My Sweet Satan

by Peter Cawdron

  He knew more than he was letting on, of that Jasmine was sure. He knew something. That he was overly defensive probably meant he wanted Chuck to hear the message for himself so he could avoid any further blame.

  Nadir turned to Chuck, speaking in his Indian accent with the softness of a saint, saying, “You must go to engineering. You must retrieve the message. Houston may say it is only for you, but it is not. This message is for all of us.”

  Chuck nodded in agreement. Nadir may not have been in command, but he held the respect of all, that was clear to Jasmine. She could see it in the way Chuck, Anastasia and Mei deferred to the older man. Even Mike seemed to show him respect.

  At a guess, Nadir was the oldest of the crew, with streaks of silver hair above his ears. Like all of the astronauts, his hair was long and unkempt after being in suspended animation, but for Nadir it was a natural look. He could have been mistaken for one of the prophets of old, a wizened man living in the wilderness.

  Mike seemed to feel compelled to say something more, but he held off on providing any real explanation, which Jasmine found unsettling.

  “I did what I thought was right. I did what I thought any of you would do in my place. I did what I had to—to protect us. They told me—”

  “They told you what?” Mei asked.

  Mike paused, and Jasmine could see he was on the verge of telling all he knew, but he continued down a different train of thought.

  “They told me you wouldn’t be woken. They lied.”

  “Nobody does anything,” Chuck said with anger in his voice. “Sit tight and give me some time to get to the bottom of this.”

  “We should inform Houston you're awake,” Jason said.

  “No,” Chuck insisted. “No one does anything, Jason. Not even you. Wait until I've heard this message. We all need to know what the hell we're dealing with before we take any action.”

  Chuck soared past Jasmine, sailing back down the glaring white tunnel.

  “You should have woken us,” Nadir said to Mike. “Before you altered our orbit. You shouldn’t have conducted an unplanned burn alone.”

  “You know I couldn't go against Houston,” Mike replied defensively.

  The two men began to argue, but Jasmine ignored them. The tension simmering around her was nothing compared to the anxiety she'd felt just moments ago. If anything, it felt to her as though a dark, brooding storm had finally broken. A torrent of rain had fallen and the cool of the evening air had finally cut through a horrid, humid day.

  “We need to get you to medical,” Mei repeated, and this time Jasmine agreed, nodding softly. Anastasia moved alongside her, helping her even though she didn't need help in the weightless environment.

  For the first time, Jasmine felt safe. She was among friends, friends she didn't know, but friends who knew her. And she was wearing her own uniform. She belonged.

  She looked at Anastasia drifting along beside her as they floated down the long corridor back to Medical. The Russian's beautiful face, her azure blue eyes and soft skin looked calm, unshakeable. Anastasia smiled at her. Jasmine smiled back. That Anastasia had the presence of mind to realize Jasmine's uniform had been left in the medical bay, and to have brought it with her, impressed Jasmine. Anastasia was both sharp and caring.

  Jasmine couldn’t begin to understand what was happening to them in a far-flung orbit around Saturn, but she felt safe with the two women.

  Chapter 03: The Message

  “OK. Let's take a look at you,” Mei said.

  She helped Jasmine wriggle out of the top of her jumpsuit, wrapping the arms around her waist like a belt. Mei attached a blood pressure cuff around Jasmine’s upper arm along with a finger clip to monitor her oxygen level. She pricked Jasmine's thumb¸ but Jasmine didn't flinch. A drop of scarlet red blood formed on the skin. Mei soaked the blood up on a sterile paper strip and inserted the sample into a thin slot on the side of the computer in the medical bay. She placed a small, circular bandage over Jasmine's thumb.

  Anastasia drifted slightly behind Jasmine with her hands resting softly on her shoulders. She seemed genuinely concerned for her friend, which put Jasmine in an unusual position. Jasmine had no idea who either of these women were beyond the names on their flight suits, and yet they clearly felt for her.

  Mei was more clinical in her care. Jasmine wasn't sure if it was cultural or professional detachment, but she could see Mei cared in her own way.

