by Jason Davis
Meaning he had more reason to hurry and touch the flashing button.
He tried to reach out again. Nothing. This time, he actually felt the inability, not just saw it.
Come on. Don’t just float here.
But the cold was too deep. He felt it in his bones, reaching deeper, pushing against the small warmth he had experienced. Death was in the little suit with him, and it was not going to give up easily.
Why should he fight so hard, and what would hitting that little button do? There wasn’t anything to hope for, nothing out there for him. There was no way he would ever see his little girl again, so there was no point.
You don’t know that. You have to try.
There it was again. That strange force inside him. It was warm and comfortable. He almost laughed when he had the brief thought of being in a microwave, warming from the inside.
Was the warmth even real?
He felt a tingling in his fingers, the sensation spreading. It wasn't intense, but like a hum of electricity building up inside him.
"Lord, I don't know if that's you, but please, help me make it home to my little girl,” he prayed. He had never been a religious man before, but if it meant he’d get home to his baby, he was all for it. Whatever worked, he would do it. He had to.
He reached out to touch the tablet floating near his hand again. It wasn’t too far. It would just take a little twitch of his finger and a slight twist of his arm. He saw it out of the corner of his eye as his gloved hand started to shake.
I’m doing it. I’m really doing it.
There was a sudden jerk to his suit and he felt himself spinning around, a sense of gravity pulling him to the back of the pod. Outside was dark, the star-filled sky he had grown accustomed to was gone. Worse, he saw the tablet disappear from sight.
No, no, no! Not now. Not when I am finally fighting to live.
He had to get it, but his body felt alien to him. He could barely control a finger, let alone his arm to reach around and find the device.
Where is it?
He craned his neck, trying to see where it had floated off to. The flashing on the screen should make it easy to see.
Is that it?
He thought he saw something red reflecting off the pod down near his leg. How the hell did it get down there?
He knew how. It was free to go wherever in the small pod. It could just keep bouncing around and he would never be able to get to it.
It was so hard to work with no gravity, no invisible force to keep objects in perspective. The tablet could be floating anywhere. He could be floating anywhere. It was outer space, that endless stretch of nothing that went into infinity.
Another jerk to the suit and he felt the sudden thrust as he was propelled against the lower portion of the pod. The strain was strong against his weakened legs and his knees buckled as they slammed against the front of the pod. He was wedged lower into it than he had ever been before. Pain shot up his knees, even through the suit he wore. The world around him, the world he had come to know as his life-pod, felt like it had started collapsing around him.
“Dammit!” he cursed through clenched teeth. His bones protested the force pulling him down. He struggled to pull his hands free from where they had lodged behind him, and as he did, he felt something tap his arm. He saw the blinking red, knowing the tablet was caught between him and the side wall. If he adjusted his body just right…
Damn, he only needed to get his hand free. All he had to do was tap on the screen, acknowledge he was alive.
But what would that do? There was no way he would be saved. Whatever was happening outside wasn’t some kind of rescue. Was that what he really thought? How could he even begin to hope? That tablet wasn’t going to do a damn thing for him.
So what was slamming him around like a piñata?
A comet. He was caught in the gravity well of some comet that had flown by. It pulled him around. As he was caught in its wake, there would be some gravity. That same gravity that kept all the ice particles together now pulled him along.
Or it could be an asteroid. He’d been near the asteroid belt when he had been ripped from his rig. Maybe he had floated into the belt and was now caught in the pull.
Yeah, or he could be getting picked up by aliens.
Was he desperate enough to think aliens would pick him up out in the depths of space? This was getting ridiculous. He was about to die, crushed to death by the force of something he couldn’t see, and he blamed it on aliens.
The pod shook again, violently slamming him up and back down. He tried to push against it, the squeezing of his legs cramping the muscles. His back screamed in protest, and he felt the tablet wedged into his side. The pull in the pod was now at an angle, pushing his body against it.
He had to shimmy a little. The pod was now vibrating, so he used that force to slide along the wall. It allowed him to get away from the pad. He worked his body so he could see the large red triangle and the flashing red light. It was near his hand. All he had to do was adjust a little to the right and turn his hand so he could touch the screen. He almost had it, as long as the pod didn’t shift again and slam him in another direction. He was almost there. Just a little bit farther…
Got it! The flashing on the screen stopped and a symbol appeared. There wasn’t any text, but it looked like two objects, one roughly the shape his pod. The other was much larger, a line stretching between the two.
The shaking of his pod stopped and he felt a shift. With all the violence he had endured, he had forgotten about the freezing air around him, but there was no mistaking the sudden warmth he felt. It was faint, but something radiated around him, like a heater had been turned on.
