The Explorer

by James Smythe

In the changing room I look at myself in the mirror for the first time since I woke up. I am a wreck; it takes me seconds to come to terms with what I’m seeing, because it’s wrong. I don’t recognize this face; it’s so thin and drawn, weak and loose and grey in the skin. My face has pockmarks, shaving scars, scars from what looks like acne and scratches, as thin as blades of grass. I examine my chest: marks, more slight scars, faded but still prominent, and every single rib there outlined, jutting, trying to punch their way out of my white, almost translucent skin. My arms are a picture of self-harm, scratched-in scars from my wrist to my elbow on my right arm, nearly as many on the left. I’m covered in them. In my mouth, my gums have drawn themselves back, exposing yellow and brown teeth that cling desperately to the inside of my jaw. At the back, two or three teeth are missing; my breath reeks, even to me. I shake, again, poking at myself. This is scarier than any film I’ve ever seen, any nightmare I’ve ever had, because it feels real; that sheen of it being fake – false – is gone, and I’m left with myself: a fragile, broken shell.

  ‘Was this the crash? The explosion? Did that do all of this? What the fuck has happened to me?’ I ask aloud, my voice – harsh, like I’m not used to speaking – cracking into tears, but there’s no reply. I didn’t expect there to be.

  Day two was spent outlining exactly how the trip was to work: what everybody’s individual roles were. I conducted interviews with the crew as they worked, or as they sat for me, like this was a TV show. Every day I beamed a broadcast back; there was a slot reserved on the BBC, sold to hundreds of other channels the world over, where they would watch the mini-documentary each day. It was basically edits of the interviews (and after a while I would start interviewing for single sentences or sound bites only, because they were all that ever made it into our miniature documentaries) and some shots of the crew working, or of the space around us – from the Bubble, or, on rare occasion, taken out on a walk. It was the first time that they had the tech to receive these broadcasts, at least during the early part of our trip, so that was part of the job. (To some extent, the money from the sales of the broadcasts funded part of the trip: DARPA sold the rights, and they pocketed the profits. It probably paid for some of the fuel, or the hull, or us.) I wrote everything down, because after this, it would become the article. I wrote at the computer – though it was harder than it ought to have been, because of the microgravity, because being strapped to a stool wasn’t comfortable, because the keys seemed to be harder to press than at home, not having their usual give as I tapped at them. Day two was when I established those things. Now, here, I listen to the me that’s out there asking the questions I barely remember asking, that now, in hindsight, sound so banal.

  ‘What made you want to become an astronaut?’ I ask Guy.

  ‘No, never wanted that. I wanted to be an explorer,’ he corrects.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘What made you want to become an explorer?’

  ‘Really? That’s your first question?’ He laughs at the camera, at me, because he sees something intrinsically funny in all of this. That was Guy. ‘I mean, Jesus, who wouldn’t?’ That was the clip from him that went into the first broadcast back; he looked so happy when he said it. I knew it was a self-satisfied pleasure, but it played as excitement.

  I listen as the other me delivers a fake eulogy for Arlen, a second speech especially for the camera, standing in front of the cockpit so as to keep his bed – his body – out of shot. I remember that Wanda held the camera, because she was still crying whenever we said his name, and Ground Control said that they didn’t want it in shot. We were to report that he died a hero’s death: that he died for the betterment of humanity, in trying to further the reach of our species, to further the concept of what it means to be human.

  ‘It’s something we all feel passionately about,’ the me says, ‘that he died a noble death.’ We don’t say what happened to him; just that there had been a malfunction, and we would be bringing his body back for a state burial upon our return. ‘May he rest in peace,’ I say, and then we go to a picture of him that we’ve got on file, superimposed with the dates of his birth and death.

  After that, it was back to work; I remember, because we had to. No rest for the wicked.

