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“Congratulations Kelvin, you’ve failed in absolutely…

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Spectacular fashion”, chimes the uppity education bot sitting behind me in the science departments largest lab. The robust orange cube like unit was typically used to tutor grad students during their first rotations aboard a science vessel, but I had it dumb things down for me so that I could try to figure out what had happened to my ships crew. About a year ago while I was crawling between the inner and outer hull plates of this ship, all seven hundred members of the crew just up and died simultaneously. At some point during the fifty two hours I was under radio silence, something catastrophic happened. Something that was not readily apparent upon my return. I admit, I took to denial and burying my head in the sand for a while afterwards, but one evening while floating in the commissary with my eyes shut and a gale force wind was blowing in my face I had an epiphany. Now, I’m just a mid level technician. I do a bunch of general tasks associated with small engines, electrical and mill work. But my forte is that I don’t mind isolation, small confined spaces or hard laborious tasks. The ‘epiphany’, as such was that I needed to gain access to as many of the ships systems as I could using the integrated biological over rides. In a moment of clarity while gathering up the deceased, I decided that storing the dead crew in our largest airlock cargo hold might be useful. And after using the ai enhanced scrubbers and cleaners to drag the bodies to one such location, disrobe them and store the associated ID tags and key cards on the right wrists of each of the dead. I made a point of having officers, or as high up the chain of command for each department set aside at the head of each enormous pile of bodies. I had a plan. An unpleasant plan at that, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

It took quite some doing to gain entry to all of the other departments but a little bit of ingenuity and a whole lot of free time meant I could figure out how to do it. So with the help of a reciprocating saw and the right hands of every department head and their personal ID cards, I had a chance to figure out how everything turned to shit on me.

“Kelvin, I do not understand how you failed to account for so many variables when preparing the simulations and models. Your ineptitude should have disqualified you from serving on a science vessel.” Quips the EDU bot again, disrupting my deep thought. “Fuck you Ed. I’ve told you repeatedly, I’m not a part of the science team, I’m a mechanical technician, I maintain the ships closed systems between the double hulls. I’m more of a spelunker than anything else. And, by the way – fuck you.” I curse at the beaten up orange bot. It has been seated in front of me in the lab for the last three hours as I attempt to run simulations on what could kill several hundred people without leaving a mark on them. “Apologies Kelvin, I was built to tutor grad student level science majors, and their speech patterns and repeated turns of phrase are logged and reused according to my learning algorithms. I assure you, my ‘personality’ is purely unintentional.” The units lights blink and glow softly as if showing some kind of contrition. I think it’s more a case of me going slowly insane, rather than the EDU bot gaining sentience. “Well, thank you, I suppose. Do you know anything about what happened? Have any additional insights I can add to these simulations we’re running?” I ask it again, hoping for a better answer. “We both know that I am unable to do your homework and/or assignments for you Kelvin. That is cheating and outside my operational parameters.” With a hum and the whirl of internal fans, the EDU bot continues to sit still doing very little to help me figure things out. “Tell you what Ed, I’m going aft to grab a helping hand from one of the science officers, I’ll be back shortly and I’d just love it if you could put any new information we uncover into layman’s terms for me. Could you do that for me, huh?” Sitting across from one another at the lab table, ED visibly grows taller in response. “Oh, yes. That is something I can do. Shame you don’t know any of my hot button commands, we could do so much more if you knew them.” Chirps the bot, as it’s head and neck extends out of the cube base where the tank tracks are mounted. “Why are you telling me this now! We’ve been at this for months, with little to no new knowledge uncovered. Jesus. Maybe lead with that info next time!” Rising out of my chair, visibly angry, face going red, veins in my forehead and neck throbbing. “Apologies Kelvin, I assumed you knew. All EDU bots have an extensive list of hot button commands for analysis and a laundry list of practical science related tasks we are capable of performing.” Answers the bot quietly. “Ok well, riddle me this Ed. After I return from the aft airlock with a severed hand and appropriate ID card to over ride the login commands on the research decks work terminal, could you direct me to where I would find those commands. Like a document, book, binder or app located somewhere on this ship? Do you think you could do that for he, huh?” Looking at the bot from behind the desk, I walk out the door and head aft of the ship. From behind me I can hear Ed nearly shout in the affirmative.

Walking down the spotlessly clean halls with their brilliant white lights, it can be easy to imagine that on a vessel this size that you are merely out of view of others and not entirely alone. Thinking about the mysterious deaths of the crew has brought a new vigor to my daily life. Though morbid, it has allowed me to channel my efforts into something constructive. While I still fulfill my assigned duties, it seems as though without any additional wear and tear from a crew that I can go longer and longer between maintenance checks. I wired the duty logs to ping my wrist biometrics when something pops up. So now that I have down time I figured I’d try to have some answers ready when the mission ends in another two and a half years. Turning the corner at the last T junction on the ship I come face to face with a massive set of atmosphere rated titanium double doors. Looking at a hand written sign posted on the door I can find the helping hand I’m after without having to dally among the dead. Smell isn’t really an issue, neither is decay. I keep the airlock in vacuum ninety nine percent of the time. After I dehydrated the bodies, I used the coldness of space to flash freeze them all in place. Locating the senior science deck officer, I pressurize the airlock. With a loud clunk I can hear the air tanks pumping oxygen back into the cargo hold within. As the doors glide open, the dimness of the space within takes over. Near the front of the room is a small table with a reciprocating saw, a charging station, cloth bags and box of masks and goggles. Picking up the PPE and saw I wander down the aisles to find the appropriate body. Kneeling down beside her, I set about gathering up the helpful hand. Having done something similar to myself only a year or so ago, I feel a strange sort of kinship with the lifeless body. Picking up the hand I place it gently in the beige cloth bag and head back to my work station. Keeping everything orderly and in it’s place. With a soft goodbye I close the airlock doors and depressurize the cargo hold. With a soft hiss the air returns to the tanks and the rooms temperature drops to below freezing.

