A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Then the girl in medical is probably the one who locked this door. Which means she’s the only one who can unlock it.”

  “You really are turning into a good detective,” I said. “I’ve watched every episode of that stupid show, and I wouldn’t have thought to do what you did.”

  Jenny managed to look both insulted and flattered at the same time. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Noa, but you’re not very observant.”

  She wasn’t the first person to tell me that, and she wasn’t wrong. Becca used to say that I couldn’t find a clue with a map, a compass, and GPS.

  “But, while I definitely want to know where this door came from, what’s behind it, and who the girl in medical is,” Jenny said, “the questions I most want the answers to are: Did somebody kill her? And, if so, who?”

  FOUR

  I SAT IN MEDICAL WITH Kayla’s body while Jenny showed DJ what she had discovered. I didn’t want to be alone with the person who might have been murdered, but DJ thought someone should stay with her in case she woke up. It was sound logic that I couldn’t argue with.

  Not much had changed since I’d left. Kayla remained still; her eyes were closed. But her skin looked a little warmer than it had before. If I hadn’t known she’d been dead a couple of hours earlier, I would have guessed she was sleeping.

  There were more questions than I knew what to do with swirling about in my mind, but there was one that I kept returning to.

  “MediQwik? What can you tell me about death?”

  “Death occurs at the cessation of the body’s biological functions.”

  “I was dead, right?”

  “Correct.

  “But you revived me the same way you’re attempting to revive the patient on the table now.”

  The lights in the room dimmed for a moment before MediQwik said, “The method by which your body’s biological functions were restored is different from the methods currently being employed due to the unique nature of your injuries.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not… I just meant that we were both dead and you revived us.”

  “The current patient has not yet been revived.”

  “Right, but I was,” I said, trying not to get annoyed. “I was dead and then I wasn’t.”

  “Correct.”

  I took a deep breath before asking my next question, not sure what I wanted the answer to be. “Where did I go when I died?”

  This time when the lights dimmed, they remained so for nearly sixty seconds, and I thought I might have broken the computer. Eventually, they returned to normal. “According to available data, your biological processes ceased to function at a location outside Qriosity. Your destination, extrapolated from your trajectory, was airlock three on deck two.”

  I laughed at the answer because it was technically correct but also ridiculous. “Okay,” I said, trying again. “Do you know what consciousness is?”

  “Consciousness is a being’s state of awareness of its own existence.”

  I wasn’t sure how accurate the definition was, but it sounded good enough. “What happened to my consciousness when my biological processes ceased? What happened to me when I died?”

  “MediQwik is a Portable Medical Diagnostician and Care Appliance, not a philosopher, and is not designed to dispense psychological care.”

  It had been silly of me to expect a computer to know what happened to me when I died. I’d been able to put the experience out of my mind until this stranger had had the bad luck to show up dead. Now it was the only thing I could think about.

  Maybe we were no different from machines. When my body shut down, I simply ceased to be until MediQwik turned me on again. The thought of being dead wasn’t as terrifying as the thought that I was little more than an accidental blip in the history of the universe. When my body was beyond repair, the soul of who I was would simply stop existing. I had come from nowhere, and I would return to that abyss when I died.

  I stood over the body on the table. “Are you in there? Can you hear me? Of course you can’t. You’re still dead. Mostly dead, I guess. I don’t even know anymore. This is stupid.”

  I screamed when Kayla’s eyes opened. She sat up and grabbed me by the front of my shirt. She was surprisingly strong. “You’re supposed to be dead. You should’ve died.”

  I shoved her hand away and stumbled back. “Who are you?” I asked. “Who tried to kill you?”

  Her eyes were wild. I wasn’t sure she had heard me. She said, “They’re watching you,” and then she collapsed.

  FIVE

  THE LIGHTS IN MEDICAL FLIPPED to red and began to flash.

  “Please step away from the patient in Bed A. MediQwik is attempting emergency lifesaving measures. MediQwik, health redefined.”