  Our journey was incessant, unless we had to cut the engines to do a mandatory stop, fix something, check something out; or if we simply chose to. There were no issues with it wasting energy or fuel for the most part, so it wasn’t a huge deal. If we wanted to stop, however, we needed permission from Guy. What I did, when I was on my own – what I will do? – stopping the engines as much as I did, that was rare. The noise of the engines covers up for me now, hiding any accidental noise I make. My beard itches, and I scratch at it, worrying that the noise will somehow carry. One of the rules was that we were presentable for the videos. That went out of the window after a while, but for those first few broadcasts we shaved and cut our hair, and Emmy put make-up on, because she said that it was important. For the day-to-day, we didn’t bother. Now, all I want to do is shave, clean myself – I stink of the sweat after the stasis, of whatever I’ve been through – and I want to reset everything. I’m starving, and I rifle through the crates and find a few spare food bars, and I eat one, but that doesn’t stop the shaking, and there’s a water bottle, pure stuff, filtered, which I drink, but it barely soothes my throat, and doesn’t do anything for the fever I’m sure I’ve got, or that I’m developing, or the desire to put myself back how I was. And through all of it, I concentrate on that beard, which doesn’t suit my face at all, would be far more suited to a harder face (like Arlen’s), and which I constantly want to itch at, tear at. I need to cut my fingernails: they scratch my face when I itch it. I can’t bite them, because I’m worried about the stability of my teeth. The beard needs to go, I decide. I need to cut it off. Before this, I’d say it was pride, or care, or a desire to feel better about myself. I never got frustrated with my personal hygiene before.

  Our third day of training had been one of the hardest. We were evaluated by psychologists, taken into small rooms one by one and shown pictures, asked questions.

  ‘How do you feel when you see a long, unlit road?’

  ‘The sound of running water: soothing or terrifying?’

  ‘What would it feel like to dream and never wake up?’

  ‘What is more important: purpose or reason?’ We had hours of the questions, one by one, alone with nameless doctors in little grey rooms. When we ate lunch, it was on our own, sandwiches handed to us in sealed plastic packets. The sandwiches didn’t say what was in them, and visually, there was nothing given away; it was a colourful paste, like sandwich spread. Before I’d even taken a bite I knew that it was a test, that I was still being watched. ‘What does it mean to trust? What does it mean to take?’

  When we were finished I sat in the annex, waiting to see what was next; if we were allowed to leave, or if there was more. Emmy was the next to finish; she sat next to me on the strict white bench and asked me about my day. We compared questions, answers.

  ‘You reckon they’re still watching us?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if they’re not,’ I said. She laughed at that.

  ‘I’ve not heard that before,’ she said. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Something . . . it’s an old phrase. Something my parents used to say.’

  ‘Monkey’s uncle.’ She smiled, and we stayed there, chatting, until Quinn arrived. He sat on the other side of her, took over; that was his role as the leading man.

  I rummage through the storage boxes for paper, so that I can write down everything I can remember that happened from my first time here. I can’t remember exact days: after Guy died, when we stopped sending broadcasts back to Ground Control – because they were markers in the days, stop signs that told us what time it was, almost – I completely lost sense of what was day and what was night. Quinn tried to stick to rigid sleeping patterns for the few days that he survived, but I gave up on it altogether, slee
ping when I was tired. Emmy . . . I don’t remember what Emmy did. I scribble down rough estimates of the days on which everything occurred, starting with Arlen’s death. Wanda’s was a week after Arlen. Guy was five days after Wanda. Quinn, a day, maybe, after Guy. And Emmy I sedated a day later. I try to remember how many days I was here afterwards; how long it took for everything to degrade. It seems so long ago, like another lifetime, or hundreds of them.

  ‘It was only two days ago,’ I realize, ‘that the ship . . .’ I try to count backwards – to calm myself, to run through the days, simultaneously practical and controlling – but can’t. I scrawl a seven next to my name – though it could have been as little as a three, as much as a fifteen, I really can’t say. I read over it a few times, saying the name aloud, counting down the days on my fingers as I go, as if I’m remembering exactly what happened, as if that counting will make a difference. And then there’s the hole: that gap between what happened and now, when my body became ruined, and I became ill (I shake, I shiver, I sweat) and I woke up again.

