Lennon smiled. “I’ll send a message to Command. I may be able to make something happen. Would you like to send a message to your family first?”
“Yes,” Parker sniffed.
“Bring it to me by the end of the day and I will send it out on a priority message.”
“Thank you, Lennon,” Parker smiled, and then let herself grin. “Thank you.”
Day Eighty-Five
The waves washed over her feet, and submerged them; the water rose up to her ankles. The sea swelled around her feet and carved the sand away, leaving her to stand on small sandy pillars. Then, the tide sucked the sand under her feet away and her feet sank deeper into the beach, buried by swirling sand. After a while, her feet would completely disappear. When this happened, she would pull her feet out of the sand and start over.
The sun was setting again. It was beautiful. She stared at it, enjoying the warmth of the Pacific Ocean on her feet and the humid air on her face.
A figure stood on the beach to her right. At first, the glare of the setting sun silhouetted the person, but as the sun turned from orange to pink, she began to be able to identify the physical features of the stranger.
The individual was a male, and he was tall and muscular. Handsome. He had chiseled features and a strong jaw. He had muscles toned to form an athletic build, a physique that more closely matched a swimmer or a soccer player than a weight lifter. He had blue eyes and dark hair that managed to look just right, even when tousled. He was her fiancé.
“You abandoned me,” he said without emotion.
Another voice, a female voice, spoke behind her. The second voice caused a feeling of familiarity and safety to well in her chest, to fill her with warmth that she missed and desperately longed for. She had known this voice as a child, and this voice had given her comfort.
“Rebecca?” her mother asked.
“Oh mama,” Lennon cried, and turned to hold her mother, to cling to her.
Her mother stopped her with a crooked finger, holding it up in the air. That sweet face that had always beamed with love and acceptance was instead angry and trembling with emotion. She pushed her finger in Lennon’s face and whispered just loudly enough for Lennon to sense an accusing tone.
“I can’t hear you, mama,” Lennon said, “what’s wrong?”
“You left me to die,” she hissed, and shook her finger.
Lennon woke with a jolt and a gasp for breath. It was not a pleasant awakening; rather, it was a troublesome arousal. It left her panting, with a pounding heart and a sweat-covered brow. She glanced at her watch. The illuminated hands pointed to 2:45 in the morning.
The lights in the ship were set on a timer. At 21:30 mission time—or 9:30pm—the lights would automatically dim. At 07:30 in the morning, they would brighten. This helped the astronauts to set their internal clocks, just as the sunrise and sunset would do on Earth. The astronauts could override the lights in each individual room, of course, including the lights in the astronauts’ personal areas. In Crew Quarters, one small light always remained on. It was a guide, much like the lights in movie theaters. Lennon rarely bothered with the lights, except to turn the ones in her personal area completely dark when sleeping. She had been having trouble sleeping lately.
She had also been having hot spells. She felt they were likely an effect related to the stress of her dreams, and so sometimes left the door to her personal area open an inch or two for an additional draft. She reached for her door to slide it open but stopped with her fingers just inches from the handle. The door was already slightly open.
Did she open it? She could not remember. Beyond her outstretched hand, she could see the crack from the slightly opened sliding door, which would normally give her a view into the Women’s Quarters, but she could not seem to focus her eyes enough to see the room beyond her personal area. She squinted in the low light and began to make out the shape of an object on the other side of her door. The opening was a horizontal slot; it traveled the length of her bed. From Lennon’s perspective, she would slide the door up to open it further.
She leaned forward and the shape came into focus. First, she identified a dark area that let her detect the edges of whatever was outside her door, and then she began to see specific details in the shadow. Two orbs in the center caught her attention, and as she stared, her drowsy mind began to see lines grow in detail until they formed into the shape of two eyes. Human eyes. They stared at her, emotionless and unblinking.
Lennon shrieked and backed up. The face showed no physical reaction. It was Parker. “Parker, what are you doing?” Lennon asked. “You just about scared me to death.”
Parker’s eyes looked to her left without her head turning. Then she allowed her head to follow her eyes and she moved out of view.
Lennon’s heart was pounding. She took a moment to catch her breath and then slid the door further open, giving her about ten inches to peer through. She cautiously leaned her head to the opening and looked out.
Parker was walking—walking—around the perimeter of the room. To an astronaut, this is about as shocking as a person on Earth seeing someone levitate. Lennon thought about pinching herself, but decided that it was not necessary because the only time one questions whether he or she is awake is when he or she is not. It was obvious that she was indeed awake.
Parker had a small object in her right hand. She was tapping the wall with it as she slowly circled the room. It made a quiet tick with each hit, telling Lennon that it was probably a light object, made of a material similar to plastic. Parker moved slowly past the single working light in the wall, which shone a dull brown glow while in night mode, and Lennon could see the object in Parker’s hand clearly, just for a fraction of a second. That glimpse was all that she needed in order to identify it. It was a comb. Although she had no reason to identify it as the comb, she could not help but remember Abrams’ search for a missing comb. Did Parker take it?