  “How is she doing, Mei?” Anastasia asked, and Jasmine noted she pronounced Mei as May, where up until that point Jasmine had assumed it sounded more like Me.

  Mei shook her head.

  “I don't know what Mike was thinking waking you early. He's not trained for retrieval. He didn't flush your lymphatic system, and you've still got nanobots in your bloodstream.”

  Mei used her fingertips to flip between a number of screens on the computer monitor, looking briefly at an array of charts before moving on to some other equally confusing graph.

  “He could have killed you.”

  Mei stopped at an image that portrayed a series of erratic vital signs that all suddenly flatlined and Jasmine struggled to swallow the lump in her throat.

  “Something's not right,” Mei said. She turned to Jasmine, adding, “I know he's your husband. I know you love him, but please, trust me when I say, there's something he's not telling us.”

  “You think he’s already heard this message from Houston? That he already knows what all this is about?” Anastasia asked.

  “I don't know,” Mei replied. “But Mike knows better than to risk a rapid revival without following procedure. Is it just me, or does he seem a little detached?”

  Neither of the women said anything, but Jasmine knew what they were thinking. She was thinking the same thing. Mike didn’t seem to have a clear grasp on reality.

  “How long has he been awake?” Anastasia asked.

  “I—I’m not sure. A few weeks, I think,” Jasmine replied. “Maybe a month. Maybe more.”

  Mei prepped a needle-less syringe with a clear liquid. She checked the volume level with precision. Jasmine was fascinated, watching as Mei allowed the syringe to float in the air before them as she typed a note of what she was administering, when, and how much on her medical computer. Weightlessness was like having an extra set of hands. Mei finished typing and rubbed an alcohol swab on Jasmine's shoulder muscle before snatching the weightless syringe from the air.

  “This won't hurt,” she said. “But you might feel a little giddy for a few minutes.”

  “I already feel tipsy,” Jasmine confessed.

  Mei pushed the syringe into her arm and Jasmine felt a cold fluid infuse through her muscle.

  “Your pee will turn bright green, but don't worry about that. It's just the nanobots passing from your system.”

  “Delightful,” Jasmine replied.

  Mei returned the syringe to its holder in a wall cabinet and then handed Jasmine a couple of tablets, saying, “A little valium to calm the nerves and some peritetraoxide for any nausea.”

  Anastasia handed Jasmine a drink sealed in a plastic bag with a straw, adding, “Hydralytes. To combat dehydration.”

  Jasmine sucked on the drink and popped the pills in her mouth one at a time.

  With the formalities out of the way, the other two women seemed to relax.

  “What did he tell you?” Anastasia asked. “Is there anything else Mike said before we woke up? Anything that might be important?”

  Jasmine thought for a second, trying to recall something of value from the torrid turmoil in her mind. She was nineteen. She was fresh out of high school. She'd just got her acceptance letter for MIT. She and Mike had been dating since December, having met in Huntsville, Alabama at Space Camp the previous year where he was working as an instructor. They were both focused on making the NASA space program, but they knew their chances were slim to none. Whether either of them would make the NASA roster was uncertain, let alone both of them. Space lay at least a decad
e ahead of her, and yet here she was. From what little she could tell, she was in her late thirties by now, perhaps her early forties. Where had twenty years gone?

  Anastasia and Mei waited patiently for her to speak, but Jasmine just wanted to return to her porch swing in Atlanta.

  Technically, she had amnesia. And yet to Jasmine, the problem wasn’t that she couldn’t remember anything from the past twenty years. As far as she knew, she hadn’t lived through them at all. Jasmine didn’t feel like she couldn’t remember the past. She could remember yesterday clearly. She could remember what she had for breakfast, what movies were coming out, current events in the Middle East, the price of gasoline soaring, the complaints of her roommate at a rent increase. For Jasmine, it felt as though she’d jumped forward twenty years in a fraction of a second.

  Mei rested her hand gently on Jasmine's forearm. Although no words were exchanged, Jasmine could see Mei was content if she had nothing to say. There was no pressure, and yet Jasmine felt she had to say something. She felt stupid. She shouldn't be here. The older Jasmine should be floating here within the Copernicus, not her. She was an impostor, and that realization made her feel guilty, as though she'd betrayed their trust.

