The Perfect Moment in Peril

by Kenneth Preston

  Elexa stood and placed her hands on her hips, seeming to consider Richard's words. Much to Richard's relief, she nodded her assent.

  “You're right,” Elexa conceded. “There's no rush. We'll wait in the shuttle until the sun rises, then move in and have a look around.”

  Deanna chuckled before rising. “The days are rather long here. The sun will be up in about three hours.”

  Elexa led the trek back to the shuttle. Richard left Deanna's side to move up alongside Elexa.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?” Elexa responded, looking straight ahead, a slight grin curling her lips.

  “For having my back. You're the captain, and the decision was ultimately yours to make, but you listened to me and took my concerns into account. I appreciate it.”

  “You're right. I am the captain, but more importantly, I'm your friend. I will always have your back, just as I know that you will always have mine...and Deanna's and Emily's and David's and, of course, George's.” She paused a moment before adding, “We're more than a crew. We're more than friends. We're family.”

  Richard smiled. He was touched, not that there was a shred of doubt in any of their minds that they were a close-knit family. They just didn't speak about it very often.

  Elexa stopped and turned to Richard. Richard stopped and turned to Elexa expectantly.

  “And I want to thank you...papa,” Elexa said with a sheepish grin.

  “For what?”

  “For keeping me on my toes. I am the captain, but a captain isn't much of captain without a capable crew. You made the right call back there...a call that, under normal circumstances, I would have made myself. It would have been a reckless move to go traipsing around in a darkened city, even if it appears to be uninhabited. It's best to wait until light. Good call.”

  “Normal circumstances?” Richard said. “When was the last time our circumstances were anything approaching normal?”

  “Touché. It's just that...never mind.”

  Richard furrowed his brow. “Tell me. What are papas for.”

  Elexa chuckled. “Well, papa, you are one hundred percent correct. Our circumstances are never normal. But lately, they've been a tad more abnormal than the usual abnormal fare. For instance, we have our little mission to repopulate the Earth.”

  “Check. And as much as I love her, we have the always mysterious and unpredictable Emily Díaz to contend with.”

  Elexa said, “Check. Emily herself is a walking mystery. She's a mysterious world unto herself.”

  “That she is,” Richard agreed.

  “The bottom line is that it's all been a bit taxing. We're not always going to be at our best every second of every day. So, as I said, thank you for keeping me on my toes.”

  “My pleasure.”

  They held each other's eyes for a moment before the smile that held Elexa's cheekbones up began to sink. Her eyes widened as a look of panic set in. The panic in her eyes reached Richard's heart as it began to beat faster. Something was wrong. Her panic-stricken eyes led him to flinch, believing that someone or something was behind him. Then her eyes slowly shifted in the direction from which they had come. Her head followed her eyes. Richard followed her gaze, his heart pounding in anticipation of what he was about to see. But before his eyes had a chance to adjust to the darkness, it hit him that it shouldn't have been as quiet as it was. There should have been something...or someone in his peripheral vision. It wasn't something that Elexa saw that frightened her; it was something...or someone that she didn't see. That someone was Deanna. She was gone.

  Chapter 21

  She intentionally fell behind Elexa and Richard. What were they babbling on about? Emily. Yes, Emily. The mystery surrounding Emily. The focus of everyone's attention. She loved Emily and found her as intriguing as the next person, but she would take a pass on this particular conversation. Besides, it gave her half a second to be alone. Oh, the irony. They were the last five corporeal beings from a planet called “Earth,” and all she wanted was a few minutes of alone time, even if she weren't completely alone, even if her surrogate papa and the love of her life were gabbing a few yards ahead of her. Ironic, but understandable. Being the last five corporeal beings from a planet called “Earth” had naturally brought them all closer together, both emotionally and physically. More often than not, they were crammed together on Encounter, and despite having her own quarters, she usually stayed in Elexa's quarters. So half a second of virtual alone time was just what the doctor ordered.

  Whispers. They came from behind her. She stopped in her tracks and whirled around. Nothing. She had heard them. She thought she had heard them. A collection of whispers―brief, indecipherable. She was frightened...and intrigued. She shook her head. Her imagination had run away from her. She began to turn when she heard them again, louder this time but still indecipherable. This time, she was startled but not frightened. In fact, she was comforted. The whispers were soothing. She was drawn to them. Search for the source of the whispers or follow Elexa and Richard? She didn't really have much of a choice. She began moving toward the tree line before making a decision to do so. She was drawn to those whispers. She walked hypnotically through the short stretch of forest. When the city came into full view, the whispers became decipherable. They were saying one word, her name: "Deanna." Her name was being repeated by several whisperers, but they weren't in sync. The whisperers were overlapping one another. They were beckoning her, and she couldn't resist; she didn't want to resist.

  Then she saw them, the source of the whispers: a group of translucent, three-dimensional shadows. She counted eight humanoid forms.

  She knew that she should have been frightened, but she wasn't. Despite the horror movie quality of the shadowy phantoms before her, she didn't want to run; she wanted to follow them.

