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In the dead silence of my jumpsuit, the heavy rush of blood pumping…

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In my ears is deafening. The constant pounding of my pulse and rush of ragged breath inside my tight and claustrophobic helmet is awfully distracting. Strapped into the makeshift gel couch, I can feel my hands tremble in the zero gravity. I swear that my eyes are rolling in my head, and I’m so nauseous from the zero gravity vertigo. This is nothing like what we trained for. The deep pools we used back on earth just didn’t prepare me for how this would feel on the day. Every so often I switch between feeling as though I’m looking down on the ceiling from between my feet, to hanging there helplessly like a bat. Good thing our weapons are strapped to our legs via synthetic webbing. I’m so nervous I might twitch and pull the trigger if I had to hold it during transit. The trip so far hasn’t been too rough, the empty cargo container all sixteen of us are stuffed into is unpressurized, and without any form of life support, or entertainment. The only indication we have that time is passing, are the readouts on our wrists that monitor our oxygen use, and the build up of CO2 in the molecular scrubbers. The container is a dingy rusted orange, little more than a transport truck container from earth with a heavy duty tactical light welded in our field of view, affixed to the floor in front of our row of gel couches. Though it has been retro fit with explosive bolts to pop off the top and full front side. We’re all strapped into our make shift couches oriented towards the same wall. When the red light in the middle of the container goes out, the bolts will blow the container in two, and we unstrap and go to war.

The container we’re all strapped into is windowless, we are floating blindly. We are expecting to show up less than half a kilometer from Torus station, to be able to meet at our target. We’ve been given enough oxygen to make it through to our target, a few hours of a fire fight, then we’re on our own to make it to our evacuation points for extraction.  The rallying point is Margot’s Fever. Today, in front of the whole Sol system The Company will launch their new experimental star ship, and we’re about to fuck her up but good. Live on the evenings broadcast, for everyone to see. But we have to get to the coordinates first.

The inner system tug boats that we high-jacked are built to maneuver these cargo crates around with ease. For some reason, the depot where they were stationed wasn’t guarded at all. We staked our whole mission on gaining access to more than two dozen of them at once. Our knowledge of them is weak at best. The minds behind the operation didn’t share many details about them with us. That operational intel went to the drone operators alone. We can travel with them, we just have no control over them from inside the containers. An entirely separate compartmentalized team is running that show from the drone bay they stormed yesterday, down somewhere in Arizona. We have no idea if they still hold the controls, or if we’re being sent off to die unknowingly. We are counting on them to get us within range. We’ve been running this whole trip on our self contained environmental rigs and we have to complete our mission and get to the rendezvous point before we asphyxiate. Hard on the nerves, to say the least. Every so often I look down at the read outs on my wrist control units. Monitoring the oxygen levels and CO2 present in my rig. The whole trip is supposed to take us at least forty hours, and we have fifty two hours of oxygen. Things are tight, and we are all extremely tense. This is our first real mission out. Four fire teams made up of four people. We’re all vying for the same objectives in mind. Redundancies in case we catch heavy fire, or get caught out on our way in. We aren’t exactly tech savvy, but we’ve gathered enough C4, and other various explosives and weapons that we think we can absolutely total Margot’s Fever and make ourselves known in the system as people not to fuck with.

The static of the mic hisses. “Somethings fucky here guys, my oxygen tanks are reading only eight hours left.” Says a muffled voice, can’t tell if it’s from my fire team, or another group in a separate cargo container. “Well ride it out, then switch to your reserve when you get down below one hour, just don’t…” The words come tumbling out of my mouth without me realizing it. “Ok, I’ve switched over, What! – Now I only have three hours left, what the Fuck!” He starts to scream into his head set, the mechanical whine from the feedback is ear splitting. Trying to calmly talk over him I answer. “As I was about to finish, DON’T switch over until you are below one hour because the reserve tanks are greatly reduced in capacity.” I finish, slightly flustered. “You fucking asshole, you’ve fucked me. I’m going to die before we even reach the target. Holy fuck, switch it back, switch it back. Help me!” The panic in his voice is palpable. “That’s just it.” I say. “You can’t switch it back. All of our equipment is designed to be scuttled after use, no traces, remember. Surprise, attack, then vanish into thin air. That’s what the leaders trained us to do. Calm down, remember your training. Take small shallow breaths and you’ll just have to jettison your materiel for the mission to your fire team commander and bolt for the rendezvous point. Now stay off the fucking mics people. We need absolute radio silence.” without a hesitation I cut the feed from outside my own suit. I can’t be listening to someone have a panic attack mere hours before the greatest moment of my life. Listening to a fellow team mate slowly die while strapped to a gel couch will not do much for morale, and it’ll just put a damper on our mission.

Playing through my mind are all the ways this thing could go south on us, in a heartbeat. The tug boat drone pilots could get caught, and we get jettisoned towards the sun, to either starve to death or asphyxiate. They could be infiltrated and crash land us into the side of an asteroid or the station. Deliver us entirely strapped down directly to The Company security forces on the station. The bolts could fail to blow and we get caught stranded in our tin cans. They blow too hard and we get pulverized before we accomplish anything. The bolts could blow without enough force to remove the front and top plates, and they shift in space to crush us with their heavy mass, and inertia. Margot’s Fever could see us on their sensor array and melt us to slag with their thrusters. Our jury rigged suits and weapons could totally fail us and kill us all before we even get within a thousand miles of the station. A laundry list of terrible, horrible, awful things could happen. Which doesn’t include the all out fire fight we’re expecting to engage in as a show of separatist force. With no windows, and no way of knowing if everything has gone off the rails, we just have to lie in wait. Pray that we’re on the right path, and that our glorious sacrifices will be met with great gifts in our next lives.

In the vastness of space, a series of black containers race towards their targets tucked underneath the unmanned tug boat drones favoured by corporations other than The Company. The pressure and strain of the bobbing and weaving has the occupants deeply rattled. The pull of thrust has them pinned deep into the backs of their gel couches. The pressure upon their chests is so great they can hardly breath let alone talk. Their old jury rigged suits don’t have the pressurized seals that help to keep the blood up in their heads. Many have vomited inside their helmets. The near constant jostling has broken bones, and rattled skulls hard enough to afflict multiple concussions. The jumpsuits are a much older style, and not the tactical sort now in use by The Company security forces. They have been provided with no radiation shielding, and zero armor plating. This gaggle of separatist insurgents are deeply unaware of how they are being manipulated and are staged to be used as canon fodder. The deep rumble of the maneuvering thrusters causes their limbs to grow numb over time. The constant pinging of micro meteorites off of the containers starts to develop into a series of portholes where the action outside can be seen. Small pin holes become massive deep dents, which tear open to reveal the empty blackness of the void beyond. In several containers the torn open shell shards shear off to impale those unfortunate enough to be in the direct flight path of the pieces. Several insurgents are shredded by the barrage of space junk left floating out around the shipping lanes that surrounds the Torus Station. Barely visible at this distance is the Torus station itself, and the myriad service vehicles and exterior traffic that surrounds it. The tug boat drones are so much slower than The Company shuttles, that it’ll be close to a full day before they are within range of the station to blow their explosive safety bolts and release the hyped up, separatist martyrs inside. Not a single one of them will make it.

 

