Overrun: Project Hideaway

  “Initiate systems check,” Parker said pretending not to notice his question or that he was still throwing up. The tube gurgled quietly in the small cockpit while it sucked its contents to the waste expulsion tanks in the back of the ship.

  "I can't do another round of hibernation, Jed," Barnes said flipping switches and bringing the computer systems on his side of the cockpit online. “I just can’t take this.”

  Barnes pulled the puke tube again to his face and this time blew though his nose forcefully. Two small drops of blood escaped and floated near his left ear. The gravity generators had not as of yet been activated by the pilots.

  Parker continued to work through his own series of ship start-up procedures. When most of his equipment appeared lit up and functioning, he pulled loose his own waste disposal tube anchored next to his seat near his left side. The tube hovered next to him for a second and then bumped silently against the instrument panel when he shifted in his seat. He didn’t need it quite yet.

  “So what do you got?” he asked Barnes tiredly.

  “Nothing,” Barnes answered him just as listlessly back. “No indication of sensor bounce.”

  Parker grabbed his tube and utilized it in a similar fashion as his copilot.

  Parker was really feeling the effects of their extended sleep this time around. He tried to remember the last time his symptoms had been this severe. But never in three of his lifetimes would he have relayed these thoughts to the man next to him. Barnes had found enough things to bitch about since they launched into space. Parker was not about to help him add to his list.

  Despite the expulsion of what he thought was the last of the hibernation fluid still in his body, Parker's stomach still felt like it was bursting from inside. The lining of his throat felt like someone had set it on fire. It had never been this bad after spending this, their usual two-month interval, amount of time in hibernation. Perhaps the age they sought to escape through the implementation of hypersleep was no longer able to outpace the persistence of time.

  "Seriously, Captain,” Barnes launched out in what Parker considered to be his “irritating” tone once again. “I don't care how safe on the system this whole setup is supposed to be. This repeated hypersleep can't be too great for your health."

  Barnes then pulled his own tube to his face again and vomited violently into its mask.

  "It shouldn’t have a lasting effect,” Parker said tiredly, repeating what he always did to his copilot whenever they awoke. “Your system just heals. Just like on a Sunday, you get over the night before.”

  But Barnes didn’t hear him. He had again become occupied with his stomach expelling the rest of the hibernation fluid from his gut. It was far more worse than usual this time, but Parker still felt gratitude and quiet satisfaction that his own body reacted less ferociously to the hibernation process than Barnes’ system did.

  "Look at this for god’s sake," Barnes said pointing at a large vomit stain on the front of his flight suit after his body ceased to retch. "I don't know why the fuck we're still even out here. Extend the mission by an extra hypersleep. I can even see them heaping it up to two. But that was a long time ago, Jed. A long time they’ve been jerking us around. How many extra months have they thrown on us? I’m getting pretty goddamn sick of all this shit! I swear to shit, I am!"

  Barnes drew his arm back as far as the smallness of the cabin allowed and flung his mask against the instrument panel in front of him. The mask stopped short of its target and floated lazily away. It bounced once harmlessly against the rectangular window separating the cockpit from the view of the barren moon looming outside the ship.

  The tube bobbed up and then hovered in front of Barnes’ face. Its plastic mask floated for a moment near his eye and taunted him like a child trying to provoke some sort of reaction from his parent.

  Unmoved by his copilot's outburst, Parker hit a switch which reeled in and secured his own tube and mask. Pressing at knobs and switches, some marked with flashing lights, he scowled at the instrument panel wedged into the tiny space in front of his lap.

  "Still no word from Science Dome 15," Parker said evenly. He blinked his eyes one last time until his vision was finally clear. He let out a long sigh and stared ahead at the darkness of the moon. “No real signal from Earth at all. At least not recently.”

  "This sucks," Barnes answered irately with a disgusting gurgling sound coming from his nose and throat. A drop of something yellow slipped away from his face and floated in the air between them.

  Nausea tugged at Parker’s stomach threatening to twist it inside out. He tried to concentrate on the empty blackness outside the cockpit. Of all the men he had to be assigned to in this mission, it had to be Major Jeffrey Barnes.

  Barnes didn't volunteer for this mission as Parker had.

  Parker had all but got down on his hands and knees to the mission commanders and begged to go. He wanted, actually needed, simply to run away. To flee his life on Earth.

  It had taken four horrifically long years past his wife’s passing to finally get that chance.

  He had found her late in the night.

  She had always held great fears of what was happening around her, and with the ozone gone, of what the world had finally become.

  Reaching to where she sat in the tub, her skin was already cold.

  Working horrifically long hours on end with the other flight teams, it had been more than two days since he had been able to come back and actually sleep in his home.

  He leaned in and pulled her body towards him, his elbows dipping into the cool water which was tinted a light crimson red.

  Parker hugged her closely to him for a long time, the exact length of which he never knew. Since that day, time itself had stopped. He could have been there hours, it might have stretched into days. He held her tightly against him and just tried to make his own body breathe.

