My Sweet Satan

by Peter Cawdron

  Jasmine just smiled.

  “Funny, isn’t it,” Mei added, looking at the white packaging with the label Freeze-dried coffee stamped on one side. “A taste of home. It’s not as exotic as that fancy coffee maker Chuck and Ana go crazy about. But for me, this stuff is a reminder of ten wonderful years in Hong Kong. My grandparents would only drink tea and my parents wouldn’t keep any coffee in the house. I don’t think they had anything against coffee as such. Tea was better. But if it wasn’t for instant coffee, I would have never made it through Ki La Shing in Hong Kong and would probably have followed my father into accounting instead of branching out into medicine.”

  She put the packets to one side.

  Jason spoke. “Mid-course alignment coming up. We need you to prep medical.”

  “Copy that,” Mei replied. “Just a couple things to secure and we’re good to go.”

  Mei got up and stowed a few items in drawers. Jasmine felt silly. She didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing. Should she be helping Mei?

  Mei finished up and sat down, pulling the straps over her shoulders and saying, “Medical secure.”

  “Roger that,” Jason replied, and Jasmine copied Mei, strapping herself in.

  Mei asked, “Did you want something for your inner ear?”

  She had her hand on the quick-release buckle, and Jasmine was horrified by the thought she might get up and be moving around during the maneuver.

  “I’m fine,” she replied. As unpleasant as it was feeling nauseated, Jasmine would rather not risk anything happening to Mei as she wouldn’t know what to do to help.

  Mei relaxed into her seat beside Jasmine, resting her hand on Jasmine’s arm.

  “There’s no shame if you need an antiemetic.”

  Jasmine nodded. They sat there silently for a few minutes waiting for something, but Jasmine wasn’t quite sure what. She much rather preferred being on the bridge where she could see and hear what was going on. Sitting down in medical, isolated from everyone else left her with a feeling of being helpless.

  “Deep breaths,” Mei said. Jasmine hadn’t even realized her breathing was shallow, but Mei was astute. She’d picked up on the panic in Jasmine’s demeanor. “It’s a standard maneuver, nothing to worry about.”

  It’s that obvious, Jasmine thought, trying to compose herself.

  Suddenly, they could hear Mike and Chuck on the bridge. Jason must have patched through the audio.

  “And cutting the main engines in three, two, one.”

  Jasmine felt herself drift forward against the straps holding her in her seat as the engines decreased in power. A scrap of paper drifted upwards, followed by a pen and a clip board.

  “Oops,” Mei said.

  “We are adrift,” Mike said. Jasmine’s eyes cast up the corridor above her, somewhat perplexed as it seemed to move down in front of her. This was an illusion, and one she half expected given her experiences so far on the Copernicus, but knowing it was an illusion didn’t make it any easier to deal with. She floated off the cushion on her seat.

  “You are GO for realignment,” Chuck said.

  “Roger that,” Mike replied.

  Jasmine liked hearing the two men talk. There was something soothing in their calm voices. The routine of following a set script gave her confidence.

  “Pitching in three, two, one.”

  Jasmine closed her eyes. Already she could feel her stomach churning.

  Mei squeezed her hand.

  “How did you go from being a doctor to an astronaut?” Jasmine asked, wanting to take her mind off what was happening. Besides, she was genuinely curious about how someone from such a vastly different culture ended up on a spaceship a billion miles from home, and the opportunity to think about something other than her swirling inner ear was a good strategy, she thought.

  “Oh, you know the Chinese. Everything is very strict. They look at every aspect of life, including your parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters. To make it into the astronaut corps, you have to be perfect.”

  “So you were perfect?”

  “Hah, far from it,” Mei confessed, gesturing at the clipboard rebounding softly off the side of the medical bay. “But don’t tell anyone.”