  Despite the warning, I moved toward Kayla. Her back arched. She convulsed. Rails rose from the side of the bed to prevent her from falling off. Her back arched again.

  “What did you say? Who’s watching us? Why am I supposed to be dead?” My voice cracked.

  She didn’t answer. Kayla’s eyes were open, pointed at the ceiling but looking at nothing.

  The red lights faded and the blue lights returned.

  “MediQwik is sorry to inform you that revival of the patient in Bed A has failed.”

  “What does that mean? You have to wake her up! I need to know what she was trying to tell me!”

  “The patient has expired. Revival efforts have ceased. We are sorry for your loss. MediQwik, health redefined. MediQwik is a trademark of Prestwich Enterprises, a subsidiary of Gleeson Foods.” The cuff beeped and popped open on Kayla’s arm.

  I tried to push the cuff closed again, but it wouldn’t lock. “Bring her back!”

  I needed DJ. He’d know what to do. I tore out of the room, calling DJ’s name as I ran. “DJ!”

  Finally, DJ answered. He and Jenny were outside the cargo bay. I was out of breath.

  “Noa? What’s wrong? What’s happening? Is she awake?”

  “Spoke,” I said. It was all I could get out. I started coughing because I couldn’t breathe.

  “What the hell is going on?” Jenny asked.

  “Give him a second,” DJ said.

  I bent over and rested my hands on my knees. When I was able to talk, I said, “She’s dead. But she sat up and said I was supposed to be dead and that they were watching us.”

  “Who’s watching us?” Jenny asked.

  “Can MediQwik bring her back?”

  I shook my head at DJ and said to Jenny, “I don’t know. She died again as soon as she said it, and MediQwik said it couldn’t revive her.” I grabbed DJ’s wrist. “Come on. We have to go.”

  “Go where?” DJ asked.

  “You can fix it. You have to. I have to know what she was trying to tell me.”

  DJ pulled his hand back. “Wait, Noa. If MediQwik says she’s dead, I can’t change its mind.”

  Why was he arguing with me? I wanted to punch him until he quit talking and did what I told him to. “I don’t know, but can’t you just try?”

  DJ looked to Jenny, who shrugged. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go. But I’m not promising anything.”

  “Fine. Whatever. Just hurry.” I walked as quickly as I could back to medical without running, annoyed that DJ and Jenny were only barely keeping up. I kept replaying what Kayla had said. The fear in her eyes. I didn’t know what she’d meant, though, and I needed to.

  I knew something was wrong when I saw the door open to medical. I hadn’t left it open. I rushed ahead to get inside. Bed A was empty. Nothing remained to prove that Kayla had ever been there.

  “Noa?” DJ said, crowding into the room. “Where is she?”

  “She was here!” I said. “And she was dead!”

  DJ’s eyes widened slightly. “You said she woke up. Was she sick? Did she have any mucus coming out of her?”

  “What?” I asked. “No! I told you, she said I should have died and that they were watching us!”

  “Most dead
bodies don’t get up and walk away,” Jenny said. She was still outside in the corridor and seemed reluctant to enter. “MediQwik? What happened to the patient you were trying to revive?”

  “We have no record of any such patient.” MediQwik’s neutral voice sounded tinny to me. Like I was hearing it through a tunnel.

  “She was right here!” I yelled.

  The lights dimmed and then MediQwik said, “The last patient we treated was suffering from acid reflux.”

  DJ raised his hand. “That was me. It was the night you made mac and cheese and I had four helpings.”

  “I didn’t imagine her!” I looked to DJ and then Jenny, but neither seemed to know what to do. “You both helped me carry her here.”

  “No one’s doubting you, Noa,” DJ said. “But maybe MediQwik did revive her and she’s lost somewhere and confused. We should look for her.”

  “Agreed,” Jenny said. “I don’t want a stranger wandering around my ship.”

  “Fine,” I said, “but this time we are not splitting up.” I pointed at Jenny. “Please don’t argue with me on this.”

