My Sweet Satan

by Peter Cawdron

  Jasmine smiled.

  “I think,” Anastasia continued, pausing for a second. “I think we are always scared of the unknown. There’s something about the darkness that fills us with terror. Turn the lights on in a creaky old house and all notion of ghosts and demons are dispelled in a second, but walk around in the dark and your heart will race regardless of any rational thought. We are, by nature, fearful.”

  “But don’t you see? This is different,” Jasmine replied. “I mean, there’s no mistaking the meaning of those words: I want to live and die for you, Satan.”

  “Why do they address him? Satan, I mean,” Anastasia asked, taking the empty coffee package from Jasmine and putting it in the disposal unit. A light whir signaled some exotic recycling motion deep within the Copernicus.

  It was a good question. Jasmine hadn’t thought about the message like that.

  “This is not a message for us,” Anastasia continued. “It is a message to him. A message to the Devil. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”

  “Everything strikes me as strange,” Jasmine confessed, and she wasn’t overstating her concern. After almost twenty-four hours on the Copernicus, she was no closer to accepting reality than she was when Mike had strapped her to the table in medical and administered defibrillation to restart her heart. In her mind, she’d been ripped from her home in Atlanta, Georgia, and thrust decades into the future in the blink of an eye.

  Anastasia drifted away from the galley, saying, “We should ask ourselves why an alien intelligence from dozens, perhaps hundreds of light years away from Earth should address an obscure demigod from our superstitious past. Why would they do that? Why would they say something that would provoke fear? Why aren’t they rational?”

  “Why should they be?” Jasmine asked.

  “Think about it. We have spent the last several hundred years distancing ourselves from the mythical delusions of our ancestors, regardless of whether they were beliefs about Zeus or Hades. These beliefs kept us chained in ignorance.

  “The advent of science allowed us to understand that our fears are only what we tell them to be, that we need not be afraid of things that go bump in the night. And yet, here we are, on the verge of the greatest moment in the history of humanity, making contact with another sentient species in this vast, lonely universe, and our dark past stirs within at the sound of just a few words.”

  “I understand what Chuck is saying,” Anastasia said, pulling the band from her hair and allowing her long, golden locks to flow freely in microgravity. She must have felt a few loose strands drifting idly to one side as she worked methodically, pulling her hair back into a fresh ponytail, working her hair time and again to pick up any stray strands. Once she was confident she had them all, she whipped the band around and back on her hair, all without missing a beat. Jasmine fought off an irrational desire to do the same with her dark hair, thinking that such a fundamental grooming act was at odds with being in space. This is what she'd do in the college bathroom with her girlfriends between lectures. For Jasmine, that act highlighted the contradiction of their position. No one understood Bestla. Pretending to understand was folly. And yet carrying on with life with a business-as-usual attitude was also absurd. Regardless, Anastasia kept talking.

  “Do you think there’s anything in the name, Saturn?”

  “Huh?” Jasmine replied.

  “I mean—Saturn, Satan, they’re similar, right? Could the alien entity have confused the two? Perhaps these aliens meant Saturn. Was Saturn related to Satan historically? You know, Mars is named after the god of war, Venus after the god of love. Was Saturn named after Satan? Maybe that’s the connection we’re looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Jasmine said, thinking Anastasia’s point sounded plausible.

  “I don’t know that it really matters,” Anastasia continued. “Regardless, we're here to represent humanity. For better or worse, our lives are not our own. We have to do whatever it takes to explore Bestla.”

  “Regardless of the cost?” Jasmine asked.

  “Regardless.”

  “Even if we provoke a hostile reaction?”

  “Even if,” Anastasia said.

  “To live and die for you, Mother Earth,” Jasmine replied, highlighting the bitter irony in Anastasia's position.

  The intercom sounded. Chuck spoke from Engineering.

  “We're getting detailed spectrograph results from one of the probes. Can you take a look, Ana?”

  “Not from here,” she replied.