“Welcome back Kelvin. And who do we have here?” The bot crawls over to me at the lead science officers work station. I run her ID card through the input, and when the login prompt comes alive I place the severed right hand, with it’s manicured metallic flecked green nails on the biological scan pad. A brief pause, and then the screen jumps with streams of data, and unintelligible code. “Whoa, holy shit. Looks like we might be able to get some answers after all. So Ed, where do I go, and what do I need to do?” Standing beside the EDU bot at the terminal, a previously undisclosed view screen flips out of the bots belly, and a blue schematic and a list of directions appears. “You may take this tablet with you, go grab the command codes and the command key and we can go over the new directives step by step.” Looking down at the schematic i feel a sudden sense of dread and fear trickle down my spine. Oh fuck no, I do not want to go back there. Not now, not ever. Why did they have to keep the command keys down in the sanitation department. Stored right next door to the waste containment canisters and that mother fucking thresher unit. Yeah, the one that took my arm off at the fucking elbow. “God damn it.” I shout. Ed pulls back several paces. “Is there an issue Kelvin?” He nearly whispers the question to me, either that or my ears are ringing from shouting at the top of my lungs in the lab. I can’t even clearly recall just how it happened either. I know I was drinking, and thought I’d have an adventure down in the bowels of the ship. I came out of the service tunnels I had been exploring and entered into a cavernous room with these massive steel tanks, they extended upwards like sixty or seventy meters. The tops disappeared in the dimness of the rafters. I was looking up, and up and up at one of the largest canisters, and fell backwards into something sharp. And immediately knew I had fucked up. My jumpsuit got caught and these exposed gears pulled my arm into the mix and then jammed. I had to use a miniaturized saws all strapped to my harness to cut my arm free at the elbow. Screaming and shrieking along with the tool as it cut through bones, muscle and sinew. Then in a foul daze I crawled to the medical bay and holed up in one of the few pristine white medical pods with automated surgery technology. Carrying my own arm, or what was left of it with me in my teeth, after I somehow managed to pry it out of the gears. God, that was a waking nightmare. The thought of going back down there for this fucking key is really giving me cause to pause.

Sitting on my bunk staring blankly at the Jean-Luc Picard quote etched into the bulkhead over my doorway I breath in sharply, and exhale in a long slow whistle. Steeling myself for all of the feelings I fear might paralyze me as I venture down below decks to the sanitation department and the waste storage canisters. Dressed in my dirty red jumpsuit, I dress in my work gear. Adding my various harnesses, links, hooks and carabiners. No real need for them, but that crushing hug from the tight fitting gear makes me feel complete, and thus comfortable. Rising to stand, I kiss my finger tips and press the pads of my fingers to the roughly etched proverb. Hoping against hope that I will come back unscathed and still in one piece.

Walking the three kilometer stretch between my crew quarters and the sanitation decks below. I follow the winding path, that winds and rises and leads me along gangways, gantries, stair cases and finally a large service power lift. The tablet has been invaluable in getting me down below with the most straight forward route. After about thirty minutes I’m looking at the brown signage that denotes the sanitation sector. Looking around I am amazed at how spotlessly clean the waste reclamation processors are. You could eat off of every surface down here. Following the schematic I realize I am only ten meters from where I found calamity as a drunken fool. Still quite taken by the sheer size of everything down here. Across the hexagonal room, flanked by several waste containment canisters is the storage lock up. A beaten brown steel safe with no discernible locking mechanism. As I get within a meter of the unit the tablet chimes, a green light flashes suddenly, and the doors unlatch and pop open silently. I am met by a strong citrus scent, the stringent cleaning agents sting the inside of my nostrils. Inside hanging among some goggles, a couple of canvas aprons, rubber boots and several buckets of industrial cleaners is a sizable black and yellow hand held unit. It has the words BOTKEY stenciled in white spray painted on it. A matching icon on the tablet is rotating 360 degrees in an isometric view. Looking around, as though something or someone might burst out of a corner and toss me bodily into the thresher unit, I hesitantly grab a hold of the BOTKEY and gingerly close the doors. With an anticlimactic shrug, i turn back to the hallway to walk up to the science lab. Looking over my shoulder at the thresher unit as i pass, i can see a tiny streak of red down the front of a bent guard plate. With a laconic smirk i say aloud “Not today mother fucker.” And promptly slip on a tile transition and fall flat on my ass, bumping my tailbone in the process. “Ok, you got me! I’ll just get the fuck out of here now!” Punching the communicator at my wrist i call up Ed to let it know to meet me at the science officers terminal post haste.

