Dark Contact

by Logan Haelstrom

  Contents

  Dark Contact

  Austin felt something pressing against his eyes and he struggled to open them against the weight. A muted, rhythmic chirping floated to his ears as he struggled to understand where he was and why he couldn’t remember anything.

  Reaching up, he felt surprise at a bandage around his head. He’d been hurt.

  He struggled to make sense of it all and fought through the grogginess.

  He was on board the Shining Beacon. Mars. He was in orbit around Mars.

  Memories came back in bits and pieces as he struggled to sit up.

  “Whoa, take it easy Shepard. Danielle?—” The voice to his right turned away to speak to someone else in the room. “Austin is awake.” He sensed movement around him as another presence seemed to join the first. “And he’s still ugly. Sorry man,” said the voice—it was Deacon—as it turned back to him, “you can only do so much, Doc, right?” Deacon laughed.

  A gentle hand squeezed his shoulder in a reassuring grip. “Took you a while,” said a much warmer voice. “We wanted you to rest a while, but you had us worried for a bit.” The hand left his shoulder and he felt Danielle untying something behind his head, hands gently cradling his neck as the straps were released.

  Austin rubbed the back of his neck as he sat up and squinted against the sudden light. He was in the medical bay of the main hub of the USJPN crew quarters. Danielle looked down at him with concern in her eyes, as Deacon turned and made notes in the computer terminal along the hub. The view of Mars and the expanse of stars was its usual breath-taking view, and it helped him focus on his surroundings. But he still had no answer for the pain in his neck.

  “What happened?” His voice came out a croak, unaccustomed to speaking.

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” said Danielle, my boss on the station, thought Austin. “You took quite a blow. If Deacon hadn’t brought you over as quickly as he had… Well, who knows what would have happened? You were bleeding a lot, but then head wounds always do. You got rocked pretty good when the accident happened in the other ring. You need to be more careful when you’re in the labs.”

  “You were doing your whiz-kid thing at the computers, Shepard,” said Deacon with a pen in his mouth. Deacon always liked to double his notes on paper so they had a hard copy as well. “I swear you never sleep.” He leaned back against the window with its slowly rotating backdrop and gestured with the pen over his shoulder. “There was an explosion in the QAR hub. The station responded as it should so it was contained, but it shook and rattled something fierce and scared the guys over there pretty good. I’ll bet they need new pants after that. But you hit your head pretty hard yourself. You weren’t locked down as you should have been in the e-hub. The company will chew you out for that. Simple mistake, probably from lack of sleep if you ask me, right doc?”

  “We could all use more,” said Danielle, “that’s for sure. In fact, MCOM just ordered it after seeing the last test results I sent back. They want us all to clock out when we say we will. BenDeCorp’s lawyers are having a hissy fit and have reminded me, in no uncertain terms, that these four years are critical and our jobs are our lives, and vice versa.” She gave both Austin and Deacon firm looks. “And they’re right. We can’t be overworking, understand?”

  BenDeCorp’s choices for civilian crew were far from accidental: The five of them had trained for years, and were chosen not just for their mental disposition, but their proven abilities to get the job done in their various fields. But they were human, and thus prone to illness, and the corporation had spent tens of billions building the station and getting them there, and weren’t about to jeopardize all the research and planning because they became too sick to work from not taking care of themselves or from a lack of sleep.

  “So then, what’s the verdict?” asked Austin, swinging his legs down. As much as he tried to get used to it, the artificial gravity from the slowly spinning ring felt off and he was reminded of it again as he took his bearings. It was subtle, but different, even if the others couldn’t tell a difference. Of course his penchant for detail helped get him here.

  Austin liked to joke he was nothing more than a simple data analyst, which in a way was true. But he was now probably one of the most famous data analysts in recent history. They were all famous now. When they returned home after their short stint on the station, they’d be set for life on book deals alone, even without the incredible compensation. They’d be able to retire wherever they wanted and he’d finally have more time to spend with his family.

  Austin thought of his wife and the opportunity he would have to send a message. Messages were inexpensive to record and send, but for company reasons they were monitored and disseminated on pre-approved schedule, again, more decisions based on the advice of company shrinks because that’s how they saw it best.

  Danielle pressed a cold pad against the back of his head. “You don’t really need this,” she said, “but it looks as if you could use one. Hold this on a for a few minutes and that’s about it for now.”

  “That’s it?”

  Danielle smiled. “For now. But I’m going to monitor you. The gash is fine, the glu-tik will keep it together and heal it nicely. But you got rattled pretty good and it’s going to take a few hours before that headache you gotta be feeling goes away. Even with this dose.” She injected something into his arm and he felt somewhat better almost immediately. “But I don’t want to rush anything until I get a better handle on how your signs look.” They had access to the best medical technology and supplies available on Earth. But they were orbiting Mars, and home was a far way away, so you couldn’t sneeze without being watched for 24 hours.

  “I’m sure I’m fine,” said Austin. “Maybe I’ll just take that nap now. But keep the syringe close. It’s pounding.”

