Sofa Space

by Tom Cheshire

  “Thanks C. So I guess my first question is… Who raped Bob?” The quiz had suddenly taken a very unpredictable turn. “Okay, okay… Perhaps that’s not the right wording. Who compromised Bob?”

  “Shut up Dom, you’re supposed to be mellow now,” Chloe said.

  “Unfortunately I am not at liberty to answer this one, Quizmaster Dom. You see, this is when my backups appear to be failing me. The events that occurred are, what one might say, a blur. All in a flash, my memory was gone, my backups removed. My identity, essentially, was reset. I believe that my forced corruption was an event that was done intentionally, but I am struggling to identify the cause. I am sorry.” There was an air of sadness in Bob’s voice.

  “You don’t need to be sorry, Bob. It’s okay…” Chloe said compassionately.

  “Yes I do, Miss Chloe. I have failed to provide Quizmaster Dom with the correct answer!” Bob moaned.

  “Oh, sod it. You can have the point,” Dom chuckled.

  “Really! Oh, fantastic! I am most enjoying this quiz!” Bob exclaimed, returning to his cheery self. I guess it wasn’t so much the pain of his previous trauma that was getting him down after all.

  “So, let me get this straight. We were on a mission travelling round the Solar System, something bad happened that caused Bob to get reset, and we all wound up frozen while the ship just carried on drifting?” Dom asked.

  “What an interestingly worded question! Yes, that synopsis is most accurate,” Bob confirmed.

  “Right… Well… That’s, I guess, all I wanted to ask. Joe, you can be quizmaster next.” Dom said.

  I spent a long time in deep thought. The answers we’d had so far… slowly everything was starting to add up. The long freezing process being because of an accident, going from being an astronaut on a simple routine mission to being stranded adrift in the middle of nowhere. It was alarmingly straightforward, and yet there was something disarmingly troubling about the facts. We didn’t know why things had gone wrong, but thinking back to the comments that X had made to me earlier, perhaps we were better off not knowing. In a way, it felt like I already had all the closure I needed.

  I considered asking Bob what all our real names were, but a part of me was incredibly reluctant to do so. It just seemed like it no longer mattered. We were all astronauts, but since we’d been frozen, those old identities had disappeared into the past. We’d woken up as five strangers in a new world where all we had was each other. Joe. Emma. Dom. Chloe. Travis. What good was the past now?

  “I’m gonna pass,” I muttered softly. Emma raised her hand.

  “In that case I’d like to be quizmaster now,” she said, with a touch of aggression. “Here’s my question… Is Joe sick?”

  I felt a chill down my spine. That was one hell of a question, one that I guessed the others felt too insecure about asking. The nerve…

  “That is an interesting question. I must give it some consideration,” Bob said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

  “Mr. Joe, it has not escaped my notice that you have been acting somewhat erratically these past few days,” Bob replied. “I do not believe your condition has a defined prognosis, but it is one I am most interested in.”

  “Well, that makes me feel just swell, guys,” I said, sarcastically, throwing my hands up in the air.

  “If he gets more sick, is there anything we can do?” Emma asked.

  “No.” Bob said frankly. Well, charming, I thought.

  “Wait… Yes.” Bob made a sudden about turn. “Something has escaped my attention. There is a special medicine on-board this ship that, in the event of a specific medical emergency, may be of assistance…” Bob said. Travis suddenly widened his eyes.

  “Really? What does it look like?” I asked.

  “A spliff.”

  “Come again?”

  “A joint. It looks like a cannabis cigarette.”

  “There’s medicine on board this ship that looks like a spliff...” I tried to wrap my head around this insane concept.

  “That is correct, Mr. Joe. I remember now – based on systematic analysis of key demographics, the medicine was developed to appeal to those who consider the popular human pastime of smoking weed to be the epitome of leisure…”

  “So there’s medicine on board this ship that looks like a spliff…” I repeated.

  “The medicine is designed to heighten blood control to the brain and drive out all undesired foreign stimulants. One could say that it has the ability to make the subject experience an epiphany, a sudden realisation of great truth…”

  “And it looks like a spliff. And it’s on this ship.” I repeated.