“Thank you Kelvin, I am now able to interpret, analyze and utilize the data from the ships sensor arrays to answer your queries. What would you like to do first?” The timbre of Ed’s voice has dropped with the operational parameters being edited. The unit is standing taller than before, and several extra data screen and ports have materialized on the bots cubic chest cavity. Rubbing my sore tailbone I say “Ok, Ed. Well… if you could take a look over the sensor data and see if the cause for all of the crew deaths was either internal or external. That makes for a great start. Can you give me a sense of how much data you have to sift through?” Standing shoulder to shoulder with the EDU bot at the dimly lit terminal on the work station underneath massive video monitors. Ed is currently plugged in using a hard line direct into the ships data banks. With a deep boom Ed says “There is approximately six thousand teraflops of data from the external sensor arrays. It could take anywhere between seventy two weeks and three hundred weeks to find the pertinent data sub sets…” blurts the EDU bot unit. “Well… shit. What if you look at the data just before I logged the second crew death aboard this vessel?” I offer in rebuttal. “That would narrow things down quite considerably. Might I ask why only at the time of the second death logged?” “The first death aboard was my best friend Keith. The second death logged would be the first of the seven hundred crew that died all together. Thanks.” I say gruffly. Turning away to sniff back the worrisome threat of a tear. Not sure why I care so much about getting emotional around Ed the tutor bot. A brief pause, then “Kelvin, this ship experienced a catastrophic dose of GCR from a localized supernova. Traveling at a speed of C.99 the speed of light there was no warning possible and they all received many times the allowable Sieverts/Rems of cosmic radiation. How you managed to survive is beyond my ability to compute.” Ed disengages from the terminal and rolls back across the room to the well lit work tables. Standing there dumbfounded I follow behind him. Out of the dimness by the huge wall monitors showing massive streams of code and data, towards the low hanging spot lights, and the lighted table top surface. “Jesus. GCR huh? Damn. Microwaved their brains in a nanosecond. God damn.” A lone tear wells up and threatens to pull more out of my eye. Hanging on the surface of my eye like a ten tonne weight. With a snap of my fingers. “The bladder!, it was the water bladder. I had to contort myself to get around it, underneath it. Practically in it to fix a wiring issue under the bridge. I was hidden behind eighty thousand gallons of plain water. It protected me, by fluke. God damn.” With a beep and a blinking series of lights Ed does a few calculations and concurs with my hypothesis. Millions of miles from anywhere, the answer provides little comfort to me. “Hey Ed, I think I saw some psychiatric protocols in that menu that would allow us to chat without me having to ask any task related questions. You feel like a conversational upgrade or what?” With a series of blinks and beeps I have my answer.

PART TWO of The Company: The Chronicles of Kelvin

“Some jobs are hard no matter where you work…

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Like for instance take my job. I shovel stuff; rocks, dirt, faeces you name it. It’s hot and sweaty and not least of all it gets really dirty. Now I used to work landscaping back on earth, and I was a real model employee. Ten hours a day, inclement weather not withstanding, I’d be on a job site shoveling whatever my boss asked me too. Big heavy steel shovels, to tackle river rock, or top soil or straight up horse shit. I didn’t care. I’d turn up at seven am sharp, grab my trusty tool and fuck off down some massive hole and shovel. All gods be damned day long. I don’t love it, but it means I don’t have to talk to anyone, and I can listen to whatever I want while I work. I can move close to twenty five yards of regolith on an average day. Yeah, my hands and back don’t like me much. But it pays good. The boss man sends me cold drinks and a decent sandwich every couple of hours for my trouble. He doesn’t do that for everybody, just little old me.

So, as it turns out the union guys up on Torus station are taking on apprentices in the new year and my supervisor signed me up, unbeknownst to me. Well he captured some candid video of the big boss man singing my praises and attached it to my application. Turns out, boss man has a very powerful aunt in HR up on the Torus station. She snagged me out of a pile of fifteen thousand applicants. Now I’m headed to the moon, or some such to shovel shit for the sanitation union guys. I looked over the job offer, and holy shit does The Company pay out the nose for this sort of thing. Like a mother fucker. I’ll be swimming in cash or credits, slugs, dollars or ingots or whatever currency the station uses. I get private accommodations onboard the station too. Plus these brown coveralls, or a jumpsuit, or a body sock or some shit. I don’t know, I skimmed everything after the job description and the salary expectations. The packet that came in the mail also had a small leaflet regarding the orientation at the launch site, and that I’d have to undergo some psych evaluations, and run some safety simulations at an accredited testing location somewhere nearby here, in Arizona. I guess the big boss man likes me because I bitch while I work, and only to myself. With everything else it’s all yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. Smiles, a can do attitude and firm hand shakes all around. Get them while they’re hot! But I digress. Not much can be found regarding the orientation, just the location and a notice not to eat six hours prior. That’s kind of weird. I have an induction day scheduled several months from now, so in between shifts I have to go meet my company organized psychiatrist for screening tests and interviews. That’s going to suck the sweat off a hot horse’s balls. Also will have to log some hours in a zero g simulator. That could be interesting. Oh, the info packet says that the entertainment hub has grown from three decks to ten or more. I wonder what it’ll be like to cut a rug in space, but I’m day dreaming. “Hey, Stevo! – what’s with the shit eating grin? Here’s a sandwich, egg and cheese with mock bacon. You think you’ll have this pool floor flattened out by end of day today?” Says the big boss man. He’s over six foot six, and gotta be near to two hundred seventy pounds. He’s a looker, if you’re of that persuasion. I’m not, but you do you. I like tits, I’d do a lot of stupid shit for access to titties. Mm mm delicious. But the big boss man is named Roger Taylor, and his aunt is the illustrious Catherine Taylor, senior HR director aboard Torus station. She’s got quite the reputation, even down here on earth. “Yeah, yeah – no problem sir. I can have this all squared away for you by about six pm today.” He smiles down at me from up on the mound of dirt next to the newly excavated pool I’m standing ten feet down in. I’m of modest height, and weight. I’m not ugly, but I ain’t no looker neither, you know what I mean. I like to make music, and can shovel dirt like I was built by god to do so. The ladies aren’t so hot on the state of my hands, you know? calluses and manual labour and shit. I keep those finger nails clean and trimmed though, eh! Wink wink, nudge nudge. Coming from a lower class family as I do, I love to moonlight as a DJ, makes me feel loved, adored even. A real rush compared to digging ditches and working in enormous holes. I hope my less than stellar academic prowess won’t keep me from all that cool hard cash The Company has on offer. I’ve got five months to impress Ms. Taylor, and keep the big boss man happy so I don’t wind up homeless before that life boat ships out to space on Christmas Eve. Jesus, I hope they don’t want to go over my school transcripts, I passed by the skin of my teeth.

Those psych evals are super fucking strange, with word games and shit. Nosey bastards too, poking around in my personal life. Awful interested in my thirteen siblings, and my geriatric parents. No I don’t see them anymore. No I don’t care to “divulge” the reasons surrounding my departure from my family home. No I don’t care to refute any rumors of any sort. Fuck them and fuck you too. Hell, I told some of my best jokes and the lady never even chuckled. That doesn’t exactly bode well. Bitch.