  “You do that, Shepard,” said Deacon. “I already locked you out of the hub. A nap is on your agenda in your quarters. Don’t want our star computer nerd passing out on us because he refuses to take time off. Heal up buddy.” He smiled and Austin smirked. Deacon always said Austin made them look bad by the amount of work he did.

  “In the meantime,” said Danielle, “BenDeCorp’s going to know by now, but they’ll want to know exactly what happened from a million perspectives. They’re a real pain in the ass that way, so I’m going to be busy awhile. The lab in the other ring is sealed for the time being until the AI can help us assess the damage and why the tank faltered prematurely. We’re in the green and we’re to continue as normal. For me, that’s paperwork. For you two, it’s rest.”

  It wasn’t lost on Austin that Danielle and Deacon were pretty cool about the accident, whatever the damage or extent. Ultimately it was Danielle’s decision to abort; it must have been big enough for the dispersal energies to rock the hubs, yet small enough not to warrant any panic. For now he didn’t need to know more. However close it may have come to an “All-Fault Abort”, life support—or the mission for that matter—had not been deemed to be in jeopardy.

  The crew was immensely valuable to the company, yet they were expendable in the right circumstances. What those circumstances were exactly was beyond his pay grade, but they’d drilled for every conceivable contingency. Space was no place to mess around, and the first inhabitants of the first space station around Mars was a major turning point in history.

  Taking careful steps while holding the compress to his neck and head, Austin got up to head back to his room, and nodded at the doc as she turned away after appraising him with a careful eye. She turned to make her own notes in the computer as she always did. About everything. Whatever else she was, she was meticulous. He wondered what she’d do if he’d farted in his sleep. She’d probably document that too.

  The long walk was
alone and solitary as it always was with only five humans currently on the station. Their living quarters were purposely built furthest from all the work hubs. AHLR, or “Augmented and Habitual Life Realism,” as they called it was another brainchild of the social engineers. It was a stupid name some company shrink somewhere back on earth made up for the environment created for the purposes of reminding them they were still human. The brains back home were paid big bucks to figure out optimal conditions for “happy workers”, yet no human had ever been this far from home in such conditions before, so how could anyone know? But every detail seemed to matter. In this case, they wanted it like you’d parked at the back of a shopping center parking lot so you had to walk the farthest to get into the store. Extra exercise, they’d said. Plus, it was supposed to be refreshing to move through the rings each day, to and from the hubs and work stations.

  There were vast spaces in which the five spent no time whatsoever, but the entire environment had been engineered for comfort outside the work hubs. The hubs themselves were all business. Austin chose to spend most of his non-work hours working anyway as he liked his job; that’s why they chose them, anyway. Good workers and the best in their fields. Doing what he did, watching for anomalies in space and learning about living in space for extended periods - which sounded dry, but fascinated him to no end- seemed boring to most back home. But the company always found a way to spice it up in the media. It was no skin off his back. Maybe he’d be the first to identify alien life. The thought amused him. He didn’t care what he did here, he’d made it. He was part of history.

  The work they did here would shape the future of mankind for generations. His own job would revolutionize new fields with what he was learning. He liked to think of himself as a “data shrink.” The title had landed him in hot water when he first used it in an interview with the folks back home, but too late, it had caught on and the company chose to go with it. He was now the “data shrink to space” in the public eye back home.

  His job had gone smoothly so far, and had been anything but boring. Routine, yes, but not boring. But then just a day ago, only two months into their arrival, he’d found the anomaly.

  It hadn’t made sense. The numbers were off.

  He didn’t like things that didn’t make sense, and a puzzle was a puzzle and it drew him like a moth to a flame.

  Austin palmed the panel outside his room, and the door slid open with a soft hiss. He paused on entering, lost in thought as he started to remember more through his mental fog.

  As strange as it seemed, he felt like the pain had come first, not the falling over. He’d felt the deep rumble and heard the station-wide klaxon right before an explosion of pain. Like a blow to his head and then the fall, which made no sense.

  No matter. Austin struggled to remember what he’d been doing in the first place.

  He’d been posing his problems to the AI. Something hadn’t added up. Discrepancies like that didn’t just happen and it consumed him the whole day.

  Austin sighed, stepping in and sitting down on the couch. He took off his shoes and tried to put a clearer picture together. The details were still fuzzy, but he remembered being disturbed at what he’d found and been debating whether to bring it up to Danielle or not. It was something he was sure the company would want to know, one way or another. Something was just off that shouldn’t have been. The station should have been able to maintain its orbit without the extra corrections he’d found it was making.

  Austin rubbed the bridge of his nose and lay back. He felt sleepy anyhow. Probably something special in that cocktail she’d given me. Fine with him. That would be like the doc.

  The mystery would have to wait until his next shift.

