The Perfect Moment in Peril

by Kenneth Preston

  Deanna raised her index finger. “Shouldn't we expect to find the race of beings that sent us the rock with the map in it?”

  “We don't know how long ago the meteor was sent,” Richard replied. “It's very possible that the beings that sent it no longer exist.”

  “All right, folks. We didn't come all this way to chat about it; we came all this way to be about it; so let's be about it. We have another day at warp until we hit the Kepler system.” She looked over at Deanna. “The coordinates are set. Whenever you feel like hitting the button.”

  “It's a touchscreen,” Deanna said. “There are no buttons.”

  Elexa smiled. “Hit it.”

  Deanna hit it, and they were off.

  Chapter 16

  The man's memories were a bit choppy. Or vague. That would be the better term. His memories were a bit vague. Emotionally vague. He had an identity. He knew who he was. He knew how he had arrived at this place in the universe. But certain memories were just facts with little emotion attached to them. It was as if some of his memories had been dictated to him, as if he had been told what to remember.

  Getting to this planet, for instance. Emotionally vague. He remembered it all, but it was as if they were somebody else's memories―or memories that were created for him.

  But he knew who he was. No amount of doubt could take that away from him.

  And he knew what his mission was; he knew what he had been tasked to do. He had been sent to this planet to make the arrangements. And to wait. It would be a short wait for him, a much longer wait for her―well, in Earth years anyway. Until very recently, until sometime after her interstellar journey began, the concept of time didn't exist for her. It existed for her companions but not for her. He hadn't seen her in so long, long before the Great Migration. He didn't know how he knew this about her, but he knew it. She had probably communicated the information to him somehow. They had a mental connection, an emotional connection. They were simpatico.

  He would sit and wait for her. He would wait for his new friends to bring her to him. But he didn't have long to wait. She was close―oh so close.

  She thought she had fulfilled her destiny when she had rejoined the Great Community, but she had been mistaken. She hadn't even come close. She had only scratched the surface. Rejoining the Great Community had just been another step on that long and wild journey. The biggest step was yet to come, and he would help her take it.

  He would be a part of it all. He was so proud to be a part of it all. After having been marooned on this planet with these strange creatures for so many years, he would finally realize his purpose.

  It would be glorious. And of course, all the glory would go to Emily.

  Chapter 17

  Address it directly, act like it didn't happen or just let it come up over the natural course of time. The latter two choices kind of went hand-in-hand, and it was the direction that David decided to go in. It wasn't what happened between them in Emily's quarters that needed to be addressed; it was the fact that David hadn't believed it possible beforehand. She was a non-corporeal being. He had been resigned to the belief that sex between them wasn't possible. Then it became possible, and he was puzzled by it. In retrospect, he didn't know why he thought it impossible. She was capable of simulating her physical form. They had kissed on many occasions. The kisses had always felt genuine, no different than the few kisses they had shared before Emily's transformation.

  But it wasn't just the sex. There was something different about her. He knew it; Richard knew it; George knew it. As the three of them had discussed in the lounge, her demeanor seemed to have changed following her rendezvous with her future counterpart.

  He looked at her across the table they shared in the lounge. Her eyes were downcast, her hands folded neatly in front of the meal he'd barely touched. She hadn't thought to ask him why he hadn't eaten the sandwich and chips that had been sitting in front of him for almost an hour, hadn't bothered to remark that the bread would go stale. It hadn't crossed her mind. He wasn't even sure if she knew he was sitting across from her. She hadn't looked up at him for nearly as long as his meal sat nearly untouched in front of him. She had a lot on her mind, too much on her own plate to deal with. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out what it could be.

  He finally decided to relent, to break the stalemate of silence, reaching across to touch her hand gently. She pulled back, startled. Her eyes met his, and he saw something there that he didn't want to see, something akin to the eyes of a lost child.

  “Sorry,” she said nervously, but she didn't reach across to take the outstretched hand that remained empty, didn't invite him to take hers. She pulled both hands further away and tucked them beneath the table.

  David retracted his hand. He wasn't offended, but he was certainly concerned. “You're a bit jumpy.”

  “Am I?” She looked through the viewport at the starfield beyond. “I'm just a bit nervous, I guess.”

  David was taken aback. He cocked his head and furrowed his brow. “You? You don't get nervous.”

  She looked at him incredulously.

  “Well, not anymore,” he added defensively. “Not since...” He stopped himself. He wasn't sure what to call it.

  “Not since the Great Migration!” she said dramatically, raising her hands above her head. She replaced her hands beneath the table. “I'm separated from them.” She paused, her eyes searching the starfield. “I get nervous,” she said absently. “I'm beginning to get nervous.” She shook her head. “I'm not used to this.”

  Her voice had trailed off. David couldn't be sure if she were speaking to him or herself, but he was sure that she was frightened. He wanted to say something, but he didn't know what to say. He wanted to get up, walk to the other side of the table, sit next to her and put an arm around her, comfort her, but she didn't even want him touching her hand.

