Déjà Vu (First Contact)

by Peter Cawdron

  My heart sinks as bursts of light ripple along the spine of the starship. The disaster unfolds in complete and utter silence. I watch as explosions compress the hull, causing it to buckle. Being half a mile long, it takes almost a minute for the Intrepid to disintegrate. There’s no nova, but the engine is glowing. The tritium from the fusion core must have formed a plasma, consuming the displacement drive before it could rupture. Small mercy. For a moment, the Intrepid shines like a star in the night. There’s sorrow in watching my life’s work being destroyed. A knot forms at the thought of my friends dying. I wish I was wrong. I wish I really was insane.

  What now?

  Do these last moments of the Intrepid repeat like one of the old vinyl records skipping and replaying part of a song over and over again? Is my life a video caught in a loop? Will another me appear down there, straddling the side of a reborn starship? How does this work?

  A shadow falls over me, which given I’m still in the shadow of the planet, is unnerving. The darkness is unlike anything I’ve ever known. No stars. I can feel the inky black darkness, which sounds as mad as it is. The spotlights on my helmet allow me to see the folds of material on my arms, reaching down to the rubber tips of my gloves, but beyond that, nothing. No Intrepid. No debris. No planet. No stars. No light whatsoever. I’m floating in eternity without any point of reference beyond my spacesuit. I turn, using the orientation jets, but there’s nothing. It’s as though I failed to move at all. The darkness is heavy—oppressive—malignant—alive. Whatever this is, it’s not natural.

  There are voices. Vague. Distant. Indistinct words. Guttural. Primitive. Yelling in alarm. Warning of danger, but I don’t understand the language.

  “Who are you?”

  The Sun blinds me.

  Gravity overwhelms me.

  I fall to one knee on a dry, dusty plain. Fine strands of dead grass reach up to waist height around me, swaying in the breeze. The Sun is high overhead. There’s a tree in the distance, rising above the African plain—an acacia tree. A thick green canopy stretches out from the tangled trunk. The sky is azure blue. Clouds dot the horizon.

  Something’s moving through the long grass, charging toward me. Dust kicks up from beneath the thundering paws of a lion. Its mane catches in the wind, being blown to one side as it pounds at the dirt, sprinting at me. I scramble to my feet, but my spacesuit is heavy. The backpack is bulky, shifting my center of gravity. I’m awkward. I lean over, running hard toward a thicket of thorn bushes. My boots thump against the uneven ground, kicking up stones and clumps of dirt. I trip and fall, landing on my side. Rocks scrape against my suit. My gloved hand pushes at the loose soil as I desperately try to get to my feet. The lion roars, baring its teeth, bellowing over the savannah.

  Tribesmen throw spears at the lion. Their dark skin, tattered loincloths, and bare feet are as far removed from orbiting a gas giant as I could possibly imagine. Leaning on my gloved hands, I struggle to my feet. The lion roars. I turn and run on. I’m breathing hard. Heart pumping. Lungs burning. Spacesuits weren’t designed to be worn on Earth. My helmet swings wildly, rocking on my shoulders.

  “What the—”

  Suddenly, the musty brown soil beneath my boots turns into a fine white powder. I find myself sinking up to my knees in fresh snow. I’m still running, but I topple forward, landing face-first in a snowdrift. My helmet is half-buried in the powdered snow.

  My backpack is stupidly heavy. It’s all I can do to roll on my side, flailing around with my arms. Tall deciduous trees line a distant rocky cliff, appearing dead, lined up like skeletons on the ridge.

  “Wh—How the?”

  It takes considerable effort to get to my feet. I sway under the weight of the life-support system on my back. The pack shifts with each step. Sweat drips from my forehead. I’m in a clearing. Powdered snow lies all around me, pristine and untouched for almost fifty yards. I can see where I fell, but there are no marks beyond there. It’s as though I dropped from the sky, but I fell while running from a lion on the savannah.

  I pick up a handful of snow, running it between my gloved fingers and watching as it falls back to the snowdrift.

  “Where the hell am I?”

  Snowflakes curl in the wind, falling from a moody, overcast sky, catching on my glass visor.

  “MacArthur? Jensen? Anyone? Can you hear me?”