Zero g simulations are the fucking shit! Man that stuff is fucking fun as hell. Bounce and float, use your arms to crawl. Being weightless is a real trip. Not a big fan of all the other folks puking their guts out though. Could do without that. Ha. Losers!

So the psychiatrist keeps asking me about how I feel about isolation, and “the void” or some shit. Who cares! Space mother fuckers! Like do I care about asphyxiation, or hard vacuum, or wearing a catheter, being alone for days on end. Can I handle being far below decks working with human waste. Why do I like shoveling so much. I do realize that I’ll have a much larger shovel and equal weight to move when in the sanitation department? Why manual labour jobs with no responsibility? Why no advancement in the eight years I worked for the big boss man? What are my coping mechanisms? Do I have any friends, a girlfriend, family connections of any sort. How will I cope with a vastly increased salary. So many god damned questions, my head hurts. I gotta go lay down.

So it looks as though I’ve been delayed, again. Not going to ship out for Christmas. The psychiatrist thinks I need more therapy or some shit. Turns out my humor tripped some red flags or they want more info on my background. God, don’t let this take my money! Oh, all that glorious money. I could afford to send most of my younger brothers and sisters to vocational school with all that dough. Get them out of that shit hole. There’s a reason I like to dig and shovel all alone in one hundred twenty degree heat. Pure heaven compared to my childhood. Ain’t nobody ever stubbed out a cigar on my balls when I’m running a fucking shovel in a pit.

I finally have a provisional offer to go up to work on the Torus. I just have to go through with induction and get my ass to the Torus station. That’s a cinch.

Well – fuck me. That was a process. They underplayed that spectacularly. I demanded they unstrap me from the gurney and I walked my ass that three kilometers to my coffin sized berth. You want to know why? Because fuck them, that’s why. Should have seen the medical technicians faces. That’s a look I’ll not soon forget. Lock that look into the ole spank bank for future reference.

“Welcome aboard the Torus station ladies and gentlemen.” Announces some HR flunky dressed head to toe in a bright yellow jumpsuit. A real Curious George looking goofball. The banana man and his troupe of minions is redirecting a sea of cyan blue jump suits, this way and that. Separating the students, from the security trainees, and apprentices from support staff. Finally after two hours in the massive receiving chamber, I’m the last one left floating against a bare wall. With a last glance the man in yellow looks through the room and pauses when he sees me. “Hello, can I help you? Mr…?” His soft lilting voice rising with the question. “Steve… erm… Stephen James Ortiz, sir. A new sanitation apprentice.” I say it quietly. No need to yell, he’s only inches from me at this point. “Oh. Well they know better than to bring you people in through the main gates. The service entrance is back down the hall, six flights down the stairwell, and where ever the fuck it is you guys conduct your business. Tell Terry that I don’t appreciate any browns up here on my flight deck. Fucking asshole. Shit shovellers in my reception hall. What the fuck. Wait until I tell everybody about this bullshit. Why you still here dickhead, go down into the bowels of the station with all the other half brained dipshits. Go on, fuck off then!” He makes as if you punch me. I stare at him, unmoved. Turning on my heel, I head for the stairwell located back down the hall. After a few minutes of float walking, gliding i come to a deep pit in the floor. A long deep dark corridor covered in netting that looks to go deep into the depths of the station. Taped one floor down is a simple note that says. “Normies stay away. Only the floaters are welcome here!” Nice – a shit joke, just what i was hoping for. What the hell have i done. As i head deeper down the shaft, a soft green light can be seen. As i pull myself, hand over hand towards the sixth floor of the sub basement i pull into a small anteroom with a round pressure door, equipped with a red circular wheel to open the seal. As it glides open soundlessly a flash of light temporarily blinds me. A loud whistle sounds, and I’m hit with the smell of astringent cleaners and sanitizer spray. The inner room is crowded with hundreds of brown uniformed workers and Curious George himself. “Surprise!” They shriek in well organized unison. Floating towards me banana man says. “Welcome aboard Stevo! Sorry for the harsh hazing, we play a trick on all newbies, we use you as a prop to maintain a certain level of distance between the upper deckers and us. Welcome to the best years of your life!” Turning to float beside me, facing the crowd, he takes my hand raising my arm like the champ in a boxing match. The group erupts into chants of Stevo! Stevo! Stevo! A grin begins to creep across my face. “Oh, you mother fuckers.” I half choke it out. Terry, the banana man, strips off his yellow costume to reveal his solid brown jumpsuit, and a union rep insignia on his chest. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you squared away and sorted out sharpish. You’ve got three days to acclimate, we’ll put you through our training programme, then you’ll be all set to do your designated service task. You’re going to be scraping down and shoveling shit in the huge containment tanks that are positioned under each sector. It’s lonely work, but it pays well. You’ll be trained on the respirator units we use, and will get your own magnetic levitating cart for tools and moving bagged waste materials between the enormous tanks and the recycler or incinerators. We have a party scheduled for tonight, as an ice breaker. I understand you moonlight as a DJ, if you’d care to share your music with us, we’d love to hear it!” Terry leads me to a gigantic lobby, with hallways leading off in every direction. “This is the dormitory, you can find your room by using your wrist communicator. It’ll key you into your rooms, and can dispense food from our commissary. You’ve got your own private bathroom, and you will get your actual uniform after the safety programme is completed. No exceptions, no exemptions!” With a quick hand shake, he leaves me to my own thoughts. The lobby is silent, well lit, with pristine gel couches arranged in a circle with a display in the center. There is so much room, I can’t believe my eyes. Tears well up on my face, and cluster on the bridge of my nose. I could get used to this.

