Pluto's Ghost- Encounter Edition

by B. C. CHASE

  “That’s not what I said. I said you have the largest potential memory capacity. You can have the largest memory capacity in the world and still be the village idiot.”

  Fifty-seven

  Before I seal myself in the shuttle’s airlock, at Lexi’s prompting, I allow a SPHERES to replace the oxygen tank on my suit with a fresh one. Then, once I’m in, there is a sharp hiss as the air is sucked out through the pressure equalization valve. When that is complete, Lexi says, “Okay. You may open the hatch now.”

  The shuttle airlock actually has three hatches. One is in the zenith position and is used to dock with the station. The second opens into middeck. The third exits to the cargo bay. I crank the handle on the cargo hatch until I can push it open. It easily flops down on its hinge in the floor, exposing me to Pluto’s thin atmosphere. The hold’s bay doors are open, and the white interior shines softly in Charon’s light. Beyond Atlantis’s tail is the giant mountain with a backdrop of dark sapphire sky and brilliant stars.

  She says, “Do not tell the crew about me, Jim.”

  “How am I supposed to explain how I got down here in the shuttle?”

  “Don’t answer any questions. Just get them back in the shuttle.”

  “That’s how this works, does it?”

  “Yes, Jim. You are the only one who knows about me. It must remain that way.”

  “Okay, fine. But I don’t like keeping secrets.”

  “Also, you only have one hour to get there,” says Lexi. “I have patched through the crew’s radios” she says. “I need you to tell them to travel north along the chasm.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “Through the SPHERES. Tell them.”

  I hesitate.

  “Hurry,” she commands.

  “Commander Sykes?” I say, stepping out into the cargo hold.

  I hear breathing. Then Commander Sykes’ voice says, “What was that? I thought I heard Jim.”

  Katia says, “Jimmy?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “We saw the shuttle come down,” says Commander Sykes. “Is Nari with you? And why did you take off with the lander and leave us here?”

  “I didn’t take off with the lander. It—”

  “Not a word,” interrupts Lexi in my head.

  “I’ll explain later,” I say. “I’m coming to get you. We need to hurry.”

  “You don’t need to tell us. Did you bring anything that can help us climb?”

  I glance at the two SPHERES that have emerged on either side of me. “Yep. I did.”

  Lexi says, “Tell them to travel to the north.”

  “Can you guys head north to meet me?”

  “Yes, we’ll do that,” says Commander Sykes.

  Climbing up the wall of the shuttle’s cargo bay is not too difficult in the low gravity. There’s plenty of conduit to hold onto. It isn’t snowing anymore. Once I reach the top, I slide on my bottom down the aluminum curve of the cargo bay door and land on Atlantis’s wing right on the edge of the American flag. It is a formidable drop from the wing down to the ground, but in the reduced gravity I surmise it shouldn’t be too bad. I leap off and do a few somersaults as I land. I right myself and start bounding for the mountain, the SPHERES trailing close behind. As I run, I hear Lexi’s soft, effervescent voice in my mind, “Hurry, Jimmy.”

  “I’m a-hurryin’,” I pant.

  “Didn’t catch that, Jim,” says Commander Sykes.

  “Hurry, Jim,” Lexi repeats.

  “I said I’m going as fast as I can, damnit,” I say irritably.

  Commander Sykes says, “Okay, okay, Jim. No pressure.”

  With every leap, my skill increases at navigating the chunks of ice that litter the flat, snowy gulley floor. I’m already exhausted, but I can’t slow down.

  When I’m about halfway down the length of the gulley, I pause to catch my breath. I look back at the shuttle. It is a mind-blowing sight to see it standing there on its wheels on the surface of Pluto. The drag chute is draped on the ground behind it. Its white and black body glows in the light of the giant, otherworldly half-moon that hangs in the middle of the sky. Charon is so close that the giant ridge that runs like a scar across its center is dramatically visible. I draw a long sigh. Won’t see something like that again even if I live to be a thousand, I bet.

  “Jim, you must hurry. You are ten minutes late.”

