by Andrew Gates
Ellen knew this could not be right. Last she remembered, she was safely resting in the stasis pod. She should have opened her eyes to the crammed interior of the small fighter, not wandering out in an open field. She could not even remember how she got here. It must have been some kind of hallucination.
“Hello?” she called out.
The wind seemed to carry her voice far. It echoed through the night, but received no answer. Not even Yuri was present.
The wind blew harder and harder until Ellen could no longer stand. She fell, expecting to land on solid ground, but rather than hit the surface, the wind kept her aloft. Her body rose into the sky. The stars disappeared slowly. The wind calmed down.
Before she knew it, Ellen found herself in empty space, far beyond the atmosphere, past the planets, even the light of the stars. Nothing remained but an endless void spanning for eternity in sheer blackness.
“Hello?” she repeated, hoping someone would finally answer.
Hello? Ellen, are you awake? The voice was unmistakable. This was Yuri. Ellen had never been so glad to hear him.
Yes, yes! Where the hell am I? She looked around, trying to get her bearings. There was nothing. Nothing at all.
I’m so glad your mind has become cognizant. I’ve been trying to contact you for hours. You’re still in the fighter. There’s an issue with the stasis pod. It’s running out of power fast. It is currently operating at 30% capacity and dropping.
How long have you been conscious?
I exist in your mind, Ellen. I came to when your brain did.
Which was?
Six hours and eight minutes ago. For an AI, that’s practically a lifetime. You’ve been in an almost coma-like state until now.
Well how do I get out of it?
Let me see if I can help. I didn’t want to try this until your mind was ready for it, but I think this might work.
Ellen felt her heart beat a little faster. She instinctively moved her hands to cover her left chest. A jolt of adrenaline ran through her, causing her to let out a brief shriek.
Suddenly she opened her eyes. Ellen sat in the cold, dark interior of her crammed stasis pod. The only thing providing any sort of light was a small LED strip that hung from the ceiling, casting everything in a bluish tint. Ellen coughed a few times. She could see her own breath as it fogged up the glass before her.
Beyond the glass, the fighter seemed to be completely dark. Not a single light shone. Ellen tried to connect to the ATG network, but couldn’t. The only thing she seemed to be able to communicate with was Yuri.
“Noth… nothing seems to be working,” Ellen noted. Talking was harder than she expected. Her throat was incredibly sore.
Glad to have you awake. That jolt of adrenaline seemed to do the trick. I’m running a diagnostics report as we speak, Yuri responded.
Ellen searched for the emergency release and found it near the LED strip above her. She pressed the thick green button, prompting the pod’s door to unlock. She held her hands against the door and pushed it open, surprised by how easily it moved.
This can’t be right, Yuri explained as Ellen swung her legs out over the edge of the pod. It felt like she had not moved her muscles in months. You’re right. Everything is offline. These two pods are the only thing still running. I can’t even get a connection to the ATG.
“Dave and Gloria?”
Still alive, but their stasis pod is also running out of power. He’s probably hallucinating in there too. I’m giving Gloria instructions now on how to wake him.
“Good,” Ellen said through coughs.
The disoriented woman stumbled across the dark hull, shivering in the cold air. Each step seemed to carry her farther than she anticipated. She had to hold out her hands just to make sure she didn’t run into anything. When she finally reached the pilot’s chair, she pulled her uniform off from the back of the seat. It was dusty and stiff. It was as if it had not been touched in ages.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked to nobody in particular.
She slowly put the clothes on, though there were holes in them now where there had not been holes before. The clothes seemed somehow much thinner and more fragile than she remembered. The dust alone made them look almost grey.
Obviously the fighter is intact. That much is plain to see. It would help to know our setting. Without ATG access, I can’t determine our date or location. I’ll need you to look outside so I can see the stars.
“Yeah, on it.”
Ellen stumbled to the forward window. The floor of the fighter seemed to sway with each step as if they were on some sort of raft. It reminded her of her dream. When she finally reached the window, she saw nothing but grey outside.
“What the hell?”
It’s just dust, Yuri explained.
“Seriously?” Ellen wiped the window with her ratty sleeve. To her shock, the window cleared up. She could now see an atmosphere outside full of cumulus clouds and a thick blue sky. The unmistakable star, Vexa Prime, glowed bright red above them.
So we’re still on Red One. Looks like the terraforming project worked.
“And we’re still here. We should have left long before this project was finished.”
I hate to break it to you, Ellen, but I think your cat is dead.
“Damn. Just my luck.”
Ellen stared out the window for a few moments, blinded by the beauty of it all. The sky was so clear, like a blank blue slate dotted with a few puffs of white here and there. In fact, excluding the clouds, it was almost too clear. She could not make out anything above, not even a mining vessel flying far off in the distance.
Knock, knock, knock! A sound echoed from Dave’s pod. Ellen immediately turned to face it. The interior of the ship was now much better illuminated in the light from the world outside.
Gloria says he’s up.
“I can hear that.”
Ellen stumbled back over to the pod as the door swung open. She suddenly stopped in place, almost colliding right into it. She wondered why she was having so much trouble moving around.