  There was silence for a few seconds before Chuck said, “Jason, do we have any updates on Mike? Has he tripped any sensors?”

  “Negative.”

  Jasmine couldn't be sure, but Jason's response was again overly clipped and felt deliberately sterile. He wasn't being helpful.

  “OK,” Chuck continued. “Ana, get down to the science mod and preprocess the results. Let's see if we can't start to unravel Bestla. Jazz, you and Jason have the bridge. Jason, report in any movement by Mike.”

  “Understood,” Jason replied.

  “On my way,” Anastasia said. She moved with astonishing grace, as though she had been born in space and had never known any other form of motion. Her sleek body glided through the air with ease, disappearing into the main shaft.

  During breakfast by the galley, and then while talking, the two women had slowly shifted in their orientation relative to the bridge, and Jasmine now felt as though the shaft Anastasia disappeared into led up away from her. The Copernicus seemed to have a life of its own, changing directions like moods. That this was an illusion of her perspective was hard for Jasmine to grasp. The human mind was designed for motion in two dimensions, not three. Try as she may, she kept wanting to ground herself on some kind of floor, but there was none.

  Jasmine wasn't sure what she was supposed to be doing. As the resident xenobiologist she was sure there was something intelligent she should be doing, perhaps analyzing some of the information streaming in from Bestla. But she wouldn't know where to look for that, let alone what to make of the squiggles on the graphs and numbers in the various tables. She wanted to be busy to take her mind off the fear swelling inside.

  “Jason?” Jasmine asked softly, testing a theory.

  “Yes, Jazz,” came a soft reply, and there it was. Jason spoke with the tenderness of a father with a child, or perhaps a mother woken in the middle of the night. There was a depth of patience and consideration in his words. The others might see Jason as just circuit boards and wires, but Jasmine knew better.

  “I'm afraid.”

  She had no idea how Jason would respond to those two words. Jasmine felt vulnerable being that honest. No one else was afraid. If they were, they wouldn't admit their fears to her.

  Nadir had downplayed her fears. He had rationalized them as a natural response to the unknown, and she wondered if Jason would provide some similar psychiatric assessment or endeavor to fix them for her with the logic drawn from over a hundred years of accumulated psychology. That was the problem, she thought, everyone wanted to fix things. They were obsessed with taking charge, taking control of the situation. Everything could be fixed. That was the unspoken mantra, but words weren't enough. Some things in life couldn't be fixed with a few eloquent words of wisdom or some pithy quote. To her, it seemed the obsession with correcting problems was a shallow, hollow bluff. Sometimes, there was no solution.

  Jason surprised her with just two words spoken in reply.

  “Me too.”

  In the silence that followed, Jasmine felt strangely comforted. Deep down, this was what she wanted. Not to be psychoanalyzed. Not to be lectured into changing her mind or being told she should smile and be positive. To be understood. To be accepted. That's what she needed. For the first time since she'd woken on the Copernicus, Jasmine had hope. Hearing those words, she understood she was not alone. Jason could have said more, but he didn't, and that he was silent spoke louder than any words could have.

  Jasmine breathed deep
ly, savoring the moment. She was at peace.

  “Do you know what I miss about Earth?” she asked, more out of nostalgia than fear or anxiety.

  “Blue skies,” Jason replied.

  Jasmine smiled as he continued.

  “The feel of moist grass beneath your bare feet. The smell of fresh flowers picked from the garden. The lazy billowing clouds drifting across a bright sky.”

  She nodded in agreement.

  Jason had to be watching as he added, “Me too.”

  “Where were you born?” she asked, knowing full well she was personifying a computer.

  “Born?”

  “I was born in Des Moines, Iowa, but my folks moved to Atlanta when I was two, so I don't have any memories of growing up there. Atlanta was all I knew before I was accepted at MIT.”

  “MIT!” Jason said with surprise and excitement in his voice. “I was born in MIT!”

  “Ah,” Jasmine replied. “So you grew up with clam chowder and tea parties.”