PART XX

The porch door opens with a gentle squeal…

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Masked in part by the large crowd of gathered children playing road hockey in the street right out front of the house. The shadows are slowly growing long along the front yard. Birds are chirping, and a subtle wind is rustling the leaves of the two large maple trees obscuring the view of the street from the porch. Stepping out of the house onto the wooden deck, she carries a glass of red wine, a cold beer in her manicured hands, and a box of crackers under one arm. Seated in a wicker chair, her husband is engrossed in the game going on with the children. “What’s the score?” She asks. “I have no idea, but you just missed an epic collision. More of a pile-on really. The girls are watching the ball and their sticks instead of where they are running. Going to have quite the knot on their heads tomorrow. Ha.” He says it nonchalantly, we’ve always given the girls the space to play, and ultimately hurt themselves with the pride of knowledge gained in the disaster. Reaching over his shoulder he takes the proffered beer. Sitting down gingerly, her glass held in her finger tips so as to not spill she pulls up the matching worn white wicker chair. The cushions are well weathered, and covered in maple keys and pollen. She’ll have to dust off her bum when she heads inside later. “Cracker? – no. Suit yourself.” The children are running about, it is semi organized chaos. Children strip the ball from teammates, kids run into one another. Tired kids fall over on the curb and wrestle on the manicured lawns. “So, can we talk about this now – or?” The question left to hang in the hot humid air between them. “Yeah, I guess so. Not like the girls will be able to hear us from here. Look at those muppets, it’s pure melee combat out there! Keep your head up! Look around you! See who’s open.” He shouts in a sudden lively burst. The girls, red faced, continue to battle it out on the street vying for the ball. The neighbourhood kids are all in a giant tangle of limbs and hockey sticks. “So, what’s the deal then. What do her teachers say?” He blurts out the question. Angst writ large across his creased forehead, his greying hair cut short at the temples, with a longer mop on top. “That’s just it, they love her. Say she’s just lovely, a real helper, a good listener, and she’s one of the better students academically.” She says it with a huge rush of outward breath, as though deflating with the sentiment. “Well – fuck. So we get the asshole at night, everyone else gets a lovely child. That’s just perfect.” He says it with a hint of a hysterical laugh underneath. “According to what I’ve read, it means they’re just really comfortable at home with us. They feel our unconditional love, and can drop the goody goody act and be more natural. Or so some child psychiatrists said. I don’t know.” Swishing her red wine around the glass, she looks down the front lawn to the two menacing, but beautiful daughters playing hockey, for keeps. “Good thing they’re cute. I could just strangle those two some times.” “Eh? You fucking think! You saw me, last summer trying to teach her her letters and numbers. Like pulling her god damned teeth out of her head. What a pain in the ass. Then she gets tired at night, cuddles up next me and says she loves me. I melt. Adorable. I love her so much, but what an asshole.” The last part is said in unison. A common refrain among the two parents. “Ok, girls. Ten minutes then you gotta come in to wash up for dinner, ok!” More of a statement than a question. The girls bark back in answer. “Was that a yes?” She asks. “Fuck if I know. They’re still growing, so we must be doing something right. It’s tacos tonight, so I don’t foresee a huge fight to get the youngest one to eat.” Standing up, he dusts off his beige cargo shorts, slips on his berks, and wanders down to the curb. His white plain t-shirt almost amber in the waning sun.The late afternoon sky is a lovely rich blue. Squirrels can be heard chattering in the large fir tree beside the driveway.

“There are – certain harsh truths one has to come up against…

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Before they can truly learn what it means to be an adult. Although, we may find some individuals who believe that they have this whole thing down pat. That just isn’t true. However, you know, ignorance is bliss. Sometimes not knowing what it is you don’t know can be sort of freeing. The truth is, we’re all floating together on a rock, specks of carbon in a vast, unyielding and uncaring universe. Fairness, equality, equity… these things are not real. Much like time – memory, or love at first sight. Constructs we built that we choose to live in. The sun does not care. Clouds do not care. No one knows how this thing called life plays out. Existential dread is just the human body coming to terms with how loose a collection of things, and stuff, our lives are made from. We have fooled ourselves into believing in order, and goodness, and the basic underlying tenets of a civil society. But you pull out one stitch, and more often than not the whole thing crumbles.” The sky in the park is vast, and open. The velvety blackness dotted with hundreds of thousands of stars. From their position, lying in the grass upon a gentle rolling hill, the slight breeze sends ripples through the tall grasses surrounding them. The evening is cool, but not cold. The soft call of crickets can be heard in the distance across the wide, and sprawling park. Fire flies have gathered in the low spots between the hill and the plateau where the soccer fields are. Puffs of smoke can be seen weaving lazy trails on the breeze above the teens heads. For the neighbours who back onto the park, the heavy sent of marijuana, and the carried sound of voices is common place. “You know what, Gina… I have to disagree with you on that. I… I think. Gah!” A hearty cough, harsh enough to bring tears to her eyes. “Oh man, I think I just swallowed a bug!” Coughing fit. Scurried fingers scraping at a tongue. “What – what were we even talking about again? I lost track.” Says the younger of the two prone girls, laying head first down the hill, while watching the stars between their feet. “Can you feel the world spinning right now. I think I can feel the world spinning right now. How awesome is that, eh?” “Dude, now that you say it, I kinda do.” “That’s, like… fucked up and shit.” From down the street, laughter can be heard. The lone street light in the park flickers, but never actually manages to come on. Clouds form to cover the moon low in the night sky.

“Ugh, good god, was that you?”

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She says sitting up from her lounged position on the soft brown leather couch. Her face ashen, with just a tinge of green around the edges. “Of course not.” I laugh. “It’s the damn dog. You know your mother feeds him raw hamburger all the time.” Getting up from the couch quickly, the stench wafting through the air between them. To avoid a second breaths worth of horrific stink, I bounce over to the fridge to grab a cold drink. The door jingles as the jars inside clink together with the motion. “Jesus, Dog! that’s rotten! You foul little beastie.” Waving both arms about, moving foul jetties of air about the adjoining kitchen. It’s enough to make the nostrils sting, and your eyes water. “Babe – do you need a refill on your drink while I’m up?” Peeling her eyes from her novel, she waves off the question with a limp flap of her hand. “No, I’m good. I have a glass of water over here that I haven’t touched yet, from earlier.” The hour is late, the hall lights are off and only a few sparse beams from headlights can be seen playing down the walls of the living room. The trailing red fading off the tiles in the kitchen as the cars pull down the street. The house is small but cozy, settled on the corner of an intersection. Outside the moon is large overhead, and the street lights have been on for awhile. The sounds of kids playing in the street has long since stopped. Called in for dinner by harried mothers and rushed fathers. Now the muffled shouts of teenagers takes it’s place. It’s a Tuesday night, and our show is about to come on. With a soft whimper, the dog fidgets and shakes as though chasing prey in his sleep. A soft hiss, a subtle wag of a tail, and another wave of the dogs gut rot permeates the couch and its occupants. Suburban bliss at its finest.

The official report on the events surrounding the launch of Margot’s Fever.

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Official Document_Mission Briefing for The Company_Designation: CLASSIFIED: RE | Margot’s Fever. ORD NO. 200076317 – FAA

After the events during the launch of Margot’s Fever and it’s alleged subsequent ten year absence [Captain’s Psych evaluation attached in Appendix Sec. 29] we have determined that there was merely an unknown error type during the ships jump to safety after the initial destruction of the observation decks and the shearing off of the starboard thruster housing. The following excerpts are from the various in person interrogations The Company investigators conducted on behalf of the Torus station security council, joint chiefs and the entire board of directors.

Lt. Jenji Tashimoto: Engineering

“I’m not denying anything, sir. It’s only that the events didn’t unfold exactly like that sir. Yes sir. I understand I’m under oath. All I’m saying is, is that those reports you are quoting aren’t one hundred percent accurate. That is all I am saying. I am not calling you a liar. No, No I’m not. Listen ok, I was there alright. Look at my fucking biometrics ok, just fucking read them. We’ve all aged ten years… Ok. It wasn’t mass hysteria, it wasn’t a hoax, we blew the leaders of the [REDACTED] out the god damned air locks, ok. We fucking ate a full two thirds of the [REDACTED] because there was no way we could have known how long the jump using the [REDACTED] engines would take. the math was off… I’m telling you the truth! Just look at the biometrics data…, let go of me… No don’t you dare put that shit in my veins…”

Although some of the stories vary a little bit, the call to check the biometrics data is a popular refrain among the two hundred souls who reappeared after the failed jump by Margot’s Fever. Lt. Tashimoto came very highly recommended for his position in engineering. Although he now seems agitated and to suffer from a severe case of PTSD. His manner was confrontational, and we were forced on more than eleven occasions to subdue him with Thorazine, and later on, Fentanyl derivatives. He was adamant about the time span too. Although the on station sensors only registered their disappearance over the course of less than one half second.

Col. James O’Brien: Medical

“The captain is a good man. Given the circumstances, and the data sets we had he made a judgment call. I know how that goes. You’re looking for a scapegoat, a way to tie this up with a clean little bow, and hang it around his god damned neck. Listen… I didn’t agree with it, but his assessment of the situation was sound. But have you not checked the [REDACTED] scans, we’re all ten fucking years [REDACTED]. Many of those who survived are showing serious signs of malnourishment. That doesn’t happen over a half a second trip, or if you skip your fucking breakfast. He told you. He told you outright that he did not want to captain that ship, and you sent him anyway. No, he didn’t show signs of being suicidal, or of a predisposition towards murderous rage. He was a hard nose captain, who ran a tight ship and could get things done. It was a traumatic event, no wonder he’s showing signs of psychosis. We had a mutiny to deal with. Jesus fucking Christ guys, aren’t you listening to me. We ATE members of the crew! We ate friends, colleagues, mentors, everyone who couldn’t cut it over the [REDACTED] gap, those who fought to turn around and jump back, when we thought we’d [REDACTED]…

The remaining medical staff from Margot’s Fever all parrot the same thing, there was a mutiny, they had to kill the leaders of the challenge group, who wanted to turn around and come home. Many of them junior members of the crew. Those who didn’t realize they were traveling trillions of miles in an instant with no hope of returning home to the same time frame they left. Relativity has eluded these select few. Though none lived to return in order to give us there side of the mutiny. we only have the resources provided to us by The Company, regarding personal notes, video logs and such to go in in making our recommendations.

