Noumenon

by Marina J. Lostetter

  The depressive mood was not mine alone. The sparse news from Earth contributed to our sense of detachment, and most of the updates we received were negative—new conflict in South America, a tsunami in Asia, a devastating earthquake in Europe. And when Saul told me the littlest convoy had been lost, I didn’t know how to react. One of our twelve, completely gone.

  But, after we hit our one-year anniversary, and the first new babies had been successfully tube grown, the unthinkable happened.

  We had our first suicide.

  “Mags! Margarita? Margarita, let me in!” Fists banged on my door and panicked cries stabbed through the walls. I woke up startled and disoriented. It took me a moment to place the voice as Nika’s.

  My fumbling brain knew something was off before I made it through the dark to open the door. It wasn’t just the alarm in her voice; she hadn’t called me on my implants, and was ignoring the door’s buzzer.

  “Lights,” I demanded of the room. I met my friend with a terse “What?”

  Tears flowed down her puffy cheeks, and her lips trembled. I’d never seen Nika cry before, and these weren’t typical bad-day tears. Something horrible had happened, and she was near hysterics.

  “He, he—I just found—I—” The hiccups started, and she couldn’t get any words out.

  I pulled her inside, sat her down at my small table, and pulled the comforter from my bed to throw around her shoulders. Without asking I made her a cup of tea in my kitchenette and plopped it down in front of her. She barely acknowledged the mug.

  Gritty sleep rimmed my eyes. Rubbing it away, I pulled up a chair beside Nika. When the hiccups stopped and her breathing steadied, I prodded. “What’s wrong?” I’d never known Nika to get unduly emotional. If she was upset, things were bad.

  “I went to go see Lexi. I couldn’t sleep. He was working the night shift and— Ooh, God.” She let her forehead fall to the table. “He’s dead.”

  Had I heard right? “How?” I lowered my head to her level. “Nika. What happened?” Lexi was an engineer, and Nika’s biological cousin. I thought maybe there’d been an accident, that some of Mira’s machinery had caught him. Never in a million years would suicide have crossed my mind.

  But that was exactly what had happened. Lexi had hung himself deep in the bowels of the ship.

  “What does it mean?” Nika asked. “Weren’t—weren’t we screened for this? We share genetic code. If he can kill himself . . .”

  “No,” I jumped in. “You couldn’t. It won’t get that bad.” I put my arms around her, but knew we couldn’t sit there. We had to tell someone—the captain. “Nika. He’s still there, isn’t he?”

  “I couldn’t touch him. I saw and I—I ran. He’s still there.” The realization that she’d left him hanging in his noose disturbed her, and she fell apart again.

  Nausea made my stomach boil. The situation hadn’t hit home yet, hadn’t grabbed my emotions yet. Which meant now was the time to act, before I became a puddle like Nika.

  I’d have to report this to Saul.

  At the thought, I was instantly ashamed, embarrassed. But now wasn’t the time to think about that, so I pushed thoughts of later duties aside and helped Nika to her feet. “We have to let the security officers know.”

  “I left him there,” she mumbled. “I ran and left him there.” She felt like a rag doll in my arms.

  I’d thought to drag her to the security offices near the bridge, but she’d fallen into a stupor. Nika stared into space like she could see through the walls. My best friend was in shock, which meant I was left holding the bag.

  This seemed like as good a time as any to give the convoy-wide security alert system a spin. I activated it via my implants, choosing the officers only option. A red light blinked at the edge of my peripheral vision, letting me know the alert had gone through. Immediately, I second-guessed the action. Perhaps I should have left Nika alone in my apartment and gone to the bridge myself. Maybe this didn’t constitute a convoy-wide emergency—or did it? It was our first death, and it was as unnatural as they came.

  “I.C.C., are you there?”

  “Yes. You have activated the—”

  “I know. There’s been . . . Nika’s cousin . . .” I couldn’t get the words out.

  “You are hyperventilating,” the computer observed.

