“I think I preferred you with the beard,” Jasmine said, thinking Mike looked like a convict, but not wanting to say that aloud.
“Ha!”
And he was off again, drifting over to another station within the command deck. Mike sailed past her as though she wasn’t there. His blue jumpsuit had an elastic waist, pulling in snug around his hips, revealing his stocky physique.
Jasmine was getting the hang of moving around in low-gravity. She pushed off one wall and glided effortlessly after him.
“You wanna take a shower?”
He was changing the subject, ignoring her concern, and yet the distraction was welcome. As much as she wanted answers, deep down what Jasmine really wanted was to reconcile herself with reality. She wanted to fit in. She wanted to remember.
“A shower,” she said. “In space? I didn't think that was possible.”
“Well,” he replied. “Technically, it's not. I mean, it's not like standing under a waterfall, but the shower cubicle produces a fine mist. Extractor fans give it a sense of direction. It's a bit like standing in a gale, but the steam clears out the pores of your skin, and a bit of suction under your feet makes it almost like standing in a shower back on Luna One.”
Jasmine was silent, still coming to grips with floating freely in space inside the Copernicus.
“It's nice,” Mike added, but his smile looked forced.
Perhaps if he'd led with that thought she would have tried the shower, but the moment was gone.
“I'm fine.”
Jasmine wasn't fine. She felt dirty, but hers wasn't a grime that could be washed away by soap and water. Everything was wrong. Even the grandeur of Saturn couldn't counteract the sense of being defiled. Jasmine felt as though her life had been stolen from her.
Mike blinked a few times, but didn’t say anything. He seemed as lost as she was. His eyelids looked heavy. His eyes were tired, and not just physically. He looked as though he’d been carrying a heavy burden for years, something that demanded sacrifice. Jasmine had seen this in her own father. He was always a lifter, never a leaner. Like her father, Jasmine suspected Mike didn’t realize everyone needed a little help now and then.
Her mother called it pride, saying men were too prideful to ask for help, but Jasmine wasn’t so sure it was that simple. She’d seen her father struggling with the monotony of work five days a week, fifty weeks a year, with only a couple of weeks respite at their lakeside holiday home in southern Georgia. One year blended into another. If it hadn’t been for the chilly winds of fall and the coming of winter, it would have been impossible to distinguish where one year stopped and another started. Days on a calendar were meaningless. Even the seasons seemed to struggle to find meaning, with winter being little more than a bitter cold with the occasional snow flurries blown down from the north. The snow never stuck, of course, but at least there was something different about the land. There was nothing different about her father’s life from one year to the next, nothing but the grey hairs that slowly appeared and the kids that grew up and left him.
Jasmine had watched her older brother and then her sister leave the nest. She was next. She was last. Perhaps that’s why Mom and Dad always wanted her to come over for dinner. Perhaps that’s why she’d been swinging on the porch. They were still holding on to yesterday.
No, she thought, looking at Mike. It’s not pride that stops men from asking for help. It’s that they don’t want to shatter the illusion that everything’s the same as it has always been. Blind zeal, that’s what it was, not pride. Like all the men she’d known in her life, Mike wanted control, but control of life was an illusion. Jasmine could see this because she’d jumped forward twenty years in the blink of an eye. She could see everything Mike couldn’t. The wrinkles on his forehead, the lines on his face, his coarse eyebrows, the slight sag in his skin that made his face more rotund than it had been as a teenager. These were changes he’d never recognize, as for him they happened imperceptibly. For her, they screamed in alarm.
Yes, she thought, pig-headed obstinance, that’s what she could see in Mike’s eyes. Jasmine wasn’t the only one struggling with reality.
“What’s happened?” she asked. She had meant to add, “to me,” but those two words caught in her throat.
“That's not the question you should be asking, Jazz. The question you should be asking is, what the hell is about to happen?”
Chapter 02: Confusion
“Purge complete,” a slightly mechanical male voice said. “Crew are showing nominal medical signs, responding according to sequence.”
