A Complicated Love Story Set in Space

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “Neither do I.”

  Of course Jenny chose that moment to walk in. I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t, but I knew what I was hoping would happen. I knew what I’d dreamed about from the first time I saw DJ’s face. That had been déjà vu as well. Like meeting an old friend from a past life.

  “Don’t let me bother you,” she said. “I was just looking for my game.” Jenny grabbed the device from the table and turned to go.

  “Wait,” DJ said. “Where’d you get that?” The way DJ asked the question got me thinking.

  “One of the science labs.” Jenny was idly twisting the pieces.

  “You think that’s what’s causing this?” I asked.

  DJ shrugged, but he wore a determined expression. “Tell me exactly where you found it and when,” he said to Jenny.

  Jenny rolled her eyes and said, “I found it in the lab on deck three. The one near where we found the crew’s storage containers. It was in the back of a drawer just sitting there. It looked interesting, so I grabbed it. I forgot it was in my bag until I was sitting here. The pieces looked like they moved, so I twisted them. That’s when faces lit up. Then Noa’s alarm started going off for his soufflé.” She scowled in my direction. “Which I never got to try, by the way.”

  “The day always starts with that timer going off,” I said. “It can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

  DJ turned his attention to Jenny. “Have you ever solved it?”

  Jenny shook her head. “I think I’m supposed to make all the lights the same color, but I’m not sure.”

  “It’s worth a try,” I said. “Do you think you can do it?”

  “Only one way to know.” DJ held out his hand. “May I?”

  Jenny passed him the puzzle. “Have fun.”

  DJ turned it around and around, examining it from every angle, before he tried manipulating the faces. Finally, he began to rotate and turn them. He muttered and mumbled to himself while he worked, and I’d never seen him concentrate so hard on anything.

  After twenty minutes, Jenny got bored and ransacked the kitchen for Nutreesh, leaving me alone with DJ. “Maybe this—”

  “I’ve almost got it,” he said. “Are you sure you want me to finish?”

  Did I want him to? What if it worked? Everything that had happened would stick. I would be free of this loop, finally able to move forward, but I would have to face the consequences of what I’d told DJ in the garden during our date. I couldn’t pretend it had never happened. It wouldn’t be fair to him, and it wouldn’t be fair to me.

  “Do it,” I said.

  DJ made two more turns. The faces of every triangle lit up cobalt blue. The device let out a chime like a meditation bell and then went totally dark.

  “That’s it?” DJ asked. “Did it work?”

  I didn’t know, but I felt like something was different. I was different. DJ took my hand when I held it out to him. “Let’s go finish our date,” I said. “We’ll know if it worked soon enough.”

  ALIENS ATTACK!

  ONE

  I COULD FEEL DJ BREATHING. My head rested on his stomach as he slowly inhaled and exhaled—in and out—and I was sure there was nothing more relaxing in the entire universe than this. I was reading one of the Murder Your Darlings spin-off novels, More Murder with the Darlings: Knock, Knock. Who’s Dead?, in the garden while DJ napped. Tried to nap.

  “I can’t believe how bad this book is!”

  “Then why are you reading it?” DJ asked.

  “What else am I going to do?”

  “I can think of a few things.” There was a playful, suggestive quality to DJ’s voice that made me grin because I knew that if I looked at him, he would be doing the same.

  The past couple of weeks had been mostly boring. Nothing had exploded; none of us had become trapped in temporal anomalies; no strangers had appeared on the ship and then died. DJ, Jenny, and I spent a couple of hours each day running simulations so that we could become comfortable operating the ship as a team, and we usually ate breakfast and dinner together. When Jenny left to do whatever it was she did when she wasn’t with us, DJ and I took advantage of the time we had to be alone. We went on dates in Bell’s Cove; we watched movies in the rec room; we relaxed in the garden and talked until Jenny found us and told us it was morning. We were getting to know each other, and I was enjoying every second.

