But The Stars

by Peter Cawdron

  “We should go,” Benson says, turning away from the window. He has no desire to explain what they were looking at and makes no attempt to shift the focus on waking Mac and Zoe. If anything, his attitude is one of resignation.

  Vichy looks out at the stars. He sees them and yet he doesn’t—not in the same way as Dante. Perhaps for him it’s simply not a big deal. Dawn breaks and the Acheron is bathed in the light of two blazing suns. Within seconds, the distant stars, once so plentiful, fade into the darkness, dwindling from sight. For Dante, it’s symbolic of everything that’s wrong with life on the Acheron. Like everything in their lives, even before they set down on P4, dawn is an illusion. The reality is that humanity is not mentally equipped for space travel. Millions of years of evolutionary pressure has led to adaptations for hunters and gatherers, not corporate shmucks or astronauts. Because of this, life onboard the Acheron has always been an illusion. All the aliens did was formalize the arrangement. Regardless of the planet, it’s always dawn somewhere down there—irrespective of whether there is Earth, Mars or P4. On Earth, a day takes 24 hours, on P4 it stretches to almost 39, while onboard the Acheron the illusion repeats itself every two and a half hours as they orbit hundreds of miles above the frozen surface.

  Life onboard the Acheron has always been artificial.

  Artificial gravity is not only a physical necessity to ensure their bone marrow produces red blood cells and their muscles don’t atrophy, it’s important for the underlying long term psychological well-being of these hairless apes venturing so far from their home shores. Oh, sure, flying around in micro-gee like Superman is fun, but there’s always something missing. There’s always something wrong, something disquieting. When the euphoria of spaceflight wears off, as it does after a couple of years, all that’s left is a sense of loss. Long hair floats instead of sitting still, moving as though it were perpetually caught in a gale unless it’s pulled back into a ponytail. Even clothing is unsettling as it tends to drift around the body instead of clinging to it and providing comfort and warmth. Seemingly insignificant points like these accumulate to form a sense of disconnect, so humanity built its own illusion in the form of the Acheron and other deep space exploration vessels—all long before the aliens decided to mimic them. Perhaps that’s why these creatures have been so effective.

  “Come on,” she says, turning to catch up with Benson.

  Vichy takes her arm, sliding his hand beneath her bicep. “Hey, we’re in this together, right?”

  She nods, but she can’t look him in the eye.

  “No secrets,” he says.

  “Only from them,” she replies as they walk past another window. Although they’re walking straight, visually it seems as though they’re walking uphill as they follow the carousel. All ways are up, pointing into the heart of the Acheron. Outside, it is as though the rising binary stars have shifted as they emerge from behind the planet, sliding down as the Acheron turns. Yet another illusion.

  As they approach the far side of the corridor, which is upside down relative to where they were, the illusion is such that they still feel upright. Like someone in Ireland and another person in South Africa, being upright is a localized illusion.

  Mac is sitting with his back to the door of Zoe’s cabin with his knees up to his chest and his head buried in his hands. He doesn’t notice their approach even though there’s a slight flex in the floor panels.

  “Where’s Zoe?” Dante asks.

  Mac looks up from behind bloodshot eyes.

  “I—I.”

  Immediately, Dante crouches, grabbing him by the back of the head and turning him to face her. Even though he’s twice her size, he responds as though he’s drugged, not resisting her pull. His pupils are dilated.

  Without turning away from him, she says, “Vee. I need the trauma pack from medical.”

  “On it,” Vichy says without a moment’s hesitation. He runs along the sloping corridor, rising up as he sprints away from them. Whatever doubts he had, they’re gone, dissolving in the need to help someone else.

  Dante calls out after him, “There’s one in my cabin—in the cabinet by the door.”

  “Okay,” he yells in reply as his feet pound on the carousel. Already, all that’s visible are his legs as he rises higher within the curved structure of the Acheron.

  “What happened to Mac?” Benson asks, crouching beside her. She doesn’t reply. Conjecture is meaningless. Gently, she turns Mac’s head from one side to the other. His hair is wet. Dante runs her hands up through his loose locks, gently touching his scalp. Warm, sticky blood comes away on her fingers.

