by Tom Cheshire
Concentrate… The backups were tiny, but they were solid metal objects. I might not have been able to see them, but I should have been able to feel them. I reached around, clutching at nothing, doing everything I could to find them. Could I even distinguish between metal and fabric at this point? My hands were numb inside the suit’s gloves, so probably not. It didn’t help that the white exhaust from my leaking oxygen tank was only adding to the mess.
“Come on!” I yelled, brushing more feathers away from my front. I probably looked like I’d collided with a giant intergalactic chicken. At that point I realised, one of the backups was actually stuck on the side of my helmet. Of course! They were magnetic. I span around, making sure to cover as much volume as possible with my body in order to increase my chances. Finally, after a great deal of awkward spacesuit posing, all three backups were firmly stuck to my suit. I breathed a sigh of relief, attaching the cable to my back.
“Pull me in guys… I’ve got them.”
Cue more cheering and compliments even from Dom:
“Well done, space fag. I’ll buy you a drink if we ever get home.”
I didn’t want to say anything. I was exhausted, and probably running low on oxygen. As I was pulled back towards the ship, I watched as the ruined sofa – springs protruding from its innards, a great cloud of scraps floating alongside it, gradually became a tiny far-away blot. It felt almost sad to be leaving it in such a state. What had the sofa ever done to anyone? Nothing! Now it would be left floating, destroyed, weeping from its poor tattered innards until it ended up burnt to a crisp in a star somewhere, or some alien passers-by rescued it and dumped it in some kind of alien junkyard. What kind of fate was that for a sofa? Actually, come to think of it, what was a normal fate for a sofa? Being left to rot in a junkyard anyway? My brain hurt.
My eyes were drooping. The sofa was almost invisible, and I overheard Bob telling me I’d be back in a couple of minutes. I realised that if I looked behind me now, I’d be able to get my first proper look at the exterior of the ship. But somehow, I just didn’t want to. There was something else. Another dot on the horizon. No, it wasn’t the sofa, it was something new.
“Guys, there’s something out there,” I muttered faintly.
“What are you talking about?” Dom asked.
“I can see it… It’s…” I squinted as much as I could but everything was out of focus. “Some sort of... I dunno… maybe a giant rock or something?”
“I doubt it,” Dom replied. “It’s probably just a piece of that sofa that fell off and caught the light of the ship.”
“You reckon?” I asked.
“Yes, I reckon. Now hurry up and bring those backups back. It’s time we had some answers.”
Dom was right, it was definitely time. I clutched the three small metal objects close to my chest. I closed my eyes, feeling proud that I’d managed to overcome my doubts and actually pull this off, that Chloe’s ridiculous plan, this ‘Operation Sofa Space’ … had actually worked out after all.
The backups had been so much effort to get, I prayed to myself that they would prove to be worth the trouble. I felt myself nodding off… definitely the oxygen running out. I wasn’t worried. It was a pleasant feeling. All this was going to be worth it… It had to be… It… had… to… coffee…
I’d passed out by the time I reached the airlock.
12
I was drifting in and out of consciousness. I can recall flashes of the airlock, of collapsing in a heap on the other side, of anxious faces, but most of all, simply darkness. At some point I was well and truly out of it, and all I know is I had a rather unsettling dream…
I was back on the sofa, or at least, that’s what I thought, yet I wasn’t alone. There was someone sitting next to me, a presence that was both familiar and completely foreign at the same time. As I tried to turn my head to see who this person could be, I could only feel my body fighting back. My eyes would close or dart away and my neck would go stiff, rebounding back to its original position. I was unable to look at my neighbour in the face and could only catch a glimpse from the corner of my eye. Hints at pieces of clothing, of posture, of weight, but nothing facially. I couldn’t tell whether this mystery figure was male or female. My hands and feet were locked down; I couldn’t even be sure I had hands or feet, or any physical presence whatsoever. I felt completely lost and yet at the same time, at home due to the familiar presence of the sofa. Around me, blackness, but with more stars than I could ever recall seeing during my previous space-walking escapade. One of them was growing larger and larger, merging with the others around it. Greater it grew, becoming a massive white light of overbearing intensity, expanding larger and faster and moving towards me with no means of escape, nowhere to go…
When I finally came to, I found myself face to face with a very worried looking Emma. I was lying on my back next to the airlock, with one of my legs hanging awkwardly out of the space suit as if I had been in the middle of getting dressed.
“Joe!”
“Whuhhthuhhpunned?” I tried to speak, but my throat was incredibly sore.
“Sshhh, sshhh, don’t say anything,” Emma said frantically. Rather too frantically, I might add, to have the kind of calmative effect that would normally be associated with that sentence.
“Whuhhduhhyuumuhn?”
“No really, Joe, don’t say anything.” She sounded serious.
“Huhhh?” I tried to shuffle into a sitting person.
“No, Joe, stop it. Guys, hold him down.”
Chloe and Dom had grabbed either side of my body, putting all their energy into restraining me. There was no use fighting it. In response, I could only make a few more odd groaning noises.
