But The Stars

by Peter Cawdron

  “But we are,” Dante says.

  “Are we?” Angel asks. “Or are we kidding ourselves? You think we’re trapped here in an illusion. I think life’s always been an illusion.”

  “We’re here now,” is all Dante can muster. “We are alive. We’re not a desk or a rock. We’re something more.”

  “I think, therefore I am, right?” Angel asks. “And yet thought is fleeting. The protons that make up your body have a half-life of ten to the power of thirty-two. You and I will struggle to get much beyond ten to the power of two years in age. All the constituent parts of this great I am will be around a helluva lot longer than either of us, but they won’t think, they won’t reason, they won’t be aware of anything at all.”

  As much as Dante doesn’t want to admit it, this is precisely the kind of thing Angel would say. Angel always loved math-on-the-fly. For Dante, this is the challenge, unraveling and deciphering these conversations, seeing beyond the words to find reality. Just how well can these creatures duplicate their thought processes, their reasoning and emotions, their quirks and idiosyncrasies? Could she be wrong about Angel? Has Dante read too much into too little?

  “So what will happen to me personally?” Dante asks, appreciating that if anyone knows the answer to that, it’s Angel.

  “Well, you,” Angel replies, putting air-quotes around the word you. “You’re already recycled. Statistically speaking, you’re a collection of six elements that have gone around and around on Earth for billions of years.”

  “Six?” Dante says, genuinely surprised by such a small number.

  “Ninety nine percent of you. Yep. You’re just a bunch of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen—stuff like that.”

  “I thought there were lots of different things,” Dante says, forgetting for a moment about the conflict between them.

  “Things,” Angel says with a hint of disdain only a nuclear physicist can manage. “You mean atoms, right?” She holds her thumb and forefinger together, separated by the tiniest of gaps, and squints, peering through at Dante. “All that fancy stuff is less than one percent. Anyway, it’s the combinations that are important. The elements are simply LEGO. The real fun is in putting them all together.”

  “And me?” Dante says, lowering her guard, genuinely wanting to know. “What happens to me?”

  “Atoms are overrated,” Angel says, apparently distracted by something she just said. She shrugs her shoulders. “They’re field excitations—energy in a persistent form, that’s all. Nothing’s really solid. It’s all an illusion.”

  “Hey,” Dante says, laughing. “This is me we’re talking about, right?”

  “Okay, so you. You’re part T-Rex, or at least some other kind of dinosaur. There are just so many atoms involved and so much time that’s elapsed that the probability you haven’t inherited some of your elements from them approaches zero. When it comes to water and air, that stuff recycles so damn quickly you have definitely breathed the same oxygen as JFK and sipped at the same water as Shakespeare.”

  “Hang on,” Dante says, losing herself for a moment. “If we’ve both drunk the same water then I’ve been drinking his pee?”

  Angel has an irrepressible smile on her face.

  “Yep.”

  All the air and water onboard the Acheron is recycled, so Dante learned to accept such notions a long time ago, but back on Earth, water always seemed so pure, or so the commercials would say. When some pretty blonde gal wearing a bikini holds up a bottle of ‘pure water,’ marketed as being from the Alps or somewhere equally pristine, it never occurred to Dante she might as well be holding up a bottle of her own pee (slightly removed).

  “Huh,” Dante says. “But what happens from here? I mean, that whole global recycling thing stopped once we left Earth, right? Now it’s just us.”

  “Not quite,” Angel replies. “On large timescales, far beyond the reach of our lives, molecular recycling will still occur, but it’ll take a different form. We’re unlikely to ever be consumed by a star. Falling into stars and black holes is actually much harder and rarer than people think.”

  Dante laughs. “I’m not sure people think about falling into stars. You might. No one else does.”

  Angel shrugs, getting up and turning away from Dante. She walks to the window, resting her hand on the glass and looking out into the darkness. Orion sits proud in the distance.

