by Mark Lukens
They came to the airlock.
They stood in front of the airlock door; it was a large metal door with a small rectangular window at eye-level. The window was black—the airlock dark beyond the thick glass. Yellow and black stripes were painted across the door along with warnings posted in red lettering not to open the doors, and below the warnings was a set of instructions and the proper steps for opening the airlock door. To the left of the door was a large green button the size of a man’s palm protected behind a hard clear plastic shell that could be lifted up.
A shiver ran through Cromartie’s body as he stood in front of the thick metal door, yet he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the fact that on the other side of this door was a room where he could be shot out into space that went on forever and ever.
“I think we’ve seen everything up here on this level,” Cromartie said and looked at Sanders. She seemed to be as creeped out by the airlock as he was. “Let’s go down and check the lower level.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sanders answered and she seemed like she was happy to get away from the airlock door.
• • •
The stairwell that led down to the lower level of the ship was tucked away near the corner of the dead-end wall, past the rec-room, supply closets, and their quarters. The stairs went down for a flight to a landing, and then turned back the other way, towards the front of the ship. They ventured down the metal steps into the gloom. Lights turned on automatically as they reached the bottom of the steps.
They turned towards an entryway and more lights came on as they passed through a pair of large doors that opened up to a vast maze of aisles that meandered through walls and walls of storage units that were stacked up on top of each other from the floor up to the twelve foot ceiling like blocks in a wall. The storage units were all different sizes, some as small as a post office box, others the size of a microwave oven, on up to units that looked like they could fit a horse inside. Each unit was constructed from a metal frame with an opaque plastic door on the front. All of the storage units had small computer panels on the front of them above the plastic doors with red digital numbers shining on the display screens, the endless stream of data whizzing by. There were no handles on the doors and no conceivable way of opening them.
“Can you believe all of these units are full of animals and plants?” Sanders asked Cromartie with awe in her voice.
“All of the different forms of life on Earth,” Cromartie said. “Enough to start over.”
Sanders didn’t say anything; she just stared at the wall of storage units in front of them.
Cromartie ran his fingers over the digital display on one of the units he stood in front of, but nothing changed on the small screen; the endless data kept on streaming by. He studied the data, but it just seemed to be some kind of code comprised of numbers and letters that probably only MAC could understand. He thought about asking MAC if they could open these storage units, but he was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that one.
“Well, that’s about it,” Cromartie said. He looked at Sanders. “We’ve explored every part of this ship that we can. MAC said the level below this one is off limits to us.”
Sanders nodded like she remembered.
“Come on,” he told her. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
Sanders smiled. It was the first time that he had seen her smile.
“Big spender,” she said.
EIGHT
Cromartie and Sanders sat in the dining area. No one else was in there with them. Cromartie wasn’t sure where the others had gone to, maybe back to their quarters, maybe exploring the ship like they had just done, and he didn’t really care right now. It was nice to be alone with Sanders—she seemed to be taking their situation the most calmly so far.
Cromartie and Sanders each sipped a cup of coffee. Cromartie had made the cups of coffee for them, emptying the freeze-dried packets into the cups of water and microwaving them. There didn’t seem to be a regular oven in the galley-style kitchen, only three microwave ovens recessed into the steel walls. The food selections were dried or canned food, or frozen food in the small walk-in freezer, and everything was either eaten cold or heated up in one of the microwave ovens.
They sat on the built-in bench around the table against the far wall, both of them silent for a while. This was the first chance Cromartie had to think about his wife and his kids, and he was shell-shocked for a moment. What had happened to them? Were they killed in this nuclear war that MAC had told them about? Were they on another ship heading to Eden? Had they died on Earth, and then had he volunteered for this mission? He couldn’t remember anything about the last few months of his life and it was driving him crazy. Why couldn’t he remember? He even wondered if he had gone insane somehow and was imagining all of this, or if he was in the middle of some kind of nightmare that he was struggling to wake up from right now. Or even trapped in a coma.
He had to stop thinking about these things or he was going to drive himself insane. MAC had told them that each one of them had varying degrees of short-term memory loss, so maybe his memories would come back soon.
At least he hoped so.
Cromartie took another sip of his coffee. “This coffee sucks,” Cromartie said after he set his cup down on the table top.
Sanders looked at Cromartie and then she burst into laughter.
Cromartie looked at her; he was a little confused for a second by her outburst, but he smiled at her. “What?”
Sanders tried to answer him, but she couldn’t stop laughing. Her words were coming out in incoherent sounds. She pushed her coffee cup away and hid her face behind her hands as tears rolled out of her eyes.
“What is it?” Cromartie asked, but he was already beginning to laugh along with her.
Sanders struggled to get herself under control, finally able to speak through her laughter. “Not only have we woken up in the middle of a three hundred year mission by a fucked up computer, but … but the coffee isn’t very good, either.”
Cromartie couldn’t help it—he burst into laughter.
“Stop it,” he told her as he tried to catch his breath.
