by Adam Moon
Just like before, Sarah was the last to go to sleep.
Beyond Hope
Sarah was still hooked to her IV's when she woke up. That was a good sign. That was how it was supposed to happen. She watched as the hatch to the pod hissed open, taking the freezing mist out with it. She yanked her IV's loose and got out.
She called upon the computer and a moment later lights started to blink to life. A moment after that, the computer said, "Hello, Sarah."
"Did you wake the others too?"
"I woke two other members of the flight crew."
"What happened to the third?"
"I don't know."
Sarah was getting dressed when Johnson and Emma came through the door.
Johnson furrowed his brow. "Where the hell's Jack?"
"The computer said she only woke two of you up. Maybe Jack's still in his pod."
"He's not," Emma answered. "His pod was empty."
"Then maybe he woke up early?"
Johnson said, "We'll find him later. Where are we?"
The computer answered, "We are midway between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies."
Emma shrieked and fell into the wall. Johnson yelled, "That's impossible!"
Sarah tried her best to keep her composure. "What the hell happened?"
"Unknown. It appears my navigation system is no longer functioning properly."
Emma whispered, "No. I wired it all up just right."
Johnson shoved her hard into the wall and opened the control panel. Plain as day, a single wire hung loose, cut in half. "Well, it appears you missed one, you idiot. No matter though. We're only stuck in the middle of deep space with no hope of getting home," he said sarcastically, not bothering to hide his contempt.
Even Sarah shot Emma a look of disbelief.
Emma raised her hands and said, "I swear I spliced them all back. You all saw me do it."
Sarah thought about it for a second and said, "That's true. I didn't see any loose wires after you put it back together."
Johnson said, "It didn't cut itself."
Emma offered, "Maybe Jack cut it?"
"Why would he do that?"
"I don't know."
"Where'd he go off to anyway?"
Bones
They abandoned blaming one another for their predicament momentarily to search for Jack. He might have some answers.
They split up, but they didn't get far before Emma yelled out, "He's over here."
They converged on the largest supply room. Tucked in the corner was a fully-clothed skeleton, sitting up. The clothes were Jack's.
Sarah said, "Oh shit," and Johnson shot Emma a hate-filled look that said, This is somehow your fault.
Sarah said to the computer, "Based on his rate of decay, how long ago did he die?"
"I do not have the equipment necessary to evaluate the age of the bones."
Johnson said, "That's fine. Find out when the last time his pod was opened."
A second later it said, "Over six billion years ago."
Sarah whispered, "Did she say billion?"
Johnson yelled, "Based on our distance from the Milky Way, how long were we asleep?"
"Thirty-seven billion years."
Emma fainted, falling flat on her face. Johnson smirked as Sarah gently woke her and got her to her feet again.
Johnson said, "What's closer, Andromeda or our galaxy?"
"The Milky Way is closer, but there is not sufficient fuel to change course and get back up to speed."
"Then I guess we're going to Andromeda," Johnson said. He started to laugh. His laugh quickly took on a demented quality. He left the room to get away from Emma.
Emma said, "He thinks I had something to do with all of this."
Sarah shook her head, but now that she thought about it again, she couldn't be sure that Emma had really put the wires back the way she'd found them. Maybe it was her fault? Or maybe Jack had done it? But why?
Her thoughts faltered when she heard banging, crashing noises from the control room.
All Wrong
When Sarah and Emma came into the control room they saw Johnson throwing a chair around. He would chuck it against a wall and then run over to retrieve it and throw it again. It was like watching a child throwing a tantrum, except this child was over two hundred and fifty pounds and he was pissed.
When he saw Emma, he grabbed the chair and lobbed it right at her. She tried to get out of the way but she wasn't fast enough. The chair hit her in the face and knocked her out cold.
That seemed to put an abrupt halt to Johnson's hysterics. He ran over and helped Sarah sit her up. She was still breathing, but they couldn't get her to come to.
"I didn't really mean to hit her."
"What do you mean? You threw it right at her."
"I just got carried away."
"Try some deep breathing exercises next time, you goddamn animal."
They sat Emma's limp body in the captain’s chair and Sarah got to work reattaching the cut wire that had sent them on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy.
Johnson said, "We're screwed, you know. Sure, the cut wire threw off the navigation, but that's no excuse for the computer failing to wake us up on time. We can't go back into stasis with any guarantee we'll come back out when we're supposed to."
"I know. But what choice do we have?"
Johnson said, "We could run a quick test. We could put Emma in your pod, put her in stasis, and tell the computer to revive her in a couple minutes. If the computer fails, then we can do it again and track back the short to the failed component or damaged wiring."
"I don't like it. She's out cold. Let me do it."
"No way. I need you to help me track down the problem."
Sarah reluctantly agreed. She just wished Emma could have done this voluntarily, but they had few options left.
They put her body in the pod and inserted the IV's. When the lid closed, Johnson said to the computer, "Open the pod in two minutes." Then he opened panels and yanked wires free. He tested them with a volt meter, one by one.