Lt. Juniper Brash: Navigation

“He told us that we’d gone into the sixth dimension. That we never traveled forwards at all, we just sort of dissolved out of our reality, or existence or what have you, and wound up some billions of years in the future as the universe itself was ending. We saw the last handful of stars before they too winked out. Just empty blackness. Ten years of looking at nothing. No light beyond our own ship board fixtures. No stimulus, nothing on the sensor arrays, nowhere to navigate to or from. He told us, he… he told us that the ships AI [Refer to Captain’s Psych Eval*] told him, after ten years of compiling data, or counting one’s and zero’s as he was want to say, that it was finally time to jump back to where we thought the earth would be. Listen I am telling you, that under no uncertain terms, this ship does not have an AI on board. The only items that you could even possible say had any sort of intelligence are the hull repair drones, and a tiny fraction of the cleaning bots. But their programming only helps them to not get stuck under doors, or tables, and how to recognize damage to the hull’s shielding and environmental protection. It’s just insane. He told us he was talking to a grey metal box full of pink goo kept in a storage room on the engineering decks, and it straight up talked to him, via the ships intercom. That’s fucking nuts, the guy is in-fucking-sane. Sir.”

We have reason to believe that we’ve got enough anecdotal eye witness accounts of the Captain, to place him under protective custody and have him removed to a soft location out beyond Charon. The penal colony there won’t recognize him, and he can undergo the therapy he requires to live a long and prosperous life. Other such similar recommendations are being discussed for all other surviving members of Margot’s Fever crew. Those that confessed to murdering and eating the rest of the crew may be quietly euthanized in transit. And disposed of during course corrections. No physical evidence shall be made available to anyone. Discretion is advised. Code level : Zulu Alpha Prometheus.

It has come down from the top brass that any and all data pertaining to the event is to be purged, or moved off sight to our non disclosed silent operations out beyond UB313. However the security guys have requested data on the Fabric of Reality Engine. They want the data sets from any operations system wide diagnostics that may have been run during transit, and the flight plan, the navigational data. Basically everything about the ship, except data regarding the crew, or their personal logs. Although any entries originating from the bridge, engineering decks, or the sensor arrays will be transferred to them as well.

Official Document_Mission Briefing for The Company_Designation: CLASSIFIED: RE | Margot’s Fever. ORD NO. 200076318 – FAA_Continued

…How can there be this much data in the black boxes. They must have been corrupted. There are millions of terabytes of information in here. The sensors and antenna array data is off the fucking charts. They are recording Gamma bursts from detonating neutron stars for fuck’s sake… The coordinates are bonkers… The data is so complex, it’s not even relevant to three, four or even five dimensions. I think they went to the sixth fucking dimension… I believe that they managed to time travel. Or shift, no phase is a better term, they phased back just milliseconds before they left. The time loop, theorys regarding fate and free will, the theoretics on this will make someone an absolute fortune… It’ll take us decades to cover all the data here. Then we’ll have to parse it all for errors, corruption in the data, or sensor malfunctions… Whatever happened here, it was not what the simulations and math predicted… Glad it didn’t really. If it had, the entire solar system would have compressed down into a black hole and killed all eight billion of us, once they kicked off those experimental engines…

Black Sight: UB313 Research Base

From the limited amount of data given to us, we think that by all accounts the engines worked, just not how we had originally planned. We think what happened was that the trip was not instantaneous, at least not how we humans perceive it. Even light takes years to travel vast distances. From the incomplete data sets made available to us we believe that they got spooked in the blankness of transit, and that they panicked. That would explain some of the blankness in the sensor data. Perhaps the excess of gamma radiation was shielding stars from the ships view. They then made the jump back so quickly that they damn near landed on themselves as they were just about to jump out. We haven’t worked out the temporal science yet. The math guys are trying to work it out now as there is talk of phasing or resolving back into our time space [sic.]. Once the off sight guys review the data, they think they can figure it out fairly quickly. It was a less than one half second jump, so there won’t be too much extraneous data to parse. We have been given no data regarding the crew of the ship, so we have no new information or insight to give there. We would kill for the opportunity to interrogate even just a handful of the two thousand members of crew. We suggest that you commandeer Margot’s fever, send it out to us here, and let us test drive the engines for further insight.

Official Document_Mission Briefing for The Company_Designation: CLASSIFIED: RE | Margot’s Fever. ORD NO. 200076689 – FAA_Continued

Absolutely not. The ship has been decommissioned, and the program jettisoned from the university archives, and all knowledge therein has been purged, in unofficial terms.

Torus Station : Two years after the events of Margot’s Fever.

Inside the media screening suite, sits the HR director Ms. Taylor. She is surrounded by members of the security council, joint chiefs of staff and the full board of directors. The room is quite cramped with all those orange jumpsuits, and their attendant staff. The room smells of rich cologne, Bourbon and some cigar smoke. The walls are painted a mixture of dark green, yellow, red and a rich burgundy. Ms. Taylor has to be conscious of where she stands, otherwise she might fade into the scenery behind her. Her crisp, tailored jumpsuit, a deep burgundy, with Green, Yellow, Red, and Brown arm bands is standing at the head of the table ready to lead the group through vetting The Company’s Official re-enactment of the events that will be released to the masses. “Thank you for joining us here today ladies and gentlemen.” A sweeping arm wave, a gesture of welcoming and of a collaborative tone. Ms. Taylor looks to be about twenty years of age, though she is far older than that. The counterparts in the room are all in their seventies, and are too far gone for the rejuvenation treatments she frequents. She caught that train right on time. The lights in the room go dim, and the movie flashes up on screen.

“So what do you think?” announces the most junior member of the board of directors. Looking around the room Ms Taylor pipes up. “I think that this fictional recounting of those events is a travesty, a total miscarriage of justice. Like a prolapsed anus, that script is both painful and messy. It skips over so much, and portrays that captain as a loon right from the get go. If I know my people, and I know them well, a good portion will hate this. Hate. It. But for the masses, it’s perfect.” with a clap of her hands, the room breaks up and everyone filters out and back to their living quarters.

The rebuild has been tough for everyone over the last two years. The last thing HR Director Taylor wants is to fuel the conspiracies, and set some growing agitation alight. She would have preferred that they answer a few of the tougher questions surrounding the events, and the disappearance of the crew, but she didn’t produce this film, and it’s not her place to edit it. Just vet it with an eye towards morale, and the new normal aboard the torus station. Her inability to know more chafes at her neck. Perhaps a visit down to the Sanitation department might provide some much needed answers. Seeing as how she has had them under her purview for more than two years now, a visit down below might actually be in order. Calling up a display inside the media suite, in the dim lights, she waits while the pinging noise from her wrist biometrics chimes softly in the empty room.

 

PART XVI

When they told me I had been selected for the maiden voyage of…

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Margot’s Fever I told them no thank you. When they asked me why I would turn down the opportunity to be a part of an historic crew going to the edges of the known universe in search of missing elements from our shared human past, I told them I was petrified of the ship, and the potential to be lost to both time and physical space. Too many unknowns, too many variables to weigh and calculate. It couldn’t be done. I thought better of it, but I told them flat out that the fact we could warp space time, and the fabric of our reality scared me to death. Left me in a state of paralysis that could potentially doom the ship. The empty dull faces staring back at me in the board of directors chamber said those were perfect answers, and they saw no reason that I should not captain the ship out to the edge of oblivion with a full crew compliment of two thousand souls. I wept. Then I threw up. I thought about murder, I thought about suicide. I thought about walking through the nearest airlock with no suit on and embracing a heartless cruel death. Instead I shipped out. Margot’s Fever would become a monument to hubris and human folly. And the weight of it all would rest firmly atop my shoulders to grind my soul to dust. And it all began the evening of the ships launch event.

