by Josi Russell
Taiver paused. He heard a pop. Looking down, Taiver saw a small drain slide open beneath his feet. Taiver looked up. The fluid which had filled the chamber was draining, leaving a small gap of open air at the top that both exhilarated and frightened him.
Taiver tried to remind himself that the chamber was made to do this. He watched as the top of the fluid reached his hair, and he stood very still as it began to drop to his forehead. Taiver began to feel heavier.
There was a new sound in the chamber, a hissing coming from above him. Fresh air was being pumped into the chamber. As the fluid dropped past his eyes, Taiver blinked rapidly. His vision cleared.
The sudden weight of his head left him dizzy, and he leaned against the soft backing of the chamber. The first convulsive cough surprised him as the fluid dropped below his chin and began running out his nose and mouth. His chest burned, and tears ran down his face.
He felt intense pressure in his ears. As he looked up, he saw Hannah outside the chamber.
“It’s the compression sequence,” she called. “It’s meant to get your lungs clear and help you breathe normally again.”
He couldn’t respond. He coughed again and again, and the pressure in the chamber increased like a fist, squeezing the liquid from his lungs in conjunction with the coughing. It was excruciating. It felt, to him, more like drowning than being submerged had felt. He was being crushed, and he closed his eyes against the compression.
Gradually, the pressure lessened, and he tried to gasp, but only succeeded in coughing. He felt the weight of the fluid still in his lungs. He couldn’t inhale. His mind went foggy from the lack of oxygen, and he was grateful when he felt the pressure of the chamber increasing again and forcing more fluid from his lungs.
Taiver was trembling, collapsed against the backing, his energy spent from coughing. But on the fourth compression cycle, as the furious grip of the chamber relaxed, he drew in his first convulsive breath. His lungs stretched to capacity, and he felt exhilarated.
He drank the air, gulped it, made himself sick on it, and rid his belly of more fluid. He breathed more steadily then, but didn’t lose the delicious feeling of breathing.
The chamber warmed as the liquid continued to drain. He felt the remaining wax melting and sliding off his skin. Heated, it mixed with the fluid and ran harmlessly out of the vents. He heard the fan run smooth again.
As the last of the fluid gurgled away beneath his feet, a cool mist filled the chamber. Taiver’s ears finally adjusted and he heard Hannah’s voice with startling clarity.
“That’s the moisturizer,” she called from outside. “It’s nearly the last step in the awakening sequence. The chamber will dry you next, and circulate the air to clear the airborne sedative—which hasn’t worked on you, either—and then it will release the door. Hang on.”
Taiver’s body was weakened. He could barely support himself. He looked out the curved glass front into Hannah’s eyes. Her concern was evident.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You were supposed to be asleep through all of that.”
Taiver shook his head. He couldn’t yet find his voice, and he didn’t have the energy to try. He glanced down at the door handle.
Hannah followed his gaze.
“It should be ready to open any minute,” she said encouragingly.
There was nothing more to say, and Taiver got the feeling that she didn’t speak without a reason. Was that a product of being alone on the ship all these years? Or maybe it was her military training? Either way, he was grateful for her steadying presence now.
Taiver heard the tap of the lock as it began to disengage. But his excitement was soon curbed as he heard the familiar grind of the ratcheting sound that it had made before.
Hannah crouched and peered at it, punching a code in. Nothing happened. She ran her fingers around the seal and looked at him. “The door’s shifted. It’s jammed the seal release.”
Taiver reached for the seal and explored it hoping for a breach. It was solid. He clawed at it and pushed on it. Hannah pulled on the door handle. Their combined strength did nothing.
He pounded the door with his fists. Maybe he could break out.
“That’s no good,” she said impatiently. “These chambers are made to withstand almost anything. They’ll remain intact if the ship crashes and they’re spread across the face of a planet. They’ll float in space for centuries without compromising. We’ve got to think of a way to break the seal, not the chamber.”
Taiver felt the word rising, felt his mouth forming it. He was unprepared, though, for the pain he felt in his throat as he spoke it. It came out in a gravelly whisper, through vocal cords unused for decades: “How?”
Hannah blinked in surprise at the sound. “I’m not sure. But we’ll figure it out. And I just talked to headquarters. They have teams circulating among the remaining ships, converting them to the new chip drives. I’ve put in a request to be moved up on that list. We’ll get you out, and they’ll be here to do the conversion, and then we’ll be to Minea almost thirty years ahead of schedule!” She was trying to cheer him, but realizing that they weren’t even halfway yet had the opposite effect.
He swallowed and croaked, “How long have we traveled?”
“About twenty-four years.”
“It seemed longer,” he said. His voice was gaining strength, and the splitting pain had dulled to an ache.
“You don’t have to tell me about that,” she said, a hint of bitterness in her voice. Taiver looked at her. Of course, hers had been the rougher journey by far. She had been awake all this time.
“Sorry,” he said.
She smiled and shook her head. “You don’t have to be. I was well-compensated, and I’ve done a lot of research that I would never have been able to do without all this time. I’m amazed at what I’ve accomplished. In a way, it’s a gift: a whole lifetime free of distractions.”
