Gliese 581

by Christine D. Shuck

Daniel was impressed with the entire setup. He could barely hear the others, despite having two of his group in nearby coffins, Deeks was below him in #047 and Jack Dunn was right next door in #051. He was pretty damn sure he wasn’t the only one opening and closing doors and pushing buttons, yet he heard little from the other units.

  Kit continued, “And as an added note, you will find that your coffin, with a bit of maneuvering, can hold two individuals for an, ahem, limited amount of time. After a few hours, it can become a bit claustrophobic.”

  Medry grinned and he could hear a couple of others laugh. He looked around him, yep, it would be tight, but getting someone, namely a slim, friendly woman like Sam Sydan into the coffin with him was possible.

  “Also, you will find that the coffins are well insulated and you should not have any problems with sound transmitting through to your neighbors.”

  This earned no small amount of laughter. It seemed that the designers of Calypso had thought of everything, including sex.

  Kit began walking from one end of the hallway to the other, shutting the doors as she went, closing each of the coffin occupants inside. A few seconds later she linked into NARA again via the comm link on her ship suit.

  Her voice came through a speaker set in the ceiling of Medry’s coffin.

  “I have set the comm link with NARA to Living Quarters and this affects all coffin inhabitants. The captain and other key crew members have the ability to send out global, ship-wide announcements to all crew. You each have the ability to call another crew member anywhere in the ship simply by dialing their individual code using the keypad next to the speaker.”

  She continued to point out features of the individual coffins, including a privacy feature that darkened the currently clear doors to an opaque black. As each member of the group played with the privacy feature, toeing the privacy on, soft lights appeared with dimmer pads set into the wall. Daniel was amazed at how comfortable the bed pad and built-in pillow was. It made sense. No one would be okay with a thin, hard mattress. Not with a trip of 121 trillion miles ahead of them. It enveloped and supported his body perfectly.

  “We don’t have time for a nap now. If everyone could please join me back in the hallway we will proceed to the communal living areas you will all be sharing.”

  The tour took them through the communal bathrooms, which were shared spaces with individual shower stalls, toilets and tiny lockers lining one wall. The lockers were again assigned to each individual according to thumbprint and number. As with the missing linens, there were no towels in the showers. Forced air blowers at the entrance and exit to each stall, rather similar in design to the blowers at the end of a car wash, forced the drops of water off and down a collection tube to be filtered and re-used. The same was true for the toilets, which utilized an effective filtration system, moving the solid waste through a processing unit that eventually ended up as nutrients for the ‘Ponics Deck. The liquid wastes from the toilets and the showers were also processed through advanced systems that cleaned, clarified, and distilled it and eventually sent it back into the water supply.

  The entries to the showers were locked and accessible only by the now-familiar thumbprint and keypad combination.

  “Full immersion showers are only allowed every third day,” Kit warned them, “And they are limited to four minutes. The auto-dispensers control the amount of cleansers used as these waters are returned, filtered and used in our hydroponics, then filtered again and put back through our own drinking water system. This will ensure proper balance in Calypso’s closed system.”

  Others nodded, for extended space travel, for any long-term travel at all, one had to be mindful of the limited resources. And water certainly qualified as a limited resource in deep space.

  There was a handful of rooms with tables, chairs, view screens and electronic whiteboards. Kit explained that these rooms had been set aside for multiple purposes, “Learning clubs, that focus on what we need to study to be ready for life on Zarmina’s World,” Kit gestured to a group already occupying one room, relaxing in the chairs as they watched vid clips of a popular comedian, “or something as simple as a social group with an interest in standup comedy.”

  She led them past other empty rooms, “The engineers who worked on Calypso realized that we will be on this ship far longer than any other mission. We need to be able to work together and live together, and with an average of twenty-five to fifty individuals awake and active during the five-year voyage, we have a vast array of talents and interests. The planners have tried to anticipate everything they possibly could.”

