by Beth Martin
The engine was silent. After the close call with the asteroid, the thrusters wouldn’t be needed again until landing. On the far wall, the maze of ductwork came together at a giant air-circulation system. It could adjust temperature, oxygen level, and circulation speed with just the push of a button. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the holographic buttons on the panel. However, I did know where the emergency power shut-off was. I just wouldn’t be able to turn it back on.
I flipped open the little door on the back of the system to reveal a bright red lever surrounded by warning labels. It took quite a bit of strength to turn the lever to the off position. I needed to get more serious about my exercises if I wanted to fare better than a pancake once we arrive at Zeta.
The fan in the unit slowed, whirling to a stop. Even after it had gone completely still, I waited another minute before touching anything. I opened the front and pulled out the filter. My pills should have gotten trapped just behind it. I swept my hand through the empty space the filter had occupied and didn’t feel anything gathered there. They could be adhered to the filter. Flipping over the carbon mesh, my heart started immediately racing. I saw the silvery-blue pills, but they weren’t sitting on the filter. They had gotten sucked into the mesh and been disintegrated into blue dust.
“Oh good, you’re cleaning the airfilter,” Cory said as he floated into the mechanical room. “Dang, that thing is disgusting.”
I looked over to see him approach the engine’s panel.
“Yeah, it’s been a while,” I said, holding up the dingy rectangle.
“Eventually we’ll get one of those gravity induction filters. Let me know when you’re done, and I’ll switch the air-circulation system back on.” He quickly thrust his hand at the panel he was working at—the gesture to close a holographic display—before leaving me alone in the mechanical room.
I looked back down at the filter. I could soak it in water and drink the dissolved pill liquid, though I wasn’t sure if the pills were readily water-soluble. Plus, all the other stuff in the filter would leach out, and I definitely didn’t want to ingest that. Dr. Whipple didn’t keep any extra Xanestam, and I definitely didn’t want to get sedated. I had been tranquilized a few times before, and it was not an experience I wanted to relive.
Holding the filter, still staring at the blue dust spotting the surface, I tried to listen. I took a deep breath and calmed my thoughts about the pills and the consequences for not taking them and just listened.
I didn’t hear anything. She wasn’t there.
Since this was the first time I was off of my medication after starting it, I didn’t know for sure that she would even come back. Usually, I could still hear her whispering at the back of my mind, but at that moment, I was greeted with silence.
I promised myself that as soon as I saw her, I would tell Doc and ask him to put me under. But until then, I would just pretend my pills hadn’t been destroyed. The crew probably wouldn’t even notice anything was different. But for now, I had a filter to wash.
•••
I was so distressed I could barely eat, sleep, or even study. Instead, I threw myself into Dr. Pierce’s project. Four students from the academy were working with him to optimize a new navigation tool. I was the only first year, the rest were in their third or fourth year.
Dr. Pierce explained what we would be doing for the project. “This navigation control functions by locating the three nearest stars, and with that information it can calculate the absolute location and orientation of the ship.”
Lola leaned against the lab table. Since I knew she wasn’t a student, she no longer bothered wearing the uniform. “Why not just any three stars?”
“Now you may be thinking, why, specifically, does it use the closest stars? In theory, yes, we could use any three stars. However, there is a bit of error when measuring things sufficiently far away that current technology can’t overcome.”
Vlad, who tended to be a bit of a know-it-all, had the Trappist system displayed on his pad. He raised his hand, and Dr. Pierce nodded at him. “That would only work if the ship were in the same plane as the three stars. Otherwise, the point in space isn’t well-defined..”
Lola walked up next to Vlad and rolled her eyes. “We get it, you understand geometry. Just use the gravity sensor.”
“Excellent point, Mr. Phillips. How would you recommend remedying this issue?”
“We would need a fourth star as a reference point.”
Dr. Pierce held up a finger. “That would certainly work, but I believe there is an easier way.”
I was trying my best to ignore Lola. Pretending she wasn’t there worked better than reminding her that she didn’t exist. As the others talked about basic navigation, I was spinning an image of Spaceship Titanium on my pad at the far corner of lab table. “What do you think, Mr. Metcalf? You haven’t contributed much to the conversation.”
I looked up from my pad to the professor. He was the only person I knew—other than medical doctors—who wore a lab coat. “The gravity sensor. Binary star systems have a strong gravity dipole which induce easily measured gravity fluctuations. And they’re all over the place. No matter where you are, there’s going to be one close by.”
“I’m impressed, Mr. Metcalf. I was beginning to think you weren’t paying attention.”
“You stole my idea,” Lola said, crossing her arms. But she was wrong. I had learned all the different sensors a ship relied on for navigation from my father while visiting him at the bridge. I was about to correct her before stopping myself.
Not one to be outshone, Vlad spoke up. “That wouldn’t work if the three stars were collinear.”
“Actually, it still would,” I interjected. “But it doesn’t matter, since no set of three stars in the known universe is collinear.” I pushed my hand against the little warp ship floating above my pad and started drawing three stars in a line with my finger. “Would you like me to make a diagram?” Lola gave me a smirk. She seemed to enjoy when I got worked up.
