Eva

by Simon Winstanley

  “I’m sorry,” he exhaled through his hands, “I screwed up, I didn’t know he was there. I was shouting and he ran off. I’m sorry.”

  “Could he have climbed the stairs?” asked Ross.

  “No, he knows not to go up there,” Karl ran his hand over the back of his neck, “He’ll have headed back into the Toy Cupboard. Damn it! We don’t have time -”

  “I think I know where he’ll be,” Janine interrupted, desperately hoping that she was wrong.

  “Where?” Karl was preparing to run.

  Janine knew exactly how her husband would react if she told him. She also knew that Abel wouldn’t want to be found by the person who’d shouted in his direction.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll go get him,” she began backing away from them, “Keep working, I’ll see you back here.”

  Not waiting for his reply, she turned and walked away. Although she really wanted to run, she thought it best if Karl believed she wasn’t worried. She knew that when she found Abel, she’d have to approach him slowly; it would be important to maintain an air of calm before the situation degraded.

  Ahead of her, sitting on the facility’s simulated grey regolith, lay the replica of the Floyd Lunar Complex. She placed her foot down onto the lunar landscape and began the slow trek around the FLC. She could see that each step she took was erasing the footprints of previous lunar explorers. It hardly seemed to matter though; soon all these footprints, hers included, would be obliterated by the arrival of a much greater destructive force.

  The launch window was imminent but she knew she still had to proceed with care. Although she could hear the blood pumping in her ears, she forced herself to take long, slow breaths.

  The air seemed colder than before.

  The chill matched the one that was gestating in the pit of her stomach; a sense of cold, creeping anxiety that urged her onward. As though each step was somehow inevitable.

  She slowly moved past the airlock of Chamber 2 and had a clear line of sight to the crater. With simultaneous feelings of relief and dread, she could see that her intuition had been right. He was here.

  Interrupting the crater’s circular rim in one place, he stood motionless with his back to her. Although this was not the first time he’d been drawn to this area, she still felt her blood turn to ice.

  As before, he was staring down into the crater. But as she continued her tentative approach, she could see that something was different this time. Three large letters now dominated the crater floor:

  ‘EVA’

  “Abel?” she called to him gently.

  As if emerging from a daydream he seemed to come back into sync with his surroundings. He suddenly noticed her and smiled.

  “Did you see that?!” he asked her excitedly.

  She crouched and hugged him, “Abel, did you write that word?”

  “No,” he shook his head, “When you called my name it just went pop!”

  She could see that the fingers of his right hand were coated with thick grey dust. As before, it appeared that he had no memory of his actions or of bringing himself here; the location of his first encounter with Eva Gray when he was just a baby.

  “Mommy, what does ‘Ever’ mean?” he pronounced EVA phonetically.

  “I think you’re supposed to say each letter separately,” she patted the grey dust off his hands and knees, “Let’s ask Daddy about it should we? He says your spaceship’s nearly ready!”

  Abel’s gleeful enthusiasm seemed to wipe all thought of the crater from his mind as he turned and ran across the lunar landscape. Janine took one last look at the word. She wasn’t sure if the deep chill she felt was from within, or from the air itself. She suppressed another shiver and dashed after him.

  DEPARTURE

  13th April 2014

  If the Sea-Bass truly was experiencing temperatures below the 0K boundary, then the sensors were once again unable to interpret the incoming data. As before, alarms around the control room were ringing out. Unlike last time though, Pavna kept her eyes firmly fixed on the impossible spectacle.

  The ice wall beyond the window now started to bend inward. A few seconds later the view resembled looking into a deep bowl; the ice effectively wrapping around them. She felt a twisting sensation and found herself pushing her free hand through the air in front of her. The air felt as though it had a tangible viscosity to it.

  A quiet, low-frequency howl began to fill the control room. The concave appearance of the ice was unwrapping again, moving back towards the semblance of an infinite wall. The pitch of the sound began to climb, as did its volume.

