At the Helm: A Sci-Fi Bridge Anthology (Volume 1)

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “I saw you,” said Matt. “You went through the airlock. Without a suit.”

  Serena shook her head. “Pretty sure I’d remember something like that,” she said. “You must have been dreaming. It’s OK, Matt. I’m here. I’m alive. We’re going to make it back to Earth. Both of us.”

  Matt blinked and tried to shake away the fuzziness of sleep. “What? How?”

  “While you were taking your little nap, I fixed the OGM. It’s only at 23%, but it’ll get us home. Just barely.”

  Matt couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You fixed the OGM? How in the hell…?”

  “It wasn’t as bad as it looked. The casing was pretty much toast, but some of the components were salvageable.”

  “But how…?” Matt trailed off, not wanting to insult Serena. If she said she fixed it, then she fixed it. But Serena was no mechanic. She didn’t even know how to change the oil on their Toyota back on Earth. And yet she had repaired a complex piece of machinery while floating in deep space in a bulky pressure suit?

  “It wasn’t easy,” said Serena. “I think I wore out the manual for the OGM. Oh, and one of our pneumatic wrenches is happily orbiting Jupiter. But the module is producing oxygen.”

  “Wow,” said Matt, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. A good two days’ stubble greeted his fingertips. “That’s fantastic. We’re going to make it home. I can hardly believe it.”

  • • •

  The next day, Matt sat at his station, staring at a monitor showing the status of the Morgana’s systems. At the lower left, a number coyly blinked red at him: 23.4%. According to the ship’s computers, that was the current operating capacity of the oxygen generation module. On camera fourteen, it still looked like a trailer that had been hit by a tornado. Whatever Serena had done to the OGM, it wasn’t apparent by looking at it. Still, the computer wouldn’t lie. Would it? In any case, if the OGM were offline, the oxygen would definitely be getting thin by this point, with two people breathing it. As it was, the cabin was a little stuffy, but the atmosphere was hardly life-threatening. If the OGM held at 23.4%, in three months they’d be back in Earth’s orbit – uncomfortable and exhausted, but alive. He should be thankful.

  Still, the image from camera fourteen bothered him. The OGM looked completely inert; it was hard to believe it was working at all, much less operating at nearly a quarter of its maximum capacity. With that mangled casing, how had Serena even gotten into the guts of the module to repair it? It seemed impossible. She’d have had to pry the casing off with a crowbar – a difficult feat in itself – and then gone to the trouble of re-securing the casing when she was done. Serena could be meticulous to a fault, but taking the time to put the casing back on after fixing the module bordered on pathological.

  He couldn’t go out and check it himself; the exertion would be an inexcusable waste of oxygen. They had barely enough to get back home as it was. And Serena would want to know why the hell he was taking an unnecessary trip outside the ship to check something that she and the ship’s computer both assured him were working fine. On top of that, what would he do if he found that the OGM wasn’t working after all? There was nothing to be done about it but wait and hope that Serena was right.

  Serena. She was alive! He thought he had lost her, but somehow she was alive. Seeing her go out the airlock… that had been, what, a hallucination brought on by the drugs? But he had seen her exit the ship before he took the drugs. Or had he? Maybe the drugs were screwing with his memory.

  A faint clink! echoed through the ship: the sound of a tool connecting with metal. Serena was finishing up her systems check and would soon be joining him in the command module. The noise reminded him of something: Serena said she had lost a wrench while working on the OGM.

  His guilt at not trusting Serena paralyzed him for maybe a second, but then his curiosity got the better of him. He unstrapped himself and vaulted toward the tool cabinet where the wrenches were kept. Sliding down the catch, he opened the cabinet and peered inside. The pneumatic wrenches were all accounted for. So. Had Serena been joking about the wrench? How could he ask her without implying that he didn’t trust her? He couldn’t very well claim that he just happened to be looking for a pneumatic wrench; there was nothing in his system checks that would require such a tool.

  As he sat staring at the complete set of wrenches, he heard the noise of a boot on a ladder rung: Serena had finished her checks and was making her way back to the command module.