“Just hold still and for god’s sake don’t swallow,” Chloe ordered.
“Whuhhtduhhyuhh- hurghh” My gag reflex had suddenly kicked in.
“Woah, careful…” Dom said as my body jerked backwards and forwards. I wanted to retch but somehow I couldn’t. It felt like something was crawling around in my throat.
“Looks like he’s just about ready to go,” Chloe noted.
“Right, let’s get him out…” Emma said. She wrapped her arms around my body and squeezed. I didn’t know whether I wanted to cough, scream or throw up. Whatever was in my throat was beginning to move upwards. It seemed to be a thick, solid object; definitely not vomit, but the feeling of it vibrating up through my pharynx was perhaps the single most unpleasant sensation I’d experienced on this ship so far. Anticipating the worst, I kept my mouth shut, but couldn’t help but continue to make anguished groaning sounds.
“Nearly there now,” Emma stated.
“Whurhtdurrfuhhhrk…”
“Joe, you need to open your mouth.”
I shook my head, but as the object continued to push its way upwards I realised that I had no choice. My mouth fell open, tongue rolling out almost comically.
The object was moving at an unbearably slow pace, but it was so close now and, oh god, I could feel it brushing past my tonsils. As it reached the opening of the great cave that was my mouth and slid the final few millimetres to the end of my tongue, I crossed my eyes trying to get a good look at it, but Emma quickly yanked it away.
“Sorry about that, Mr. Joe.” Of course it was Bob.
“What the hell were you doing inside me?!” I yelled, wiping the spit from the corners of my mouth. Emma had a cloth in her hand and had started rubbing the rest of my bodily fluids from Bob’s sleek black exterior.
“I believe… I was saving… your life… Mr. Joe,” Bob stated, in between cloth rubs.
“No, I don’t think you were…” I turned away half expecting to projectile vomit an organ or two, but nothing came out.
“You’d stopped breathing, it was our only option,” Emma said.
“What, sending robo-boy down my windpipe to give me the kiss of life?” I angrily grabbed Bob.
“In a sense, Mr. Joe, you are correct. In the absence of sufficient medical knowledge shar
ed between your peers, I took it upon myself to perform direct cardiopulmonary resuscitation through a series of self-contained electromagnetic pulses to the…”
I waved a finger to silence him. “Did you seriously have to climb into my body to do that?” I asked, pointlessly.
“Affirmative, as I believe I am rather unfortunately lacking in the physical size requirements necessary to perform resuscitatory chest compressions from a more dignified vantage point.”
“Yeah, whatever, I get it.” I rubbed my forehead.
“Aren’t you going to say thank you?” Dom asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said sarcastically. “So sorry that a ‘thank you’ wasn’t on the tip of my tongue after having… that… thing… climb out of my mouth just now.”
“That thing just saved your life,” Chloe said.
I put Bob down, and looked around at my surroundings, breathing heavily. Travis was watching wide-eyed through the panel-window, still not brave enough to step into the room, while the others were staring at me like I’d just broken a major taboo by talking down to the thumb-sized robot. I was about to apologise, but then something in me snapped. I looked back at the airlock, then around to the three backup drives that had become scattered on the floor after all the commotion.
“Yeah, well you know what? Maybe my life shouldn’t have needed saving! I mean… maybe I shouldn’t have been forced into a position where I was in danger in the first place.” Silence. “Hey, nobody thank me! I just risked my life to get those backups, I didn’t exactly want to!”
“Well in that case why did you volunteer?” Chloe asked.
“Volunteer? What are you on about?”
“You volunteered. Back when we were discussing who should go, you put yourself forward.”
“What? No I didn’t.”
“You did volunteer, Joe.” Emma said. I stared back at her, shocked.
“No, that’s not right…” I was breathless. “We had a massive argument… Chloe you were trying to make Emma go instead and-”
“Why would I do that to Emma?” Chloe asked. “Why would I want to make anyone risk their lives?”
“The whole mission was your idea. You had to have it your way.”
“Yeah, it was my idea, that’s why I wanted to be the one to go.”
“But that’s not what I wrote in my…”
“Look we’re all very glad for what you did, Joe. But don’t start accusing me of all this bullshit, for god’s sake. I get enough of that from Dom.”
“Huh?” Dom was a little slow on the uptake. “Hey, at least my bullshit is grounded in reality, y’know?”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Schlong,” Chloe said.
“Bob, come on. You were there, you saw what happened, didn’t you?” I asked desperately.
“Affirmative. I can run a transcript for you now, if you insist.” Bob said.
“No, come on Bob, stop wasting time. Let’s sort out those backups now, yeah?” Chloe said, picking up Bob and the three backups from the floor, then heading straight for the panel opening.
“Yeah, it’s about time…” Dom muttered, jumping to his feet and following swiftly behind.
It was just me and Emma.
“Emma…” I couldn’t think what to say.
“What was that you said about writing?” She asked, coldly.
“When?”
“Just now. You said the you-volunteering thing wasn’t what you’d written in your… something?”
