My Sweet Satan

by Peter Cawdron

  “I was wrong!” she cried out as her eyes focused on the transmission status projected onto her helmet: No signal. “They're not friendly. They're not. They're evil.”

  Acid began eating into her hands, stripping away the skin and dissolving tendons and bones. Jasmine screamed in agony. She pushed her legs against the wall of tentacles to gain leverage and flexed with all her might, trying to wrench her arms free, but she only sank deeper into the writhing alien creature.

  “I WAS WRONG!” she yelled, but no one could hear her.

  A dark stain crept slowly along the sleeves of her spacesuit. The crumpled white fabric covering her arms turned black as though it had been burned in a fire. Jasmine was hyperventilating. Waves of panic swept over her.

  Again, three beeps sounded, warning her about the CO2 levels within her suit. The seething mass of tentacles pulled her closer, wrapping around her helmet and drawing her in.

  “NO!” she screamed.

  Suddenly, a hand rested on her shoulder.

  Jasmine turned and saw Mike standing beside her. The creak of the rusty chains supporting her swinging bench seat came to a halt as her feet rested on the wooden deck of her home in Atlanta.

  “Jazz,” Mike said, crouching beside her. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Jasmine blinked in amazement. Slowly, she looked around. Cicadas chirped in the cool of the evening. Stars appeared in the twilight sky, nothing more than tiny pinpricks of light against the fading reds and purples of the setting Sun. The lawn sprinkler stopped as abruptly as she remembered it starting, leaving both the concrete path and the grass soaking wet. Water dripped from her brother’s red bicycle lying on the lawn. A delivery truck drove slowly down the street, cruising past as the driver peered out at numbers on the various mail boxes.

  “Come,” Mike whispered.

  “Jazzy,” a soft feminine voice called out from inside the house. “Dinner’s ready. Time to finish up out there, Honey.”

  There were a bunch of books sitting on the wooden swing seat beside her: Orbital mechanics, Astrobiology 402, Advanced Physics, Applied Chemistry.

  “I—ah,” she said, getting to her feet, still looking at the textbooks and wondering where they came from. They were far more advanced than anything she’d read in high school.

  A message flashed on her phone: Stay with me, Jazz.

  Jasmine felt dizzy.

  The world seemed to reel around her.

  Darkness closed in.

  For a split second, she saw flashes of light and the splatter of blood. Dark tentacles grabbed at her. They slapped at the faceplate on her helmet, clinging to the smooth sides, half covering the spotlights. Acid dissolved the glass, slowly eating through the compressed layers making up her composite visor. The acrid smell of burning flesh stung her nostrils.

  She couldn’t escape.

  She couldn’t pull free.

  And as suddenly as she’d been flung into space, she was back on the porch.

  A cool breeze broke through the humidity in the air. In the distance, somewhere out of sight, thunder rumbled. A storm was coming, but rather than threatening, it promised relief from the heat.

  “Trust me,” Mike said softly, reaching out and steadying her as she stood on the porch. Looking at him, Jasmine felt as though she’d seen a ghost. He appeared strange, almost aloof. This was not the Mike she knew, not now in orbit around Saturn, not decades before back on Earth. He smiled. She reached out, touching at his face. A light stubble covered his cheeks. He had shaved this morning, but his skin still felt like fine sandpaper. There was something strangely comforting in touching him.

  Jasmine lowered her arm to her side and shook her head, struggling to understand what was real. Was all that had happened on the Copernicus just a dream?

  “Are you? Is this?”

  Through the window, Jasmine could see her father sitting down at the dining table along with her younger brother. They looked so peaceful.

  She followed Mike into the house. Every detail seemed overwhelming. Paint peeled from the door. The screen door had tiny gaps where the cat had clawed at the mesh. A small dog darted outside as Mike stepped in, holding the door for her. He smiled again. He was smiling a lot, which seemed out of character.

  “You OK, Baby?” her mother asked, setting a large bowl of green beans on the table. Jasmine hated being called “Baby,” especially in front of her boyfriend.

  Steam wafted from the beans. A fresh dollop of butter dripped over them, running down as it melted with the heat.

