Mental Contact

by Beth Martin

  Doron finally looked up from his pad to my face. “Why not?”

  I looked down at my knees and shook my head. “I can’t see holograms, not well.”

  Doron leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “Really? I’ve never met anyone with partial blindness. I assume it can’t be ameliorated?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said with a sigh.

  “Were you born with it, or did you acquire it after an injury or illness?”

  I leaned back. His questions were getting too invasive for my tastes, and I didn’t want to divulge too much personal information to a stranger. “I wasn’t born with it.”

  Doron sat back and gave out a single laugh. “I’m sorry. I get carried away when I hear about something curious. I’m a researcher by profession and by heart. I always need an explanation for everything. It’s too bad. You won’t be able to see most of the stuff we’re working on.”

  I took a deep breath. Maybe Doron knew of a way to improve my vision. “It’s a side-effect from a medication I’m taking. Was taking. But even after I stopped the medicine, my vision hasn’t gotten much better.”

  “What medicine was it?”

  “Xanestam. I took it for ten years.”

  “And how long ago did you stop taking it?”

  I squeezed my hands into fists. I wanted to stop talking about this. “A week ago.”

  He nodded while looking at me carefully. “Any medicine could take longer than a week to work out of your system. But sometimes side-effects from certain medications are permanent, so don’t count on getting your vision back. If you don’t mind me asking, why were you taking Xanestam?”

  I really didn’t want to admit to this man who was willing to put me up in Chi that I was mentally ill. “Because my doctor prescribed it. Why do you care?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, I have an inquisitive nature. Besides, any medication has off-label uses. Usually, Xanestam is prescribed to people who have supersonic hearing. There’s a lot of noise on that spectrum in this system, so people who can hear it can’t hear anything else. But you seem to understand me just fine, so I figured you were taking it for something else.”

  Gripping my knees with my hands, I heaved out another deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I glared at him until he lifted his hand up and said, “Apologies. I didn’t mean to get so nosy. I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Thank you,” I said through gritted teeth.

  •••

  As soon as we started approaching the landing zone, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lola. She hadn’t communicated with me for three whole days. I was beginning to miss her. I wanted to shout, “I’m here, Lola!” but instead I glanced and Doron and said, “It’s about time we arrived.”

  “You are visiting someone,” Doron accused as he grabbed his bag and stood up, ready to disembark from the ship. “I know that look. That’s the look of a man in love.”

  “I don’t know a single person here,” I said flatly.

  I followed him off the ship and through the passage to the small spaceport, if it could even be called that. The building was a single room with enough seating for only a few people. I felt light as I walked. Chi was a small planet, and the gravity here was less than any other planet in the system.

  “I hope you brought something warm to wear,” Doron said. He pointed to a window, and I followed his gesture to look outside. It was pitch black with a multitude of stars. Chi didn’t have any moons, so there wasn’t any extra light to pollute the sky. The ground was made of jagged crystals, glittering under the starlight. It looked like a landscape of sparkling diamonds.

  “Those are ice crystals,” he said, noticing my expression of awe. “We still don’t know how they formed like that.”

  “Wow,” I whispered, unable to look away.

  “It’s actually around negative forty out there, so no one spends much time outside. All the buildings are connected. This hall here leads to the apartments. I’ll show you my place and we can drop off our stuff.”

  I nodded my head in agreement, but still couldn’t pull my eyes away from the view. Only after I heard Doron open the door to a long corridor did I turn away and dash over to follow him.

  The building interiors were as dull as the view outside was remarkable. Everything was composed of brown bricks and windows were few and far between.

  The corridor forked, and we took the hall to the right. There were maybe a dozen doors. We stopped at the last one on the left. Doron pulled some keys from his bag and opened the door. “Home, sweet home.”

  I entered and took in the space. His apartment was much larger than any living quarters I had seen before. I had never really thought about how small accommodations on ships were due to size constraints. The only place I had stayed in on a planet was my dorm at the academy, and that had also been a small space.

  There was a living room with a large L-shaped piece of furniture lined with pillows, a table and chairs for four, and an entire kitchen similar to the one we had on Paradido. I couldn’t believe this was all for one person.

  “You have a roommate?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Oh god no. I barely have enough space to have anyone over.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve lived my entire life on spaceships. Most cabins are barely big enough to lay down in.”

  He glanced away and bit his lip. “Right. I forget sometimes that other people don’t live like I do. Well, there’s plenty of space for you to stay here while you’re on Chi.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been incredibly generous.”

  He showed me into his office which could have been a second bedroom. He had a large desk in there, along with another piece of furniture with cushions on it. He pointed to the soft seat and said, “That’s a pull-out.”

  I wasn’t sure what a pull-out was, but it looked comfortable enough to sleep on.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “Starving.”

  “Let’s go to the mess.”

  I was surprised when Doron left the apartment instead of using the kitchen inside. We went back up the hall and down the other direction at the fork. Soon the hall opened up and led in several different directions. The second on the left led us to a dining area with seating for around a dozen people. There were two people already there seated at the same table.