Parker had nearly completed her circle around the room, and continued with a slow, lazy, walk, just as if she were on Earth in full gravity. Her gaze remained forward, not down or to the side, perpendicular to her body, without her eyes diverting or wandering. There was a glassy look to her eyes, similar to a person on drugs, without any indication of life or soul behind her brown eyes.
Lennon had never had any sort of a paranormal experience. In everything that she had encountered, almost every tale of paranormal activity had some sort of scientific explanation. She did not consider the spiritual world to be implausible; in fact, she believed a spiritual world did exist. However, her training told her the most reasonable explanation for this experience was sleepwalking. Sleepwalking? Didn’t that, by definition, infer walking? Lennon backed farther into her personal area as Parker returned to the front of Lennon’s bunk. She tapped on Lennon’s door with the comb. She was standing now, not crouching, as she was when Lennon had first caught her staring. Parker’s head was out of view, but Lennon could see her abdomen through the opening in the door. Her bare stomach moved in and out slowly, as Parker took slow, relaxed breaths, waiting several seconds between each successive inhale.
Parker crouched down and looked at Lennon again through the opening in the sliding door. She was holding the comb still, making no effort to hide it.
“Is that Abrams’ comb?” Lennon asked, afraid of the answer.
Parker smiled and looked at it wistfully. She returned her gaze to Lennon. “It takes eight minutes for a transmission to reach Earth from here,” she said in a low voice. It was not just low in volume; the pitch of her voice was also low. Not only that, but the timbre seemed somehow off.
“I asked about the comb, Parker. Is it yours?” she asked, shakily.
“That’s the first Earth would hear about it, if a transmission got out.”
“Hear about what?”
“I watched you, you know. For nearly an hour, before you woke up.”
“Maria, you’re scaring me. It’s not funny.”
Parker grinned,
a sheepish smile of someone who is happy with his or her work and unable to hide his or her feelings about it. “It’s true, though. Think about it.”
“Think about what?” Lennon tried to identify what it was that was different about Parker’s voice. It was definitely her voice; yet it was not. It was almost as if there was an electronic distortion or static interference. Yet it was so subtle that Lennon could not even be sure a distortion was truly present.
“The trip is two and a half years,” Parker continued, “Have you thought about how long that really is?”
“Yes, Parker, I have. We all have. You sound like something is bothering you. Do you want to go to the Atrium together and talk for a bit?”
Parker looked down at the comb and ran her finger over it. She smiled and looked back at Lennon without moving her head, staring out of the top and side of her eyes. “I could be a queen in that time.”
“I’m confused, Maria. What are you—?”
“I could kill everyone on board,” interrupted Parker.
The two stared at each other for a few minutes, with Parker still in that awkward pose, tilting her head away from Lennon while still looking at her with her eyes. Lennon could feel her face blanching. “W-what are you saying, Parker?” she stammered.
Parker let her eyes return to the comb. “I could kill everyone on board,” she repeated. “And really, could anyone do anything about it?”
“Are you thinking of hurting someone?”
“We went through so much testing, you know,” she tapped her forehead with her finger, “psychologically speaking. They planned for everything, didn’t they?”
“I hope so,” answered Lennon.
“They didn’t plan for everything.” Parker paused for a moment. “They didn’t allow for a Single Event Upset.”
“Yes, Parker, they did.”
“Not for a human.”
“SEUs don’t affect humans. The body doesn’t work like that. There are no bits to flip in the human brain.”
“Perhaps. But what if there was an event, something that happened, that could change a person’s fundamental behavior?”
“Events like that are rare, Parker, and for a non-traumatic event to cause a fundamental behavior change, well, that would be almost unheard of.”
“Would it? Hmm.”
“Maria, are you ok? If you need someone to talk to, or if you want help with something, anything, let me know.”
Parker withdrew the comb and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Rebecca. I didn’t mean to scare you. It just gets to me sometimes—there aren’t any rules up here, but what rules each of us decides to follow. We have this trust, you know, and any one of us could choose to betray that trust.” Her voice sounded the same as before, but for some unexplainable reason it now sounded normal. Lennon struggled to understand the cause of her varied perceptions of Parker’s voice. Perhaps the atmosphere control was off again.
“No one here is going to betray anyone’s trust. It’s not going to happen,” Lennon assured her, and realized that she was assuring herself just the same.
Parker patted Lennon’s hand. “Thanks, Lennon. I feel better now. I’m going to go to sleep.”
Lennon realized that Parker was now floating like normal. She wondered if she had ever not been floating. Was she just seeing things? She did not see the comb anymore. Parker could have pocketed it or stuffed it somewhere, but Lennon remained in her bunk, questioning her own sight.
Parker pushed away and crawled into her own sleeping bag, inside her personal area. She turned her back to Lennon and almost immediately went to sleep.
Lennon shut the sliding door to her personal area. There was a lock on the door to secure her belongings while she was out. Normally a key would lock it from the outside, but from the inside, she could also turn a lever to lock it. For the first time ever on this trip, she turned the lever and the latch locked with a soft ‘click’.