  He looked down at the table, silently admonishing himself for not being a very good boyfriend. Of course, how could he be a very good boyfriend when his girlfriend was a non-corporeal being? Couple that with the fact that corporeal humans were all but extinct, and the last five corporeal humans were flying into the unknown. It was kind of a unique situation.

  Unique situation or not, he wanted to help her; it was his duty, not just as a boyfriend but as a human being, to figure out a way to help her. Direct. He had to be direct.

  But first, he had to open his mouth. "Was it your first time?" He had to concede that it wasn't the best way to break the silence, but it was better than the silence, and it was an opening.

  She dipped her head and cocked an eyebrow, her brown, disbelieving eyes meeting his. Her glasses slid down the bridge of her nose a bit. She pushed them back up with her index finger.

  He was struck by the simplicity of the glasses sliding down her nose, of having to push them back up. It all seemed so normal. And of course, that made it abnormal. It was a topsy-turvy universe he found himself in.

  She looked back through the viewport and said, “Yes.” He only had a moment to let her answer sink in before she glanced at him and said, “You?”

  He didn't hesitate. “Yes.”

  That got her full attention. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Really! You're how old?”

  He smiled sheepishly. It was his turn to look away. “You know how old I am.”

  He looked back in time to see her nod, her smile morphing into a barely contained smirk. “Twenty. That's...that's a good age.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” he asked playfully.

  “On the contrary. I'm honored. But...”

  “But what?”

  “You were one of the popular ones in high school, one of the cool ones.”

  “Pssh. I'm still one of the cool ones.”

  Emily laughed warmly, heartily. “That's true. I mean, you may be the first corporeal being to make it with a non-corporeal being. It doesn't get much cooler than that.”

  David was thrilled. He had broken the ice. He was actuall
y having a playful conversation with Emily at a time when playful conversations with Emily weren't as commonplace as he would have liked. He made her laugh―a genuinely enthusiastic, throw-back-your head laugh. He was in the zone. He was ecstatic. Even her reference to corporeal and non-corporeal beings couldn't taint this moment.

  The ice was broken, and as much as he would have liked to revel in the moment, there was still the pressing matter of the recent change in Emily's demeanor. A playful conversation and a laugh didn't sweep that issue under the rug. He would have been perfectly fine with sweeping it under the rug for the time being, but they were closing in on Kepler-438b. He and the crew needed to know if something akin to a repeat performance of the Eden incident was in the cards.

  “Em?” His tone was tentative. Probably not the best way to broach the subject.

  Emily sighed. “Here it comes.”

  “Here what comes?” Dumb question. They both knew what was coming.

  “You wanna know what's going on with me, why I've been acting so―” She framed the next word with finger quotes. “―strange.”

  “Well...yeah.”

  She turned her head and gave him a sideways glance. “My behavior strikes you as strange?”

  “Well, I'm not sure how to put this, but your behavior has been a little more...physical lately.”

  “Weren't we just talking about that?”

  “Yeah, but...”

  “You wanna talk about the how and the why.”

  “Well, more the how than the why. I'm perfectly okay with the why.”

  Emily snickered. “Of course you are, you sexy beast.” She lowered her eyes contemplatively. “The how. Okay―”

  Deanna's voice erupted from the loudspeaker. “Emily? David? We're coming out of warp in a few minutes. Wherever you two lovebirds are, we could use you on the bridge, pronto.”

  Emily smiled knowingly at David. “I guess this conversation is gonna have to wait.”

  “Of course it is.”

  Chapter 18

  They marched into the cockpit and were met with the final moments of the glow of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

  Elexa looked over her shoulder. "Glad you two could make it for this historic event."

  “We wouldn't miss it for the world,” David said ironically.

  Elexa said, “All right, let's disengage the warp drive.”

  The star field reappeared. The glow of the cosmic microwave background radiation disappeared and was replaced by a planet: Kepler-438b.

  They were closer than David had expected. This planet wasn't the Earth-like planet he had been told about. Sure, there was plenty of water as far as he could tell. There was more blue than green...a lot more. He could barely make out two very small land masses on their side of the planet. The rest was water. He estimated that, unless there was a significant amount of land on the other side, the planet was between eighty and ninety percent water.

  “Is this what you expected?” David asked.

  “No,” George responded. “I expected an Earth-like planet, but this...this is unusual.”

  “Well, there's life here,” Richard said. “We know that much.”

  “Or there was life here,” George suggested. “This is an Earth-like planet in that it's technically capable of sustaining life, but my gut tells me that what we're seeing is the result of some cataclysmic event.”

  “That might explain why they sent us the meteor,” Richard speculated. “There's a significant amount of data in that DNA that we haven't analyzed. Perhaps it's a record of their civilization.”“Well there's one sure way to find out if there's life down there,” Elexa offered.

  Deanna said, “Unless Emily can help us out by using her super-duper intuitive powers to tell us if there's life down there.”

  Emily stared at Deanna for a moment, contemplating her answer, before settling on a quip. “Sorry. My radar's broken.”