Taiver had never thought of it that way. The door ceased its grinding, and the lock lay silent between them. Hannah summoned the computer and initiated a troubleshooting sequence.
“It will take a few minutes to process,” she said, “but it can probably override the lock.”
Taiver was breathing easily now. This wasn’t such a bad way to spend his first few minutes awake. He glanced around at the other sleeping passengers. They would have so many more dreams to live through before they reached Minea. But these drives sounded interesting.
“The drives?” he managed.
“Right. Apparently they’ve done some innovations on Minea and made some discoveries. It’s changing the way we look at travel—the way we look at the whole universe, really. And they say their first priority is to retrofit all the ships that are on their way, to get us there more quickly.”
Fewer years. Fewer dreams. That, Taiver thought, was a very good thing.
***
A full day had passed, and Taiver’s body was weary. There were only three positions he could take in the chamber—standing, kneeling, or sitting with his knees drawn up—and he had moved through all three multiple times.
He found he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes. And he was ravenously hungry.
Hannah had stayed outside his chamber except to check on her experiments and to communicate with headquarters on how to get the chamber open.
Now, she was kneeling outside the chamber, trying to shift the door back with a small pry bar.
Taiver sat slumped against the back of the chamber, watching her.
“It’s not going to budge,” she said, sitting back with a defeated look on her face.
Taiver was tired of thinking about it. He was tired of the cycle of hope and disappointment that had followed every plan they’d concocted. He looked at her. How tired must she be, after twenty-four years in the confines of her own prison?
“Is it awful?” he asked. “Being on your own for so long?”
Her eyes met his. She had an open, direct gaze. “I’ve always been on my ow
n, Taiver. It didn’t begin when I stepped on this ship.” There was the ghost of sadness in her voice. “My parents were so caught up in VR that they barely knew I was around. I was taken away from them when I was five because they hadn’t fed me for three days.” She shrugged. “I was raised by the state and joined the military when I was sixteen. Honestly, I was the perfect fit for this job.”
She sat and leaned against the door. Taiver moved to that side of the chamber, leaning against the glass beside her. He knew loneliness. Since Steph had left, he’d had some rough days. His whole trip to Minea was an attempt to leave that emptiness behind and fill his life with something new.
“You weren’t afraid?” he asked, remembering his own apprehension about boarding this ship.
She gestured around. “Afraid of what? The ship’s a safe place. Warm. Food on demand. Plenty of entertainment. It’s not like there are wolves waiting to attack around every corner.” She laughed.
“Sure, but—” Taiver stopped and looked at her. That was an odd image to select.
“Wait, wolves?” he asked.
She bit her lip and looked away. So it wasn’t his imagination.
“How do you know about the wolves?” Taiver leaned away from the glass and studied her more closely for a moment.
“You might as well know,” she said as she met his gaze. “I’ve seen your dreams, Taiver.”
He didn’t respond. It seemed not only impossible but also repugnant.
She must have seen the shock in his eyes, because she spoke quickly, pushing her pale hair out of her eyes. “Don’t worry. We just scan brainwaves and monitor vitals. It doesn’t hurt the subjects at all.”
“Subjects?” He glanced around. “You mean the passengers?”
“Passengers,” she corrected. “It doesn’t hurt them.”
“What doesn’t hurt them?”
“The study. We’ve learned so much already. I’m not actually that excited for the new drive, because I’m seeing some really interesting patterns, and I’d love to know if they continue.”
“You watch people’s dreams?” he asked. “How?”
“Brain waves, I said.” She, too, sat away from the glass, and her shoulders straightened.
“You can’t see pictures with brain waves.”
“We have some high-tech equipment. There are new psychodiodes that transmit what the brain is seeing. It’s really fascinating.”
“Why?”
“Because this is a study ship, Taiver. Because we had fifty years of uninterrupted observation to unlock the magic of sleep. We could find out how the body repairs itself during sleep, how the brain processes trauma, and how it stores memories. If it is possible to learn in stasis. We could find more reliable information in five years on this ship than we could in a hundred working with waking subjects.”
“But they don’t know you’re watching.”
“There was a clause in the paperwork. Everyone signed it.”
“But that document is eighty pages long. And I don’t remember the word ‘spying’ in it anywhere.”
She rose and walked around in a tight circle in front of the chamber. “It’s not spying. Anymore than a doctor who takes an EKG is ‘spying’ on your heart. It’s observing. It’s cataloging. It’s study.”
Taiver rose, too, though the effort winded him. “You’ve seen all my dreams, then?”
Her cheeks colored. She knew what he meant. “I don’t watch them all,” she said. “I’ve only seen yours because I was reviewing your case to find out what might have made you wake up early, how you developed the tolerance for the sedative. Mostly the computer analyzes and categorizes the dream data, and all I see are conclusions.”
Taiver was a doctor. He knew what the process of discovery looked like. “And what do you do with the conclusions?” he asked pointedly.
“I replicate them. I try to challenge them. I adjust things and observe some more.” She stepped up to the glass to face him. “Look, I’m not going to justify the program to you. It’s legal, and it’s valuable.”
