The Numinous

by Michie, Tristan

  “Christ knows!” Exclaimed James. “We must be! Lets get the power online and find out!”

  6

  Louise and Edward wondered the labyrinthine passages of the spacecraft, desperately looking for any clues as to the whereabouts of the Medical deck. It felt as though they had been navigating the darkened corridors for an age, in actual fact they had only left Louise' Stasis room ten minutes previous. Time didn't seem to flow at it's normal rate, two minutes felt like an age, ten minutes a lifetime. All the while, the darkness played tricks with their eyes; shadows took on demonic forms, people seemed to dart in and out of the gloom. The whole journey was unnerving and it was taking it's toll on them.

  “What was this ship like before?” Edward wondered.

  “I don't know.” Louise replied. “But right now I’m really not liking this. It's like something from a messed up dream, one you can't awaken from.”

  “This light, constantly flickering. The sound of failing electricity all around us, not really knowing what’s real and what isn't.” Edward said, “I swear I keep seeing things in the shadows.”

  They continued walking through the darkened bowels of the ship, both of them on edge and paranoid, even the smallest sound would set their hearts racing; both of them convinced they could see things moving all around them, moving silently; keeping just out of sight.

  “What do you know about Alpha Centauri?” Edward finally asked.

  “More and more as the minutes pass.” Louise announced.

  Edward was taken aback by her response, his older mind struggled to remember anything.

  “Really? What do you remember?” Said Edward, surprise in his voice.

  “Well, this may not be one hundred percent accurate, but the more I think about it the more it's trickling back.” She began. “But, Alpha Centauri is the closest system to Earth. I think it has three stars, two roughly the size of our sun and a tiny one. There's also a planet which orbits one of the larger suns.”

  “Anything special about this planet?” Asked Edward.

  Louise stopped for a moment and tried to correlate her thoughts.

  “No, I think it's too close to it's sun to harbour anything of interest.” Louise replied.

  “OK, so what brought us out here?” Asked Edward, “there must have been something going on.”

  Louise looked at Edward and smiled “well, that’s the best bit.” She said “we picked up a signal.”

  “A signal? What type of signal?” Edward asked.

  “That I can't remember yet, but things are coming back to me. What I do know, is that whatever it was wasn't announced to the public, they kept something back, something big.” She responded.

  “What do you mean? Did they reveal anything to the world?” Edward said.

  “Yeah, I think so.” Again, she had to stand still and try and arrange her memories into some kind of coherent order. All the while a dark cloud threatening to push them back into the depths of her consciousness.

  “I think they just told the world they had picked up a transmission of some kind, a pretty vague but exciting announcement I guess.”

  “So what were they holding back I wonder?” Edward questioned.

  “I don't know.” Louise answered “But surely it has something to do with what's going on. I mean, this isn't normal. The more I think about our situation the more scared I feel. We've woken up on board an abandoned ship, probably light years from home, with no idea what happened.”

  Edward listened to what she said, he agreed with all of it – this was messed up. They had both tried to stay positive and remain hopeful, but they both knew something very bad had happened. And that nagging feeling that the same was going to happen to them was difficult to shake off.

  It was at this point they arrived at a stairwell, the red lights overhead flickered briefly then stabilised.

  “There must be a lift nearby.” Guessed Edward

  “Yeah I expect so, unlikely it's working though.” She replied.

  Edward walked over to a sign on the wall, it was a map of the deck. 'Hyper Lounge 3' It declared in bold letters, with arrows pointing up and down the stairs; one labelled 'Engineering and Transmissions' the other 'Hyper Sleep 2'.

  “OK,” Edward started. “If we go up we get to engineering, down we go to another Hyper sleep deck. What do you think?”

  Louise pondered the options, “I suggest down, it doesn't seem right having to go through Engineering to get to Medical.”

  “I'll trust your judgement, you seem to remember more than me anyway.” Edward said, slight frustration in his voice.

  “Your memories WILL return, just give it time.” Louise tried to sound reassuring.

  Suddenly the ship was filled with the voice of a man, both Louise and Edward stopped in their tracks and stood listening.

  “Erm........This is James Horton. I am currently in Engineering, if anyone can hear this then please make your way up to Engineering. Hopefully we can all help each other to work out this mess. Thank you.”

  “Thank God!” Louise said happiness in her voice. “It would seem we get to Engineering first, maybe we can get this sorted out after all.”

  “How do we know we can trust him?” Edward asked

  “Well, I suppose we don't really. But it's another crew member, that can only be a good thing right?” She replied.

  Edward nodded, though Louise got the impression he wasn't convinced.

  Edward closed his eyes, there was a pain deep in his head that was slowly getting worse. All around the red light seemed to grow darker, very subtly but he could definitely see it. He looked at Louise, she was glancing over the map on the wall. The corridor behind them looked dark, too dark. Shapes seemed to dance in the darkness, too real for his eyes to be playing tricks on him.

  “Louise?” Edward whispered, urgency in his voice.

