Mendez jumps a bit at the unexpected response to her statement. She has been preoccupied too much to notice her audience, standing in the hallway too.
Mendez: I am sure that is it. Everyone needs locks on Earth; it is most likely an extra precaution for privacy.
After the attention is removed from her, Mendez locks the door slowly to prevent the lock from making a sound. She raises her fist to her mouth to obscure the sound of her throat clearing. While walking between Cardiff and Ghent as they talk, she excuses herself quietly. Her feet shuffle across the smooth floor in the hallway. After arriving in her own room at last, she moves to shut the door firmly behind her. Just before the door closes, she notices a figure seated on her bunk in the dark. She squints while leaning forward.
Mendez: Long? Don’t do that to me, you just scared me… Why are you waiting for me in my dorm, and not somewhere else? Why are the lights all out?
You know, this is my personal space, and I would really appreciate it if you respected it.
A silent response as simple as the subtle nod of a head signals the reception of her statement, although no verbal reply will be heard.
Mendez: Doctor Long, we need to talk, you and I, but not right at the moment. Please leave me in peace; I’ll talk to you in the morning.
Long gets up off of her bunk, where he had been sitting, and walks by her, slowly. With an unbreakable gaze upon her, he moves toward the door. As he walks by her in the dim light, his eyes make contact with hers, a deep sense of panic surges through her entire body as she stares back into the seemingly endless space behind his eyes, her fingers quiver. As Long rounds the exit, she shuts her door slowly behind him. She steadies her hands long enough to reach for the light switch.
The abysmal darkness outside her window is fascinating, terrifying and invigorating, all at the same time. Mendez quietly walks over to the window. She climbs out of the heavy pressure suit, and obscures the window by hanging her suit up over it.
As Mendez turns away from the window, she notices the lock on her own door. She quickly walks over to the door, and quietly turns the lock on her door.
Mendez: That’s better; nothing will disrupt my sleep tonight. I really need a good night’s sleep.
A brisk rapping of knuckles on her metal door jostles her and she jumps in place. She walks to the door and opens it narrowly; she peers around the edge of the door with a single eye. Much to her amazement, Long is standing in the hallway, looking back at her with a plain expression.
Mendez: I said that we would speak in the morning! What do you need Doctor Long?
Long: Well, you just told me to come in and talk to you, just a few minutes ago. I heard you walk down the hallway; I just thought that you needed to talk to me right now, that’s all.
Mendez: You were waiting for me in here, that sort of thing will really worry people you know.
Long: Uh, no. I was sitting in my room, waiting for you to peek in, you never did, you just walked by my doorway without saying anything to me. So I thought I would check with you.
Mendez pulls her head back away from the door, and slowly shuts the door without uttering another word. She twists the lock on her door without concerning herself over the sound it made. Without even thinking about it, she turns and walks over to her bunk.
Exhausted and utterly confused about her mental condition, she stands in front of her humble sleeping arrangement. With a fatigued mind, she lies down and slips into a deep slumber within only a few moments.
Radiant heat warms Mendez’s face as the dark of night exits her room. As her eyes open at the disturbance, her cloudy vision reveals dancing light of a distant flame moving upon her wall. Time, it seems, has passed, but she has no recollection or measure of how much; was it ten minutes or has it been days?
Her fingers are bound in an unbreakable grip upon her blanket. Her chest moves ever so slightly up and down in breath; her breathing is slow, yet its sound resounds loudly in her ears. She moves to sit up, yet not a single muscle in her body complies with her request. The rolling pattern of the flames through her window appears to her to be drawing even closer.
Her eyes widen from their drowsy state, fixed upon the window. A clear inner voice calls out from within the dim reaches of her mind, “What happened to my suit?”. Her eyes dart over to the door; the door is shut and locked. The hallway light has turned itself off, and cannot be seen shining underneath her door. From her still vantage-point, her pressure suit is not anywhere; there is no furniture in the room to obscure it from her view.
Immeasurable, eternal expanses of time pass without event as she lay frozen on her bunk. She can feel her mind slowing; her thoughts seem random, without reason or purpose. The burning flame outside begins to move again. Her eyes widen even further as the flame appears to begin moving right through her solid masonry wall.
Accompanied by an engulfing flame, an outstretched hand appears first through the wall. The radiating heat from the flames is felt, burning her forehead. Further it moves inward toward her; a cloaked arm and leg appear next. The movement of the recently-discovered figure is so slow, it seems like it is almost not moving at all.
Is that her suit coming back through the wall on fire? Her sluggish mind is freed from the bonds of reason. No thought needs to make sense to her to be considered seriously. This feeling of not knowing is completely alarming to her; terror has taken a complete hold upon her. The suit stands before her, helmet and all.
Her arm lies dormant and unresponsive on top of her. A flaming, outstretched glove comes to rest on her cold arm. A raging sensation of burning overwhelms her senses and draws her complete focus for a moment.