  The joke was told dryly. It was part rebuke, part aversion. A joke was the easiest and most convenient way of dancing around the truth. Despite the fact that entire expedition to Kepler-438b was blocked to her and the Great Community, she had believed, or perhaps hoped, that she would be able to get some kind of sense of what was waiting for them once they reached the planet. But no such luck. Her view of the future was as dark as it had been back on Earth. Her radar was indeed broken. There was nothing to see beyond the limited range of her corporeal eyes. Even if the events of this expedition were no longer blocked to her, she doubted that she would be able to give her crewmates so much as a basic hunch. She was too far removed from the Great Community.

  David, Richard and George glanced at one another. Words weren't necessary. Their eyes said it all. Emily's transparent dodge of Deanna's question was yet another sign that she had changed. Elexa said, “Well we didn't come all this way to take in the view, so I guess we'll find out soon enough. Drop the warp rings, and take her in, Lieutenant.”

  Deanna ran her fingers over the console, disconnecting the warp rings. The ship slid out from the sleeve that held the warp rings together and moved in. Details on the planet's surface were beginning to stand out as they grew closer. The waters were calm, not surprising considering that the planet was currently devoid of cloud cover. The sun's rays were shining on the planet's western hemisphere, leaving the two visible land masses in shadows. If there were cities or any form of civilization on those land masses, they appeared to be without electricity.

  Tension was building in Emily's stomach, something that didn't exist for her when she was at one with the Great Community. Something didn't feel right. A hunch? Was this the physical manifestation of one of her hunches?

  They passed through the atmosphere and descended into darkness.

  Deanna scanned the two land masses. “I don't suppose your little map gave you an exact location on the planet.”

  “No,” George replied.

  Deanna shrugged, palms up. “Any one care for a game of eeny meeny miny moe?”

  George's eyes scanned the land masses. “Give me a second.”

  They were small, of approximately equal size. George estimated that each land mass was the approximate size of the state of New York, back when the state of New York existed and lines on a map actually meant something. Of course, that was a very long time ago, but that was the best approximation that he could make. Squinting, he was able to make out dark patterns on both land masses. The patterns could have been structures, or they could have been a trick of light and shadow. The former was more likely as they didn't come all this way for nothing. They were given a map by some advanced civilization. The dark patterns that George assumed to be evidence of an advanced civilization were spread wider on the eastern most land mass.

  “It might as well be a game of eeny meeny miny moe,” George said. “But let's go with the one on the right.”

  “Your reasoning?” Elexa inquired.

  “I may be grasping at straws, but the structures are more widespread there. More structures, more people? I don't know, but we have to land somewhere, and that piece of land seems to be...well, I don't want to say promising, but it's a start.”

  Elexa squinted into the distance. “You see structures?”

  “You see those dark patterns?”

  “I see them,” Deanna said. “I guess somebody forgot to pay the electric bill.”

  “Something happened here,” George said ominously. “Something catastrophic.”

  “Which would explain why they sent us the meteor,” Richard offered. “But the question remains, did they send it to us knowing the DNA wasn't intact? Did they include the map to draw us here?”

  A sense of foreboding invaded the cockpit. The crew remained silent as Encounter moved slowly toward the eastern land mass.

  David was frightened by Richard's words and the silence that followed. He took a deep breath and said, “Draw us here for what?”

  Richard shrugged. “I don't know. It's just a suggestion.”“A suggestion that's gotten
my heart racing a bit,” David confessed.

  Richard smiled. “I'm sorry, David. That wasn't my intention. However, it goes without saying that this is an unpredictable situation, and we need to be vigilant.”

  Emily looped an arm through David's and placed her other hand on his forearm. Gently caressing it, she looked into his eyes and smiled. “Don't worry, honey. I got your back.”

  He knew she was teasing him, but he couldn't help but be slightly embarrassed. He felt his face getting hot. He was sure she noticed him blushing. “Thank you, and I have yours.”

  She chuckled. “Of course you do.”

  She leaned in for a kiss. He leaned in to meet her.

  They were knocked off their feet, landing on their backsides, their hands interlocked. The ship had been rocked by something. It was shaking violently. An alarm bell was sounding. David looked to Richard and George. They had been knocked to the floor. They were lying back on their elbows, looking about the cockpit in confusion. The cockpit continued to shake unabated.

  David propped himself up on his elbows.

  Rain was battering the viewport. Lightning was flashing. The roar of thunder and the rattling of the ship's hull made Elexa's shouted commands nearly unintelligible. She was barking orders at Deanna. Deanna was huddled over her console.

  “Where the hell did this storm come from?!” Elexa shouted.

  “I don't know, but the system can't be very large,” Deanna shouted back. “I'm going to try to...damn it!”

  “Pull up!” Elexa commanded at the top of her lungs.

  “I'm trying! Most of the nav controls are unresponsive! The best I can do is to try to guide us into the water!”

  We're going down! David looked to Emily. She was propped up on her elbows. She didn't seem concerned. He looked back to the viewport to see a thrashing ocean ahead.

  He was frightened, but he wasn't panicking. He didn't have time to panic. What was about to happen was inevitable. They were going to crash into the ocean. He didn't have a choice in the matter.