  Jenny held up her hands. “There’s either a stranger, a zombie, or a killer somewhere on Qriosity. Possibly all three. I am totally okay with sticking together.”

  We started on the top deck and methodically searched the ship, going into every room, checking every service tunnel, opening every hatch. Qriosity had seemed so big in the beginning, but I’d spent enough time in it that I didn’t think there was anywhere for someone to hide where we wouldn’t find them. Someone had, though, and that was scary.

  I was about to suggest we try Ops, see if there was a way to scan the ship for the missing girl, when Jenny, who was a little farther down the corridor, shouted, “It’s open! The room is open!”

  I pushed past DJ and ran to where Jenny was standing in front of the room that had been locked earlier. Sure enough, the door stood wide open.

  “Hello?” I peeked my head in, and there she was. The girl, Kayla, was lying on a narrow bed, her knees bent to her chest, so obviously dead that anyone could have seen it. Her eyes were glassy and her skin was chalky. “She’s here,” I said, quietly like I was scared to wake her. “She’s in here.”

  SIX

  I DON’T KNOW IF HER name was actually Kayla. If I had died the moment I woke up and DJ and Jenny had found my body, they might have thought my name was Nico. But without our having another name to call her by, Kayla stuck.

  We moved Kayla’s body back to the medical suite and locked the door this time to make sure that she couldn’t get out. Then we returned to Kayla’s room to see what we could discover about her.

  “She liked Nutreesh almost as much as you do,” DJ said to Jenny.

  “Funny,” Jenny said. Seemingly to spite DJ, she whipped a bar out of her pocket and unwrapped it, eating noisily.

  Kayla’s room was twice the size of my quarters, but it still felt small. Nutreesh wrappers littered the floor. They filled and overflowed the trash can.

  “You don’t think she was trapped in here the entire time?” Jenny asked.

  “Couldn’t have been,” I said. When DJ and Jenny both turned to look at me, I added, “You can’t live on Nutreesh. She would’ve needed water, too. And she had to go to the bathroom sometime.”

  Jenny shivered. “That means this strange girl was wandering around Qriosity, living here with us, and we didn’t know it.”

  “Maybe we’re the interlopers,” DJ said. “We don’t know which of us was here first, so to her we might’ve been the strangers living on her ship.”

  “How many other people are living on this ship that we don’t know about?” I asked. DJ looked away, and Jenny was quietly going through Kayla’s belongings. Neither had an answer.

  It was morbid searching a dead person’s room to try to get to know them, but we didn’t have much choice. I kept hoping to find a journal where Kayla had written her innermost thoughts or the answer to every question I was carrying inside me. Who kidnapped us? What did they want with us? Why was I supposed to be dead?

  I found nothing like that, though. Her room was spartan. Some clothes, a projector and screen, an entire case of Nutreesh. I was ready to give up when Jenny pulled something out from under the bed.

  A sketchbook. Jenny set it on top of the mattress and opened it to the first page. Inside were watercolor paintings of the most beautiful landscapes that I had ever seen. Landscapes that could not have existed on Earth. A field of violet trees with a blue sun overhead. An ocean of starry night. Mountains cloaked by velvet orange clouds that rained fire.

  “Good imagination,” DJ said. “I wish I could paint like that.”

  “How do you know these aren’t places she actually visited?” I asked.

  DJ tried to speak but stumbled over his words until he finally spit out, “I guess I don’t.”

  “They were special to her,” Jenny said. “She wouldn’t have hidden them otherwise.”

  “Hidden them from who?” I turned to the last page. It was the first and only painting that wasn’t a landscape. Staring back at us was the unmistakable image of Jenny Perez. “What do you think it means?”

  “We should ask her,” Jenny said. I wasn’t sure it was the greatest idea, but Jenny was already saying, “Hologram! Get out here. We’ve got a few questions for you.”

  Seeing the hologram’s photons assemble from nothing hadn’t yet grown so commonplace that it didn’t fill me with awe. But the wonder always vanished as soon as Jenny Perez began to speak.

