by R. A. Mejia
The morbid thoughts cascade through my mind until the ship’s voice cuts through.
“There. You should be able to remove your helmet now, John.”
I quickly reach up to take off my helmet, but my gloved fingers fumble with the latches. The clock flashes red as it hits 0:00. I open my mouth but find it difficult to draw in another breath. Pure panic hits as I struggle to breathe, and the edges of my vision start to get dark as I fight to free myself. There’s a hiss as the airtight helmet unseals, and I jerk the bulky thing off my head and throw it onto the bed, where it clatters against the wall.
Sweat pours down my face as I lean forward, arms on my knees, and gasp for breath. My hands are shaking from the near-suffocation experience, but oddly, I find myself smiling. Then I start to laugh. I can’t help it. It’s a chuckle at first, but then it becomes a full-bellied laugh. I made it. I’m going to live.
“See, John. That’s wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
“Yes, that was hard, you darn blasted machine! I almost ran out of oxygen and died.”
“But you didn’t,” the A.I. responds calmly.
“I could have. If you’d been any slower cycling out the bad air, I would have.”
“But I wasn’t. My calculations took into account the added task of isolating you in a crew member’s room and changing out the air in there. There was an 84.6% chance that you’d complete the task given and live.”
I sit there holding my head. So, the ship gave me an 84% chance to live? That’s honestly more than I gave myself. I genuinely thought that I was going to die so many times, that I was going to be sucked out into space, blown up by a missile or laser, or just crushed by the crashing ship. That I was never going to see my family again. Then my thoughts turn to Crewmen Yoe and Joseph. The two freed me but ended up dead. I hardly knew them, but they came back to help me when they didn’t have to. Thank you both. Because of you, I still have a chance to see my family.
Suddenly, my whole body is weary. I feel completely drained of energy.
“Ship? Uh, I mean SAI. Is it safe for me to take off my space suit now? I’m not going to die from radiation poisoning or something?
“Yes, John, it’s safe for you to remove your suit. The radiation levels in the ship are within normal human tolerances. I wouldn’t suggest going out for a stroll outside without the suit, but what’s left of the ship is safe for you.”
With that, I peel myself out of both the orange space suit and my silver long johns from my cryo-sleep. I run a hand through my thick black hair and feel the sweat and built-up oils. While I wish that I could take a shower, I’m too tired to even ask about it. Instead, I carefully put the space suit on the dresser next to the bed, lay my helmet on top of it, and get into bed and go to sleep.
Chapter 3
The warm rays of the bright yellow sun beat down on me as I float atop the salty ocean water. It feels so good to just relax and exist here. I hear laughter and music off in the distance and turn my head toward the sounds. The world seems to shift, and I’m looking at a cabin on a lake. I’m puzzled for a moment as to why the water doesn’t taste salty anymore, but the confusion passes as I remember that Annie and I came out here with our friends for the week.
As if summoned by the mere thought of her, my beautiful red-headed wife opens the cabin door. She’s wearing a long green summer skirt, a white short-sleeved blouse, and a big wide-brimmed sun hat. Her long hair flows wildly behind her as she walks out of the cabin, and the music from inside follows her out. It’s the song we first danced to together, and she’s moving her hips to the beat as she approaches. I smile and start swimming toward the wooden pier that extends into the lake from the shore. I reach the end of the dock just as she does, and she kneels down to smile at me. She starts talking, but her words seem fuzzy and indistinct. It doesn’t matter, though, because I’m hopelessly lost just staring up into her deep blue eyes and looking at her beautiful freckled face. I think she catches on that I’m not listening because she stops talking and just smiles down at me, a light blush creeping into her cheeks as she rolls her eyes and puts her hands on her hips in mock annoyance. I smile back, knowing that I’m the luckiest man in the world whenever she looks at me that way.
I’ve had my nice swim and reach up to grab the pier and pull myself up, fully intending to kiss my wife and join the party inside, but my hand never reaches the edge of the pier. Just before I catch the wooden plank, something brushes against my ankle. I spin around in the water, looking down and searching for what touched me. But I don’t see anything. My heart’s pounding in my chest, but I turn back to my wife, who’s still smiling and waiting for me. I pass the incident off as some fish that brushed up against me as it swam past and reach up again to get out of the lake. But again, just as my hand is about to touch the pier, something grabs ahold of my leg and pulls me down. The sensation of being pulled under water is both startling and frightening, but I kick out and connect with something. Whatever has grabbed me lets go, and I reemerge above the surface of the water. I’m farther away from the pier and try to swim towards it, but again, something grabs me. The world seems to slow as I look down into the water and see that what has grabbed me is a hand. My sight is suddenly able to pierce through the now-murky water, and I gasp as more hands reach out from the darkness below. I try to turn and swim away, but they grasp my legs and pull me down. I try to cry out for help but my mouth fills with water, and my wife only looks down at me sadly as I’m pulled under the surface.