The visor of the figure’s helmet is completely obscured in flames, yet Mendez can make out the subtle movement of the helmet. Mendez’s eyes grow heavy under the searing pain. She slips back into the windless sea of her unconscious mind; her thoughts drift away from her in this desolate expanse behind her eyelids. Hours pass, unmarked by intermittent time.
Chapter 14
Year 15, Day 40
The rising sun brings yet another morning; the dust-laden plains, surrounding the dome, fill with light. Rocks littering the landscape, untouched by human hand or design, draw long shadows behind them through the ever-changing sand-scape. The solar panels, in the array outside the dome, groan as they begin to turn toward the distant rising sun. This array appears most contrived in this natural wasteland of sand and rock.
The wind blowing over the ridge of the endless volcanic cauldron atop Mount Olympus can be seen blowing bits of the sublimating carbon dioxide ice as it vaporizes in the morning sunshine. Clouds of this gas surround much of the peak’s ridges. Driving winds leave their mark upon the clouds, a mark that can be plainly seen from the distant dome.
Outside the quiet confines of the dome, marks left by feet lay imprinted inside the rig tire-marks as they stretch out into the distance. Wind-driven sand slowly erodes these marks, erasing any evidence of their existence as the sand fills and shifts in the morning breeze. The evidence of a journey home the night before washes away into the endless sea of dust.
Echoes of voices once heard over the radio resound from cavern to hillside, from cliff-face to peak. The silent sound of memory rings through the dome, filling the dormitory building. A night fraught with tragic realities and terrible dreams has oppressed the four remaining, disconsolate crew.
Mendez sits silently on her simple bunk. Morning’s light casts her room into a deep, rich red color. Her arms are wrapped around her knees; she pulls them tightly against her chest. The red light within the room almost blends the swollen red blood vessels into the white of her eyes. She rubs her right forearm tenderly; a handprint pattern of burn blisters on her arm is carefully hidden beneath her sleeve from the morning light as it invades her room. Tears rush down her cheeks from distant eyes.
Lachrymose feeling flees her mind as sheer panic replaces its hold upon her. Her eyes fixate, once again, upon her small window. Recollec
tion of the unusual memory last night returns in perfect clarity to her mind. The suit, she recalls well, was hung neatly on those hooks above the window when she had fallen asleep. She did not move them, of this she is certain.
Forgetting about all else, Mendez frantically searches the small closet space in her dorm room. She rushes to a kneeling position in front of her bunk. In the same frantic manner, she searches the footlocker underneath the bunk.
After taking a moment to breathe, and to try and calm herself, she realizes that she is still dressed in her work suit; she had fallen asleep in it the night before. She stumbles over to the sink in her dorm room. Time, it seems will reveal the whereabouts of her misplaced suit. Aberrant, misguided thoughts seep into her logical mind as she begins to stare into her mirror from across the room.
A single thought occupies her mind at present: “What happened?”. Her exhaustion does not make much sense to her. She had fallen asleep so quickly, and cannot remember anything from the night before, not a thing, save the bizarre nightmare that seemed so surreal. Memory of the dream rings clearly, begging the question: was it a dream at all? She looks down at her burns. She approaches her sink, and then turns the cold water on. Mesmerized by the nonsensical nature of her memory, she begins to run the water over her arm to quench the burning thirst of her skin.
She draws in a deep, cleansing breath before she reaches for her toothbrush, as if to carry on with her daily routine. “One bad night does not seem enough to justify a bad day too”, she has always said. A final inspection before leaving the dorm reveals an exhausted reflection staring back at her.
She stares for a moment into reflected brazen eyes. She watches her reflection blink. Mendez cocks her head to the side in disbelief.
Mendez: Did I blink?
In the mirror, her reflection moves right in front of her own eyes. The look-alike woman in the mirror begins to cough violently; her hands cover her mouth politely. Crimson blood appears on the thumb as it rubs up against the nose. A steady stream of the warm blood runs down the lips of the reflection, and drips down into the reflection of the sink.
As if to mimic her own reflection, she reaches up toward her lip and touches her nose with the side of her finger. The figure in the mirror does exactly that, as one might expect a reflection to do. Her reflected finger is well-covered in blood; her own, not at all.
She reaches over to her right, toward the door. Her hand strikes the door latch long before she had anticipated. With her head cocked sideways, she notices that the door is actually ajar. That door was clearly locked last night; the event of locking it is distinctly memorable. She looks out into the empty hallway; the sunshine illuminates the passageway thoroughly.
She turns back to her mismatched reflection. Her head darts back in surprise as she looks at the reflection of the back of the room. She looks to one side of the mirror and then the other trying to figure out why she is not visible in the reflection, the reflection that should be of her.
Cardiff: Yeah, you don’t look good. I don’t think it warrants that kind of response when looking in the mirror though.
Cardiff stands just outside the doorway. She is clearly puzzled by Mendez’s side to side movement around her mirror.
Mendez: Huh? What… Sorry, uh… good morning.
