by J. Blanes
“There’s the cutting of the walls and the spilling of water on the floor,” Keira replied, more interested than ever to hear what he had to say about that.
“The cutting of the walls led me to another discovery about the ship, but just another curiosity. But the spilling of water was a very important test and allowed me to know more about our survival chances, just in case this trip takes longer than expected.” Albert paused, looking at their reactions.
“And?”
“The spilling is the key,” he said enigmatically. Then he paused, as if thinking about something important.
“And?”
“I’m sorry, I think I’m going to rest now,” he blurted out, leaving them openmouthed.
“What now?” They were both incredulous.
“I’ve told you about everything I know, and I’m tired of talking. I’m not feeling well,” he said.
“But, you need to tell us about the cutting and the spilling,” Keira insisted. “By the way, are you OK? You don’t look good.” She noticed Albert’s weird expression and felt worried about him.
“There are things that are best left unanswered,” he said in a firm, grave tone. “I shouldn’t have done it. It was dangerous; I think I’m going to…” He stopped talking, wide-eyed, terrified. He got up. “The spill…the aliens…” he stammered, pointed at the walls, and fell unconscious to the floor.
“Albert!” Keira screamed, kneeling next to him. “Albert, Albert!” She screamed again, shaking him, trying to wake him up.
“What’s going on?” Dylan only looked at them, unsure of what to do. “Do you think he’s dead?” he asked.
Keira felt his pulse and sighed in relief. “No, he’s got a pulse. He must have fainted.”
“He didn’t look OK,” Dylan remarked. “What was he talking about when he said it was dangerous?”
“I don’t know,” Keira said with concern.
Suddenly, Albert opened his eyes and, to their disbelief, started laughing out loud.
“What the …!” Dylan exclaimed, “You should’ve seen your faces!” He repeated between laughs, “Your faces!”
“Our faces? Are you crazy?” Keira was furious. “How could you put us through a thing like this now?” Her rage, normally directed at Dylan, was now concentrated on Albert. Dylan couldn’t have been more pleased about it. He sat back and enjoyed the show.
Albert stopped laughing. “I’m sorry. I was bored from talking. I saw your faces when I told you about the water, and I decided to have a little fun.”
“A little fun at our expense when we’re in a situation like this? Unbelievable! You’re supposed to be the voice of reason here! I could expect something like this from Dylan, but never from you!” Keira’s last remark didn’t please Dylan at all. “How can you be so immature?”
“I’m sorry,” Albert apologized again, “but your faces were…” He let out another laugh before being able to control himself again.
“Were what? Worried? Scared to death? How is that funny?” She approached him and whispered into his ear, “I swear, if you pull another one like this again, I’ll kill you myself. Do you understand?”
Dylan didn’t have to listen to this part, as he had been in Albert’s shoes many times before. His smile broadened.
Albert finally composed himself. “Yes, I understand. It won’t happen again. I think I needed to blow off some steam.”
Dylan got up, bowed to Albert, and applauded him. “Bravo! A performance I could never match. Now, after having your fun, please, sit down and enlighten us with your wise insights.”
Keira was not completely cool yet. “That’s just what I needed,” she complained, “another child in a man’s body.” She looked at Albert. “Please, never again…” she pleaded.
Albert nodded to her and sat at the table again. “Don’t worry. I think this trip is also affecting me, but I promise I won’t let it get to me again, Shall we continue our conversation?”
“Yes, master, please continue” were Dylan’s words.
“Let me tell you about why I cut the walls,” Albert started. “They are made from a rubberlike material, but they’re different. It interested me, so I scratched it with my nails, accidentally breaking off a small chunk. To my surprise, the wall gradually filled the gap that the chunk had left, and in less than a minute there were no perceptible signs of my actions. That really got my attention, so I borrowed your knife and made several cuts of different lengths and depths on the wall. They all vanished without a trace after a few minutes. There’s no doubt; the walls are made from some kind of regenerative biological material.”
“Rege-what?” Dylan frowned in confusion.
“Regenerative, it means that it heals itself. It’s too slow to be useful in a crash or in battle, but it’s enough to repair minor damages. And imagine if our hosts have adapted it to themselves! Their bodies could heal their own wounds, up to a point, of course.”
“Cool!” Dylan said. “It’s like the lizards. They can drop their tails and grow them back!”
“Exactly. Maybe they’re lizards,” Albert remarked, teasing him.
“What?” Dylan didn’t like the idea of being abducted by lizards. He had seen the rerun of a TV show where an advanced species of lizard-like humanoids disguised themselves as humans to take over the Earth. It was not a pleasant thought.
Albert and Keira laughed. Dylan scratched his head and smiled meekly. He cleared his throat and ignored them.
“The Cutting Mystery is now solved,” Dylan declared. “Let’s now hear the Spilling of Survival. Why is that so important?”