Three bleary eyed days later my alarm buzzed at eleven pm. I had an hour to dress, eat and get over to sector two’s waste containment tank to meet my supervisor and start to learn the ropes. I was so anxious I ate on the trip, and good thing too, as sector two was a fair distance from the main dormitory I was lodged in. The huge Warren of tunnels, pipes, chambers, dials and vents was spotless, and repeated in a pattern every three hundred meters or so. Rounding a band I found Terry and a smaller woman, both dressed in brown standing beside a floating cart full of equipment. “Hey Stevo, glad to see you are as punctual as your references suggested. This is sector two’s smallest waste containment tank, and Jordie here will lead you through your hoops to get in and out alive, and accomplish your required tasks.” Terry was beaming, and cheerful. Hard not to be when everything is spotless and shining, and smells of lemons or berries. “I thought I had to undertake a safety programme or something?” I sputter. “Yeah, you do. But it’s on the job training here bud. You’re in the shit now, as it were. Ha! So listen close, don’t die, and Jordie will make a fully functional member of the team out of you in no time flat!” With that he left us alone, at the mouth of a huge airlock type chamber. The small red haired woman looked me over before she spoke. “They vet us types pretty good eh? Want people who don’t need to be babysat, and can do shit work with a grin on our face. Terry likes to find us underprivileged types and lift us out of poverty, if we’ve shown we got the goods. Out of the frying pan and into the potty. Ha!” The sudden burst of laughter seems to be a common affectation among Terry’s crew leaders. “So couple of tips. Always use your PE. It gets hot in there, but you worked in Arizona so the ninety five degrees won’t bother you much. Use the respirator at all times when in the airlock or inside the container. Never, ever remove it, the methane will gravely injure you. Not to mention the bacterial load inside these things. Yeesh. Wash your hands as often as you can. Your cart comes equipped with a fresh water recycler so you won’t run dry. We don’t shake hands much until out of our gear and showered. Elbow bumps if you must, but don’t touch anyone in uniform if you can help it. I’ll show you how to suit up, and in what order. I’ll test you on it as we go. I’ll leave a checklist you’ll want to memorize over time, but no harm if you use it forever more. I do. Any questions?” I nod that I’m ready to rock and roll.

After three hours, I’m left to scrape and shovel massive loads of shit. It’s hot, and this stuff gets heavy. But I’d much rather be here in a chemical toilet storage tank than back on earth that’s for damn sure. With sweat stinging my eyes, I use my magnetic boots to walk up the walls of the fifty meter tall tank, the fifteen meter diameter makes it seem like the most wide open space on the ship. I am amazed that this is a small tertiary tank. The big ones must be mental.

 

PART XXI

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

“I heard you the first time…

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Why don’t you fuck off Lou, huh. I’ve got an important message here, direct from The Company that Ms. Taylor wants me to analyze. So just piss off, I don’t have time for your shit today.” Todd is livid, but their playful game of cat and mouse usually plays out with a more fanciful fanfare. The tall mountain of a man named Lou side steps the door to the now abandoned C Suites block, and Todd scurries along inside. Down the main thoroughfare, passed a massive row of desks and a palatial lobby, big enough you could host multiple robot fights in here simultaneously. Turning at a t junction, Todd locates the security details hidden terminal. Tucked back behind a generic looking cabinet, in a non descript portion of the office block. The beige angular box boots up at the touch of an analog key. It always strikes Todd as crazy, just how old the tech is that The Company’s security forces are utilising. Punching in a few key strokes, the prompts for the intranet come up on screen. Clicking a short message into his wrist comms Catherine suddenly appears face to face with him. The new holographic interface is really something of a marvel. “Great, now load in the whole message, do a search for any extraneous code, or tags, or what have you that might be embedded in the message itself. These are crafty buggers, must have a secret message in there to pass along covert data.” Her face is a mottled red and blue, slightly pixelated in the rendering in three dimensional space. “No, not much showing up here.” Says Todd. “Hey, wait a second. There’s a broken link to an image here. The corporate logo looks corrupted. I’ll scan that for….oh woah, here we go…” in the blink of an eye a wall of text begins to spool on screen. Directives, missives, commands and appendices. “Good catch Todd. Those tags look ominous.” She half chuckles. “Yeah – I’d say so. They have you flagged as a target. Jesus, they have you listed for Euthanization. Looks like a strike team located on the station has the green light to terminate your contract. As it were.” Looking down her nose Cathy says, “These people and their fucking euphemisms. Grow a pair will yah!” With a laugh she waves him off. “Ok log out, and get back to my offices. Take care to not be seen exiting the offices. Say hello to Lou, you saucy minx.” The display winks out. Moments later the lithe body of Todd is seen slipping into the shadows of the corridors directly outside the C Suites.

“I don’t understand you. How. Are. You. Still. Alive. Gods damn it! You should have been dead more than one hundred times over. I’ve stabbed you, burned you, given you viral loads of vast quantities, blood borne illnesses, hypothermia, hyperthermia. Are you a fucking demon!” Dr. Jang is pacing the laboratory, under the brilliant lights, in view of the camera rigs. His slow decent into absolute frustration with the near lifeless lump that is Ravindar Rashida is bringing him to his wits end. Soft steps can be heard in the halls. In comes the lead medical officer in charge of Project Cerebus on UB313. A man of medium height and build. Plain in look. Would be nearly impossible to pin point him from a line up. Nothing to distinguish him from countless other white men his age. “What seems to irk you so Dr. Jang?” He nearly croons the loaded question. For he is always watching on the far end of the lab’s CCTV link. “You’ve gone over, and over, and over this man. Do you have the answers we seek? We’re under – direct – pressure to produce results. I did not personally engage in subterfuge, fuelling a separatist movement and various terrorist plots, just to get stumped by physiology, and losing my grasp on a several trillion dollar contract with The Company.” The man’s sing song voice belies the true raw nature of his anger and loathing. His greed has led him to do some truly awful things for the sake of progress and an enormous payout that would take generations of poor choices to spend in its entirety.