  Matt quietly closed the cabinet door and pushed off against the wall, propelling himself back toward his chair. His heart beat rapidly and his armpits were suddenly damp with sweat. What was he so worried about? It’s just Serena, for God’s sake. Calm down, idiot; you’re wasting oxygen.

  Catching one of the restraint straps as he sailed over the chair, he pulled down and spun deftly, landing in his chair with a whoomf! He clicked the restraints into place mere seconds before Serena floated into the module. He took a deep breath and tried to look bored.

  “Everything OK?” she asked, regarding him quizzically.

  “Yeah,” he said, a little too quickly. “I, uh, had a bit of a scare. Misread the fuel consumption figures and almost gave myself a heart attack. But everything’s fine, yeah.”

  “Cool,” she replied, maneuvering into her own chair and securing the restraints. “Everything checks out on my end. We should get some sleep.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Take a sedative. We’re wasting oxygen.”

  “Give me a minute. Maybe I just need to relax a bit.”

  Serena shrugged and closed her eyes.

  After a moment, Matt spoke again. “Hey, what was the name of that restaurant we used to go to in Houston? That place with the cheap T-bones. It had some horrible name.”

  Serena didn’t open her eyes. “Happy Steak?”

  Matt laughed. “Yeah, that was it. Happy Steak. We spent a lot of Friday nights there. We should go back sometime, after we get home.”

  “I don’t think it’s there anymore,” said Serena. “I think it went out of business when I was in the coma. I drove past it afterwards, and it looked like it had been boarded up.”

  “Figures,” said Matt. “We probably kept that place in business.”

  Leave it alone, thought Matt. You’re not going to accomplish anything by pushing her. But his mind wouldn’t leave it alone. Something wasn’t right. After a moment, he spoke again.

  “Hey, what was that game you were trying to teach me in the hospital?”

  “Indiana Rummy?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. We should play that game.”

  “We will. When we get back.”

  “Let’s play now. Just one game. I think it will help me relax.”

  “No way,” said Serena. “I’m not teaching you any more card games. You’re a terrible student. You complain that I’m over-explaining things and then when you lose, you bitch about how I didn’t explain the rules well enough. It’s maddening.”

  “Please,” said Matt. “Just one game. I promise I won’t complain. How about if I look up the rules on the computer and wake you up when I’m ready to play?”

  “Whatever,” said Serena.

  Matt punched Indiana Rummy into the console. The computer replied with: No matches found.

  “Huh,” said Matt. “The computer doesn’t know the game. I thought it knew everything.” In truth, he hadn’t expected to find anything. After Serena’s failed attempt to teach him the game, Matt had looked it up on the ‘net, and had been surprised to find that as far as the ‘net was concerned, Indiana Rummy didn’t exist.

  “I think my grandma invented it,” said Serena.

  “Your grandmother invented a card game?”

  “Sure. The women in my family are a little eccentric. Mathematicians. They used to make up all sorts of card games, just for fun. Indiana Rummy was our favorite, though.”

  “OK, well, you’re going to have to teach me, since the computer evidently isn’t fam
iliar with your grandmother’s repertoire of card games.”

  “Later, Matt. Please. I’m trying to sleep.”

  “OK,” Matt said. “Later.” He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But all he could see when he closed his eyes was the mangled OGM casing.

  • • •

  Matt looked up from his console. “So you going to teach me this game or what?”

  “I’m kind of busy over here.”

  “Busy!” Matt snorted. “You’re doing a Sudoku.”

  “Yes,” Serena replied. “I’m busy doing a Sudoku.”

  “Come on,” Matt wheedled. “You promised.”

  “Why do you suddenly want to play this game so bad, Matt?” Serena demanded irritably. “You sure as hell didn’t show this much interest when I was in the hospital.”

  “Well, I’m interested now,” he said, meeting Serena’s glare with a cold gaze. “Teach me the game.”

  Serena looked away and laughed. “I don’t think I remember the rules.”