  “Hi! I’m your host, Jenny Perez, whom you probably don’t remember from a show that no one watched because it was awful and so am I. Sorry about it!”

  DJ busted out laughing, and Jenny said, “That’s a scarily accurate impression, Noa.”

  “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Jenny Perez said.

  “In this case,” I said, “it’s not.” I nodded at Jenny. “This was your idea.”

  Jenny cleared her throat. “Did you know this room existed?”

  “Of course, silly. This room was created exactly three hours and nine minutes ago.”

  “Created?” I asked. “How could—”

  Jenny held up a finger to silence me. “And were you aware there was someone other than the three of us living aboard Qriosity?”

  Jenny Perez cocked her head to the side. “There is? I detect no human beings other than my junior detective and her two perky sidekicks.”

  “Sidekick?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about the hologram viewing me as Jenny’s sidekick, but it also wasn’t the time to argue.

  DJ said, “How’s it possible that there’s been someone living on this ship since we woke up and you didn’t know about it?”

  “It’s not,” Jenny Perez said. “Therefore you must be mistaken.”

  “We’ve got a dead body in medical that says we’re not,” Jenny said.

  Something had been nagging me, and it finally clicked into place. “She wasn’t part of the crew.” The others, including Jenny Perez, turned to look at me. “She couldn’t have been. There was no storage container with her name on it.”

  Understanding dawned on DJ’s face. “Which means she was like us.”

  “Not exactly like us,” Jenny said. “She was hiding here. She could have come out and talked to us at any time, but she didn’t.”

  “I’m more concerned about how she was able to hide on the ship without the super detective over there knowing,” I said. “How many more people are secretly living on Qriosity that we don’t know about? Is one of them a murderer?”

  “We don’t know for sure she was murdered,” DJ said. “We won’t until MediQwik completes its autopsy.”

  Jenny Perez, who’d been standing quietly with her trademark smile plastered on her face said, “MediQwik has finished the autopsy of the unknown deceased human in the medical bay. Would you like the results?”

  “Yes!” Jenny said

  “MediQwik has determined that the cause of d
eath for the unknown deceased human was heart failure due to a ventricular septal defect, a common congenital heart defect.”

  “So she wasn’t murdered?” I asked.

  Jenny Perez said, “MediQwik suggests the probability that death was caused by factors other than the heart defect is less than one percent. Looks like there’s no case here, junior detectives. Sorry about it!”

  “I guess we should be glad there’s not a killer on board,” DJ said, but he wasn’t smiling. None of us were.

  SEVEN

  WE STOOD OUTSIDE THE INNER airlock door. Kayla’s body, wrapped in a shroud, lay inside the airlock, which was visible to us via a screen on the wall. Nothing in Kayla’s room had indicated what religion, if any, she followed, so we were left to muddle through. I hoped we did right by her.

  “Anyone want to say anything?” DJ asked. He’d been hovering near me all afternoon like he wanted to be nearby in case I needed him, but the closer he got, the farther away I wanted him to go.

  “Sorry you died,” Jenny said.

  I just shook my head. I wasn’t going to pretend I knew her. I wasn’t going to pretend I’d miss her. I wished she wasn’t dead, but even my reasons for that were selfish. I only wanted to know what she’d been trying to tell me. I wasn’t sure if that made me a bad person, but I certainly didn’t like myself much right then.

  DJ clasped his hands in front of him. “I’m real sorry you felt like you had to hide from us, and I wish you hadn’t died alone. Hopefully, you’ll find peace now.” DJ pressed the button on the touchscreen that opened the outer airlock door. Kayla’s body was hurled into space, frozen forever.

  * * *

  I was sitting in Ops, in front of the viewport, when DJ found me later. I hadn’t exactly been avoiding him and Jenny, but I hadn’t wanted to see them either. DJ sat beside me, and I could feel the warmth of him. I scooted away.

  “Why do you do that?” DJ asked.

  “Do what?”

  DJ pursed his lips and eyed the space between us I’d created. “Move when I get near you, flinch or pull back when I touch you?”