But The Stars

by Peter Cawdron

  “I see colors,” Angel says. “I see enough to fool most doctors. Sure, flowers look a little bland, but I can pick between their colors. If anything, I see more shades than most of you norms.”

  “You’re missing the big picture,” Cap says. “No offense to Dante. I understand what she’s trying to do. I don’t agree with her conclusion, but I understand.”

  Angel says, “The real problem is, if it’s not one of us, then who is it?”

  Cap says, “I know about me. I can vouch for who I am, but I don’t know about any of you.”

  Vichy looks to Dante. She wants to say something to him, but she’s running out of ideas. She’s not as eloquent as she feels she should be, but she has to counter their arguments.

  “I’m telling you. It’s them. The two of them.” Dante points at Cap and Angel. As the words leave her lips, she feels dejected. She’s not convincing herself, let alone anyone else.

  Cap says, “And I’m telling you, don’t rush to the wrong conclusion.”

  “Think about what happens if she’s wrong,” Angel says. “The real aliens go undetected. They get a boost from this and you lose our support.”

  “Hang on,” Benson says, pointing at Cap. “You wanted Dante to come up with a way of distinguishing between us and them. You wanted her to do it in a way they couldn’t predict. In a manner they wouldn’t understand. So she lied. Given what we know about how well they can fabricate our reality, that’s a damn good idea—you just don’t like the outcome.”

  “We’ve got to work together,” Cap says, but Mags has had enough. She interrupts, cutting him off before he can continue, issuing one of her trademark, end-of-story statements, with each word carrying more weight than the last. The final word is delivered with a stamp of her foot.

  “Fucking. Fucketty. Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuck!”

  “What do we do now?” Vichy asks, turning to Dante. She shrugs.

  “What can we do?” Mac asks.

  “Don’t ask me,” Zoe says. “I’m still trying to figure out who we should flush out of the airlock.”

  Benson shakes his head. “They won’t feel anything.”

  Zoe doesn’t care. “I’ll feel something,” she says, tapping at the center of her chest. “I’ll feel a helluva lot better.”

  “They’re playing with us,” Mags says. “Like a cat with a goddamn mouse, they’re fucking us over. Goddamn it!”

  “Angel died on the bridge,” Dante says, trying to turn the conversation in her favor. She points to the spot where Angel fell. “Mags shot her. Remember?”

  “I did what?” Mags cries out in alarm, apparently having no recollection of that reboot.

  Dante feels as though she’s been abandoned. Mags is right. This is all just a game to them. These alien creatures are toying with her, teasing her, tormenting her, leaving just enough clues for her to unravel the threads but not enough for her to make any real difference. It’s cruel. She wants to say something, to explain, but she’s at a loss as to where she should start. Even to her, it sounds crazy. Why would Mags strip a construction bot to build a rivet gun?

  She goes to speak, but Vichy cuts her off. He seems confused by her. He squints as he says, “What the hell are you talking about, Dee?”

  “I’m telling you. Angel is one of them.” Dante appeals to Mac and Zoe. “You guys have got to believe me. You’ve seen how they can inflict physical pain on us in here. Imagine being shot in the head. She wouldn’t survive. She couldn’t.”

  “We don’t know what we can survive,” Naz says, still undecided.

  “We don’t even know if you’re right,” Mac says.

  “Why would Mags shoot Angel?” Cap asks. It’s then it hits her. By focusing on Angel, she’s letting Cap off the hook, whether consciously or otherwise. In the eyes of the crew, the focus is Angel, not him—and the rest of the crew are not convinced.

  “I’m sorry, Dee. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mags says, echoing Cap, being genuinely confused by the prospect of having shot Angel.

  “Surely, you remember,” Dante says.

  “I—I would never,” Mags says, stuttering. She seems to doubt herself, but she pushes on, sticking to her conviction. “I never did that.”

