Oceanworlds

by J. P. Landau

  “Bloody hell! And who granted you so much seniority?” said Derya.

  “Yi, I don’t think controlling behavior lands well around here. Please return it today,” said James.

  “Then I’ve had enough as well,” said Yi. “It’s the fourth time in a row I’ve been ‘randomly’ selected by Derya’s ‘blind’ algorithm to clean the filters. Yesterday a few balls of many-hued hairs, not all scalp related, were awaiting collection.”

  “Oh god,” said Sophia, pulling a face.

  And it ended at that. A much-improved outcome to the previous month’s Nutella incident, she thought. It started one morning when Derya discovered someone had finished off the group’s monthly Nutella ration. When he demanded an explanation from the offender, Yi countered that the next bin was scheduled to be opened in two days, which the other misconstrued as inconsiderate behavior. “Are you fulfilled? Have you replenished your breadbasket with our calories?”

  “You can take my ration next time.”

  “You twonk wanker!” Derya followed by throwing his coffee mug at Yi. A moment later, the two were wrestling in a ridiculous floating embrace, and had it not been for Sergei’s fast intervention fists drawn would have each landed in the face of the other.

  After a long time living together in close quarters, emotions ran raw and fuses tripped fast. Everyone knew there was a stowaway in Shackleton: a silent, inconspicuous little devil stirring up tempers. It even has a name: Irrational Antagonism, thought Sophia. There had been extensive warnings from psychologists and sociologists about increasing emotional volatility and confrontational behavior. This is tipping point stuff. Once the rules of respect are violated, doing it again becomes ever likelier. A variation of the broken windows theory in criminology.16

  * * *

  16 Sophia remembered one of the Thursday night talks a few months back about psychological effects of long-term confinement. Each crew member was responsible for a talk one Thursday every five weeks, in which a subject relevant to living in space was presented for half an hour, followed by a lively debate. It went something like this:

  Isolation is tough on the spirit, and if anybody knows how rough, it’s probably late US Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who tested the boundaries of human mental endurance to the point of narrowly escaping suicide.

  Following active duty in World War I, he turned into an overnight national hero after flying over the North Pole in 1926. In 1927, he turned his sights to the biggest challenge of his day, the non-stop crossing of the Atlantic. He landed (crashed) in France a month too late, outcompeted by Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo epic.

  Flying over the South Pole followed in 1929, going all in and barely making it. A month later, a special act of Congress made him, to this day, the youngest admiral in the history of the US Navy at 41 years of age.

  Escalating the commitment, in 1934 he disappeared alone into the Antarctic winter “to taste peace and quiet and solitude long enough to find out how good they really are.” He journeyed into a white frozen land as foreign to us as the Moon, which at least can be stared at most nights. Alone in a hut for five months through a single unbroken night.

  Things quickly turned ugly as the stove, his only heat source, malfunctioned. What followed was a harrowing tale of enduring the horrendous cold while desperately trying to contain a mind slipping ever closer to irretrievable insanity, under the breathtaking beauty and eeriness of the southern auroras. He penned Alone in 1938, which became an instant bestseller. A chock-full life for anyone, but not Byrd.

  He continued with yet another Antarctic expedition in 1939, his presence there cut short by being recalled to active duty for World War II, in which he fought all the way to September 2 1945, when he witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. He was awarded the Legion of Merit twice before continuing with two more expeditions to Antarctica, all the way to his death in 1957.

  He wrote a great deal about interpersonal dynamics in isolation, commenting on innocuous mannerisms magnified into intolerable flaws, such as when one of his men complained about another’s “way of breathing, his belief in dreams, and his frequent use of the phrase ‘I’m sorry.’”

  33 | The End of Everyday Life

  February 14 2029. Day 609; 1.6 Years to Saturn

  James woke up spontaneously at 5:40 AM, eager to rewatch the video once more. There was an active data allowance bartering system on board: one crew member may be looking for extra capacity today in exchange for future megabytes, while another may be willing to take the reverse transaction. Even TiTus, formerly known as TT, plays ball by lending work data transfer capacity when there’s no counterparty, thought James. And after weeks of data saving, he had amassed enough capacity to receive a four-minute video from Belinda.