  “Blunt force trauma,” she says, shifting the hair and examining a cut on his scalp.

  “I don’t understand,” Benson says. “I thought all this was a simulation. How can he be hurt? It’s just a trick, right? He’s not really injured.”

  “Looks pretty damn real,” she replies, gently pushing her fingers up into his jugular and checking his pulse. Erratic. Surging.

  “But in the real world?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand what they’re doing to us. I think Mags is right. They’re leveraging the hypnotic mechanism—making our minds susceptible to suggestion, using that to form these illusions.”

  “Okay. But he’s not actually hurt, is he?” Benson asks again.

  “You have to understand. There are ten times as many nerves leading away from the brain as there are returning. Whatever’s happening in this illusion will generate an actual, real response in his body. If he’s got heart arrhythmia here, I’m pretty sure the same thing is happening back there.”

  Vichy comes running back down the carousel with the trauma kit. His feet pound on the floor, causing it to flex and shake. He’s breathing hard.

  Dante takes the kit from him, saying, “Every aspect of our bodies is controlled by the brain—not directly, not through conscious choice or any willful act, but it’s regulated by the nervous system regardless. Tamper with that and…”

  Vichy picks up on the conversation. “So even if that injury isn’t real, the way he reacts to it is?”

  “Yes,” Dante says, prepping a needle-less injection. “Shock will kill you faster than poison.”

  “How is that going to do anything?” Benson asks, pointing at the injector.

  Dante ignores him, holding the injector up so Mac can see it and saying, “I’m going to give you something for the pain, okay?”

  He nods.

  Dante pushes the injector into Mac’s arm, even though in reality, she’s not doing anything of the sort. How these creatures can so perfectly mimic each part of their reality is astonishing to her. On some points, the fidelity is utterly overwhelming. Their mastery of biochemistry at a microscopic level has to be centuries ahead of humanity, and yet those points they miss are telling, revealing how they’re struggling to comprehend the complexity of human physiology.

  “If that’s not real, how is it going to work?” Benson asks.

  Dante applies a healing balm to Mac’s scalp, saying, “All I know is, don’t underestimate either a placebo or a nocebo.”

  “Ah,” Vichy says. Dante nods.

  Benson screws up his face a little. “Nocebo? What’s that?”

  “A negative psychosomatic response. It’s not that you believe something bad is happening to you, but that your subconscious can’t accept otherwise and the body responds as though it’s injured. Nocebos can bring on disorientation, vomiting, heart attacks—whatever, even though nothing is actually wrong.”

  “These aliens—they can kill us?” Benson asks in alarm. “Those fuckers out there can kill us in here?”

  “Out there. In here,” Dante replies, running a handheld scanner over Mac, checking his vitals. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “So we can die in here?” Vichy asks, genuinely surprised by the realization.

  “Is that what happened to Angel?” Benson asks. “Was she actually dead? Did they bring her back?”

  “Is this some so
rt of torture?” Vichy asks.

  “I don’t know,” Dante replies, leaning Mac forward as she bandages his head. “And I really don’t want to find out.”

  “Fuck,” Vichy says.

  Benson reinforces his sentiment. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

  Mac blinks rapidly, making eye contact.

  “Hey, welcome back,” Dante says.

  From somewhere behind her Benson mumbles, “Oh, I wouldn’t say welcome.”

  There’s scratching at the door beside Mac. Although Dante notices, she pays no attention, focusing on him.

  “Easy. You’ve had a bad bump.”

  “Zoe, Zoe,” he mumbles, swinging his head as he speaks. Mac's motion is unnatural, as though he’s caught on a rollercoaster, flung around with each twist and bend. Gently, Dante restrains his head, keeping her hands on both sides of his face, trying to steady him.

  “Slow down.”

  “No,” he says, pushing her away and trying to get to his feet. He plants the palm of his hand in the center of her chest and shoves, causing her to lose her balance. Dante tumbles backwards. She wasn’t ready for him and rolls onto her shoulder.