“Alright helmsman let’s pull about on the starboard side and ignite the in system ion engines. Bathe those media bastards in brilliant blue light!” Seated in my captain’s chair at the center of the bridge, I am surrounded by scores of officers, dutifully buried in their tasks. Noses pressed to screens, tablets and work stations alike. Everyone wants to make The Company happy, and putting on this dog and pony show to hype up the mission goes a long way to accomplishing that. Great video feeds and network coverage can boost The Company on more fronts than they’d ever let us in on. Not just morale, but a moral victory for humanity. To finally be able to send man to the furthest reaches of the eternal abyss and live to tell the tale. What a thrill, or so they thought. Those desk jockeys never did anything real beyond count the zeros in The Company cheque book. Keep in black, we got your back. In the red, you best come back dead. “Pulling about starboard side, captain. Ignition in three… two… one… firing all three engines, we are lit sir.” The helmsman is an androgynous Ceresian individual of moderate height, with an undercut and long violet hair on top. Competent. But no ability for banter. The role of captain is very isolating when your subordinates don’t have the confidence for exuberant banter. Where’s my XO, the commanding officer can really give us all shit right when you need it the most. “Ok, now ease off, and let’s float for fifteen kilometers then we should get the go ahead from transportation for us to make our way out of the system before firing off those Fabric of Reality engines.” affectionately known as FOR E’s, like four ease. Never want to be within one hundred au’s of any habitable system when you kick those fuckers off. They run on something like antimatter, would wipe out everything in the system and create a super massive black hole in its place. More of a devastating weapon than a mode of transport. And to think we have nineteen year old technicians trained on its maintenance like it’s just any old engine. Oh, to be young and stupid. So my I’ll placed regard for technology and personal skill. Some shit just wasn’t meant to be bottled up and used at the whim of mankind.

Wee-ooh, wee-ooh, wah wah wah… warning bells are sounding, proximity alerts are buzzing, hull breach klaxons are blaring. Margot’s Fever is starting to list dangerously toward the Torus station. “Navigation, how far out are we… engineering, status report on the hull damage, are we breached? Medical, are we showing many casualties? Sound off!”

“We’re only point five of a kilometer from the station, we’re falling back along the line. Somethings hit us. Whatever it was, it’s massive. The thrusters aren’t responding. I can’t get the ship to course correct.” The navigator is a pale, bald woman who is only about ninety pounds and four feet tall. She looks puzzled and bewildered at the same time. “Engineering here sir. We have major malfunctions all across the board. Hull breaches, engine failures, and our sensors are getting peppered by biologicals. Jesus, I think those are bodies. Christ all mighty, the Torus is coming apart at the seams…” “ok medical, I’ll assume you’re not in a state to collect any possible survivors from deep space?” “No life signs sir. We’ve got enough problems from within the ship sir. Whole decks have lost atmosphere, suffered catastrophic decompression in the XO’s crew compartments. I’ll get back to you sir.” A second violent shake pushes Margot’s Fever right up against the outer torus of the space station. In the dark recesses behind the moon, the glow of the sun adds a beautiful halo around the torn and rended edges of the outer ring sections. Bursts of flame, and geysers of escaping oxygen can be seen. Bodies, like a hail of bullets are sucked out of the station by the hundreds. Beyond the destruction the only thing visible are the exhaust blooms from other ships that are breaking their acceleration towards the dying station. “We can’t take much more of this abuse. What is our hull integrity like security?” By now everyone is shouting over the alarms, alerts, buzzers and klaxons. It is a cacophonous mess inside the bridge. From behind me a deep voice booms. “Hull integrity at fifty four percent and dropping sir. We need to get out of here now.”

Inside the luxurious suite where HR director Catherine Taylor lives, a live cast is showing the horrific deaths, in gruesome detail of two hundred of the most rich and famous members of the torus station. The dead camera men floating out in the void with the gigantic listing ship Margot’s Fever in frame. Gas and sparks and bits of shrapnel are jettisoning off the massive interstellar ships hull. Save for the timer blinking on the media screen, the room is empty and has been untouched for hours.

“Good evening Catherine, I didn’t think we’d see you back in the med bay for another treatment so soon.” The doctor, dressed from head to toe in blue, is the only person on board the torus station with the cahones to call her by her birth name and not by her hard earned title. “Isn’t tonight the big launch event? What I would give for a chance to dress up and mingle on the observation decks. God, what a sight that must be. I bet the hors d’oeuvres must be spectacular.” “Oh, you have no idea. Succulent culinary delights, to be certain. But with two new unions under my purview I’m exhausted. I can’t even bring myself to watch it. I have it set to record. I’ll skim the feed later on, I’m sure.” “All right then Catherine!strip down and we’ll get you sorted out ok. Do you need me to initiate it for you, or can you handle it now, by yourself?” Without waiting for a response the doctor strides across the brilliantly lit room to her office, a small alcove tucked against the far wall. There are several others just like it scattered about the octagonal med bay. “No, please, do it for me. Bitch.” Catherine steps lightly on the cold metal floor and hops up into the medical pod. Pulling the heavy door closed over the tube, the inner screen jumps to life. The biometrics scan immediately, and a cursor and prompt appear to flash before her eyes. Running through the checklist she decides to set the rejuvenation protocol to the three hour full tissue and fiber recalibration setting. More staff under her means she can take the resources appropriate to her station. With this expanded role, she is now, unofficially in charge of some fifty seven percent of all staff aboard the Torus station. She out ranks every other senior member of the board of directors. With a smirk on her face she triggers the program count down. “This never gets old.” She says out loud, it echoes within the small chamber. Over the med pod pa system the clock counts down. “Rejuvenation protocol four set to commence in five… four… three… two… Ooooo-ooonnne….” with a sudden jolt, the coolant gel spurts out, as the med pod system jitters in the midst of the power grid overloading. A look of shock is frozen upon Catherine’s face, as the med bay goes black, and the doctor is drawn helplessly out into the far reaches of space.

“There’s no time. I don’t know who, or what the fuck those exhaust plooms are, punch the FOR E’s, and get us the fuck out of here, now!” “Fucking hell sir. No. I can’t authorize that. I refuse.” Shouts the helmsman. “You what? We’re all going to die out here. The station. It’s gone. Dead. Totally dark. In thirty seconds, those people.” I’m waving indistinctly at a general direction of what I can only assume are a collection of ships. “Killed about forty thousand people, and critically injured this vessel. We have to assume that they have, or will attack every base, rig, ship and station in this system. We must save ourselves. We were never going to make it back here to this time anyway. Fuck them. Punch it. NOW!” I am absolutely livid. In a panic, and can’t give any thought to anyone who isn’t under my direct supervision. “Forget it. I’ll do it my damn self.” Leaning over my console I punch in my seventeen letter override code, ease back the trigger and squeeze, the vision on screen before us goes entirely black.

Three years later, and I am still unable to come to terms with the choices I made while under extreme pressure. Duress, you might even say. Truth is, I wanted the helmsman to ignite the for ease so that I didn’t have to live with the knowledge that I doomed our home solar system. You can’t just extinguish eight billion human lives and go grab a cuppa with your pals after a long shift. For those who survived the initial attack, and weren’t on the bridge, it was life as per usual. The weird thing about the drive was there was no sudden acceleration or thrust to denote we had moved so far so quickly. We folded the fabric of space and popped out the other side. The computer is still attempting to triangulate where we ended up. Three years and it’s still counting ones and zeros to locate us. I jest, but I think we’d jumped through space and into pure nothingness. There are only a handful of stars in view here. And it is unsettling to say the least. The damage we suffered means we only have one chance to make a successful jump anywhere else in the universe. We have to guard that option with our very lives.

Five years out here and we’ve finally had to put a mutinous insurrection to rest. It cost us dearly. Nearly a full two thirds of the crew were either killed in the fight, or jettisoned off the craft for their part in it. Seems the theory of relativity didn’t occur to some members of staff until we had to float near dead in the water for a year. Some of the younger crew members were desperate to turn around and jump home. But you can’t travel thousands of trillions of miles instantly, and turn around and go that same distance back and expect to find ma and pa waiting at home for you. Life as we know it is gone. We have become a myth, a legend. And the unending darkness in isolation is killing us all. But oh! What a fanciful tomb.

“Captain’s journal, entry date, 3700 days since our initial jump. The ships ai has queried me for an update on our location. There are only a tenth of us left. We set out, ten years ago with a full crew compliment of two thousand souls. The last two hundred are a sad, feral bunch. Life is harsh here, among the living dead.” With a loud ping the ships computer alerts me it has an answer ready on our actual location. Turning from the terminal in the bowels of engineering I stumble over to the ships ai compartment. A tiny room, with a gray box full of pink goo in it. “Captain.” “Good evening Margot.” “I have determined our location, would you care to know more?” “Yes Margot, I would love to know where the fuck we are.” “We are currently less than one one hundred thousandth of one percent of an au from earth, in the sixth dimension. The reason there are so few stars here, is that we are witnessing the final stages of the universe. As the stars wink out, all becomes nothing, until it becomes something once more.” Falling to the floor, dumbfounded. Silence. “If we jump, do we stay put but leap dimensions?” I croak out the question to the ships ai. “Yes captain. Our initial projections for the engine were false. It is only a dimensional shift created, not forward movement.” “Do we… can we… can we go back to where we started?” “Why yes captain. Though I would not advise it. Our reappearance could be violent.” “But if there’s a chance we have to try!” Bolting to my feet, I race headlong through the ships corridors, charging toward the long unused bridge. Scanning my biometrics, retinas and finger prints, I breathe upon the service latch to release the biological locks I had put in place. Darting incoherently for my captain’s chair, I pull down the trigger on the for ease engine ignition override.