  He put the tablet a few inches from his face for extra immersion, even at the expense of pixelation.

  Belinda was resplendent in her role as a new mother. Grandpa could be seen in the background reading his newspaper. It was one of those volatile London days, long gray clouds wrestling with patches of blue sky. The brick walls of the garden were covered in vines, a few neat cone-shaped shrubs, a small glass greenhouse with an assortment of flowers inside. But Belinda aside, it was all preamble, like singers onstage before the lead soprano enters. And … here comes Emma. The intelligent gleaming eyes, the long eyelashes, the tiny nose, the round face capped by unruly hair. The camera followed her as she moved decidedly even if her plump legs lacked assurance. She babbled and screamed in delight. Belinda shouted her name, but it was only after a few tries that she turned.

  It was the babbling that made it so hard for him. Emma had profound hearing loss and would be deaf within a few years. That was the medical diagnosis. But then I hear her and wonder. Toddlers with progressive hearing failure grow increasingly silent as they stop trying to listen to themselves. Emma keeps trying. Belinda swore the hearing aid barely helped. The doctors said the time was now. But what if? Emma was chirping in the video, tapping her tablet screen with excitement. When the camera went above, he saw his own face from a year earlier, narrating and showing the illustrations from The Little Prince with the Milky Way background beyond Bacchus’ Observation Window.

  The clinical solution was a cochlear implant, which bypassed the damaged part of the ear and delivered electrical impulses directly to the auditory nerve, which the brain interpreted as sound. Whereas a hearing aid was really just an amplifier, this sidestepped the hearing process altogether. But it’s invasive: electrodes under her skin, a wire perforating the inner ear, and an external cable and processor. And once you bypass nature, it’s irreversible. Her sonic world would be bleached in white noise, with discernible but metallic, robot-like speech sounds. She would be able to enjoy Bach on a clavichord, but would never be able to fully grasp Beethoven’s Ninth. Why her? Why not—

  Somebody knocked on his cabin’s hatch. He glanced at the wall clock. Six in the morning. Why would anybody—?

  “What is it?” No answer, but the tapping repeated.

  As he stood out of bed and felt his way to the ladder, the hatch opened atop. James turned the lights on. Sophia in pajamas closed it behind her and climbed down.

  “What’s going on? Sophia?” She seemed about to break down. He made her sit on the bed.

  She looked at him with imploring red eyes, but did not speak. The urgency overrode sensibilities and he demanded an answer.

  “We have a Code Red … Sergei …”

  “Sergei …”

  “Without warning … a few hours ago … Iman went into a coma …”

  She couldn’t speak anymore. He saw the tablet in Sophia’s hand and gestured for it. After reading it cursorily, he sat by Sophia’s side, speechless and lightheaded.

  “I need to tell—”

  “Earth recommends we wait …” interrupted Sophia, sobbing.

  “I must tell him now,” said James.

  “… to decide on the proper course of action …”

  The news about I
man’s death had arrived minutes earlier. Sergei’s howls echoed in Sophia’s head, a bleak reminder of their fragility and the definitive mark that things had changed permanently for the worst.

  Sophia’s hands were unsteady as she read a printed copy of the Medical Checklist Manual one last time. She had a hard time swallowing, her throat one big lump. She also couldn’t shake off the sense of premonition.

  BEHAVIORAL—ACUTE PSYCHOSIS—EMERGENCY

  1. Unstow:

  Drug Subpack

  Duct Tape

  Bungees

  Towels

  2. Talk with the patient while you are restraining him.

  Explain what you are doing, and that you are using a restraint to ensure that he is safe.

  Restrain patient using duct tape around wrists, ankles, and use a bungee around the torso.

  If necessary to secure the head, place a rolled towel under the neck and restrain with duct tape.

  As she got into the intramuscular injection section, it unraveled. Something crashed and broke in Sergei’s cabin, the chilling screaming started again, the muffled sound of something big hitting a wall.