“I don’t know. It must have slipped out,” I said nervously. I felt myself sweating.
Knock knock... What are you going to tell her? Do you think she would believe you now?
“I don’t know…”
“Joe?” Emma asked.
“What?”
“Are you talking to yourself?”
“No…”
Aren’t you?
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You’ve changed, Joe…” Emma said sorrowfully. I wanted to respond but couldn’t.
“You know, you were unconscious for nearly five hours just now,” Emma began. “All this time, Chloe, Dom, Bob, me… none of us left your side.”
“Except Travis,” I interjected. “Too scared to come in here in the first place.”
“He was still helping,” Emma pointed towards a third oxygen canister lying on the floor away from the suit. “See that thing over there? Travis found that by digging around in the corridor. If we didn’t get that to you fast I don’t know what would have happened. We were all fighting to save you, Joe.”
“I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be ungrateful.”
“That’s not all that happened while you were out,” Emma continued. “The cryo pods…”
“What about the cryo pods?”
“They’ve recharged. They’re working again. You know ever since I tried to freeze myself I’ve been thinking a lot, trying to force myself to… find a reason to keep going. I thought I’d found one…” She paused. Here we go.
“Emma… Trust me.”
Then she hit me.
Hard. Across the face. I fell back with a groan, feeling blood on my lips.
“You stupid shit! You think I can trust you?” Emma yelled.
“What?” I was shell-shocked.
“Trying to implicate Chloe like that, making me look like some kind of victim…” Emma was shaking with fury. “You act like you’re a hero. Just count the number of times you nearly jeopardised that mission! You ignored nearly all of Bob’s instructions once you started talking to that imaginary friend you have!”
“I don’t have an imaginary friend.”
“Either way, you need to realise something, Joe, and you need to realise it fast. The more you… let yourself get distracted… the worse it gets. You’re dangerous. I’m done pretending otherwise. No more lying to try to make you feel normal.”
I stood up and started pacing around. I couldn’t look Emma in the eye, both because of the sudden aggressive state she’d entered and because of the tears that had completely clouded my vision. I stopped and put a trembling hand in my pocket. The sachet was still there.
“So… you lied when you said you could smell the coffee too,” I said.
“Of course it was a lie,” Emma replied calmly. She was slouched in a corner, staring emptily at the airlock. “I did find that sachet. But I never smelled a thing. I pitied you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I...” I fumbled the sachet, feeling all of the tiny granular particles rolling around inside. “Thank you for lying.”
“You what?” Emma laughed out of confusion.
“It was a good lie, that…” In that moment I thought about taking out the coffee sachet and ripping it open, but I realised that part of me still cared, still hanging on to the thought that if I held onto it, everything would be okay.
“I put on an act,” Emma continued. “Pretended to be on your side…”
“No…”
“I thought that if I could connect with you, I’d be able to stop you losing yourself. The others, they don’t see it yet, but they will.”
“I haven’t lost myself.”
“Maybe not yet…” Emma whispered sinisterly. “But if it happens… you’re on your own.”
Emma finally stood up and walked towards the panel exit.
“Are you going to freeze yourself?” I asked, emotionlessly.
“No.”
“Wait…” I called out. “The way I’ve been acting... Believing things that nobody else does… Perhaps it’s just my way of coping.”
Emma nodded and left the room. For the first time, I felt utterly alone.
Hey, you’ve always got me, right?
Go away, X.
13
I don’t know how much time I spent staring desolately out of the airlock window but it was probably longer than any non-troubled person’s ‘staring desolately out of an airlock window’ session ought to be. Emma’s outburst had really struck a chor
d with me. I just didn’t know how to handle it. The only person I’d truly thought I could trust had turned on me, and I couldn’t even be sure that I’d done anything wrong. My hand, pressed tightly against the glass - assuming it was glass, was trembling uncontrollably. My eyes were sore. I don’t think I’d blinked for several minutes. I was clearly in shock. What had I done? Should I feel sorry?
No. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I kept replaying the conversations over in my head. Was I really starting to lose it? So what? I’d been exposed to all kinds of mental and physical traumas while I’d been in the suit; of course my head was going to be in a mess. Had any of the others done anything as noble and heroic as I had? Of course not! This felt like a complete and utter betrayal from Emma, and, by extension, the others, too.
Something caught my eye. A white flash, perhaps? Something glinting in the distance? It couldn’t be… I moved even closer to the window, pressed my face against it and took a deep breath as I felt the wave of recognition pass over me. Yes, there it was… the asteroid. I thought I’d seen in right at the very end… the very last thing I’d spotted on my space walk, and there it was again. Was this the object from my dream? I could see it… a fully formed chunk of rock, hurtling through space, reflecting the light from the exterior of the ship as it went. Which way was it headed? It wasn’t clear, but I could feel the anxiety growing in my stomach.
“Collision course…” I muttered.
What could I do? I decided to keep it to myself for now. There was no point introducing any further reasons for the others to question my sanity. But this object was real. There was no doubt left in my mind…