Cardiff: Uh, are you ready to get to work? The sun has been up for a couple of hours already. I looked down the hall earlier; your door was open so I assumed that you were already up. After looking for a while, I decided to come back and actually check. Here you are.
Still rubbing her eyes, Mendez follows Cardiff into the hallway. Once again, she comes to a complete stop; Doctor Long is standing in the hallway right in front of her.
Long: What happened to you? You look terrible, I don’t mean to be rude, but you look tired.
Cardiff continues to exit the dormitory, without Mendez. Mendez watches the captain leave for a moment before thoughtfully answering the rhetorical question posed to her by Long.
Mendez: Well, I am glad last night turned out to be a restful one for you. That is… great. Look, I would love to stay here and chat, but I need to get something to eat, so what say you and I go finish this at the breakfast table?
Long: Right. I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.
The short walk to the mess hall provides Doctor Mendez enough time to straighten out her faltering gait, and enough time to compose herself. Upon entering, Mendez notices Cardiff and Ghent, who are already seated and ready to eat.
Ghent looks up from the table and meets her watchful gaze. Mendez smiles at him and turns her head slightly to the side while raising her eyebrows. His eyes appear sunken into his flaccid face. Last night appears to have been equally brutal to the older man at the table.
Mendez: Alright. Makes sense, I didn’t sleep well last night either.
Ghent: I slept well, I just didn’t rest well.
Mendez: I had the same problem. I don’t think I even hit the bunk before I was asleep. When I woke up moments ago, I felt like I had been up all night.
Ghent: I just had several dreams that weren’t dreams.
Mendez: Do you have any marks or bruises… anything like that?
Ghent: Bruises? What does that have to do with not being able to rest?
Mendez: Never mind, it sounds like you might be suffering from hypersomnia.
Ghent: Hypersomnia?
Mendez: Yeah, it is basically the opposite of insomnia; your brain paralyzes your body while you are still awake. You enter a dreamlike state, but you can still see everything. You can see around you and can feel things but cannot move.
It is basically a problem with the brain. Sleep walking is where your brain does not paralyze you when you dream, so you interact with your surroundings while you sleep. This is more like your surroundings and dreams interacting with you though. It is sort of like hallucinating, but you are dreaming.
Ghent: I know what hypersomnia is, I am a doctor of biology. I was wondering about whether or not it explains what I had experienced.
Cardiff: Well, that all sounds dreadful. Shall we eat?
Mendez: It might Doctor Ghent. It just might.
Mendez gradually shifts her interest in talking about sleep problems to wondering why Cardiff is so dismissive this morning.
Hunger prevents meaningful conversation, everyone waits somewhat patiently for the food to be rehydrated. The simplest of thoughts occupy each mind, “Lawrence is gone”, “when will the food be done”, “what do I have to do today”. As the hunger pains wane in the act of eating breakfast, hunger gives way to a brief return of reason and logic; everyone seems to be thinking about the same exact thing. The tragedy of the prior day weighs heavily upon the somber group; Ghent feels less burdened than the others, but does not appear callused and hollow.
Aside from the conversation before the meal, no one is interested in speaking aloud. Thoughtful eyes seem to be wandering the table, looking at one and then the next, and so on. The sound of utensils on the plates provides a background noise that drowns out all other faint noises in the room. The light through the window shines onto the long table, which reflects the light back upward onto the ceiling and walls.
Doctor Long is the first to finish his portion, and quickly rises off of the bench to clean his plate. The gusto in which he moves provides a stark contrast with his behavior the past few days. He has a busy day planned; he will be examining the rest of the samples that he had managed to bring back.
Ghent: Looks like business as usual today then?
Long: The show must go on.
Ghent: Oh, show-business clichés… original.
Long: What do you think we ought to do today? Maybe we ought to play canasta? Bingo maybe? Or we could also sit around the table all day looking distraught and melancholy I suppose.
Ghent: Never mind, you are a busy man.
Long: I have my tasks, you have yours.
Doctor Mendez finishes her reconstituted eggs and pushe
s her plate further into the center of the table. She looks on at the conversation with great interest. Cardiff sits across the table from Mendez, Cardiff watches her while she eats. Mendez’s expression remains unchanged on her face as she sits quietly, her hands rest on the table in front of her. After a quiet moment, Mendez returns her attention to the captain.
Mendez: Captain, I am going to take a look at Lawrence’s journal entries, just to see if there is any information that might be of use.
Cardiff: Well, give it a try. Let me know if you find anything of a particular interest, will you?
Mendez slowly nods to confirm the request made of her. Doctor Ghent quietly finishes his breakfast without saying another word to anyone. He finishes cleaning his dish, and leaves the mess hall. Work from the day before needs to be completed; the beehive down by the pond still needs to be setup. The bees haven’t been transplanted yet, and this work is important. It should have been completed the day before.
Mendez: Well, I think that it is safe to say that our original evaluations are just about worthless now. Until we can figure out what we are really dealing with here, there is no point in trying to predict any further behavior.
Deeper Into the Void Page 14