  “You two, stay put,” said James rather needlessly. “Sophia, let’s go.” Yi and Derya were shell-shocked—one unable to talk, the other unable to reason.

  Sophia had been clueless about what to do next and when James asked her to get ready, she refused at first. Now her mind rushed in anticipation. I’m the wrong person for this—I’m a follower, not a leader—I’m, I’m the youngest by three years—I’m the smallest, the least experienced, the lightest, the only one with long hair and missing a penis—

  Her heart raced as they moved their hovering bodies via handrails to Sergei’s cabin. She looked at James. For the first time since she knew him, his expressive face had become emotionless and driven by one sole aim. It made her recover at least part of her composure.

  James unlocked the latch that had kept an unaware Sergei confined to his cabin. He opened the hatch. The cabin looked like the guts of a tornado in slow motion, dozens of objects and shattered pieces of flotsam and jetsam floating around, with Sergei’s large frame languidly banging a wooden box anchored to his desk ten or fifteen feet away from them.

  He sensed their presence and turned with scary agility. The image spoke to Sophia as the scene of a fatally wounded lion. She could feel his enormous power draining away, the dignity of a dying face. She became paralyzed with fear. Sergei was nimbler and much stronger than anyone else. If he felt threatened or was unwilling to cooperate, things could turn ugly fast. She glanced at James. There was no tranquilizer gun on board Shackleton. All they had was a syringe in Sophia’s right hand, which Sergei spotted right away.

  James did not move at first. He called Sergei by his diminutive, “Serezha … nobody can understand the extent of your pain, and nobody can help you now. But there’s one way to … to let your consciousness … drift.” He pointed at the sedative drug in Sophia’s hands. “This will put you down.”

  Sergei didn’t answer but everything in him seemed to beg for the pain to subside. James extended his hand toward Sophia but she remained frozen. “Sophia, goddammit,” James hissed. But she couldn’t move. He cautiously moved around her, never losing sight of Sergei, and pulled the syringe from her fingers.

  James inched closer to Sergei and gradually reached for his arm with his free hand. Sergei remained docile. Sophia began sobbing, heartbroken. James grabbed Sergei’s arm and gently pulled up the sleeve. He swiftly scanned for a protruding vein in the burly, muscular forearm and pierced the needle through the skin.

  He held the passing-out Sergei in his arms. The latter slowly curled into a fetal position before blacking out.

  34 | Sergei

  July 14 2029. Day 759; 1.1 Years to Saturn

  Five months hence, there were four crew members seated at Bacchus’ dinner (and arguing) table. The fuselage high-definition wall was displaying Thailand’s Railay Beach. It was midday and low tide, with hundreds of people far inside the turquoise, knee-deep sea. To the left, the fantastically shaped vertical limestone cliffs towered over the thick tropical forest. The sky was deep blue, with a few round clouds moving in the distance.

  “Just arrived at our doorstep,” Sophia read aloud from a tablet. “Main findings from the Weekly Behavioral, Psychological & Sleep Hygiene Report. Data collection based on: crew rest/activity measured with wrist-worn actigraphs; Beck Depression Inventory questionnaire; Psychomotor Vigilance Task—”

  “I wish it came in paper form so I could at least use it to swab my rectum,” said Derya.

  “Here, you read it then,” said Sophia, handing it to him.

  “Listen to this poetryfaction: ‘the ecological validity depends upon the extent to which it instantiates elements relevant to crew behavior during prolonged confinement in space.’ A third of a Twix bar to anyone who can explain what I just read. Then … blah blah, and the report ends with a profiling of Sergei Dmitrievich Lazarev requiring special clearance, again. Or in other words, inaccessible to anyone but our commander. I’m deeply thankful for this fostering—no, this sensitive nurturing—of an environment of trust and safety.”

  “Do me a favor and shut up for an hour,” said James tiredly. “And pass it on in the meanwhile.” He had been protective of Sergei, whose recent behavior had been strange at best.

  As the rest continued Saturday’s brunch—weekends were light on work—he concentrated on the report.