  The surface of the infinite wall began to fold away from them and as the ice moved back towards its previous curvature, the side of the sphere came back into view. As the sphere reached its former size, she felt the twisting sensation subside.

  The time-stretched sound that had accompanied the transition, now rapidly rose in pitch and became heavily distorted speech.

  “…esting docking permission, Over.”

  Although it was only a distorted fragment, Pavna thought she recognised the voice.

  “Is that Tristan?” she turned and smiled at Mat.

  He wasn’t smiling, in fact his expression seemed to indicate that Tristan’s distorted voice was confirmation of something else.

  “Damn it,” he said softly, “We’ve been chasing our tails.”

  “What do you…?” Pavna searched his face for explanation.

  He closed his eyes and sighed.

  “The slow incoming message that Lucy’s been trying to speed up?” he prompted her to remember, “It’s not an incoming message.”

  There was a short hiss of static, then the control room speaker sounded again.

  “Arc vessel Sea-Bass, requesting docking permission. Over.”

  “This was Tristan’s opening hail,” Mat shook his head, “The one he transmitted to the USV before you both went down in the pod.”

  It now dawned on her. Tristan had tried three times to contact the USV docking station, but received no reply. The anomaly had been slowly returning the radio transmissions, the Sea-Bass had simply been receiving them.

  “Arc vessel Sea-Bass, requesting docking permission. Over,” Tristan’s time-delayed broadcast echoed out around the control room.

  She felt Mat squeeze her hand. As she’d requested, he hadn’t let go.

  “We’ll go back and find him Pavna!” he said, “I promise.”

  The control room speaker gave a short click.

  “Arc vessel Sea-Bass,” a new voice replied, “we receive you…”

  LIFEBOAT

  29th December 2013

  In the confines of the Apollo 11 Command Module, Lawrence Clark considered the Lifeboat Pass that he was holding in his hands. In the event that Siva was unstoppable, the plastic-laminated pass was supposed to have guaranteed him entry to a secure Archive facility. The irony was that he was already in one. In a very real sense, he was also sitting in a lifeboat; if the launch was successful they’d be spending many days at sea.

  After that, who knew.

  The reality was that in a few minutes everything he’d ever known was about to pass into oblivion. When they washed up on some unknown shore, the world would be different. The educational currency of his life was about to become worthless; no amount of quantum mechanical theory or artificial intelligence trivia would provide him with food and water.

  He heard feet climbing the access ladder outside and then Abel poked his head in through the hatch. Lawrence could hear Janine outside the module, telling her son to climb inside and sit quietly.

  He put the Lifeboat Pass away then helped Abel and Janine to climb in through the narrow entrance. The boy’s face was a picture of excitement, but his mother’s expression seemed blank.

  As they were settling into position, he heard Karl climbing the ladder accompanied by what seemed to be a tinny-sounding voice. A few seconds later, he could see that Karl was holding the battery powered radio they’d been lis
tening to a few days earlier. It was still trailing the antenna extension wire connecting it to the equipment on the floor outside.

  “AM broadcast, south of New Orleans somewhere,” he said, carefully passing the radio through to Lawrence.

  In the run up to their departure, Karl had resumed scanning through the radio stations in the hope of hearing any useful local detail. It appeared that this was the only one he’d found. A static-filled national anthem was playing at a low level while the man talked.

  “… head north… Looks like the wave’s less than a minute out. If you can see higher ground, just take it and keep moving, this thing ain’t gonna stop… Nowhere for me to go now… I’m just gonna keep broadcasting for as long as I can… I dunno, maybe somebody found all this useful… If you’re with somebody you love, tell ‘em… hold ‘em tight and never let ‘em go,” his crackling voice now faltered, “Rachel, if you’re out there… I hope…”

  The background music suddenly stopped and after a few seconds Lawrence realised the man would never speak again. Presumably scenes just like this were happening all around the world; words of love and regret spoken into the oncoming darkness, never knowing if they would be received. Despite the very public method of the man’s communication, Lawrence felt ashamed that in hearing the heartfelt final words, he’d somehow intruded on a private moment. As the sound of radio static echoed around the craft’s small interior, it seemed that the air had become suddenly colder.