Before he had been disconnected, he had heat. Where had it come from? It would have been around him, much like how it felt now.
The gravity stabilized and he suddenly felt normal in the small pod. It wasn’t like the free floating he had come to know. This was even more recognizable, like the half-g of acceleration-forced gravity he had been used to on his rig.
It all felt so…right. He couldn’t explain it, but everything made him feel like he was in a comfortable place, like the hand of God had come for him.
Then he felt the weight of everything pulling at his eyelids, an exhaustion like he never felt before coming over him. He didn’t know why, but he smiled as he felt himself fall away to the long stretch of sleep.
* * * *
Moments came and went, leaving only a fading faint impression. Then those were gone. White walls? Flashing lights passing by? Light came and went. Things went dark, then got bright.
He couldn’t tell what was going on. It felt like time passed, but was mashed together in slow, dull moments.
The only thing that had remained, the constant wrapping around him, was that the cold had returned.
* * * *
The first thing he felt when he woke was something cold touching his skin. No. Multiple things touching him. He felt it around his arms, his legs, pressing against his forehead. He was hunched over something.
When he heard a crash around him, he jumped, fully awake. He tried to pull himself up as the world around him came into focus, but he was stopped short by cold metal around his wrists.
Where was he? Where was his suit? How was he not in the pod? No, this wasn’t right. He was in a room. That was impossible.
I’m still dreaming. I’m in another nightmare.
But, as he looked around, he knew he wasn’t. It was a simple room with stainless steel walls, a door that had a large round wheel in the center of it, and a stainless steel table he was currently handcuffed to. They were attached to a long chain that ran through the ring fastened in the center.
If he didn’t know any better, it looked like an interrogation room from one of those old cop shows. The main difference being the futuristic steel walls and the hatch door rather than a regular one.
The sound that had awoken him had been the twisting of that wheel and the release of
the latch. He watched as a woman stepped into the room. He studied her, trying to place her.
She had a stern, pinched face as she glared at him. It didn’t take long for him to realize she was studying him, not coming any closer.
And it was true. He was in a room with another living person. It didn’t make sense. He didn’t know how it happened, but he was alive and she was there—a living, breathing, honest-to-God person.
"I'm alive?" His voice was dry and gravelly. He didn’t know how long it had been since he had tried to talk.
"Of course. You are here with us on Mars. We wasted a lot of money to bring you here, but don't worry. You’ll be able to pay us back in payments."
He looked at the cuffs and the table. He was definitely alive. The cold steel was too solid, his body too sore.
"What's going on?" he asked, pulling against his chains.
"Settle down or you'll have to be sedated." The woman didn't come closer, staying near the door.
He tried to do a she said, but it was hard. So much rushed through his head. Questions of how he was saved and why he fought against wanting to thank the woman while outraged about being confined to the table.
He saw the fear that kept this woman from getting any closer. Something in the back of his mind whispered to him, warning him that he needed to be careful. He focused on taking deep, long breaths until he felt himself relax.
She watched him curiously. When his shoulders relaxed, she nodded. "Good. As I was saying, you are on Mars. The company is suing you for negligence and fraud, so we’ll soon be sending you back to earth for your trial. I am here to determine whether you are sane enough to stand trial, or if you've been suffering from Coffers."
Will felt the color drain from his face as his mouth dropped open. None of this made any sense.
"What do you have to say for yourself?"
He didn't have anything to say. This didn't make sense. He was dumbfounded.
"What did I do?" he whispered.
She seemed frustrated and had a hard time looking at him. He tried to plead with her with his eyes. It came off like a desperate, broken man, and it wasn't long before the tears came. They hurt because of the dried roughness around his eyes.
"Unlawful negligence, vehicular manslaughter, and damage to corporate property in access of one million dollars."
Her monotonous voice said the words, but he had a hard time focusing on the meaning. These were crimes. Actual crimes that he was going to be put on trial for. How was that even possible?
"How?"
"How what?"
"I didn't do anything wrong.”
The room seemed to get colder, and he wanted to take his chained hands and wrap them around his body to find warmth. The air coming through the filtered vents had such a chill, he felt it on his skin.
Was it all in his head? Did he really feel the room dropping in temperature?
"Because of your mishap, your ice shipment came in unmanned. The corporation was heavily fined. We had to pay out a large sum of money for your rescue and—"
"Why did you do that?" He didn't mean to cut her off, but he couldn't think of a better time to ask.
“Excuse me?”