  In the main cabin, they have seats with belts across them, to hold them down. They have beds with buffers, with rubber panels to stop them slipping, to keep them safe, to frame them and ensure that they get the maximum amount of optimum rest; and blankets, attached by Velcro, to keep them warm and simulate the sense of being in bed, of sleeping; and the ability to warm the meal bars, to heat them in the branded microwave ovens, to eat them and feel some semblance of normality in mealtimes, and being able to choose flavours, to alternate meals, to drink something other than re-cleaned water; and the ability to exercise, to strap themselves to the rower or the weights, to press against something and feel actual stress, pressure, feel their muscles working against something other than just the lack of gravity, pressing against each other, working their bones, stopping those tiny slivers from wearing away in their joints; and computers, where they can send messages back to Earth, and receive them, write to their families, their friends, and to hear that they are all safe and sound; and to speak to Ground Control, reassure them that the trip is going smoothly, get orders, hear back that everything is running fine at their end; and they have other people to talk to, even if they don’t actually get along with them, even if they wouldn’t choose them as friends in any normal social circumstance, but find themselves able to converse, to argue, to fight, to discuss; and other people to look at, to just be aware that they’re not alone; and they’ve got the Bubble, and the cockpit, and they can see where they are, see the astonishing feat that they’re accomplishing in real time, first hand, see what nobody else has ever seen outside of a recorded video, grainy and somehow unreal, because it needs to be seen by the naked eye to ever actually become totally tangible; and they have other people to share this with, to assure them that they’re still sane. I have nothing. I have myself, and the dark of the storeroom, and no control over anything that’s happening to me, because it’s all been controlled once before.

  That night, the ship creaks. I notice it quietly at first; like a stomach ache in the person lying next to you in bed, something you hear but can’t place the origin of, can’t pinpoint. I press my ear against the wall and listen as hard as I can, but it’s only there as that tiny creak, that murmur; and then it’s gone.

  ‘If I haven’t gone insane, I’m somehow back on the ship,’ I say out loud, to make it real.

  I think about changing everything, and every time I do I halt myself. Every time I do my stomach knots and I feel more sick than I did, and I stop and tell myself it’s better this way. I remember something from a film I watched when I was a kid, a sci-fi thing where somebody time travelled – ha! That’s what I am! A time traveller! – and they were told that they can’t change the past or it will break everything. It’s impossible to change, they were told. I wonder if they’re right, but my stomach, my every instinct seems to agree with them.

  I hear Guy saying that he’s coming to the storeroom before he does, which is a relief, a mercy; I’ve been nearly asleep, or halfway there, trying to think of something other than how sick I feel. He shouts something in the hallway, speaking to Quinn, saying that they need something – a plug to close the filters on Arlen’s bed, designed to allow air in, something that the corpse of Arlen no longer needs – and Quinn shouts that they should be in the storage crates.

  ‘Along with all the other crap,’ he says. We hated the crates when the ship was being loaded, because everything in the boxes was contingency stuff. When the scientists told us what was in them, it was always prefaced by them telling us that we wouldn’t need what they were giving us. Nothing was necessary.

  ‘Just remember,’ the scientists said, ‘the most important thing is the mission. Get as far as you can, and use whatever you have to in order to get there.’ Those boxes were the whatever. (I remember why Guy wanted to plug the filters; Wanda was worried that Arlen would start to smell. Emmy reassured her that he wouldn’t, but she wouldn’t listen. That was Wanda.)

  The hardest part of staying in the room is the worry that somebody will just appear; with microgravity, there’s no footfalls, no early warning system. Guy’s shout let me know to keep my head down – the boxes I’m under are full of nothing, spare parts for the external panels, in case we hit an asteroid or something, I don’t know – but they’re not what Guy’s going to be looking for, but that doesn’t matter. I quickly loosen the straps on another crate, behind where I am, and I slide under that, watching the shadows made by the light outside the room as Guy approaches. I stay totally silent as I hear the door slide across, Guy heaving it, locking it open. He grabs the box he’s looking for, drags it towards the light from the hallway, peels back the lid and rummages.

