by J J Perry
Panting, gasping for air, she pedaled past images of cliffs and seascapes, pounding surf far below, puffy clouds above. Instead, she saw false promises, deception, lies in her fighting parents, in her humble priest, in her best teachers, in politicians everywhere. She was so young then, uncertain and cynical. Perhaps Sasha was no different, she wondered. She could not know and needed the perspective of distance. She was not unhappy, just afraid that yet another man would take advantage of the French black girl.
She met Cyrus on Crete just after she left. His passion was buried deep, not spilling out in ink for the world to see, hidden from everyone, perhaps even from himself. The intensity, the mystery attracted her long enough to join him in union after he proposed the fourth time. To her disappointment, he proved to be only conflicted and depressed instead of profound. It irritated her greatly at this moment. She did not need his hopelessness, his useless ballast. It forced her to be buoyant, which was not her default personality mode. All people need to compensate to stay together, the delicate balancing of pains and pleasures.
She was satisfied with her pleasant though cautious misanthropy in the world she viewed as chaotic and self-serving. Sasha lived loving Savanna with all his heart in a world of the way things should be. He was eight years older and ready to settle into his idyllic life. Poor farm girls from Normandy do not deserve such happiness. Perhaps the dissonance of realist and idealist was why she left.
She reached a gentle down slope and eased up, wind growing, blowing her short wet hair back, cooling her anger. Regrets come and sometimes leave. This one had never departed. Most mistakes are inconsequential in the long run. To Savanna, the importance of everything was a matter of scale. Up close, a pimple is ugly. From fifty meters, it isn’t there. From fifty kilometers, the person isn’t visible. From fifty light-years, the planet can’t be seen. Cyrus would mock her philosophy as superficial, but he never came up with anything better. If time heals all wounds, why does she still miss Sasha so much at times like this? It had been several years but perhaps not long enough. Without the impending centuries of oblivion, in a normal existence, she would not miss him a hundred years from the present. Yet, when she, hopefully, should wake up on the other side of the journey, his great-great-grandchildren shall have been dust for thousands of years. Then she will be the only person to crave and remember him. Shall he or did he make a difference? Was his literature famous for a year? Twenty years? A thousand years? Probably not. Even if his writing were better than Homer and Shakespeare, it would be gone when she arrived, if she arrived. It was gone to her regardless. He was and is important to her because he loved her. That she loved him now was easy because he was an idea, not a halitotic, flatulent, corpulent academic idealist sharing her bed thirty years from now. Her fond time-frozen memory of him will die when she does, ten or fifty years after landing. Reality is overrated. The line between future and past is blurred or maybe artificial.
She left him, a man she still loved. Though she wanted to, she couldn’t leave Cyrus, a man she didn’t. Her legs were tired, and the view of the road went on with more hills ahead. She dug hard, trying to flee her thoughts on the going-nowhere bicycle.
3.1
Dripping with sweat, she picked up a white towel and decided it was time for breakfast. She found the mess hall still empty except for Leila, sipping tea. The walls were yellow, like milk and egg batter for French toast, the floor a mixture of cheesy orange and yellow. Leila wore a contraband dark-blue cotton T-shirt with a Gupta International Engineering logo instead of her uniform, a departure from her pattern. Cotton would not last the five thousand years and would only contribute to dust level.
“Aren’t you the energetic one?” Leila admired.
“When Cyrus got off shift, he woke me up and I couldn’t sleep. I should probably go shower and put some real clothes on.”
Leila went to speak but hesitated. This pattern repeated itself and made Savanna wait in the doorway. “Do you have a minute, Savanna?”
She stepped back inside the room, a towel around her neck, draped over her chest, hiding her braless appearance under her mission-approved olive drab tank top. This was going to be interesting because Leila seldom initiated a conversation with her. “Sure. What’s up?”
“I just need someone to chat with for a minute, that’s all. We’re all cooped up in here, and it seems that you and I never just sit and shoot the breeze.”
“We’re all a little tightly strung,” she said.
“If the string is too tight, it will break—too loose, and it will not play,” Leila said.
“Good point. You’d think with the dull tedium, we’d find conversation easier and relaxing.” Savanna sat, and the cook-bot whirred over and waited. “Tomato juice with lemon, Durgon. And hold the humor.”
“As you wish.”
“I heard some commotion through your door this morning when I left my room. Are you and Suresh doing OK?”
“I am embarrassed that you heard.”
“Don’t be. If Cyrus and I didn’t argue about something, we would hardly talk. So how are you doing?”
“I just wanted to chat about something trivial, not about trouble.”
“Don’t you think this expedition would make a good movie?”
“It would be great. Eight people in a small space for months. Tension, differences, strain, lust, jealousy, idealism, maliciousness, science, medicine, hope, despair. It’s all here.”
“We’re like miners trapped after a cave-in.”
“I wish I had camera and sound crews, an editing bay, and a way to get this little adventure back to the theaters.”
“With you doing the acting, production direction, it would win an Oscar.”
“It’s satisfying to make good art while revealing how things really are.”
The cook-bot placed the juice on the table. Savanna gulped almost half the glass. “You see more than I do. I haven’t seen lust or malice.”