  “Stars explode. It’s something they do really well. They wipe out entire solar systems. Chances are, that’s what’ll happen here in the long run. These binaries will merge. The newly born star will eventually burn through its fuel and its outer shell will explode violently into space, stripping the planets bare. Then we’ll be recycled into the heavens, perhaps to form other asteroids, comets, planets. Maybe even other lifeforms.”

  Dante likes Angel. She wants to believe Angel, but the stars. Angel sees them and yet she doesn’t. Angel’s oblivious to their cryptic secret. For Dante, that’s all the confirmation she needs.

  Angel looks back, peering over her shoulder as she makes eye contact. She feels awkward.

  Dante smiles.

  Lies come easy.

  Angel screws up her face a little, saying, “I’ll let you get some rest.”

  Dante nods.

  As Angel walks out of medical, she mumbles, looking down at her feet and talking to herself. The last thing Dante hears is, “What is it with Orion anyway?”

  Colors

  “Good morning,” Vichy whispers, sitting down next to Dante in the medical suite.

  Night has become day, but not through any natural process. Somewhere, an electronic timer has ticked over, triggering the lights and—just like that—their bodies are told it’s time to wake and become active again. Consciousness returns, pretending it never left, making it seem as though several hours were no more than a few minutes. Consciousness is yet another lie Dante has to deal with. She turns her head, yawning and stretching, looking around as she sits up. Like a dream, Angel is gone.

  Dark rings surround Vichy’s eyes. Stubble has formed on his cheeks. His hair is a mess. He doesn’t look as though he’s slept at all. His voice is low, breaking like gravel in a cement mixer.

  “What did you figure out?”

  The look on her face screams in anguish at him. She grits her teeth, clenching her jaw, fighting not to lash out at him in anger. Vichy knows.

  “I had to get them apart,” he says in his defense, appealing with his arms out before her. “It was the only way.”

  Still, Dante’s silent. Brooding. Smoldering. Finally, she lets out a sigh, releasing her frustration.

  Mags pulls up a chair on the other side of her bed. “How are you doing?”

  The difference in their greetings doesn’t go unnoticed.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “I bet.”

  “What did you find in Zoe’s apartment?” Dante asks, addressing her, not him. “Were you able to get in and identify each of us?”

  “The door had seized,” Mags says. The look on her face is more succinct than her words—they failed. Still, Mags continues, explaining what happened.

  “Benson had to modify a winch from engineering to get the lock to turn. Even then, we went slow. Mac was worried the stress might strip the gears inside the doorframe.”

  Vichy says, “The door was buckled. Damn thing’s supposed to be blast proof.”

  Dante waits for Mags to continue.

  “Cap suggested using a QX scanner from one of the surface bots to assess what lay inside. Mac liked the idea. While Benson worked on the door, he repurposed a scanner.”

  “Just tell her,” Vichy says.

  Mags ignores him. “We got the door to open about four inches and pushed the probe into the darkness.”

  “And?” Dante asks.

  Mags hangs her head. She doesn’t say anything. Vichy speaks on her behalf.

  “Say what you will about Cap. He’s right about one thing.”

  “What?”

&nbs
p; “We see what they want us to see.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dante says.

  Mags is disappointed. “There was nothing in there.”

  “Nothing?”

  “An empty cabin,” Mags says. “Nothing else. No internal power. No lighting. But also, no bodies hanging from the ceiling.”

  “But I saw—”

  “Even Zoe’s not sure what she saw,” Vichy says, cutting her off.

  “But the door,” Dante replies. “The door itself is proof. Something caused it to buckle.”

  Vichy shrugs.

  Mags says, “Whatever you saw, it was long gone by the time we got there.” She pauses, picking her next few words carefully. “Naz thinks you’re confused.”

  “He thinks I lied about what I saw?”

  “He thinks you exaggerated. Not intentionally. We’re all under a lot of stress, Dee. He thinks you saw what you wanted to see, precisely what you described to us beforehand back on the bridge. He thinks even you doubt yourself. That’s why you ran out into the corridor.”

  “And you?” Dante asks.

