Seeder Saga

by Adam Moon

  She dragged it to the door and started to cut. To her utter amazement, the torch cut all the way through right away. Even more amazing was the fact that she saw none of her atmosphere escaping into the hole the torch had made. The pod chamber was open to space, which meant it should’ve sucked up her air greedily.

  She stuffed her disbelief down and kept cutting. She sluiced through the last of it and stood back. When the door failed to fall, she stepped forward and kicked it down. Normally that would be a stupid idea because the vacuum would’ve sucked her out with all the air, but in this instance it didn’t matter.

  The pod chamber was completely intact.

  There was no gaping hole. There were no floating bodies. All was as it should be. Well, except that on further inspection, every single pod was empty.

  What the hell did this mean?

  Jane called over the intercom, “Michael, this is Jane. The pod chamber is untouched. We’ve been tricked.”

  As soon as she said it she knew he wouldn’t believe her. She wouldn’t believe it if she hadn’t seen it with her own two eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Jane, but it’s over. I’m going into stasis now. I’m sure you know there’s no way you’ll be able to cut through the command station door. I don’t care if you try, but I’d hate for you to waste valuable time on that instead of getting to one of those pods.”

  She hated to admit it, but his voice was reassuring, as though he actually hoped she’d succeed in retrieving one of the pods. But those pods were a ruse, or at the very least, some kind of misdirection.

  What was on the monitors was fake. Did the now unresponsive computer have something to do with that?

  She started to plead for Michael to come down and see the fully intact pod chamber for himself when all of the lights suddenly went out.

  “Oh shit.”

  She lit the torch so she could see.

  Her heart skipped a beat when Michael came right up to her and demanded, “What the hell did you do?”

  She said, “I didn’t do that. But look at this.” She turned around and pointed the torch into the pod chamber.

  Michael gasped when he saw it. Then he squinted, shook the confusion from his thoughts and said, “What the hell is going on around here?”

  Airlock

  Jane’s stomach lurched when the unmistakable sound of the airlock opening reached her ears.

  She said, “Who’s operating that? Melanie’s dead, right?”

  “Yeah, I made sure she was dead before I ejected her. Jacob’s developing rigor mortis so I know it’s not him.”

  “Maybe it’s one of the colonists?”

  “Aren’t they all in stasis?”

  “Nope. I checked out all the pods and they’re empty.”

  Now the confusion had Michael by the balls. “None of this makes a bit of sense.”

  A strange voice said over the intercom, “Lay down on the ground and you will come to no harm.”

  Michael got down first. Jane mulled over her options and then joined him. She heard the airlock door again, which meant that the inner and outer doors were now open. Why weren’t they being sucked out into space?

  She heard footsteps approach hurriedly. Then a male voice barked, “Hands behind your backs.”

  They both complied, and the distinct sound of zip-ties being cinched tight around their wrists was unmistakable. Jane didn’t have the proper mental tools available to figure out what the hell was going on.

  Michael turned his head to her and said, “They’re human. Did you send out a distress signal?”

  She furrowed her brow. It would’ve taken months for a rescue party to reach them. They were roughly yanked to their feet and led towards the airlock.

  When they rounded the corner, Michael gasped and Jane almost fainted at what they saw. The airlock didn’t lead to outer space. It led out to a cavernous room, littered with equipment and personnel.

  Passing Grade

  A man stood in the doorway ahead of them and introduced himself, “I’m Doctor Davis. I’m pleased to tell you that you both passed the test.

  Michael made to lunge at the man but he was held back by the guy holding his zip-tied wrists.

  Jane yelled, “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that we simulated the voyage and added a few obstacles to see if you and your crew could overcome them.”

  Jane’s heart leapt. “Does that mean that Jacob and Melanie are alright?”

  “No. They are quite dead. Michael here killed them both. But the colonists are fine. They were actors hired to add an element of realism.”

  Michael snarled, “I’ll kill you all.”

  Dr. Davis smirked. “Then you’ll lose your spot on the Seeder.”

  Michael visibly calmed. He’d gone mad, but he was still lucid enough to comprehend what was at stake if he acted upon his impulses.

  Jane yelled, “What you’ve done is cruel. I’m glad you’re all going to bake after we take off.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said the doctor without a hint of sarcasm.

  Jane looked back over her shoulder. What should have been the outside of the ship was just a nondescript block with pulleys and hydraulic lifts attached to it. It was a humungous simulator like they use in the movies.

  Beside it was a similar apparatus, but a slightly different shape, and it looked to be brand new whereas the one they’d left looked like it had been to hell and back. A dozen men were busy wheeling a large tube towards the entrance of the other one.

  She asked accusatorially, “What’s going on over there?”

  “Another crew is docking with the Seeder,” Davis said with a smile. “They’ve launched from Earth’s orbit and are about to set out on the journey of a lifetime.”

  “How many of those poor people will die before your sadistic experiment is concluded?”

  “This mission is far too important to just wing it without doing a trial run. As you saw, not everyone is fit for such a mission.”

  Michael said, “When do we launch for real?”