  ‘Verdammt du Hurensohn,’ he says, then shouts the rest down the corridor. ‘These boxes are such a fucking mess.’ I listen as he roots around, takes things out and puts them on the floor. ‘Are these labelled?’ He puts them back, walks around the front part of the room. ‘It says that they’re in here, in this box. Where’s Wanda?’ He shouts her name, and she shouts back. ‘Have you got the inventory?’ She tells him that she’ll bring it down, so he leans against the box, waits for her to bring it to him. I worry that he’ll hear my breathing, so I try to calm down.

  Wanda finally arrives with the inventory; she and Guy read what’s in the boxes (which are all numbered, one to eleven), and then they find the plug in a box on the far side of the room. They leave after a few minutes of putting the boxes back together, of barely speaking – they never got on especially well, always frosty with each other, never really talking much – and then shut the door after them. I listen as it slides across, realizing that I’ve kept my eyes shut the whole time, like a kid playing hide-and-seek. I can’t stay here, I realize. I need somewhere better to hide.

  The first time we were allowed to walk around the ship was a VR simulation. This was before construction was finished, when it was still just a fantasy, when the promise of our trip was still eighteen months away from being realized. We – most of the people who were being offered the jobs, deep into our training and analysis – were led through, given a guided tour by one of the scientists. They showed us every nook and cranny, clearing the rooms, spinning all the features, stripping the walls of their panelling and showing us what was inside them: the wires, the pipes, the tubes. They showed us how the piezoelectric energy worked; the little sensors rubbing across the metals, the gap between the outer shell and inner walls that carried the sensors. It had to be wide: the hull of the ship picked up the vibrations, and the inner wall of the hull carried the sensors that converted those vibrations into energy, which then ran off into the battery. I remember standing in that room with Arlen and a doctor who didn’t make the final team.

  ‘It’s like a closet,’ Arlen said.

  ‘Wouldn’t even hold half of my wife’s clothes,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Good job she’s not going to be coming on the trip, then.’ We were shown around every part of the ship, then the ou
tside, the hardcore electrics, the mechanics, the stuff I would never understand. The panels were all designed to be removable, in case we needed to reach the electrics, to do vital repair work. Remove them, fix the ship, we were told. If the battery fails, open the walls and get inside, and fix the piezoelectric stuff from the inside. Everything is repairable. These things were vital to the continued journey of the Ishiguro and her crew of explorers.

  I wait until the crew have gone to bed, then grab a tool from one of the boxes, a thin sliver of metal that’s not dissimilar to a crowbar. It slides between two of the panels at the back of the room, and I heave the panel off. There, I see it: the ship’s insides. Her guts. They run like veins and intestines and arteries and bones and nerves and synapses and blood, and they line almost every inch of the panelling. It should be dirty grey metal, like they showed us in the VR mock-up; instead it’s technicolour, wires of every type, bound together in lines. There’s insulation, as well, white and foamy and unlike anything you can buy to do your roof with; future insulation. The space between the walls is wide enough for a man, even for a man turned sideways, lying flat, stretched out. I pull the panel out and slide in. It’s colder than the rest of the ship, but not by much, and the noise from the panels is so loud that it makes my head throb as soon as I’m in there. But after I’ve pulled the panel shut behind me, tugging it into place, listening to the clack of the plugs sealing me in the pitch-blackness, I feel totally safe. None of the crew will be able to find me here. It’s perfect.

  I’m crammed in when I feel something in the cargo pocket of my trousers, pressing against me. It’s under a zip, and I open it, and there’s a bottle of pills, a quarter full. They’re labelled as painkillers. I don’t know where they’ve come from, but it doesn’t matter, because they’re all I’ve got, and as I’m looking at them I feel the overwhelming need to take one, the sheer blunt desire, like a hunger, a craving. I take one, and ten minutes later I can barely feel my leg, and the shaking and shivering has gone, and I start to actually, genuinely relax.