“Well, this is it,” Mike replied with a hint of resignation. “There’s no putting this off any longer.”
“Who is that?” Jasmine asked, turning and looking for the source of the electronic voice. “Is there someone else awake?”
“That’s our AI.”
There were no visible speakers, or even computer screens nearby.
“You really don't remember anything do you?” Mike said, resting his hand gently on the side of her neck, his fingers lying softly along her jaw. “God, this must be so strange for you.”
“You have no idea,” Jasmine replied, trying to hide the tremor in her hands. Life had been so simple sitting there on her porch swing in Atlanta. How had she come to this point in life? What sequence of events had dragged her halfway across the solar system?
Jasmine loved Mike Morrison, or at least there was a time when she had loved him, now she wasn't so sure. His eyes were the same, but they looked tired. The uncanny resemblance to her Mike was somewhat upsetting. His skin was rougher than she remembered, but only slightly so, and Jasmine struggled to recognize exactly what was different. For him, decades had passed, but for her it felt like only a few days since she'd last seen young Mike.
Perhaps it was the pores in his skin being marginally more prominent that upset her, or the slight crow's feet around his eyes when he smiled. The wrinkles on his forehead weren't overly distinct, but her Mike didn't have any wrinkles at all. And her Mike would never shave his head. She couldn’t imagine him ever getting a buzz cut like this. Her Mike had a mop-top, long straggly hair that looked perpetually unkempt. And her Mike never had any facial hair. In all the years they'd dated, she'd never seen her Mike with anything more than one day old stubble, and only on a couple of occasions. Even in the bitter cold of winter, Mike would be clean-shaven. He said he hated having a face that felt like sandpaper. If this had been her Mike, he wouldn't have stopped with stubble, he wouldn't have been content until he could run his fingers over the smooth curve of his chin. The man before her could have been from an alternate universe for all she knew. Was this really her Mike some twenty to thirty years on?
What had happened to her? Where had twenty years gone? Jasmine caught a glimpse of her own face in the polished reflection of a stainless steel cabinet by the galley, but the image was distorted, stretching her cheeks and enlarging her eyes. Was this a carnival? Was she trapped in the Crazy House of Mirrors? If only this was all just a nightmare, a dream she could awake from and forget.
“Are you going to be OK?” he asked.
His face was slightly fatter, she thought, although fatter was the wrong word, and she scolded herself for settling on that term yet again. Fuller, perhaps, making his eyes look sightly smaller. Jasmine didn't remember Mike's jawline being quite so pronounced.
“Just a bit dizzy,” she replied, lying. She was freaking out. Get your shit together, girl, she thought, berating herself mentally. Jasmine gritted her teeth, trying to snap herself back to reality, only this was reality. Mike didn't notice. He went on, responding to her initial question.
“Jason's an artificial intelligence unit: JCN unit.”
“J—C—N?” Jasmine replied, pronouncing each letter slowly.
“Jungian Comprehension Network. He goes by Jason for short.”
“He?” she replied, surprised to hear gender applied to a computer.
A synthetic voice spoke, saying, �
�How are you feeling, Jazz?”
The tone was neutral, without any hint of emotion. It was as though Jason was asking for the time of day.
Jasmine turned, looking for someone behind her. In micro-gravity, she sailed through three hundred and sixty degrees, coming to a halt as Mike reached out to stop her from tumbling.
Mike grinned, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “Can you believe that? Sounds real, doesn't he.”
“I am real,” Jason replied in a dead-pan tone. “I'm as real as you are, Mike.”
“Here it comes,” Mike said, rolling his eyes. There was a slight twitch in his cheeks. Jasmine had seen this before, just after Mike had revived her, but at that point she hadn't thought anything of it as there was so much else bombarding her mind. Mike didn't look right. Was this a nervous twitch? Her Mike had never had any ticks or quirks. This Mike looked frazzled, as though he'd had one too many espressos and needed to pee.
