by Rok Chillah
"It's a dormitory," Tomson ventured. "Kind of like a giant WorkPod01 without the galleys and other amenities."
"How odd," Brenna said. "You think they all went there to sleep?"
"Where else could they have gone?" Lantz said. "Push here."
Ridge did as she told him, pressing the first of a row of orange squares. He zoomed in on a stylized image that showed rows upon rows of sleeping tanks. "They must have gone under the gas," Tomson said. That was the lingo that meant they'd gone to sleep, and that immediately cued the four that there must have been a catastrophic emergency. "Why else would they have gone under?" Brenna said.
"Comet? Meteor? Something hit the ship and caused all that burn damage we saw out there," Tomson said.
Ridge bit his lip and swallowed hard. "If that's the case, then we need to think this all through from the start. Remember how old Caulfield was? All the signs point to this having happened a long time ago."
"We must have been asleep a long time," Brenna said. Her face contorted in horror. "My children! My husband!" Tears ran down her cheeks, and she dropped her weapon. Her hands flew to her face. The others stood stunned, soaking in the realization that Ridge knew they had been suppressing. He said quietly: "I was afraid of this. That's what Mahaffey was thinking when he pulled the plug."
"I'm going to kill myself!" Brenna cried. "I don't want to live without my babies!" She wailed loudly, and nobody had the fortitude to stop her. For a moment, Ridge wished he had joined Mahaffey. It would have been an easy way out. "No," he told Brenna. "No, you don't understand, do you?"
She wiped her eyes and stared at him through a grimace of glittering tears. "What?"
"Your babies aren't dead," Ridge said. "You're thinking that a long time passed and they grew big and died of old age. Or maybe they are grownups now and they think you were lost in space."
She nodded, running wet fingers over her sorrow-swollen features. Lantz and Tomson weren't faring much better.
"It isn't so," Ridge said. "Trust me. It's almost more sad than all that."
"What do you mean?" Lantz cried feebly, her voice distorted with grief. She, too, had loved ones who might have long ago died if the ship and its passengers had really gone into long-term hibernation as a way of escaping death, until someone could come to rescue them.
"I'd rather not speculate," Ridge told them. "It's just—I hate to see you so torn up over how this has all turned out." His three companions stared at him in varying degrees of realization and a newly dawning horror. "You see, there were no babies."
"No!" Brenna mouthed. She held her fingers to her mouth and appeared beyond speech. No words came out of her pale, distorted features. Her eyes glittered with bereavement, as did those of Lantz and Tomson, each in their own way. Tomson was still more stoic, while Lantz appeared to be a denier to the last. Feeling terribly sorry for himself, but more so for Tomson and Lantz, and especially for Brenna, Ridge said: "You remember the questions Mahaffey was asking? Can you name your children? Of course we couldn't. None of us has children."
"You think we're not human?" Tomson asked somberly.
Ridge sighed deeply, holding Brenna as she collapsed against him. "I want to think we are."
Lantz was still defiant, at least partially. "You'd better explain this crazy shazzle, man. I think I'm going to puke right here, right now." She looked green around the cheeks, and her tongue worked feverishly in her mouth as if saliva were gathering for a violent projectile heave. Ridge couldn't blame her. "I'm just piecing it together logically," he said.
"Go on," Tomson urged. "You're on the right track, man. We need to know the truth so we can understand what we are really up against."
Ridge said: "Maybe the ship took a hit. Maybe we are beyond help. A long time has gone by, and nobody has come to rescue us. Who knows where these mudmen have come from. Who knows what any of this is about. Fact is, I looked over the edge and there was nothing in WorkPod01. Nothing. No galley, no books, no showers, nothing. Just a bunch of hibernation beds for..." (he paused to swallow, and almost could not speak) "...for the next crew just like us."
Lantz hurled just then, a stream of yellowish breakfast or whatever that twirled in the air and spattered loudly on the gleaming floor in the rotunda. Her red hair hung around a feverish, flushed face in sweaty strands. Her face looked emaciated like her body.
Ridge continued: "We were grown somehow with our memories forced into us the way you add piggyback medications to an intravenous drip. Memory codons. Everything we know, everything we remember, is fake."