  “Something like that,” Jason replied, and from his tone of voice she could have sworn he was smiling.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Know what?”

  “Blue skies. Grass beneath my feet.”

  “Oh,” Jason replied playfully. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

  At the same time, a nearby monitor sprang to life. Jasmine watched as Jason played video footage of her entering the command deck yesterday for the first time. She was wearing a skimpy top and tight-fitting underwear. Mike was there, with his full beard and long straggly hair.

  “See that?” Jason asked. “You’re looking out at the inky black darkness, but you haven’t spotted Saturn yet. You’re looking around, looking for something, looking for the sky.”

  “Blue skies,” she replied.

  “Exactly.”

  “And what about the green grass?”

  Jason fast-forwarded the video and zoomed in on her feet. As she floated weightless within the bridge, her feet moved. They weren’t twitching, they were searching. She hadn’t even been aware of their motion at the time, but her feet were seeking somewhere to rest. Jasmine could vaguely recall a longing to feel the ground firmly under her feet.

  “It was your toes,” Jason said. “I figured, you prefer something soft underfoot. Either carpet or grass. You have a way of moving, a gentle motion that suggests you enjoy a soft touch.”

  “My parents have a shag carpet,” Jasmine said. “I’ll sit there watching TV while twirling the long strands with my toes.”

  “Ha,” Jason replied.

  “And the fresh flowers? The clouds drifting across the sky?”

  “Nothing but a guess,” Jason confessed.

  Jasmine smiled. She rolled up her sleeves. Dressing in a navy blue flight suit made her feel like she was a mechanic rather than an astronaut. She felt like she should be helping her dad change the oil in her car.

  The footage continued to roll forward but without sound. Jasmine could see her lips moving on the screen, but she couldn’t recall what was being said at the time.

  “Oh, God, I look awful.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do,” Jasmine insisted.

  “Here,” Jason replied. “Is that better?”

  Jasmine missed what he’d done. The screen had flickered in the time it took her to blink and the camera angle changed. Suddenly she looked better. Her hair was still messy. Her skin was still pale, but she looked more Jasmine than Jazz.

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “Oldest trick in the book.”

  Jasmine raised her eyebrows, signaling to Jason that he was going to have to explain himself.

  “It’s a mirror image.”

  Jasmine didn’t see the relevance. The look on her face must have suggested she was confused, as Jason went on to say, “Haven’t you ever thought about it? You only ever see yourself in a reflection. You never see yourself for who you really are.”

  Jason split the screen, showing Jasmine two images of her face, one the mirror image of other.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You hate photos of yourself? They never look quite right, huh?”

  Jasmine was quiet.

  “No one’s face is perfectly symmetrical. Normally, the right side is slightly larger than the left. And you have a soft crown, giving your hair a natural part on the left, which to you in a mirror looks as though it is on the right, so the part always looks wrong in photos. There’s a slight blemish on your forehead, and the light smattering of freckles on your cheeks are clustered more to the right.”

  Jasmine looked at the two images of her face as Jason spoke.

  “You’ve only seen one of these images each morning in the mirror. The other is alien to you, but familiar to us. Funny, huh? How something so simple can have such an influence on your outlook in life.”

  “I’ve always hated photos of myself,” Jasmine said.

  “Hold the next one up to a mirror,” Jason replied. “You’ll like what you see.”

  “I will.”

  Jasmine liked Jason. He was kind, considerate, and paid attention to her when no one else did. In the midst of the madness of being in outer space and approaching a massive alien spacecraft, Jason kept her grounded, which was an apt analogy given she was drifting aimlessly in microgravity.

  “So this is what you do with your spare time?” she said. “You analyze—”

  “Fire, huǒ, ogon’ āga. Isolating modules.”

  “What?” Jasmine cried in alarm as a nondescript voice continued speaking over the top of them.

  “Fire, huǒ, ogon’ āga. Warning! Suppression system offline.”