Jason spoke with a soft, considerate voice as though he were talking to a child. “Come on, Mike. You have no problem considering the electrical impulses surging through your brain as intelligence—as conscious life. How am I any different? All that separates us is our substrate: silicon or neurons.”
“He was a late inclusion,” Mike said ignoring Jason. “An experimental prototype. NASA administrator Hamilton's idea of a joke, if you ask me.”
“You can't offend me,” Jason said in a soft tone that felt somehow defiant. “We're in this together. We're a team.”
“You're a program,” Mike protested with a degree of irritation that surprised Jasmine. “You're a bunch of if-statements. A logic table. A decision tree. A fancy database full of useless information. Nothing more.”
“And you're not?”
“No,” Mike insisted. “I’m alive.”
Jasmine was quiet. Her head was spinning, physically and metaphorically. Any time she changed direction her inner ear seemed to swirl and she felt sick. She was fine moving in straight lines within the confines of the Copernicus, but the slightest wobble of her head left her on the verge of vomiting again. On top of the physical uncertainty, she was struggling mentally to process everything that was coming at her: being weightless in space, being in orbit around Saturn, seeing Mike some twenty years on, and listening to a computer that sounded like a psychiatrist.
“As a xenobiologist, you appreciate the diverse possible ranges in which life can exist,” Jason said. “Surely, you understand it is folly to pigeonhole the definition of self-aware intelligence? To limit the range of possibilities under consideration to purely biological organisms is a mistake.”
“Don't tell me you agree with this horse shit, Jazz.”
Mike was determined not to accept Jason’s premise. He didn’t seem pleased with any idea that didn’t originate with him. The funny thing was, she’d seen this in her Mike, only to a lesser extent. This Mike might have been more technically competent, he might have been more knowledgeable and experienced, but he seemed more immature in this regard. Her Mike would have been more accepting, she thought. Her Mike wouldn’t have felt threatened.
Jasmine felt bewildered by Jason. She didn’t know what to say in reply. She didn’t want to offend Jason, but neither did she want to agree. She didn’t feel she had to agree. She felt she should be afforded some time to make up her own mind and not be forced into taking sides.
“I—I don't know.”
There was silence for a second.
“To state something is unknown is an acceptable position,” Jason said. “Unknown leaves room to know.”
Jasmine wasn't sure she agreed with Mike, but being lumped together with Jason didn't feel natural either. It seemed both Mike and Jason were vying for her vote.
“Oh, I know what you are,” Mike said. “You're not fooling me. You might sound like you're human, but you're not.”
“I would never claim I was human, only that I am alive, only that I think.”
Jason's voice sounded slightly indignant.
“You see what I’ve had to put up with for the past few weeks,” Mike complained.
Jasmine spoke in a soft tone. She could see this was an ongoing argument between the two of them, one that would never be satisfied.
“How many others are there?”
“Other astronauts?” Mike asked.
“Four,” Jason replied. “Counting you and Mike, the Copernicus has a total crew of six. Three Americans along with representatives from China, Russia and India. The rest of the crew is gaining consciousness now.”
“And the shit is going to hit the fan,” Mike said.
Jasmine had drifted slightly to one side and so had her back to Mike when he spoke. From the tone of his voice, she could have sworn he was smiling, but as she pushed off gently on one of the handholds, she saw a worried brow. Mike looked nervous.
He pushed off the bulkhead, gliding like Peter Pan as he flew over to what was clearly the central console on the Copernicus, a large half-moon shaped series of stations and leather-bound chairs set roughly ten feet back from the shaft. The seats faced outward, away from the central corridor. They looked sparse, while the consoles looked homemade. Thin sheet metal frames defined the panels. Rivets sealed the edges. Wires protruded from the rear of each console, strapped in bundles as they disappeared beneath the deck.
At first glance, Jasmine assumed the command deck was unfinished, awaiting cabinets and covers to be put in place, but the deck was functional rather than aesthetic.