Resolving back into our regular third dimension with an incredible crash, not quite here, no longer there, we splice half in half out of reality atop of ourselves and the Torus station. Gutting the observation decks, and slicing off all thrusters on the starboard side of Margot’s Fever.

 

PART XV

I have a lot of respect for editors

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Now that I am face to face with nearly 30,000 words worth of short stories to review and correct. I do not have an exceptional grasp of high level grammar, syntax and the like. My writing style is pretty pulpy or plebeian. I did my university papers with the same layman’s appeal that I use today. I think I was accused of using purple prose once so I don’t try to get too flowery or “cerebral”. That’s not who I am. But I digress. Editing, and editors. You must have a fairly wide continuum in the quality of work you see. Although I couldn’t imagine there being too many commercially successful writers whom turn in work that requires too extensive a review. But I don’t know. I’m a graphic designer who also dabbles in sculpture, so my knowledge of the ins and outs of the world of paid writing is woefully underdeveloped. Looking at forty plus pages to go through a few times is more daunting to me than writing anything. Mind you, I write micro short stories, so if I keep it succinct I can probably write four hundred to one thousand words and be happier than a pig in shit. Creating something from nothing is simpler to me, than making sure what is written follows all the appropriate rules of the english language. Kudos to all you editors out there. And to any writer who takes on the task themselves. Brave souls, the lot of you.

“Do you have any idea how much these treatments are going to run The Company!”…

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Screams a ruffled angry man in a shabby orange jumpsuit. “Yes, I have some idea of the cost Gerald.” My tone is neutral, even if my voice comes across as laconic. “Well, why the fuck do you need it then. Do you know what this does to the bottom line?” He’s just out of frame of the view screen, probably pouring himself a stiff drink. Why do they all do that. Any sign of an obstacle and they turn into booze hounds. Pathetic. Can’t say that aloud, not yet. For now I have to keep Gerald placated. “Have you reviewed my sector’s safety numbers, our billable hours, success rate with the tradeschool and university. We have so many award winning roboticists we’ve jumped ahead in ships ai service bots by about two hundred years. Our service records are impeccable. But to maintain all of this i have to work twenty hours a day, every single day.” Walking around the mechanics boardroom with the massive windows that overlook the dock yards to emphasize my point. My conference table camera tracks my movements throughout the room. It’ll even zoom in for punctuation when i trigger the action on my palm control.”Ms. Taylor, we are all well aware of your exemplary achievements with your posting. The rich burgundy suit you favour makes a striking impression on all board members.” How humbling to hear Herald… grovel. “Ok, ok, the board of directors will approve the request for the continuation of the rejuvenation treatments. Provided the shop floor continues to out perform all other Company ship building facilities. Oh, one other minor thing. I know you have a lot on your plate right now…” oh shit, I can hear the trepidation in his voice, I need to cut the feed… cut the feed, cut the feed damn it. I can’t find the correct button on my palm control. Shutter speeds are fluttering, there’s an extreme zoom. “…but, we’re having a real tough time mediating the battle between the Janitorial union and the sanitation guys again. This is the sixth time they’ve butted heads over their overlap, and the infighting and politics is getting out of hand. We only just got them to settle on purple uniforms for the Janitors, and the Sani’ guys were are too happy to have – brown. Of course. Fucking children, the lot of them. I’ll have my under secretary depose you of what road block we are currently dealing with.” And in the blink of an eye, two more full departments have been dumped in my gods be damned lap. Going to have to add two new colour bands to my jumpsuit sleeves. And I thought the mechanics were a prickly bunch to deal with. Keeping the generalists, welders, hardware techs, programmers, fabricators and cnc guys all aligned was no small task. Add to that the training, and educational staff, and an onslaught of apprentices. Jesus, even the HR teams that run under my banner can be pedantic as fuck. Not the group to play scrabble with. Nerds. A loud ping sounds off, the paperwork for my next treatment has come through. Good old Gerald, kicked that order up the chain as fast as he could. Must mean this Janitor v. Sanitation hubbub is a real shit show. With a soft woosh the boardroom door opens onto a wide, well light corridor, replete with charming wall sconces, aromatic flowers in planters and various autonomous cleaning bots scrubbing each surface imaginable. Heading to the large corporate power lift, the attendant calls it down from storage, and operates the lift to the corresponding floor. Our lifts are pretty great they can travel laterally through the station too, so I can jump over the required sectors to the elite med bay.

“Ok Cathy, how do you feel now?” The med tech dressed in blue coveralls with a stethoscope hung loosely from her neck is standing at the foot of the medical pod. I feel like I was dunked in a clear gel soup for an hour, but in actuality it was about forty five minutes. Time is money. No reason to pussy foot around. Get us up and at ’em. “Typically I’m referred to as Senior Director Taylor, ma’am, or Ms. Taylor… Jennifer, you know that.” Chuckling to herself the medical technician turns away and says. “Yes, very well Cathy, you’re cleared to go back to your duties. We’ll see you again soon, no doubt.” With a flurry of papers rustling on the medical chart the doctor exits the room housing the med pod. Stepping out of it requires a slight hop. The room is cool, bordering on cold. Pulling on my soft body sock, and all of its appropriate catheters and safety seals is a tedious and slow going job. Then sealing myself inside the more rigid and rigorous outer shell. The rich burgundy really pops in the light down here. These earth like sun bulbs are amazing. Tying my wet hair into a tight ponytail it’s time to head back to my office block and get a hold of that under secretary. What was his name again? Don’t recall Gerald mentioning anyone specifically by name. Typical. No respect for their staff. It’s all transactional with these people. Probably why they all die rich and alone, of a heart attack, surrounded by things and stuff. Leaving no loved ones behind, or as is the case with Gerald, just a few wealthy disaffected kids and an alienated trophy spouse.

“For the last time guys, keep your voices down. Screaming isn’t going to help resolve this matter.” The union bosses for both the Janitorial guys and the Sanitation crews are red faced, sweaty and running dry at the mouth from their heated arguments. “Listen here fellas. I’ve had to spend the last three days combing forty thousand pages of documentation with my junior staff and I can’t find any record of you guys having divided up your tasks or sop’s. Now that you’ve come under the umbrella of The Company, you no longer retain the rights to dictate what, where, when or how, or even who gets to perform what tasks. You signed away those rights for those awesome colour coded uniforms and our involvement in your organization. No. No, you keep your mouths shut. I get that you’ve always had your own say, and had control. But those shifts are gone. Do I have your undivided attention now.” The room is silent, all bodies in the room, or seated at the conference table are stock still. “Now, as a matter of union dues, those all come to us to disburse. Schedules, vacation, benefits, workload, day to day activities will now be dictated to you. We OWN you now. So, first order of business. You will provide us with, in exacting detail, every single job description contained in your organization, their task requirements, educational needs, training parameters, pay structure, organizational structure, and any issues you encounter, no matter how small, that disrupts your ability to perform your duties. Should we find overlap, we’ll convene a task force, from both branches and we’ll sort it out as we come to it. That is all.” The shocked faces are quiet, dumbfounded by the enormity of what they had entered into. Stand up as one, and burst out into fits of laughter. Two men, twin brothers step around the far side of the board room table, putting themselves between me and the door. “Ms. Taylor, we have all that completed all ready. You see, we’re a tad sneaky. We listen to every conversation aboard this station. We came to suspect that you were the one to lead us. Our fights are imaginary. We simply made them up, to tire out the other directors, so they’d dump us on you. They don’t care. Those silly fucks always want to bury their noses in their own business and could care less about us janitors, and sanitation guys. But you!” They say it in unison, like they share one joint brain. It’s quite alarming to hear this speech in stereo. “You know your people. You have a reputation for getting shit done. Finding the needed resources, then getting. The. Fuck. Out. The. Way!” Punctuated by finger guns, claps and stomping feet from the rest of the room. Oh these guys are good. They played all the senior staff like fiddles with vacuous time sucking squabbles. “Well, gents I’m glad to be of service. But that trick only works once. Now if you’ll excuse me, we are about to launch the largest ever starship, Margot’s Fever, and I have a live cast to catch from my quarters. You have my direct line.” I can hear music playing, as the gathered team starts to pop bottles and dance in celebration. I leave feeling both relieved and shocked. How did they fool so many members of the board of directors. What did they mean about listening to every conversation. That tid bit might come in handy.