“That’s easy to explain. This ship is too small to carry an unlimited supply of provisions and oxygen. We don’t know how much time we’re going to spend on this ship, but what if it’s more than a few days?”
“I don’t understand,” Dylan said. “You’re saying that we should ration the water and the food, and because of that you squander water on the floor?”
“On the contrary, I believe we shouldn’t ration anything.”
“But you just said the ship is too small to—”
“That’s right, but that was to bring in my point. Look carefully.” Albert grabbed his glass of water and spilled its contents on the floor. They all saw the water quickly disappear, leaving the floor completely dry in a few seconds. “What do you think this means?”
“The floor has an efficient water-drainage system?” Keira answered.
“Right, but not only for water.” He grabbed a complete cylinder of food and put it on the floor. The cylinder began to dissolve and disappeared in a matter of minutes.
“This ship is really full of surprises,” Dylan commented.
“I believe,” Albert continued, “hypothetically, of course, that all of this is part of an extremely efficient recycling network. The water, the food, the air, all of them are recycled somehow. Nothing is wasted. And if it’s as good as I think, the ship is probably taking advantage of our body heat, too.”
“Wait a minute, but that also means that we’re eating and drinking our own…ew!” Keira said. Her face contorted in disgust when she realized the implication of a complete recycling, even of things disposed of by their bodies.
“Well, practically, no,” Albert corrected her. “Think about the air. We breathe oxygen from the air and exhale carbon dioxide. The recycling of this ship is doing the opposite, converting the carbon dioxide back into oxygen, as plants do on Earth. But saying that carbon dioxide is the same as oxygen is clearly false. This also applies to the water. The ship cleans our urine and extracts the clean water, probably transforming the rest into other things like food or energy for the ship. What we’re drinking is pure water, nothing more, nothing less.”
Keira and Dylan were not entirely convinced. It was lot to digest, mentally and physically.
“I wonder what kind o
f energy source the ship uses to do everything. It must be pretty efficient and powerful,” Albert mumbled.
“What I wonder is why the ship came without instructions,” Dylan said, visibly annoyed. “We have to figure out everything by ourselves. It’s a pain in the ass. Are the aliens testing our abilities or what?”
“Hey, look at you!” Keira exclaimed. “You just made an interesting observation! You must be exhausted, right, from all that thinking?” she mocked him.
“Ha, ha, very funny. At least some of us do the thinking in here, not like others…”
“I think Dylan has an interesting point,” Albert interrupted them. “The aliens have gone to great lengths to make us relatively comfortable in here. Why don’t they help us more with some instructions here and there? It would’ve made our life easier. The fact that they didn’t doesn’t make sense. Very good, Dylan, nice thinking.”
“Aha!” Dylan looked at Keira triumphantly. “Did you hear him? The master has spoken and praised Dylan’s astute comment.”
“My sincerest apology.” Keira played along. “This humble apprentice has a lot to learn from you, oh greatest of the greats!”
That night Dylan awoke in the middle of a nightmare. Albert was sound asleep, but Keira was not in the bedroom. He looked for her and found her in the control room, staring out the window.
“What are you doing here? You should be sleeping. It’s still nighttime; can’t you see?” he joked, pointing at the perennial black night in front of them.
She remained silent at first, and then she spoke softly, with a hint of melancholy in her voice, without taking her eyes off the window. “It’s exactly the same view as yesterday; nothing has changed. It’s hard to believe we’re moving at all.”
“I wouldn’t believe it either, but Albert is Albert, you know, a brain, and if he says we’re moving, we must assume it’s true.”
“Do you think they already know we’re gone?” she said, abruptly changing the subject.
“Who, people on Earth?”
She nodded.
“They should’ve found the pickup by now and probably organized a search party looking for us,” he replied.
“My mom must be worried sick, and my dad is probably on his way back from his trip to South Korea. He just left yesterday! I’d give an eye to be with them right now.” Just after saying this, she recalled that Dylan had no family to go back to and felt sorry for him. “I’m sorry. I know how you must feel.”
“Don’t worry about me. On the contrary, I’m not alone; my family is right here, with me. You and that annoying, big, brainy boy are all I have, so in a way, I’m better off than you two.”
After another moment of silence, Keira spoke again. “My phone battery went dead.”
“Eh?”
“You asked me why I was here,” she said. “My phone battery went dead, and I thought my camera battery would also be dead soon, so I got up to see the pictures again. I looked at the beautiful pictures of the valley, the river, the canyon. I also had pictures of my parents, and I probably saw them for the last time…” Her voice waned and she started crying. “It’s probably the last time…” She couldn’t speak anymore. Tears poured from her eyes, and she covered her face with her hands.
Dylan looked at her but didn’t attempt to console her. He knew that grieving was an important step in her process of accepting her new reality, and she had to take it alone. Today’s hurting was tomorrow’s healing, he thought. The hurting would also become an endless source of a power that would drive and help her to achieve her dreams of going back home.