  At the end of the corridor was the Mess Hall which they had assembled in originally. It was the largest space any of them had seen to date. Although they had seen the schematics, as well as toured the Earth-side replicas, it was different seeing it in action.

  Medry could see from the outlines on the floor that sections would rise up according to need, tables, chairs, and at the moment, a vast open palette to accommodate the groups being given the final tour and orientation before departure. According to what they had learned, the Mess Hall could fit every single citizen aboard Calypso. It might be a tight fit, but that meant the room was capable of holding the entire population, something they would only see in the last week of the voyage, if at all. The plan was to establish orbit, revive key personnel in stages, set up a base on the planet and then bring people down in groups, according to available resources and need. Some had already gone through the tour and been put into stasis in Cryo in anticipation for departure.

  “The Mess Hall doubles as a gathering place where the Captain will hold weekly crew meetings. Monthly meetings will be held on the fourth Friday of every month and everyone is required to attend regardless of shift.”

  Kit smiled, “The only excuse for missing one is if you are in Cryo or sick as a dog in the Medical Bay.”

  Her lean form swished past Deeks, who appeared mesmerized, and Kit led the group out another door, “And speaking of Medical Bay, follow me, everyone!”

  Two days later, most of the occupants of Calypso were safely tucked away in their Cryo pods while the crew stood in the Mess Hall and watched Earth recede from view, a rapidly shrinking planet that quickly became nothing more than a small bright light in a sea of stars.

  It would take nearly three months to reach the outer edge of the solar system, a safe distance in which to engage the Alcubierre-Mesner warp drive that would take their ship far away from humanity’s first home. They were finally on their way.

  Schism

  “A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment.” – Carl Sagan

  Date: 04.14.2103

  Calypso Colony Ship

  At first, the meetings had been daily. Then thrice weekly. Then weekly. And now, Nathan thought for a moment, it had been ten days since his last meeting with Dr. Carter. Jacob, call him Jacob.

  “How are things, Nathan?”

  Jacob Carter appeared older than his forty plus years. The last few months had aged him. Perhaps it was the challenge of keeping the crew in a good head space, not an easy job with everything that had happened.

  “Fine.”

  “Define fine.”

  Today would be a challenge. But Nathan was up to it, just this one more session and, if things went well, he could be free of the mandatory meetings.

  Nothing to see here. Nothing at all. The world ends, everybody dies, and really Doc, it’s all fine around here. Nathan Zradce had never held much stock with psychotherapy.

  Nathan smiled, a small one, because otherwise he would have some dumb shit-eating grin on his face that would scream liar! And then he would be here for another twelve weeks shooting the shit with a guy who wanted to peer inside his brain.

  “Really, I’m doing okay. No nightmares, nothing.”

  “That’s right. You had a dream about your birth
mother. You mentioned it at the end of our session so we didn’t get a chance to get into detail about that.”

  Jacob glanced down at his notes, missing a myriad of conflicting expressions that flickered across Nathan’s face before disappearing once again behind a mask of casual indifference. Why the hell did I have to go and mention a nightmare? Now Carter will never let it go!

  Jacob continued, “So, you mentioned that you were adopted at a young age? My records don’t even show it. How young were you?”

  Nathaniel pretended to think a moment, “Huh, let me see. I dunno, maybe eight or so?”

  “Eight years?”

  “Uh...yeah, I guess, somewhere around there.”

  Jacob scribbled a note on his computer tablet. It was rare to see someone actually use one of the handwriting programs on a tablet. Most found it easier to either transcribe notes using sub-vocal intonation or through a basic keyboard program that recorded the strokes you made directly on the interface. Jacob Carter was using an actual program that would read his loopy, unique handwriting and translate it into recorded notes. Few even knew the art of cursive writing it was that rare.

  “That’s not particularly young, Nathan. What are your memories of her?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  Spittle flying from her twisted deranged mouth. Hands clawing in the air as the officers wrestled her to the ground. “Immanuel! Immanuel! Give me my SON!”