Dave coughed as he poked his head out from the pod, unaware that he had almost hit her with the door. He used both hands to pull himself out and immediately fell onto the cold floor.
“Agh… Milsen… what’s… what’s happening?” he asked, hardly able to get the words out.
Ellen helped pick him up off the floor. He was easy to lift. It was as if he weighed nothing at all.
“We’re not sure. The pods were running out of power for some reason. We’re still on Red One. The planet is terraformed,” she explained as Dave finally found the energy to stand on his own.
“Why is there so… so much dust?” Dave asked as he looked around. “And why is it so c… c… cold?”
The stasis pods are the only thing running. They emit a cool temperature when active. They must have slowly been cooling the cabin over time, Gloria explained.
“How much time do you reckon?” Ellen asked, getting right to the question on the forefront of everyone’s mind.
I couldn’t see any stars from the window, Yuri said, save for Vexa Prime, obviously. There’s too much atmosphere in the way. If I can see the stars, I can determine what year this is based on their movements and rates of decay.
“Too much atmosphere, huh? So Vexa Corp did the trick,” Dave noted.
“So what are you saying, Yuri? We have to wait until nighttime to view the sky?”
There is no nighttime on this world. The planet is tidally locked, which means it is non-rotational. When we touched down before going into stasis, the fighter was in the band between the dark and bright side of the planet. Judging by the angle of the sun I saw out the window, I’d say we haven’t moved far from that point.
Ellen had known this information before going into stasis, but in all the confusion, she had forgotten these facts. She recalled her knowledge about the planet. She remembered that it was small, but dense. That was why she was moving around so easily. The g
ravity, now she remembered. Slowly it came back to her.
But that still did not explain the rocking motion.
“Why does it feel like we’re moving up and down?” Ellen asked.
“You feel it too?” Dave replied, stumbling. He gripped the side of the pod to stabilize himself.
“It’s almost like we’re on a boat or something.”
Going back to your earlier point, Yuri interrupted, not letting it go, I will be able to see the stars, but I’m going to need your help. I’ll have to adjust the settings in your eyes from my end so that the brightness of the stars and the magnification and light-gathering capacity of the lenses can overcome the glare of the refracted sunlight.
Ellen nodded her head. That sounded like it would work. She hobbled her way to the front window again and gazed out the section clear of dust. Yuri did his work on her eyes, changing the settings this way and that. Ellen could see the stars in clear detail. They were beautiful.
Got it, Yuri explained.
“That was all? I thought it would take longer.” Ellen set her vision back to normal.
I’m an AI. We work faster than you humans.
“Well, what did you learn?” Dave asked, making his way to the front.
After all this time, Dave had still not bothered to change out of his stasis suit. Ellen picked up his dusty old uniform and handed it to him. He accepted it without saying a word.
You’re not going to like this, Yuri started in a serious tone. He paused for a moment, as if giving the humans a moment to mentally prepare. We’ve been in stasis for a little over 1,300 years.
Dave coughed in shock as he zipped the last zipper on his uniform.
“Seriously?” Ellen asked.
How is that possible? Gloria wondered.
As if skipping a few hundred years had not left Ellen feeling detached from the world she once knew, skipping a few thousand was like joining a whole new dimension entirely. The rules of the universe must have been completely different now. She wondered what technology was like, what society was like, if the old governments she once knew even still existed.
Most importantly, she wondered if her kids were still alive. Blake and Orion were so young when she left the system, but now that was lifetimes ago. They must have been long dead by now.
1,300 years. That was a lot to process.
The stasis pods have a battery life that lasts about that long. They’re meant to last over a millennium in case of any emergency. Our autopilot must have had some sort of malfunction. It didn’t take us to the shuttle like it was supposed to. The ship stayed planet side and the stasis just kept running until the battery started going out. Based on the remaining power levels I’m seeing here, the pods themselves will only last for a few more seconds.
That means we can’t even reroute power from the pods to get the ship back online, Gloria added.
“The ion dampeners,” Ellen recalled. “They were acting flaky on our way out. There must have been an ion radiation leakage.”
Ion radiation is known to damage core systems from time to time, Yuri agreed.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Dave said. He seemed flustered. “So because our dampeners failed, the autopilot malfunctioned and didn’t take us to the shuttle? And the only reason we’re awake now is because the pods ran out of power?”
Ellen nodded.
That would seem to be the case, Yuri confirmed.
“Damn.” He lowered his head to the floor, saying exactly what Ellen was thinking.
Nobody spoke for a few seconds. All were quiet as they took the time to process this information. After a few moments, Ellen sighed and looked at Dave. She was angry and he was standing right in her line of sight.
“This is your fault!” she exploded, pointing right at him. “For someone who’s supposed to be an ace pilot, you’ve been asleep at the wheel since we started this journey!”
“Me?” Dave replied, defensively. “How is this my fault? You are just as much to blame!”
“I am to blame? Me? Dave, you’re one of the top pilots for Vexa Corp. You should’ve known about the issue with the ion dampeners.”