  There’s movement behind a pocket of pine trees to my right. Dark shadows loom through the thicket. I watch in awe as an elephant pushes its way between the trees, knocking snow from the boughs. Wait. This isn’t an elephant. Shaggy hair covers a thick hide. Long, curved tusks extend from a massive head. A thick trunk samples the air, swaying as it searches for scents. This is a mammoth. How is this possible?

  Snow rests on top of the mammoth, piled up on its back. The animal comes to a halt, looking at me with bewilderment. Neither of us belong here. I wonder what’s going through its mind. I’m an intruder in this world. Will it charge at me like the lion? If I flee, will I fall into some other world?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spot men moving through the shadows of the trees on the side of the clearing. They’re stalking the mammoth, creeping up on it under the cover of the pine boughs. They pay me no attention, keeping their eyes on the massive beast. They’re carrying spears held above their shoulders, set like javelins ready to throw. I want to call out to them. I want to talk with them, but I suspect they wouldn’t speak English. I wonder if they’re able to speak at all. Would their grunts be recognizable as a language? With animal skins draped over their bodies and long straggly hair, they may not even be human. This could be a Neanderthal hunting party for all I know.

  The hunters creep forward, edging closer to the mammoth. I stagger over toward a woman standing on the opposite side of the clearing. She’s horrified by my appearance. It’s difficult to move through the snowdrift, more like wading through water than walking. I must look like a devil to her, a demon from another world. In many ways, I am.

  “Please. Help me.”

  I reach out a gloved hand, only reality shifts again. I find myself standing in a town somewhere in North America. I can tell it’s the US by the advertising signs for cherry cola, denim jeans, and a billboard advertising affordable funerals. It’s a small town. At a guess, somewhere in the rural midwest. I’m in the center of a broad main street. Cars drive past. A few of them beep their horns, but not in an aggressive manner. They’re warning me they’re coming up from behind and passing to one side.

  I’ve seen internal combustion vehicles like these in museums, but I’ve never seen one in motion. They’re much louder than I thought. I can hear them clearly even though my helmet visor is still locked in place.

  The snow clinging to my suit melts under the hot sun, forming a pool of water by my boots. I turn through 360 degrees.

  “What is happening to me?”

  With the stubby, rubberized fingers in my glove, I punch at my wrist pad computer, bringing the screen to life. I hit the transmit video setting.

  “MacArthur? Jansen? Are you reading me? Can you see this? Please tell me you can see this.”

  My heart sinks. Deep down, I know they can’t hear me. They’re dead. Or are they? Are they rebooting somewhere else? Are they trapped in orbit around a gas giant? Are they still convinced they’re prepping to leave Earth’s orbit?

  I pan around, allowing the cameras on my helmet to take in the sight of a small town in rural America from roughly a hundred years before I was born. There are people on the sidewalk, standing in front of a fast-food restaurant. They have their phones out, taking pictures of me. I walk over, breathing heavily within my spacesuit, struggling under the weight of the life-support pack.

  An elderly woman looks amused by my presence.

  “Halloween ain’t for another month, sweetie.”

  A teenage boy chewing gum asks, “Are you making a movie?”

  His girlfriend reaches out toward me. “Can I touch your suit? Did you make this yourself?”r />
  The boy laughs. “That’s some wicked cosplay.”

  I dare not open my helmet. For all I know, my next step could see me plunging back into orbit around another alien world. “Where are we?”

  The boy laughs at my confusion.

  “Louisville. Just outside of Omaha, Nebraska.”

  “And the year?”

  “What?” The girl is genuinely surprised. “Are you like from the future or something? Are you The Terminator?” She laughs at the thought.

  Her boyfriend is working hard on his gum. “Oh, that’s rad.”

  “Please. The year?”

  “You’re shitting me, right?” He looks around, trying to see if there’s anyone else following me. “This is a gag. It has to be. We’re on Punk’d, Lizzy.”

  Liz giggles, asking, “Where are the cameras?”

  For a moment, I’m confused. I point at the side of my helmet, thinking they’re talking about the camera clipped onto my suit, but they think I’m part of a practical joke. They’re looking for hidden TV cameras operated by some morally ambiguous reality show. Someone’s trying to make fools out of them, but they’re not falling for the trap.