  “We’ll schedule the launch as soon as we find a captain for the mission.” He looked over his shoulder at the new simulator. “Captain Sarah Miller is a fine candidate, should she survive this test.”

  Jane angrily said, “I thought I was the captain?”

  “No, no. You ran off and hid in a cupboard when things went bad. You’re lucky you’re even part of the crew after that little display of cowardice.”

  Michael gave her a guilty look, and then looked away when she stared hard into his eyes.

  They heard the large tube as it bumped into the unused simulator. Men at controls fiddled with switches and the simulator jerked as though it had been docked. An audible hiss issued, as though an airtight seal was being achieved.

  Jane heard footsteps as the new crew of the fake Seeder made their way on board to wait for confirmation from ground control that they could leave Earth’s orbit.

  Captain

  Captain Sarah Miller was exhausted. She was alone in the control station, awaiting orders. She ran a systems check for what seemed like the millionth time.

  The monotone male voice of the computer said, "All systems are optimal."

  She already knew they were, but she had to be sure.

  She watched the Earth tumble below on her little monitor. They were only in orbit to fuel up and that had happened over an hour ago. Hopefully they'd take off sooner rather than later.

  She shook her head sadly as she thought back over the past twenty four hours. The training she'd endured just to get here was so intense that not everyone survived it. Within an hour of passing that frightful fake test, she'd boarded a rocket with her new crew and launched into Earth’s orbit. Everything had happened so quickly it made her head spin.

  Just yesterday she had been tricked into believing she had already launched towards the seed planet they were to colonize. In her mind, the mission had already gotten underway. What she hadn’t known was that she wa
s actually still on Earth in a lab, being evaluated. Her fellow crew members had been tricked in the same manner. Two of them didn't survive the ordeal. She made it out alive and so did Jack Mayberry, her second in command.

  The training left her conflicted and it also left her completely drained, emotionally and mentally. In a way, she couldn't wait to go into stasis just to shut her thoughts off for a while.

  She was thankful that those responsible for putting her through the training weren't coming on the journey with her. The Earth was doomed and they deserved nothing better than death for what they'd done.

  Jack came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder. The contact made her flinch.

  He said, "Sorry. I guess you're still a little jittery from the training."

  She shot back angrily: "Yes I am. I wasn't lucky enough to pass the tests early like you did. I had to watch Emma go unconscious twice and die of cyanide poisoning. I was the one who had to administer chest compressions to Johnson when he went into cardiac arrest, and then I had to watch him die too."

  He said defensively, "You know I had no control over any of that. I was just as clueless as you were. I just got taken out of the experiment before things went really bad."

  "I'm just saying, if I got here because of trial by fire, then you got here via trial by luck."

  "Wait a second. You can't hold any of that against me. I passed the test early. That's the only difference between us."

  "Well, I'm still your superior officer, so get the hell out of my sight."

  Jack shook his head sadly. Just because he had been removed from the experiment early didn't mean he got to turn a blind eye to what had happened afterwards. He’d watched the remaining crew members spiral out of control. He’d watched the testers as they created more and more chaos inside that fake spaceship. He’d seen it all from a dozen feet away on monitors.

  But he also knew Sarah was right. He'd gotten off easy. He might have cracked too if they'd left him in there. He got lucky. She didn't.

  He left her to check on the colonists. There were two thousand of them and they were mostly in stasis already. There were a few cowards who were still stalling, but they'd all go to sleep eventually.

  The sleep wasn't really sleep at all. Their bodies would be frozen in time for four thousand years. When they woke up they'd be in orbit around the seed planet. The seed planet had already been given a name, but the mission commander had explained to the crew that they could name it whatever the hell they wanted once they touched down.

  Jack didn't give a shit about the name. After the testing he'd went through just twenty four hours ago, his only concern was getting to the planet in one piece.

  If the testing did anything for the surviving crew members, it conditioned them to expect the worst.

  Take Off

  Sarah said dryly, "We're all ready up here."

  A few seconds later a male voice came over the speaker: "Ground control to orbiter, we're a go down here too. Just give us a timeline and we'll hand the controls over to you."

  "Now's fine. Everyone's on ice."

  "Controls are yours. Godspeed."

  Disgusted, she said, "This had better be the real deal this time. I don't want to have to go through another fake launch just to prove myself to you bastards. If this is a test, I swear I’ll kill you."

  "This is the real deal. Good luck."

  "Screw you, ground control." With that she switched her comm off, double-checked that all the stasis pods were occupied and operational, and then set the Seeder to launch from the fueling station. Just as the boosters kicked in, she disrobed, attached the IV's and got into her coffin-like stasis pod.

  Hers was not beside all the others. Hers was all alone in the command station. If shit went down, the captain could be woken first and be able to take immediate action. She hoped it wouldn't come to that, but then again, her spirits were dampened by the testing she'd just gone through. She could only imagine the worst.

  Just as the door to her pod hissed shut, she whispered, "I hope you all bake to a crisp down there."

  The IV's began to pump and the pod had all the atmosphere evacuated from it. It then filled with a frigid mist that felt oily on her skin. Just before she blacked out from oxygen deprivation, her body was locked in time by the chemical cocktail.