  “Ah, yeah. I’m fine,” Jasmine said, tucking her hair behind one ear.

  Spotted grease stains marked the front of her mother’s apron. Sweat dripped from her forehead. Her mother wiped the sweat away with the back of her hand as she handed Jasmine a large bowl of mashed potatoes.

  “Put this on the table, would you Jazz?”

  Jasmine reached out to take the bowl, but it fell through her fingers as though they weren’t even there. As if in slow motion, Jasmine watched the bowl tilt as it fell. The white ceramic bowl shattered as it hit the floor, spraying hot mashed potatoes across the ground. Jasmine looked at her hands as they became transparent, fading from view.

  “NOOOOOO,” she screamed, seeing dark tentacles writhing before her. The CO2 alarm beeped three more times as she struggled to free herself from the alien monster. She twisted to one side, pulling several of the tentacles away from her helmet. Dark tentacles engulfed her gloves and boots.

  Although she was in space, she was on her hands and knees, pressing against the soft, squishy tentacles, trying to pry herself free, only with each act, she sank deeper into the creature’s clutches. Again, tentacles slapped at her helmet. Blisters formed on the inside of her visor as acid ate through the glass.

  The dark stains on her arms had reached above her elbows. Jasmine pushed with her legs, pulling with her arms, and suddenly her arms snapped off. She held up the charred stumps, shocked to see her arms had been torn in half just below her elbows.

  Although there was no pain, the shock of seeing her arms amputated caused her to reel mentally in anguish. Bits of fabric and charred flesh broke away from the stumps of her arms, scattering like ash.

  Suit malfunction, flashed on her heads-up display. Pressure compromised.

  Tentacles lashed out from the creature, wrapping around her upper arms and pulling her headfirst back into the dark seething mass. The tentacles grabbed at her shoulders, squeezing hard.

  She blinked and what had been tentacles morphed into hands. Mike was facing her, crouching down in front of her and holding her gently. He was so kind. He’d been saying something, but she didn’t catch exactly what. Her memory betrayed her. There was something she’d seen, something she’d been thinking about just moments before Mike grabbed her. What was so important? It bugged Jasmine that she couldn’t recall a thought from just seconds ago, but Mike smiled and she lost herself in his touch.

  “Hey,” he said. “Stay with me, OK?”

  “Don’t you worry about anything, Jazz,” her father said. “We’ll clean this up.”

  “What? No!” Jasmine cried, as fleeting memories drifted through her mind. She was unable to reconcile the two views of reality thrust upon her. “How? Where? Where am I?”

  “You’re at home. It’s your birthday, Honey,” her mother said, already wiping up the mess as her older brother begrudgingly held a bucket for the broken pieces. “Don’t you worry. Mistakes happen. It’s nothing to get upset about.”

  “I—I,” she began, gesturing to the stars in the sky beyond the clean glass window. “I was out there.”

  Mike pulled a chair from the table and helped her off the ground. He sat her at the far end of the dining table, and kissed her gently on the cheek, whispering. “Everything’s going to be OK.”

  The smell of roast beef filled the air.

  Mike poured Jasmine a glass of water and sat down beside her. He looked so young. His hair was tousled, as though he’d just come through a st
orm.

  “Henry,” her mother said. “Can you go and get the washing off the line?”

  “Do you remember?” Jasmine asked Mike quietly as her parents finished cleaning the floor. Her older brother left the bucket and headed out the back door. Rain began falling gently against the side window.

  “Hurry,” her mother cried after him.

  Jasmine took advantage of the distraction to whisper to Mike, “Do you remember any of it?”

  “Any of what?”

  “Bestla? Saturn?”

  Three beeps grabbed Jasmine’s attention. It was the CO2 alarm. Her head jerked to one side and she started to get up, but Mike rested his hand on her thigh and she sank back into her seat.

  “What’s wrong, Honey?” Mike asked. His eyes seemed so warm, so caring, so intelligent.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” she said. “None of this is real.”