Down in the bowels of the station, the sanitation crews are hard at work, fixing, replacing, updating the hardware to all of the waste recyclers.  Although the brown uniforms were a joke, the brave men and women who work with medical and human waste are a tight knit bunch. The joke is that once you go brown, you swirl down and never get seen again. People who don’t work with feces just don’t get their particular brand of humor. The accommodations down here are vastly superior to anywhere else on board the station. Even the upper echelon don’t have rooms like these. No one bothers to check the specs when you deal with what’s flushed down the shitter.

 

PART XI

I can’t believe I’m sitting here, cowering in my room like a god damn child…

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I swear to god everytime I leave though, I can feel an extra set of eyes on me, watching, observing, lying in wait for me. I constantly get chills, and the tiny hairs on my neck stand on end. But I have never, once ever seen anyone out of place near me. Sitting on my tiny bed, staring at the darkly coloured door, it’s raised panels have scuffed paint, breaking the facade of what would be a wood panel, instead it’s a faux paint job, on an atmosphere rated door. The crew quarters for entertainment staff, or “talent”, as my manager Jimmy likes to refer to us as, is massive in comparison to the guys who work the dock yards out on the widest ring of the torus. Those guys sleep in glorified coffins, meant for one, with communal bathrooms, and leisure areas lit like an out of use subway platform. Hell they spend one hundred percent of their time not five hundred meters from where they work all day. You can see the individual berths and all the ships attendant staff from inside their sleeping chamber. Now my room, is about four meters wide, and a full two meters deep, with what looks like an inset bunkbed. But actually the bed is up top, there is a closet to one side from ceiling to floor, and a toilet, shower, sink combo unit on the other side. Below my bed is my crowded desk slash lounge. Littered with scripts, a media screen, a teleprompter and props I’m meant to learn to grow comfortable with. I can spin a six shooter like a son of a bitch. Years worth of side arms training, and all those tech guys on staff to vouch for me, but still not allowed to purchase a hand gun. The potential for calamity it much too high. Even the black uniformed guards all over the station only have access to stun weapons, like bean bags or rubber pellets. At least that is the official word down from the board of directors and all The Company literature available on the subject. But, I’m wasting time, again. Stalling, instead of walking across the sector to go meet with my producer regarding the next season of my show. We’ve finally gotten picked up for primetime. That means bigger budgets, and greater expectations for ratings. I kind of like the idea of staying a big fish in a little pond, but… can’t stop progress I suppose. “Buck up princess! Get that ass in gear.” My father’s old mantra. He was not one to mince words. A real rock you could count on to provide stability in an ever changing world. Standing up from the bed, I walk to the full length closet and pull on my green coveralls. “Ugh, this does nothing for me. Safety first!” Out here, in space, precautions and safety protocols take precedence over fashion. No exceptions, no exemptions. You learn that little quip the hard way. Well, unless you were born up here. But you’d have to overcome a whole slew of other issues if that was the case. I’m an actor, so I’ve allotted some of my prescription allowance to the use of an IUD, so pregnancy isn’t really a concern for me right now. A pregnant gun slinger doesn’t test well with the exec’s. After getting dressed and pulling my thick brown curls into a tight bun, I look back at the door, then to the clock on my desk. I really have to get moving if I don’t want to be late. Checking my map for the tenth time, I approach the door and set off.

There is a soft woosh as my biometrics unlatches the atmosphere rated door to my quarters. I’m really very fortunate, I live in a quiet block within the all green entertainment sector. Being a semi famous actor, I get newer accommodations in a well lit portion of the upper torus. We have more gravity here, with an increased spin. It isn’t exactly earth like, but we don’t float like the people lower down, or further out on the mechanical rings. We have planters full of real greenery, in wall lighting that adjusts to the time of day. With the shift change about to happen within the next hour, all common areas, like the main concourse i’m strolling towards will brighten up, as crew and staff rush to or from their shifts. Every eight hours, like clockwork, the station bustles to life. I’ve heard, whispers, rumors, stories even, unverified mind you, but stories still the same of people having their biometrics spoofed, or copied outright by shady characters during these peak rush periods. Hard not to take them seriously when you are caught up in the swell of moving bodies, as everyone is hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, in the hallways and power lifts. I try to move about the ship prior to these events, so as not to invite undue attention. Last thing I need is some crazy star stuck fan waiting naked for me in my bed, covered in mock rose petals. The thought sends a shiver down my spine. I glance over both of my shoulders. First the right, pause, walk several more steps, then glance over the left. Coast is clear. Not too many other people walking about at this time of shift. This sector is a living, breathing maze. If you haven’t planned where you are going in advance, or memorized the directions, you’ll end up at some random dead end, on god knows what level of the entertainment hub. Not many windows up here. At least, not until you go up to the observation decks. Two whole floors of the torus, wide open space where tourists and the media go during a new vessel launch. The freedom of movement up there is exhilarating. The inner portion even has this majestic hanging garden, full of vibrant coloured rhododendrons and lush ferns, and ground covering ivy. The smell is divine! Lost in thought I nearly miss my turn off the main concourse. Located several meters down the narrow corridor is this tiny little hole in the wall bistro. Seated at one of the only two tables available is Gary my producer, and Jimmy my manager. They’ve taken the liberty of ordering garlic bread-sticks, cheese curds in gravy and some garden green salads for the table. Carbs! , they must want to butter me up for something. Gary stands up, pulling out the third and final seat at our quaint little faux wood table. From the cool touch of the underside my guess is it’s a formica shell over a plate steel skeleton. Soon after sitting down our waiter drops off three glasses of pre poured red wine, in tall stem crystal glasses. This stuff must be expensive, as the gentleman swirl their glasses and sniff at the bouquet, a thin film coats the crystal goblet. Both men sip their drinks, and smile to me. Jimmy sits, arms wide and says “come on Ger’, we’ve been here twenty minutes all ready, catch up. This is so delicious, almost like a porter. Watch yourself though, it’s got some testical tickling kick to it. Feels like seventy proof, if its ten!” Jimmy, not a big fan with HR, tends to speak from his gut and not his head. Taking a bite of a fantastically greasy garlic bread-stick, I lift my glass to my lips. “Salute!” We all say it. Smiles all across the table.

I come to realize, later that I’m being held up by two sets of arms. Half dragged, half carried through the corridors towards the lift. Oh god, no. Not like this. I’m trying desperately to get my feet beneath me, find my bearings, but my vision is swimming and I think I’m going to vomit. I can feel upwards movement. We must be in one of the power lifts. Surely I could catch the eye of a passersby. With the urge to lie down and just drift off to sleep growing by the second, I try again to raise my head. It feels like I have a lead crown holding me down. Not a crown, someone’s hand is stopping me from looking at my surroundings. Panic is setting in. My heart rate is pumping through the roof. I don’t recall stepping off the lift, or even noticing the upward motion stopping. We are crossing what feels like a massive, empty room. I feel myself slowly being lowered down onto a full length bench. Smells and feels like real wood. The grain runs against the palm of my hands. My fingers are dancing in my field of view. I can feel the soft brush of fern leaves against my cheek. I can smell something like flower blossoms. The room is immense, yet dark. The only source of light is minimal, and it’s coming from inside the shrubbery. “Jesus Ger’, look at the state you’re in. Jimmy, help me prop her up. Yes, under her arm, no not there, that’s her tit!  Dickhead! Don’t laugh, I’m going to have to report that to HR. Do you realize how much paperwork is involved in that. Jesus man, she’s the star of our first ever primetime serial. Fuck me. Just, you know what. Keep your hands to yourself, and just stand over there, by the windows.” Gary is fuming, pointing towards the massive windows that cover the entire observation deck, from floor to ceiling. Only a handful of bulkheads are in place that could obscure the view of the void beyond. From the vantage point up here, you can see the lunar surface, earth, an endless field of stars and all of the traffic outside the station. A bustling scene of transports, crew moving vessels, supply boats and the guard shuttles. “Hey, Gerri, hon… how you feeling? You knocked that porter back a touch quickly. Had you eaten yet today?” Gary…, it’s Gary, he’s talking to me. “Heeey Gar-ry, I didn’t know you were a twin… what’s… what’s going up, down… on. What’s going on here! Huh, buddy!” I’m finally sitting up, I point a finger deep into his squishy chest. The whole station is spinning around at an alarming rate. Gary takes a step back, and leans down towards me. “Well Ger’, your pal Jimmy said you love to come up to the observation deck when The Company is going to launch a new boat. He was going to take you himself, but I took the liberty of tagging along. Well… tonights the night girl! For the first time ever, the interstellar vessel Margot’s Fever, is going to emerge from the ship yards and head out to the far reaches of known space. This is momentous! I apologize again, for Jimmy’s choice of drink. I shouldn’t have let Jimmy jostle you into chugging a sipping porter. But you’d downed the lot of it before I could chime in.” Gary appears sincerely distraught. “Look, this might be a hard sell, but media will be here shortly for the launch, and what better time to announce your show to the whole of humanity than at the Margot’s Fever launch event. I talked to legal, The Company is excited we’ll help hype up the launch and our show. Synergy Gerri, suitable partnerships.” Gary looks almost hot pink with the joy of his darling show going mainstream, onto the network. The profits for his investment will be handsome. His jolly pink visage is jiggling with unbridled joy.