Sanders waved a hand at him, but she was laughing so hard now that she could barely breathe. Tears rolled down her face. “I’m … trying,” she finally said.
After a moment they stopped laughing. They each wiped at the tears in their eyes.
“God, I needed that,” Cromartie said after a big sigh.
Sanders nodded and took another sip of her coffee. “You’re right. This coffee does suck.”
They looked at each other and burst into another fit of laughter.
After they stopped laughing, Sanders stared at Cromartie, her expression turning serious again. “You don’t remember anything about your past?”
Cromartie nodded. “Yeah, I remember a lot more now. Most of it’s coming back to me. I know I’m married to my wife, Julie. I have two kids. Carrie is ten and Joey is eight. I own a construction business in St. Paul, Minnesota. We have a house …”
He let his words trail off as he stared at Sanders for a moment, and then he shook his head. “I wouldn’t have volunteered for something like this … this mission or whatever it is. I wouldn’t have left my family alone to board a spaceship headed for some other planet. I mean … why would I do that?”
Sanders was quiet for a moment, like she wanted to say something, but she hesitated. Then she spit it out. “What if something happened to your family and that’s why you’re here?”
Cromartie felt a lump of emotion form in his throat and he nodded. “Yeah, I already thought of that.”
“MAC told us the Earth was destroyed,” Sanders continued. “What if something happened to your wife and children? A missile blast or radiation sickness or something like that.”
He just nodded. Sanders didn’t seem to pull any punches with her words, like she was just stating the facts without emotion or regard for his feelings.
A memory tugged at C
romartie’s mind as he sat there with his hand still wrapped around his coffee cup. The image struggled to surface in his mind, like something trying to materialize out of the darkness of his lost memories, but he just couldn’t make it out yet.
Did he really want to remember whatever was eluding him? For some reason he was sure that this was a terrible memory trying to surface, something bad that he didn’t want to see again.
“Not knowing is the worst part,” Cromartie finally said. “Not knowing what happened to my wife and kids. Not knowing why I’m on this ship.”
Sanders nodded and took another sip of her coffee.
“What about you?” Cromartie asked Sanders. “What do you remember?”
“I’m not married. No kids. I was a cop in L.A. Working my way towards a detective’s badge.”
Cromartie stared at Sanders as an epiphany hit him.
“What?” she asked like she could tell that he had just realized something important. She was smart, and he could see the cop in her now. He should’ve seen it before: her calm and confident manner, the authority she conveyed with her body language, her sharp eyes that didn’t miss a thing.
“You were a cop,” he said.
She nodded and looked at him strangely—she had just told him that.
“And I owned a construction business.”
Even though she was sharp, he could tell that he had lost her.
“Come on, let’s go round up the others,” he told her as he jumped up to his feet.
“Why? What is it?”
“Because I want to ask everyone a question.”
NINE
Cromartie and Sanders gathered the others, even Butler, and they all met in the dining area. More crappy coffee was served, and Cromartie stood near the counters, staring at the others.
“I’m from St. Paul, Minnesota,” Cromartie told all of them.
They stared back at him with blank looks.
“I’m a builder. I own my own construction company. It’s a very successful company. I’m married to my wife, Julie. And I have two beautiful kids: Carrie who is ten years old, and Joey is eight.”
“This is the big announcement?” Ward asked, shrugging like he didn’t understand. “You telling us who you are and where you’re from?”
Cromartie didn’t respond to Ward’s question. Instead, he looked at Sanders. “I was talking to Sanders in here a few minutes ago. She’s a cop from Los Angeles.”
Again, they stared at him with blank looks.
“Don’t you see?” Cromartie told them and he couldn’t hold back his excitement. He felt like he’d discovered a clue to this mystery that they weren’t seeing yet. “Why would either one of us be on a spaceship? We’re not astronauts. We’re not in the military. We haven’t been trained for this kind of stuff.”
Cromartie saw the illumination of revelation in Abraham’s expression.
“What about you, Abraham?” Cromartie asked, seizing on his sudden understanding. “Are you an astronaut?”
Abraham cleared his throat. “No. I’m from Ohio. I’m forty-nine years old. I’m a professor of biology at a small university outside of Cincinnati.”
“What are you getting at?” Ward asked.
“What about you, Ward? Are you an astronaut? Have you been trained for stuff like this in your past?”
“No,” Ward said, but he didn’t expound on it.
Sanders watched Ward with a cop’s suspicion. “Well, what do you do for a living?”
Ward shrugged and shook his head. “Everything’s still a little fuzzy.”
Sanders stared at Ward like she didn’t believe him.
“I see where he’s going with this,” Abraham said and looked at Rolle. “What about you?” he asked Rolle. “What did you do for a living?”
“I’m a psychiatrist,” Rolle answered. “I have a private practice in New York City, in Manhattan. I’m single and I spent most of my twenties in college. I also hold a degree as an M.D.”
“Rich kid, I bet,” Ward said in his slight southern drawl.