  “Of course it’s real,” her mother said, wiping her hands on her apron and joining them at the table. “Why would you say that? I think you’ve been studying too hard. You push yourself too much, Jazz. I do worry about you.”

  Her father added, “You do have a rather active imagination, Honey.”

  Henry walked back into the house with a bunch of sheets draped over his arm. He lay them over the back of a lounge chair and joined them at the table.

  “What was that beeping?” Jasmine asked

  “Why that’s the microwave,” her mother replied. “I’m heating some gravy.”

  Jasmine looked at her father and her brother. They smiled.

  Mike spoke, saying, “I picked up some Black Forest cake for your birthday. I thought you’d like that for dessert.”

  “And Mom’s baked an apple pie,” her brother added.

  Jasmine didn’t notice the color fading around her.

  The room took on sepia tones. The shadows in the hallway became pitch black. The light hanging from the ceiling seemed to shrink.

  Mike said, “You can have both for dessert if you want. And there’s some vanilla bean ice cream too!”

  “Sounds yummy,” her father said, taking his seat at the head of the sturdy wooden table. Everyone was so happy.

  “Doesn’t that sound good?” Mike asked.

  “It does,” Jasmine admitted as the light faded and the room took on dark grey hues. She barely noticed as the darkness washed over her. The microwave beeped again, sounding three times, but no one seemed to care. Her mother was talking with her father, but Jasmine couldn’t hear what she was saying. Sounds blurred, becoming indistinct and then no longer registering within her brain. She stopped breathing. Her heart stopped beating. She stopped thinking. She could no longer feel anything.

  Jasmine was dead.

  Chapter 12: First Contact

  ::Alarm—Proximity alert! Vessel of unknown origin approaching. Collision imminent. Unable to activate kinetic defense. Estimated point of impact: forward hold. Estimate damage will be confined to the hold. Energy expenditure required for increased cognitive processing—23%. Instructions?::

  Cold circuitry sprang to life as the automated systems within the Arc Explorer stirred. They operated at multiple levels, each designed to conserve precious power by hibernating when not needed.

  Praz awoke.

  Praz was a level four intelligence block within the general computing framework, capable of inferred reasoning and independent decision making.

  Instructions? The level one monitoring system was primitive. Under normal flight conditions it would have been relegated to waste management and basic maintenance tasks, but ever since the core breach and the loss of the crew, emergency survival measures gave L1 priority as the lone wake cycle—the only system functioning on a routine basis because of its low power consumption. Most L2 and L3 functions had been allocated to L4 processes like Praz, who were woken only on an as needed basis.

  L1 needed instructions, but what instructions could the Praz unit give? After four millennia by Zoozii reckoning, there was little hope of rescue. Survival seemed only to prolong the inevitable. The Arc Explorer was lost, dead to all who knew her. The seeds she carried for colonization were still viable, but even they would not last forever. Once her power reserves dropped below 0.01% they too would die.

  There had been some hope. Several gas giant orbits ago, a strange spacecraft had approached within the ring system and Praz had organized a response. Messages had been directed at the craft, but as quickly as it had arrived around the ringed planet, the tiny vessel had sailed on into interplanetary space.

  L1 navigation calculations had determined the craft’s point of origin as being from the third planet in this star system.

  Praz had captured and analyzed radio signals from the planet. The frequency chosen by the inhabitants and the analog nature of the signal suggested a class one emerging technological society. The lack of sophistication in the probe seemed to reinforce that notion. Praz applied a standard inversion technique to the signal sent to the probe, and broadcast a distress pattern, but the damage to the transmission network on the Arc Explorer meant the signal was unlikely to be detected by anyone other than a class two society. Without specifically looking for the signal, Praz doubted a class one society would ever detect such a faint SOS, and yet he tried nonetheless.

  Several other probes passed through the ringed planet system, with some of the later craft remaining in orbit, but the Arc Explorer was on the fringe of the local gravitational sphere associated with the gas giant, well outside the close orbits chosen by those from the third planet.

  The Arc Explorer was adrift almost 200 times beyond the most distant rings of the spectacular planet, and with over sixty moons, was unlikely to be seen as anything other than a captured asteroid. Those from the third planet were so near, and yet so very far from stumbling across this celestial shipwreck.