  “None?”

  Nathan shrugged.

  “No. None at all. My foster parents are the first people I really remember. Hal, my foster dad and his wife, Mary. They adopted me, but I wanted to keep my last name, so we just added theirs as a middle name. They were great folks.”

  Jacob scribbled with his stylus a little more, then stopped and frowned at Nathan.

  “I guess I’m still stuck on you not having any memories of your mother at the age of eight years. Memories are typically formed beginning at around age three. We don’t tend to remember much before that time, but we certainly do remember important figures, like parents, and by age eight, well.”

  His voice trailed off and he stared speculatively at Nathan. “How did she pass?”

  Bundled into a straitjacket, fighting, clawing, even after they injected her with the strong anti-psychotics. Screaming his brother’s name from inside of the ambulance.

  “Was it sudden? Or after a long illness?” Jacob persisted.

  Nathan felt the pressure building in his head. Right at the temples, those gateways to the psyche, the pain was setting in.

  “Immanuel! You let me GO!”

  “She had a mental breakdown, at least, that’s what they told me.”

  “And you have no memories of her? And no siblings? What about your father?”

  The pain continued to build, spikes of agony in time with his heartbeat.

  “I have to protect him!”

  It took effort to shrug now that a headache was settling in to stay.

  “I’ll cut you.” Maniacal gleam in her eye. Standing in the filthy kitchen, a large, sharp knife in her hand. “You tell me where Immanuel is. TELL ME!”

  He had been so frightened of her when she was like this. She was unpredictable, dangerous.

  Nathan could see Jacob was still waiting. He was waiting for Nathan to answer.

  “No, no siblings, sorry to say.”

  “Where is Immanuel, you little snake. What have you done with him?” He remembered it all too clearly. It had been on a cold winter’s day, the wind howling, shaking the small house, and he hadn’t been able to escape outside as he did in the warmer months.

  “My dad was never in the picture. I guess he wasn’t too excited about having a kid. My mom never talked about him. I was lucky enough to get plenty of siblings when my foster parents took me in. We were a full melting pot, kids of all colors, all ages. Hal and Mary, they were great.”

  Her standing there, blocking his escape into his room, into his closet where the darkness was his friend and his mother left him be. “I need to find Immanuel. The end of times is nearly here. All of this,” she waved the knife around her in a vague circle, “ALL of this will blow away at the end of days. We will be reborn, comforted by the fires of the righteous. God will clothe us in soft raiments and we will eat manna. We will ascend and sit at the right hand of the Almighty. It has been written.”

  Jacob didn’t seem to know where to go with all of this information.

  “I guess I’m just a little surprised you didn’t mention this sooner.”

  “You, YOU are the devil’s spawn. I see the mark upon you, shining from your head like a curse. Where is Immanuel?” He had stepped back from her, desperate to hide and wait out the wave of crazy, but he could see there was nowhere to go, except maybe outside in the storm.

  Nathan shrugged again. His head screamed in protest.

  “I guess it just didn’t occur to me. I had a good life with Hal and Mary, they were great.”

  “Yes, you’ve mentioned that.”

  “I guess I don’t know what else to say. I had a great childhood. The typical bumps and scrapes, I shoplifted once as a teenager and they both really took it seriously, made me pay for the stolen merchandise and volunteer with some youth groups. They were just...”

  “Great.” Jacob supplied.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “And have you checked on their status since your revival from Cryo?”

  She was bleeding. Her hand clenched around the knife so hard that the metal sliced into her skin. “Tell me where he is, you disgusting little snake.” Why did she always blame him? She had always loved Immanuel best. For every step he took backward, she took one forward. The blood dripped onto the floor, making fat red blooms on the faded and stained carpet.

  Nathan stared down at his hands, slumped forward in his seat.

  “Hal died five years ago from cancer. And shortly after, Mary passed away too. It wasn’t even a year.”