  I was—my hands were going all tingly.

  “Close your mouth and inhale slowly through your nose.” I.C.C. was clearly more concerned with my present state than why I’d used the alert system. I wasn’t sure what to think of that. Wasn’t sure what to think about anything, actually.

  Security officers busted through my door like they were performing a drug raid. My apartment-for-one became a sardine-can-for-twelve in under two minutes. The officers separated Nika and me in an instant—thinking a domestic dispute, I’m sure. It took me a few minutes to assure them we weren’t the problem. They were overly eager and hopping, as unsure in the execution as I was in the concept, but itching to do their duty, to solve whatever the problem might be.

  Unfortunately, the hubbub pushed Nika into silence. I couldn’t get the exact location out of her, and bringing up Lexi’s work agenda from the cached files only told us he was scheduled to perform routine maintenance. So they left me to attend to my poor friend while they scoured the ship’s innards for a body. It took me a moment to realize our big mistake—we had all forgotten to ask I.C.C. for help. I.C.C. would know where he was.

  “I.C.C., do you have Lexi’s location? Please direct the officers.”

  “I will. Your breathing has normalized.”

  “Thank you.”

  Stupid. So stupid. I.C.C. should be programmed to alert us to this kind of thing. We shouldn’t have to stumble upon it. Privacy be damned.

  Like everyone in the convoy, I knew Lexi, if only on the level of acquaintance. He’d seemed happy whenever I saw him, but I’m sure I had seemed happy to him, too.

  The shrinks saw the event as a tragic failure on their part. They sent out emergency psychiatric evaluations and made sure everyone had an appointment to meet one-on-one with a doctor.

  They assigned me to a session with Dr. Yassine. A nice enough guy, if a bit fidgety. Forgive me if I think doctors who work with people on the edge should be calm, collected, and stately, but if I were ever on the fence about killing myself, I think Dr. Yassine’s inability to sit still would have driven me to it. I almost got up and grabbed his hand to stop his pen from tapping. Almost.

  He wanted me to “explore myself verbally.” But when you don’t feel comfortable with someone, it’s not easy to open up. I didn’t want to “explore” with him. It’s not that I had a problem telling him what was going on in my head. It was just that I knew it would be a lot more helpful for me to share it with someone else. Someone specific.

  I resolved to stop telling Saul I was fine when I wasn’t. I hadn’t seen the harm in keeping my emotional distance before, but now . . . Keeping up appearances wasn’t worth crumbling inside.

  So I made my next report ahead of schedule, and tacked on a letter for Saul. I told him everything. How I was feeling. How I was coping with the suicide.

  How I was sure there would be more to come.

  I wondered—in writing—about purpose. Mine seemed obvious enough. But what about the others? We’d created false purposes for them—something to keep their DNA busy until we reached the anomaly. The engineers hated being called mechanics because that’s not what they wanted to be. Nika was a historian, a diplomat, and that meant she needed to be working with people and their history. As noble as she made archivist seem, it wasn’t who she was.

  Saul made all of it seem okay. He reminded me of the mission. How Earth was counting on us. We were brilliant scientists, doctors, inventors, thinkers, and Earth had given us up for a greater purpose.

  I was looking at things too narrowly, he said. That our purpose was in the journey, in experiencing life as humans had never experienced it before. I found our situation�
�locked in tin cans hurling through a vacuum—boring, depressing. He said the people back home found it wondrous. That my messages were now studied all over the globe.

  [You can’t see the forest because you’re a tree] he’d sent. [A tree might ask, Why do I grow here? Why do I produce cones instead of fruit? Or, why must I lose my leaves when that tree stays ever green? If you could show the tree how it fits into the forest, how it provides so much to the greater being that is the forest, what might it think of itself then?

  [Show them the forest, Margarita. The trees are dying because they don’t see the forest.

  [P.S. I have a daughter now. I named her after you. People have been naming their children after you voyagers for years now, and probably will for centuries to come.]