  She walked slowly, languidly toward them. She felt as if she were gliding. She was mesmerized, as if in a trance. She was aware of her trance-like state, and she was perfectly fine with it.

  As she neared them, the three-dimensional shadows turned and led her into the city.

  She pried her eyes away from the shadowy forms just long enough to take a look at her surroundings. She was surrounded by a collection of jagged obsidian-like stone structures. To call these structures decrepit would be an understatement. This looked to be a city that hadn't been maintained in any way, shape or form in centuries. The jagged stone buildings she passed were dark and covered in vines. The windows were ovular. If the windows ever had glass, the glass in each and every window that she attempted to look into had been shattered long ago, not surprising given the overall state of the buildings. Many of them appeared to be buckling. Some were leaning, as if prepared to collapse. There were cracks running through the stone frames. Chunks of stone had crumbled from the exteriors and lay strewn about the bases. The interiors were darkened. There wasn't a source of light anywhere that she could detect. With the exception of her shadowy companions, this city appeared to be abandoned.

  Against the backdrop of the starlit sky, she could make out the forms of several former skyscrapers. The buildings appeared to have partially collapsed, no doubt due to centuries of weathering and neglect.

  She felt as if she were floating through the maze of decrepit buildings, the shadows guiding her through the debris-covered streets.

  The shadows led her between two of the stone structures and picked up their pace, widening the gap between themselves and Deanna. She picked up her pace, struggling to catch up. She didn't want to be left behind. The shadows turned right at the end of the path and disappeared from view. She began to trot.

  Abruptly pulled from her euphoric state, she began to panic. She had never experienced the emotions she had felt in the presence of those shadows. The camaraderie, the belonging, the love she had felt were all being pulled away from her, and she was desperate to retrieve those feelings.

  Her trot became a sprint. She was determined to catch up. They couldn't just give her a tas
te of those feelings and yank them away. That would be cruel, sadistic. Perhaps that was the point.

  Running as fast as her legs would allow, she reached the end of the alley and turned right. She was hoping that the shadows would be waiting for her. They weren't. Well, perhaps they were, but she couldn't see them. What she did see was a gray stone structure resembling a Gothic cathedral. It was frighteningly beautiful but odd. The structure was warped. The steeple was uneven and leaning to one side. Each of the stone steps leading up to the dilapidated double wooden doors was bent, dipping down or bending up, each step leaning to the left or right. It looked as if the entire structure had been shaped by giant hands, and the owner of those hands had never quite gotten around to putting the finishing touches on this work of art. In its unfinished state, it was quite beautiful. Deanna would take it as was. No need to lay another finger on it.

  She was both frightened of and drawn to the structure. The beings had led her there had meant for her to go inside.

  She began ascending the crooked stone steps, careful not to slip, careful not to twist an ankle. The wooden doors invited her. They were meant for her to enter. The entire structure existed just for her.

  A cool but comfortable breeze tousled her hair as she reached the doors. She never considered knocking; she just reached for the iron doorknob on the right-hand side door. The doorknob squeaked as she turned it. She pushed the large wooden door open, the groan of the swinging door announcing her arrival.

  She hesitated to enter, both terrified and enthralled. It was dark, but amid the darkness was movement. Soft glimmers of light danced about the room, soft and undefined images mixing with the light.

  It was time for her to find out what it was, why she was brought to this place. She entered.

  “Close the door,” came a collection of whispers from the darkness.

  She was startled but did as she was told.

  “What is this?” she called out.

  “Look,” the whispers replied.

  Yes, it was dark, but the dancing glimmers of soft light provided enough illumination to move by. She stepped forward and squinted into the darkness, attempting to make some sense of what she was seeing. The images shifted with each step she took. Each of the multitude of images appeared to be separated from one another and contained within a rectangular border. Then it hit her. The room was filled with mirrors, floor to ceiling.

  She moved slowly across the room, each step cautious, deliberate. Her eyes scanned the multitude of mirrors. With each step, the mirrors' images began to take form. She didn't see herself as she had expected. The images were indistinct. It made sense considering the dim lighting in the room.

  She stepped closer, her eyes moving from mirror to mirror. She was more than a little confused. But amid the confusion came a sense of familiarity. Without being completely sure what it was she was looking at, she felt a sense of home in some of the images.

  Still closer, and the first image solidified, came to life. It was clear to her why she felt that sense of home in some of the images. She was home. Her eyes locked on the image directly in front of her. It was her childhood home in Florida.

  She pivoted on her heel, peered into the darkness behind her, immediately felt silly for doing so, and turned back to the image.

  Why was she seeing this? Was she hallucinating?

  Hallucination or not, her eyes began to well.

  The tears barely had time to blur her vision before her eyes moved to the next image―Kennedy Space Center, a second home for most of her teen and adult life.

  She shook her head. Her eyes moved from that image to the one above―Encounter, parked in the field in Florida where the Kennedy Space Center had stood centuries earlier.