  I turn and walk away along the sidewalk as they continue making snide remarks. Curious faces peer out of storefront windows. Fingers point. Hushed comments are made. More photos are taken.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Everyone has a phone out. They hold them up, blotting out their faces, hiding from me behind these tiny impersonal electronic devices.

  A young boy yells, “You’re stupid,” as his mother hurries past. She jerks at his arm, holding his hand tight and dragging him on before I can say anything.

  I can’t take this.

  Where am I?

  How am I jumping between worlds? This makes no sense. I’ve gone from a low Earth orbit to some gas giant in the Proc, to the grasslands of Africa, to the snow-covered mountains of Europe in ancient times, and deep into 20th century America. How? Why?

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I want to rub them, but I dare not open my visor. For all I know, I’m still in orbit and this is all some grand hallucination. Someone bumps into me. I turn, and a boy on a skateboard laughs, zigzagging as he continues along the pavement. His wheels clack as they hit each crack in the concrete.

  Darkness descends. Thousands of eyes peer at me. There’s no body to this immense alien presence, just a wall of eyes—no, it’s a sphere curving around me. I’m at the center, trapped inside this alien monster. Tentacles flutter next to me like seaweed caught in an ocean swell. They touch at my naked body from the fringes. Where’s my spacesuit? It’s gone, but how?

  I can’t move. I’m paralyzed, gripped by fear. In the depths of my mind, I’m screaming in terror, but outwardly there’s no movement. I’m dead. I’m not breathing, not blinking. I have no muscle control, no feeling, no pain. My eyes stare straight ahead, unable to move, but I can see them—the wall of eyes—the aliens of Procyon Alpha. Thousands of pupils dilate in unison. They shift in a coordinated motion, scrutinizing my body in chilling detail.

  Where’s my suit? My thermal undergarment? My clothing is gone. But how? On the edge of my vision, I make out the pinkish skin of my arms. My hands and fingers look almost plastic, like those of a storefront mannequin.

  A puff of smoke drifts before me, rising from the center of my chest as a laser beam cuts through skin and bone. Thin alien tentacles pry open my chest, pulling back the rib cage. Bones break. Blood drifts in tiny globules, but there’s no pain. My eyes stare straight ahead. My ribs are stretched wide. They’re opened like gates on a hinge, exposing the inner depths of my body. I’m being tortured in purgatory. I must be. A vision of hell, with demons dancing in flames, could never be as terrifying as watching my own body being dissected.

  The eyes swivel, examining stringy blood vessels, lung tissue, and arteries. Strips of muscle and fat float before me. I don’t want to watch, but my eyes won’t close.

  Suddenly, the field of eyes meets me. Thousands of eyes stare deep into mine, peering through me, seeing beyond the veil of flesh and into the depths of my soul. They know. They can see me, not just my body. They’re looking beyond my eyes into my mind. Somehow, they can detect my thoughts. They’re horrified by what they see. The emotional anguish. The hopelessness. The hurt.

  The eyeballs fade from sight and I’m surrounded by the pitch-black void once more. No stars. No light. No strange worlds. I’m whole again, drifting in my spacesuit. I’m breathing. My heart rate is going through the roof, hitting a hundred and ninety-two beats per minute. Warnings flash on the computer-controlled heads-up display inside my helmet.

  I’m not sure how or when the transition occurred, but the thick, insulated material in my spacesuit cocoons me, wrapping around me. I dare not move. I’m alive, but my arms and legs are precisely where they were when I was naked. The whir of the fan in my helmet is my only companion, whispering to me, telling me I’m okay.

  The lights on the side of my helmet catch the folds of fabric making up my spacesuit. My spotlights reflect various chrome-plated fittings. I can see my thick gloves, my rubber-coated fingers and the screen of my wrist pad computer. Beyond that, though, there’s nothing but the darkness.

  Yet again, I’m lost.

  “Is—Is there anyone out there?” I ask with trembling lips, not entirely sure I want an answer. Right now, stumbling through the snow or standing in the middle of a street is appealing. At least I’d be on Earth. The silence is terrifying. My heart pounds in my chest, but it’s beating.