  Doron went immediately over to the pair. “Hi, folks.”

  A woman in a shiny pink outfit which resembled the gold one I had bought on Zeta turned to him and said, “Hiya, Doron. How was your trip?”

  “Good. Good. The missus says hi.”

  “Who’s the bloke?” an older man with graying hair and watery blue eyes asked.

  “This is Jake. He’s my wife’s cousin.”

  “This is Rachel, she takes care of the facilities here,” Doron said, gesturing to the woman.

  Rachel turned in her chair to face me and held out her hand. “Pleasure.”

  “And this is Ted. He’s our technology guy.”

  The older man nodded.

  “Let’s get some grub,” Doron said, walking to a panel on the wall. “All of our food is dehydrated, so you select what you want here, and the food distributer retrieves it, hydrates, and heats it, then delivers it right here.” He opened a small door under the panel to show an empty tray. “So, what would you like?”

  I looked at the dark panel. I had no idea what food options were available. “I don’t know. Whatever.”

  Doron nodded. “Spaghetti and meatballs, then.” He poked at the panel a couple times. After a few seconds, I could hear the tray behind the door slide around. “All done.” He pulled out the tray with a plate of spaghetti and two large meatballs accompanied with steaming vegetables and a glass of water.

  Before he could hand the tray to me, something caught his attention. He looked up to a corner of the room. I followed his gaze to a small flashing red light. There was a panel below it, but all I could see was the hint of som
e scrolling text.

  “Shoot,” Rachel said. She stood up from her seat and grabbed her tray. “We better get to the site.” Ted got up as well.

  Doron handed me the tray with my food. “I’m sorry, Jake, but I need to go take care of this. Hopefully we won’t be long.”

  Rachel deposited her tray through the same door my food had come from, and then her, Doron, and Ted rushed from the mess.

  I set my dinner on the table and sat down. The spaghetti was a little bland, and the meatballs had an odd texture, but it was much more palatable than I had expected. It was certainly much better than the nutritionally optimized slop I was used to eating.

  There was nothing keeping me in the mess after I had finished my food, so I returned my tray and decided to have a look around.

  I wandered around the complex of buildings, all connected to each other with enclosed hallways. These buildings were the entirety of human existence for the whole planet.

  I was able to go everywhere except for the lab, which was locked with a sophisticated-looking mechanism. They had all the important things a person needed including a grocer, medical center, and gym. From the size of the apartment building, assuming all the apartments were the same size as Doron’s, I estimated only a dozen people lived here.

  As I thought about it, I realized I had no idea what kind of research was being done on this planet. Doron had never mentioned what type of scientist he was. The conditions on the surface of Chi were unwelcoming enough to make me wonder what made the planet so special.

  I grasped my head in my hands as I walked back to Doron’s apartment. What was I doing here? A delusion had told me to travel to the farthest planet in the system, and I just did it. Perhaps I needed to spend the rest of my life in a mental facility.

  Doron had left his door unlocked, so I let myself into his apartment. There wasn’t really anything for me to do since the only entertainment I could find was a panel hanging on the wall. The cushioned furniture looked inviting so I stretched out on it and decided to take a nap.

  •••

  I woke up to the sound of the door to the apartment opening. “Sorry about that,” Doron said as he closed the door behind him. “The scanners alerted us of some unusual activity. We thought we had found something in the ice. Turned out to be just a trick of the light on a jagged crystal formation.”

  “That’s fine. I kept myself busy.” I sat up and rubbed my hand over my head. My hair was getting long.

  “Looks like it,” Doron said with a laugh. “We’re far enough from Trappist that day and night are pretty indistinguishable. We use Kappa standard time, which means it’s time for me to turn in.”

  “I could use some more sleep.”

  “I’ll help you get your bed set up.”

  I followed him into the office. I thought I’d be sleeping on the small seat, but Doron removed the pillows and a device inside folded out into an actual bed. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Thank you.” I stood next to the bed as Doron left, closing the door behind him. I laid down on the lumpy mattress. It was more comfortable than the cot I had strapped myself into daily on Paradido, but not nearly as plush as the hotel bed.

  I wasn’t sure how long I had napped earlier, but it must have been a long time because I found myself having a hard time falling asleep. After a while of just lying there, staring at the ceiling, I decided to get up and poke around the office.

  It was too dark to see much, but I was able to feel around the desk and turn on the lamp beside it. The room filled with a warm glow. I hadn’t noticed the bookshelf earlier. No one read physical books anymore, and it had taken me quite a while to accrue my collection. But Doron’s office had several shelves crammed with identical black-bound volumes.

  I didn’t even try to hold back my curiosity. I pulled out one of the books in the middle shelf and laid it on the desk. It opened to a drawing of crystal formations similar to the ones I had seen outside. I flipped the pages to find more pictures of the same subject. It was a sketch book. Had Doron drawn all of these?