I kick and punch as the hands crawl their way up my legs, pulling me ever downward. I stare up at the surface of the lake and the retreating light, hoping for some help. My instinct is to hold what little breath I have for as long as possible, but the air in my lungs burns, aching to be expelled as I’m dragged ever deeper into the depths. I don’t want to look down at what’s gotten hold of me. Some lizard part of my brain is terrified to see what will be the cause of my doom. But some unbidden force turns my head downwards as the slimy, creeping hands, crawl up my torso. My eyes squeeze shut and refuse to see. But the hands. The hands reach up around my neck and squeeze. My eyes open unbidden, and before me is the visage of the desiccated faces of Crewmen Yoe and Joseph. Their hair floats around their eyeless faces, and they are still dressed in the spacesuits they died in. Only the suits are in ruins, torn and burned everywhere. The two crewmen stare at me with accusing expressions as they squeeze my neck harder and harder until the breath I’ve been holding bubbles out in one long terrified scream.
__________
I bolt upright, covered in sweat and gasping for air. The realization that it was all a dream does little to calm my beating heart. I reach up to my neck, the sensation of Crewman Yoe’s and Joseph’s dead hands still there, like the phantom touch of a ghost. Then it’s gone, and as the intensity of the nightmare begins to fade, my mind begins processing the terror. It was only a dream, John. It was only a dream. You’re safe. The room is dark, and for precious seconds, I think that I’m back home in bed with my wife. I roll over to tell her about my nightmare, but she’s not there, and a sense of emptiness strikes me in the chest as I remember that I’m alone, stranded on some planet where the very air is trying to kill me.
I throw off the covers and sit at the edge of the bed. I mutter the standard vocal command, ‘Lights, please,’ and the room slowly illuminates in the soft white glow. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and yawn while taking a good look around the room for the first time. It’s mostly empty, but there are a few pictures and certificates hung on the wall. The pictures are of a tall, blonde woman in her mid-thirties. She’s dressed in a military uniform and standing next to an older couple, whom I assume are her parents. In another photo, she’s eating at a restaurant with a bunch of other women, and they’re all wearing paper hats and holding up glasses of wine. The name on the certificates is Genevieve Johansson, and she is an astronavigator. Or at least she was. I don’t know if she made it off the ship in one of the escape pods or if she died in
the attack.
The idea sparks off a question. Wait, if I was able to survive the crash here, maybe others did too?
“SAI, are you there?”
After a brief pause, the ship answers, “I’m always here, John.”
I smile, chagrined. Of course, she’s always here. She’s the ship. Where else is she going to go? “Uh, I was wondering if you knew if there were any other survivors. I mean, if I survived the crash, couldn’t someone else have too?”
“I’m sorry, John. But it’s statistically improbable that anyone else survived. According to my sensors, everyone except you and the captain had already either abandoned the ship or been killed when we lost thruster control. The only reason the captain was still on board was that he’d been grievously injured and made the decision to continue fighting the pirates while the rest of the crew escaped.”
I am alone then. The thought that I’m the only person on this whole gods-forsaken planet is depressing. I’d hoped that there was some chance that someone would be out there--someone to work with to get off the planet. But no. I only have myself and the ship’s A.I.
As I sit and consider the situation I find myself in, my stomach starts to grumble. “Uh, SAI? Do we have any food around here?”
“There are some emergency rations in the galley. I can highlight the path if you’ll put your helmet on.”
I glance at the cumbersome thing and decide against it. Instead, I make my own suggestion. “Would you mind downloading the schematics of the ship to my neural implant? I’d like to be able to get around without asking you for directions every time I need something.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Sir? I almost think I detect a sullen tone to the statement, but I’m likely imagining things. After all, SAI is just a program. A notification appears in my vision.
Argonaut Ship Artificial Intelligence requests permission to download file Argonaut Map to neural implant://John.exu. Do you grant permission? Y/N
I grant permission and watch a red line zip by as the download completes. My implant updates, and I select ‘Galley’ as my destination. I get up from the bed and walk out of the crew quarters and follow the green arrows around the circular central section around the elevator, past the hallway to where the escape pods were, and then into the galley. It isn’t very big, but it wouldn’t be on a cryo-sleeper transport. You’d only need a small crew to stay awake in order to make sure that everything runs smoothly. There’s cabinetry, a sink, a stove, an oven with heavy black soot marks above it, and a small refrigeration unit. I open the refrigerator hoping to find something to eat, but I’m assaulted by a rancid odor instead. My nose wrinkles in disgust at the smell, and I see that there is only one thing it could be coming from: a wrapped package in the back of the empty fridge. My implant tries to identify it for me but can’t. Just because it smells, doesn’t mean it’s not edible. I mean, some of the best cheeses I’ve ever had were also the smelliest. I’m tempted to investigate for curiosity’s sake when SAI speaks.
