Interstellar Caveman

by Karl Beecher

  At that moment, the door to the room slid open. “Is that complaining asshole awake yet?” came a loud voice.

  In walked the voice’s owner. This time, Colin’s memory needed no additional prompting. It was the woman whom Colin had previously seen only in fuzzy outline: a tangle of fiery red hair, a soiled white t-shirt, dirt-streaked arms, and dust-ridden overalls tied at her waist.

  The expression on her face could have turned a supernova cold.

  “Sir, may I present Doctor Tyresa Jak.”

  She turned to face Colin. “Ah-ha!”

  As she marched to the bed, Colin fumbled at the sheets covering his lap and raised them higher as though a layer of cotton might offer some defence.

  “The gentleman is conscious,” said Ade, “but suffering a state of amnesia. No doubt he requires care and has numerous questions.”

  “I have some questions of my own,” Tyresa said, not taking her eyes off Colin. “Like: who the hell are you and what the hell were you doing putting yourself into hibernation under the surface of this planet?”

  Colin spluttered. “Look… look… I… I’d love to answer your questions, but I don’t know who I am. I don’t know my name. And I don’t know where the devil we are.”

  “You’ve no memory of this place at all?” she said.

  “None,” replied Colin.

  “Those rooms underground? Not familiar?… Think!”

  Colin went back in his mind to that awful escapade, just before seeing Ade for the first time… being carried over the woman’s shoulder… the smoke in the corridors… the dust… the poster whizzing by as they…

  “The poster!” he cried. Old memories were struggling out from beneath the rubble of his grey matter. “Of course, that nauseating poster on the wall. The wall… those grey walls with the blue stripe along them. That smell… like the Underground. Yes. I was… encased in something.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You were inside some kind of stasis pod. You were in long-term hibernation.”

  “I was!” Somehow—he couldn’t quite grasp how exactly—Colin was getting vague recollections. He fought to remember more. “But why? I don’t know. But I’m sure I remember that place. I remember the rooms, the corridors, the elevator. Dear God, I remember that death trap of an elevator. But wait… this yellow fog. That doesn’t seem right. I don’t remember that.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure as I can be. What is that stuff?”

  “What is it? It’s the entire surface of this miserable planet, that’s what it is.”

  “What?” Colin turned to Ade. “No, it can’t be.”

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” Ade replied. He stepped over to a wall with a panel mounted on it. He pushed a button and the panel slid aside to reveal a window. Through it, Colin saw nothing but mustard-coloured mists swirling violently.

  “That,” said Tyresa, “is the atmosphere of this planet. Just carbon and sulphur. Pure poison.”

  “It can’t be!” exclaimed Colin. He had flashes of looking through windows before. It was never like this. It always looked different. “I remember. I remember it was all blue and green and pretty.”

  “Whatever you’re remembering, it ain’t this place.”

  Colin pointed at Ade. “It can’t be poison. I saw him walk through it.”

  “I’m an android, sir,” Ade replied, rejoining Colin at his bedside. “As such, I do not breathe.”

  Colin blinked.

  Android?

  A nervous laugh escaped his mouth.

  “It’s true,” said Tyresa.

  “Oh, really?” replied Colin, still laughing. “I suppose you’re an android too are you?”

  “No,” she said. “Just standard human.”

  A machine beside Colin beeped and Ade attended it. “His pulse rate is climbing dangerously.”

  “Okay,” wheezed Colin. “I get it, this a joke, isn’t it? It’s a joke. Or a dream? Never mind. Just tell me where I am. Tell me who I am and how I get home. Please? Please!”

  “He must be made calm, ma’am.”

  “All right, Ade,” said Tyresa. “Give him a sed–”

  A siren cut her off, drowning out her words. Orange lights flashed and reflected off the walls. Tyresa hot-footed over to a small, busy screen mounted on the wall.

  “Oh great!” she yelled. She punched one of the buttons and the wailing siren went quiet. “Transhacker ship approaching. It’ll be here in three minutes. Suggestions?”