Even the chairs were spartan in their appearance. The padding looked no thicker than a textbook. Although she couldn’t think of any practical need for cushions in space, they had been supplied, but only in the most austere, rudimentary fashion, as though they had been taken from the Economy Class seating of a low-budget airline. Jasmine knew weight was at a premium in space, or more specifically, mass, and she could see how it was being conserved in the bare design of the command deck.
Jasmine felt as though she were suffering from a hangover. Without meaning to, she had drifted over near the bathroom capsule. It hadn't been a conscious decision on her part, but she suddenly became aware there was a mirror, a real mirror, and not the warped shiny sheets of metal near the galley. After seeing her distorted features moments earlier, she felt an urgent need to see herself for who she truly was and not as some sideshow freak.
The conversation between Mike and Jason had calmed her a little. Mike was strange. There was something out of place, something peculiar about him. He'd been surprisingly passionate in denying the possibility of artificial life, but once the subject changed, he dropped all hostility. He and Jason were talking about the technical details surrounding communication with Earth as though nothing had transpired between them.
Jasmine ignored them.
She floated there mesmerized by the view in the mirror. Fine strands of hair drifted lazily around her head. Her cheeks looked swollen. Her sinuses felt stuffy, leaving her feeling as though she had an oncoming cold, and she sniffed, wanting to clear her nose. Bloodshot eyes stared back at her, red and angry.
She reached up, touching gently at her face with her fingertips. Tenderly, she pulled down the skin beneath one eye, stretching the loose, puffy skin on her cheeks as she explored her face, noticing the wrinkles in the corners of her mouth. Her high cheeks were peppered with tiny freckles. Gently, she touched at her dry, cracked lips. Her hairline had receded slightly on the sides, a sign of her age. She ran her finger over the freckles as though they were specks of dust she could brush away. This wasn't her.
“In pod UV,” Jason said, and Jasmine jumped, surprised to hear Jason so close at hand. She could hear Jason talking to Mike on the other side of the command deck by the navigation console and yet here he was holding a simultaneous conversation with her on an entirely different subject. “We use a blend of booster shots and ultraviolet light to get the body to generate vitamin D while you're in cryo-sleep. The freckles will fade with time.”
“Ah, thanks,”
she replied, still getting used to the almost godlike omniscient ability of the JCN unit. Like Mike, she wanted to think of Jason as a machine, but the illusion of care in his voice lulled her into acceptance that he was more than just a computer program. She could have sworn there was a real Jason hidden somewhere behind closed doors.
“How do you feel?” Jason asked. “Disorientation is to be expected, but I suspect you are experiencing something more…”
Jasmine was silent.
“...alarming,” Jason continued. His pause felt deliberate, as though he were probing for more information. “I'm programmed—no, that's the wrong word. I've been trained in psychoanalysis. I can help.”
Jasmine frowned slightly, noting the peculiar manner in which Jason caught himself as he spoke, correcting notions mid-sentence just as a human would. If his response was indeed merely the result of complex programming, mimicking human reactions, then his persona was overwhelmingly convincing, she thought. Surely, no computer would reflect upon what it had said after it had spoken. Logic would determine the most efficient terms up front, or was this mimicry? Was this a clever trick to imitate a natural form of speech? Had Jason’s code been developed with human-like mannerisms to allow him to integrate more naturally with the crew?
“You wouldn't understand,” Jasmine insisted, turning slightly and catching a glimpse of herself in profile. Like Mike, she looked different. The earring holes in her ears had long since closed over. Her neck looked thin, much thinner than she remembered, and there was a fine hair growing from her chin. It wasn’t that noticeable, but she noticed it. She pinched the hair between her nails and plucked it, adding, “I don’t think you’d understand because I know I sure don’t.”
“You feel displaced,” Jason said. “No, not displaced. That’s the wrong word. Lost.”
Jasmine swallowed, wondering just how much Jason could read into her non-verbal body language.
“You really don't think you should be here, do you?”
Jasmine breathed deeply.
“What is your last memory?”
My Sweet Satan Page 3