“Let’s not get nasty, please,” Dr. Pierce said while holding up a hand. “I’d say this is a good stopping point for today. We’ll reconvene on Thursday at twenty hundred hours.”
I grabbed my pad and crammed it into my bag before quickly leaving the science building. I walked at a quick stride back to my dorm. “That wouldn’t work if the stars were collinear,” I said to myself in a mocking tone. Vlad was an immense pain to work with, and that had been only our second meeting together.
“You sure did put him in his place!” Lola squealed, so giddy she was practically skipping next to me.
There was no one nearby to see what I did next, so I stopped walking and turned to Lola. “Please, stop talking to me.”
She stuck out her bottom lip. “You’re the only person who will talk to me.”
I grabbed fists full of my hair and pulled while squeezing my eyes tightly shut. “She’s just in your head. She’s not really there,” I told myself.
“Jake, stop acting so weird.”
“You’re not real!” I shouted. Another student coming out of the library had seen my outburst and was now staring at me. I turned and continued my quick walk.
Lola had to jog to keep up. “I am real,” she said. “You’re just the only person who’s bothered to notice me.”
“I’m losing my mind.”
“You’re not going crazy. I’m real. I’m not only in your head.”
She kept pleading with me the entire way, and once I got into my dorm I slammed the door in her face. I sat down on my bed and covered my face with my hands. Ever since she had touched me, she had permeated my brain. She was always in my thoughts, and I couldn’t escape her.
I glanced up, and there she was, sitting on my roommate’s bed. “Just go away.”
“I get lonely.”
“Don’t you have friends or family that you can pester?”
She laid back on the bed and laced her fingers behind her head. “Nope. You’re all I’ve got.
”
I almost felt sympathetic for her, but had to remind myself, again, she wasn’t real.
“You can see me right in front of you. Do you not trust your senses?” She stood up and crossed my dorm to sit next to me on my bed. “You can see me and hear me. You can touch me.” I initially flinched as she reached her hand out to me, but ultimately let her touch my hand. Her fingertips felt solid and cold like a piece of stone. Every little hair on my body stood on end in response. Momentarily, I blocked out my doubt and held my hand up to her cheek. It was also cold. Curiosity overcame me so I touched her hair and then the collar of her shirt. Those felt like I had expected.
I leaned closer to her and breathed in her scent. She smelled of exotic flowers. “You can taste me, too, if you’d like.”
My senses were all intoxicated with her as she pulled closer to me. I hated this woman; she wouldn’t leave me alone. No one else could see or hear her, which meant she had to be in my head. Yet my body overrode my screaming brain, and I closed the gap to kiss her.
I wish I could say something magical happened at that moment: that there were fireworks and tingling all over my body. Maybe there were, but I don’t remember.
I do remember a feeling of absolute certainty that I had completely lost my sanity. In the void, I could hear her voice. I’m real. You’ve got to believe me. I’m real.
There was no way to block her out. I yelled, “You’re not really there! You don’t exist.” As soon as the words left my mouth, a stabbing pain ripped through my brain. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All that mattered was the pain.
The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor of my dorm, flat on my back, gasping for breath. My roommate and two other people were looking down at me.
“Are you okay, mate?” Jordon, the resident adviser on my hall, asked.
“I’m…” my voice was too hoarse to get another word out.
“Jake, you were yelling and banging around the room throwing things,” my roommate said.
“Don’t worry,” Jordon said. “I already called the health department. They’re sending someone over to make sure you’re all right.” I could hear the sirens in the distance. “Oh, here they are now. You two, stay with him. I’m going to go let the medical team into the building.
“Everything is going to be just fine, buddy,” my roommate added, but I already knew it wouldn’t be.
Jordon came back into my room escorting two paramedics. The medical professionals did a quick assessment before lifting me onto a stretcher and rolling me away.
You need to believe in me, Jake, or things like this will keep happening.
•••
There were all kinds of assistive technologies to help people with any kind of disability or ailment. The idea was to have every person perform at ‘standard capacity.’ I was the only person I was aware of who couldn’t achieve even that. Gene therapy had successfully eradicated any predisposition to troublesome mental illnesses, so I was a special little snowflake.
Someone born blind would be given an implant which connected to the optic nerve and gave them the ability to see. Once, I asked Doc if my retinas could be detached so I could get vision implants. He said it wouldn’t help. My problem wasn’t with my eyes, but with how my brain interpreted the light pattern I saw.
But light wasn’t the only thing my brain got wrong. The only medication that could block my delusions also interfered with my other senses, leaving me substandard and barely able to hold down a job. I couldn’t hear certain sounds like the frequencies from our communication devices. Gravity felt different, giving me frequent vertigo. I always felt cold. For the most part, I was looking forward to all of these side-effects going away.
But even taking the medication didn’t completely block her out. But for the time being, I couldn’t even hear her whisper. A flash of sadness came over me. What if I started to miss her?
“Paradido to Jake,” Van said.
“Huh?”
“It’s your turn.” The two other crewmates were looking at me expectantly, grasping their hands of cards.