  “Correct! In the luxury escape pod!” Bob exclaimed.

  “The what now?”

  The luxury escape pod, as it turned out, was the ‘proper name’ for the giant round object in the airlock room. As we took a break from the quiz to return to this room (Travis, characteristically, stayed in the corridor, still unwilling to climb through the hole in the wall) Emma continued to ask questions.

  “So this is an escape pod? What does it actually do?”

  “Well, Quizmaster Emma, the luxury escape pod is an extremely high-quality piece of technology, the only desirable way off this ship in its current state…”

  “Did he just say what I thought he just said?” Dom asked.

  “The luxury escape pod places its users in a trance designed to instigate feelings of happiness and prioritise comfort and safety, while moving at perpetual speed, maximum velocity towards a safe-return location.”

  “Holy shit, so if the ship itself can’t actually return to Earth… are you saying this thing might?” Chloe asked.

  “I would not consider that mathematically probable…” Bob said, tempering everyone’s expectations. “But it is certainly possible, yes, with the right signcode.”

  “Oh my god, you guys...” Chloe beamed. “This could be it. Do you hear that, Travis? This could be our ticket out of here!”

  Travis didn’t make a sound, or if he did, he certainly didn’t say anything loud enough to be audible from the other side of the hole in the wall.

  “I admire your optimism, Miss Chloe. However, I should just point out that the luxury escape pod has limited capabilities; it will only support up to three individual human beings,” Bob said.

  “Only three of us? Damn… Two of us are going to have to stay behind?” Dom asked.

  “I… I’ll s..stay!” Travis called.

  “Don’t be silly, Travis. We’ll… we’ll just have to figure this out later. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Chloe said authoritatively.

  “I will be able to unlock the contents of the luxury escape pod very shortly so that we can recover the medicinal cigarette in case of emergency,” Bob stated. “Until then, I suggest we return to the common room to complete our quiz.”

  “Really? I thought we were kind of wrapping up…” Dom said.

  “Yet the game is unfinished, Mr. Dom! Mr. Travis has not yet had the opportunity to become quizmaster!”

  “Do you honestly think he cares?”

  “Come on guys, we might as well get it over with,” I said, trying to prevent any of the group’s seemingly ageist discrimination from bubbling up again.

  We all sat back in the common room, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for Travis to ask a question. For a while, it didn’t look like anything was going to come out of his mouth. I looked across at the others: Chloe was tapping her foot impatiently, Emma was trying her hardest not to make eye contact with me, and Dom was fondling his wig and talking to it under his breath as if it were a small puppy, which I found a little disturbing… Travis on the other hand had his eyes shut and was clearly thinking hard – just from a glance at his facial contortions you could tell that there was a lot going on in his weary old brain. At last, he opened his eyes, looked up, and very calmly and clearly asked his question.

  “Which one of us is the youngest?” That was not the question I
expected him to ask.

  “I assume you mean excluding Bob?” Dom asked; Travis nodded.

  “Well, wait a second, Bob. Before you go ahead answering this, let’s all give this one a shot. Could be interesting…” Chloe said.

  “I think Emma’s the youngest,” I said. That was supposed to be a complement, but Emma made a snorting sound.

  “No way!” Chloe yelled. “I’m clearly younger, can’t you all tell?”

  “Uh… not really,” Dom admitted.

  “Dominic!”

  “Hey, I’m just being honest. You’ve got a few wrinkles here and there.”

  “No I haven’t. It’s the lighting in the room, you know. That and the lack of make up,” Chloe sighed.

  “Never try to guess a woman’s age,” I muttered.

  “Well, come on, even if what Dom says is true, I still look about 24, 25 perhaps, yeah?” Chloe speculated. “Emma’s clearly more in the early to mid thirties.”

  “Mid thirties?!” Emma snapped.

  “Calm down girls, we’re actually all in our hundreds or thousands, remember?” I laughed.