  What had Mike said?

  Was there anything Mike had said that could help them? Jasmine didn't feel obliged to keep Mike's confidence. She felt a debt to these kind women, and yet it was one she couldn't repay. There was nothing she could tell them. They knew more than she did.

  “I'm sorry,” she said.

  “It's OK,” Mei replied softly.

  “Don't you worry about anything,” Anastasia said, squeezing her shoulders gently. “Everything's going to be OK. We’ll get through this together.”

  Jasmine wanted to confide in them. She wanted to explain to them that she wasn't who they thought she was, but the thought of sounding silly kept her quiet. Jasmine felt stupid. Her bottom lip quivered.

  A hatch on the back of the medical sphere opened directly opposite the shaft leading up to the command deck and Chuck drifted through.

  “We need to get everyone together,” Chuck said, spinning around in the weightless environment. To close the hatch, he had to grab hold of a rail on the side of the craft and pull the large metal door closed. The hatch connected with a soft thud. Chuck spun a wheel-shaped lever in the center of the hatch, sealing the door.

  Jasmine wondered how tall Chuck was. In space, height was irrelevant, which for a five-foot-nothing girl like her was a bonus. Chuck, though, looked as though he was easily six-two or six-three. He had the body of a linebacker. Even after the extended cryo-sleep, his physique was apparent beneath his jumpsuit. He sailed out of medical and up toward the command deck.

  Anastasia pushed off after Chuck, followed by Mei.

  “Coming?” Mei asked, pausing at the entrance to the shaft.

  “Yes,” Jasmine replied. She touched her feet against the hull and pushed off softly, with less vigor than either Mei or Anastasia.

  Mei disappeared from sight.

  A familiar voice spoke as Jasmine drifted through the medical bay.

  “You didn't tell them,” Jason said.

  “I couldn't. They think I'm her.”

  “You are.”

  “I don't know that I am,” Jasmine confessed. “I feel lost.”

  “You have to tell them what happened to you,” Jason said as Jasmine paused by the shaft. Her motion was irrational, as though she would leave Jason behind once she sailed into the corridor, but she paused there regardless, holding onto a handrail. In reality, Jason could talk to her anywhere, and yet in the fog of her mind, she felt as though he were corporeal, as though he had a single point of presence like a person.

  She looked back, saying, “What is Bestla? Is it a moon?”

  “Yes,” Jason replied. “A moon and more.”

  “More?”

  “Technically, Bestla is known as Saturn 39, and was discovered only quite recently—in 2004.

  “In Norse mythology, Bestla was a frost giant, a goddess, the mother of Odin. Bestla was ruthless in her desire for power, a murderous bitch. She had Odin slaughter his brothers to ensure his ascent to the throne of Asgard.”

  “And they named a moon after her?” Jasmine asked, not seeing any relevance in the arbitrary choice of a mythical name.

  “Yes. Only Bestla is exceptional. We've always known that, but we've only just realized why. Bestla is small, barely five miles in diameter. Her orbit is highly eccentric, being elongated, reaching out to over thirty million miles from Saturn. If it puts things in context for you, there are times where Earth gets closer than that to Venus! So for a moon, Bestla is absurdly distant from Saturn.

  “At thirty million kilometers, Saturn looks smaller than the Moon does from Earth, just a ping pong ball moving through space. All of Saturn’s grandeur is lost at that distance, but her icy gravitational grip still keeps Bestla in orbit. And then Bestla swings inward again, approaching to within nine million kilometers, about where she is now.”

  “And Bestla?” Jasmine asked, feeling a longing to join the others in the command sphere and yet being mesmerized by Jason's recollections of the moon. Recollections, she wondered. Yes, Jason was speaking as though he were enamored by Bestla. His was more than a factual record. He'd thought long and hard about this tiny rock.

