“You look good,” I tell him. “Not dead, anyway.”
And not at all insane.
When his eyes snap open, I flinch. He looks back and forth, confused and a bit like a nervous baby rodent leaving its den for the first time.
He sits up, wincing at the lights. His hands shake as he runs them along the sides of the cryo-bed, and then he yanks them back, like he’s been burned.
A sob tears from his body. Then another. He slides from the bed and convulses when he touches the floor. He pitches forward and bounces between his hands and knees, never sustaining contact with the floor for more than a moment. Reminds me of a lizard running over burning desert sands. But it can’t be sustained, and he falls into a writhing, twitching mass, weeping out of control for ten minutes.
I recognize the symptoms as early PCD—post-cryosleep depression. The brain, after spending so long in a kind of mental disconnect from all stimulation, has trouble coping with a sudden return to the world. Everyone onboard was tested for PCD susceptibility, but our longest stint in cryo, before launch, was three months. There was no way to know how people would handle ten years. PCD is treatable in its early stages, but left unchecked…
He unravels before me, and soon the shaking subsides and his sobs become laughs. When the laughter and tears fade, the smile remains. “Early bird gets the worm.” He looks straight at me. “Don’t you think?”
I stagger away from him, the animal instinct in me pumping adrenaline.
But Tom doesn’t attack.
Tom is dead. Lying in this very same cryo-bed, with sausage legs and flaccid skin.
He tilts his head, hearing something that I cannot. PCD hallucinations aren’t uncommon, but generally only after a few months. That he’s seeing something now means that it’s accelerated, perhaps because of the duration.
“No,” he says. “I’ve never seen a worm either.”
Tom, like Capria, was born and raised on Mars, and while there were probably opportunities to meet Earth creatures, including worms, he was a tech-jock from the moment a VR headset could rest on his head without slipping off. Tom’s experience of the world was similar to my current life on the Galahad, trapped inside, never breathing fresh air, never having dirt beneath your fingernails, never...
I used to go fishing. Catching a fish was rare. Catching an edible fish was impossible. Thanks to the polluted state of Earth, the only fish people could eat came from vast fish farms hidden beneath domes. But I hooked enough worms to remember the slime, the dirt, and the peaceful quiet that followed while waiting for a fish. I caught one once, when I was seven. A pickerel. I called it a ‘Pickle Fish,’ which my mother adored. Until she died a year later. Neo-cancer. Everyone died of neo-cancer back then.
I force my thoughts back to the more recent past. Both time periods are painful, but only one of them can answer the questions picking at the inside of my skull.
Naked and shivering, Tom waves his hand toward me. “Stop. That’s crazy talk. I don’t want to kill anyone. Well, maybe Gabby. Such a bitch.”
Gabby is short for Gabriella. She was one of two pilots, not for the Galahad, which doesn’t require piloting, but for the landers that would have carried supplies down to Cognata’s surface. She was short, a little chubby, and funny. Didn’t pull her punches when she teased. Most people didn’t mind, but I think her jabs were too spot on for Tom’s preference.
“That’s not why I’m here, anyway.” Tom rubs his arms. “Need to rig the system.” He heads for the door, singing his version of a song I’ve never heard, but it’s probably one of the weird classics he likes. “Haa, rig it,” he sings. “Rig, rig, rig, rig it. Haa, rig it. Rig it real good!”
The happy tune syncs up with the pace of his legs, and he all but jaunts from the cryo-chamber. All traces of anguish are gone. I sense the mania building inside him, the PCD spreading through his mind like tree roots.
I reach out, pinch the air, and pull myself forward through the three dimensional security footage. Every inch of the ship is being monitored, at all times. With no way to predict what the Galahad and its crew might encounter in deep space, the designers thought it would be wise to record everything, inside and out. Part of me is glad they did. I like answers. The rest of me wishes these recordings didn’t exist. The answers are going to hurt.
In the hallway, I latch my feed to Tom and hover behind him as he makes his way through the Galahad. He’s heading for the secondary VCC, stark naked. Probably hungry and thirsty. Whatever he woke up early for is his priority.