  Danger

  The thaw hurt more than she thought it would. Apparently the test had faked more than just the situations; it had faked the details too, because the thaw from the test hadn’t been this painful.

  A human voice called out to her over the intercom. “I apologize for waking you so far ahead of schedule, but I had to be sure you were alone when we spoke.”

  She was still unhooking the IV’s when she said, “Uh huh. You better have a great reason for doing this.”

  “My name is Greg from ground control. I need to debrief you on your crew.”

  She wrapped the thawing blanket around her shoulders and waited for the disembodied voice to continue.

  “Your crew members have been put through some horrific scenarios and we can’t be sure they’re still as emotionally sound as they were when we recruited them.”

  “Hurry up, for Christ’s sake. I’m freezing here and now I have to wait a full three hours before I can go back into stasis.”

  “This info is for your own protection, should the worst of our fears come to pass. I’m sending you the results of the tests on each crew member.

  “Okay. I don’t care. Just send it.”

  “I need a secure link and then I’ll transmit.”

  She gave him the secure link, hardly giving a spare thought to why he didn’t already have one.

  He said, “Read them over but do not try to contact me. Good luck, Captain. I hope this information finds you well.”

  When the dossiers came through and she glanced them over, she knew why Greg from ground control was so paranoid. She already knew about Jack. His report was mostly clean. It made mention of his keen intellect, composure, diligence, and physical strength. It touched on the fact that during the testing it appeared he might’ve been about to crack or give up, but then it went on to say that he’d muscled through it. She remembered that. She remembered his bout of negativity, but under the circumstances that was normal; they’d all feared the worst during the test, because they didn’t know it was just a test.

  Emma and Johnson had both died. She didn’t bother to read Johnson’s report because she had watched him unravel when their situation became impossible. He’d had a fatal heart attack right in front of her right after a colossal freak-out.

  But she paid close attention to Emma’s report. The testers had deliberately murdered her and she wanted to know why.

  The report stated that when it was obvious Emma was no longer productively contributing, she had to be taken out of the test before she skewed the results. But because they’d already sealed the subjects inside the phony spacecraft, the only way to negate her involvement was to immobilize her. When Sarah and Johnson had decided to place her inside a pod to test why the pods were malfunctioning, the testers saw a golden opportunity and pumped her IV’s full of cyanide. Then the report went on to cite some bullshit legal precedents no one had ever heard of outside of law school about how it wasn’t considered a crime to dispatch her because she’d signed her life over to the program and the testers were above reproach. The language made Sarah sick to her stomach. They’d killed an innocent, sweet-natured woman and excused themselves of the crime with paperwork full of legal terminology.

  Sarah knew it would have been just as easy or even easier to pump her IV’s full of morphine, but that wouldn’t freak out the rest of the crew the way the cyanide poisoning had.

  For a moment afterwards, Johnson had been so confused he’d believed the ship’s computer was trying to kill them. That kind of paranoia is hard to fabricate without the right ingredients, and the testers had a whole pantry full of sadistic delights to push them to their limits.

  Sarah
closed out Emma’s dossier in disgust. She was glad to be leaving Earth behind forever after what she’d been put through. She just hoped the colonists weren’t as cruel and manipulative, or else the Seed planet would go to shit the way the Earth had.

  There were two more files. One file was much larger than the other. She read the names off: Michael Stevens and Jane Hotchkiss. They were the only two survivors of their four man crew experiment. Jane’s was the smaller file so she read that one first.

  In a nutshell, Jane had completed her test admirably, for the most part.

  Sarah checked the dates for the test. Jane’s group had started their testing just ten days before Sarah’s group started theirs; ending on the same day Sarah’s started. Jane and Michael were probably almost as exhausted as Sarah and Jack were.

  The only pause for concern came when she read that Jane’s crew had turned on each other rather than trying to reconcile the situation or fight their way through it, and Jane had run off and hid from them in a cupboard. At first Sarah was mildly disappointed by her actions until she read that the fighting had turned deadly. Who wouldn’t get sick of that much aggression?

  But because of her perceived cowardice, when the test ended, she was demoted from captain.

  That explained why Jane had given her the evil eye when they met during the launch from Earth into orbit. But Jane’s cowardice and her resultant demotion was hardly Sarah’s doing.

  So Jane was only here because she was small enough to fit inside a kitchen cabinet and cowardly enough to let her crew murder each other without intervening in any way.

  She closed the report and moved on to Michael’s. When she was finished, she had half a mind to jettison his frozen carcass out into the void.

  Michael had performed quite well during the trials. But that had all changed when it was discovered that one of the crew members had purposely jettisoned several colonists—actors—and then set up a fellow crew member to take the fall. She’d semi-thawed the patsy crew member so he'd move into a different position and then she refroze him. When the others saw that he'd moved since they'd put him on ice, they suspected he'd come out of stasis to kill the colonists. But because refreezing so soon after a thaw was dangerous, the guy was dying a slow and painful death as his cell walls were ruptured by the crystallized water within them.