  Mags hesitates. “I don’t know what to think. Zoe says it was insanely dark in there. She said she knows you saw something that frightened you—something other than the inside of one of the cabins, but even she’s not entirely sure what it was.”

  “But you saw them, though, right?” Dante says, addressing Vichy. “You saw the bodies. You saw that thing charging at me.”

  “I don’t know what I saw,” Vichy says, stammering. “I—I was watching you. I was reaching for Zoe. I saw shadows—something moving. Damn. It’s like you said. Memories are hard to focus. They’re a haze. A blur. Especially when you’re under pressure.

  “I was scared. For you. For me. For Zoe. I was too busy grabbing the fire extinguisher and spraying it through the gap to think about anything other than getting you the hell out of there.”

  “But it was real,” Dante says, and yet her words sound hollow. Nothing’s real anymore.

  “I know. I know,” Vichy says. “I don’t know exactly what I saw in there, but it sure as hell wasn’t the inside of Zoe’s cabin.”

  “And Cap?” she asks.

  From off to one side, a familiar voice says, “Apparently, I’m an alien.”

  Cap is leaning against the doorway leading from medical to the carousel. He walks in slowly, staying over by the window. Dante sits up in surprise, not having seen him standing there, wondering just how long he’s been listening.

  “And I’m going insane,” she replies, playing along with his charade. He must know how threatened she feels as he keeps his distance. Even now, he remains where he is, looking down at his shoes, seemingly searching for the right words to speak.

  “You saw what they wanted you to see,” he says, echoing Vichy. “Don’t you get it? They’re playing you.”

  “They?” Dante asks.

  Cap smiles, trying not to laugh as he shakes his head. He sits on the edge of the window. It’s as though he’s taunting her, blocking her view of the stars, knowing how much they mean to her.

  “Dee,” Mags says, but Dante cuts her off.

  “You’re on his side?” she asks in alarm. She had hope to rally support from her closest friend but she finds only doubts. “You think I’m mad. But I’m not. I’m right. I know I am.”

  Mags says, “It’s like Vichy said, we’re all under a lot of pressure.”

  Cap says, “If we’re going to get out of this, we have to work together.”

  The problem is, he’s not wrong. There’s no point of logic on which Dante can fight him. Given the chance, she would make the same appeal to the rest of the crew. The difference is, he’s insincere, manipulating her. Or is he? Has she been wrong about him all along? Whoever he is, there’s no guile or bitterness, at least none she can detect. Was Angel right? By focusing on the two of them, has Dante inadvertently aided the real intruders, allowing them to hide and continue misleading the crew from the shadows?

  Benson comes running in. He’s grinning. He’s oblivious to the mood within medical.

  “You were right,” he says, waving his flex around as though it were proof of some scientific discovery. “Colors. Colors are the key.”

  “What do you mean?” Vichy asks as the rest of the crew follow along behind Benson, making their way into medical. Benson’s excited, unable to contain himself.

  “Dante was right about how to expose these creatures. They can’t see color. That has to be a given as there’s nothing to see beyond shades of grey. Colors are entirely subjective. Physically, they couldn’t possibly see the same colors we do as what we see is an evolutionary illusion. Colors are contrived. They don’t exist outside of our eyes. They’re entirely arbitrary, depending on our physiology.”

  “But it didn’t work,” Mags says, confused.

  “She’s right,” Dante says, fighting against her own stubborn pride. Some things are easier to say than others. For Dante, it’s easier to say, ‘She’s right,’ than to admit the corollary, ‘I was wrong.’ Benson, though, doesn’t agree, which Dante finds peculiar.

  “Three colors,” he says.

  Benson holds up a flex with three large colored dots on it.

  “Look at this green dot. Green occurs at a wavelength of 535 nanometers.”

  Like a kindergarten teacher working with preschoolers, he turns slowly, pointing at the green blob, keeping his index finger right below it, making sure everyone can see it, looking for them to acknowledge him. Naz screws up his face. He clearly thinks Benson’s mad. Zoe laughs at the childish manner in which Benson is making his point. Mags shakes her head in disbelief, but her eyes follow the tablet and a smile settles on her lips. Angel takes him seriously, focusing intently on his every move.