  He twisted his lips into something he hoped resembled a sad look.

  “It was as if she died of a broken heart. There was a huge funeral. They had fostered more than seventy kids over the years.”

  “You are a lying little snake. Tell the truth. WHERE is Immanuel?”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Nathan. Any word on your foster siblings?”

  “Don’t say another word. I know you, and I know him, you are nothing, Immanuel is clean and good.”

  “Those kind of records are rather hard to look up. A lot of them are sealed – especially those who were in the foster care system. And as for the others, well, honestly, we just didn’t keep in contact after Hal and Mary died.”

  “You never called them Mom or Dad?”

  “Immanuel is everything you are not, Nathaniel. I’m going to find him, even if I have to come through you to do it.”

  “No,” Nathan managed to laugh, although the pain in his skull was debilitating, he had to get out of there, “They were pretty laid-back in that sense. Mary especially was a big proponent of not making kids call their new parents Mom and Dad. Something about that being a ‘special title, not to be pushed or misused.’”

  He shrugged, “Even in my case, where I was adopted and not just fostered, they left it up to me. I had been calling them by their first names for a full year, so changing would have felt...odd.”

  This seemed to satisfy Jacob. He scribbled away with his stylus for a moment more, and then looked up.

  “So...overall, how do you think you have handled the news from Earth?”

  The knife flashed towards him. Pain, like an electric shock, jolting into his body. Red, bubbling from the wound in his stomach. Screams. Who was screaming? Him? Her? He stumbled away from her, the room spinning, opened the door and stepped out in his bare feet. The cold wind slapping him in the face and blowing through his clothes as if he were naked. Walking to the next house, his steps slowing, erratic, ringing the doorbell. The woman who had answered had screamed, backing away from the open door.

&n
bsp; “It’s been tough. Really tough. I, uh, I wish my wife was here right now. But I’ll see her when we obtain orbit around the planet, so, yeah.”

  Police. Paramedics. Holding her, holding him. “It will be okay, son. We’ve got you.”

  Jacob Carter stared at him and Nathan struggled to keep a small smile on his face. One that hovered somewhere between “really sad” and “we will survive.”

  Mother. Struggling. Screaming. Fighting to get free. The knife was out of her hands, on the ground, covered in red.

  “I’m going to go ahead and inform the Captain that you are cleared from the mandatory counseling sessions. As I am sure you are aware, if you ever need me, I am happy to fit you into the schedule or talk to you, day or night.”

  A tall blond woman, turning away and speaking into her radio.

  “We’ve got an eight-year-old male, abdominal wound lower right quadrant, heavy bleeding. Blood pressure is ninety-two over thirty-eight and dropping, oh two sat, eighty percent on five liters of oh two with non-rebreather mask. I’m increasing the oh two to seven liters. Alert the PICU we are in route. ETA three minutes.”

  The gurney rising, moving, the dull gray clouds and icy wind abruptly cut off by the sterile ceiling of the ambulance. Sirens.

  “Stay with us, Nate. Do they call you Nate or Nathan?”

  “Thank you, Jacob. I will definitely reach out to you if I need to talk to someone.”

  He pasted a vaguely grateful, relieved look onto his face.

  Siren wailing. The vehicle shaking over a rough pothole. The tall blond woman holding his wrist.

  “Nate? Can you hear me? Hang in there, kiddo, we are close, just another minute.”

  Nathaniel made it through the rest of the pleasantries and nodded goodbye to Jacob. He walked steadily through the door of Jacob Carter’s office, into an empty hallway, and sagged against a wall as soon as the door closed behind him. His head, it didn’t seem possible that it could hurt this much and not simply explode.

  He stood there a moment, allowing the ship wall to prop him up, then gathered his wits and moved on down the corridor. It wouldn’t do for Carter to come out and see him like this. Nor anyone else. Too many questions and Nathaniel had had enough questions to last a lifetime.