  The metaphor might have been heavy-handed, but it and his postscript were exactly what I needed—what all of us needed.

  But it took six months and three more suicides for me to take action. And I regret that to this day. As a member of the governing board (all department heads had a place in politics) I had a duty that far exceeded my station. But I was still so new to independence that I had yet to grasp my authority. I was basically a kid trying to be an adult—to be a leader. They had trained and trained and trained us until I could recite leadership principles in my sleep, but in the end, a person also has to want to be a leader. To rise to the occasion. I only wish I had found my place sooner.

  I couldn’t change the past. But I was pretty sure I could change the future.

  I put in a personal request to see the captain. In later years that would have put me on a waiting list as long as my arm. Back then I practically walked in.

  Entering Captain Mahler’s situation room, I lead with the holoflex-sheet. In my eagerness to prove a point I’d forgotten to salute and do our introductory dance. Nothing like starting out on the wrong foot when you’re trying to save your entire community from emotional collapse.

  He sat at the head of a beautiful marble slab, the kind that made the most intriguing tombs and best kitchen counters. Green, with beautiful flecks of gold and iridescent carbonates, it was out of place. Almost every portion of the ship was metal or plastic—carpeted floors being the major exception. But the ship designers had wanted to give us little pieces of nature wherever they could—maybe they’d known better than I had how much we’d miss such things when they were gone.

  The holoflex-sheet plopped in front of Mahler before my clipped greeting met his ears.

  Five sentences into my rehearsed speech, he cut me off with a violent, chopping of his hand. “To whom are you speaking?” he said through a clenched jaw.

  The question tripped me up, as it was meant to. “Uh . . .”

  “As you did not address me, I can only assume this flippant diatribe is meant for someone else. Yet I believe we are alone.”

  It was then that I realized both my mistake and that I was intent on preaching to the choir. I’d come to him to talk order and systems. To discuss individualism vs. hive mentality. I wanted to argue for the very thing the captain hoped for: militant commitment to the group’s goals over individual wants and needs.

  Immediately I backtracked, saluting at attention, barking out my station and my purpose, addressing him in the manner he deserved to be addressed.

  “Sir,” I began again. “We have a distinct disconnect between the command team and everyone else. We are not a military convoy, but neither are we civilians. I believe this message from my Earth contact illustrates our problem. Most of us are wandering around in our own little worlds. The members don’t see how the pieces fit, and I believe that to be the source of our convoy-wide depression. We need to rethink how we think, if you will.

  “We were each taught how special we are. As individuals. Yet, for some reason, we weren’t taught that the group is special. That devotion to the group is required for success. Yes, we were instilled with devotion to the mission, to the anomaly, but not to the convoy and each other.

  “We need a better sense of community, and at the moment I can think of no better way to bring that about than to change the way we do things. I know there was a plan, and that it was supposed to ensure our stability, but it won’t work. Father—” this was tough to admit, but I swallowed and pressed forward “—Father was wrong. He wanted a ‘be all you can be’ attitude, when what we need is a ‘be all we can be attitude.’”

  Mahler passed his hand under his chin, scratching it lightly, clearly weighing my statements and considering his first words on the matter carefully. “I wasn’t supposed to address this until the elections. Matheson and Seal didn’t think we’d have any suicides at this point, but things seem to be moving along faster than expected. Whether that’s problematic or all for the best will make itself clear eventually, I’m sure.”

  “Sir?”

  “The suicides were expected. Not planned—don’t give me that look. Just planned for. They were built into Matheson’s equations, and he figured if we had fifteen or so suicides in the first five years that would actually strengthen our society—much in the way you suggest.”

  Flabbergasted, my mind went blank. I couldn’t even be sure I’d heard him correctly, let alone understood. “Sir, may I sit?”

  He gestured toward a spot near the other end of the marble slab, but I took a seat at his right hand. “Are you saying Mother and Father knew some of us would die this way? That Lexi and—?”