  Lawrence knew they should conserve the radio’s remaining battery power, in case broadcasts resumed one day. He turned down the volume until the dial clicked, leaving the Apollo in silence.

  Still standing on the ladder outside, Karl quietly disconnected the radio’s external antenna and turned to Ross outside the craft.

  “Anything from the cameras yet?”

  “The balloon keeps turning,” came Ross’ voice, “Can’t tell if the horizon’s changed or not.”

  Karl turned back to Lawrence.

  “If that broadcast was from New Orleans, how long would we have?”

  Lawrence’s previous estimate had been on a wave propagation speed of around two hundred metres per second. Taking into account an earlier prediction of the tsunami’s direction, then the wavefront was around one hundred and fifty kilometres away.

  “Twelve minutes thirty,” Lawrence replied.

  “We haven’t got twelve minutes of fuel,” Karl shook his head and looked over at his wife and son, “We can’t launch yet.”

  “Daddy?” asked Abel, “What does E.V.A. mean?”

  “Sorry, Abel, not now,” Janine responded quickly, “Daddy’s quite -”

  “It’s alright,” he sighed, “Extravehicular Activity. E.V.A. just means going outside the spaceship.”

  Although Lawrence was familiar with the traditional abbreviation, he’d used the same initials to name a specific subroutine; one that queried the state of a piece of hardware outside the ship. A horrible thought crossed his mind.

  “Karl,” he said, “I didn’t check that the External Valve Assembly was reset.”

  A fleeting look of recognition flashed across Karl’s face, then he descended the ladder at speed, “Ross, I need help. Now!”

  Immediately, Janine was on her feet and calling out of the hatch.

  “What’s wrong? I’m coming down -”

  “Stay up there with Abel!” he yelled, “Larry, power down the apex separation mechanism!”

  By the time Lawrence was looking out of the hatch, Karl was disappearing under the craft and Ross was poised ready to pass him hand tools. Lawrence twisted on the spot and used the smartphone to power down the system.

  “Done!” he yelled in the direction of the hatch.

  A few seconds later, Ross began relaying Karl’s muffled instructions. Several times during the restart operation, the Command Module’s internal lights were extinguished, leaving the entrance hatch as the only source of illumination. On those occasions, the light coming in through the hatch seemed to highlight Janine, holding her son to her chest in a comforting hug. Although she was projecting an outward sense of calm for him, her own breathing rate betrayed her; each exhale was sending white wisps of condensation curling through the cold air.

  Lawrence heard something that sounded familiar, but it was out of place here. When he looked out of the hatch, he could see that it was raining.

  With the access roof open, rainfall was now freely entering the facility. Water had begun cascading down the smooth sides of the FLC’s cylindrical chambers and was pooling at its base. The surrounding lunar landscape was being hit by hundreds of watery projectiles, each impact event sending up motes of fine dust. The effect was short lived though; the continued rain had soon turned the entire surface into a thick grey sludge.

  He saw Ross run to the portable monitor, holding onto the sides while he tried to assess the situation. Even from here though, Lawrence could see that the image was unstable; the tethered balloon was obviously in the grip of the weather system above them.

  “Give me the three-quarters!” Karl yelled from underneath them.

  Ross dashed away from the monitor and scooped up a nearby wrench. With no warning, the junction box at the base of the balloon’s tether simply disintegrated in an explosion of white light. Almost instantaneously, and accompanied by a reverberating thump of overhead thunder, the portable monitor overloaded as the last of the lightning strike discharged to earth. Lawrence looked up just in time to see that the balloon’s long vertical cable was falling; forming rippling curls of wire over the FLC’s wet chambers. A moment later the balloon’s dual-camera rig smashed into the roof of the FLC’s central prism assembly.