"So far so good."
After two minutes passed, Sarah said, "Computer, why haven't you opened the pod?"
"Two minutes have not passed yet."
"It's three minutes now. Open the pod."
"Okay."
As the pod hissed open, Johnson said, "Maybe her internal clock is goofed up."
Sarah pulled the IV's but there was an unusual scent coming from within the pod. "Come here, Johnson. What does this smell like to you?"
Johnson put down his volt meter and trudged over. He said, "It smells like almonds." He paused for a second and then said, "Oh shit."
He pulled Emma's body free from the pod, but it was already too late. She was dead.
He double-checked to make sure he was right, but there was no pulse to speak of. She had died quickly. He laid her down and put a blanket over her.
Sarah was pacing, her thoughts frantic and paranoid. She'd never been this afraid before and she didn't know how to handle it.
Johnson stood up and said, "Do you know what smells like almonds? Cyanide. Her IV pumped her full of cyanide."
Sarah walked over to him, shaking her head in disbelief. "Why would my IV's have cyanide in them?"
"To kill you. That's the only explanation."
"Why would they send me on an interstellar mission to the seed planet and then put poison in my IV? I don't get it. Why would they want to kill me?"
"Maybe they didn't. Maybe it's the computer."
She shook her head. "The computer doesn't think for itself. Plus, it doesn't have access to any cyanide."
"Yes it does. It can scoop it up as it travels through space."
"There's cyanide in space?"
"There's all kinds of stuff in the near vacuum of space. There's water, oxygen, and even cyanide. It's floating in minute quantities, but you can gather it up, especially over the course of thirty-seven billion years."
"Okay the
n. Can we purge the IV's, disable the scoop, and maybe find a way to set a manual timer to wake us? If not, we're going to die out here."
Johnson thought about it. "You work on a manual timer. I'll suit up and disengage the scoop from the front of the ship. Then we can purge the cyanide and whatever other deadly cocktails this computer has gathered up for us. Maybe then we can set a straight course and actually wake up on time."
Sarah knew she’d got the short straw. Suiting up and unfastening the scoop was child's play compared to engineering a manual timer that could be programmed to wake them up at a specific moment billions of years from now.
But she didn't need to worry about it for long, because as soon as Johnson suited up and tried to disengage the airlock, he knew they had a problem.
He called her over and said, "Do you see that beading around the hatch?"
She looked closer and saw what he was talking about. "What is it?"
"That hatch has been welded shut."
She shook her head. None of this made any sense. "Why would someone seal us in? Do you think Jack did it?"
"Nope. It was welded from the outside. See how the beading seeped inwards?"
She looked again and she knew he was right.
"So there's no way out of this tub then?"
"Not without a cutting torch. And I bet if we go through inventory, the cutting torch crate will be empty."
Sarah sighed. "I'm getting hungry. How about you?"
He looked at her like she was an idiot, but then he understood her thought process. They were screwed. They were too far from anything to ever make it unless they went into stasis again, but the computer was not waking them on time, the ship had veered off course twice already, and now their IV's had cyanide in them. At first, Johnson had assumed the ship was poisoning them because he just couldn't wrap his mind around why any human would want to do it. But the hatch was welded shut too. That could not have been done by the computer. That was done by a person, so it stood to reason that their IV's had been tampered with by a person too.
She felt like every time they tried to tackle a problem, two more worse problems reared up. So why not just go and find a sandwich? Her hunger problem was one she could actually solve.
Sustenance
Johnson followed her into the small kitchen. It was small because it was thought they would have little use for it. Maybe if someone got hungry before the initial launch from Earth’s orbit, they could get a snack, but stasis precluded the need for food. But because they'd been stuck in Earth’s orbit for nine days, the kitchen had been used more than any of the designers had imagined. Sarah had been aboard the entire nine days so she had personally used the kitchen on several occasions.
So she was shocked to find it completely empty. There was nothing left. Some wrappers littered the floor, but otherwise there was no proof it had ever been a kitchen at all.
Johnson smiled and said, "I guess Jack ate all the grub and then died of starvation."
"I didn't think about that."
"If it was me, I'd have just gotten back inside my pod. Why do you think he didn't go back."
"Maybe he found out about the cyanide."
"I doubt it. If so, he would've woken the rest of us."
She mulled that over for a full minute. "I'm going to check his pockets."
"Sounds like a plan."
Weirder
Johnson knew something was wrong the moment he picked up Jack's skeleton so that Sarah could reach his back pockets.
"It's too light. Plus, all the bones are staying together."
"Put it down."
Once he put it back on the floor, they both inspected it to find out what was so unusual.
"It looks right, but aren't bones supposed to have little pores in them?"
Sarah squinted. "And I don't see the notches where ligaments would've attached. This isn't real."
"Do you think Jack set it here to throw us off his scent? Make us think he's dead while he sabotages the ship around us?"