“I have it on good authority that the dispatch from The Company is a trap. A time wasting trap. Now, as far as we can tell all members of the security forces have fled the station, so no one is here to read and carry out their directives.” Says Ms. Taylor to her gathered junior staffers. All of them trusted members of her inner circle. The vast majority of people may have left the Torus, but her staff stayed on. Todd coming through the doors, his nose in a binder – again. “What do you know about a guy named Dr. Douglas Jang, and an independently wealthy figure known only by the moniker Jones.” Crossing the room, over to her desk, he lays a print out on the work station before her. Looking it over, her thumb on her lip. “Well, if I recall, Dr. Jang was disgraced about twenty years ago, and banned from practicing. Had a penchant for unnecessary surgery. Seems he was a part of an older religious movement that shunned Nano technology. Was in such a state of denial, it was nearly pathological.” Leaning back in her chair. Stretching her back. “I have no idea whom this Jones character is. Financier? Patron? Alias? Hard to say. With a name that generic it could be nearly impossible to find him.” After a brief pause, the room stirs back to life.

 

PART XIX

“What an insufferable lot of twats these people are…

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Wouldn’t you agree Todd?” Quips Ms. Taylor the current senior director of HR to her deputy minister Todd Gaines. He has worked under her for years. Come to learn a number of handy tricks when it comes to dealing with the geriatric portion of the board of directors, joint chiefs of staff and now the security council. Todd was a part of the diplomatic endeavor that brought the warring factions of janitors and sanitation departments to heel. He was also a part of a top secret delegation that went deep underground to learn many of the stations deepest, darkest and most highly guarded secrets. Didn’t hurt that he fell in love with and married both twins that run the waste management services aboard Torus station. “Not sure how I should answer that ma’am. More than a few are on their last legs, and a good shouting match, or a tough row might keel them over.” He hasn’t looked up from his binder. It’s full of today’s agenda, with all sorts of interesting tidbits regarding the goings on of many groups aboard the station. “I’m getting pinged by several junior staffers ma’am so we best head in and confront this mess head on. Give’em a jolt, perhaps shake some positions loose on the board? Just a thought.” Finally looking up, he smirks at me. Yes, we certainly think on similar wave lengths. But it won’t suit my needs today to have any of these old farts drop dead mid conference from an aneurysm. “You go in first Todd, and I’ll be in shortly. I just have a quick call to make to shore up some possible gaps in our gathered intelligence.” Without missing a beat, Todd is through the double doors to the enormous luxury suites where the upper echelon conducts their business these days. Plush seats, expensive booze, cigars and the like. The air scrubbers here work desperately to clear the air, and the cool rush of recycled air makes the hard fabric on Catherine’s burgundy jumpsuit flutter. She has no calls to make, her arguments are airtight. Her case is going to ruffle some feathers. Make a few old men blush. Also, the chance to make them wait for her, and fluster themselves by realizing they no longer carry the balance of power aboard the Torus is just too good a chance to pass up. She can hear the rising voices, and the murmur turns to a din as she waits beyond the atmosphere rated conference room doors. Standing with her back to the wall, the subtle texture of the door frame glides under her fingers. Cool to the touch. Once she can clearly make out the shouting from inside she opens the door to stride in confidently, head held high. “Good afternoon ladies and gents. It is with great sadness today that I called you here. We have much to discuss.” Looking around the large room, the board members are seated, the underlings placed around them evenly, the joint chiefs seated on the far side, and the three chairs set aside for the security council are empty. With a puzzled look Catherine looks to Todd who shakes his head. “Well where the fuck are they?” She snaps. “Well, no matter. The security council is on the agenda today, so makes sense they would be absent to provide any further clarification with what I am about to say.” Walking down the length of the table, each member in turn swiveling in their seats to maintain visual on her. “I have convened this urgent meeting to discuss a most troubling matter. Seems the newly formed, and entirely secretive security council has been up to no good. I have here with me now, here today, evidence that the security council has been transporting members of Torus station off site to conduct vile, inhumane experiments. Seems the sudden increase of in transit deaths has been a cover for creating an army of untold numbers of Guinea pigs for their medical black sites, located out in the far reaches of our solar system.” From a morbidly obese woman in the joint chiefs ranks, a shrill screech of a voice kicks up. “That’s utterly preposterous. No one could do that. Who would fund it. Who would follow orders to kidnap our own people.” She shrieks. “Exactly, Janice, my sentiments mirror your own.” Replies Cathy. Suddenly caught off guard by the calm reply, Janice shakes her head and mutters something only her junior staffers can hear. A few underlings start making calls from their wrist communicators. Another older gentleman says “These are some extraordinary accusations you are making senior director.” He spits out each word around his loose dentures. “Perhaps we should call down from the C Suites The Company administrator to peruse this so called evidence you’ve gathered. Who are your sources if I might be so bold – Cat?” The old man flails about, until his junior deputy rushes to his aid to lift him from his heavily cushioned seat. “No, you may not. Don’t bother calling the administrator, she’ll not answer.” Ms. Taylor hisses. “Ridiculous! Nonsense, we’re the board of directors. We run the day to day operations of this station. They’ll answer to us, to ME! I fucking well guarantee it!” Whirling in place, he turns to see all twenty of the gathered junior staffers all dialing, hanging up and recalling, again and again, to no avail. “No, I’m afraid The Company abandoned us some time ago, isn’t that right Todd? Our best guess is that the administrator and her staff ventured off the station in the weeks just after Margot’s Fever crashed and fizzled. Their offices look to have been abandoned for what? Todd you thought it was somewhere in the vicinity of twelve months?” The crowd looks beyond Cathy to the lithe man sat grinning with his nose in a gargantuan binder. “Best guess places it around twenty seven months ago, ma’am. They have been forwarding in coming calls to an emitter which cuts down the lag time for responses within the system. They could be anywhere within thirty au of us here and we would never know it.” A laugh from the gathered crowd. “Not possible! There is no way anyone in their right mind, that would walk away from those C Suite offices and living quarters. No, never. I don’t believe you.” With a chime, the media screen at the back of the room comes alive, to show a group of janitors and sanitation workers walking through a clearly abandoned office block. Papers are scattered on the floors, piles of ash gathered in puddles on file cabinets, scorched by fire. Frozen mugs of coffee, and half eaten bagels are on desk tops, the greenery has all overgrown their individual planters due to the automated feeders. The board room is taken over with a shocked hush. In unison, each of the geriatric members of the board say aloud. “They abandoned us. How did we not know. What is going on here?” Collapsing deep into their seats, the look of defeat etched on their pale, wrinkled faces. “That’s what I am here to tell you. If you have any insights, you voice them right here, right now. No point of interest is too small, too minute.” With a flash of colour the media screen starts to come alive with names, dates, redacted files that were surreptitiously pulled off of the security teams intranet.