“Sorry, what was the last play?”
Adam let out an annoyed sigh while Van shook his head.
“Adam played a scout and discovered the red dragon,” Van said. “You get the first attack.”
“Is this the first dragon?” I asked.
“God dammit, Metcalf,” Adam said, slapping his cards down onto the table. “We only use these stupid card games for your sake. I would much rather be playing a racing simulator on the big entertainment panel right now.”
“I’m sorry. My mind’s just in a different place. If you all don’t want to keep playing, we don’t have to.”
“Then I’m out.” Adam undid the belt holding him into his chair and went to the other side of the rec room. He slapped the front of the panel and started gesturing to start up his game. His cards were hovering above the table, one of them spinning around.
Van took Adam’s cards and shuffled them in with the rest of the deck. “You still want to play?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s fine. I’m just going to go back to my cabin and read.”
“All right. See you later.” Van pulled out his pad from under his seat and turned it on.
•••
At first I navigated down the hall, lazily moving from one handle to the next toward my cabin. Even though I enjoyed reading, I knew if I couldn’t focus on Dungeon Cards, I wouldn’t be able to make it very far into a book.
Instead, I passed by the cabins and went to the bridge. I had half hoped that I would be able to see something on the control panels, but they were still completely dark. As always, I kept a good distance away from them as I jumped up to the observation deck.
I pressed my back against the catwalk and watched out the windows. I recited the names of my favorite stars in my head as I spotted each of them. Sirius, Polaris, Wolf 160. There was Orion, his familiar belt holding him in the night sky. But something was off. Was something missing?
The star map swirled in my head. I tried to imagine the current orientation of the planets in Trappist and how that would affect the sky. Instead of traveling in a straight line to Zeta, we had done a slingshot and would approach the planet from the dark side. That meant I wouldn’t be able to see our destination. Then it hit me. I couldn’t see Zeta, but the planet should be obscuring the view of Cancer’s left claw. Paradido relied on the strong pull of Trappist’s gravity to land on Zeta, but if the ship was off by even the smallest amount, we would sail right past our destination and get sucked into the star. I wasn’t sure exactly which direction we were going, but the ship did have instruments which would give us a better guess.
If only I could see Zeta, then I’d be able to tell exactly how far we had gone. It had been at least a day since the near-collision with the asteroid, so the spaceship could potentially be way off course.
Although I wanted to stay there and keep looking at the stars, I needed to alert Greene right away. He hadn’t been in the rec room with the other crewmembers, so he was probably resting in his room.
I left the bridge and headed over to the cabins. The pilot cabin was by far the largest and the only one with a single occupant. The door was closed. He might be sleeping. Should I let him sleep, or wake him up and alert him? Perhaps he was already up.
I rapped on the door. A shuffling noise came from inside. “Pilot Greene?” I knocked again when the noises from within stopped. “Pilot Greene? Are you up?”
“I am now,” his voice filtered through the thick door. “Just give me a minute.” More shuffling noises came while he muttered, “This better be important.” Within a couple minutes, he finally opened the door. “Mate Metcalf? What do you want?”
“I apologize for waking you, but I was on the bridge—”
Greene interrupted me, “You bumped into the control panels again. Dammit, Jake. You need to be more careful. I should have asked Ford to let you go a long time ago.”
> “No, no, no,” I said. “Not at all. I noticed something while looking out the observation deck.”
“There aren’t any other asteroids. We did a thorough scan.”
“I believe we’re going in the wrong direction.”
“You believe? I checked the navigation parameters before turning in for some sleep. We’re on the correct path.”
“We’re at least three degrees off of the correct path since the star Acubens is unobscured. I can show you.”
Greene rubbed his eyes. “Fine. I’m already awake.” He came out of his cabin wearing his sleep clothes and led the way back to the bridge.
He went straight to the control panel, waved his hands, and tapped random buttons. Since I couldn’t see what he was actually doing, I guessed that he was checking the navigation parameters to verify whether Paradido was still on the right path.
“There you go,” Greene said, pointing at the panel in front of him.
I stayed still, watching him patiently.
“Oh, right,” he said. “It shows we’re still headed directly to Zeta, 10,000 miles away. Projected arrival in two days.”
“Look out the window.” I jumped back up to the observation deck and Greene followed. “These are all the stars we would expect to see, but at its current place in orbit, Zeta should be in line with Trappist and Acubens. Since we can see all the stars of Orion, we must not be correctly aligned. Paradido is going to miss Zeta and get sucked into Trappist.”
“The panel says otherwise. I just don’t see it,” Greene said.
“This is all I can see,” I said. “I know these stars. I know how to navigate using them. I’m telling you our course is off.”
“I believe the navigation system over the janitor.” Greene pushed against the window back to the bridge and headed down the hall.
I turned back to the window and looked at the stars. Now that I had seen it, our awry course was so obvious. Any pilot, even one of a lowly delivery ship like Paradido, would know how to navigate without the help of computers. While traveling at warp, the navigation systems had to be relied on. But going below the speed of light, any pilot should be able to make it to his destination without the aid of technology.