"Not everything," Tomson said quietly. "We are human. We know what that is. If we didn't, we wouldn't be human, and none of the rest would work." He looked at Brenna. "Our grief," he said. He looked at Lantz. "Our desperation." He pointed to himself. "Our disappointment."
"Is that what you feel?" Ridge said, tears springing to his eyes. He sobbed with his own grief. He had thought he was married. He had thought he had children. "Disappointment?" He wanted to hit Tomson. "Is that what it is in the end? You are disappointed?"
Tomson was stoic. "Maybe it's the wrong word, Ridge. Each of us has to take this in his or her own way. I didn't have children or a wife. I had a girlfriend I was going to go back and marry, but I knew she was cheating on me. That made me feel sad, but I felt I could go back and turn it around. Somehow I was going to get her to love me. Now I know it was just an illusion. Makes sense what you said. It was all a big fraud." He looked up and hollered. "Damn you, Corporation. Why did you do this to us?"
They waited in silence, and nobody answered.
Brenna wiped tears away with the stiff fingers of one hand. "Something went wrong, didn't it? I mean, this ship doesn't seem to have any plan."
"It's Science," Lantz said bitterly. "Progress. Human advancement. We can do anything. We are masters of the universe." She looked up. "Fuck you!" Her voice echoed grimly among the shadows in the mezzanine.
Ridge said: "Bottom line, do we want to live?" He looked from one to the other. "Do you want to live? Do you? And you?" They all nodded hesitantly. "No," he said, "it's not good enough. You can't hesitate, or you are lost. You have to make up your mind. Do you want to live? If you do, you have to do the impossible and shove aside all your grief and anger and disappointment, because the mudmen will be back any time soon and they are looking for a meal."
"We weren't made for that," Tomson rumbled in his big, implacable voice. "It's too complicated."
Lantz laughed coldly. "Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe we are on some long trip and the mudmen were created to be food for us, but the tables got turned somehow."
Tomson shook his head again. "Too complicated still."
Brenna stood back and looked in Ridge's eyes. "Are you sure?"
"What do you mean am I sure?"
"That we aren't real."
"We're real," Ridge said. "Parts of our memories aren't."
Brenna shook her head in continuing shock, but her tears had dried up. Lantz stepped up beside her and put a strong freckled hand on Brenna's shoulder, seeking warmth and companionship. "What a nightmare," Lantz said. "You know what? Already, I'm forgetting more stuff."
Tomson nodded. "That's because it's not necessary. Your brain is compensating. Once the veil of illusion is torn, the illusions blow away."
"What does that leave?" Ridge said bitterly. He felt terribly empty. He wondered if he'd ever been to San Diego, or if there was a woman named Dorothy there, or even if San Diego existed at all.
Tomson said: "It all seems so clear and logical to me. It's like a storm has passed and it's one of those clear, moonlit nights. Anyone know what I mean?"
Ridge could picture it exactly. "I've seen a clear, moonlit night." He had, somewhere.
Brenna ran a grimy sleeve across her face. "You didn't. Someone else did, and that person lent you their memories."
Lantz put her hands defiantly in her pockets. "I'm a human being, a woman, from Tacoma. I love that place. I can almost smell the m
oss in the rainforest."
"Me too," Tomson said. For the first time, a smile flickered on his features. "You know, if we can remember things in common, it probably means they are real. Like, is there a Philadelphia, or is it just some parlor trick of gene splicing done by the Corporation?"
"I was never in Philadelphia," Ridge said, "but I know they have these meat things, these sandwiches..."
"...With cheese on them," Brenna said laughing.
"Bad for your heart," Tomson said, laughing. "Cholesterol factory." They all laughed.
Ridge said: "What else can go wrong today?"
"We want to live," Tomson said. He looked angry. "Whoever made us, and why, we do have the will to live. Mahaffey may have lost it, but I'll go down fighting."
The others all agreed. "Okay," Ridge said. "It's settled. The best we can do is continue as before. We have no other choice. We can deal with the emotional stuff once we're safe again."
Brenna grew serious again. Their sunny moment had been fleeting, like on a meadow swept with rain clouds on a day that wasn't winter any more but wasn't spring yet. "We could go back to WorkPod01, get back in our dream machines, and go back to sleep."