  The time I’d spent trapped reliving the same day had begun to blur together in my memories. My mom had told me once that the reason doctors give kids lollipops at the end of a visit is because what we remember of an experience is usually an average of the entire thing, with greater weight given to the end. It’s the same reason why a woman will swear during childbirth to never again go through the pain and agony of it but will, after holding the baby and seeing its beautiful face, often convince herself that the suffering she’d endured hadn’t been that bad.

  I sometimes woke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, from a nightmare where I was trapped in a single minute of time, but despite my fears, the days did go on. Morning became night, night became day. Time passed, even if it sometimes felt like it didn’t.

  “What’s your favorite color?” DJ asked. “I just realized we’ve been on Qriosity for a few months and I don’t know what your favorite color is.”

  “Do I have to pick just one?”

  DJ’s belly shook. “I’m not sure you’d be you if you did.”

  “Are you insinuating that I’m difficult?”

  “Pick a color, Noa.”

  I huffed playfully. “Fine. A tree-lined street on the first day that feels like spring has finally arrived.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” DJ said.

  “Say what?”

  “Florida,” he said. “Remember? Land of perpetual summer?”

  It was strange to me that there were places that didn’t know the joy of emerging from hibernation at the end of winter and watching the world come to life. Places that never experienced the shift from summer to fall when the world curled in on itself to sleep during the dark months of cold and rain. Places like Qriosity, where nothing ever changed.

  “I’m guessing your favorite color is green,” DJ added.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But it’s more than a color. It’s the smell of life waking up and stretching its limbs, it’s the feeling of turning a corner, a light at the end of the tunnel that’s suddenly close enough to touch.”

  “Do you actually understand the concept of colors, Noa?” DJ was laughing when he said it.

  “I’ll show you colors.” My book forgotten, I attacked DJ with a flurry of tickles that had him squealing for me to stop. Tears ran down his cheeks, and snot dribbled out of his nose. It wasn’t pretty, but I refused to relent. And then DJ went on the offensive, and we were rolling in the grass, each one trying to gain the upper hand. DJ had the advantage of size and strength, but I was a slippery eel with fast hands.

  DJ rolled on top of me and was leaning over me. His eyes were a blue break in the clouds, his cheeks the warm promise of sunrise.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I whispered back.

  DJ plucked grass from my hair and used it to tickle my nose. “You know what my favorite color is?”

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  “You.”

  “And I’m the one who doesn’t understand the concept of color?” I tried to make a joke, but my voice was strained.

  “You’re my favorite color, Noa. And my favorite sound. You’re my favorite part of the day, my favorite flavor, and my favorite program.” DJ leaned in closer.

  “DJ, I—”

  Immediately, DJ reversed course. The reassuring weight of him on top of my chest lessened as he rolled off me. I hadn’t meant for him to go. I hadn’t meant to push him away. I wished I could explain it to him. I was trapped in that liminal place where everything I did with DJ was both a painful reminder of the past I was trying to move beyond and a promi
se of the future I could have if I were only bold enough to accept that I deserved it.

  I wanted to tell DJ that the last couple of weeks had been my favorite everything, and that I had him to thank for it. That I was still scared of taking the next step, whatever that might be, but weren’t we all afraid of moving forward? Weren’t we on the roller coaster, poised at the apex of the drop together? I might not have been holding my hands in the air—I might have been white-knuckling the safety bar and trying not to vomit—but I was still on the ride, ready for the plunge.

  I wanted to pull DJ back toward me, but I hesitated and he noticed.

  DJ stood and brushed the grass off his pants. He held out his hand to help me up. “Come on. We were supposed to meet Jenny fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Can’t we skip it?”

  “Probably better if we don’t,” he said. “I’d spend every second with you if I could, but we can’t exclude her. It’s not fair.”

  “I guess you’re right.” I squeezed his hand, trying to use the contact to tell him that I didn’t want to go. That I didn’t want this moment to end. To tell him what I had failed to say with words.