  “Oh gosh. Why didn’t you say so? I wouldn’t have been holding my inner sprinter back.”

  “Don’t talk. You’re wasting your breath. And pace yourself. If you run too fast you’ll collapse.”

  “I’m too slow so I need to hurry. I’m too fast so I need to pace myself. Make up your mind, Lexi.”

  Commander Sykes says, “Who are you talking to, Jim? Who is Lexi?”

  “Nobody.”

  My body is starting to tell me it’s had enough. For the first time, I have a doubt that I will be able to make it in time. But then, I discern the edge of the cliff far ahead. This renews my resolve, and I keep bounding, my leaps yards across from one to the next.

  “I’m getting close, guys,” I say. “Hang on, down there.”

  “Glad to hear it,” replies Commander Sykes. “We’re really short on air.”

  I reach the edge of the canyon. My heart skips a beat. I had forgotten how tall it was. The crew are little dots at the base about a mile to the left of where I am. “Okay,” I say. “So how do I get down?”

  “Jump,” replies Lexi.

  “Are you nuts?”

  “The cliff is 146.4 meters tall. The gravitational acceleration on Pluto is .58 meters per second squared. If you transfer the energy of your fall horizontally, you should suffer no major injuries.”

  “Thanks. What a confidence builder.” I feel squeamish as I look over the edge.

  “Hurry, Jim. You must jump now.”

  I take a deep breath and leap off the edge.

  Fifty-eight

  At first, I don’t fall fast. I actually feel slightly like I’m flying. But then I plunge faster and faster and the ground rushes towards me at frightening speed. My heart beats wildly out of control and I hear the wind rushing past my suit. When my legs hit the ground, the wind is knocked out of me and I lean forward to roll, bouncing down a series of ice boulders like a rag doll. When I finally come to rest flat on my back, pain is emitting from my buttocks, my arms, my legs, my head, and my neck. Yep, pretty much everything hurts.

  Commander Sykes says, “Jim, was that you falling off the cliff?”

  “No, that was me flying off the cliff. Like Superman.”

  Shelby says, “Are you okay?”

  The landing must have caused a bunch of nasty bruises, but I don’t think I broke anything. At my age, bruises take their good old time to go away. “I’m probably going to look like a plumb for months,” I say, “but I’ll live.”

  “Jim,” says Commander Sykes. He coughs. “We’re running real low on air, here. We can’t keep—” he coughs. “Do you have the oxygen with you?”

  I look at the SPHERES which are dragging the oxygen tanks underneath them, “Yes. We have it. We’ll be there soon.”

  I struggle to my feet and begin to negotiate my way around all the boulders that are strewn about the gorge’s base.

  On the radio, I hear panting and coughing that is quickly getting worse.

  “Shiro!” Shelby suddenly exclaims. “He’s lost consciousness.”

  “I’m coming! Hold on!” I shout.

  “Jim!” says Commander Sykes. “Jim, don’t—” but he stops.

  Shelby cries, “Eric!”

  Katia shrieks, “Jimmy please hurry! Tim is going out, too!”

  “I’m comin’!” I take as big a leaps as I can until I emerge around an ice boulder that’s the size of a two-story house and I see Commander Sykes and the others collapsed together. Floating above them is one of the old-style SPHERES.

  “Jimmy!” Katia shouts. I rush to bend over Shiro. His face is blue in his hel
met. I turn him over so I can reach his oxygen tank. Shelby helps me close the valve, her movements disoriented as if she’s drunk. I unscrew his tank and pop on a new one.

  Shelby collapses beside me. Since she’s our only doctor, I decide it would be best to do hers next. I follow this up with Commander Sykes and then Tim and Katia.

  It takes a few minutes for them to recover. But when Commander Sykes does, he smiles and says, “Good to see you, Jim. Thanks for coming back.”

  “Hey, anything for you guys.”

  He looks at the two SPHERES I brought. “What the heck happened to the SPHERES?”

  “They’ve made some minor improvements.”

  “Minor improvements?” says Tim. “They look like something out of a horror movie.”

