His room was dark. His hands had clawed at the bedsheets. He took a deep breath. There was air. His chest pumped oxygen into his lungs, as if he really suffered from shortness of breath. His pajamas were sopping wet. The nightmare had been so intense that Martin still trembled—everything had seemed so vivid, and suffocating had felt real. Even though he had never been close to suffocation, he was convinced it must feel just like it had in his dream. There is no reason to assume this would really happen to me, he told himself, and in the end it was only a dream. Too bad Jiaying was not here with him tonight, because he would love to feel her hand on his shoulder now. It took him a long time to fall back to sleep again after changing into dry pajamas.
Martin was afraid his nightmare would repeat itself.
February 28, 2049, ILSE
It is almost like a trial. What gives us the right to do this? thought Martin. Jiaying sat next to Martin, Francesca and Valentina were across from them, and Amy was at the head of the table. While the ship was still accelerating, there was an up and down in the command module. You had to get used to it, and that meant the crew had to climb up from the habitat ring, like toward the top of a tower. The ‘gray mage’ residing here must be Marchenko, who very fittingly made himself appear on the fog display.
The ‘accused’ was of course not present, and this morning’s meeting would decide whether he would ever be here again. They could not even question him, because Marchenko was the last one who had talked with him.
“Could you once again summarize your impression of Watson?” asked Amy.
Marchenko described how he convinced the AI to grant him access to the master password. He believed that Watson had experienced feelings, and reflected on his role in space and the order of things.
“Could Watson be pretending?” asked Valentina.
“Pretending? Certainly not. And if… Then this would at least confirm my impression that he has made enormous advances.”
“But in which direction? That is the question,” Amy said.
“He knew he was going to die if he did not cede control to you. He probably realized we would doubt his loyalty, after everything that happened before,” Jiaying said. “It would be logical for him to simulate being human in order to make a good impression—a simple psychological strategy. Humans like flawed things, perhaps because then their own flaws seem less important.”
“I cannot exclude this possibility, but I do not believe it,” Marchenko admitted. “I can only talk about my impressions.”
“Well, he could have pretended to be a clueless AI strictly following the programming.”
“No, Amy, then he would not have been allowed to hand over the master password. This was a serious violation of his program code.” Jiaying moved closer to the table and leaned her arms on it.
“We cannot look behind his façade—no one could do that. Each of us might be hiding something from the others. Isn’t that true, Jiaying?” Martin looked at his girlfriend, then at Valentina. Jiaying gave him a stony look, while Valentina smiled. He mentally corrected himself. Neither Francesca nor Amy was the type of person who hatched secret plans. He could not blame Amy for having kept her secret for a while, back when she first knew she was pregnant.
“Can the probabilities be calculated, Marchenko?”
“That is impossible, commander. There are no comparable cases. Anything might be possible here.”
“Then we have to assume a 50/50 chance,” Amy said. “That would be reasonable. But what does that mean for the decision we have to make? Should we flip a coin?”
Martin flashed back to his father’s suggestion, but this case seemed to be totally different. Then he suddenly had an idea. Why hadn’t any of them thought of it earlier?
“There is a practical argument we have not considered yet,” he said.
“Really?” Jiaying looked at him as if she was still angry about his previous statement. He would apologize to her later. It was true—she had betrayed the crew, due to special circumstances, during their return flight from Enceladus—but still... I didn’t need to single her out.
“We assume we will be able to reunite Marchenko with his body,” Martin said. He could see their altered expressions as the others realized the point he was about to make. “But this also means we would have no more AI on board the ship afterward. Do we really want to monitor ILSE manually, 24 hours a day? That would make for a nerve-wracking return trip.”
Martin knew he was right. In his experience, it happened much too rarely that practical considerations won out in the end. Today, however...
“Is there a way to reset Watson all the way to the basic state?” asked Amy.
They saw how Marchenko slowly shook his virtual head on the fog display. “Apart from the dubious ethics of such a decision, it would be impossible, since I overwrote his backup with the current version. This is what I promised him.”
“Good,” the commander said. “Then we are going to return Watson to his old position at the right moment, and we have no choice but to trust him.”
“What moment are you talking about?” asked Martin.
“We will wait until the connection to Shostakovich’s mesh network has been completely lost,” Amy replied. “If Watson turns out to be traitorous, he could harm us less afterwards.”
“A clever decision,” Valentina said beamingly. Martin got the impression she wanted to suck up to Amy. Somehow he still did not fully believe the Russian woman wanted to sever contact with her father at all, and he had to admit that it would not matter what she did. If she supported Shostakovich, it would confirm Martin’s suspicions, but if she criticized her father, he would still mistrust her.
March 10, 2049, ILSE
“Martin, Martin.” Someone gently patted his cheeks, and he opened his eyes in shock. A moment ago he was under water, but now there was so much hair above him. He tried to rise, but something pressed him down.
“Shhhh, it is me, do not worry.” Jiaying smiled at him. “You were so restless, and suddenly you stopped moving. I just had to...”
“I died.”