  He leaned his face against her cheek and rested his chin across the back of her shoulder. He remembered staring straight ahead trying to focus on the white square tiles that lined the wall. He remembered the effort of just trying to make air move through his lungs. He stared hard at the tiles searching within their simple structures for something to keep the insanity rushing at him at bay.

  The smell of her hair lingered in the air.

  His body ached, and his soul screamed with agony when he finally released his grip and at last pulled away. Gently, he let her body fall back.

  When her head rested against the wall, Parker reached down into the tub.

  With a crying heart, he picked up the lifeless form of his infant son from his mother’s lap. He was born one year and eight months back from that exact day.

  It comforted him somewhat when he had learned many days later that his child had died from one of the many radiation diseases running rampant within the protective confines of the domes. She had taken her own life out of sorrow.

  She had never called to let him know about their son’s death. She had relayed the news with her own.

  Since that time, Parker had been able to push it all away. He fought hard to be assigned to the Hideaway Project. She was the reason he was up here. Even if he knew in his sickened heart, it was already entirely too late. He wanted to make the world she feared a better place. It was a world, in which he was now alone, he vowed he would die to save.

  He was on the Hideaway to safeguard a technology, in the event of war, that could accomplish this task. To ensure its secrets and security would not be compromised. To make sure that those outside the U.S. Dome Administration, no matter how horribly the world became embroiled in battle, would never obtain it.

  His job was to captain the ship and also attend to what was now at hand. Keeping his copilot from going to that fearful verge Parker himself had already been to and fought as valiantly as he could just to stagger back.

  Parker felt this task was his penance for failing his family. And for still being alive himself.

  His copilot Major Jeff Barnes was a
different story. He was not up here out of a sense of patriotism or duty. He did not join the mission to take a side in a war or to ensure life on the planet continued to live on. He was wanted, wooed, and begged by most of the dome technical community to first join the scientific military and then sign onto the mission.

  His intellectual gifts had always been recognized throughout his career. His mind, despite harboring deep almost-dysfunctional personality flaws, was always considered a cherished asset by the scientific community.

  But Barnes was merely an intellectual mercenary. He cared little about anything and even less for the idea of patriotism itself. His only real concerns were his own personal safety and his level of compensation for supporting the cause.

  Parker had thought the man simply lacked courage. And that he was only up in space on this mission due to his fear of the world in which they lived.

  Despite his moral ambivalence, there was something else about Barnes that bothered Parker considerably more.

  The more time they spent together, both as they prepared for the mission and after they had already been sent up, Parker noticed there were a series of serious debilitating personality flaws at work in Barnes psyche. Not enough to scrap him and the intellect he offered to the mission, but enough for Parker to see why he was denied full command of the ship guarding the future of the world they left behind.

  Barnes was a virtual thinking machine.

  After taking the laborious hundreds of required aptitude and psychological predisposition tests, it was discovered that Barnes had post-doctorate skill levels and knowledge in mathematics, engineering, and machinery. In fact, Parker had heard his intelligence was almost immeasurable.

  He was a fucking genius.

  A genius and ungodly efficient. His mind worked like a computer. Once presented with a scenario, a set of surrounding variables, and an identified task at hand, like hitting the “enter” button on the keyboard Barnes could instantly process the situation and offer the solution.

  Barnes’ mind alone was the equivalent of the twenty technicians that could have been sent up in the Hideaway, eating food, using oxygen, and depleting other resources necessary to operate the ship equipment. Barnes was all that was needed to replace them all. If the world as it was known suddenly came to an end, he was the one those in the scientific community wanted to safeguard the ship.

  His brain processes, however, were to the point where they were too fast. Too proficient. Almost pushing past the limits of what the human body is equipped to handle.

  Once his brain had thoroughly processed a problem or function, often within seconds, like a hard-to-please bored child it actively sought out and physically needed something else to do.

  And this is when his brain would cease to function as a scientific godsend and start to become something else.

  Without something to occupy its attention, his brain would begin to turn inward and focus on itself. It would delve into normal human brain activities like basic wants, needs, insecurities, common forms of acceptable depressive feelings, and fear. His mind would then begin feeding on these processes and feelings with the same rapid-fire rate. With nothing else to concentrate on, personal thoughts and emotions were dwelled upon and poured through repeatedly.

  This usually led to heightened states of irritation, paranoia, and numerous compulsive tendencies.

  The final result was a general all around edginess, and to say the least, a personal disposition that was difficult to withstand at best. He had a noticeable lack of loyalties to schools of thought or objects of patriotic appeal. His mind wasn’t disciplined enough to focus on anything that required extended concentration or drawn-out emotional thought.

  And sometimes it would get away from him. Especially during times like when they came out of hypersleep. When your mind was nearly blank, and like the ship, took awhile to completely fire back up.

  These were the times that the paranoia and compulsiveness often grew. His mind was on a constant search for an outlet for its continuous energy surge. When ideas or thoughts were exhausted, it often looked inward for gratification and release.

  Like a crumpled piece of paper suddenly lit on fire, it would collapse and begin to consume itself from within.