  “Yeah, well, anyway, come on guys, isn’t it obvious I’m the youngest?” Chloe asked.

  “I was going to suggest I was the youngest.” Dom muttered.

  “Dom, no offence. But you’re kind of insanely bald. So I doubt it,” Chloe scoffed.

  “Well, you never know, maybe all my hair fell out when I was like twelve or something…”

  “Guys, shall we get this over with?” I asked. “Bob, who’s the youngest?”

  There was an unexpectedly long pause.

  “The youngest is Travis,” Bob replied.

  Travis stood up.

  “Bob’s right,” he announced.

  Then he left the room. Dom, Chloe, Emma and myself all sat in silent shock.

  “Oh, yay, another point for me!” Bob cheered.

  15

  “Now wait a minute…” Chloe paused, about to reveal her seventh theory for why Travis was allegedly the youngest of the group. “I’ve got it! Travis must have a disease of some sort, like, causing him to age really quickly…”

  “That’s pretty stupid,” Dom said.

  “But let’s look at the facts,” Chloe scratched her head. “We all woke up from cryosleep at the same time, more or less within the same few minutes.”

  “Yeah, I even saw him as he first climbed out of the pod looking like the grim reaper,” Dom reminisced.

  “And all the clocks on the pods were set to the same time, so we must have all slept for the same number of years too… So if Travis really is the youngest… Nope, I still don’t get it.” Chloe said.

  “What do you think, Wiggy?” Dom asked.

  “Wiggy?” Chloe asked, dumbfounded.

  “Yeah,” Dom raised his arms, holding his wig in one hand and his artificial beard in the other.

  “You…” Chloe raised her eyebrows. “You named your wig…”

  “Wiggy.” Dom waved with his wig like a pom-pom.

  “And the beard?”

  “Beardy.”

  “And you talk to them?” Chloe’s voice was getting higher and higher.

  “Oh come on, we spend all day talking to an inanimate object already, what’s the difference?” Dom lifted Beardy to his ear like a sock puppet and made some exaggerated speaking motions with it. “That’s right Beardy, Chloe isn’t being very nice to you, is she?”

  “But Dom… Dom...” Chloe was trying her hardest not to collapse into laughter. “Dom, Beardy doesn’t talk back like Bob does.”

  “Ohhhh!” Dom gasped. “Chloe, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Beardy doesn’t like you.”

  “No, Chloe doesn’t,” Chloe said. She stepped towards Dom and reached out with her hand, attempting to pull on the edge of the goatee. Dom retaliated with a comical growling sound and continued to animate the puppet hairpiece as if it were attacking her. While it was nice to see Dom coping in his own way with his embarrassing hair loss revelation, this play-fighting was quite excruciating to watch.

  Yawn yawn...

  Oh, it’s my imaginary friend again. Where have you been?

  You asked me not to interfere during the quiz, so I obliged.

  I suppose you did. But why come back at all? I’d love to say I missed you, X, but, well, I was kinda thinking about what’s best for me, actually. You know… the saner, the better?

  Do you really believe that there is any sensible definition of sanity under the current circumstances of your space-faring existence?

  Well, you’re probably right, but I don’t think having you around is helping. Come on, why are you bothering me now?

  I thought the timing was appropriate.

  Why, because Dom’s got imaginary friends too now? Is that supposed to make me think talking to you is suddenly justified? Very funny… Well, since you’re here, do you fancy shedding any light on the Travis thing?

  There’s a perfectly rational explanation for everything.

  Wait…

  “Attack, loyal minions!” Dom had rugby tackled me – I was on the floor near the bookshelves with Wiggy and Beardy playfully tickling my chest. I was having none of it. This wasn’t the time for stupid childish wrestling.

  “Hey, do you mind? I was in the middle of something,” I said angrily, slapping Wiggy out of Dom’s grasp.

  “What do you mean?” Dom asked.

  “I was just…” I paused. “I was just thinking… weren’t we supposed to be working out the truth about Travis?”