Rolle didn’t deny it.
“I see what Cromartie’s getting at—none of us would’ve been trained for something like this,” Abraham said with more excitement in his voice now, a small smile on his face.
“Not that we can remember, anyway,” Rolle reminded them.
Abraham shook his head quickly, dismissing Rolle’s idea. The older man was getting even more excited now. “Either we volunteered for this mission and can’t remember it, or we were abducted. We were taken and put on this ship against our will.”
“I don’t remember anything like that,” Ward said.
“Yes, that’s just it,” Abraham answered. “None of us remember how we got on this ship. That seems to make a good case that we were knocked out somehow, with a drug or something, and put into cryosleep on this ship. They needed people to populate this Eden planet we’re going to because the Earth was dying, and they took us against our will.”
“And all of the others on the other ships,” Cromartie said. “There could be dozens of us headed to this planet. Maybe even hundreds or thousands.”
Sanders looked up at the ceiling of the dining area. “MAC, are you there?”
“Yes, Sanders.”
“Is this true? Were we taken against our will and put on this ship to colonize this planet we’re going to?”
MAC hesitated for a moment and then answered: “I’m sorry, that information is not available to me.”
“He knows,” Ward growled.
“But why us?” Rolle asked. “Especially if we were never trained for something like this. I could see astronauts or soldiers or something … but us?”
“I think it’s kind of obvious,” Abraham said. “We’re kind of like a cross-section of humanity on Earth. And we all seem to have some of the necessary skills we might need to colonize a planet.”
Abraham looked at Cromartie as he continued, talking faster now. “You’re a builder. You know about construction.” He looked at Sanders. “You were a cop. An enforcer of the law.” He looked at Rolle. “And you are a psychiatrist, a needed skill I’m sure in a situation like this. And you’re a medical doctor on top of that. And I’m an expert in biology, and I’m also an organic farmer. We all have skills that could be necessary on this new world. I mean, they wouldn’t send a used car salesman or an accountant or something, right?”
Sanders looked at Ward. “What about you? What are your skills?”
They all stared at Ward, waiting for his answer.
He shrugged and shook his head. “I’m out of work. Or I was, anyway.”
Sanders looked at Abraham with a smirk. “So they sent us an unemployed person?”
Abraham turned his attention back to Ward, not deterred by Sanders’ sarcasm. “There has to be more. What skills do you have?”
Ward didn’t answer.
Sanders stared at Ward. “Why don’t you want to tell us anything?” She didn’t try to hide the suspicion in her voice.
“I was in the Marine Corp for four years when I was younger,” Ward finally answered. “I live in Georgia and I’m a survivalist. Okay? You satisfied now?”
“A survivalist?” Cromartie asked.
“I have a big piece of property out in the woods,” Ward said. “When I saw where the world was heading, with all of the threats of nuclear war, terrorism, pandemics, and all that stuff, I spent all of my money on a piece of property way out in the middle of nowhere. I built a bunker there and I stocked it with water, food, supplies. Guns and ammo.”
“There you go,” Abraham said, obviously pleased with himself. “Ward has skills that we would definitely need.”
Ward jumped up to his feet, suddenly angry. He marched towards the archway that led out to the corridor, but then he turned around and walked back to the group. He looked right at Abraham. “That’s all great, professor. I’m glad you figured all of this out. But let me ask you a question: What good are all of these skills if we’re going to
be dead before we even reach this planet?”
Abraham didn’t have an answer to Ward’s question.
None of them did.
“This is pointless,” Ward grumbled and left the dining area. “I’m out of here.”
TEN
Ward sat on the edge of his bed in his quarters. He was still fuming over the stupid conversation they’d had in the dining area.
Didn’t these guys get it? They were all dead. There was no way out of this. Who cared why they were selected for this ship, or what skills each one of them had? They weren’t going to make it to the planet, so none of it mattered anyway.
He got up and paced the small area of his room, walking back and forth—he needed to walk, to move around. He felt caged in, locked inside this metal tomb adrift through space.
As he paced, he tried to recall the last thing that he could remember before waking up on this ship. He concentrated, trying to remember something … anything.
But nothing would come to him. He could remember everything about his life except for the last few days or weeks … he wasn’t really sure because that time was a blur to him.
So he tried to think back to the last thing he could remember, and that was being at his bunker in the woods. He’d been there … doing something, but he wasn’t exactly sure what. That’s when it all became a blur.
He concentrated again as he walked back and forth beside his bed. He thought back to the last time he was at his bunker. He remembered driving out there on the dirt road that led to his camp with a truck full of supplies. He got there and …
And then what happened?
He couldn’t remember.
Did someone come and abduct him? Knock him out and put him on this ship? But how could somebody have done that? Nobody knew where his bunker was hidden. He was good at keeping secrets, and he was even better at hiding his tracks in the woods. No way anyone followed him … there was no way somebody could’ve gotten to him on his property without him seeing them. No way. It was too secure.
Then how?