"And never wake up," Lantz added. "Good way to go if we have to."
"I think I want to do better than that," Ridge said. He stared into the turbulent dusk in Brenna's eyes, and she looked away to avoid his gaze. Don't go the way Mahaffey did, Ridge thought silently. I want to be alone with you.
A flute-like sound rolled across the air. It was delicate, probing, and menacing. Other low round-mouth sounds floated in the air as the mudmen spoke among themselves.
"Let's get out of here," Tomson said.
"Up the stairs over there!" Ridge said, pointing across the floor to a curving staircase that looked like faux marble. "Maybe we can save ourselves, save the ship, end up back on Earth after all!"
Lantz helped stricken Brenna along. Brenna kept stumbling on the stairs. Tomson carried an armload of rifles, including Brenna's.
"Hurry!" Ridge said. Already, he saw mudmen spilling into the rotunda. "Up here!" Ridge led his companions around into the mezzanine. The mudmen milled below, until several looked up. They had not faces, but the suggestions of faces. Their features looked as though someone had sewn them onto a dirty gray sock. Some were darker gray than others, some putty-colored, a few almost off-blue like the color of wet concrete. As a dozen mudmen swarmed up the stairs, Ridge and Tomson unloaded a withering fire into their midst, and they fell back in a tangle of piled, motionless bodies. "So far so good," Ridge said. "Let's keep moving before our luck runs out."
They followed a maze of corridors on this upper level until Tomson found a small lobby with several elevators. The lobby had that gleaming marbled look, resembling office buildings back on Earth—anything to foster the illusion of normalcy for humans trapped vast distances from home in a tin can amid hostile outer space. The material was lightweight but sturdy, and had the smooth, cool feel of marble. It came in a variety of colors and styles, all of them smooth and polished like the real thing. There were reddish marbles with yellow inlay, white in black, black in white, all the possible combinations. They were patterns like in real marble—some resembling ink dissolving in water, others smoke drifting on mountains, others the sedimentation that took place to really create marble. The floors themselves in the cone were doctored further with illusions of glass, gleaming brass, thick carpeting, and echoing high ceilings to further the illusion, to prevent humans from losing their minds on long journeys through the cosmos. Somehow, Ridge thought without having much time to dwell on the idea, we ourselves are part of the illusion. But how? Why? He was desperate and angry to find out. A part of him wanted to think: Where are our creators so that we can embrace them and crush their lives out of them just as they have crushed our hopes and our very identities? We want to punish them for playing this cruel joke on us, for toying with our lives like this. Another part of him thought: We are humans too, and we should treat them with mutual respect when we meet them, if we meet them, if we can find them, if any of them are still left. He also thought: Maybe the ultimate joke is that they have gone away and we are left to take their place. Or was that the purpose? He realized how much more he needed to learn, and he would not rest. Survival alone wasn't enough.
He must learn the truth. That alone, the truth and nothing but the truth, would console the grief he'd seen in the eyes of Brenna whom he loved. Finally, he had this good thought that now they were free to love each other. He wondered if she knew that yet. He glanced over as they ran to the elevators, and saw Lantz and Tomson supporting her. She still looked ravaged with grief. Her grief alone lent her dignity greater than the cynicism of those who had created this tragedy; her grief alone made her more than human, he thought, suddenly proud of her and of himself and his companions.
Chapter 10
Watch out!" Lantz cried suddenly as mudmen burst into the elevator lobby. Lantz whirled about, holding her rifle ready in pale, muscular arms. Her rangy body bucked several times as she fired, and damp curls of orange hair jigged about her narrow, intent face. More mudmen spilled into the area waving their claws, and the humans dispatched them in a welter of crackling blue light and flying chips of faux marble.
"In here!" Brenna said, punching open the elevator doors. The four remaining humans sidled into the grayish light inside the elevator as shiny brass doors rumbled shut. For a second, mudmen tried to pry the doors apart. Ridge got a lingering glimpse of scaly skin and peeling, horny claws. The claws were at least two inches long, and ribbed with black lateral stripes within, while the outside was coated with a thick layer of horn. "Don't shoot!" Tomson cried. Lantz and Brenna used their rifle butts to slam the clawed hands into bloody pulp, which the owners then pulled away. A puddle of greenish blood dripped onto the floor, and bits of gore dribbled down the crack between the doors. Ridge looked away as he felt his gorge rising.