  “Now, look at the yellow dot. Yellow is 590 nanometers. The difference is 55 nanometers. Are you with me?”

  “No one’s with you,” Dante says. Benson laughs her off, shaking his head and still grinning. He points at the last colored circle.

  “Red is the outlier, right? 760 nanometers. The difference when moving to red is huge. It’s three to four times higher than the jump from green to yellow. An additional 170 nanometers more than yellow. 225 nanometers more than green. Physically, we see three different colors, but what we don’t see is the extreme difference in wavelengths. The inconsistencies.”

  “We’ve been down this road before,” Cap says. “I see red, yellow and green. Maybe Angel doesn’t, but I do.”

  “Ah,” Benson says, holding a finger to his lips. “Only you, Cap. Only you.”

  Benson uses his index finger to drag the large red dot on top of the green one. As each of the circles is semi-transparent and Benson’s a little sloppy, not quite fitting one exactly over the other, slithers of green and red are visible on the fringe of the large circles.

  “What color is that?” he asks.

  Although he was initially calm, Cap seems to panic. His eyes dart around the crew, settling on Angel.

  “Wait a minute. She’s the one that’s color blind. Ask her.”

  “No,” Angel says, gesturing toward the flex. “Please. Go ahead. Be my guest.”

  “I don’t know what you think you’re going to prove by this,” Cap says, but he’s lost the confidence that normally accompanies his comments.

  Dante coaxes him on, saying, “Well?”

  “It’s a trick, right?” Cap says.

  “Not for any of us,” Zoe replies, and that’s the point at which Cap knows he’s lost them. Dante can see it in his eyes. He didn’t expect this. Benson’s caught him off-guard.

  “Come on, Cap,” Naz says, reveling in the reversal of roles. No arrows to muck around with this time.

  “You want me to say yellow, but you’re setting me up,” Cap says. No one responds. “That’s why you included a yellow dot to start with. It’s a feint.”

  “You really are an alien,” Mac says, getting up and walking over toward Cap with clenched fists.

&nbs
p; “You’re bluffing. You haven’t changed the wavelengths,” Cap says. “The colors overlap but their wavelengths have remained the same.”

  “Yep,” Benson says, agreeing with him in principle, but no one’s looking at Benson. All eyes are on Cap.

  “It’s just a muddle of red and green.”

  “The correct term is added primaries,” Benson says.

  Naz and Mac flank him, addressing Dante as they say, “What do you want us to do with him?”

  “It’s not a separate color,” Cap says as though that’s somehow a defense.

  “It’s yellow,” Dante says, turning around and sitting with her feet dangling over the edge of the bed. “Green and red make yellow. Everyone knows that.”

  Benson adds, “Every human knows that.”

  Zoe says, “Every human can see that.”

  “But the numbers. They’re all wrong,” Cap says. “Yellow makes no sense.”

  Dante shakes her head, struggling to suppress a wicked smile. “Now, you’re really starting to learn something about us.”

  Cap backs away as Naz and Mac approach him.

  “You can’t hurt me,” he says as the two men grab him by the shoulders and drag him over, pushing him roughly down into a seat. “You might think you can, but none of this is real.”

  “Who died,” Dante asks.

  “Me,” Cap replies.

  “Who else?”

  Cap smiles, but doesn’t respond. Dante’s furious. It takes all her resolve not to step down from her bed and lash out at him. She wants nothing more than to rake the back of her hand across the side of his face, but it would be a mistake. She clenches the bed sheets in her fists.

  “This ends now, do you hear me?”

  Cap nods but doesn’t show any emotion. It’s almost as though he’s disinterested. He’s resigned to being exposed. If anything, it seems he expected this sooner. Mac adjusts his chair, turning him roughly, making sure he’s facing Dante head on. There’s something brutish and menacing about Mac’s motion. Without using words, he’s suggesting he can be far rougher, regardless of what’s real.