The cells are buried in frigidly cold rock. The air is thick with mould and mildew. The stale air is damp and musty. The cells are little more than dog kennel sized holes in the rock walls with large heavy titanium bars for a door. The light is a sickly pale green. Somewhere the slow drip of water can be heard. The smell of human waste is strong from inside the cell that Ravindar Rashida is held inside. After the fifth day with no food and no water, he was able to shimmy about in the cell to get a look at his biometrics. The Nano bots he had recently upgraded to were working extraordinarily hard to keep him alive. Burning off sugars and fats at a drastically reduced rate, reclaiming water he still retained to maintain organ function at the minimum rates allowable to survive. From the logs the biometrics keep it shows he suffered ammonia poisoning, but was able to live through it. Though it burned his lungs and eyes, and left him weakened. But where the hell did that happen. He didn’t recognize the rock from Torus station. His GPS unit couldn’t place him anywhere in the mechanical sector of the station. From off in the darkness of the extensive corridor the soft footfalls of someone walking can be heard. As it draws closer, Ravindar realizes it isn’t one set but multiple. The soft mumble of a quiet conversation can just be made out. “Please… please I need some water. I don’t know where I am… how did I get here… please, you have to help me!” The panic and adrenaline in his voice startles the group as they pass by. “Well now, aren’t you the tenacious one. Yes, yes. Please come with me. I will set you straight.” The science officer lifts a tag on the outside of the cage door, a sardonic smile upon his face. “Mr. Ravindar Rashida. Yes. Let’s get you down to my office. Shall we?” The door latch is unhooked as the weakened man falls out onto the floor. He lands with a hard thud. Turning over on the floor the man stares into the empty eye sockets of the skeletal remains of a small child. It shrieks in pain with a long and pitiful muah!, as Ravindar scrambles to back away from the horribly emaciated figure packed inside a dark cell. She was not three feet below him this whole time. In the cages surrounding him are hundreds, no thousands of other mindless near dead people. Strong hands pull him up to his feet then he is place unceremoniously onto an ice cold gurney and wheeled off into the darkness. The medical officer and his underlings continue their conversations, as though nothing had happened.

“Let us begin with what we know. We believe that a black site has been created to house various secret operations. Our intelligence on what they are doing is sketchy at best. But we know the place is named UB313, and that is actually where it is too. They chose a dwarf planet out beyond Pluto. So no one is just going to stumble upon it. And we lack the resources to storm the place, even if we felt so inclined. We also know, because we have their official communications, that all surviving members of Margot’s Fever have been sequestered there. And we believe the stations missing people have been shipped there too. Lots of talk about squashing conspiracy theorists, quelling rebellious groups, and “euthanizing” troublesome persons in transit. I mean, Jesus. They have sop’s for gassing people in their berths for fuck’s sake.” Senior director Taylor is almost as red in the face as her burgundy jumpsuit. The room is full of shocked silence. Heads are held low, and not a single person is figeting. Near the back of the room a nondescript individual taps out a short code on her wrist communicator. The station emitter barks out a pulse and then goes dark.

“Hello Ravindar, glad you are finally awake. Well, well, well… look at you. Tell me, how do you feel?” The scientist has a glowing bed side manner, or so it would seem. “Please, water… so thirsty.” “Yes, yes, you’ve said so before. But I have a few questions for you my boy. How did you do it, huh? How did you manage to survive the ammonia leak we set off in your gel couch during transit? Hm… no, please do share.” With a smile the man pulls up a stool, a pad of paper and a pencil and waits patiently. “What?, huh… I don’t know – please you have to help me!” Ravindars pleas are a soft whistle, through his dry cracked lips. His eye lids begin to flutter heavily. “Oh no you don’t. No sense you go dying on me now. Nurse, please set him up with an iv, and let me know when he regains consciousness, we’ll start him on Project Cerebus after we gather a suitable baseline for him.” The short nurse moves in on the motionless body of Ravindar Rashida as he is strapped down to the metal gurney. The lab is fairly large, covered top to bottom in large white subway tiles, with a polished cement floor. Huge dust extraction units hang from each end of the room. There is a viewing gallery behind a mirrored glass panel near the top of the far wall. Several camera rigs with booms and stabilizers hang down from the ceiling. The scientist likes to capture every second of Project Cerebus on film for protocol review and quality control regarding his surgical precision. Written above the door in bold red letters are the words “Welcome to Hell.”

“Did no one other than myself and my immediate staff think it was strange that our security forces just spontaneously erupted up out of the ether over night? With access to ballistic weapons, armor and those teflon weave coveralls. Who designed, manufactured and brought on board all those arms and ammunition. The webbing, holsters and such? Do we have any leads on where it originated from? Anyone?” Head shakes all around the table. A somber mood pervades the conference hall. There is only standing room now, as each director brought in more and more junior staffers and advisors to help shed light on what was being uncovered by Ms. Taylor and her covert web of spies.