The first emotion finally registered as she looked up from the pad she had been reading from. She was stunned. Was it because he wanted to know why he was accused, or because she wasn’t used to people cutting her off like that? He hoped it wasn’t the latter because the last thing he needed now was to piss this lady off, but he wanted to know. Shouldn’t he know why the hell they were charging him with this stuff?
They’re making an example out of you.
The thought came from nowhere, but as the voice echoed in his head, he had a sinking feeling it was true. But make an example out of him for what? What purpose would that serve?
“Why was I saved? It doesn’t make sense. I’m a nobody. Some cheap truck driver paid to haul ice from point A to point B. I’m not someone important.” Will had to swallow past the lump in his throat before he continued. “So why come save me?”
“Oh.”
She didn’t want to meet his eyes. It was obvious with how she tried to find something to look at on her tablet. He saw it in her face. She didn’t want to face him, but why? She had been so full of herself before.
“Well, it’s because you’re cheaper alive than dead,” she finally said.
“Excuse me?”
“You are cheaper alive. If you were to die, the company would have to pay your spouse twelve million dollars, as well as pay for your children’s educational needs. If we recovered you alive and injured, we would only have to pay your family one million. It was cheaper to recover you and have you live out the rest of your days as a vegetable than to just leave you out there.”
His jaw dropped. It was cheaper to save him than to let him die? He should be happy to hear that, but something about it being on paper, a financial decision that allowed him to still breathe, made it all wrong. He was only alive because of a clerical calculation that had shown the cost of saving him more viable than to let him die.
So if it hadn’t been cheaper, they were okay with just letting him die. He knew that. He had always known that. In fact, he had spent time in the pod expecting to die. So why did it upset him so much to hear her say what he already knew?
“So you thought there was a chance I would just be a vegetable? That means you were reasonably sure I was still alive.”
“Mostly. The survival suit you decided to take for a joy ride has built-in cryogenic capabilities. While having never been tested on humans, it has had a seventy-three percent success rate on monkeys, although only five percent have had full recoveries.”
His head hurt. He didn’t want to hear more of this, but he wanted to know why he was still there, still alive and talking with the woman.
“That’s f’d up. I was just some dumb lab rat for you out there.”
“Mr. Wozniak, you were hired to be subjected to tests. In your employment agreement, you stated you acknowledged this new form of space travel had risks and that there were new technologies you would be working with to help the corporation achieve its goals. You signed up for this.”
“I signed up to haul ice. I’m a truck driver. Hauling things is what I do.”
“You signed up to sit in a room and be isolated for eight months. How much ‘hauling’ have you actually done?”
“But…”
He wanted to argue that it wasn’t true. He had once been a truck driver. Now he was a space trucker. It was who he was. Saying he was just there to be a lab rat, paid to sit in a room as it flew across space… That wasn’t him.
But how could he argue? It had been his life for the past six years.
“Mr. Wozniak, you stopped being a driver long ago.”
His head dropped. He wanted to cry. He wanted to go home and see his daughter, spend time with that precious little girl he had once held in his arms. He wanted to hug her, be there with her as she prepared to go off to school.
“What do you want from me?” There had to be something. She wasn’t telling him all this for no reason. She wanted something from him, and he realized he was tired and done with all the bull.
“We need you to sign an agreement. You plead guilty to all charges, accept responsibility and say there was no fault by the corporation. By doing so, we will get you home. Your imprisonment will be logged as your flight home, so you will spend no actual time behind bars.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, sir.”
He felt a chill again, the room around him growing colder. This time, he knew it wasn’t a dream. He was sure he was awake. He was in hell, and it had started freezing over. He knew what he wanted to say to this woman. He wanted to tell her she could take her agreement and stick it where the sun didn’t shine, but they were a long way from the sun. It didn’t shine out there as well as it did back on earth.
Back on earth… He could see his daughter again, spend some time with her. If he wa
sn’t doing these long runs any more, he would be able to stay there and be there for her. They could do all the things he promised her they would.
But that also meant he would have to agree it was his fault the company dumped him out in space, saving him later. If he did that, would he ever be able to look his daughter in the eyes? He already knew the answer.
And if he was home, would they ever actually do those things, like go to Disneyland or Soldier’s Field? He doubted it. There would always be another excuse, and why not? That was never going to be his life. Earth was never again going to be his home.
The chill grew deeper. He was sure he would never get rid of it. It had become a part of him, and as the shiver ran down his spine, he knew he was okay with it. The cold wouldn’t kill him. It would only make him stronger.
He looked up to stare her in the eye. It made her uncomfortable. Good. He wanted her to be uncomfortable. The cold became steel running through his veins, a fire burning a new fury deep within himself.
“Yeah, well… You can go f—”