by Tracy Lauren
His eyes scan my face, as if considering what to tell me.
“You’ve been asleep for a very long time.”
I look around the room. It could easily be something out of a science fiction film. “How long-—a hundred years?” I ask, half jokingly, half aghast.
Valens’s expression is solemn as he shakes his head. “Nearly two thousand.”
I don’t know what my reaction is in that moment, but Valens looks at me with fear in his eyes and he grips me as if I need help remaining upright. “Andrea, are you okay? Should I call the medic back in?”
“What? No…no, I’m fine,” I tell him, but if it weren’t for Valens’s hold on me I feel as if I might collapse. “What do you mean, two thousand years?”
“There will be a debriefing in the ship’s conference room. There you will get the answers to your questions.”
I can’t imagine how, but instead I concern myself with this debriefing. “Who will be there?”
“The members of the rescue party, the Captain, and a counselor to assist you through this ordeal.” I frown at his words. That’s a lot of strangers.
“You’ll be with me?” I ask, wanting confirmation.
“I was a member of the rescue team. I will be there.”
“Do the others have to be? Can’t you just explain everything?”
“Having a team to answer your questions will be beneficial to you in the long run, Andrea. They will be able to alleviate the types of concerns I often overlook.”
I think of the others, the way they looked at me as I woke up, the incoherent thoughts and fear I felt coursing through me. “I’m scared of them, Valens.” Somehow I feel comfortable admitting this to my new-found friend—hell, I need to tell someone what I’m feeling.
“Yet you do not seem to be scared of me,” he points out.
“I remember you. The rest of them…” I trail off, not wanting to inadvertently say anything to insult his friends.
“The Captain, Renzo, Kayla. They are all human, just like you. I imagine that over time you will develop a sense of camaraderie with them.”
I shudder at his words. They are human. Obviously that means the others are not. I mean, I could see that for myself. But Valens…my monochromatic friend. “What are you?” I ask.
“I…am an android.” He answers as if he knows he is dealing me a major blow, but he gives me honesty just the same.
I shake my head, disbelieving. “There’s no such thing.”
“There is in the year 3942.”
I don’t argue with him about the date, regardless of the fact that I know it to be wrong. Nearly 2000 years has not passed. “So, you’re part machine?”
“I am all machine. But I am also sentient.”
I nod, not sure what to make of all this. But no matter what Valens says he is, he’s the only person I feel safe with.
“This debriefing, it will explain things?”
“It will, Andrea. For better or worse, you will have answers.”
I nod, steeling myself for the moments to come. I don’t know where I am. Hell, I don’t even know when I am. But this isn’t my home, this isn’t the life I was living. This is something all new. My hands shake as I try to steady my breaths and Valens places his own over mine. I look up into his eyes—they’re like cold metal but filled with an undeniable warmth. “Promise me,” I beg, praying the tears welling in my eyes don’t overflow. “Promise you’ll stay with me the whole time. I don’t think I can do this alone.”
“I will not leave you, Andrea.” And despite all the things I don’t know, there is one thing I trust—Valens.
Chapter 9
Andrea
I look down at myself for the first time since waking. I’m wearing something like a hospital gown, or this place’s version of one at least. It isn’t terrible. Nothing like the pillow sack ones I’m familiar with—the kind that leave your butt hanging out in the back. This one crosses in the front and has clasps along the seam, leading from the neckline down to my knees. I notice that I’m barefoot.
“Where are my clothes?”
“You had none.”
I blink, taking that in, feeling a mixture of fear and embarrassment. My most pressing concern is how I got naked in the first place. I shift in my seat, wondering if I was assaulted. But my state of undress also means that Valens has undoubtedly seen me naked. His eyes search my face, likely noting the deep blush I feel creeping up my cheeks. And sure enough, he speaks to my latter concern.
“There is nothing to be embarrassed about, Andrea. Not when it comes to me. By the time we joined the others I had covered you with an emergency blanket. It was the medic—another female—who dressed you in your gown.”
I nod, acknowledging his words. “Is this what I’ll be wearing then?”
“No. Now that you are ready to leave the medbay we have something else for you.” Valens extracts his hands from my hold on him and makes his way to a shelf on the opposite side of the room. When he returns he offers me a thin stack of folded material. I shake everything out, inspecting it. There’s a pair of simple, capri-style leggings and a sleeveless shift dress. The shoes are equally minimalistic in their design, yet sleek enough to be still be considered stylish. There’s a bra and panties there too, but I scrunch them in a ball and put them on the table, not trying to advertise what will be going on under my dress to Valens.
“Thank you.”
“Kayla and Vesi chose it for you. They are better when it comes to things like clothing. You’ll find a few more items in your assigned quarters.”
My mind swims with the information. While I am moved by the kindness of the women Valens mentioned, I get stuck on the whole assigned quarters thing. How long do they plan to keep me here, I wonder?
“Dress, Andrea. I will inform the Captain you are ready to begin.” Valens rises, starting for the door. A feeling of panic washes over me and I clutch his arm.
“Wait!”
“What is wrong?”
I look around the room. It’s like any hospital might be. Cold, sterile…frightening.