  Deacon watched him leave and thought about how much Austin knew. He’d have to adapt with Austin recovering, but BenDeCorp didn’t put him there because he was slow. He would do whatever was required of him. Still, this was a new wrench thrown into the mix and it was his mess to clean up. He’d been given a green light to “do whatever it takes” as long as he didn’t jeopardize the first priority: learning more about the cloaked craft and figure out how to get in. A follow-up crew—a private and specialized security crew for that matter, and this time unknown to the media back home—was already en-route from the station orbiting Earth’s moon, although it would be many months yet before their arrival.

  “We’ll have to watch him,” said Danielle over her shoulder from the other side of the room. “That gash will be fine, but if he needs extra rest we need to give it to him, and you know he won’t want it.”

  Deacon looked over at the station boss. He hadn’t considered her a problem yet, and she probably wouldn’t pose one. But nothing could get in his way. They were depending on him back home and that meant his loyalty wasn’t to her, but to the job neither her nor Austin knew anything about. “We’ll just have to make him listen,” he said with a grin. But she hadn’t turned around. “He’ll be fine.”

  Austin survived because of Deacon’s sloppiness. Within seconds he knew the blow had failed and he’d had to adjust his plans, rescuing him from the very injury he’d given him. He knew Austin never locked down in the hubs and saw his opportunity. He was supposed to wait on word from home, but he was one to take initiative. Only this time he’d failed.

  It wouldn’t happen again. He just had to be more careful.

  Austin’s sleep was unsettled. The drugs in his system worked to keep him under while his mind yearned to be awake. The result was restless sleep that left him no better off several hours later, no matter how exhausted his body felt.

  He’d tried to access his work from his room but he’d been locked out. At least the doctor had the good graces to put a smiley face with an admonishing wagging finger as a gentle reminder, apparently to help take the sting off. He liked her, she reminded him of himself, loving the work but never taking themselves too seriously and realizing the blessing it was to work the farthest out in space anyone ever had so far.

  Austin put on some programs to pass the time. His favourites were sitcoms from the early 2000’s, nearly 60 years ago. Still some of the best programming in his mind to date. But even that felt frustrating as he hated having to relax by someone’s else dictum. His head felt loads better, but knowing he couldn’t work bothered him and he felt antsy to get back to it.

  The anomaly.

  Austin thought about it as he mindlessly munched on some terrible chips.

  The station’s orbit needed abnormal correcting. Minor correcting, but still.

  If there was one thing he knew, computers and humans were different. Oh, scientists played with words and imagery over the years to make humans seem like nothing more than infinitely complicated machines, but there was an important distinction. Humans and machines broke down due to human error - also biology, in the case of humans. But machines didn’t break down due to computer error. It was always GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. It’d been that way since back in the day of programming.

  BenDeCorp, one of the biggest private conglomerations in the last forty years, could afford the best minds in the business. And the best minds included a mix of both AI and human. They had every resource at their disposal, and the amount of money they had—at best guess, as they kept a lot out of the public eye—would make even medium-sized nations blush.

  Money wasn’t a problem.

  It meant that everything on board the station was not only state-of-the-art, but that each detail was deliberate in every regard down to the last detail. The colours chosen had been deliberated on for months, after study upon study of achieving optimal results for what they were going for depending on the needs of the room. In short, nothing was an accident, but always a deliberate decision. The pristine, slightly off-white walls were no accident in the halls and labs. Same for the yellowed, ambient lights in the personal rooms and lounge areas. Everything had its purpose.

  And Austin knew what that meant. The station was still new. There shouldn’t be anomalies of any k
ind. At least not something a data guy could pick up after a little bored digging.

  The big deal wasn’t the amount of error, it was the error at all, and what it portended.

  Thus the puzzle.

  The numbers he’d found demonstrated one of only two things. The anomaly was a failure of engineering or planning somewhere, which was highly unlikely, or there were new variables which required further understanding.

  Neither thought bothered him. But they intrigued him. And it appeared to be the latter. New variables.

  He’d found the discrepancy after playing with programs he’d created with the AI to measure certain data sets. With the best AIs on board that BenDeCorp had ever developed, the universe was his to play with. But he’d found the inconsistencies when turning his searching gaze inward, to inside the station instead of in space like he was there to do. But the numbers pointed to something near them in space that affected the operation of the station.

  Something was causing the station to expend energy more than it should. The measurements themselves were hardly alarming, but that the numbers were off had caught his attention. The AI’s didn’t seem to be concerned or feel a need to notify home. But Austin hated unanswered inconsistencies.

  The Shining Beacon was in a geo-synchronous orbit at a healthy distance from the upper atmosphere of Mars. Yet the numbers revealed a fluctuation that caused the station to self-correct it’s trajectory to keep it where it was. The correction was so minor he’d had to extrapolate out to see what would happen if it didn’t, and it took about six months to see an appreciable change in deviation for normal operations, yet there it was.

  Something was pulling it off course.

  And that something had to be big, or at least have immense mass.

  But there was nothing there.

  Maybe the small percentage of a point change in station energy depletion would not only never register on the radars of the crew he worked with, but they would probably neither appreciate it nor care if they did know. They had their own jobs to do, they wouldn’t think it worth further thought.