Day Eighty-Six
Seeker3> Welcome! You are logged in as Lennon, Rebecca. There is a new system message!
Command> getmsg
*
Message 1 :
Seeker 3 notification message:
This is a notification of pending messages for the crew.
Subject: Personal Electronic Communication, week 12A
Seeker 3 has received new personal mail for the crew! Totals are listed below (an asterisk indicates a change from the last transmission):
Nicholas Quesen
Messages Queued: 9
Messages Unread: 0
*Jonas Matthews
Messages Queued: *24*
Messages Unread: *2*
*Justin Petri
Messages Queued: *31*
Messages Unread: *3*
*Kyle Abrams
Messages Queued: *12*
Messages Unread: *1*
*Maria Parker
Messages Queued: *42*
Messages Unread: *6*
Rebecca Lennon
Messages Queued: 1
Messages Unread: 0
Messages are locked for privacy. For crewmembers with new mail, log in under your personal login and type “getmail” without the quotes to access your new messages. Additionally, mail can be viewed through the GUI via the mail program. Video messages and messages with images must be loaded through the GUI. As always, new mail will be transmitted as applicable on Sunday and Wednesday of each week.
End of notification from seeker 3.
Command>_
Day Eighty-Seven
Abrams tapped his chin with a pencil while he scanned a large unfolded blueprint. “It’s all fine,” he said. “From a hardware point of view. Everything checks out.”
“So what caused the failure?” asked Matthews.
Abrams groaned. “I hate to say this, but I don’t know. I have checked every system everything is fine. The only thing left is memory failure, or an SEU, but the chips passed a read-write test. I ran one again just to be sure.”
“So how do we know the Box is safe?”
“I’ve cycled it five times. I revved it past safe and it alarmed every time.”
Matthews was getting frustrated. “How do we fix it, Abrams?”
“That’s just it. It doesn’t need fixing. My belief is that we have experienced another single event upset. Once the volatile memory refreshed, the problem self-corrected.”
“Another SEU? That doesn’t make sense. We are not experiencing an increase in abnormal space weather. There haven’t been any solar flares.”
“True, but SEUs can be cause by galactic cosmic rays as well as solar flares. I know it’s unlikely, but there is no other explanation. The hardware’s good.”
“Alright,” Matthews sighed. “I’ll put your analysis in the logbook. Let me know if anything else comes up.”
Lennon clamped herself onto the toilet, which was an interesting contraption. It was designed to work without gravity. The vacuum fans inside started automatically as she strapped herself down onto it.
She did not have to use the toilet. The small closet that she had packed herself into was a perfect escape, where no one would question her disappearance.
Her mouth was dry and her heart was racing. She had recognized the symptoms early, at the onset, and had removed herself from the presence of the other crewmembers as soon as she could. She hit the button for the overhead light with the heel of her hand and sat quietly in the darkness after the light went black. She fought to keep any thoughts from entering her mind. Any thought could cause the pending anxiety attack to grow out of control, and if that happened, she would be in trouble.
She squeezed her eyes shut. The image of Rocky the Rat popped into her mind’s eye, and the image of him rocketing around the cage with his little nubby arms made her smile.
She took a deep breath. She had avoided an anxiety attack. She did not know if the thought of Rocky had saved her or if she was simply lucky. Anxiety attacks often have no direct identifiable cause—therefore the subver
sion of the attack is difficult. Still, today she had overcome. She left the restroom feeling much better.
“I’m concerned about Parker.”
Matthews sighed. Lennon read his face, trying to see some sort of signal to the source of his frustration.
“What is it now?” he asked.
“Sir, I’m trying to express a valid concern.”
“No, it’s not that,” he explained. “It’s just that you are not the first to express concern. I’m tearing my hair out to figure out how keep this crew stable.”
“No offense sir, but most of that is my job. You are taking too much on yourself. You need to let me help you or you will wear yourself out.”
“Point taken.” He leaned towards her. “Alright, so what is your concern?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I should tell you this—because I was half asleep and the details of the incident are shaky—but I had an informal conversation with Parker—just idle banter, really. During the conversation, she made some unexpected statements about harming the crew. I don’t know if it was just a ‘what-if’ conversation or if there was something more sinister. As I said, I was half-asleep. She woke me up to talk about it.”
“Well, what do you think? You are the specialist, and you had the conversation first hand.”
“There’s more. I caught her and Dish leaving the shower—together, I might add—and then heading into the Men’s Quarters. I’m worried that a pattern of erratic and impulsive behavior is beginning and it concerns me.”
“Anything else?”
“The pepper plants in the Atrium were destroyed. Someone intentionally cut them up. No one will admit to it.”
He creased his forehead and stroked his chin. “But there’s no evidence that she did it.”
“No, there’s no physical evidence.”
He grunted. “It’s times like this that I hate being a commander.”
“What about that dancing? Her behavior is just… odd. Jonas, what if she gets pregnant? We can’t deliver a baby here, or on Mars. What would we do?”
Single Event Upset Page 12