  I didn’t know what was happening between me and DJ, but I didn’t want to screw it up, and I was terrified I was going to.

  TWO

  JENNY WAS ARGUING WITH JENNY Perez when DJ and I strolled into the galley.

  “But why are the cameras malfunctioning?” Jenny asked, drawing out the “why” like she was talking to a child. “You freely admit that you’re recording everything that happens on Qriosity, which I still contend is deeply creepy, yet you never have recordings of the times or locations that I need.”

  I had never seen the hologram Jenny Perez look annoyed before, but she was currently doing a pretty fair imitation. “Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for you. But you’re a superb junior detective, so I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  “I’m not a junior—”

  DJ cleared his throat, causing both Jennys to look our way.

  “Finally,” Jenny said. “You’re late.”

  “We lost track of time,” I said.

  Jenny Perez’s smile returned. “You seem to have organic matter in your hair.”

  Jenny busted out laughing. DJ quickly said, “It’s grass.”

  I rolled my eyes and headed to the kitchen. “Leave it to the hologram to put it in the most ambiguously suggestive way.” While Jenny and the hologram continued to argue, I looked around for something to snack on. Wrestling with DJ had made me hungry. “Hey,” I called. “Did one of you eat the last of the lemon cake I made yesterday?”

  “I’m a hologram,” Jenny Perez said. “I lack the tangibility to consume actual food.”

  “No one asked you.”

  DJ called, “I had a slice last night, but there was still plenty left.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Jenny said. “And that’s one of the things I was trying to get this useless hologram to show me.”

  Disappointed, I wandered back to the table. “Someone had to have eaten it.”

  “Exactly.” Jenny motioned for us to sit. “I think there’s another stowaway hiding on Qriosity.”

  “That’s what this is about?” I asked. “We’ve been over this ship multiple times—”

  Jenny raised her eyebrow sharply. “Talk less, listen more.”

  “My junior detective has collected some compelling evidence.”

  “I don’t need your help,” Jenny said to the hologram.

  I was daydreaming about returning to the garden to roll around in organic matter with the boy I had conflicted feelings about, when he said, “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve got.”

  Jenny closed her eyes, inhaled, held the breath, and then exhaled and opened her eyes again. It was very dramatic. “It started with the blood on my jacket. The one I was wearing the day this nightmare adventure began. I wasn’t injured, so I was fairly certain the blood wasn’t mine, but I suspected that it might belong to whoever had locked me in the toilet.” Jenny looked from me to DJ knowingly.

  “Wait? You thought it belonged to one of us?” I said.

  “Initially,” Jenny said. “But I gathered DNA from each of you and asked the computer—”

  “That’s me!” Jenny Perez said.

  “—to compare the samples.”

  DJ grimaced. “DNA samples?”

  “Hair,” Jenny said. “You both shed like dogs.”

  I wanted to protest, but Jenny wasn’t wrong. My mom had complained about it too. “You said ‘initially,’ ” I said. “Does that mean we weren’t a match?”

  Jenny nodded. “Correct.”

  “Were you able to test Kayla’s DNA?” DJ asked.

  “Not a match either.” Jenny waved her hands around, flustered by our questions. “Which means someone else put me in the toilet.”

  Jenny had told me she was investigating, but I’d assumed it would be like the time I decided I was going to learn French. I downloaded a language program, signed up for a free online class, spent a couple of hours Googling pictures of handsome French boys, baked a dozen croissants, and then forgot about it and moved on.

  “You could’ve gotten that blood on you before you boarded the ship,” DJ said.

  “Possibly, but that’s not my only evidence.” Jenny took another deep breath. “Someone wrote Noa the note in his hud for him to see when he first woke up in space, and they left you instructions as well, didn’t they, DJ?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “However, that doesn’t prove someone else is on the ship. Whoever abducted us could have arranged the notes before leaving.” Jenny rolled on confidently, and I wondered if there was a room where she’d taped our pictures to the wall and used bits of string to connect the various clues.