“But is it ethical?” He felt the words snarl from him, in the same tone he’d used when he’d asked himself that question two months before he’d given up his position and applied to go to Minea.
She turned and walked away, leaving him seething in the chill of his empty stasis chamber.
***
Taiver could no longer stand. He was weakened and dehydrated. His head felt heavy against the cool glass, and he barely had strength to open his eyes when he heard the screech of metal above him.
Hannah was standing on a crate outside the door, using the prybar to remove the panel above his chamber. Beside her, on the floor just outside his door, he could see a small pile of supplies.
He fixed his eyes on a pouch of water, like a clear bubble. He reached for it, but his hand bumped the glass.
“I’m going to try to pull out the air hose and drop a couple of these things through the vent to you,” Hannah said, her eyes full of concern.
He tried to find the indignation he’d been nursing since she left yesterday, but it had dissipated in the glare of his thirst and hunger. He nodded. “Thanks,” he said. The gravel was back in his voice, and his mouth felt dry and rough.
The panel clanged to the ground outside, and he saw her rip the pipe free. Looking directly above him, he saw her fingers as she reached inside and the shining tips of a spreader tool as she bent the rods of the grate, making an oblong opening.
She jumped down, snatched up the water, and dropped it through the hole.
Taiver reached up just in time to catch the pouch clumsily against his chest. Without pausing, he jammed the opening into his mouth and greedily drank it.
It was pure and cold, and the taste of it revived him just a little.
Hannah was smiling outside, and she dropped in another water pouch and a pouch of cherry-red gelatin. It was a nutrition supplement that he gave his patients back home, and he was glad to see it. He slurped it from the pouch gratefully.
The food and water gave Taiver strength. More than that, they gave him hope. This was no life, being imprisoned here, but it was a chance at survival, which was more than he’d had an hour ago.
“Thanks, Hannah,” he said, sincerely.
She nodded. “I know how it is to be hungry.”
He wondered about her, tried to imagine her as a child, as a young adult, tried to imagine the two decades she’d spent here. But that drew him back to her research, and he found new fuel for his anger.
“Do you induce the dreams?” he asked, unable to restrain his question.
Hannah’s expression hardened. “Sometimes,” she admitted. She wasn’t deceptive. He gave her credit for that.
“How?”
“With different compounds, released into the fluid.”
“You drug them. Have you stopped since our conversation?” Part of him hoped she had, that he had helped her see she couldn’t do this to people.
“Listen, Taiver, I just got word that the refurbishment team is coming to do the drive. My fifty-three year study just got cut in half. I have spent twenty years on this research, and I’m not stopping now just because you try to guilt me into abandoning it. I have less time than I thought. I have to work twice as hard to get the last data—as much of it as I can—before they get here.”
Taiver felt sick, and he was sure it wasn’t just the reintroduction of semi-solid nutrition, though that would take some getting used to as well. For the first time in several hours, Taiver looked past Hannah to the sleeping girl across the aisle. Her face was contorted into a grimace. She flinched involuntarily, and her mouth opened and closed as if she were crying out for help.
Then he looked at the others. They were all twitching, shifting, tormented.
He turned a burning gaze to Hannah. “Stop this.”
She shook her head. “They’re just dreams, Taiver. The passengers will barely remember them when they awaken.” Her eyes were pleading, and she knelt besi
de the glass, pressing her hands against it. “There’s so much at stake, Taiver. So much good that can come of this.”
“What good?” he asked, pushing himself to his knees and meeting her eyes. “What good?”
“I’m on the verge, Taiver, of figuring out how the brain processes trauma. If I can work out the last synaptic response, I’ll know how to induce the process that allows us to file and forget the pain we’ve experienced. I’ll be able to erase painful memories from people’s minds as easily as they forget a particularly disturbing nightmare. We can be free of it almost as soon as it happens.”
Her slip into the first person was not lost on him, and he saw, then, the seed of personal investment that lay behind her research. She wanted her own pain gone, and she saw these people as the river that would carry it away. Every researcher knew that fire, the fear or pain or love or anger that drove them through the most challenging research. And as he saw it in her, he knew that he could not talk her into abandoning the project. It was too personal to her. She would not stop the experiments willingly. The only way to help these people was to find the controls and manually end their nightmares. And he couldn’t do that from in here.
She knew that, too. He saw it in her eyes. She turned and gathered several more pouches, then stepped quickly onto the crate and pushed them in. They fell behind him, and he remained kneeling on the ground, looking up at her. For the second time since they’d met, he begged her.
“Please, Hannah. Don’t do this. Don’t make them go through this.” She was moving away now. “Please. Look at them.” But she moved down the row as she had the first time he’d seen her, looking straight ahead, on her way to somewhere else.
***
Taiver didn’t see her again, not for days. When she returned to feed him, he spent the encounter pleading, then raging. When she went away, his hands hurt from beating at the door.
He had regained strength, and other than the muscle cramps that came from being confined, he felt good. He had tried using the rigid straw ends of the pouches to pry underneath the seal, but that only left him with a pile of broken pouches. As he worked, he kept his eyes averted from the other passengers, whose torturous and fitful sleep, he was sure, would haunt him for the rest of his life.