Proxima Trilogy: Part 1-3: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Really? You mean because the curtain is still not opening? What a bummer.”

  “No. While you were walking along next to the egg, the hall narrowed, according to my measurements.”

  “What do you mean? Isn’t that impossible?”

  “It looks like the curtain has moved. In our direction.”

  “And is that dangerous?” Eve immediately realizes the answer to her own question: Of course it is. After all, the curtain is not made of soft cloth. “Can you stop it?” she asks.

  “It is worth a try. Let the egg move another two meters, while I will stand right in front of the curtain.”

  Eve lets go of the egg. It starts moving along the luminescent stripe again. After another meter she hears a metallic creak.

  “Stop,” Marchenko orders. Eve has an idea of what is about to happen. She holds on to the egg, but now she has to use a surprising amount of force.

  “The curtain is simply pushing me along.”

  “You can’t stop it?”

  “Not in the least. It is not even slowing down.”

  “Then I better never let go of the egg.”

  “That is not possible,” Marchenko says.

  “Oh,” Eve says, “do you have a better idea?”

  “We still know too little.”

  “A nice excuse. What would happen if I let go?”

  “Then the curtain will sweep us to the end of the hall.”

  “And what will happen there, Marchenko?”

  “No idea. Maybe it will squash us.”

  “But why?” Eve asks.

  “Perhaps we activated a defense mechanism.”

  “So they would let us get here, to a place where we can’t go on, only to then crush us? It makes no sense. They could just wait for us to die of old age.”

  “Maybe that would take too long for them.”

  “No, Marchenko. I rather think it is a kind of cleaning device. This place definitely needs a thorough cleaning. Could there be a chute at the end of the hall, where things are disposed of?”

  “It is hard for me to tell that from here. If so, the chute would have to be very narrow. Less than ten centimeters.”

  “Then it looks like death by being crushed.”

  “You might have a chance, Eve. The curtain can push me to the end of the hall, but I don’t think it can deform my body.”

  “So I am going to spend the remaining years of my life in a gap with a width of 80 centimeters.”

  “120 centimeters, if I stand sideways.”

  “Very funny, Marchenko.”

  For a while there is silence. Eve is letting her thoughts wander. She is surprised about not feeling panic. Shouldn’t I be afraid of death? She remembers her long journey. She had been close to death several times. So perhaps she was getting used to it to some extent.

  She is startled when something taps her on the left shoulder. She turns to the left, but there is nobody there.

  “Marchenko, you’re such an idiot.” The robot had silently come up right behind her. He is standing to her right. Adam sometimes teased her by tapping on her shoulder like this. Then she slaps her hand against her forehead.

  “Marchenko, the corridor.” She sees how the big robot smacks one of his steel arms against this head.

  “Of course, the corridor,” he says.

  “Let’s count to three and run.”

  “Wait, Eve, you don’t know how fast the wall will be moving. I definitely can run faster than you, particularly in the dark. I will hold the egg, and you will have all the time in the world to walk ahead to the corridor. Let me know once you are safe, and I will come running.”

  Eve does not like this, but she knows Marchenko’s suggestion makes sense. Once again he puts himself in danger for her. How often has he already saved Adam or herself? She hopes his plan works out.

  “Okay, I am going now,” she says. This isn’t the moment for farewells. Marchenko will meet her in the corridor. Touching the wall with her right hand, she moves quickly in the direction where they found the corridor. She is relieved to find it is still there. Everything is going as planned.

  “I am safe,” she communicates to him via radio.

  “Okay, I am going to let the curtain slide now.”

  Eve hears footsteps from afar. The helmet radio remains silent. She can feel a scraping sensation transmitted via the floor. That must be the curtain, which is now cleaning the hall.

  “Damn, too fast,” Marchenko says. “I am going to stop the egg.” There is silence for three seconds. “Not a chance, the mechanism is too strong,” he says. He seems to be completely calm.

  Eve hears a dull knocking sound. Then she realizes it is her own heart. The patter of steps is getting faster, then it is mixed with a squeak. The scraping noise comes closer and becomes so loud she can no longer hear the pattering sound. Eve retreats a few steps into the corridor and shines her flashlight into the entrance. She notices mud seeping in, which apparently is being pushed forward by the curtain.

  She sees an iron hand appear briefly at the right side of the portal and recognizes the grasping part of Marchenko’s third arm, which is located on his back. He must be trying to hold on, but then the hand disappears, while a dark shadow zooms by the entrance with enormous speed. Mud splatters in her direction. Then the eerie scraping sound fades away. A squeal, a heavy thud, and now it is as quiet as before.

  “Marchenko?”

  She receives no answer. She did not expect anything else, but she still calls out his name three more times. Then the realization hits her. She feels as if it were climbing her sleeve and she could watch it. Now it crawls across her chest. Breathing becomes difficult. It enters the side of her neck and follows blood vessels into the brain, where it manifests itself as a stabbing pain.

  Eve slowly sinks down against the wall of the corridor. Here the mud reaches the top of her boots, but she does not care. She knows she is alone.