  Colin tried to interject. “Excuse me…”

  “We could power down all non-essential systems,” said Ade. “Combined with our volatile surroundings, the ship would then be hard to detect.”

  “But not impossible,” said Tyresa. “If it’s just on patrol, it might miss us. But if it’s looking for us, it will find us.”

  Colin’s gaze flitted between the others. “Excuse me?”

  “If, ma’am, you’re suggesting we launch, then might I point out we are guaranteed to be detected in that case?”

  “But at least we’d have a chance to escape. If we stay here and they start firing down on us, we’re history. We need to get manoeuvrable.”

  “Excuse me,” said Colin. “What’s going on?”

  “Will you shut up a minute?” yelled Tyresa. “I’m trying to prevent you from being turned into a steaming smudge of charcoal.”

  “The decision is yours, ma’am.”

  “All right,” she said, thumping the table. “We make a run for it. Ade, to the bridge.”

  “Very good, ma’am,” said Ade, following her. “And our guest?”

  Tyresa, already starting towards the door, turned back to Colin. “Oh yeah, stay here and hold onto something. Something that’s bolted down. If we survive, I’ll explain everything later.”

  “Survive what?” cried Colin.

  Too late. They were gone.

  14

  Colin strained from the bed and to his feet. To his surprise, he didn’t immediately collapse.

  His legs wobbled, keeping him upright long enough to stagger to the door before they gave out. He held onto his bedsheets with one hand and reached out with the other. He wasn’t sure whether he planned to open the door or fall against it.

  In any case, he did neither.

  The door opened automatically, and Colin panicked, stumbled and collapsed in roughly that order. He fell through the doorway onto the floor and found himself in some sort of corridor. It was suddenly a very different environment from the one he’d just left. Whereas the sickbay was warm, white and sterile, the corridor was cool, gloomy and industrial. Metallic grey panels lined the walls. Elaborate piping and thick cables hung from the ceiling.

  Colin huffed and pulled himself to his feet, then drew the bedsheets around his shoulders. There was no trace of his two hosts, who moments before had yelled about hostile ships and being turned into charcoal. The whole thing still had the airs of some elaborate, sick joke.

  He heard a dull whooshing sound and the floor shuddered. With a loud metallic clack! gravity shifted violently, and Colin was thrown from his feet. He toppled backwards and spun through several backward rolls.

  Finally, Colin thudded against a wall. For a moment, he was pinned there unable to move, but gravity eventually normalised, and he collapsed back onto the floor. He’d fallen through another door and into a room large enough for no more than three or four people. For a moment, he saw nothing else in here apart from himself and his bedsheets and thought he might be inside some sort of closet. Then he noticed something beside the doorway: a small panel with what looked like buttons.

  “Destination please?” came a voice.

  Colin looked around. He was still alone.

  “Destination please?” the soulless voice prompted again.

  Clearly, someone or something was keen to know where he wanted to go. He tried to think of where the woman, Tyresa, had run off to. She’d said something about a ‘bridge.’ Maybe that was it?

  “Um… bridge?” sa
id Colin.

  The door to the room swiped shut. Colin heard a hum and watched as a little animation on the control panel that looked like a box moving through a tube. A few seconds later, the door reopened to reveal a very different exterior.

  The room was extraordinary.

  It was packed with an overwhelming array of technology. All the walls he could see were covered from floor to ceiling in hundreds of control mechanisms—buttons, screens, dials, sliders, readouts—all illuminated in dozens of different colours, accentuated by the room’s moody lighting.

  As Colin crawled further, a large window came into view. It must have been fifteen feet wide and ten feet high. Through it, he saw the familiar yellow mist whipping past at enormous speed.

  He heard the voice of Ade, calm and collected as ever. “Altitude: twenty K.”

  “All right,” said Tyresa. “Prepare secondary burn.”

  Colin watched them both. Tyresa was sitting at a console near the window. Ade was off to her left beside a wall of illuminated gadgets. Both were feverishly reading screens and manipulating controls.