  “They didn’t know who, but they had guesses. Matheson’s calculations indicated a rash of suicides was inevitable, but that the tragedy would give us an opportunity. Misfortune can have many different effects on large populations. It can drive some into chaos, but the more empathetic the group, the more emotionally aware the individuals are of the other individuals—”

  “The more likely they are to band together,” I finished for him, nodding. Instead of at my captain, my gaze bore into the far wall where a blank screen hung. We were a forest, trees in the forest. “Some conifers need fire in order for their seeds to germinate,” I mumbled. Turning back to him, I asked, “This is our forest fire?”

  “Yes. That’s a good way to look at it.”

  “But, why didn’t they warn us? Why not prepare us?”

  He stood and began pacing. “Is anyone every really prepared for tragedy? They did warn us. They told me, and I was to inform the board once the elected half was in place.” The hard lines of his face were covered in stubble—I’d just noticed. Unusual, for Mahler anyway. He preferred to be clean-cut and well pressed at all times. This must have been weighing on his mind as much as it had been weighing on mine.

  “But, elections won’t be for another six months. We were told exactly what must be done the first two years,” I said. Eventually we’d be able to make our own laws, dependent on whatever social problems cropped up. We could deal with them our own way, but not yet. For the first few years we had to follow our orders to a T, even when it came to civilian government.

  Our board right now only consisted of the department heads and their appointed seconds. Only once we hit the two-year mark we were to set up elections whose winners would comprise the second half of the government.

  “I know—believe me, I know. But now that you’ve brought it up, I don’t think we can wait until we have a full board,” Mahler said. “I can’t wait for our timeline to match the original. If the suicides are happening now we must take action. I was waiting, hoping . . .” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We are going to use these deaths as a rallying point, as an educational point. We’re not going to let the mission fail.

  “We just have to work out how.”

  I left the captain feeling simultaneously giddy and nauseated. Saul had been right. We could fix this. There was even a plan to fix this. We would band together and be stronger than before.

  But at what cost? Matheson had sacrificed these people. Sacrificed Lexi and those still to kill themselves. Not directly, of course—he didn’t go through their files and say “You will die.
And you will die. And you will die.”

  But he might as well have.

  If he’d informed us this might happen—that in all likelihood, according to his societal projections it would happen—we could have stopped it. Lexi might have thought twice before hanging himself.

  Even worse, our psychologists and psychiatrists had known it was coming. They’d seen it in Lexi, they just hadn’t been able to do anything about it. They weren’t allowed to tell our modest security detail about pending problems. It made me wonder if that was why Dr. Yassine had been so fidgety. Because he knew, but hadn’t been able to do anything. It was only after something bad happened that they could act. We had to change that. No one’s hands should be tied when it comes to saving a life.

  We operated that way because that’s the way many Earth societies operated—they didn’t respond to potential tragedy, only actualized tragedy. Once we could make our own laws we needed to abandon those ways. We were no longer bound to Earth by its gravity, why should we remain bound by its customs?

  Perhaps my line of thinking was exactly what Mother and Father had planned for. This sense of outrage, this desire to band together to prevent more catastrophes. Despite what it meant to the little personal freedoms we had.

  It didn’t prevent me from hating our mentors for not telling us. But I also found myself admiring their strategy and planning.

  Again: nausea and giddiness.

  My duty and my humanity were at odds, but I let them settle at opposite ends of my brain. I needed both to survive in this new encapsulated world.

  I reported our progress to Saul. Told him we’d discovered a new portion of our societal design and now had to decipher how to implement it. He responded with a thumbs-up emoji and a picture of him and his family.

  His son was fourteen. Saul himself was going on fifty. He looked so old. Not because fifty is old, but because in my mind he was still in his thirties.

  How could he be fifty? How could his life slip away so quickly? Intellectually, I knew all was as it should be. He wasn’t living his life at a rapid-fire pace, I was simply seeing it through a long-range lens. But I still felt a gaping maw of loss in my gut, still wondered if I was ready to let Earth move on without me—without us.