised neatly into rows of twelve with flaps on the top. He tried to prise one open with his foot but it wouldn’t budge.
“Don’t touch anything,” Chloe warned. For once Dom took her advice to heart.
Emma was looking at the walls with a quiet curiosity. Before she had a chance to open her mouth, Chloe had already started analysing it all.
“Loads of equipment here,” she lectured. “Cables, machinery, though I’ll be honest, not entirely sure what it all does.” She turned to face the bulkhead. “This seems to be an airlock. There’s a little access shaft right there. I’ll bet there’s open space on the other side of that door…” She was right, it didn’t take a genius to figure that out.
“Hey, Travis, where are you?” I called again.
“I’m h-here,” Travis’ voice echoed. He was standing behind the hole in the wall, looking nervously through.
“What’s the matter, aren’t you coming in?” I asked.
“N-n-n-no…”
“Come on, old man, shake a leg!” Dom called.
“You having problems getting your legs through? Want me to help?” I asked, trying to be helpful. I didn’t think that Travis had any problems with arthritis or anything.
“N-no… I can manage.” Travis muttered. He grabbed the side of the opening and raised his leg, but then hesitated.
“N-no… Can’t…”
It didn’t exactly look like Travis was physically struggling, but I went over to him anyway.
“Come on, grab my hand, it’ll be easy.”
“N-n-no…”
“Sure it will, just one big step, nice and easy…”
“D-don’t want to go in there!” Travis raised his voice, trembling slightly. I was surprised. I’d never seen Travis act this way before.
“Um… right. Well if you change your mind, let me know,” I smiled, giving him a friendly tap on the shoulder.
“Here,” Travis said, handing Bob over to me.
“Thanks.” I said. “See you… later, I guess?” Travis wandered off without making eye contact.
“What was all that about?” Chloe asked.
“I have no idea.” I answered. “He’s just scared of coming in here, I think.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know, maybe there’s more to Travis than meets the eye.”
Chloe shot me a look as if to say ‘no shit.’
“So what, he’s not coming? Just to have a look around a room he hasn’t been in?” Dom asked, dumbfounded.
“He seemed to be having some kind of anxiety attack…” I shrugged.
“Pussy!” Dom yelled.
“I’m not sure that’s helping,” Chloe said.
I walked back across to the huge spherical object.
“Bob, talk to me.” I should have known not to use such a vague command.
“Hello Mr. Joe. How are you today?”
“Fine, Bob. I was just wondering…”
“Glad you are feeling fine, Mr. Joe.” Bob cut me off. “I must say I am feeling a bit under the weather, as it were. Do you happen to know of any hangover remedies?”
“Not really, Bob. I was wondering if you could tell me what exactly this big round thing is over here.”
“Ah, yes. I was wondering that myself.” Great. I stepped closer. Suddenly, Bob flew out of my hands and landed firmly on the round thing’s surface. Whatever it was, it seemed to be strongly magnetic. Bob started making awkward ‘uh-uh-uh-uh’ noises.
“What’s happening, Bob?” I asked.
“I am experiencing a soothing and mildly erotic tingling sensation. I am – oooh… but this is aaah, fun oohoooaa…”
“Eurgh, what?” Dom frowned.
“Are you alright, Bob?”
Finally the oohs and aahs stopped.
“I believe my hangover is cured,” Bob declared.
“Good for you,” Dom rolled his eyes.
“It is as I hypothesised,” Bob continued. “In order to develop cross-system communicational rapport with this unidentified device I first had to penetrate the outer layers of its proximity detection protocol, swim through several blocked firewalls and procreate the central core with my identification key.”
Dom scoffed. “Fucking your programming was one thing, but this? Now I’ve seen everything.”
“Oh, now this is very interesting…” Bob was talking to himself. “Oh yes, I see… and this does the… a-ha!” All the objects on the floor sprang open, revealing… files. Files and files of information, contained in some odd luminescent binders of some material I couldn’t possibly identify.
“Woah, what’s all this?” Dom asked excitedly.
“Records, Mr. Dom. Transcripts of all recorded communications transmitted to and from authorised on-board systems.” Bob explained.
“Really? That sounds like exactly what we need!” Chloe beamed, rushing over to open the nearest file. Her smile quickly faded. “I don’t know what it says.”
“Let
me have a look…” said Dom. After a lengthy pause fumbling around with the documents, he exhaled noisily. “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not in English.”
“Pretty sure? What, you don’t know?” I laughed.
“When was the last time you read something?” Dom asked. In that moment I came to the awkward realisation that I wasn’t sure I remembered how to read. The perks of cryo-freeze amnesia just keep getting better and better…
Knock knock… Sorry to interrupt, but if you can’t read, you can’t be a very good writer. Is this not stating the obvious?
“Joe, are you alright?” Emma asked. My head was spinning.
“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks. Just a headache.” I rubbed my scalp.
“Your cut hurting again?” Chloe asked, somewhat less empathetically.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Bob, can you help us read these files?” Dom asked.
“Unfortunately not, Mr. Dom. These documents have been scrambled with the help of a highly sophisticated encryption cypher. I myself created the decryption keys, but I am afraid they have been redacted from my current circuitry.”
“Typical.” Dom tutted.
“Hey, guys, look at this!” Emma called. We all looked up, presumably because we’d gotten accustomed to Emma being the quiet one now that Travis wasn’t here. Emma was holding up some kind of body suit; she’d dragged it from one of the equipment-laden shelves when we weren’t looking.
“Is that a space suit?” I asked.
“Looks like it,” Emma replied. “It seems to attach to this really long cable back here. Runs all around the room several times. Extendable. Looks like it’d stretch for miles…”
“You are correct, Miss Emma.” Bob stated.
Chloe had the look of a mental genius about her.
“Say, Bob? These backups you told us about before. The ones you said were in the sofa…” she began. “Would those have the decryption keys on?”