  She turned around to look at him, even in the dim light she could see he had turned a ghostly pale, she stepped over to him. Edward was staring down the corridor they had not long walked up, like he was in a trance.

  “Edward? Edward, what's wrong?” She whispered back.

  He didn't reply for a moment, his eyes were transfixed on a point in the darkness. He looked frightened, no terrified.

  “Edward.” She said a little louder.

  He turned to look at her, his eyes were wide. He was trembling, visibly trembling. Louise became worried.

  “Edward, for god sake what's wrong?” She said, loudly still.

  “D-d-down the corridor, look..” He finally said.

  She followed his gaze into the darkness, the emergency lighting started to struggle but she continued to stare into the darkness. What had Edward seen? She saw nothing but shadows in a dark, red light.

  “Edward, I can't see anything.” She said.

  The lighting continued to struggle.

  “It's there, in the dark. It's coming towards us.”

  Edwards words brought back memories of her own experience, something coming towards her in the dark. It unnerved her, her heart started to quicken. She looked hard in to the gloom. Edward started to step backwards.

  “My god! It's coming! Get back!” Edward screamed at Louise.

  She didn't know what to do, she was starting to feel the same fear she had felt earlier, yet she could clearly see there was nothing there. And that’s when the emergency lights switched off.

  They were plunged into darkness, she could almost hear a low hum as the lights went out. Behind her she could feel rapid footsteps on the steel floor, like someone running around in circles.

  “Edward” she called, “Edward it's alright! Relax! The lights will come back soon!”

  She could hear his panting as he ran in circles in the dark, he was panicking. Clearly he was a lot closer to the edge than she had realised. He was behind her, she could hear his breathing right behind.

  “Edward, please. It's OK” She tried to sound reassuring, although inside she could feel her own panic beginning to ri
se.

  Please lights, come back on.

  The footsteps in the dark continued, the panting became slower and deeper. And then the emergency lights came back up, stronger than before. Everywhere was silent.

  “See, I told you it will be OK. Look the lights are working better than they were before!” She said, relief in her voice.

  She was met with silence.

  “Edward?” She said, as she turned to face him.

  But she was stood alone, Edward was nowhere to be seen.

  “Edward!” She called “Edward, where are you?” But her words drifted off down the shadowed corridor.

  She stood alone and scared as something crashed down behind her, disappearing into the shadows; making her heart nearly burst from her chest, while a sharp pain began to rapidly spread from the inside of her skull.

  7

  Markus and James slowly made their way up two sets of stairs, the sound of their feet on the metallic steps echoed all around the stairwell. Their flash lights creating shadows all around the walls. They emerged in a small room, across from them another set of stairs led up to the next deck, close to them was an elevator and a sign on wall. To their left a large double door was set into the wall, 'Engineering and Transmissions' was clearly written above it.

  “Here we are then.” James remarked. “Lets go and see if we can do anything.”

  “Let me just check out that sign a second, see what's on the next deck.” Markus said as he walked across the room.

  The sign was a map of the deck. Through the door they would reach the main systems room, which included Life support, artificial gravity, and temperature among others. Further down the deck lay the emergency systems rooms, and beyond that was where the main reactor and Light Drive were located. The Light Drive was what gave mankind the ability to travel at almost the speed of light, by bending time and space around the ship; in effect moving space rather than the ship itself. It had been a staggering achievement in science and engineering and would allow access to far off places that could have only been dreamt about visiting in ages gone. The Transmissions room lay to the right of the main systems room. The deck above, according to the sign was the Bridge; this would also contain star and navigation maps as well as the master computer systems.

  Both men stood at the door to Engineering, James pressed the button located on the right hand side and the doors slowly opened, a hissing sound accompanied the sliding mechanism. They were greeted by a dark room. Oddly enough, Engineering was the darkest deck they had seen so far. The emergency lighting was really struggling here, their flash lights found no sign of any other crew members; living or dead. James' heart sank, he had almost convinced himself they would find some of the crew up here. Surely someone would have been here trying to fix the power problems, but no, the deck seemed as deserted as everywhere else.

  James made his way to a large screen on the nearest wall, it was on but static rained down the screen and it would intermittently switch itself off and on. It was the general power statistics, it displayed at a glance which systems are using the most power, which aren't using any and most importantly the status of the reactor.

  “OK,” said James after spending a minute or two looking at the display. “I can't tell for sure yet until I investigate more, but it appears we may have a problem.”

  “What’s wrong?” Markus asked, he sounded stressed.

  “Well, according to this we are down to ten percent power. That means everything is running off the emergency power, which is fine for the immediate future but soon everything will start failing.”

  “How soon is soon?” Replied Markus, now clearly stressed.

  “Going by what’s here, maybe.....24 hours at the most.” James answered

  “Shit, what the hell? Why were we woken just to die?”

  “Look, it's not necessarily that bad. Like I said, I need to double check these figures. There maybe something we can do to increase what time we have.” James said, his tone suggesting he wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.

  “What do you mean? How much time are we talking?” Markus asked.