  “Kayla proved that it was possible for someone to live on Qriosity without us knowing. We never saw her, and there’s conveniently no video of her.”

  “How can that be?” I asked.

  Jenny looked pointedly at Jenny Perez. “That’s what I was trying to find out.”

  “Sorry about it!”

  “I don’t think you are,” Jenny said.

  Everything Jenny had laid out was odd, but odd on Qriosity was pretty much the norm. I didn’t see how she thought there was still someone hiding on the ship. “How do you know Kayla wasn’t the one who locked you in the toilet?”

  Jenny glared at the hologram one last time. “Like I said, the blood wasn’t a match, but I also don’t think she ever left that room.”

  “She had to use the bathroom sometime,” DJ said.

  “Yes. She did.” Jenny waved her hand in the air, and Jenny Perez projected a three-dimensional image of Kayla’s quarters onto the table. “While you boys were picnicking, I searched that room one square millimeter at a time. Know what I found?”

  I glanced at DJ. “I’m really hoping it wasn’t gallon jugs of urine.”

  DJ snorted, earning me Jenny’s ire.

  “Show them the recording,” Jenny said.

  The image wasn’t an image at all. It was video. And it began to play. On the recording, Jenny walked into the room and began crawling around on the floor, looking beneath the bed, pulling the furniture away from the walls. We watched as she found a Nutreesh bar under Kayla’s pillow and began to eat it.

  “You can skip ahead,” Jenny said.

  The video flashed forward, and suddenly Jenny was standing in front of the wall directly opposite the door with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the side. After a few moments, she pressed her palm to the wall, and a door appeared that absolutely had not been there before. Jenny pushed it open and stepped inside. The recording ended there.

  “Was that—”

  “A bathroom, Noa,” she said. “Complete with a shower and everything. It’s the only private bathroom on Qriosity that we’ve found.”

  “Restrooms and showers are no-no zones for surveillance,” Jenny Perez said.

  “That’s reassu
ring,” I muttered.

  DJ’s mouth was hanging open. “A secret room with its own secret bathroom?”

  “I know,” Jenny said. “I’m totally blowing your mind right now.”

  “A little.”

  “But how does this prove there’s someone else on the ship?” I asked. “The only thing this proves is that Kayla was trapped in that tiny space until she died.” Thinking about her locked in there alone made me feel awful for the complaining I’d done. At least I’d had the whole ship to mope around in.

  Jenny dismissed the recording. “That’s where the mystery of the vanishing food comes in.”

  “Vanishing food?” DJ asked. “I didn’t realize food was disappearing.”

  Jenny nodded. “There’s the lemon cake that I swear I didn’t eat the last of.”

  “The chocolate croissants,” I said. “I accused Jenny of eating them during the repeating day from hell. When she said it wasn’t her, I assumed someone was waking up in the middle of the night with the munchies.”

  “Wasn’t me,” DJ said. “At least, I don’t think it was me.”

  “I don’t believe it was any of us.” Jenny waited until we refocused our attention on her before continuing. “Food only seemed to go missing when it was left out in the open, so I placed some treats in random locations before I went to bed. In the morning they were gone. But it still could have been one of you, so I repeated the experiment with Nutreesh because—”

  “I would eat my own toenails before eating Nutreesh,” I said.

  “Exactly. And in the morning, they were also gone.”

  DJ turned to Jenny Perez. “How about video of that? Did you see who took the Nutreesh?”

  “Unfortunately, there appears to have been a malfunction in Qriosity’s monitoring system during the requested period. Sorry about it!”

  Jenny gave the hologram the finger. “See? I tried to go back to different instances where food went missing, and there was a malfunction every damn time.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Neither, it appeared, did DJ or Jenny. It was a lot to wrap my mind around, and the truth was that DJ was the only mystery I was interested in unraveling. We could search the ship again, but we’d done that multiple times and hadn’t found anything.