“It’s all here, and you’ll see it if you look in the right places.”
Savanna scrubbed her short hair with the towel. “So I’m curious, Leila. Why did you two volunteer for this program? It seems so out of character for Suresh at least.”
“I am upset with him right now.” Savanna saw this was uncomfortable for Leila. She did not let people into her shell. She squirmed and nudged a knuckle along her lower lid, putting the saline on her finger. “I shouldn’t say this, but he is so self-centered. With his success in South America and India, he thinks if he starts a new world, he can be the ruler of it.”
“That’s—I don’t know what to say, Leila.”
She sipped her tea slowly, looking deep into the bottom of the cup. “His Brahmin-ness is killing me.”
“It’s so counter to what we are doing.”
“I guess it is. I’m not clear about how we got through the screening and selection process. That he is dominant is not subtle.”
“Then it was influence. Did he pay someone?”
“He keeps finance to himself. I think he did. That would be his way. He gets what he wants, except from me.”
“Oh?”
“One of his other wives was his Kama Sutra master, not so pretty in the face but well built.”
“Another wife?”
“Two others.
Savanna sat back in her chair in amazement. “That may explain the disagreement this morning then.”
“He thinks of me as a possession, the model, the actress, the trophy to make men jealous. I see myself independent, an engineer with a brain.” She swallowed hard. “He makes intimate demands that I refuse. It’s quite a problem for me.”
“You need a break.”
“I have found a way out.”
Savanna’s face screwed up in a questions mark, but she said nothing.
“I mean a way to cope.”
“That’s what I do
in the five-sense booth. With a little pharmacologic boost. You should come with me sometime.”
Lucinda and Chen entered, looking tired and incapable of conversation. On seeing Savanna and Leila engaged in conversation, Chen took his arm away from Lucinda’s waist.
“What boost?” She then turned and smiled in her best delicious way as she gave the couple her full attention. “Hi, you two. Looking refreshed, aren’t you?”
“Good morning,” Lucinda croaked. “I need coffee before I can talk.” Chen just nodded his close-cropped head.
“I saw your signals when I surveyed this morning,” Lucinda said, yawning and looking for the robot. Leila winked when her eyes were turned, and the corner of Chen’s mouth twitched upward. Savanna saw nothing of the interaction. She walked over to Lucinda and rubbed her back for half a minute until her steaming coffee was delivered by the cook-bot.
“How about a little rub-a-dub for me?” The bot flashed and rattled. “It’s been so long since a woman got my titanium hot.”
Savanna shook her head with a wry grin and walked away without a response.
“Cold. That’s cold,” it said.
She was pleased that Leila opened up. The women in the crew were coming together, growing closer in deeper connections. The emotional support was a welcome relief from the oppressive doldrums. She would remember that conversation in the months after, wondering if she had missed a clue to the catastrophe that followed.
3.2
LAUNCH + 91 DAYS
“OK,” said Lucinda. “Just to confirm, let me watch both of you run through the in vitro fertilization procedure, using test samples from Raul and Leila.”
Zhivago responded, “They are not married.”
“This is just a test,” replied Lucinda. “Besides, who are you to object, Dr. Zhivago?”
“I am not amused at the reference.” Both robots moved quickly around the bay, using various appendages to lift, carry, and place the needed supplies. At chest level, they each attached to a powerfully illuminated microscope to micropipette into a tiny sterile chamber to complete the task. The microscopic images displayed on the pop-up screen showed nanometer precision and absolutely no tremor.
“Show template,” Lucinda commanded. The visual display then showed programmed shapes over the ovum and the pipette, which coincided perfectly with the real-time image. “Thank you. Back to image-only display.”
“At the end of today, according to the log, we will have been through all the tests and exercises twice since link-up,” Maricia groaned.
“It has taken four long, boring weeks.” Lucinda yawned as she spoke.
“Yeah, Luc, it has been pretty dull around here lately. I have island fever already, and we have six months to go on this end.”
“Island fever?” Lucinda asked as she watched two screens, one of a microscopic image, the other a much less magnified view of the robotic instruments.
“The need to get off a small island for a while. You’re free, but you can’t leave.”
“I don’t feel trapped. Just… I guess I need a little change, a little stimulation.”
“Chen, the free spirit, seems like he would be a very stimulating guy.” Maricia winked and smiled.
Lucinda paused. “He must be bored too. He spends a lot of time on the back side of the moon, so to speak.”
“Is that a sexual reference?”
“Funny. Hardly. I mean he is out of touch with me lately. Incommunicado.”
“Really? When did that start?”
“About week three. Space travel lulled his libido.”
“Well, Raul has the opposite problem. We’re like newlyweds. He wears me out, not that I mind so much.” She giggled.
“Maybe one man’s salt peter is another man’s Spanish fly. Maybe I need to take a more aggressive approach.”
“Have you two talked about it?”
“Not specifically.”
“That might be a good place to start, Luc. He’ll probably tell you how he feels.”
“I don’t think so. He avoids talking to me. You’ll think this is weird, but I decided to do a little experiment. I have not initiated a conversation with him in about ten days but have been physically close to him and friendly. I have counted five verbal exchanges more than hello. Just five. I bet he has said less than two hundred words to me.”