“John, I should warn you that we were scheduled to pick up a new cook on Luna and that the refrigerator unit has sat untouched for two weeks. Anything you find in there is likely at least that old. Additionally, the galley was one of the first areas where I turned the power off.”
I quickly close the refrigerator door. “Okay, the rancid smell is from spoiled food, not gourmet cheese. Got it.”
I search the rest of the galley and find mostly empty shelves. In the bottom-most cabinet, there’s a rusty-looking box labeled emergency supplies. I have to practically pry the lid off, but I find four three-centimeter bars wrapped in plastic. My implant tells me what I’m looking at.
Emergency Rations - Standard Soilent Greenery emergency ration bars. They contain an artificial combination of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, protein, and fats that an average-sized adult needs to live.
I vaguely recall some scandal about that company’s manufacturing process but push both those thoughts and the rations aside. Instead, I focus on the other item in the box: a 750-milliliter bottle of scotch. It’s only half full, but the sight of the amber liquid makes me smile as my implant identifies it.
Johnny Spacewalker - One of the most widely-distributed brands of scotch in the galaxy. Their motto: “It doesn’t matter what species you are. As long as you have the stomach for it, you’ll enjoy our scotch.”
“So, that’s where he kept his stash of liquor.”
I look up from the emergency ration box and ask, “What do you mean?”
“Our last cook had a bit of a drinking problem, but the captain couldn’t find his stash of alcohol. He almost set the ship on fire trying to make a flambé, and the captain fired him. That’s why we were getting a new cook on Luna. I guess he took out some of the emergency rations and hid his liquor bottle there.”
I remove the screw top of the bottle of scotch and take a swig. The amber liquid burns as it goes down my throat and warmth spreads throughout my chest. I sit on the floor and lean back against a cabinet and take another swig. “So, what you’re telling me is that those four emergency rations are all I have to eat? How long will that last me?”
“If you did not work at all, you could probably survive on them for ten days, but that would be stretching it.”
So, four days’ worth of food? Unless I plan to sit around and do nothing, which I most definitely don’t. My mind starts to churn as I take another drink of the amber liquid in the bottle and consider the other things I need. Water, food, and shelter are the basics anyone needs to survive. I have shelter and a bit of food. Then I remember how close I was to suffocating recently and add oxygen to my survival requirements. I glance up at the lights and remember that the ship runs on something to keep the lights on and the life support system going.
“SAI, how is the ship doing on power? You said the ship’s core was shut down. What are we using to run the lights and stuff?”
“That is correct, John. Standard crash protocol dictates that the ship's core is shut down to prevent a catastrophic plasma explosion. We are currently running on the back-up electrical system.”
“How long can we keep the systems running on back-up power?”
“We have a week’s worth of power, assuming we maintain the current rate of electrical usage.”
“So, I have four days’ worth of food and a week of electricity. What about oxygen and water?”
“The ship has a sophisticated environmental system that combines technologies that scrubs and reuses the atmosphere and waste on the ship. We can go a full year without restocking either oxygen or hydrogen, the key components necessary for the environmental systems to make water or atmosphere.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. At least I won’t have to worry about that if the ship can last a year with a fully-staffed crew.
“However . . .”
The word sends shivers up my spine. It’s not a word you want to hear when talking about the things needed to live.
“However?”
“However, while entering the planet’s atmosphere, the ship broke up into three parts. The forward section containing the bridge, navigation, communication, and a host of weapons controls broke off and landed somewhere to the north of our location. The cargo hold and the engines sheared off and tumbled to the east of here. The tanks for hydrogen and oxygen storage were kept in the cargo hold.”
“And without those storage tanks, how long do I have?”
“Combined with the atmospheric scrubbers, you have enough oxygen to last two weeks. If you use the oxygen to make water, cut that down to a week. Additionally, refilling your space suit’s oxygen tank will further deplete this resource and reduce the time you have. I should also point out that the ship will run out of electrical power before then, which will result in both the life support and environmental systems shutting down.”
Images of myself dying from starvation, suffocation, or dehydration pass through my mind and send a shiver up my spine. My head suddenly starts to hu
rt from the stress of the situation, and I take another drink of the scotch. “So, we’ll run out of oxygen in two weeks, but I’ll run out of electricity before then, and the life support systems will shut off. But none of that matters because I’ll run out of food and starve in a few days. Is that correct, SAI?”
There’s a pause before the ship answers. “Well, I’d like to point out that humans have been known to survive without food for up to sixty days before dying. So, your death will most likely come from suffocation when the ship runs out of electricity and the environmental system shuts off.”