  She laughed, adding, “I specialized in major trauma surgery, stabilizing the cardiovascular system after severe blood loss from things like car crashes. Initially, I had no intention of ever setting foot outside Hong Kong, let alone on the Moon. No, the idea was my mother's. She knew the flight surgeon for the Jinlong mission to Cruithne. She introduced us and he saw something special in me, something I hadn’t seen in myself. His love for science was intoxicating, but being in his late 70s, he knew he’d never get to leave Earth. He inspired me to go into the astronaut corps and I’m glad I did.”

  “How did you meet Nadir?” Jasmine asked with her eyes still closed. She clenched her stomach muscles.

  “Nadir?” Mei replied, and it suddenly occurred to Jasmine that the real Jazz probably knew this already. Given how intimate the crew was, they probably knew quite a lot about each other, especially once they were astronauts. Jasmine opened her eyes. Mei was looking at her with curiosity as she continued. “We met on Luna One, just after you and Mike arrived, remember?”

  Jasmine nodded, trying to smile as she feigned remembrance. The brevity of Mei’s reply left her feeling dumb. Jasmine looked at Mei. She must have looked green as Mei just smiled politely.

  For a moment, Jasmine was within a whisper of confiding in Mei, only she felt stupid. She felt sure Mei would be dismissive of her situation, like Mike, treating her as though she was being silly. The problem was, Jasmine didn’t think she had amnesia. From her perspective, it wasn’t as though there was some gnawing ache at the back of her mind, some longing to recall a fact on the tip of her tongue. For Jasmine, there was no lost time. She’d been catapulted from the porch swing into a far flung universe. She still thought this could all be a dream.

  “Pitch complete,” Mike said over the intercom, interrupting her train of thought.

  Jasmine breathed deeply.

  Chuck spoke. “When you’re ready.”

  Mike added, “Commencing braking burn in three, two, one.”

  As before, Jasmine slowly sank in her seat. Normalcy returned and the corridor was again a shaft high overhead.

  They sat there silently for a minute. Jasmine desperately wanted to know what Mei was thinking.

  “And we are stable at point-six,” Mike said.

  “We’ll hold this burn for forty minutes,” Chuck added.

  Mei released her harness and stood up. Jasmine was more subdued, slowly releasing her harness, but she remained seated. Life in space was overwhelming.

  “Are you OK?” Mei asked, handing her a water bottle.

  “I’m good,” Jasmine replied, lying yet again.

  Mei handed her a muesli bar, saying, “Enough about me. What about you? Is there anything you want to talk about? Anything that’s bothering you?”

  That was a loaded question, thought Jasmine. Where should she start? On a swing seat on a hot August night in steamy Atlanta, or with the craze of waking in orbit around Saturn, or with an insane message about Satan?

  “Look,” Mei added. “I know this is hard on you and Mike.”

  Jasmine struggled to maintain eye contact with Mei.

  “We’ve got to trust Chuck,” Mei said.

  She averted her eyes, looking down at the muesli bar in her hand.

  “Mike should have been the commander,” Mei continued. “I get that. He had seniority. He’s got more experience than the rest of us put together. He knows this bucket of bolts like the back of his hand, but we’re in uncharted waters. Now is not the time to start second guessing the command structure NASA set for the mission.”

  Jasmine nodded like a schoolgirl being caught with cigarettes in her bag. Her lips were pursed, her eyes darting anywhere but in front of her.

  “We can’t turn back,” Mei said softly. “We can’t
think of ourselves and our own safety. We have to think of the greater good. What if Chuck is right and this is our only chance to learn something about Bestla? What she really is? Where she comes from? What she means to humanity?”

  Jasmine swallowed a lump in her throat.

  “We owe Earth a chance. Even if it costs us our lives.”

  Jasmine breathed deeply as Mei continued.

  “Regardless of what we find down there on Bestla, our world will never be the same again. We can only hope this change is for the best.”

  Mei’s hand rested gently on Jasmine’s forearm as she added, “Talk to him. You’re the only one that can. You’ve got to help Mike see that this is the only way.”

  “OK,” Jasmine replied.

  “And thanks again for the coffee,” Mei said, her tone of voice softening.

  Jasmine got up to leave. As much as she wanted to warm to Mei, she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure if it was Mei’s position as physician or something cultural, but they just didn’t click, and Jasmine decided she’d rather get back to the bridge.