  Dante’s suddenly acutely aware she sounds crazy, almost obsessive as she tries to convince them of something that, from their perspective, never happened. Within a matter of minutes, she’s gone from being in control to looking like a madman, while Cap’s gone from condemned to back in charge. He’s calm. Too calm. This isn’t working out the way she thought it would. She’s fucked this up. No one remembers that reboot. She’s the only one. They’re all looking at her like she’s delusional.

  “What are you talking about?” Vichy asks, but he was there.

  “You saw it. You all saw it,” she says, seeing even Vichy’s starting to doubt her. “No. No. No.”

  Anxiety swells within her chest. Her throat constricts, tightening, making it hard to breathe. She’s got to do something.

  Dante knows how the illusion works. Deviations cause the membranes to collapse. It’s almost as though the crew is being herded together by these alien creatures with each reboot. Variations are punished. Run from a room or lash out in some unexpected way and they reset the sim. Whatever these creatures are, they’re studying them, observing them, learning from them, replicating and ultimately deceiving them.

  Panic seizes her. The muscles in her body go tense, only they don’t, because none of this is real, and that realization terrifies her. She starts to hyperventilate. Her palms go sweaty. What seemed so simple and clear-cut moments ago, now looks impossible. Rather than convincing the others, she’s confused them.

  “Ah,” Cap says, realizing what she’s about to do a fraction of a second before she does herself, which perplexes the others. “Don’t.”

  Her voice trembles. “I—I have to.”

  It’s then Dante realizes what happened throughout all of those other reboots. She finally understands the isolation each of them has felt. Mac staggering down the hallway trying to reach Zoe, Benson when he could see those creatures creeping up behind her in medical, Mags as she waved the gun around. The one thing they all had in common was their frustration, their inability to convince someone else about what was happening. No one would listen. No one understood.

  Dante bolts for the corridor, dropping her shoulder and running hard, sprinting toward the open doorway, hoping for a reboot, wanting a second chance.

  “No!” Vichy yells, reaching for her, but he’s on the other side of the deck.

  Naz is closer. He sticks out his leg in front of her, trying to block her passage.

  Dante leaps.

  Naz shoves her, connecting with her shoulder and sending her slamming into the navigation console.

  Dante’s head hits the edge of the metal panel, striking just above her temple. Pain explodes within her skull and she crumples. Her body slumps to the floor. Naz rushes to her side, cradling her head as she collapses. Dante’s not sure who’s swearing. It seems everyone is yelling something, including Naz. The last thing she sees is Cap and Angel crouching over her.

  As the darkness descends, Cap whispers, “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Angel

  Dante’s eyes flicker, taking in the familiar surroundings of the medical bay onboard the Acheron. The lights are dim. She’s lying on her back on a thinly padded gurney with a sheet and blanket wrapped over her. It’s disconcerting to find her arms pressed tight against her sides, leaving her feeling trapped. Dante never sleeps like this. She goes to move, but her arms are held down by the blanket tucked tightly beneath the thin mattress, making it difficult, but not impossible to get free. She flexes, wrestling with the blanket, loosening the sheets.

  A familiar voice whispers softly from the shadows.

  “Hey.”

  Dante turns, but that motion causes pain to shoot through her head, running from the nape of her neck over the top of her skull
and stabbing at her right eye. Her head is pounding. A bandage has been wound around her forehead but it’s uncomfortably tight.

  “How are you holding up?” Angel asks.

  Angel?

  Petite fingers touch softly at Dante’s shoulder, resting gently on her flight suit, trying to calm her, but for Dante it’s as though she’s been hit with a jolt of electricity. She struggles against the blankets, pushing to sit upright.

  “Easy,” Angel says. “You’ve had a nasty knock.”

  “You!” Dante says, looking around, not wanting to be alone with Angel. “What are you doing here?”

  “Relax,” Angel says, pointing at the soft red LED glowing in the corner of the ceiling. “They can see you.”

  Given the crew of the Acheron are in some kind of alien prison, ‘they’ isn’t exactly the most appropriate term. Angel picks up on that and corrects herself. “Cap and the others.” Although hearing Cap’s name is hardly reassuring.