  “Secondary burn down to sixty percent,” said Ade. “It would seem a second thruster has failed.”

  “Second? Didn’t you finish fixing the first?”

  “If you may remember, ma’am, I was called away before I had completed repairs.”

  “Ah, shoot ’n shit! What an operation we are. I just hope we can clear the atmosphere. Fire secondary burn!”

  The dull, whooshing sound flared up again. The floor shuddered, the room lurched to one side, spewing Colin out of the elevator. Through the large window, he watched as the yellow fog thinned out until just a mustard-coloured horizon remained against a black sky. The yellow layer then panned downwards out of sight until all that remained was an inky blackness covered in hundreds of white dots.

  Colin felt a rush of adrenaline as the realisation hit him. “We’re flying!” he cried, pointing a trembling finger at the window.

  Tyresa spun in her chair. “What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay in the sickbay. Ade, strap him into a chair.”

  “Very good, ma’am.” The android strode over and lifted Colin to his feet.

  “You said this was a ship,” Colin gasped.

  “It is, sir,” Ade replied. “A starship to be precise.”

  “A star-ship? You mean like a spaceship? I thought you meant it was a yacht or something.”

  “My apologies if I spoke misleadingly, sir.” Ade plonked him into a chair beside a waist-high dark block. He began locking and tightening the straps.

  Tyresa barked over her shoulder, “And don’t touch anything!”

  Ade returned to his station. “Altitude approaching one hundred K, ma’am. QG becoming nominal.”

  “Roger that, switching to sub-light,” said Tyresa.

  The shuddering in the ship ceased, and the whooshing noises died down.

  “Well,” she said, “we cleared the atmosphere at least. Any reading on the enemy?”

  “Right behind us, ma’am, and changing heading: oh-seven-four mark oh-one-nine. An intercept course.”

  “Shit. All right, adjusting course: one-oh-two mark oh-nine-three. Be ready with full speed.”

  Colin saw all the stars suddenly pan across the window in unison. He felt nauseous.

  “Ahead full sub-light,” commanded Tyresa.

  Colin couldn’t stand it any longer. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re getting out of here.” Tyresa jabbed a button on her console. To Colin’s surprise, a floating, holographic image appeared above the table beside him. “See that?”

  He did. It was a floating, three-dimensional image of… well, Colin didn’t know what it was, but the words ‘dark grey wedge of cheese’ came to mind. Its surface was hard-edged, lumpy and riddled with little tiny pinpricks of white light. Whatever it was, it wasn’t made to look beautiful.

  Tyresa continued. “That’s a Transhacker patrol ship.”

  “That’s a spaceship? Not very stylish, is it?”

  “It doesn’t have to be stylish when its job is to blast other ships to pieces.”

  “You don’t mean us, do you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why? Why is coming after us?”

  Tyresa hesitated. “Uh… that’s a long story. The short answer is: we’re not really supposed to be here. This planet is Transhacker territory and… well, we aren’t Transhackers.”

  “So, they’re going to attack us? Can’t you call them and reason with them or something?”

  “It’s a patrol ship. Automated. No people aboard. You’d have more luck reasoning with an incoming asteroid.”

  Colin saw red streaks of light on the holographic display emanate from the front of the grey ship and disappeared off the edge of the image. “What’s that?”

  A bang like a clap of thunder. A brief but violent shudder. If Colin’s bowels hadn’t already been surgically evacuated prior to entering stasis, he would have emptied them right there in his seat.

  “What was that?” he screamed, gripping the edge of the table with both hands.

  “A plasma bolt hit. The ship is firing at us. Ade, put shields on double stern.”

  “Already done, ma’am.”

  Colin shook from head to toe. “Do something for God’s sake!”

  “We are,” replied Tyresa. “We’re getting the fuck out of this system. Don’t panic, we’ve got protective shields.”

  “Well, that’s something I suppose…”

  Another bang. Another quake.

  “Yeah,” said Tyresa sheepishly. “They don’t exactly last long against weapons like this though. Ade, shield status?”