  “Don't know how long it will give us, but we can shut down all none essential systems, switch the Stasis chambers on all decks to manual – in effect switching them all off.” James said in reply.

  “And then what? Just float around aimlessly in space?” Markus was getting clearly agitated.

  James was beginning to get concerned with how Markus was dealing with things, clearly he wasn't coping all too well with the situation they found themselves in.

  “No, hopefully not. With all systems we don't absolutely need shut down we can hopefully keep enough power in reserve to control the ship. We head up to the bridge, set a course back to Earth and then we both switch on a Stasis chamber and sleep until we get home. We just pray the ship can survive however long the trip lasts.”

  “Will that really work?” Asked Markus.

  “Yeah, well the first bit will. As to whether we'll get home? I honestly couldn't say, but I don't know what other options there are. To put it bluntly, we either suffocate on board this ship when life support goes offline or we try and make it home. At worse, we'll die in our sleep.”

  “Oh.” Markus said under his breath.

  “I know it isn't what we wanted to hear, but let me just check further, it may not be as bad as that yet. I'm going to head down to the reactor, while I’m gone why don't you try some of these terminals; see if you can find anything out.”

  Markus felt alarmed, he didn't like the sound of being left on his own. It must of shown on his face.

  “I wont be long Markus.” James said, “just relax OK? We'll get out of this.”

  And with that he walked off down towards the other end of the deck, Markus watched as the light from James' flash light grew further and further away, before completely disappearing. He stood there in the dim light, flash light in hand looking around engineering. Various machines, large and small filled the room; most of which had a computer terminal built in. He assumed this would have been a busy place when things were normal, but now it was empty, deserted and too quiet.

  He walked across the room to a small office, inside he found a desk with a terminal on top and a couple of filing cabinets. He sat himself down in a chair behind the desk, and switched on the screen. After a few seconds of loading a message appeared.

  ENGINEERING SYSTEM.

  PLEASE ENTER AUTHORISATION CODE.

  Markus sighed, he didn't have a code. He stood up and walked across the office to one of the filing cabinets, a label on the front read 'Paper Archives'. He opened the top draw, revealing several dividers containing various bits of paper work, most of which made for tedious reading and dealt with system reports from before the ship left Earths orbit. The other drawers were the same, reports taken from different days and months but all from Earths atmosphere. He tried the next cabinet, the content here was like before, only during flight. Markus could see that reports were made of all the systems during flight, right up until the Light Drive was activated. After this there was nothing else, at least not on paper.

  “The terminals would probably have more up to date stuff.” He muttered to himself.

  All of a sudden James Hortons voice filled the air, the suddenness of which gave Marcus a nasty jolt.

  “Erm........This is James Horton. I am currently in Engineering, if anyone can hear this then please make your way up to Engineering. Hopefully we can all help each other to work out this mess. Thank you.”

  He's found a way to communicate, maybe there will be others around too.

  He slumped back down on the chair, holding his head in his hands, sharp pains running through his brain. The headaches were definitely getting worse, what was causing them? How long had they been asleep?

  The lights went out, only his flash light lit the room.

  “What the fuck?!” He whispered to himself, “what now?”

  A low 'Hum' came from the direction of th
e reactor, he stood up holding the flash light in front of him. His head felt like it was splitting open. He slowly walked out of the room, shining the flash light in the direction James' had gone, there was no sign of him; only an intense darkness.

  A voice?

  Markus spun around, he could hear someone, someone shouting. What was being said he couldn't tell but there was definitely a voice. Just then the lights came back up, they were still the same eerie red of the emergency lighting but now they seemed a lot brighter and stable. And there was the voice again. Markus began walking to the hallway outside of Engineering, that was where it seemed to be coming from. He stopped at the top of the stairwell and listened, all had gone quiet.

  “Markus?” James said as he walked into the hallway.

  The fright nearly scared Markus half to death, he let out a whimper; dropping the flash light down the stairs.

  “Jesus fucking Christ James! Nearly gave me a damn heart attack!” Markus responded, clearly distressed from the sudden scare.

  “Sorry.” James said. “What you doing out here anyway?”

  “There was someone down there, I heard a voice” Markus replied.

  “A voice? Are you sure? Maybe somebody heard my announcement! Could somebody be coming?Did you hear me over the ships tannoy?” James asked excitedly.

  “Yes I did, that's when you scared the shit out of me the first time!” Markus remarked, “You could have warned me!”

  “Sorry.” James replied, “ I had completely forgotten about the ships tannoy until I saw a ComSpeak on the wall back there! Hopefully if anyone else is here they'll have heard it too.”

  “There is someone else here!” He said back to James, “I swear I've just heard someone! Anyway what was it you were doing back there? I noticed the light was improved, was that you that switched it off?”

  “ Yes, I've shut off all none essential services. The figures checked out, there is no plan B; looks like we'll be sleeping on our way home soon. The lighting is running a bit more efficiently now though. I had to reset the reactor to try and get some more power. It wasn't just the lights that went off, everything did – including life support!”