"I don't know him very well, but he didn't seem psychotic."
"It could be space madness."
"There's no such thing as space madness."
"No one has gone as deep as we are. You don't know that his mind didn't just crack when he saw how far from home we are."
Sarah nodded and bit her bottom lip. "I don't suppose we have any tranquilizer left?"
"I'll check. In fact, come with me. I'd hate to think what might happen if we split up."
Johnson kicked the phony skeleton in its chest and then they went looking for the tranq.
Neither of them mentioned the fake skeleton as they walked. If they thought too much about it, it would just lead to more unanswerable questions, like where did Jack get it from? Maybe it was a doctors’ tool, stored in one of the crates for the colonists to use. But the crates had all been empty so far.
Johnson tipped over stacks of boxes and crates as he searched for one labeled with a medical symbol. After opening a few of them, they knew it was futile. They were all completely empty.
He said, "I guess it was worth a shot. If Jack comes at us we'll have to overpower him the old fashioned way—with a boot to the ass and a fist to the face."
Sarah said, "Jack could have done all of this to us, but how did he weld the hatch shut from the outside?"
Johnson said, "Space madness might explain that. Maybe he just went bonkers, suited up, and sealed us in. He's probably floating around, light years from here, freeze-dried by the vacuum of space."
"You can't attribute space madness to everything unusual."
"I can do whatever the hell I want," he yelled, a little too aggressively. "I didn't even want to be here. I told the recruiter no. I told him I wouldn't leave my parents alone on a doomed planet. But they were persistent bastards. They called every day. They sent emails. They followed me to the grocery store. In the end, I agreed just so they'd stop hounding me."
"You must've wanted to come a little bit."
"Of course I did. But I was scared something bad might happen. When they offered to give a sizable amount of money to my folks, I caved in."
Sarah could tell that Johnson was unraveling at the seams. Maybe space madness was real. She kept him talking so he'd settle down.
"What did you do on Earth?"
"I was an astronaut."
"That's impressive."
"No, it isn't. All I did was go into orbit and adjust satellites. I only went up three times altogether."
"It's still impressive. I was a fresh graduate from MIT."
"I don't give a shit. Why are we talking about the past? We need to concentrate."
"Johnson, we're doomed." She didn't say it to upset him, just to bring him back to reality. But it backfired.
He kicked over a stack of crates. He stomped one of them into splinters. He punched the door. The door made a dull thud. He punched it again and paused, listening intently to the dull noise it made. Then he pulled a small pen-knife out and pushed it into the door. He pried at the knife and then walked back to Sarah.
"That door is supposed to be an airlock in case we have a hull breach on this side of the ship."
She nodded, wondering where he was going with this.
He held out his hand. In it was splintered wood, painted silver. "That airlock is made of wood."
She gasped and checked the door out for herself, sure that things couldn't get quite this weird. But sure enough, on closer inspection, the door was wooden, painted to look like steel.
She said, "I don't understand."
Johnson had a faraway look in his eyes. He started hitting the door with both fists. He screamed in impotent rage as he pounded the fake airlock. Then he abruptly stopped and turned to face her. His eyes were bugged out and his lips were turning blue.
She knew a heart attack when she saw one. He'd overexerted himself, physically, mentally, and emotionally; his body was shutting down.
He collapsed to the floor in a heap.
&nbs
p; She ran to him and checked his pulse. It was non-existent. She did chest compressions to circulate his blood, but it was a useless waste of time since there was no medical equipment on board. She was out of breath by the time she gave up and slumped against the wall.
System failure
Suddenly all the lights went out. A second later there was a faint hissing noise. She stood in the dark and blindly felt her way along the walls, trying to get to the source of the sound. Her mind was racing. Was it Jack, finally ready to pounce on her? Was it aliens? Had the ship simply given up?
She saw sparks and light forming a line against a wall. She could see just enough from the light of the sparks. She was at the hatch and something was on the other side, cutting through the welds that sealed her in.
She swallowed, but her throat was dry. She was backing away when the hatch fell outward. It clanged to the floor.
When her eyes adjusted to the light on the other side of the door, she couldn't believe what she saw. She'd never fainted before so she didn't recognize the telltale signs when they overtook her.
She fell face down on the floor.
The Truth
She woke up in a bed. Her wrists and ankles were strapped down. A figure approached from the corner of the room.
It was humanoid in appearance. No, not humanoid, it was a human being.
It said, "I'm Doctor Davis. You have passed the test, Captain."
"What test? Where am I?"
"In a research lab on Earth."
"So I'm not stranded in outer space?"
"No. We tested you to see if you could handle some adversity. Emma and Johnson could not, but you and Jack did just fine."
It took her a full two minutes to wrap her mind around what he'd told her. "So none of that was real? It was just a test? You're a sick, demented bastard."
"This is an international, multi-billion dollar endeavor. Did you think we would send just anyone out there? This is a mission to ensure the continuation of the human species. We had to be sure you and your crew were up to the challenge."