The elevator rose. Lights flashed by above, indicating changes of floors. Ridge counted twelve floors. The lights were round and bore small black numbers. The last circle was red rather than yellow, and had the letters CP in it. "That's where we want to go," Ridge said. "That's where we'll find Captain Venable and get an explanation of all this."
For a minute or two the elevator slowly rose. The four humans stood tensely with their eyes upcast. Ridge felt the tension in himself, and noticed how his companions' cheekbones were hollowed, their eyes framed in dark orbits, their faces dribbling sweat as they stood with their rifles ready. Then the elevator began to falter. "No!" Lantz cried, punching the buttons. "Go go go!" Tomson muttered under his breath. "Come on!" Brenna said. Ridge felt like smashing his rifle against the buttons. The elevator slowed down, shuddered, and stopped. "Oh no!" they all said. "Damn!" Tomson kicked the splashboard along the wall with his boot. Ridge said: "Let's think it through, guys. Let's be calm. What is happening? The elevator died on us. Looks like we made it about half-way up there. We may need to climb the remaining six floors on foot. We can do it."
The elevator did not start up again. The lights were lit and the lighted buttons promised power, but somehow this was not translating through to the guts of the machine. "Open the door," Ridge told Lantz. All four stood with their rifles pointing, as Lantz gingerly reached over and pressed the button. She sprang back in a ready pose. The doors made a shuddering noise and then rumbled gently open. Ridge expected a mudmen charge, but all was quiet. They stepped out into a wide space, and for a moment Ridge thought it was just another clean, well-lit laboratory or office space. A moment later he began to realize how wrong he was. The first clues were what looked like ancient shreds of cloth lying along the carpeted floors.
"Weapons," Tomson said softly in a warning tone of voice. They moved slowly forward while holding their weapons ready. The air was still but when the climate control fans hidden in air ducts cut in, Brenna let out a little yell, and Ridge nearly jumped a yard backwards. "Damn!" Tomson said. Lantz's eyeballs wer
e rolling left and right and up, while her hands flexed around her rifle. Lantz's cheeks looked sucked-in, and her mouth had a quizzical tilt to it, as if she were about to cry. Ridge felt the same way.
The lobby area was about forty feet long and twenty feet wide, with large open portals leading into darkness on either side. Opposite the elevator doors were high glass walls whose dark hues varied from dark brown through various off-shades of gray to a dirty charcoal. They looked old, Ridge thought with added foreboding. Maybe he was ready now to face the truth, whatever that was. Nothing was as he'd thought it to be just that morning, and he swallowed hard at the thought that he'd have a lot of other unhappy surprises before the tally was done. "Careful," he said. Keeping the others in line kept him from going crazy. Keeping his friends alive meant more than the luxury of slumping inward and preoccupying himself with the gloom he felt slowly spreading through his soul. "Easy does it."
Lantz was the first to reach the high, arched portal on the right. The area around the portal was steeped in shadows from large, stacked boxes, but beyond the boxes Ridge saw light. As Lantz stepped through into the grayer, brighter light, she made a face and cried out. Her face did not lose its mask of dismay as the others crowded around her. Ridge almost did not want to look, but he knew he must.
They stood at one end of a long room like a dormitory. It had a low ceiling of large, square tiles. The walls were covered with monitoring equipment. In some areas were rows of two dozen black chemical suits with staring round eye holes in charcoal hoods; purpose unknowable, but obviously for some type of rescue. Doors on all sides led into more rooms like this one. Instead of beds, the incubators lined up by the hundreds reminded Ridge of the sleeping boxes he'd seen in WorkPod01 while hanging by his fingernails. He did not want to call these containers coffins, though they had some resemblance to containers for dead persons. Their rounded glass lids had a smoky look, but many of the lids had been torn off or hung at odd angles. Many other lids had been smashed, and the shards lay on the skeletal remains they contained. The incubators made an even procession of twenty to a row, and Ridge counted about 40 rows. As they walked in, Ridge saw other rooms like it, and guessed there must be several thousand incubators.