He dresses in a perfectly clean VISA, enters the VCC and slips into the virtual. My feed follows him. His security credentials check out and he starts moving through the code.
He’s inside the crew’s personnel folder. What the hell could he rig here? The answer comes with his next words, “No way I’m doing the nasty with Gabs.”
He tries to open the document and is blocked. He chuckles at this and brings up a series of programs from his personal directories, activating three of them. He returns to the folder labeled ‘G.P.’, and he tries to access it again. This time, his three open software packages come to life, flashing numbers and code, and after just two seconds, access is granted.
He’s a tech-hack, I think. All tech-jocks are hackers to some degree, but there is knowing, and then there is doing. Because of the highly volatile effect hacking can have on the technology-dependent world, it’s been outlawed. And because of the human race’s precarious position, most tech-jocks abide by the rules. Some made a game of hacking, creating security systems for others to try their skills against. They even hold unofficial hacking games including old school, DefCon-inspired Network Forensics, Hack Fortress, Warl0ck gam3z, and the ever popular Beard and Moustache Competition, which takes place in VR, since facial hair is against the rules. But I never saw Tom take part.
You were too smart for that, I think, as tech-hacks were disqualified for the Cognata mission. Not that many hacks wanted to be part of the mission. It was too visceral. Too real. Another planet, in real life, could be uncomfortable. Or deadly.
There are two columns of names, men on the left, women on the right. All fifty crewmembers. Beside each name is a link that reads, ‘gene sequence,’ but that’s not what holds my attention. I’m looking at the label atop the list.
Genetic Pairing.
“Pause,” I say, and Tom’s VCC feed goes still. It feels strange, being inside a VCC, inside a VCC—layers of unreality. But my curiosity is more powerful. I scroll down the list, finding my name toward the bottom. I follow the column to the right.
Capria.
My genetic pairing...is Cap!
I’m smiling when I say, “Continue.”
Tom repeats my name search, finding his and then following the column right. “Gabby. Bull and shit.”
Using his hands, he physically manipulates the list. First he plucks Gabriella Florence from the list and places the name to the side. Then his fingers scroll down, stopping at Capria Dixon.
My muscles tense.
He traces his fingers to the left, hovering over my name. “It’s sad, don’t you think? Him always pining for something he could never have.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Listening to the PCD hallucination.
“I know, right? I don’t know how the big wigs missed it, but it was clear as a Martian day. Heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy. Probably would orgasm just seeing this list.”
He shrugs at something. “Cap? No, she feels sorry for him.” A pause and then, “Yeah, I’m sure. Just shut-up and let me finish this.”
Tom plucks Capria’s name from its spot beside mine and moves it to where Gabby’s had been. Then he moves Gabby down beside my name.
“Sorry, my man.” He laughs, and then laughs at his laughing. “Ahh, no I’m not. You’re a jock, man. A simpleton. Cap needs more. She needs Synergy.”
The word, ‘Synergy,’ staggers me even more than Tom altering the list. Synergy is a legend among jocks and hacks. Most peo
ple didn’t believe he was real, but every now and then, a system would get hacked, and improved. The simple message, ‘Your syns have been forgiven,’ was the only evidence he’d been there. I didn’t believe he existed until he hacked one of my progs...and made it better.
That’s why Tom stayed off the radar. He wasn’t just a hacker, he was the hacker. If not for having Tom’s dead corpse at my disposal, I would have never regained access to the system. He’s that good. Better than me. Which means he was secondary computer scientist, the boring term for tech-jock, because he chose to be. Never in the limelight. Always behind the scenes.
And that explains both his ability to wake up early and his desire to alter the system. In this case, I don’t agree with his mod. I can’t imagine Cap would, either, no matter what Tom thinks. Hers is a logical mind. At all times. A scientist with eyes for the stars. Though I’ve tried to tell myself they might also be for me.
Tom had the same idea.
Maybe it’s neither of us. Maybe her dark brown, almost black eyes, fool the opposite sex into seeing wide pupils, a subconscious sign of desire.
With a few hand gestures, Tom backtracks, his software erasing all traces of his presence. He doesn’t touch the security. Yet.