  “Really,” said Matt. “Your favorite game. The one you tried to teach me six months ago.”

  She turned to face him again. “That’s right, Matt. I don’t fucking remember,” she snapped. I don’t remember how to play the game. Is that OK with you? I had a near-fatal head injury, remember? Maybe I forgot a few things.”

  Matt persisted. “CMS ran you through a hundred tests before letting you on this mission. There was no sign of brain damage or memory loss, except for the few moments before the crash. And in any case, you seemed to remember the rules just fine while you were recuperating, after you came out of the coma. If you don’t remember the rules, it has nothing to do with the crash, and you know it.”

  “Jesus, Matt. What is it with you and this game? Just let it go, would you?” After a moment, she said again, more quietly, “Let it go, Matt. Please.”

  Matt found himself blinking away tears. What the hell was wrong with him? He was with the woman he loved, and in three months they would be back home, with a year of paid leave to spend together, doing whatever they wanted. Why couldn’t he just accept that and be happy?

  A tap of an icon brought up camera fourteen again. The mangled casing looked as bad as ever. Reason told him there was no way in hell that thing was working at 23% capacity. And then there was the supposed missing wrench. And his “hallucination.” He had seen Serena go out the airlock, before he had taken any pills. Maybe the pills had screwed with his memory, scrambling the order of events, but it had seemed so real. He was sure that he had seen her go out the airlock – as sure as he was that she was sitting across from him now. On the other hand, maybe he was hallucinating now.

  “Teach me the game,” he said again.

  “Matt, no…” she pleaded.

  “Teach me the fucking game. Indiana Rummy. Teach me. Now.”

  Now Serena was weeping. “No, Matt,” she cried. “Please don’t make me.”

  “I love you, Serena,” Matt said through gritted teeth. “If you ever loved me, teach me the game.”

  After a moment, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded. She tapped her screen a few times, and a window popped up on Matt’s screen. It read:

  Serena wants to play a card game with you. Accept/Refuse.

  Matt accepted, and a deck of cards appeared. Seven cards flew off the deck, flipping to appear face-up at the bottom of his screen.

  “Order the cards by their face value, regardless of suit,” said Serena. All emotion had drained from her voice.

  Matt tapped the cards, one by one. Two of clubs, three of hearts, six of spades, eight of hearts, nine of clubs, jack of spades, king of diamonds.

  The screen went dark. Then a message appeared. It read:

  Project Avalon has been suspended. Stand by for instructions.

  A face appeared on the screen. Matt gasped. He’d know that face anywhere: it was his own.

  “Hi, Matt,” said the Matt on the screen. He broke into nervous laughter. To someone off-screen, he said, “I feel like an idiot doing this. Can’t somebody else… yeah, yeah. OK, I’ve got it.”

  Matt shuddered in his chair. He had no memory of making this recording. In the video, he was wearing a dirty gray sweatshirt. His hair was longer, and he had a beard. He looked gaunt and tired. It looked like the recording had been taken about six months earlier, during the depths of his depression, before Serena’s miraculous recovery. In fact – was that the sound of a heart monitor beeping? Was this video taken in the hospital, by Serena’s bedside? What kind of sick—

  His thoughts were interrupted by the Matt on the screen. “Well, I guess if you’re watching this, you’ve made it back to Earth safely. Either that, or something has gone pretty fucking wrong. I hope for your sake it’s the former, but this isn’t going to be easy for me either way. For you, I mean. Jesus.” The man on the screen fought to compose himself. After a moment he continued.

  “They’re making me do this recording as a condition of the project. I guess it’s as much for me as it is for you. They want it documented that I understand what they’re going to do to me. That is, what they did to you. Understandable. You’re probably going to want to sue them. Trust me; don’t bother. You’ve waived every right you have.

  “I want you to know, first of all, that I didn’t do this primarily out of grief, although the grief is nearly unbearable. I also didn’t do it because of the money, although the money is very good, as you’ll soon find out, now that you’re back home safely. I did it because I wanted to go into space. That’s an opportunity very few people have, Matt. Remember that, whatever else happens.