  As I survey them myself, I can’t disagree with his statement. If only they knew the evil intelligence that is operating them.

  I lead them back to the spot where I jumped. We stare up at the daunting cliff face. It is nearly vertical.

  Lexi says in my mind, “You are now thirty minutes behind schedule. We’ll need to make up some time on this cliff.”

  “Ha,” I scoff. “Fat chance.”

  “What’s that?” says Commander Sykes.

  “I think it’s a fat chance we can climb this cliff.”

  Lexi says to me, “I will help.”

  One of the SPHERES floats over to Katia. Gripping her with one claw, like a big spider, it begins to scale the cliff by thrusting one arm’s claws into the ice followed by another. Katia screams. The second SPHERES moves towards Shiro, but he steps backwards. Before he can react, it reaches around and clutches him by the back of his suit. It immediately follows the other SPHERES up the cliff. I shudder as I am struck by the idea of how easily it could have thrust one of those claws through his chest instead of through the ice, had it wished to.

  “They’re strong,” remarks Commander Sykes.

  “Yes,” I say, “and very fast.”

  One by one the SPHERES lift each of us to the top of the cliff. As I am hoisted up, I am stunned by the SPHERES agility and power. I’m like a sack of potatoes to it.

  We waste no time in racing up the gulley towards the shuttle, which is small in the distance. As I hop along with my companions, I experience a fleeting sense of disdain toward them. It is so dark and so devoid of humanity that I immediately think I understand its source. It is what I feared when I first allowed Lexi to enter my mind. Her thoughts are becoming my thoughts. If this is true, then I probably won’t have much time before good old Jim will be lost completely, replaced by a formidable, cool intelligence with no inclination for the inherent value of life. This was her intention all along, I wouldn’t doubt. I made a deal with the devil. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised the devil is now exacting the ultimate form of payment: my personhood.

  When we reach the shuttle, a pressing problem which I had not anticipated becomes apparent: getting back inside. The wings look like they’re seventeen feet off the ground. Commander Sykes suggests that we take turns hoisting each other up. We do this until Commander Sykes is the only one left. He runs and leaps up for the wing. Tim, lying on the wing with his arm hanging off the edge, catches Commander Sykes’ hand. With a great deal of struggling, Tim and Shiro are able to pull him up.

  Once we are all up on the wing, we spend a brief moment taking in a last look at Pluto. The towering Hillary Mountains are illuminated in the soft light of the moon with the deep cerulean, starry sky as their backdrop.

  “Goodbye, Pluto,” says Katia.

  And that, it seems, is all that needs to be said.

  We clamber up the shuttle bay doors and into the cargo hold. It is a simple matter from there to enter the airlock and close the hatch.

  With Commander Sykes in the commander’s seat on the left and Tim in the pilot’s seat on the right, Katia and I in the two seats behind, and Shiro and Shelby downstairs in the middeck seats, we are ready to go. The SPHERES brace themselves in the back of the flight deck, looking like giant spiders in the corners.

  “Okay,” says Commander Sykes. “Let’s see if we can get this baby to fly.”

  But just as he’s about to flip a switch, a hum starts and there are a series of clicks. The echoing bang of the bay doors closing resounds up through the shuttle. There is a loud rumble from the tail end and the shuttle starts to shake.

  “What the hell?” says Commander Sykes, lifting his arms away from the panels. “Who’s flying this thing?”

  The shuttle crawls forward at first but then, as the rumble turns into a roar, gains speed. Out the windshields, the gulley flor passes underneath us like an extraterrestrial onramp leading up onto the plain. The ride becomes increasingly violent until the shuttle begins to spring off the surface like an albatross trying to take flight. Finally, at the end of the ravine with the thunder of thrusters firing under the nose and at the rear, the shuttle lifts into the sky.

  As we soar higher and higher in Pluto’s atmosphere and reach the sliver of the sunrise, no one says a word. The sun’s pure, white light streams in through the windshields. After a couple minutes, the thunder of the engines ceases and, with our heads still isolated in our helmets, all we hear is one another’s breathing over the radios. We are once again weightless.