I follow him back to the real world and down to the cryo-chambers. By the time he reaches them, he’s skipping, naked, flapping his hands and his manhood back and forth. He’s drunk on madness.
He enters cryo-chamber four and stops in front of his bed. Then his head cocks up. “Oh, that’s naughty.” He looks back over his shoulder, grinning. “I’m not sure she’d go for it. And no offense, but I don’t think she’d like you very much.”
Who does he think he’s talking to?
“She’s the jealous sort,” he says and then snorts a laugh. “Okay, okay, you can watch, but you can’t say a word.”
He holds his hand out to no one. “Shake it.” An impatient sigh marks the time between words. “Yeah, I know you’re not fucking real. Just shake it.” His hand pumps up and down. The imaginary deal is struck. Then he’s on the move.
He passes cryo-chamber three, extending his middle finger as he goes by. “Fuck you, Gabby.”
“Don’t you do it,” I say to past-Tom as he rounds the corner into cryo-chamber two and approaches Capria’s bed. “Fucking asshole.”
I pace inside the VCC, moving around the virtual security feed. I fight the urge to punch Tom as he starts tapping the interface attached to Cap’s bed. He’s waking her up. The fogged glass lid slides open revealing Capria’s naked form. Thanks to Command’s strict fraternization rules, made even more stringent for the Galahad crew, I’ve never seen Capria in anything less than a loose fitting uniform. Seeing her naked, her skin dark brown and shiny, her hips squished out to the side, her imperfect stretch-marked waist showing signs of a heavier past. She’s perfect in her imperfection, and I find myself unable to turn away.
Then Tom steps in front of me. He leans over Capria, already showing signs of arousal.
“You son of a bitch,” I growl.
A manic shiver shakes through him, and then he contains it, mustering his old, non-delusional self to the forefront. As Capria starts to wake up, all signs of PCD are gone.
Capria opens her eyes. They flutter like butterfly wings. And then...she smiles. “Hey,” she says. “Are we there?” Her eyes go wide. “Are we at Kepler?”
Tom shakes his head. “Cognata is still a year out. I just changed the registry. They had you paired with Will.”
Capria sniffs a sleepy laugh that breaks my heart, and then stretches, arching her back. “You weren’t supposed to wake me up until we got there.”
He grins. “I figured since I was awake, and there’s time.” He looks down at his naked body. She follows his eyes down. Sees what he has in mind. And again, she smiles.
“What the hell?” I’m pacing again. Irate. Confused. This wasn’t what I expected. This hurts too damn much. But I can’t look away. Can’t stop the playback. I need to know for sure.
And then I do.
Without another word, Capria reaches down, takes hold of Tom, and opens her legs. The number of rules being broken by the two of them is staggering. Romantic relationships are forbidden, never mind sex, especially unprotected sex during an unauthorized cryo-wake inside a cryo-bed!
The ache in my heart transforms into anger. And then to dislike. Capria is not the person I believed her to be.
“Now I know why you didn’t kill her,” I say. But he would have. In the end. His mind was so far gone that even Capria, who he’s had a relationship for who-knows-how-long, wasn’t safe.
When they’re done, Capria is returned to cryo-sleep.
Tom is alone again.
And not.
He turns around and grins, mania returning to his eyes. “Enjoyed the show?”
He struts back to cryo-chamber four, opens his bed and climbs inside. He lays back, closes his eyes, and then snaps them back open. He lunges forward, springing from the bed and sliding across the floor. “I’m not going back. I can’t do it again.” He points at the imaginary friend, once again standing in front of me. “No, no. You’re right. It’s just a year. No one will know. One year.” He nods. Frantic. “Hell, yes. We’ll have some fun.”
He unleashes a hungry, Cheshire grin. “We’re going to have a lot of fun.”