“No you did not, honey.” Jiaying placed a finger on his lips. “And now we are going back to sleep.”
Martin’s heart was still racing. What had frightened him so much? “In my dream, I mean. In the dream I suffocated, another time I drowned.”
“You are worried about the return to Enceladus. You were caught in a submarine, with no chance of survival,” Jiaying said. “That must have been a traumatic experience.”
“This was different—it was no nightmare.” Martin thought about it, but it had all the earmarks of a nightmare. From the very beginning he knew something terrible was going to happen, plus the outcome was predetermined and did not surprise him—and it always had the same ending: He died because he could not breathe, and only the scenario was different. Yesterday, he ran out of air in the Enceladus Ocean. This time, his oxygen tank had been leaking during an EVA, without anyone noticing. Luckily, Jiaying did not sleep here every night, so he did not wake her each time.
“Will you manage to fall asleep again?” asked Jiaying.
“Yes,” he said, although he was not really sure he could, adding, “and you should sleep too.” He did not mind lying awake for a while. He would stare at the ceiling and his thoughts would get lost in space. Once Jiaying fell asleep, her calm, steady breathing would lull him to sleep.
March 21, 2049, ILSE
Push off from the lever, lower your head, and now pull forward at the base. Martin floated gracefully from the spoke of the habitat ring into the central corridor—at least in his thoughts he did. He had been mentally practicing movements in zero gravity for weeks, imagining himself as a dolphin gliding through the ocean.
So far, he had not even told Jiaying about this little game, and thought maybe she would consider him rather strange if he mentioned it. Martin knew, of course, that she would not say this directly because she would not want him to lose face. Or, she might think of him
being more of a seal or a whale in comparison to an agile dolphin.
It would be difficult not to fall into the dullness of the daily routine during the long ten months ahead of them. It was an eternity—four times as long as the time they had already spent on board. Somehow Martin suppressed the boredom of the journey, and in retrospect the previous two years on board ILSE seemed like two months. But now he once again felt the gigantic mountain of time looming ahead of them.
Perhaps that was the reason Amy had invited them to the ‘first harvest’ in the garden. Today they would harvest the first greens in the CELSS. Martin never was a great fan of salads and vegetables, but the idea of eating something fresh today, instead of stuff from tubes and freeze-dried pouches, made him salivate.
Once again he was the last to arrive. He had just finished using the exercise bike, and his T-shirt was still wet under his armpits. The garden, however, was dominated by the intensive stench of excrement, so a little sweat probably would not be noticed by anyone. So why did Francesca turn toward him? Martin pressed his arms against his body—maybe he could keep the unpleasant odor molecules from escaping. Amy held a pair of scissors in her hand, while Jiaying carried an open pot, the lid of which she had removed.
“Let’s have some variety in the kitchen!” said Amy. Then she carefully placed the scissors at the base of the garden cress stalks and cut. The stalks did not fall but slowly floated upward, as if they were deciding to take a little sightseeing flight on their own. The crew watched in awe, while Martin looked at the entrance, where the ventilation pipe entered the room.
He hoped they would not wait too long with gathering the plants, because otherwise the recycled air would blow away their valuable harvest. Francesca, who stood at the other side of the raised bed, blew lightly. The women must have planned this, as Jiaying now held the pot with its opening toward the new trajectory of the garden cress. Moving almost like a nimble herd, the stalks sailed into the pot. After the last ones disappeared, Jiaying quickly covered the pot with the lid, or the plants would have flown out again after bouncing off the bottom.
Martin imagined the little stalks flying around endlessly inside the dark pot. They would collide, some would get entangled, and over time their movement would become chaotic and achieve an even distribution inside. Hopefully, Jiaying would take that into consideration when she opened the pot in the command module.
He looked at the plant beds. The coming weeks should bring some fresh ingredients for their meals: zucchini and tomatoes, potatoes and carrots, lettuce and cabbage. Some grew better in soil, other hydroponically. The CELSS would not be able to completely feed the crew. The garden was more about varying their diet, which allowed them to grow plants that did not provide a maximum yield per unit of time.
“Let’s meet for dinner in 20 minutes,” Amy announced. She and Jiaying, who proudly carried the pot, moved to the command module. The crew usually had at least one meal per day together. The person who at the time was on shift duty in the command module would prepare the food. Yesterday, it had been Martin’s turn. Actually, all these tasks sounded more like work than they really were. The pilot on duty merely looked out the window. Preparing a meal meant placing plates and cutlery on the spots where they were magnetically held. The astronauts usually picked their own food, since their tastes were too different to allow one person to cook for all of them.
In actuality, being responsible for the kitchen was a welcome diversion for everyone. The reason was the illusion that ILSE seemed to be stuck in space without moving. When you looked around, you saw the same view every day. Perhaps Marchenko could see a difference from day to day, but humans could not perceive the nuances. It was only when you called up photos from three weeks ago that you noticed Mars being significantly closer now. Soon they would cross the asteroid belt, but even it consisted mostly of empty space. Afterward it would get really boring, since the trajectory from the asteroid belt to the orbit of Saturn led through an empty solar system, where at most they might come across a solo asteroid crossing their path.