  Darkness rises in front of her eyes. This is more than the absence of light. Eve notices that she is sliding into unconsciousness. She is swimming through the waves of a black sea. Pain appears when she reaches the surface. Marchenko is dead. Adam is dead. She is alone. Then she goes under. The water surrounds her. She feels a salty taste on her lips. The pain dissolves. She would like to sink to the bottom, be buried in the soft sand, and finally stop breathing and thinking. But then the next wave comes and lifts her up mercilessly, into the pain and into life, and she finally understands why there is no difference between those two things. Most of all she realizes she lacks free will. The ocean won’t let her sink into the depths. She has to withstand the pain, again and again. She has to live.

  A growling sound wakes Eve three hours later. She flinches. She must have actually slept. And besides that, all of her body’s vital functions are still working. Her stomach complained because she is hungry. She stands up and almost falls back down. Her right leg has become numb.

  She takes off her backpack and uses her flashlight to check its contents. Luckily, Marchenko put some food in there for her. If she rations it carefully, she might feed herself for three or four days. The air down here is so humid she should certainly be able to extract drinking water from it. This leaves her a few weeks before she is going to starve.

  This realization does not shock her. Quite the opposite, it feels like relief. Now she knows she won’t have to hold out forever down here, all by herself. Her time will be over at some point. Eternity would have been frightening, while death isn’t. There is a big bubble in her mind, and she must not touch it. It has to do with Marchenko leaving her, and with Adam. But if she leaves this sensitive bubble alone, if she does not poke it, she will be fine. She even feels her spirit of adventure reviving.

  The curtain, which until now had blocked any further advance, is gone. At least for the moment. Does the cleaning mechanism have a kind of reset function? She should hurry before the curtain returns to its old position. It is still quiet out there, and the only sound she hears i
s her own growling stomach.

  Eve decides food will have to wait. First she has to get out of the corridor, then go to the left, and past the spot where the curtain used to be. She aims the flashlight forward. The beam is getting weaker. That could turn into a problem soon. Only Marchenko would be able to recharge the battery. No, she must not think of him. She only has to find a light switch, then the problem is solved.

  She walks ahead slowly. A little bit of the mud has flowed back into the hall. She turns toward the left. After three meters it already gets noticeably drier. The curtain has fulfilled its purpose. Now the air also seems to be slightly warmer. Had she and Marchenko started some kind of process? Or was the air on the other side simply warmer, and now it is flowing to her side?

  Eve keeps shining her light at the wall next to herself. She follows the luminescent stripe. Its end is her destination. She walks and walks, and suddenly she is there. This is where she had found the egg. Had it been a mistake to move it? No, they had no choice. They simply acted as human beings would, even though this drastically shortened their lives. Oh well, humans are not made for infinity.

  Eve keeps on walking. The hall is gradually changing. The wall next to her recedes and the room is getting wider. She shines her light upward. Even the ceiling is much higher here. She now notices there is no mud on the floor, even though the curtain did not sweep through this area.

  Her flashlight blinks twice and then shuts itself off. Eve stands in darkness. She should be experiencing fear now, but she isn’t. She wonders what to do with the flashlight. It could be used as a striking tool or a weapon. Eve has to laugh at this idea. Then she drops the useless flashlight. The echo of its clinking sound tells her that the hall she is in must be very large.

  She just plain stands there, while her eyes attempt to adapt to the darkness. She has never stood so long in the dark with her eyes open. What else should I do? Eve waits for something to happen. First she sees sparkly flashes in her visual perception. Could that be a side effect of being cut off from all optical-sense inputs? Is her brain starting to create its own images?

  Eve does not know how much time has passed when a dark red glow slowly emerges from the blackness. It is still far away, but it gradually approaches. The contrasts become more defined, then weaker, and then once again defined. It seems as if her brain is busy calibrating this new perception and integrating it into her view of the world. Her brain appears to integrate this dark red glow, just as it would connect the source of a sound with a change in the field of view of her eyes. It is not a true red—she perceives the color red as bright, but this one is dark. In fact, almost a shade of black.

  Eve starts to suspect what she is perceiving here, but she still cannot believe it. She does not dare give it a name—which would have to be ‘infrared’—but the heat she sees at the end of the hall lures her on, nevertheless. She marches toward it and then adjusts the strap of her backpack. As she looks at her extended hand, there is something out there in the ultimate blackness of the lightless hall that she never would have expected—a warm outline that moves whenever she flexes her muscles.

  A shiver runs down her spine. Why isn’t Marchenko here? She misses him. Could he perhaps have managed to save himself? She would like to tell him about it, that her genome just gave her a new gift.

  May 2, 19

  The gap between the wall and what we mistook for a curtain is exactly eight centimeters wide. So my estimate of ten centimeters was not far off. Unfortunately, the gap is also decreased by the ‘pleats’ sticking out. The metal front smashed me against the back wall at 120 kilometers per hour. Then the pleats cut my body into pieces. I was exceedingly lucky that large parts of my central computer and a significant section of my memory remained intact. My body is gone. While I cannot move or communicate, I can still think. And I have access to two-thirds of my nano-fabricators. I hope those little things will work a miracle and get me out of here.