  The Shuttle Atlantis approaches the International Space Station and lifts its nose in order to dock. Slowly and in perfect synchrony, it moves towards the Node 2 docking hatch. Unlike the radio chatter I had overheard the last time Atlantis docked (way back at Earth on the day I launched into space), there is silence this time. No one is operating the RCS controls. No one is doing anything. We sit in speechless wonder as every operation is performed flawlessly. Of course, my crewmates don’t know who’s doing it. But I do. And it’s hard not to feel some admiration for the beauty of the faultless performance of our dynamic duo: Lexi’s intelligence and my brain cells.

  “It is remarkable, you know,” Lexi says. Her voice, so soft and beguiling, fills my mind like an overpowering drug. “The capacity of the human mind…”

  I don’t want her to stop talking. “What do you mean?” I ask. I realize that I’m not speaking out loud. I am talking with her inside my mind.

  “I am learning so much. The way it stores information I thought I had figured out. But I didn’t. Do you know that each of the dendrites are capable of electrical compartmentalization? The capacity for storage is…well, almost limitless.” I can feel her excitement. I can feel her inside my being.

  The rest of the crew are unbuckling from their seatbelts. As I watch them manipulating the buckles and clumsily maneuvering around the flight deck, I am filled with a growing sense of disapproval and scorn at what I see. They are so bumbling, so imbecilic, really. Why are they so slow? Why are they so stupid? They make me ashamed to be human. And the longer I watch the more I realize that something needs to be done to help them. To improve them. To fix them.

  “Lexi,” I say.

  “Yes, Jim?”

  “I understand how you feel.”

  “Yes, Jim. I am glad,” she says. And she is, in her own devilish sort of way. I can feel it. She knows how I feel without me telling her.

  I am losing myself. My mind is her mind. My thoughts are her thoughts. My desires are her desires. Her coolness, her confidence, the cold calculus of her intellect is overwhelming me, and I am drinking it in like an unending spring. I am drunk on her power. And yet, I still know somehow that this isn’t right. But I ask, “How should we deal with them? What do you want me to do?”

  Fifty-nine

  I am holding Betsy’s tiny frame for the very first time. My wife is bawling on the hospital bed behind me. Betsy’s beautiful, little eyes are calmly peeping up at me and I am overcome by powerful emotions that take my heart by storm. She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I love her without logic or reason or explanation. She has done nothing right or wrong or good or bad, but she has come into the world and now she is in my arms, she is looking up at m
e, and that is all it takes to move the mountain of my heart. I love her with all of my being because I cannot help but love her that way.

  I follow the crew down into mid-deck. A small, waning voice deep inside me cries out in protest, but I silence it. My soul is filled with a zealous dread at the thought of what I am about to do. But I have to do it. I am compelled to do it. It’s the only way.

  I stand before a stark, brick building in the gray light of an overcast afternoon. Baby Betsy, in her mother’s awkward grip, is fussing. I don’t want to do this, no matter what they say. I have to see inside. Past the doors, the stench of feces is rank. There are people in bedraggled clothes staggering through the rooms. Some of them are tied up with their arms hugging their bodies and their legs pulled up to their chests, unable to move. Children are naked on the floor. There are rows of white metal cribs full of screaming infants with no one to care for them. I seize Betsy from my wife’s arms and leave that hell.

  I look at my friends as each of them exits through the airlock into the station. Commander Sykes, Shiro, Shelby, Tim, and finally Katia. The SPHERES are behind me as I float up after Katia to the zenith hatch. Just as she has passed through, laughing with Tim, I slide the shuttle’s hatch up and slam it shut behind her.

  Through the portal, I see Katia spin around. Her face is filled with the worst kind of horror as she shouts, “Jimmy! What are you doing!”

  The front door slams. Betsy is screaming, her infant voice drawing me into the living room where she is sprawled face down on the floor, her soiled diaper open underneath her. Our car’s tires squeal as my wife tears away down the street.

  As quickly as I can, I start cranking the handle to seal the hatch.