  I opened the drawer in the desk to find a set of charcoal pencils. Doron must have been the artist. I closed the sketchbook and replaced it on the shelf before grabbing another one.

  The second book was similar to the first, except the crystals were more abstract. Every few pages contained a figure. It appeared to be a woman wearing loose clothing with flowing hair. One of the figures had a lot more detail—a naked woman with shoulder-length hair. It was the woman I had just met earlier that day, Rachel. I smirked at the drawing before closing the book. I now knew the nature of Doron’s relationship with her.

  After replacing the sketchbook, I took one from the next shelf up. This one was in pristine condition with minimal signs of wear. When I opened it, the image facing back at me was so shocking, I immediately closed the book. I took a deep breath. This wasn’t merely a sketch of crystal formations or naked women. I gingerly opened the book again to confirm the horror I had seen within. This time I held it open long enough to take in all the elements of the image.

  I recalled the frog dissection I had done in biology class on Spaceship Titanium. The frog had been laid on its back and the skin on its belly had been cut away and stretched to the sides with pins. That’s what this picture reminded me of. Except it wasn’t a frog; it was a woman. Her skin seemed to explode outward leaving her insides exposed. The most unnerving part was her eyes. They looked from the page straight through my soul. I had read descriptions of even more gruesome scenes in my novels, but to see the image in front of me in acute detail was a different story entirely. The blood dripping down her legs looked so real, I almost thought it was actually flowing over the paper.

  Unable to look any longer, I flipped to another page, then another. Each drawing was as appalling as the last. Some were of people, some of animals. There were horrific scenes of couples without heads copulating and animals eating rotten flesh off of living individuals. With each progressive page, I felt more and more sick.

  Maybe these weren’t Doron’s drawings. Maybe they belonged to someone else. I flipped to the very first page and read the inscription. “From the mind of Doron Moreau.” Well, fuck.

  I couldn’t think about it anymore. I put the book back on the shelf and tried to push the contents out of my mind.

  I lay awake on the pull-out for most of the night. Who was this man I was staying with? Could I really trust him? It felt like forever before I was finally able to fall asleep.

  •••

  When Doron offered to give me a tour of the lab the next morning, I pushed the images of his drawing out of my mind and accepted.

  “Well, this is it,” Doron said, waving his arm out to indicate the entire building. The lab looked just as high-tech as the bridge on a warp ship.

  I was able to see a lot more of the holograms now. The panels lining the walls and work surfaces projected shadowy figures and diagrams. I still wasn’t able to discern the texture or color of the illusions, but at least I could see enough to distinguish what they were displaying.

  “What exactly are you researching here?”

  Doron smirked as he leaned against one of the work surfaces. “The ether.”

  My confused face betrayed that I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “That’s what they called it ages ago. Now it’s known as dark matter.”

  I had heard of dark matter before. One of the classes at the academy was on galaxy formations, and dark matter played a significant role in the shape of galaxies. Basically, it was stuff that was there, but couldn’t be seen. But we knew it was there because something had to be there to balance the gravitational pull. I would have taken the course if I had gotten the chance.

  Doron continued, “Dark matter is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not really black.”

  I nodded my head. Everything that we could observe bounced off light. Dark matter didn’t, hence the name.

  “See, we thought dark matter cou
ldn’t be detected because it doesn’t interact with any frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can’t find it using microwaves, radio rays, x-rays, nothing.”

  “But you know it’s there,” I said.

  “Right. But now we know more. Obviously, gravity was the key.” Doron walked over to one of the work tables and held up a small metal box with a thick cone sticking out of the top. “This is a gravitometer. It’s sensitive enough to detect even the smallest perturbations of gravity. Using it, we can visualize the ether.” Doron’s voice was high and excited.

  “Why would you want to see dark matter?” I asked.

  “Why not? It’s basically an entirely different dimension. It doesn’t interact with matter in any way other than gravitationally. We can pass right through it, and it through us. But if we can see it, at least in a sense, we can observe it and learn how it works. Over 90% of the energy in the universe is dark energy, and if we can understand it, we might be able to use it. It exists completely outside of space time. Can you imagine, a ship made of dark matter, unconstrained by the speed of light? We could travel almost instantaneously from place to place without skewing our time reference.”

  The idea was pretty neat. The ability to travel between systems without the rest of the universe aging much faster than the traveler would be revolutionary. “But why are you studying it here on Chi? Couldn’t you set up your lab somewhere… warmer?”

  Doron carefully set down the gravitometer. “Because at this moment, Chi is overlapping with a cloud of dark matter.”

  I furrowed my brows. I wasn’t sure what exactly that meant.

  “Look, I’ll show you,” Doron said. He tapped one of the panels on the work table and a control panel appeared above it. He turned one of the holographic knobs which made an image materialize between us. It was hazy, like a cloud. It looked to be three feet across at the widest and extended five feet above the floor. “Can you see that?”

  “It looks like mist.”