  “You fell,” Angel says. “You hit your head.”

  “I remember.”

  “It was an accident.”

  Dante doesn’t look convinced, so Angel continues. “Naz was trying to stop you, not hurt you.”

  “And you?” Dante asks, looking Angel squarely in the eye. “Do you want to hurt me?”

  “No one wants to hurt you, Dee.”

  For Dante, the illusion is overwhelming. This is Angel. It’s her voice. Her mannerisms. Her soft features. It’s hard to see an alien intelligence manipulating her, but that’s precisely what’s happening, Dante’s sure of it, and yet Angel looks and sounds entirely innocent.

  Angel and Dante first met during crew selection—a grueling 46-hour combination of physical and mental stress designed to see how candidates would handle pressure over an extended period of time.

  Back then, neither of them had any idea how long the selection process would actually last, which was intentional, to find each candidate’s breaking point. At first, selection seemed easy. Too easy. Each hour was measured with atomic precision. An hour walking on a treadmill, followed by an hour of verbal tests ranging from 10th grade math to basic geography and English comprehension, followed by an hour of rest that could be spent anyway they wanted—eating, sleeping, browsing the Internet, watching a video—but they were warned, that was the only time allocated for bathroom breaks. Outside of that, it was a case of hold it in or wet/soil yourself. One of the trainers even taunted a candidate caught unaware in those first few hours, saying, “When you feel like you can’t hold it in anymore, let me know. I want to watch.” Needless to say, the candidate made it to the break.

  Every third hour was free time, which seemed incongruous with the goals of selection. Angel wasn’t fooled. She told Dante to sleep. At first, Dante didn’t listen. While Angel lay on her bunk with her eyes shut, Dante responded to emails and messages from home. Then the process repeated. Again and again and again.

  The candidates were divided into three rotations so there was always someone on the treadmills or seated in front of an instructor answering questions or lying on the bunks pressed up against the far wall inside the vast gymnasium. With the lights on full and the sound of shoes constantly echoing across the wooden floor, sleep was nigh on impossible, or so Dante thought, but somehow Angel would start snoring. Being petite, it was a soft grumble occasionally escaping from her lips, but she got her zzzzs. Like most of the other candidates, Dante expected the session to stop after twelve hours as surely the instructors had gathered enough data by then, but on it went. The rhythm was relentless.

  After twenty-four hours, they’d only had eight hours free time. For Dante, only four of those had been spent asleep—but limited to slightly less than one hour blocks. Waking was hard. Disorienting. Fatigue set in.

  By the time the candidates hit thirty hours, middle school math started feeling like advanced astrophysics. Dante’s words began to slur. The lack of any meaningful, deep sleep meant she was functionally drunk. She hadn’t actually had any alcohol for over a month beforehand as she prepared for training, but her reasoning and judgment were impaired, and she knew all too well this was what they were looking for. Angel, though, was still fresh. She was prepped for a marathon.

  Walking on the treadmill became utter torture. The constant pace caused Dante to stumble. Her body wanted variation, not exact repetition. Angel saw her falter. “Repeat the same phrase over and over again,” Angel said from the treadmill next to her. “A mantra. Something to help you keep your rhythm.” Angel didn’t have to tell her that, but she wanted to help. The instructors noticed and made notes. Already, almost half of the candidates had dropped out, having given up, being desperate for some respite.

  Dante never did find out what Angel’s mantra was, but hers came from a nursery rhyme, one she mangled to her own private amusement. It was the only way she could stay sane. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star—How I wonder what you are—Up above the world so high—Like a diamond in the sky—Twinkle, twinkle, rather big planet—technically, not a star,” and she’d jump right back in at the second stanza, “How I wonder what you are.” Somehow, Dante made it work and kept her legs pumping.