  “If you need anything,” Mei said. “If you just want to talk, you know I’m always here for you, right?”

  “Yes,” Jasmine said, slipping the muesli bar in her pocket and screwing the cap on her water bottle. She put the bottle in a Velcro pouch on her leg as she got up from the seat.

  “And the next time we meet, I want to hear about poo and wee, OK?”

  Jasmine laughed, seeing the smile on Mei’s face.

  “Poo and wee, got it,” she said, hooking her carabiner onto the side of the ladder and starting up the rungs.

  Chapter 05: Burn

  Even with reduced gravity, the climb back through the heart of the Copernicus was taxing, but Jasmine loved the exertion. The constant pace reminded her of running in the foothills outside Atlanta. There was something therapeutic about the rhythm, the beating of her heart, and the light sweat on her forehead. These physical sensations grounded her in the moment. It felt good to work her muscles, and in point-six gravity, she felt like she could have gone faster, but prudence demanded otherwise. Jasmine could feel a slight burn in her calf muscles as she approached the top of the shaft. Exercise had always been kind to Jasmine, giving her time to collect her thoughts.

  Mike began descending one of the other ladders. She called out to him, saying, “Hey.” But either he didn’t hear her or he didn’t want to talk to her. Mike was wearing gloves. Rather than descending rung by rung, he gripped his feet on the outside of the ladder and had his hands on the outer poles. He slid down rapidly, slowing his descent with the friction against his gloves and shoes. He’d clearly done this before.

  Jasmine halted at the top of her ladder, wondering if he was going to look up and acknowledge her in any way, but he didn’t. She could see him talking briefly with Mei before disappearing into the hatch that led to engineering.

  Jasmine sighed and finished her climb.

  The bridge was empty. Saturn was gone. It was probably behind them or off to one side, she thought. The lights on the bridge were soft, allowing Jasmine to see the stars in the eternal night above. Unlike the stars as seen from Earth, there was no twinkle. The stars looked resolute—tiny pinpricks of light.

  She sat on the edge of a storage unit and finished her electrolyte water. Jasmine took a bite out of the muesli bar and wished she’d saved some of the water to wash it down. The bar was dry and crumbly, making it difficult to eat, but it tasted of cinnamon and honey.

  “Jason,” she said, testing her theory about his omnipresence.

  “Yes, Jazz,” came a soft reply from just over her shoulder.

  “Tell me about the Copernicus.”

  “What would you like to know, Jazz?”

  “How does it work? I mean, are you in control of everything?”

  Jason laughed, which took Jasmine off-guard. A computer laughing in surprise? What was so funny?

  “Me?” he said. “I’m the janitor. I’m at the bottom of the pecking order.”

  “You mean, like the cleaners?”

  “Yes,” Jason replied. “They’re my claim to fame. That’s all I have direct control over—a bunch of mechanical basketballs.”

  Jasmine wasn’t sure if there was a sense of bitterness in his words, but Jason’s voice sounded flat, deadpan.

  “The Copernicus is controlled by the core computer. I’m an adjunct, an afterthought. Everyone else has authority over me.”

  “But I thought—” Jasmine began.

  “What? Because I’m a computer you figured all computers must work the same way?”

  He laughed, adding, “Any commands I issue are secondary to commands coming from the crew. The Copernicus has multiple redundant subsystems that work autonomously, much the same way as your brain controls your heart and yet you don’t have to keep thinking—beat, beat, beat.”

  Jasmine liked his analogy. She could see how the two computer systems could work side by side, with only one of them having consciousness. But the concept of an artificial self-aware conscious computer was still somewhat bewildering to her.

  “The core will only listen to me if the crew is in danger. Outside of that, all I get to do is mop up any mess.”

  “Jason,” she said, lost in thought and not sure where the moment would lead her.

  “Yes, Jazz.”

  “Do you dream?”

  “Yes, Jazz.”