  “Bestla is no ordinary moon. She orbits in the opposite direction to Saturn and the other moons, and she cuts across the celestial equator at a sharp angle. Everything about her screams for attention. She formed elsewhere, probably in the cloud that originally formed our Sun. She's been captured by Saturn as she fell inward toward the Sun. Up until recently, it was assumed Bestla was debris, an asteroid from the Kuiper Belt that had drifted slowly inward, destined to be vacuumed up by one of the gas giants, but now—”

  “Now?” Jasmine asked with white knuckles as she gripped the handhold on the hatch. She could hear voices from the end of the corridor. She felt as though she were being pulled down the tunnel, but she wanted to hear from Jason, she wanted to understand what made Bestla so special.

  “Well, three years ago, Bestla awoke.”

  Jasmine froze.

  “The Iliad was a unmanned deep space probe tasked with chronicling the moons of the gas giants as far out as Neptune.

  “The Iliad began mapping the terrain on Bestla using active radar and multi-spectra imaging to detect mineral signatures, looking for deep space mining candidates, only Bestla spoke back. She reversed the signal, bouncing it off the Iliad. Bestla was probing the Iliad. Twenty seven minutes later, all contact with the Iliad was lost. It took almost eighty minutes before we knew anything adverse had happened back on Earth. By then, the event was consigned to history. We tried to revive the Iliad, but the craft remained silent.”

  Us, we—these were terms she or Mike might use, but not a computer. Jason unthinkingly included himself in with humanity, and perhaps rightly so, she thought, given Earth was his point of origin.

  “Since then, the eyes of Earth have focused on this obscure, tiny rock, trying to understand its origin. The best minds on the planet have tried to figure out exactly what Bestla is, but no one really knows. The leading theory says she's an alien artifact of some sort. Perhaps a spacecraft or the equivalent of a navigational buoy lost in interstellar space.

  “If you think about the kind of vessels we send into space, she could be anything from a research probe to a warship, or perhaps she’s something else again, something beyond our current reasoning capability. In any event, she has answered the question: are we alone in this universe. Finally, we know the answer: no.”

  “And that’s exciting,” Jasmine said.

  “For some, it’s terrifying,” Jason replied, but Jasmine couldn’t see such a monumental discovery as a source of fear. There were no little green men in flying saucers buzzing Washington D.C. or blowing up buildings in New York, no silver spaceships leading an invasion fleet.

  For Jasmine, the prospect of Bestla b
eing an alien artifact was electrifying. Being young, her attitude was fueled by her limited perspective. At nineteen, the world lay before her with the promise of adventure. Jasmine couldn’t think of herself as a middle aged woman, even though her body and the circumstances in which she found herself defied her feelings.

  The voices from the end of the corridor were growing louder. A heated argument was brewing. She pushed off, saying, “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” came the kind reply from within the medical bay. Jason, it seemed, like to mimic humans with their singular sense of presence. He could have spoken from the corridor, but he didn't. Jasmine couldn't help but think of him as the seventh member of the crew. For her, he was a confidant, someone she could trust.

  She sailed down the corridor as angry voices drifted towards her. She’d missed the start of the argument.

  “You're fucking lying!” Mike yelled at Chuck. “That's not the message, and you know it!”

  “How do you know that?” Chuck yelled in reply. “You don't know that! You don't know what Houston told me!”

  Jasmine came up beside Anastasia and Mei as they floated on the edge of the command sphere. Nadir was between Chuck and Mike, keeping them apart with his arms outstretched. Without him, the two men would have torn each other to pieces.

  “Play the goddamn message,” Mike yelled. “What are you afraid of? They have a right to know. They're in as much danger as you and me.”

  “How do you know?” Chuck demanded. “That was a confidential message. It was encrypted.”

  Spittle flew from Chuck’s lips as he yelled at Mike.

  “You lied to us! Before, when you said you didn't know what all this was about. You lied to all of us, including your own wife! You made out like you had no idea why a contingency abort had been called, but you knew all along, didn't you?”

  “Don't shift the blame to me,” Mike replied with his finger raised in defiance. “I did everything that was asked of me.”

  “Did you hack the message?”

  “Will you two stop,” Nadir cried. “We don't need to be fighting each other. We need to work together.”