  The rumor among the candidates was the test would be stopped at the fortieth hour, but the pace never slackened. One hour of walking. One hour of verbal testing. One hour of rest. Food and water on the run. No feedback. No encouragement or criticism. For all Dante knew, she was getting every question wrong. A couple of times, she found herself babbling. Even she wasn’t sure quite what she was saying. Notes were taken. Nothing was said regardless.

  To her surprise, Dante found the verbal tests hardest. The instructors would read sections from To Kill A Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick—all with a monotone voice, droning on for up to ten minutes before asking a series of questions that sometimes related to information from a previous reading a couple of hours earlier. Dante found it hard to stay awake, let alone concentrate.

  Why does Scout ask Atticus about the death of Mrs. Radley?

  Why would Jem be disappointed to hear she’d died?

  What’s behind the homoerotic relationship between Ishmael and Qeequeg?

  Do you find it natural, convenient or forced?

  Why was Ahab obsessed with the great white whale?

  Explain your reasoning.

  Is Nick a reliable narrator or is he misleading us, idolizing Gatsby?

  What leads you to that conclusion?

  Dante hated those questions. She wanted to ask, “What the hell does this have to do with interstellar exploration?” But she knew the answer—everything and nothing at all. Their answers weren’t important. Their reasoning was. The ability to focus was. Pushing through fatigue when faced with mundane tasks was a key indicator for how they’d function under pressure a quadrillion miles from home. And the psychs were right. Once the glamor of the mission wore off, all that remained was their dedication.

  The fortieth hour was ‘The Wall.’ With no end in sight, candidates began physically dropping. Bowing out no longer meant stepping off the treadmill and sulking to the door on trembling legs. Candidates simply fell on the whirling tread and tumbled to the wall. No one helped them up. At the time, it seemed mean, but a hundred light years away, there would be no one to help. More notes were taken. Nothing was said.

  Even that far into selection, Angel looked as fresh as she did at the start. All the strapping, musclebound men with their pumped thighs, ripped biceps and ironing board stomachs found their legs turning to jelly after forty hours, but not Angel. The challenge was now entirely mental. Dante focused on Angel and her unassuming, petite frame. Having Angel beside her gave her a sense of companionship—camaraderie. They’d whisper encouragement to each other.

  At one point, all the staff left, leaving the two of them staring at a clock on the wall slowly counting out the seconds. They were barely fifteen minutes into a walking session. On either side of them lay empty treadmills sitting idle. The only other remainin
g candidates were in their rest phase, lying on their cots with sheets bundled up over their eyes in a vain attempt to block out the light. Angel kept her eyes forward. Like Dante, she knew it was a trick. The instructors wanted to see what the two women would do when given the chance to cheat. For Dante, though, to have stopped and rested, even if just for a moment, would have meant not starting again. She had to keep going.

  When the test finally finished several hours later, neither of them believed it. They’d just completed their millionth walking session. Dante sat down at a table in front of one of the instructors, ready for yet another mind-numbing question from Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden, and he simply said, “We’re done. You can go.” It took her a moment for those words to sink in.

  Even though she’d heard what was said, Angel slumped down on the chair next to Dante. Her legs were shaking. It was then Dante realized they both needed each other through those long hours. They succeeded together, not as individuals. Perhaps that’s why they ended up on the same mission. Back then, Angel had to be carried to her quarters. Somehow, Dante made the walk across the campus, but she bounced lightly off a couple of walls in her quasi-drunken state. When she finally got back to her room, Dante fell face first on her bed. She was asleep before her head had dented the pillow.

  The next day, they found out only four people were selected out of a hundred and sixty-seven applicants. The two of them and a couple of guys who were later assigned to the Virgil. Dante and Angel were never emotionally close, not like her and Mags, but there was a bond between them, a sense of trust and respect. It upsets Dante to realize that their friendship is being used against her.

  Dante blinks in the soft light coming in through the broad window on the Acheron. To see Angel sitting beside her in medical is disarming. Dante wants to hate this alien imposter. She wants to resist, to at least be suspicious, but the more they talk the lower her defenses fall. Is this Angel? Physically, this is Angel, but what lies behind those eyes?