  The android responded in his mellow voice. “Down to half strength, ma’am. Attacker is closing distance, now down to ten K.”

  Colin interrupted. “Did he say the attacker is gaining on us?”

  “Yes,” replied Tyresa. “Just sit tight. We’ll be safe as soon as we get to light speed.”

  “Light speed? You mean proper light speed? Like a speed faster than light?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do it now!”

  “We can’t, not this close to gravity wells. We need to open up distance first. I’m not going to sit here at a time like this explaining space-warp physics to you. Just trust me, we’ll go to light speed as soon as possible.”

  A third bang, louder and more violent. The lights briefly flickered, and seconds later, Colin could smell smoke.

  Ade reported, “A hit on the port generator, ma’am. A fire has broken out in section three. Shields down to one-quarter power.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Colin despondently. “I’ve been alive half an hour, and in that time I’ve been manhandled, gassed, kidnapped, and now I’m going to be blown to pieces by transsexuals!” His brain entered full panic mode, and he began to wrestle with his safety belt.

  “They’re not transex—” began Tyresa. “Look, will you just calm down, we’re not going to die.”

  “Ten seconds to light speed,” reported Ade.

  Boom!

  We’re it not for his safety belt, Colin would have been hurled halfway across the room.

  “Shields collapsing, ma’am,” announced Ade as congenially as ever.

  “Well,” said Tyresa, “we’re probably not going to die. Evading manoeuvres, Ade. If we can just hold out a few more seconds. Come on, Turtle!”

  Colin, through blind luck, had loosened his safety belt. He slid from his chair into a heap on the floor. At that moment, he heard something. It wasn’t a bang or a whoosh, but would later describe it as sounding like a high-pitched organ hurtling through a tunnel. It grew in intensity, and Colin instinctively braced himself.

  As the sound hit its peak, he saw the stars outside appeared to dance. They wobbled and gyrated, leaving freakish, colourful streaks wherever they went. It was like looking into space through a haunted prism.

  The outlandish sound died away.

 
Tyresa, now sitting back, looked relieved and gave a very satisfied laugh. “Piece of cake,” she said, wafting the smoke away.

  Colin, his gaze fixated on the view outside, climbed to his feet, the bedsheets slipping down as he did so. He pointed at the viewport, completely naked. “Th… that…that’s…”

  “Light speed,” smiled Tyresa. “We’re away.”

  Colin’s brain elected that, owing to a recent, unforeseen level of demand, an urgent period of downtime was required. It slowly eased its owner into a state of unconsciousness.

  Colin collapsed to the floor.

  15

  Colin stared at the contents of the dinner plate, trying to work out what everything was. His memory had now returned, so the fact he recognised little of the food couldn’t have been down to his amnesia.

  “Not much of a first meal,” he muttered.

  He’d awoken feeling much better than before, physically at least. After passing out on the bridge, he’d apparently slept for over twenty hours straight. His condition was generally much improved, and he’d come to with his memories intact.

  After administering a few medical tests, Ade had questioned Colin about himself and his past. Colin had similar questions of the present, but the android tended to deflect them.

  “All in good time, sir,” Ade had kept saying. “Ms. Tyresa doesn’t want to risk you having another episode by bombarding you with information.”

  Once satisfied, Ade had passed on the information to Tyresa and given Colin some clothing: a pair of Tyresa’s old grey overalls and some kind of sports shoes. (Thus, Colin learned that Tyresa was taller than him and had larger feet.) After that, Ade brought Colin into the ship’s galley.

  Colin found the name ‘galley’ rather overly-grand. The room was hardly bigger than a stationery cupboard and contained little apart from a kitchen counter, and a small metallic table bolted to the floor. It was on this table that Colin’s meal sat: four sticks of something dark red and vaguely carrot-like, several crispy leaves that Colin would have named lettuce if they hadn’t been blue, and some kind of green fruit—with spikes.

  “I recommend you eat something, sir,” said Ade. “You haven’t eaten in a day.”