  Ross picked himself up and looked around at the aftermath. While the Apollo 73 was still on dry ground, the FLC simulator was directly underneath the access roof opening; the central portion was caught in a neatly contained rectangular downpour. Ross looked at the smouldering remains of the portable monitor and then back at Karl who’d called him away just seconds before.

  “Early warning’s fried,” said Ross, “We go now.”

  “I’m done,” Karl scrambled out and began climbing the ladder, “Larry, time to put that phone back into flight mode.”

  While Lawrence started the basic flight interface, Karl huddled next to his family. Ross passed a case of FLC food rations in through the hatch and then climbed in after them. When he was safely out of the way, Lawrence swung his improvised control panel to face the hatch; it would be the only way to visually navigate their craft. Although he’d rigged the controls to work in a similar way to an oversized remote-control drone, the ascent would still be difficult.

  “RTO intermix valves to auto, Gyro-feedback active,” he reported and turned to Ross, “We’re good to go.”

  “Launches used to have some inspirational words,” he looked at the others, “but on this occasion, just get us the hell out of here, Mr. Clark.”

  Lawrence hit the ignition button and the engines fired, sending a shuddering wall of noise up into the Command Module and clouds of billowing smoke across the wet lunar landscape a few feet away.

  Under the combined efforts of the RTO thrusters, the compact spacecraft began to rebalance the forces at work. The downward thrust increased and, a few seconds into the burn, completely cancelled out the effect of Earth’s gravity on the craft. The continuous downward force then overcame the effects of inertia and the Apollo 73 began to move with an almost impossibly slow speed.

  Lawrence pushed the power output up through fifteen percent. The water-drenched FLC appeared to pitch and tilt as they began their ascent. The engine noise saturating the air was peppered with excited cries of ‘Lift-Off!’ from Abel, somewhere behind him.

  The craft now rose above the FLC’s cylinders, a high perspective that bore a large similarity to the first time he’d seen the simulation’s starfish-like form. Now, however, there was internal weather to deal with.

  Abruptly, the rain in front of them became a soli
d and heavy block of water that plunged past them.

  Lawrence stabbed at the phone’s touchscreen and they veered out of its path. The massive weight of water reached the FLC below and crushed it in an instant, but the devastation didn’t end there. The continuing water flow obliterated the lunar surface, flooded outward and began filling the facility below.

  Lawrence looked up toward the access roof and could see that the entire opening was filled with incoming water. It was too late. The radio broadcast must have been closer than they thought. The tsunami was already above them. There was no way out.

  Under the growing pressure, several support stanchions above them sheared away from the roof, sending thrashing waterfalls of seawater out onto the metal stairwell nearby. Above them, the roof was starting to give way; seawater fizzed as the air inside the facility tried to escape through the same hole.

  “Lawrence!” Ross was shouting, “Get us to a corner!”

  “But,” he found himself transfixed by the blocked exit.

  “Just do it!” Ross yelled.

  He pushed at the touchscreen, backing the craft away from the continuing deluge and reducing the thruster power. Now burning fuel while they hovered in place, he could see that the facility below was already over half full.

  “We have to let it flood!” Ross was shouting so that everyone could hear, “When this space is full, the water flow above it will join the rest of the tidal wave on the surface. We need to hitch a ride with that wave, but we’ll need to be underwater to do it!”

  Karl was nodding and then shouted a reply above the noise.

  “As long as the thrusters keep firing, water can’t get into them. They’re designed to work where there’s no air,” he tapped at the side of the spacecraft, “but I dunno how much lift they’ll give.”

  Lawrence saw the roof give way on the opposite side of the water column. Several trucks and an entire section of street collapsed into the rising waves. Amid the surrounding noise, they didn’t appear to make a sound. As the hole widened, the facility only flooded even faster. Soon the seawater would reach the roof level.