“I don’t want to be alone here.”
Valens nods and turns his back to me. He widens his stance, crossing his arms over his chest as he waits.
“You’ll stay?” I question.
“I will.”
Hurriedly I rise to my feet, not wanting to inconvenience the man any more than I already have. I pull the panties up first, followed by the leggings, before I venture to open the front of my gown. And when I do, I turn to face the wall, giving myself as much privacy as possible with Valens still in the room. I cast a glance over my shoulder. Part of me is making sure he isn’t peeking; another part just wants to be sure he’s still there.
“You aren’t bad at choosing clothing,” I say, appraising his current attire. He’s wearing black slacks, fitted tight to his sculpted body, and a sleeveless shirt. Everything is clean lines and looks like it was made just for him.
“This is my uniform.”
“Oh…well, it still looks nice on you. What do you wear when you’re off duty?” I pull the dress over my head.
“My uniform.”
My hands still as I smooth the fabric. I almost want to laugh, but then I begin to wonder about the man. He called himself an android. What does that really mean? Is he just a robot? Immediately I reject the notion. Everything about him, from the first moment he looked into my eyes, I could see there was something to him. He might be an android, but he is no simple robot.
“I’m dressed,” I tell him. He turns back toward me as I lean against the bed to tug on my shoes. Valens appraises me from head to toe but makes no comment on my appearance. Not that I’m worried about it. I’ve got bigger things on my plate right now. Still, I want to be vaguely presentable when I face all these strangers.
“Is there a comb or a brush I could use?”
Valens goes to an open cubby on the wall—it’s lit from within. Beside it there is a slim keyboard and he deftly ty
pes something in. A moment later a brush materializes in the cubby. I’d be amazed if I didn’t find the technology so painfully unnerving. I rub my hands over my eyes, roughly wiping away any tears that think to accumulate there.
“Thanks,” I tell him as I take the brush, running it through my hair to get all the tangles out.
“Are you ready?” Valens asks when I set the brush aside.
“As I’ll ever be.” My voice sounds like it’s on the verge of cracking and I wring my hands trying to pretend they aren’t trembling. Do I really want to know what these people are about to tell me? Somehow I feel that after this, there will be no going back, no escaping the reality I now find myself in.
Valens’ hand goes to my arm. “You are not alone, Andrea. I will be with you the whole time.”
“If it’s too much…” I don’t know what I’m asking. I guess I want to know if I can tap out if I need to.
“Would you like me to monitor your breathing and heart rate? If you become overwhelmed I will request a break on your behalf.”
“You can do that?”
“I can.”
I nod in agreement. Valens hesitates a moment, looking down at me with a troubled expression. Then, wordlessly, he wraps an arm around my shoulder and leads me from the room.
Chapter 10
Valens
New stimuli often cause unique responses by my neural network, activating things my creators programed yet had remained dormant. Faced with Andrea and this impossible situation, something akin to protectiveness has awoken inside of me. I first noticed it when I saw the outline of her face within the pod, but it coursed through me with a near violence when she rushed into my embrace back in the medbay.
Sometimes these new functions are simple, like my burgeoning sense of humor and the friendship bonds I feel for my crewmates—the Captain, Renzo, Kayla, Odo, and Vesi in particular. New functions develop slowly over a period of time, my neural network constantly building upon itself. But this feeling I have for Andrea, it is consuming and I struggle to filter through my inner state and the environment around me.
But there is little time to analyze myself. Now more than ever Andrea needs me to be her advocate—her protector. I am inclined to believe that this debriefing will cause her significant emotional turmoil. And at the moment, I am the closest thing she has to a friend.
Andrea trembles against me all through the corridors of the Salutation and I try to view this place through the eyes of a person from the 21st century. It must be unnerving. What is normal to each of us is a concept beyond foreign to her. While I see my crewmates as we walk through the ship, she must see aliens and monsters. As if to prove my point, she sucks in a fearful gasp as she spots one of the security cadets. The young man is Ihasa, his flesh red and sinewy in appearance. He is nothing to fear, yet I find myself holding Andrea that much tighter.
When we make it to the Captain’s conference room, the door glides open for us. Inside the others already sit around the table, their faces marked by their own concern for Andrea. Suddenly though, I stumble to a halt when she tenses so severely that everyone in the room sits erect, ready to leap to her aid.
For a moment I cannot fathom what has set her off and I fearfully scan her face for some type of indication. My sensors detect the increase of her heart rate, but I don’t need any readings to tell me how terrified she is. I follow her gaze to the windows along the wall, but all I can see are the stars.
“Andrea, what is it?”
She pulls her gaze from the view and focuses on me. We are so close when she whispers, I know I am the only one who can hear her.
“You said ship…I thought that meant…” She looks down, embarrassed. “Despite everything I’ve seen so far, I still thought we’d be somewhere on the Pacific. I probably should have known better, considering all the aliens.”
“Do you want me to close them?” I offer.
She shoots her gaze back to the windows, if only for a moment, but she shakes her head.
“I will monitor you, but I want you to tell me if anything makes you uncomfortable.” Though Andrea says nothing, the look of gratitude in her eyes is easy to read.