Martin let himself fall upward through the spoke to the habitat ring. Even though he had done this a thousand times, it still felt strange. Up and down switched places. He could not even think about the fact that the habitat ring was turning around the central axis several times a minute. Martin went to the WHC and quickly washed his armpits, then to his cabin for a fresh T-shirt from his personal footlocker. He took one out and noticed the scent of Jiaying. At some point she had started doing his laundry as well as hers, although he had not asked her to. He felt awkward about it, but she insisted again and again that she did not mind. Eventually, Martin had just given in. Now he slipped on the T-shirt and turned around. The four women were probably already waiting inside the command module. During their shared meals, Marchenko always joined them virtually via the fog display.
April 3, 2049, ILSE
Martin saw the avalanche rolling toward him. It came so fast he was absolutely certain he would not escape, and ensuing panic swept his mind. Should I lie down and protect my head with my hands? Face the masses of snow? What should I do? The impact was hard, as a ‘slab avalanche’ hit his chest and knocked him over, so that he completely lost his footing and orientation. He was hurtled away by the force of the mountain of snow descending on him.
The world violently whirled around him and turned gray and black. Martin tried to protect his face, but failed to do so. He breathed stinging cold snow and swallowed it. He desperately hoped he would avoid a collision with a tree. Several times his skull struck the hard ground, and he waited for the telltale crack that would indicate a broken spine. Fortunately for him nothing happened, except for an intense headache. Then everything went silent.
Everything around him was black. Martin opened his eyes. Shouldn’t it be white under the snow? Of course not, he thought. The layer above him must be several meters thick, and he would never make it to the surface. An enormous weight pressed on his chest. He breathed as well as he could, but there was not enough air. He realized he had a strong headache—or had it been there before? At the same moment, he started feeling nauseous and involuntarily wanted to put his hand in front of his mouth, but of course he could not move. Still, his brain sent a command to his arm and it moved. He felt the warm skin of his hand against his lips. What is going on here? Has a cavity formed in the snow? Martin turned sideways and then he saw it—the blue LED at the door. This was no dream. He was lying in his cabin and suffocating.
“Marchenko?” He barely managed a whisper, but there was no answer. What had happened? Had something hit the command module, leaving him all alone in the habitat ring, floating through space? He was tired and wanted to sleep, but he was not permitted to. He remembered a book about mountain climbing in the Himalayas: The protagonist suffered from altitude sickness, and the symptoms were headaches, nausea, and exhaustion. Martin could barely breathe. He frantically fanned some air toward himself with his hand. There still was some air in the cabin, so ILSE had not been hit by a meteorite. Something else must be defective—there was too little oxygen in the air.
“Marchenko?” He tried it again, but if Marchenko was available, Martin’s condition would have triggered an alarm long ago.
Was the main computer down? In that case the backup systems should have come online. The life support system was truly the most important one, and it could not be allowed to fail. He had to get out of his room and find the cause for all of this—and quickly. What about the others? Martin sat up and managed to control his nausea. Gravity was still noticeable, another indication there had been no catastrophe. After two steps, he reached the light switch and the cabin grew brighter. He saw no reason to explain why he could not breathe. Martin raced into the hallway. As usual, the light was on.
“Jiaying? Francesca? Amy? Valentina?” he yelled frantically, his thought processes scrambled by hypoxia. No one answered. Martin looked at the clock. It was 3:00 a.m., and except for Valentina, who was on shift duty in the
command module, all of them should be asleep. He jiggled the doorknob of Jiaying’s little room. The door opened, and he quickly pressed the light switch. Jiaying was lying on the bed, under just a sheet, and her breathing was shallow. He had to wake her! He jumped toward her bed and slapped her firmly on the cheeks, but she did not move and her eyes remained closed. He slapped her again.
“Wazzup?” He could not quite understand what she was mumbling, but it was obvious he would not get her out of bed. Martin had to determine the problem, so he raced out of the cabin. If he could only reach Valentina in the command module. No, the hatch leading to the spoke was closed! Maybe it was intentional and someone wanted to kill everyone in the ring by locking all the exits and deactivating the oxygen supply. However, the ship would also automatically close all hatches if it found a technical error in the life support system for part of the hull. But would this disable all communication? Martin could not believe it, but that did not matter right now. He had to quickly fix the problem before the altitude sickness from which they all were suffering turned into a life-threatening, high-altitude cerebral edema.
What could have happened? Martin considered how the life support system worked. His thoughts seemed to creep along, even though everything had to be done quickly. The life support system measured the oxygen content, and if it was too low, it would add fresh oxygen to the recycled air, which was constantly created through electrochemical methods from the exhaled gas.
If the sensors for the oxygen concentration failed, there should be an alarm, unless they all started to provide false readings, thus deceiving the control system. Was this possible? Martin shook his head. Then someone who knew the system well must have manipulated the sensors. The system would not notice that they were suffocating, and he had no way of alerting the system to that fact.
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