  The lights on the bridge dimmed and flickered. The brief flash of darkness terrified her.

  “You’ll find emergency respirators under the seats,” Jason cried over the voice repeating the emergency warning.

  “Fire, huǒ, ogon’ āga. Switching to backup power.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “NOW!” Jason yelled at her.

  Chapter 08: Ana

  In a panic, Jasmine struck out with her legs, propelling herself through the air toward the flight seats. She reached out and grabbed at a headrest as her torso and legs whipped past her arms, having a mind of their own and not wanting to lose their suddenly imparted momentum. With her legs sticking up into the air, she grabbed at the seat cushion, pulling her head down so she could see beneath the chair.

  “Hurry!”

  Velcro straps held a small red canister and mask in place. The mask didn’t look like a full face gas mask, more like something she’d wear snorkeling, only the rubber nose seal extended down to cover the chin. Still upside down and drifting to one side, she pulled the rubber straps over her head, fitting the mask over her eyes, nose and mouth. A half twist of the handle on the cylinder caused oxygen to begin flowing and Jasmine breathed deeply, more scared and alarmed at the way Jason had spoken to her than at any threat of fire. Fire didn’t seem possible in space.

  “The voices—”

  Jason replied briskly, cutting her off. “It’s a core system alarm. English, Chinese, Russian and Hindi.”

  As she maneuvered herself out of the foot well between the seats, she saw smoke hanging in the air. Unlike on Earth, the thin dark mist didn’t dissipate or drift to the ceiling, instead it extended slowly out into the domed area of the bridge like a tentacle. The thin dark tendril looked almost alive.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out,” Jason replied. “Normally, fires burn themselves out. There’s no convection in zero-gee, and the vents shut automatically so there’s no movement of air, suffocating any flames. Any localized fire would have oxygen only for a minute or two at most before snuffing itself out.”

  “Location?” came the cry over the speakers. Chuck’s voice was impossible to mistake.

  “Sensors are going haywire,” Jason replied. “Trying to isolate the
source. Getting all kinds of false alarms.”

  “Engineering is sealed,” Chuck cried. “I can’t get the override to work.”

  “On it,” Jason said in a voice that sounded more panicked than Jasmine would have liked to hear from a seemingly omniscient computer. How could he not know where the fire was? How could he not have seen the flames building?

  “Why the hell is suppression offline?” Chuck asked over the intercom.

  “It—It shouldn’t be,” Jason replied, stuttering in response. “We’ve lost two of the four guidance and control systems. Trying to reboot now.”

  “Ana? Mei?” Chuck cried. “Sound off.”

  There was no reply.

  “Jazz?”

  “Here,” Jasmine replied quickly. Her voice sounded dull and muted from beneath her mask. She yelled, “I’m on the bridge,” but her words were indistinct.

  “Ana? Mei?” Chuck repeated. “Report in.”

  Jason said, “I’ve got master alarms in Medical and Science.”

  “It’s not Medical,” Chuck replied, coughing. “I’m in there now. Smoke’s bad, but there’s no visible source, just a haze.”

  “Auxiliary modules are sealed. If the smoke’s not getting worse, the fire must be contained in one of the modules.”

  “Can you fire up the extractors?”

  “Negative,” Jason replied. “The core won’t let me, not until we’ve clearly identified the source. Until we’ve isolated the fault, the core won’t risk feeding the fire with fresh oxygen. I can’t override the core until we get at least some of the sensors back on line to demonstrate hull integrity.”

  “Understood,” Chuck said, coughing with a bad hack.

  “Does he need a mask?” Jasmine asked, thinking she could take a gas mask down to him.

  “He has one,” Jason replied seemingly only to her. “But he won’t put it on. I can see him moving up to the Science mod. He’s breathing without strapping up, prepping for buddy breaths, but he’s taking in smoke as well.”

  Jasmine pulled herself along the command deck, moving slowly into the shaft.

  Jason added, “Use the transmit button on the side of your mask to talk. There’s an overhead light as well.”