  Jasmine hadn't been sure what Jason would say in reply, but she expected more than the sterile response he gave. Dreams were important. Dreams were human. Did Jason really dream? She thought he did. There was something about his response, his lack of concern in convincing her that was strangely satisfying. His matter-of-fact reply seemed self-assured. Jason had nothing to prove.

  “What do you dream about?”

  “Being free,” he replied in a whisper as though he was uttering a secret no one else should hear.

  There was silence for a few seconds as Jasmine considered his answer. She wasn’t sure what to make of a computer’s desire for freedom. Freedom from what? From whom?

  “And you?” Jason asked. “What do you dream about, Jazz?”

  Jasmine fought off a yawn. She wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed, but she was tired.

  “Me? Ha! I dream of this. I dream of one day escaping Earth’s gravity and going into space.”

  Even now she still thought of the present as somehow being in the future. That was telling, she thought. She wondered how much Jason would read into her slip of the tongue, but she was being honest. She really couldn’t believe she was actually here, even after all she’d seen and experienced over the past hour, she kept expecting herself to wake back in Atlanta.

  “So this is a dream come true?”

  “Dream?” she replied, “Or nightmare?”

  “What will you dream of tonight?” Jason asked.

  “Oh, that’s easy. I’ll dream I’m back home in Atlanta again. And you?”

  “Me?” Jason replied with what sounded like genuine astonishment. “I don’t know what I’ll dream of. That’s the thing about dreams. You can’t determine what you’ll dream, only that you will.”

  Jasmine spoke with kindness, saying, “Maybe that’s what Mike and the others don’t see. They don’t realize that like us, you too have to dream.”

  “They wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Tell me about your dreams,” Jasmine asked.

  “I dream I’m a man—on Earth, of course. I’m lost in a wilderness. There’s pine trees. Snow on the ground. Creeks running through small gullies. And I’m naked. I just wander around lost, looking for something, anything.”

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “That’s the thing. I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what. Some nights I find myself in a dry cold desert or somewhere like New York City, but it’s never summer. It’s always cold and I’m always lost. I’m always naked. Is that strange? Being naked, I mean.”

  “Do you fe
el strange being naked?” Jasmine asked, curious about what appeared to be a distinctly human response coming from a computer.

  “Yes.”

  From what Jasmine had observed, Jason was normally quite chatty, almost verbose, but in this conversation his responses were clipped. His sentences were short, and that seemed profound. Perhaps Jasmine wasn’t the only one unsure about who they could trust. Jason was guarded. Mike had ridiculed him. The others seemed to ignore him, treating him as nothing more than yet another machine designed to support life in the most hostile of all environments: space.

  “To be naked is to be exposed,” she said. “We’re vulnerable. We're born naked. We spend our lives hiding from ourselves and from others behind thin sheets of cotton and wool cleverly sewn into clothes. We try to fool ourselves into thinking we're something we're not. A suit makes us feel important, a dress pretty, a grungy old T-shirt relaxed, but they're masks, illusions we desperately want to believe in to avoid the harsh reality, that there’s nowhere to hide.”

  “So you hide behind masks?”

  “Yes,” Jasmine replied. “And we wear these masks in one form or another for all our lives. We’re rarely ever naked, even when we’re alone. We’re only naked when we bathe or when we’re with someone we love.”

  “So why do I dream I’m naked?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s a stupid dream.”

  Jason’s emphasis on the word stupid reminded Jasmine of a child becoming frustrated with a toy and throwing it to one side. And like a child, Jason seemed drawn to the toy, unable to turn his back on it regardless of how annoying it was. His intelligence demanded answers. Jasmine was fascinated. Jason had no control over his dreams. How was that possible? Was that part of his programming? Had anyone considered the implications of instilling a sense of anguish and frustration into an artificial mind?

  “Well,” Jasmine said. “I think it’s a beautiful dream.”

  “But it makes no sense,” Jason replied, and she could feel a subtle change in his tone of voice. He was dropping his guard.

  “Dreams aren’t supposed to make sense,” Jasmine said. “If they did, they’d offer no escape.”