Within fifteen minutes the observation deck is littered with news anchors, late night hosts, spokes people and cameramen of every shape and size. After a brief word from Gary, I take the stage to present a little speech passed down by legal. Jimmy offers a sheepish thumbs up from his place by the windows. The station rumbles, a deep ominous sound. Jaws drop, as the most enormous starship ever built slowly comes to life. The three massive engine nose cones shake and with an eye watering flash, light up to a neon blue that bathes everyone in cold, yet intense light. Dust and parts of the hulls environmental shielding falls away in a shower of particles, like snow. As slow as a mountain being formed the entire ship crawls across the station, the view of the passing hull is incredible. Visible are the data gathering arrays, sensors, antenna, and port holes. There are still hundreds of people completing the final touches on the exterior hull. A million tiny fireflies, welding rigs shooting sparks into the air. The vessel is trailing sparks like a comet. As the ship comes about, a puff of smoke, so delicate, like the breath from a child can be seen.

Klaxons blare, then immediately go silent. A rush of wind, like a full on tornado rips at the flesh of our faces as we are sucked out through the shattered glass of the observation deck. As we are torn bodily from the station, the last thing we see are sparks, muzzle flashes from black uniformed guards. But they are firing beyond us, out into the dark reaches of space.  In mere moments the gathered mass of two hundred people are exposed to the void. Hard vacuum approaches, so fast our helmets and respirators can’t deploy in time. Two hundred dead, all caught on camera, live cast for all humanity to see. A bad omen for Margot’s Fever.

 

PART X

“Good evening everyone, welcome to orientation!”

greatwallstudios3 Comments on “Good evening everyone, welcome to orientation!”

The lead instructor emphasizes her remarks with an all encompassing wave of her hands. Gathered around her are the newest three hundred people who are to travel from planetside up to the Torus station orbiting the moon. Many of the young adults gathered nearby have pensive, or outright terrified looks upon their faces. For most, this is their first experience with space travel, and the prospect of living in or near zero g for the next decade has worn some of their nerves to a frayed mess. The instructor, a Ms. Kim is about five feet tall, slim but fit. She is wearing a safety coverall that is orange in colour, which signifies her as being a director or board of directors member. Turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees she surveils the large welcoming room and all of its eager occupants. She is standing in the middle of the nervous crowd wearing a head set and a sub vocal mic strapped to her throat, so as to not shout when she speaks. “For many of you, the next forty hours as we travel to near moon orbit will be the first experience you have with actual space flight, being under thrust, eating and defecating in near zero g. So, in short… a major shock to the system. We had all of you undergo strict medical testing, so no one is going to die of natural causes! Yay!…” a pause for nervous laughter, of which there is precious little. Her voice reverberates off the painted undecorated cinder block walls. The hall is spartan in design, no pillars or knee walls to hide behind. “You’ve all passed your survival training and undergone some simulations, but fear not! The next seven to ten years will be some of the best you’ll ever have.” On the outer edges of the crowd more orange suited instructors are piling into the room, followed by red suited technicians wheeling in rack upon rack of cyan coloured safety suits. The meeting hall at the space port is starting to feel cramped with all the extra bodies, and suits and equipment. The air temperature is rising as the gathered crowd grows restless and afraid. “Our expected time of departure is four hours from now, so according to my watch, around oh six hundred. By then, you’ll all have showered, trimmed your nails, shaved your heads & bodies, voided your bowels and bladders, removed any extraneous jewelry, stripped down naked and put on the provided safety suits. We have a delicate balance of weight to account for when moving three hundred souls from earth side to outer space. No exceptions, zero religious exemptions permitted. I will now turn you over to our trusty lead technician Darnel, who will take you step by step on how your safety coveralls work, and the prep needed to get you into them safely. With that, my team will bid you adou.” In a sweep of theatrics, the orange colour coded team leaves the hall, departing down a long winding ramp located near the front of the hall, and heads to the ship located three kilometers away, down the supply corridor that’s one hundred meters below ground, and very heavily heat shielded. An extremely heavy set man dressed in a rich red set of coveralls steps out from behind a cluster of suits on a steel rack on large industrial rubber wheels. He is sweating under the anxious glare of three hundred, cold, tired and weary new recruits. Gathering himself, he straightens up and raises his arms to signal the crowd. “Thank you instructor Kim, hello all… I’m lead suit tech Darnel Smythe, and I will give you all a run down on some of the suit specifications, and why you need to prep your bodies accordingly for them to work properly in case of a sudden loss of atmosphere while in transit, or while on the station, in class, at work, on a mission, or just in general through ultimately unlucky circumstance. Ha. That was a mouthful.” An audible gasp is heard throughout the crowd. Wide eyes, and a couple of horrified wails can be heard among the gathered recruits. This is information they have been given numerous times over, via document, speech, and in the simulations themselves, but never so bluntly, or all at once like that. The reality of their choice to pursue life in space is hitting home like a lead weight to the belly. In space, death lies in wait behind every choice you make. “Right, so from what I understand the majority of you are all from earth. My manifest shows a few here from Mars and a couple from the station off Venus. Now you lot have traveled previously, and can pull off from the main group as you’ve been fitted for suits, and are still wearing them.” Shocked noises from the group, again. “Oh yes people, these suits are all that you’ll be wearing from here on out. They have an internal rigging we’ll go over later, but you will eat, sleep, work, study, bathe, exercise in these suits. Until, you earn a colour coded new one that corresponds to your vocation and training. Since you are all new, young and dumb. You will spend the entirety of your time in a suit. Can’t be having green horns and noob students dying on us just because a micrometror poked a hole in a hallway, or training facility.” The look on the gathered group is one of stunned incredulity. A very stout young man with blue hair and various facial piercings pipes up.”That can’t be right, I have all these expensive clothes that I bought especially for going to university on the torus. I can’t possibly be expected to dress exactly the same as everyone else. I just can’t!” Looking at the tech, the young man has his arms crossed over his chest, and his chin thrust outward. “Eh, sorry chico, you all wear it. The bags you dropped off at the front gates, all gone into lock up. All you get are what I’m about to give you. Now in order to get you to focus on the task at hand, I need everyone. Every. One. To strip naked, yes here, right now. Yup, peel down to what your mother’s gave ya! You are all going to walk single file through the showers, then you’ll be diverted to the void rooms, where a warm milky liquid will, well… void your innards. Then you’ll have laser hair removal, yup, you guessed it, all of it. Bam! Gone. Your nails will get trimmed down to the quick and then we’ll go over the suits, pack you in, then march you to your seats. I do apologize for how cold the water is. This will be the last full flow shower you’ll have for a very long time. I wish I could say the water is above fifty two degrees farenheit, but… it isn’t. Life in space is hard folks. You signed the waivers. Took the psych tests, completed simulations and a multitude of training sessions. The movies are great, but this is the real world. Oh, here we go, the doors will open and the clock is ticking people. Move, move, move!” The sea of red tech’s move down the line of naked recruits, helping them to form a single file. A huge set of steel double doors pull open to reveal a dark and cavernous hallway starkly lined with water spigots and jets of multi coloured fluids. Not mentioned in the documentation are the delousing treatments and the mild acid wash that’ll take two full layers of skin off, and aid in the laser hair removal. Cutting weight is difficult at the best of times, so strict measures to save every possible ounce have been enacted. On the floor, a conveyor belt stirs to life, mild gasps and hearty screams of shock as the ice cold streams of water are doused over the glut of nude bodies. A flashing yellow strobe kicks up in the hallway, as men and women and the young and old are diverted one direction or another. The muffled sound of gagging and vomiting can be heard through the echos of screaming and crying. The void process is harsh, and not limited to just bowels and bladder. Breakfast must be purged too. For the biological males, prostates get emptied, in a perfunctory manner. The milky medical cocktail liquid ingested is also used to dry up gastric juices and bile, so no one suffocates in their helmets during take off or during the forty hour trek to the moon. For some, prolonged exposure to near zero g will set off violent bouts of vertigo and nausea. In order to limit the transmission of any airborne illness among so many new recruits into what is essentially a closed ecosystem, drastic medical measures are undertaken. Drugs, needles, radiation baths, invasive biometric scans, the likes of which no one would willingly sign on for are done in secret while the recruits are voided. They’re helpless and weak. Totally disoriented. Sheep for the slaughter, as it were. Each one, though surrounded by hundreds of other people, are suffering in a desperate isolation of their own choosing. The truth is, the entire indoctrination process takes about twenty four hours total, not four, and the faces of the crowd will be hollow, teary eyed, and desperately weak when they are seated before the technician, medical staff, and his army of tailors. The processing has begun, it will be hours before Darnel need address the group again.