“What nonsense is this?” he finally said when she sobered. “You’re not allowed to say negative things, remember? It’s my job to be pessimistic and yours to scold me when that happens.”
She looked at him for the first time, smiling.
SEVEN
In Another Corner of the Galaxy
Far away, a very different, short conversation was taking place in a strange language unknown to humans.
It probably would have been roughly translated as follows:
“They’ve successfully boarded the ship and are on their way.”
“What about the Tukma?”
“No signs of activity from them.”
“Good, let’s hope for the best. We now must wait.”
EIGHT
The Spaceship
It was the tenth day since the ship had left Earth. The initial excitement and curiosity experienced during the first days had given way to monotony and boredom resulting from having too much time and few things to do. Only the games designed and drawn by Keira, and additional discoveries about the ship, broke the constant tediousness.
Albert was the most affected by far. His inquisitive mind required constant challenges to remain active, and as time passed, his frame of mind rapidly deteriorated. His mood changed for the worse, and he gradually distanced himself from his friends. Apart from the casual chess game that Keira got out of him occasionally, he spent his time in silence, staring at the front window, hoping for any signs that would indicate the journey was about to end. However, day after day, the exact same view appeared, plunging him more into desperation. He was barely eating and was getting up from bed much later than the others, even though he was the first to go to sleep every night. Keira was worried about him, but she knew the only drug that would work with him was the end of this trip. She hoped for it, the sooner the better.
The eleventh day started with the exercise routines that Keira had designed to keep them in shape. The first day she had proposed them, Albert and Dylan had welcomed the idea with enthusiasm. However, after just three days, Albert quit without an explanation. Today was no exception, and Dylan and Keira were jogging all over the ship without him when Albert suddenly hurried to them.
“Do you feel it?” He was excited, looking left and right at the walls, as if expecting something important to happen.
“Feel what?” Keira couldn’t understand what he meant.
“The ship! The ship is slowing down!” he shouted with enthusiasm.
They stayed quiet for a few seconds and felt a slight force pulling them toward the control room.
“I think you’re right. It’s barely perceptible, but it’s there,” Keira agreed.
Dylan felt it, too. “Does it mean we’re arriving?”
“We must be.” Albert was now smiling. He went to the kitchen and put a stick of food on the table. As he expected, the stick rolled down the table until it fell off the edge. “There’s our proof! Our senses are not deceiving us; we’re definitively decelerating!”
They looked at each other in complicity, as if they had the same thought at the same time, and rushed to the front window. They couldn’t see anything different, but Albert realized it was because the slowing down had just started and they were probably still too far away.
“Perhaps in a few hours, or tomorrow,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as the others that the end of the trip was close. “We were going really fast, and it will take some time to stop at this poor deceleration rate.”
The next two days the window became Albert’s obsession. He stayed there day and night, like a statue, only moving to go from one side of the window to another like a caged animal, always thinking that he had perceived something new only to be disappointed a little later. If Keira had not brought him water and food, he would have starved to death. He only left the control room to go to the bathroom, but only if Keira or Dylan agreed to cover for him at the window.
On the morning of the second day since the slowing down started, Albert’s scream wakened Keira and Dylan. It was a scream of excitement and passion, but above all, it was a scream of joy. They got up and drowsily walked to the cabin.
“There!” Albert exclaimed as soon as he saw them. “Look! Just in front of us between those two bright stars.” He was po
inting out two of the brightest stars visible from there.
They focused on the stars but couldn’t see anything between them. Dylan, still sleepy, rubbed his eyes and tried again, but nothing caught his attention.
“Come on, Keira,” he said as he turned around, “let’s go back to sleep. There’s nothing there; he’s hallucinating.”
“No, wait!” She grabbed Dylan’s arm and signaled him to look again. “I’m seeing something. It’s closer to the right star.”
Dylan looked again. Keira was right: there it was, a black, small dot, barely visible against the dark background. “I see it, you’re right, we’re arriving!” he shouted even more excitedly than Albert just minutes ago.
Keira didn’t share their excitement. She had known that this moment would inevitably come and was happy that Albert’s ordeal was over, but she was scared of what might be waiting for them at their destination. Even though she hoped that the aliens would treat them at least as well as they had until now, she suspected more unpleasant surprises were awaiting them.
It was 7:00 a.m. already, and the ship turned on the lights, dazzling them for a few seconds and reflecting back on the window, making it impossible to see anything outside for a while. They decided to have some breakfast and come back later. Even Albert, happier now because of their impending arrival, agreed to it.
When they returned to the control room after breakfast, the little dot had grown to a baseball-sized sphere. It was too dark to make out any distinctive features on its surface, but it was clearly visible now.
“That thing is huge!” Dylan gasped in astonishment. He pondered about something that didn’t feel right before speaking again. “But, why is it so…so round?” He was disappointed. He had expected a super cool, spectacular spaceship like the ones he had seen so many times in the movies, instead of this rather dull, uninteresting sphere.