  “Please.” Although I know it’s hopeless, I can’t help but plead for my sanity. “I’m sorry. I—I am. Please. Bring me back.”

  There are voices. At first, they’re faint, but a man and woman are talking with each other. They sound intent, focused, not panicked, but not calm either.

  I hear partial sentences.

  “…not possible …she shouldn’t be …can’t see how…”

  “Jansen?” I say with shaking lips. “MacArthur?”

  It’s then I realize the voices are not coming through the speakers in my Snoopy cap. Sounds echo around me from beyond the reach of my helmet, but that’s impossible. I’m in a vacuum.

  “I’ve lost her. She keeps slipping away.”

  The accent is European. English is a second language. Male. Not old. Late twenties, early thirties? Educated. Intelligent.

  “Help me. Please,” I say, looking around but not seeing anything in the darkness beyond my suit.

  A violent shudder races through my body. My arms and legs spasm. I’m lucid. I’m falling yet again. I’m expecting to land in some other world, at some other time, but I don’t. I keep falling, plummeting, accelerating. It’s as though I’ve tumbled off a cliff or fallen down an elevator shaft.

  “What do you mean you lost her?”

  The disembodied woman speaks with a sense of annoyance.

  “How the hell do you lose an archetype?”

  “I’m here. I’m still here!”

  I yell, waving my arms as though someone somewhere might see the movement, but I’m small, tiny, insignificant. I’m just a speck of dust in the vast universe.

  “Please. I’m right here!”

  Deep down, I know this is not my salvation. No rescue is possible. Who could ever reach me in the Proc?

  “Get her back.”

  “She’s adrift in the ether.”

  “Then shut it down. I want her back on the Intrepid.”

  “No. No. No. Don’t you understand? I die back there. I always die.”

  I try to turn, wanting to look, but in free fall, all I can do is wiggle in place. There’s nothing to push off. No leverage. I punch at the buttons on my wrist-pad computer, bringing it back to life. I need to activate my orientation jets. I want to turn to face the speaker even though I know she’s not actually there. There’s nothing but the eternal darkness behind me, and yet I feel that if I turn and face her, she’ll somehow hear me. I’m frantic, desper
ate for attention.

  I call out, saying, “The Intrepid is doomed. It explodes. Somehow, I’m found by an alien race and dissected. Please, don’t send me back there.”

  My jets activate and I rotate, although without any point of reference, it’s impossible to tell I’m in motion. Pitch-black darkness pervades spacetime, starving me of any sensory input beyond the reach of my suit.

  The disembodied male voice sounds as though it’s from Northern Europe, perhaps Denmark or Norway. “There’s something wrong. She’s not following the confluence. She’s off-script.”

  “How is that possible?” The woman’s voice softens. She’s curious. “She has no choice, right?”

  “There’s independent thought.”

  “No. That’s impossible.”

  “Possible or not, it’s happening.”

  “Can you bring her up?”

  I don’t understand. They’re talking about me as though I’m a thing, an object, nothing but mere chattel.

  “Raising her now.”

  Raising the Dead

  The darkness around me fades.

  Although it seems as though I never moved, I’m suddenly floating in a vast, open cleanroom, the kind used by NASA when assembling space probes. The ceiling opens out fifty feet above me, while the walls are at least as distant again. There are dozens of scientists in thin, white disposable clean suits. White socks cover their shoes. White caps hide their hair. White masks cover each nose and mouth. They’re working on a variety of craft, but the designs are like nothing I’ve ever seen.

  In my day, spacecraft favored function over form. There’s no need for aerodynamics in space. Like the Apollo lunar lander of old, the Intrepid lacked aesthetics. The spaceships here look as though they’ve been built by Ferrari. High-gloss dark burgundy paint glistens under the ceiling spotlights. Soft curves and sleek lines. Artistically placed silver fittings. Clear glass canopies. Polished chrome engine nozzles. These are luxury vehicles. To me, they’re trophies rather than spaceships.

  I’m drifting beside a workbench. Dozens of tiny holograms shimmer in what look like fishbowls, providing a miniaturized view of a variety of worlds, including a snow-covered clearing that seems all too familiar.