  Her eyes moved from image to image―her high school, the mall where her teenage crush, Billy Baxter, kissed her for the first time, the beach where she spent many hours of her young adult years soaking up the sun and partying with her friends, Mars as seen from the cockpit of Encounter where she finally acknowledged her love for Captain Elexa Thomas―only to herself, of course. Elexa was, at that time, a happily married woman.

  Image after image of the most significant scenes of her life filled her dancing eyes. She didn't know what to make of it. She didn't know why she was seeing these places, or even if she was seeing these places.

  The shadows had tapped into her memories. That was the only conclusion she could come to. These strange, other-worldly beings were probing her mind and projecting her memories into the glass. For what reason, she couldn't begin to fathom.

  Rapid movement caught her attention and drew her eyes to a mirror above. She had no trouble identifying the two figures running as if their lives depended on it. She was in love with one of them. The other was a father figure.

  “What are they running from?!” she pleaded.

  Darkness poured through the gaps between the glass, like water from a broken tank, cascading around and behind her. She turned toward the darkness and watched it rise like a plume of black smoke. It separated and formed several humanoid-shaped, free-standing shadows.

  “They're looking for you,” came the multitude of out-of-sync whispers. “We have a proposal for you.”

  Chapter 22

  George was finally able to get to work on figuring out what the actual problem was. He didn't have the heart to tell them. More importantly, it wouldn't have been prudent to tell them. He didn't want them to panic. He had to be as optimistic as possible if he was going to get anything accomplished. He told them that the storm had shorted out Encounter's electrical system. That was a lie, one of only a handful of lies he had ever told Richard. He wasn't proud of it. Lying to Richard made him feel guilty, but the guilt was offset somewhat by the fact that the lie was absolutely necessary to get the job done. The lie was absolutely necessary, because the truth was disturbing. The truth was a mystery. George didn't have the faintest clue what had happened to Encounter. What had happened to Encounter shouldn't have happened. He designed the thing to travel to the farthest reaches of space, to persevere under the most extreme circumstances. It was a spaceship for crying out loud! If a spaceship couldn't survive a common lightning storm, it wasn't much of a spaceship, was it?

  He ran the length of the ship repeatedly, from the cockpit to the engine room and back again, performing every diagnostic in his toolkit, formulating every theory imaginable, no matter how fantastic. The principle of Occam's razor led him to one undeniable, frightening conclusion. The ship had been forced down by an electromagnetic pulse that rendered the ship's electrical system inert. Nothing else could have had such an effect on the ship. There was no physical damage. Encounter simply didn't work.

  George had reached the end of his rope, feeling as if he had run out of options. He took a seat in the Captain's chair and put his foot up on the helm. He was done with diagnostics. He needed to think this through. At the very least, he needed to be able to tell his crew mates something when they returned. He couldn't continue lying to them. He had to tell them the truth. They were adrift on a glorified boat in the middle of an ocean on a planet that was ninety percent ocean with no conceivable way of returning home. Yes, that's what he would tell them...if it came to that. But he wasn't quite there yet. He wasn't ready to call it a day. He needed to sit still, relax, analyze the problem and formulate a solution.

  Meditating on the problem as he gazed upon the ocean through the viewport was just what the doctor ordered. Putting aside the fact that he wasn't on a pleasure cruise, the view from the cockpit was actually quite beautiful. He allowed himself the briefest of moments to take in the beauty before him.

  The briefest of moments was a tad briefer and a bit more abrupt than he would have preferred as he was suddenly thrown to his left, falling from the Captain's chair and grunting as he hit the floor. He didn't need to look through the viewport to know that Encounter had begun spinning. He could feel it as he rose to his knees and reached for the helm to steady himself. With one hand on the h
elm, he risked a peek through the viewport and immediately regretted it. His view of the horizon was a blur as it raced past his field of vision. The ocean surrounding Encounter was spinning. The ship was caught in a maelstrom. It was being pulled down into the vortex. The inner wall of the maelstrom was rising into his field of vision as the ship descended further into its funnel. He felt helpless. There was nothing he could do to prevent the inevitable.

  Except panic. His heart began racing, pounding against his chest. He began hyperventilating. He didn't want to die. Not like this. He didn't want to leave Richard behind. Encounter was going to be George's tomb at the bottom of the ocean. Richard would never know what happened to him. His disappearance would be a mystery. Richard would be lost.

  His life with Richard flooded his mind. This was how it was going to end. He would focus on Richard, cherish the life they shared together, and everything would be okay. He would descend into darkness, thankful for the love he took with him.

  He grabbed the helm with his other hand and pulled himself to his feet. He gazed into the vortex, but he didn't see it. Water crashed against the viewport, but he didn't see it. The ocean's depths embraced Encounter, pulling the ship further into darkness, but George didn't see the darkness. He saw Richard, and he smiled.

  It would all be over soon. Encounter would be crushed and he along with it. Consumed by the darkness of the ocean's depths, he made peace with his imminent demise. He was ready for the end. He was ready to embrace it. Any moment now, death would reach for him from the darkness, and he would reach back. He would throw his arms around it. Any moment now.

  Then he saw the light.

  Chapter 23