  “Crew sleep time averaged seven hours and twenty-three minutes per night, with everyone but Sergei Dmitrievich Lazarev above the minimum seven hours recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.”

  One graph was based on the weekly individual question of naming the two crew members with whom you communicated the most. The circle size represented the number of times the person had been mentioned. Arrows pointing to and from a person, the interactions with the rest. Sergei’s circle was isolated and by far the smallest. Connected only to me, thought James.

  “Shackleton is rewriting the scientific literature on the Minimum Acceptable Net Habitable Volume for missions over 500 days. NASA’s baseline of 870 cubic feet per person, even considering a weightless environment that allows full use of available volume, is no longer deemed appropriate.” This was a non-active restriction, as Shackleton had many times that space.

  “This week’s report reconfirms an increasing premium on personal space, mainly as a result of Sergei Dmitrievich Lazarev’s erratic behavior. There is an active effort by Sophia Jong and Derya Terzi to avoid him.”

  Further down the document, “Sergei Dmitrievich Lazarev has settled into a twenty-five-hour sleep cycle.”

  The immediate consequence was an out-of-whack schedule. It was midday and Sergei was in his cabin—James had Sergei’s wristwatch sleep and light level real-time data displayed in the screen, showing he was in a nighttime sleep phase.

  “This week, after consultation with world-renowned experts, our medical team has escalated to Priority One the need to calibrate his circadian sleep cycle back to twenty-four hours. Failure to do so may have unforeseeable consequences on the overall mission.”

  He jumped to Sergei’s diagnosis and prognosis.

  “The patient exhibits acute depression, persistent sleep insomnia, chronic sleep deprivation, performance deficit in behavioral alertness, cognitive impairment, irritability, negative affect, and interpersonal tension and conflict. All the neurobehavioral, psychological, and biochemical markers point to an increasingly unstable person with seriously compromised mental health.”

  A few paragraphs below, “Due to his alpha trait, indicating a tendency to present himself more ideally, along with his cultural background, this report cannot properly assess the risk of Sergei Dmitrievich Lazarev being suicidal or homicidal. WE MAINTAIN THE TOP PRIORITY INSTRUCTION TO KEEP HIM UNDER SURVEILLANCE 24/7.”

  Easier said than done, thought James. Sergei knows everything about the ship down to the smallest rivet, on
top of being stronger and faster than anyone else. If he has malevolent intentions, there is little anyone can realistically do to stop him. With no firearms or electroshock weapons, James wished again they had brought a tranquilizer gun, if only as deterrent.

  “Then what do you propose? Spacing him?” said Yi.

  “Come on, don’t be so politically correct, chino. I’m verbalizing what everyone, including you, is thinking. He has become a huge liability for this mission. We’re at the mercy of a psychiatric inmate roaming free around the ship,” said Derya.

  “‘Spacing’ him?” said Sophia.

  “You know, the sci-fi equivalent to walking the plank. Open the airlock and eject him into the vacuum of outer space,” said Derya. “Before he does us all in.”

  James, quiet until then, thumped his coffee mug against the table. “I am very disappointed in you, Derya. And you too, Sophia.” His jaws and lips remained clenched for a few lengthy seconds. He continued, more controlled, “I really would have expected more compassion. Clearly, you’ve never truly loved somebody before.”

  “What do you know?” said Derya meekly.

  “Nobody, nobody can understand what he’s going through. But you are not even trying. You will read that night’s Code Red to feel how it burns inside. That’s an order. It should give you much-needed empathy,” said James.

  “We are five people on a ship in the middle of nowhere. Like it or not, we are in this together,” said Yi.

  “Profound, Yi, very profound. Let me write it down and copyright it,” said Derya.

  Derya’s guilt was strangling him. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Never in my life I could have thought … Now it all clicked, the one key needed to understand the whole affair. A revelation so violent his mind staggered to comprehend its full meaning to make the emotional shock bearable.

  They never spoke again after their son’s death. He banished her out of his life—forever, as fate would have it. Who knows how many times he may have been on the verge of lifting the silence? Had he got past the blinding grief and anger … most of this could have been averted.