“Welcome recruits. Glad to see so many faces after your… ordeal. It isn’t pleasant, but it is necessary. Now, on to the fun stuff. You will be given your safety suits, or coveralls, shortly. They are a very pretty shade of cyan. That denotes to everyone else aboard any base, capsule, rig or what have you that you don’t know jack shit about living in space! That fact, quickly denoted, will save your life and theirs. Yes, there is a method to the madness. If and when you are somewhere that loses atmosphere, it happens real fucking quick, so you. Can’t. Talk. Colour coding is now your friend. It’s been drilled into you by many others, but you have to live it, to appreciate it’s simple yet awesome effectiveness.” Walking through the crowd of what looks like hung over freshman college students after a week long alcohol fueled binge session. Darnel looks over the neat formation of the gathered half conscious recruits. Each laid out on a mechanical surgical gurney,in equal lines, with equal spacing between them. The lead suit tech talks animatedly. Wild gesticulations, modulating his voice with precise changes to capture and maintain their waning attention. They’ve all been run through the ringer. A type of joint trauma most will likely never fully remember, as their bodies and brains will shut these memories out, for the sake of their sanity. Dark halls, screams, purging both fluids and matter, drugs and the bitter cold knowledge of true isolation. A harsh reality, one that is a secret hidden in plain sight. “Ok kids, the suits go onto bare skin. That way you get the highest quality seal. It seals in numerous places, in case of a tear, or blow out, we can save the maximum quantity of your body in case of catastrophic failure. These bad boys seal at the ankle, calf, knee, thigh, waist, chest, neck, wrist, elbow, armpit.” Darnel is ticking off the locations on his fingers as he speaks. “There is an internal catheter system to expel and expunge bodily waste. Means you can work long hours in eva, and not have to try and hold it in. There is also a function for hooking up to the steam showers on the station, to bathe, and flush out dead skin cells and such. Your biometrics work through the suit too. The ability to get food, drugs, sleeping quarters, into and out of your class rooms, job placements, entertainment facilities all are tied to your own biometrics.” The mention of drugs, food and entertainment brings some life into their worn and weary eyes. Some faces have a haunted thousand yard stare, that begins to melt away with the following message. “This wasn’t on any program or documentation, but it’s a gift from The Company to all those stationed on the torus, and any rig, vessel that they have commissioned. You are all allotted a prescribed amount of recreational drugs, access to sex workers, education, job training, food and entertainment. Do. Not. Under any circumstance go to a private, non sanctioned vendor for either drugs or sex. Our system is heavily regulated, taxed and monitored for your safety. You can not OD, on our supply, and when you have shift hours, or class hours or some regulated function to perform, your biometrics will cancel out and nullify the effects of whatever it is you chose to use. But only If it is from The Company, or one of our chartered pharmaceutical vendors. If you’re brilliant, but socially awkward, the brothels in the green sector will take care of you. The healthcare, wages, hours of operation and peace of mind of our regulated sex workers are guarded heavily, so use them as needed, don’t go private. Your tax dollars are there to provide you with what you need and keep us all healthy. Enjoy yourselves…. so on that note, my team will come around shortly, and fit you into your suits, boots, gloves and test your auto deploy helmets and respirators. Just lay back and let us work our magic.” In the silence of three hundred exhausted newbies the experienced technicians set to work plying freshly scrubbed nude bodies into their spongy body socks with waste management system inserted and inflated, and coveralls on top. As each unit is inserted and inflated in bladders and bowels alike, for both the men and women, an occasional yelp, moan or cry can be heard among the group. Thousands of pairs of rubber gloves go into the recyclers, to be incinerated down to their constituent parts, and reassembled later as other synthetic latex products.

The three hundred bodies are wheeled down the subterranean hall way, on a long train of gurneys. Each body has been infused with a sturdy mixture of vitamins and minerals, so they will survive the next forty hour flight without food or water. The vast majority of cyan suited recruits are fast asleep, or are so over tired that they can only watch, wide eyed as they pass two and a half kilometers of cold yellow lighting, damp concrete, and the musty smell of a tightly contained, low ceilinged windowless, windless cavern that seems to stretch on into utter blackness in the distance. As the long stretch of lights comes to an end, and the gurneys travel the last five hundred meters in utter darkness, the smell of the launch vehicle hits the nose like a punch. The mix of fuel, and astringent cleaners, oil and detergents wafts over the space like a damp towel over the head. It clings to the nostrils, and burns the lungs and stings the eyes. At the base of the launch vessel, a massive elevator sits, large enough to load up thirty gurneys and the eight techs required to haul the recruits to their coffin sized berths. Slowly, the elevators move up and down, as the gurneys return collapsed, and empty, more recruits are loaded. Not long after an automated buggy interlinks with the collapsed gurneys and returns them to their resting spot, just outside of view of the welcoming grand hall. Hidden behind huge metal doors, stored just off a large empty hallway full of spigots and a conveyor belt floor.

“Goood morning freshmen, this is your captain speaking. I’m captain Hardy, flying with us today is my number two Ms. Casey Phillips. We are approximately twenty hours away from Torus station, which is both the station name, and the design. She’s ugly as fuck, but awesome in scale. Also your new home for the next seven to ten years. In case no one mentioned this, the station runs on continental shifts. That’s right folks, she’s a twenty four seven type of gal. Whether you are a worker, student or prostitute, you’ll all live in rotating eight hour shifts. Congratulations on making it this far, you are now allowed to move freely about the common areas of the ship. There is a viewing deck at both the forward and aft sections of this ship. If you are currently experiencing vertigo, or nausea please refrain from vomiting anywhere but in your immediate crew quarters, as they are designed for just such an occurence. The Company, always thinking.” With a loud click the pa system kicks back to the soothing soft jazz that had been slowly growing louder as more and more freshmen recruits regained consciousness after their ordeal during induction.

The personal crew quarters are more like pre fabricated, pale blue cloth paneled coffins, with a singular soft yellow light embedded in the ceiling, so as not to provide a surface you could cause any head trauma on. Inside the recruits are velcroed into a quilted padded blanket, to keep from bouncing off the padded coffin walls during transit. At the foot of the tiny room is a media screen set to stand by, with stock images of the launch vessel, the torus and flight crew fading in and out as a screen saver. The passengers are equal parts students, vocational apprentices, and support staff for the immense Torus station. What was once just a ship yard for The Company, has now expanded to be a system wide university of choice, tradesmen learning center, and hub of activity. The entertainment sector has ballooned from three levels to a bustling thirty. It now boasts television stations, several movie studios, theme parks and casinos. The work force in the mechanical sector alone is upwards of eight thousand souls. Capsules don’t just come here for repairs any more, they are designed, fabricated and manufactured by the score. Rivaling the designs and capabilities of anything produced by the old school earth bound teams from The Company HQ in Houston Texas. After the mark thirties were completed, the Daryl Bradley Design Shop decided that they’d show off some of their new tricks, and in secret, built, tested, and flew a newly fashioned Minotaur class starship for the first time ever. With an entirely new design for propulsion their starship was able to make a successful jaunt out passed Pluto and back in three weeks time. What had previously taken one hundred and eighteen weeks one way, was now only twenty one days. The cosmos were finally opening up. After catching wind of this momentous achievement The Company swiftly stepped in to purchase, then patent all aspects of the design. They pride themselves on being beyond competition.

The first mission would be to go as far out as they could get, ping any sensor, or antenna arrays they could find, and report back. In truth, someone very high up with The Company wants to find The Non Sequitur, and figure out what had gone wrong all those centuries ago. The greatest thing about the vaccum of space was how well it could preserve anything it came into contact with.

 

PART VIII