  Vichy steps forward, placing himself between them as she turns, getting to her feet. Mac is on all fours, but he’s disoriented. If Dante didn’t know better, she’d swear he was drunk. He crawls, swaying as he moves, reaching for the walls, wanting to steady himself, trying to stand.

  “Hey,” Benson says, reaching out, trying to stop him from falling.

  Mac lashes out, batting at him with his huge arms. “Get away from me!”

  “Whoa,” Vichy says. “Slow it down, big guy. No one’s going to hurt you. We’re here to help.”

  “That’s what they say,” Mac says, slurring his words. “That’s what they always say, but it’s a lie.”

  “No one’s going to hurt you,” Dante says, only she isn’t looking at him. She’s madly searching through the medical kit, tossing bandages and plastic vials on the floor.

  Mac spins, turning around and pressing his back hard against the wall. He has his knees bent in a squat, with his arms out wide, flat against the wall. His muscles flex and squeeze, jerking as he struggles to remain standing even though he’s not moving. Veins pulse on the side of his neck. He stabs at the floor with his boots, desperate to stay upright.

  “Equilibrio-whatever, right, Doc?” Benson says.

  “That’s it,” Dante replies.

  Benson is pissed. “Those fuckers are experimenting.”

  “Again,” Vichy says.

  Dante rummages through a container, loading an injector. “I’m going to give you a shot of diazepam.”

  “Valium? F—Fucking valium,” Mac yells, swinging his arm, trying to keep her at bay, but he’s seeing double, swinging at thin air. “No. You don’t understand. I’ve got to get to Zoe.”

  “You’re not going anywhere like that,” Dante says. With a swift motion, she jabs at his shoulder and retreats. In seconds, his arms droop while his head lolls to one side. Vichy jumps in, grabbing him before he falls.

  “Easy, big guy.”

  “But Zoe,” he mumbles as he slides down the wall to the floor.

  “It’s okay,” Dante says. “We’re here to help. Where’s Zoe?”

  With a limp hand, he points.

  “But—don’t hurt her. Please. You don’t understand. It’s Zoe in there.”

  “We won’t,” Dante replies, but there’s something wrong. Who else would be inside the cabin? Why does he think they wouldn’t recognize her?

  “You—You don’t,” he says, struggling to finish his sentence. Dante hit him with a bit too much. With his legs out in front of him and his hands in his lap, he mumbles, “I tried. I really tried.”

  “It’s okay,” Vichy says, resting his hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him.

  Dante’s about to open the door to Zoe’s cabin when Benson raises his hand, signaling for her to stop. She pauses, unsure why, but senses danger lies beyond the sheet metal. Benson raises his eyebrows in alarm. They all hear it. The scratching. Slowly, Benson crouches, keeping his ear barely an inch from the door. He’s trying to gauge precisely where the sound is coming from.

  “She didn’t want this,” Mac says, slumped against a maintenance hatch less than three feet away. “I know she didn’t.”

  Benson holds a finger to his lips. He gestures for them to step to one side. Rather than opening the door by waving his hand in front of the activation pad, he moves to the opposite side and quietly unscrews an access panel.

  The screws on the panel are designed to be removed by a gloved astronaut in the event of catastrophic depressurization so rather than being recessed with a small notched head, they’re bulky, with machined grooves to aid with grip. Instead of falling away once they’re undone, the screws swivel down, aligning with slots that allow the panel to be easily removed. If the carousel was in vacuum, the narrow entrance would seal with a second door, leaving a gap of barely four feet to act as an airlock, but with regular pressure, it’s little more than a tiny, inner corridor barely larger than a wardrobe. Benson winds the emergency crank inside the panel, causing the sliding door to slowly crack open.

  Dante’s first impression is that the lights inside the cabin are off as there’s nothing but darkness beyond the door. Her heart drops at the thought of tripping another membrane and sending them through a reset. She wonders where she’ll wake this time. As the gap widens, spikes appear, only they’re organic in nature, with a dull point reminiscent of a pool cue. They’re in motion, scraping against the edge of the door. Their movement is random, with no indication of intelligence. They’re neither probing the carousel nor advancing. Rather they seem to be glancing around like bulrushes in the wind.