  Parker had seen it many times in their preparations for the mission. Sometimes a jolt was needed to bring him back down. To force control. To rein in his great mind and focus it again on what was needed to be done.

  This was what necessitated Parker’s presence on the ship. He was there to safeguard and control the actions of Barnes’ mind. No matter what a scientific and technical asset Barnes was to the Hideaway mission, Parker was there to protect Barnes and the Hideaway from Barnes himself.

  “So, how long was it this time?” Barnes asked starting to relax his disposition slightly. He made a few more grotesque sounding inhales to clear the remaining hibernation fluid still blocking his sinuses. A blood bubble pulsed twice on his left nostril and finally disappeared. “I don’t even keep track anymore. A month here. Two there. Sometimes three. This time around, how long were we down?”

  Continuing to scroll through the ship readouts on his control screen, Parker didn’t answer him right away. Something on his panels had caught his eye. Something that didn’t seem quite right. While Barnes watched him in silence, Parker moved faster on the keyboard digging deeper into the ship’s logs and self-system checks recorded during the time they were in the tubes.

  “What the hell, Jed,” Barnes said to him softly. “What’s going on over there?”

  Still Parker didn’t answer him. He could feel the lines furrowing across his forehead and the blood draining from his face.

  Energy expenditures. Life support system durations. Amount of fuel used on the ship. All the readings were off. All indicated extreme overuse for only a two month down cycle.

  "Seriously, man," Barnes said again moving closer to watch him. “What the hell….?”

  “Nothing…..nothing,” Parker said softly without looking up and continuing to work on the consoles. “It’s nothing. I don’t know the duration offhand.”

  Barnes settled back into his seat and rubbed his hand through his hair which was still thick with dried hibernation fluid.

  “Goddamn,” he swore softly with a disgusted look on his face. He reached to the instrument panel to his right away from Parker and wiped his hand across the console. “Whole fucking process is just disgusting.”

  He glanced over again at Parker, who still did not answer him or look up.

  "So, how long do you think, Captain Jed? It seriously fucking feels like it’s been fucking forever."

  Barnes grabbed his puke tube and pressed one of his nostrils into the mask. Making another disgusting noise, he blew forcefully still trying to dislodge and expel the contents from his sinuses.

  “It’s probably been closer to three,” Barnes said from inside the mask. “Three and a half months max.”

  "Barnes, I don't know," Parker finally answered and released himself from his command chair. His body floated up towards the top of the small cabin. Before Barnes could complain that his ass was in his face, Parker pushed off from his seat towards the rear of the cockpit and the entranceway to the rest of the ship.

  "What?” Barnes asked incredulously pulling the mask from his face. “What the hell do you mean you don't know, Jed?! It should be right there."

  “It is, but isn’t,” Parker said reaching back to pull open the door. “We should’ve only been down for two months. But the goddamn ship readings don’t match. Right now, I really don’t know.”

  Barnes’ eyes were now wide open and fully awake. He straightened in his seat and began to jab at his own consoles in front and around him.

  "Holy, shit, Jed. How can you not fucking know, Jed?” Barnes asked with a borderline edge to his tone. "You're the mission administrator in charge of all that shit. What the hell is going on?"

  "Relax, already, will ya Barnes?” Parker snapped with a curt confidence he f
or some reason did not really feel. “I'm going to check the main network. Chances are we've just been down long enough that the computers reset and dumped the accessible data. I'm just going to get on the mainframe and download it all back.”

  "Dumped the accessible data? Are you kidding, Jed?” Barnes’ expression and his tone developed even more of a raw edge. “It's only supposed to dump that data every six months. You think we've been out here for six months? They wouldn't let us stay down for more than six months. That's too long. No wonder it was so fucking hard to come out of it. Do you think we've been down for six months?"

  "Knock it off, Barnes. I'll check the mainframe, and when I get back up here, we’ll reestablish contact with the dome."

  Parker hit the release on the door, and when it snapped up, he pushed his way away from the cockpit and down the passage to the rest of the ship.

  "I'll be right back," Parker called back to his copilot. Before completely exiting the cockpit, he saw Barnes turn around as if to answer him. He paused for a second, and then did not speak. Still fighting the weightlessness in the ship, he remained strapped down in his seat.

  Parker was glad to leave him for the moment and head deeper into the ship.

  It was now only a matter of time.

  While he was gone checking the main data ports at the back of the ship, Barnes would begin to wade through the individual system files to figure out himself their exact position in time.

  Rather than sit and wait for Barnes to process the figures, Parker was opting to go to the back and confirm on his own what he already knew. It would give him some time away from Barnes, time necessary to compose and ready himself for what was sure to come.

  Barnes would know the truth soon enough. It would be better for the both of them if he allowed him to discover it on his own.

  It took Parker about five minutes to make his way back into the systems room which contained the ship’s network infrastructure. By the time he hovered over it and began to monitor its readings, it had already completely rebooted itself to full ship capacity. It was about an hour-long process that began the moment their hibernations were terminated and life support systems to the ship were completely brought back online.