“That is terrible, Luc. You must feel isolated. Do you want me to talk to him?
“It might make it worse instead of better. Besides, you are prettier than I.”
“Not as beautiful as you or as Leila.”
“No one is as beautiful as she.”
Displays on both Zhivago and Jekyll showed shaking, and the pipettes withdrew. Both robots, in unison said, “Unexpected motion detected. System warnings have been issued.” Lucinda and Maricia looked at each other as they also felt the floor tremble beneath them.
“Where’s the problem?” Maricia asked as she dashed to a console.
Zhivago replied, “The problem is aft. Engineering.” There was a distant pop as the room trembled, cabinet and drawer contents jangled, and the ship issued an ominous groan. “A high-voltage surge has occurred.” Both robots whizzed to their docking stations. “Emergency protocol is enacted until overridden or controlled by the system algorithm” was the unison intonation as they locked down the medical room. Lucinda and Maricia ran down the stairs toward Engineering. They didn’t hear the explanation that followed. “Failure of hardware relay E-22, backup solenoid enabled. Room safety achieved.”
A harsh, loud buzzing filled the room and the hall outside. Cyrus and Savanna were the first to arrive and silenced the alarm.
“What’s wrong?” Cyrus asked when he found the door sealed. Through the glass, they both saw the room was dark. From an adjacent recess, Savanna tapped on a screen.
“Is anybody in there?” he asked again, pulling against the handle, shaking it.
“Air quality is marginal with some halon present,” the computer announced from a speaker. “O2 is 19 percent, and carbon monoxide is elevated but not dangerous. Homeostasis protocol enabled.”
“I think I see two people on the floor,” said Cyrus. “Is the room disabled?”
“Affirmative, power is off.” Savanna raised a flashlight to the window and pointed in the direction of the two figures on the floor. Thin smoke made the beam visible.
Lucinda and Maricia arrived. “I smell ozone,” Lucinda said. “What’s up?”
“Someone’s hurt,” Cyrus said.
“Who?” Maricia asked.
Savanna tapped on the screen. “Chen and Leila.” She tapped furiously to unlatch the door.
“Oh god, no. I can’t go in there,” Lucinda said.
“It’s probably safe now,” Cyrus said, pulling and shaking the door.
“Stop it!” Savanna demanded. “I can’t get it to open if you’re tampering.”
“Smells like an electrical arc,” said Lucinda. “And burned flesh.”
The door hissed open. Cyrus and Maricia burst in. Lucinda stayed out, watching in terror. Savanna continued to work on the computer screen. “I’m trying to get the lights on,” she called out.
Thin smoke wafted from the console where the two bodies lay close together. Cyrus felt the neck of Chen. He looked up and shook his head. Maricia moved to Leila.
“No pulse?” asked Maricia.
Cyrus shook his head again and stood. “No. You had better check.”
In the doorway, Lucinda squealed in fear.
“No pulse on Leila!” Maricia kept probing. “Get the defibrillator!” She went to Chen, confirmed he also had no pulse, and started chest compressions and muttered something like “Four fanning,” undoubtedly a Danish expletive. Cyrus backed away.
“Luc, I need you in here!”
From a speaker in the stairwell, a
message was repeated. “Air quality marginal.”
“Luc.” Savanna put her hand on Lucinda’s shoulder. Tear-filled eyes looked back at her, blinking. “You can do this.”
Lucinda entered and started doing chest compressions on Leila. She put Chen and Maricia at her back.
Savanna flew up the stairs and returned quickly with a book-sized device and placed it next to Leila. Lucinda applied a long adhesive about four inches wide and twenty inches long to Leila, turning her so she could fix it to her back and chest over her heart. Maricia watched as she continued chest compressions in the dark with one flashlight dancing around the room. Wires led to the defibrillator, and a red light appeared for five seconds. “Shock advised. Clear, clear, clear!” the machine announced.
Lucinda backed off and couldn’t keep her eyes from moving to her husband half a meter away. “Shocking once!” it said loudly. Leila convulsed as fifty thousand volts raged through her body. Lucinda placed a small adhesive band around Leila’s head an inch or so above her eyebrows and pressed it into her hair above her ears. “No shock advised. Analyzing. Stand clear.”
“Savanna, get the med-bots down here,” Maricia called out as she surveyed Leila. “Lucinda, get the defibrillator on Chen!”
Cyrus moved the light beam to Chen.
Savanna worked on the console to free the med-bots from security lockdown.
“Who pulled his pants down?” Lucinda asked as she was disconnecting the device.
“Not important right now, Luc,” Maricia responded curtly. She took the strap and applied it to Chen.
“That’s how we found him,” Cyrus said.
Leila’s pupils were fixed and dilated. Dead. Her brief brain wave analysis agreed. The med-bots would know for certain.
The defibrillator was enabled and analyzing. Maricia had resumed chest compressions on Leila without hope while watching Lucinda.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Why are his pants down?” Lucinda asked.
“No shock advised. Cardiac asystole. No neurological function detected” came from the resuscitator.