  “OK, so, Project Avalon. They’re going to tell you that they retrofitted the Morgana to make it a two-person ship. They lied to you. They spent half a billion dollars trying to do it, but it was simply unworkable. If you take some measurements of the ship, you’ll see what I mean. There’s no way two people could live on that thing. Hell, there’s only the one command station.”

  What the hell was he talking about? Matt wondered. Serena’s right over—

  He looked up from his station. The command module suddenly seemed very small. Serena was gone.

  “Serena!” he called. But only silence followed. Where the hell could she have gone? And what had happened to the command module? Where was Serena’s station?

  “The studies showed they needed a two person crew,” the Matt on the screen went on. “Another suicide and they’d be bankrupt. They thought they had their answer with Sidekick, but you know how that turned out. Well, you know the first part of the story, anyway. You won’t remember the rest, because they removed some of your memories. Anyway, I’ll get to that in a minute.

  “At first the psychologists couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Sidekick was a nearly flawless implementation of artificial intelligence, the perfect non-living companion, but somehow it was driving test subjects crazy. Then they decided to try the experiment again, but without telling the subjects that Sidekick was a computer. A real Turing test, if you will. And guess what? It worked. The problem wasn’t with Sidekick at all; the problem was in the perceptions of the test subjects. They were driven insane by the knowledge that their sanity depended on their friendship with a computer program.

  “This presented a simple but vexing solution: somehow they had to convince an intelligent, sane, technically savvy pilot that Sidekick was a living, breathing human being. But how the hell do you do that? Well, not to put to fine a point on it, you have to fuck with a person’s perceptions.”

  “No,” said Matt to his doppelganger on the screen. “No, no, no….”

  The doppelganger continued. “They are going to implant a chip in my head. Back here.” He reached to touch the base of his skull, and Matt unconsciously did the same. He felt a small bump at the top of his spine “The chip is an interface between your brain and a computer program. An enhanced version of Sidekick. It creates what they call teleological hallucinations. In other words, hallucinations with a purpose. Y
our brain tells the chip what it needs, and the chip creates a hallucination that provides it. If you need thrust vectors, it will give you thrust vectors. If you need somebody to talk to, it will give you that. All in the form of your… my wife, Serena.”

  The Matt on the screen turned away from the camera, holding his hand over his eyes. Matt found himself with a lump in his throat and a queasy feeling in his stomach. He looked away from the screen. There was still no sign of Serena anywhere.

  After some time, the Matt on the screen composed himself. “They are also going to alter my… your memories. You’ll remember Serena waking up—” He bit his lip, fighting back tears. “You’ll remember her waking up, and you’ll remember the two of you being selected as the Morgana’s crew. You’ll celebrate, get drunk, and wake up the next day with a bad hangover.” His hand went to the base of his skull again. “After that, she’ll be with you, in your head. All the time.” He smiled weakly, as if looking forward to relief from his suffering.

  “Now that you’re back… well, you’re going to have to come to grips with reality. Serena’s gone. You piloted the Morgana by yourself, with a little help from Sidekick and your memories of Serena. They’re going to make you have the chip removed. I honestly can’t imagine how I will… how you feel about that. Maybe by now you want to cut it out yourself. Maybe you want to keep it forever, and pretend that she’s still with you. Either one is a really bad idea.

  “Let them take the chip out. Take some time off. See a therapist. You’ll have enough money to live on for a few years, thanks to the deal I made with CMS. And I know you’re going to want to blame them, but this isn’t CMS’s fault. They didn’t kill Serena. All they did is delay your grief a bit, and give you an opportunity very few people have. And pay you very well for it, I’ll add.”

  The Matt on the screen nodded to someone off-screen, and the camera zoomed out and panned left, showing Serena, lying unconscious in the hospital bed. There were tubes in her mouth and nose, and more tubes and wires hooked up to her arms.

  “No!” Matt sobbed, staring aghast at the screen. “She woke up! Wake up, goddammit, wake up!”