  “What the hell?” Vichy whispers, to which Dante replies, “Shush.”

  Stepping lightly, she treads sideways, slowly revealing more of the cabin. The light in the corridor is bright, too bright, not allowing her to see anything beyond the shadows. Dante comes to a halt directly in front of the thin crack, barely six inches wide. Occasionally, a thin, dark spike comes into view, moving like the spines of a sea urchin.

  “Kill the lights,” she whispers.

  Benson fiddles inside the access panel. On either side of them, the elongated LED lights that line the carousel wink out. Shadows stretch along the broad main corridor. Dante’s not sure who’s walking around behind her, whether it’s Vichy or Benson, as no one’s saying anything, but they’re both moving like ghosts. Once again, darkness embraces her, but the stars provide a guiding light. She can feel them behind her, not physically, there’s no warmth as such, they’re far too distant for that, but as the soft light surrounds her, passing through the window behind her, she feels at home. The stars have always been there for her.

  Dante steps forward.

  Benson is back at the access port. He turns to face her, waiting for her cue. She nods and he winds the crank, opening the door further. Ratchets grind behind the wall, grating against each other, creaking and groaning softly.

  Vichy is on the other side of her, hard against the wall. He’s grabbed a fire extinguisher and is holding it at shoulder height with the nozzle barely an inch from the gap. Smart. Whatever this thing is, if it comes at her, hopefully a burst of carbon dioxide laced with fire suppression powder will cause a little confusion and buy her some time to pull back.

  Her heart pounds within her chest. Even though the lights on the carousel behind her are off, it takes time for her eyes to adjust to the darkness beyond the door. She stands still, patiently willing her eyes to resolve the shadows. There’s no bravado, no drive, no conviction or courage. Dante’s doing this because she has no other choice. She has to know. With the dim light of ten thousand stars at her back, she peers into the darkness within the cabin.

  Tentacles writhe on the ceiling, spreading out like tree roots. Dante keeps her distance from the spikes waving against the narrow opening, but they’re low and remain below wai
st-height, allowing her to lean forward and peer inside. The smell is musty, like that of dead leaves and rotten wood.

  Dante’s expecting to see the inside of Zoe’s cabin but instead she’s peering into medical, which doesn’t make sense as the orientation is all wrong. Medical lies in the same direction as the carousel, effectively sectioning off the circular corridor so that the O-shape is usable only as a U—with the top section being roughly thirty meters of medical equipment, beds, hibernation pods and storage. As Mags lives on one side of the U and Naz on the other, Dante’s used to complaints about not being able to use medical as a thoroughfare. She could open the far door, but it would mean rearranging storage and losing space in the ward. Technically, she doesn’t need too much room, but it’s there in case of an emergency involving multiple crew members. Shortcuts to bed hop are the least of her concerns, but this… this is wrong on multiple levels.

  Dante is staring into medical, but Zoe’s cabin is at the base of the O-shaped carousel forming the outer ring of the Acheron, almost directly opposite medical. Not only that, Dante’s peering into an elongated, curved version of medical that’s set at a right-angle to the carousel, which is physically not possible.

  Bodies hang from the ceiling, strung out in a row running the length of the module. Even in the soft light, she can see they’re naked. Men and women hang draped beneath tree-like structures wrapping over their shoulders, hiding their heads from view. They twitch. Legs spasm. Arms flex, not moving more than a few inches, but they’re clearly animated. Dante looks down at her own hand, rolling her wrist around and looking at the lines in her palm and the curve of her fingers. She looks up. One of the women has turned her palm slightly upwards. Slowly, Dante lowers her hand, watching as her doppelgänger moves in sync with her.

  “How is this possible?” she whispers.

  Beside her, pressed hard against the outer wall, Vichy asks, “What is it? What can you see?”

  “You,” she says. “Me.”

  Vichy whispers. “I don’t understand. Where’s Zoe?”