When we turn back to the table both Andrea and I are further dismayed. There are only two seats left…on opposite ends of the table. There is only one solution.
“Just a moment,” I tell her. Still, I feel her shadowing me as I go for one of the chairs. I grab it by its arms and pull until I hear metal groaning, followed by a loud snap. Most furniture on the Salutation is bolted down for safety in the event of high speed or evasive maneuvers. Chairs are not meant to be moved, but right now it is Andrea’s emotional security that I am most concerned with. With my chair now free, I place it beside the one meant for Andrea—at the head of the table. Her hand slides into mine as we sit.
The room is silent, but when I look up I see Renzo smirking at me. The Captain looks less amused however. “You could have asked Kayla to move,” she points out. I look to my left, to where Kayla’s seat is. It doesn’t seem close enough to Andrea, but I don’t point this out. The problem is already solved.
“I suppose we should proceed. I’m sure our guest has many questions,” the Captain notes as she rises from her seat to stand beside a holo screen.
“Her name is Andrea,” I tell the others.
“Thank you, Valens. Andrea, it’s our pleasure to meet you. I am Captain Nilsson. Our ultimate goal here on the Salutation is going to be providing a place where you can feel safe to embark on the next phase of your life. But that can’t begin until some of the blanks have been filled in about your past. While you were recovering in our medbay we were able to research how you came to be locked inside a pod deep in outer space and thankfully we have found answers.”
I look to Andrea. She sits on the edge of her seat, rigid and pale. Her fingers are still laced with mine and I feel a layer of perspiration beginning to accumulate. I attune myself to her heart rate and deem the current range acceptable.
“It was a week ago that Science Officer Valens noticed an irregular signal coming from a nearby system. It appeared to be man-made. At that time I allowed him to assemble a small team to investigate the irregularity.
“This is Vesi, a medic on my ship. Officer Renzo, in charge of engineering and navigation. And Officers Kayla and Odo—they are Science Officers, as Valens is. They followed the signal, which turned out to be EM radio waves. By the time they intercepted the object projecting the signal, it had already been caught in the gravitational pull of an uncharted planet and had crash landed onto the surface. The team determined that Officer Valens would go down to the planet to evaluate safety. In the short time he spent on the surface he was able to locate the object.”
An image of Andrea’s pod, taken from my uniform’s recording device, flashes up on the holo screen. Smoke can be seen billowing from it.
“The object, ancient in its construction, had been badly damaged during its descent and subsequent crash landing. Its functions were failing and those functions turned out to be life support.”
The Captain pauses to let that information sink in.
“If the team would have been any later it’s likely you would have perished. But Valens was able to open the pod, engaging an automatic cessation to your stasis and causing you to awaken. Again, this system was not only ancient, but crude. Had you been in a modern stasis unit, there would have been no adverse effects to your waking. But that was not the case in this event. Valens was forced to leave behind your unit during an escape urged on by the native wildlife on the planet, but he was able to recover the onboard computer.”
A new image, one of the pod’s computer, appears on the screen. All the while, Andrea continues to take in this information with a level of stoic disconnect that gives me concern. Needing to do something useful, I mentally connected to the ship’s computers, scanning for information regarding human recovery from emotional trauma.
The Captain continues her explanation. “While you were
being treated in our medical bay, we were able to interface with the device, providing answers to how you came to be inside the pod in the first place. We cross referenced Earth’s historical database and found articles supporting the inferences we made from the pod’s computer. I warn you, Andrea, you will not like what we have discovered. Kayla will be able to provide you with that information.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Kayla says, making her way to the screen. “Tell me, Andrea, what is the last thing you remember?”
All eyes shoot expectantly to Andrea. This close to her side, I can see the tears she tries to blink away and though her mouth works, no words fall from her lips. I press closer to her, giving her hand a gentle squeeze as I nod to Kayla, urging her to go on.
“Okay… I’ll just try to make this as linear as possible so you have an accurate timeline.” Kayla brings up an image on the screen. It is a poster with the word: MISSING, written in bold, red letters. Below it is a picture of Andrea, followed by her height, weight, hair and eye color, age, and the date she went missing—July 17th, 2019. Kayla reads the information on the poster. I already have it memorized. So instead I watch Andrea’s face as she listens.
“County Sheriff’s Office is seeking public assistance in locating a missing woman. Twenty-six-year-old Andrea Lancaster was last seen by family in the morning hours of Wednesday, July 17th, 2019. She left home, driving a blue 2011 Toyota Corolla, but never made it to appointments she had scheduled for that day. If you have seen Andrea or have any information on her whereabouts, please contact.”
Andrea’s hand covers her mouth and she chokes back a sob. She no longer fights her tears. On the screen, Kayla scrolls through various missing posters featuring the woman at my side. Some of them even have age progressions, showing what Andrea might look like in her late forties and early fifties.
“I also have a news broadcast…if you’d like…” Kayla offers, her voice soft.
“Show me.” Andrea nods.
“Police are still seeking information on missing Southern California woman Andrea Lancaster. Weeks after the 26-year old’s disappearance investigators are still baffled by the lack of physical and digital clues that might lead to the answers her family is desperately praying for.