11
I watched the security video until I was numb. Then I watched it again. And again. Despite my repeated viewings, from multiple angles, I could find no evidence of coercion, not even the slightest hint that Cap was anything but complicit. She knew who Tom was, who he really was—fucking Synergy—and that he was breaking protocol by waking up early and risking the genetic viability of the human race by altering the pairings. I’ll admit, at first that bothered me for purely personal and selfish reasons. I had broken protocol by falling in love with Capria, but I would have never risked humanity to be with her. It went against the very core of the Galahad’s mission. As deep as my feelings for Capria once were, my belief in our mission was unshakable. Broken-hearted though I might have been, I would have accepted any genetic pairing for the sake of humanity.
But it’s all past tense now. The mission is over. Most of the crew is either definitely dead or probably dead. And my feelings for Cap feel as far away as Earth. She didn’t know Tom’s cryo-sleep would fail. Didn’t know he’d slaughter the crew, or turn his VCC into a psychopath’s nest. Not even Tom could have known that, and in the end, there was probably very little left of the man I once called a friend. But even without his rampage, he and Capria had conspired against the mission. Against the human race. And for that, I will never forgive…
I shake my head, sitting alone in the mess deck, and I call my own bluff. “Bullshit.”
Despite Capria’s deplorable choices, I would forgive her, if only to have someone to talk to, other than myself.
“You still have the virtual,” I tell myself. Artificial Intelligences passed the Turing test long ago, and while they lack the desires of a human being, making them passive and without selfish ambition, they can fool most people. But they can’t fool the people who create them, myself included.
Then again. I have time. Maybe I could fool myself?
But I’m not there yet.
I still need answers, and still have a lot of real-world work to do.
As much as I don’t like the results, I at least know what led to Tom’s madness and the mission’s demise. What I still don’t know is why I survived, and where Tom sent the Galahad.
The first answer should be easy to find. I just need to find my file, which should be on the surface level of the Galahad’s digital storage. The second answer…
I shake my head again. Tom will never be forgiven. Insanity might not have been his intention, but now that I’ve had time to scour through the code he changed, I’m positive that it was his tinkering that caused my cryo-bed to fail, locking me in ten years of immobilized consciousness.
And w
hile I’ve managed to access the majority of the ship’s systems, some of them, including navigation, have an additional level of ‘Synergy’ security that I haven’t been able to crack. Not even lugging Tom’s body-condomed dead weight back into the VCC will help. The encrypted codes were erased from the universe upon Tom’s death, and they were set inside the virtual, which has no security footage to watch. I have a small army of cracking progs running brute force attacks on his passwords, but without a starting place, cracking the code could take a hundred years, or a million.
“So, it’s settled. I figure myself out, and then the ship.” It feels backward, and sounds all wrong coming out of my mouth while no one is listening, but I don’t have a lot of choice in the matter.
With a wave of my hand, the virtual reproduction of the mess deck fades. I’m not sure why I went there to think. Probably because it’s where I would have gone to think, back when I needed to eat, but now… The only things constraining me are Tom’s damn passwords.
I access Gal’s file systems and am propelled into a virtual representation of the ship’s vast stores of knowledge.
I initiate the search verbally, though it’s not necessary. “William Chanokh.”
A list of names appears in front of me, and I scroll through for names that match mine. Keeping with my verbal command, Gal responds in kind, “There are thirteen hundred fifty-three entries for William Chanokh.”
“Thirteen hundred…” It’s a large number, but given that Galahad contains the sum of humanity’s knowledge, it’s not a very long list. And many of the names have variations of my first name, from Wilhelm to Gwillym, and my surname: Chanokh, Enok, and Enoch. Because of my name’s rarity, my listing, marked with a ‘Crewmember’ icon, tops the list.
I access the file and find my records split into chronological folders. The list starts at the year of my birth and ends with a folder labeled ‘Galahad’, indicating the mission’s start, which forgoes the chronological system, as our ten years of travel equaled 1400 Earth years. Time, at FTL speed, gets muddled. Has it been ten years? Or 1400? Was the time it took me to get through Tom’s security and access Gal’s basic systems a year, or 140? Whose measure of time is more important? Earth’s, where probably no one lives, or mine? The creators of the filing system didn’t have an answer, though it seems pretty clear to me, as maybe the last man in the galaxy, that time is whatever the hell I decide it is.
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