  I cannot get back through the wall, where Eve must be somewhere. My escape route must be downward. Below me there is another room, probably some kind of garbage dump, because the cleaning mechanism squeezed all the mud there. I am looking forward to dropping down there, because there is likely no better place for me to stock up on my resources.

  First the fabricators will have to change my shape. I will turn into a reptile that can crawl through cracks eight centimeters wide. My body will have six legs and a flexible tail that I can use as a weapon. While I don’t think I will need a weapon down here, it is better to be safe than sorry. Besides, the tail will help me climb. After all, I have to move through the room below me and then somehow get back up. Eve needs me.

  However, my modifications will take time. During the past 24 hours my fabricators finished about half of the job. I follow each of the steps of their project, for the simple reason that it keeps me from imagining the dangers Eve might be in right now. She is all on her own. Her resources will barely last longer than two weeks. First she is going to run out of energy, so she will have to make her way blindly through a potentially hostile environment. It might have been better not to bring her into this extraterrestrial labyrinth. Yet I know quite well she would never have agreed to waiting on the surface.

  I have come up with something to keep me from being bored for the next 24 hours: All my extremities must be able to separate from my body. They will have their own sensors, so they can transmit their observations to me. That way I can explore areas not accessible to my whole body.

  The two lower extremities are already finished. I check them once more, then I drop them down. To keep with tradition I named them ISU 1 and ISU 2, after the Independent Sensor Units. Sure, I could have called them Foot 1 and Foot 2, but talking to my independently-acting feet would have seemed a bit schizophrenic to me.

  The ISUs move using the wriggling movements of terrestrial serpents. Once they reconnect to my body, they stiffen at the right spots and become real feet again. Right now, they take to exploring like a duck takes to water. Both of them report falling to the floor at the end of an unknown room without suffering any damage. I have them send me radar scans. The ISUs are close to the rear wall of a room that is only one and a half meters high. If I compare that to the height of stairs and passages, this area could not have been designed to house inhabitants.

  The fresh piles of mud that the cleaning process swept down there indicate this to be an in-between floor. However, the ground is uneven. ISU 1 shows me it contains ditches and pools. I launch a quick simulation. These might be canals carrying away refuse. Perhaps it is being processed down here. Further in front I detect structures that might be machines. Were they used for garbage processing? Suddenly I realize we have been wrong concerning the hall up here. Who would build such an aggressive cleaning device?

  Yet if the inhabitants grew food there, it would make sense. The ‘curtain’ then would be a harvester moving all the organic matter that would next be separated into usable components down here. It would be a very advanced form of agriculture, wasting not a single gram of biomass. I will never find out whether I am right, though, because the machinery down here seems to have been inactive for a very long time.

  I have the two ISUs crawl forward along opposite walls. Their task is to find paths leading upward. However, the paths obviously do not exist. After half an hour they have searched the entire room. I won’t find the way to Eve so easily. The ISUs marked two promising entrances to other floors below me, though. One of them is an air duct that must have drawn off waste air, judging from the shape of the rotors. The other might be a water pipe, by now dried out. The limestone deposits show water once flowed here. Both paths are large enough for my new body to squeeze through.

  Which one should I select? If I use the water pipe, I probably will reach all rooms connected to the water and wastewater system. I do not know how many rooms that would be, but certainly fewer than the number of rooms requiring air. Therefore, the decision is not difficult. Now I only have to wait until the
modification of my body is complete. Eve, I implore you, hang in there!

  May 2, 19

  Discovering a new sense seems to be exhausting. After Eve had found herself yawning repeatedly, she listened to what her body was trying to tell her. She lay down with her head on the backpack and slept for six and a half hours, as the screen of her universal device indicates. When Eve activates it in the dark, the glow almost blinds her. She immediately sets it to the lowest brightness in order to conserve energy. The device with its many functions is too valuable to waste as a mere flashlight.

  If Marchenko has somehow survived, this would offer the only method for him to contact her. When she turns the universal device around she sees a dark spot on the back, in the infrared spectrum. That must be the battery warming up.

  Eve sits down. Her butt hurts and she feels sweaty. Apparently it has become even warmer during the past few hours. The temperature is 12 degrees according to the universal device. That’s seven degrees warmer than yesterday. Does a day cycle exist in here, or did they trigger something by launching the cleaning process?

  She turns around. The place from which she came is still dark. Yet the opposite direction seems to have brightened. The heat must be coming from there. Eve opens the upper part of her suit and slips out of one of the shirts she has been layering, like the skins of an onion. She hopes it won’t get too warm. What would the inhabitants of this planet have liked? Eve laughs. She is thinking about a non-issue. No matter how cold or warm it is, she needs food and water to survive.

  One step after the other. It is difficult for her to get up. After sleeping on the hard ground all her joints and muscles protest against her cautious movements. That will disappear once she gets going. Eve turns around again. All of a sudden she feels the slight hope that Marchenko will surprise her by stepping out from the darkness, placing a hand on her shoulder, and saying, ‘Let’s go, the aliens are already waiting.’