“How could I have known that, Milsen? You didn’t think much of it either. Don’t pin that on me.”
“Well it sure as hell isn’t my fault!” Ellen shot back. She wiped some sweat from her face and felt that she was tearing up. She stumbled across the rocking ship and punched the metal wall before her. Her hand trembled. “My kids are probably dead!” she shouted. “They lived their lives and I wasn’t there to see it!”
“It’s okay,” Dave said, trying to sound reassuring, though the nervousness in his voice told a different story.
Both of you need to get a grip, Yuri said. I know this is a tough time. It’s a lot to take in. But letting emotions dictate your actions like this is only going to delay our ability to get out of this mess.
I concur, added Gloria.
“Easy for you two to say. You’re AI.”
Exactly. We’re thinking straight, Yuri said.
“I guess you’re right,” Ellen replied as she pulled away from the wall. She studied her knuckles. They were bright red. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She had to clear her mind.
Ellen remembered her home on Mateo. She envisioned the wind blowing across the field, the blue sky above, the slow rocking of her favorite chair, Destiny purring by her feet. The thought calmed her down. Her anger slowly faded away.
“Well… what do we do now?” Dave asked.
Ellen opened her eyes again and studied the inside of the dark, dusty cabin. As much as she hated to admit it, there was nothing more they could do in here.
“If this fighter is out of power, it’s completely useless. There’s no sense sticking around,” she said, finally thinking straight.
“You think we should go outside?”
“I do.” She nodded. “The planet is terraformed now. It’s safe to explore. Maybe we can find someone and get answers. Maybe they can help us get off world and back to Mateo.”
Dave silently nodded back.
I’ll mark the door’s manual release on your HUD, Yuri explained. The system is entirely mechanical. No electricity required.
Ellen followed Yuri’s direction. A green arrow highlighted a concealed lever in the corner of the vessel where the starboard wall met the ceiling. She pulled down on it. The lever was stiff. Even with her muscles in the low gravity, it took some effort to move it.
Now twist, Yuri explained once Ellen had completely lowered the lever.
Ellen did as Yuri instructed. Twisting the lever was much easier. Within seconds, the aft door dropped. Water splashed into the ship.
“Water?” Dave asked, pointing out the obvious.
The corporal walked down to the ramp, hoping to see some sort of solid surface at the end. Instead, there was nothing but water along a vast horizon.
It would seem we’re in an ocean, Yuri noted.
“Thanks for the astute observation,” Dave replied in a sarcastic tone that would have gotten him reprimanded if this was the military. Ellen wondered if joking was his way of putting his anger behind him.
“Ocean is not good. We need to get out of the water,” Ellen commented, ignoring Dave’s sarcasm.
“What are you proposing?” Dave asked, turning to face her.
“What do you think?”
“Swim for it?” he eventually replied after a brief pause. Ellen wondered why it had taken him so long to put that together.
“We need to see if there is a landmass around, but we don’t get a 360-degree view of the ocean from here in the ship. I suggest we swim around to the front of the ship, where it angles down low. We can climb up to the roof of from there and get a better view.”
Dave let out a deep sigh. The look in his eyes showed that he did not want to get wet today, but that he knew there was no other choice.
You poor baby, Yuri commented privately.
Top pilot, huh? Next in line
to replace the commander?
That’s what the records said.
There’s no way. Ellen shook her head in disbelief before suddenly realizing that this was a private conversation between her and Yuri. She immediately stopped and held her head still, hoping that Dave did not notice.
“Alright, we’ll swim for it,” Dave eventually agreed, apparently not noticing a thing. “But what if we get to the roof and realize there’s no landmass around?”
“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. We’ll have more answers out there than we will in here. We’ll keep this door open in case we need to come back here for any reason.”
Water worlds have serious currents, Yuri explained. If you’re swimming for it, you may want to be careful.
“Do you think the ship might drift away?” Dave asked.
I doubt it. As a security precaution, Vexa Corp fighters like these automatically trigger an anchor when floating in a body of water. The entire process is autonomous. My guess is that we’re tethered to the ocean floor right now. I doubt we’re going anywhere, Yuri explained.
“Alright then,” Dave said with a shrug. He motioned to the door. “You first, Milsen.”
She nodded back to him and dove into the water. Judging from the taste and smell, it clearly had a high salt content. She bolted forward a few meters farther than she expected due to the low gravity, then angled up, piercing the water’s surface. She opened her mouth to let in the fresh air.
Warm sunlight filled her sights as the waves rocked up and down. Birds chirped above as they navigated the clear blue sky. The vista before her was beautiful. Though she could see the same sight from the door of the ship, it did not compare to being out in the water. She could not believe this was the same brown rock she’d studied on the holo over a millennium ago.
Dave dove in shortly after. He shook his head, sending water splashing all over the place.
The two pilots joined each other, treading water. Ellen spun around, taking in the entire area.
“Doesn’t look like there’s a landmass nearby,” she commented. She motioned to the floating ship. “Let’s climb on top of the fighter. We’ll get a better vantage point from up there.”