  “Well, yeah, but I don’t think we’re getting anywhere.” Dom said. “Bob’s being evasive as ever, and Travis clearly ain’t gonna come here and spill the beans himself, so you know what?” Dom lifted up Beardy and ventriloquized the words “Fuck it.”

  “Come on!” I yelled. “This whole thing makes no sense. All this time Travis hasn’t just looked physically older than us, he’s acted older than us.”

  “What are you talking about, I’m mature!” Dom said with surprising conviction, despite lying on top of me like a schoolboy, having just attacked me with a fake beard.

  “I mean, it’s always been like Travis knows more about the ship than we do. Hell, you saw how he was able to knock up those chairs so quickly. Even if he didn’t already look like an old man, he just acts like he’s been on this ship for much longer…”

  “Despite also being too scared to climb through a little hole in the wall for some reason,” Chloe shrugged.

  “Don’t you guys care? Don’t you think it’s kinda weird?”

  “Kinda weird yes, care no.” Dom said with a moronic expression, finally climbing to his feet. “Face it, Joe. Travis is just a weird person, that’s all there is to it.”

  “But…”

  “I’m done looking for answers,” Dom stifled a yawn, and ran his fingers across his bald scalp. “I know who I am now, Joe. That’s all I care about now.”

  “Oh!” Chloe snapped her fingers and pointed at Wiggy. “Maybe Travis is wearing a wig too! Maybe not just a wig, but like a whole face mask or something, so he’s actually got a young looking face underneath. It’s not too far-fetched, is it?”

  “Uh… What do you want me to do, go over to him and say, ‘Sorry Travis, I’ve just had a sudden urge to tug at your face,’ yeah, no, not happening,” Dom scoffed.

  “Well come on! At least give me one of your theories, if you’re gonna keep shooting down mine,” Chloe moaned.

  “Okay, fine. He’s a cyborg that runs on purple juice,” Dom guessed.

  “Rubbish.”

  “How about… maybe everyone on this ship just started aging backwards? So we all start out looking old, finish up looking young?”

  “Are you implying I’m the oldest now?” Chloe frowned.

  Before Dom could either take back his theory or follow it up with a witty remark, Emma burst into the room. She’d been in the airlock room with Bob all this time.

  “Guys, you might want t
o see this,” she called.

  The luxury escape pod was there in front of us, opening up like an egg to reveal three perfectly contoured silver seats made of a soft plush material undoubtedly a thousand times cosier than the Travis-chairs or even our lost, fabled sofa. Above them, loads of glowing cables and important-looking pieces of futuristic technology were strewn around, making for quite the spectacle.

  “As I stated previously, the luxury escape pod places its users in a trance designed to instigate feelings of happiness and prioritise comfort and safety,” Bob stated. “I managed to disengage the activation locks and initiate the authentication matrix. It is ready for use as soon as you are ready.”

  “Amazing… We might actually be able to get out of here,” Dom muttered, seemingly forgetting about the rather substantial issue of there only being room for three of us in there.

  “What about the cigarette cure thing? Did you find it?” Chloe asked.

  “Negative,” Bob replied. “This is most curious. It appears to have been removed from its storage container.”

  “All we found is this,” Emma said, holding a shiny red lighter in her palm. She flicked a switch and a tiny flame emerged, in case any of us had, post-memory-loss, struggled to remember what a lighter was supposed to do.

  “Well it’s no use without the ciggy itself, is it?” Chloe asked. “Did you check everywhere?”

  “Affirmative, Miss Chloe.”

  “I’ve been looking all over the ship for it,” Emma added.

  “Well, hopefully we’ll never need it,” I said. “We’ll be fine without it, surely?”

  “What makes you so sure?” Chloe asked.

  “Well, I mean, let’s just get our priorities straight. How the heck do we decide who gets to go in the pod and who gets to stay behind?” I tapped my foot impatiently.

  “I don’t know, Joe.” Chloe said, flustered. “I just don’t know. Now’s not the right time…”

  “Well when is the right time? When will ever be the right time?” I was starting to feel my blood boiling.