  Anyway, what help could a class one technological society be to a class three space faring society such as the Zoozii? Praz was skeptical, but his job was to stay objective, to fight for the preservation of the seeds. He’d woken L5, the primary librarian, only once before, when the first of the probes passed by, only to be remonstrated for the waste of power in reviving an L5. Praz was expected to be more circumspect in his use of energy.

  ::Instructions?::

  The L1 was getting antsy.

  The Arc Explorer had no means of propulsion, no means of evading the impact. Regardless of the damage caused by the incoming vessel, there was nothing to be done. Praz did have one idea, though. He thought about waking the L5 but decided against it. L5 wanted him to have operational command to conserve resources, so he would exercise his prerogative to define executive orders.

  ::Is the approach speed within the limits of a manual tether? What’s the mass comparison ratio? If we capture by tether, will we suffer orbital degradation?::

  To Praz, the alien craft seemed to be out of control. If they were looking to rendezvous, he’d expect more careful maneuvers, perhaps the deployment of a landing craft.

  He couldn’t imagine that those from the third planet deliberately intended to ram them. If they wanted to destroy the Arc Explorer, there were much more effective ways than ramming them. And besides, the Arc had done nothing to provoke such a response. No, something had gone wrong. Perhaps they too had suffered some kind of catastrophic failure. What a shame, he thought. After so long, with rescue seemingly so close, it was maddening to see an opportunity slip away. And yet, if he could safely tether the strange craft, he could set L1 tasks for the reclamation of resources. If there was a heavy metal reactor, something using an atomic mass over 220, they could replenish the Arc’s main power supply. There might even be parts that could be repurposed for propulsion. These would no doubt be primitive, but if they could navigate to a sizable asteroid, such a rendezvous would provide all the raw material necessary to repair the Arc.

  The L1 process responded.

  ::Comparative mass ratio is 1:27,800. Velocity difference is 13.75Rx. Resulting orbital velo
city change after successful acquisition is 0.003 degrees::

  That was nothing, thought Praz.

  ::L1 you are authorized for capture::

  What was this strange ship playing at? L1 had woken him once before when it became apparent the ship was on an intercept trajectory, but it had only taken Praz a couple of seconds to assess that his wake cycle wasn’t necessary as the craft would pass by at a harmless distance. Something had changed, and the L1 was right to have woken him again. Praz was mindful of his energy consumption, but the chance of snagging resources prevented him from powering down completely. L5 would understand, he was sure, and yet Praz didn’t wake the L5 just in case she disagreed. Praz decided to put himself in a temporary wait state as a compromise and avoid too much drain on reserves.

  ::L1 I am dropping to 23,000 cycles. Wake on capture. Once contact is established and a survey complete, we will either release or reclaim::

  ::Understood::

  For Praz, the next hour passed in an instant.

  ::Alarm—Outer lock breached in response to proximity sensor. Activating Praz persona. Energy expenditure required for increased cognitive processing—22%::

  Praz was confused.

  ::Clarification on capture?::

  ::Capture successful within authorized tolerance. No viable lifeforms detected on alien craft. L1 determined no need for additional cognitive processing::

  Praz was angry. He’d wanted to be woken. The L1 should have obeyed.

  ::Reclamation?::

  ::Vessel composition is mainly light metals, polymers and complex molecules from low mass elements. Identified heavy metal reactor. Beginning reclamation::

  ::Good::

  Praz had been right. Sasha, the L5 librarian would be pleased, but he wouldn’t wake her yet.

  Gender was arbitrary for an artificial intelligence unit, and yet the Zoozii had insisted on imprinting their AI replicas with such characteristics because of the need for diversity in lateral thinking. With three genders, the Zoozii were adept at negotiating compromise settlements, and that same process carried through to the L-series. L1, 2 and 3 were the neuter workers, L4 the submissive calculating masculine and L5 the dominant leadership feminine, but that didn’t stop L4s from asserting their independence and Praz felt he had a good handle on the situation. His L5 would be proud, he was sure of it.