The lab is dimly lit as Ravindar awakes. His throat is dry, but he desperately needs to urinate. Beside his bed, a large bag is full of a dark orange brown liquid. The foul smell of urine lingers in his nostrils. The urge to itch his genitals rushes to him, until he realizes they have inserted a catheter for him. They must not realize he upgraded to Nano technology for use with his new wave biometrics unit. The lights click on and suddenly the room is too bright for Ravindar to see. Blinded by the pale white light, and the glare off the pristine white glass tile, he tries to bring his arms up to guard his face, only to find the end of the slop in his restraints. Beside him is a large media screen, a head set and some sort of clamps. “Good afternoon Ravindar. Glad you could be here with us. Nothing hard in store for you today my friend. Just some research for you to watch ok buddy.” With a quick jerk the gurney transforms from a bed to a chair. Stepping off the levers at the head of the gurney, the science officer twirls Ravindar around to face the screen. Pulling a leather strap from behind the head rest, he wraps it around his head. Looking at the monitors he decides to nudge the gurney just a hair closer to the monitors. “Ok, so big picture here. You have to be close enough that all you can see is the screen. Can’t have you staring at the bevels or off into the distance. You have to see everything on the monitors, ok? Also, incase you were hoping to sleep or shut those beautiful eyes, we’re going to keep your peepers wide open. I have numbing drops and a hyper hydrator for your pupils too. Great stuff. Great stuff. Now, you’re new here, so your first day with Project Cetebus is going to be a long one. I think we’ve trimmed this presentation down to ninety six hours. We’ll push some food through a feeding tube every six hours or so, but just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!” As the lights are dimmed the medical officer turns to leave. “Oop almost forgot the headphones. You need to hear this to truly appreciate the situation you find yourself in.” The monitor flickers to life, with a short countdown. The medical staffer vanishes from the room. In the darkness, Ravindar can see a young girl being wheeled into the lab on a gurney similar to his. Visions of hell unfold before him. The panicked screams reverberate off the hard surfaces throughout the subterranean portion of the UB313 medical wing. In his large office, the scientist turns from his CCTV showing a bucking and wrenching Ravindar, to turn on his stereo and listen to Holst’s the planets on near constant repeat.

With a tremble Ravindar crushes his eyes closed in an attempt to stop the horrific stream of visions burned into his retinas. A small man enters the room. “Good morning Ravindar. Do you understand what you are here for now? Do you have some idea of what we are attempting to do, for all of mankind?” The young man looks to be of japanese decent, with thinning jet black hair, a wide grin, and soft friendly blue eyes. “Wh.. wh.. what’s going to happen to me?” Ravindar exclaims. “Well you see. That parts up to you. If you help us figure something out, we can put you through different tests, until you either a.) Succumb to the testing, or b.) Solve our issue and get thrown at another issue, ad infinitum.” “But, wh… why, why though. What can we do. Why do this to us.” “For all mankind, you silly goose. We have to find a suitable way to get around Galactic Cosmic Radiation, surviving Solar Proton Events, finding if a miniaturized Magnetic Field Generator can stop you from dying in the face of extreme radiation. Among other things, we want to see people become heartier in regards to inhospitable environments, toxins and a laundry list of other imminent threats.” The small doctor drops the seated gurney back into a bed. Unlocking the wheels, he pushes the cool gurney over to an air lock. “Ok my good friend, today we’re going to test your bodies response to oxygen deprivation. I have the cameras and lights set up in there all ready, so feel free to moon for the camera.” With a metal woosh, the heavy doors close, to leave a trembling Ravindar to wait on the soft hiss of escaping oxygen. The visceral stench of dread fills the room in place of the missing oxygen. Much to Ravindar’s chagrin, his Nano tech keeps him alive under the stress.

“Wait, wait, wait. The time lines seems screwy. You said they fled the Torus almost immediately, in the aftermath of the Margot’s Fever event. They must have thought it was something else than an engine malfunction. Might explain the live recordings showing black uniformed guards firing ballistic weapons out into the void, before those images were purged from the archives, and a sanitized account of events was delivered to the masses. So who did they think it was?” Again an agitated silence hangs over the gathered group. The attendants are so many the overflow is now out into the hall, and out the corridor to the lobby. The whole discussion is being broadcast across the whole floor. Some three hundred members of the Torus station are gathered to give input or just listen. “What could they possibly be doing out there in UB313. What are they trying to do?”

A long low whistle. “Well fuck me, you must be a gods be damned superman. I did not think you’d survive exposure to total vacuum. You surprise us at every turn. But what we gather from our instrumentation, you aren’t much different than myself or anyone else for that matter. How do you do it Ravindar.” It’s more of a statement at this point than a question. The life in his eyes fades a little bit every day. For months now, he has been subject to all manner of torture, or testing as they call it. Ravindar’s best guess is they want to beef up humans to survive interstellar travel over incredibly long periods of time and distance.

“Can I get a tally of what suits the administrators and attendant staff were wearing when they fled? Personal artifacts, food, supplies, anything like that. Compare it to the missing people and those who “died” in transit over the last decade. Cross reference, and cross check all of it, on screen, now please.” With a blip, the data spools on screen as tiny packets of data are pooled into larger groups, on and on, with each variable listed in the query. Todd is typing furiously.

“Seriously Ravindar, how the fuck do you do it? How the fuck are you still alive!” Shouts Dr. Jang directly into the unresponsive Ravindar’s face. Though not dead, he has retreated far back into the dark reaches of his mind. Sanity has long since fled his clutches. In a fit on anger the doctor kicks the gurney, breaking his big toe on his right foot. “FUCK!” The call echoes down the halls.

“The only thing that ninety nine point nine nine percent have in common are the jumpsuits they were issued. Our standard Scalzi model coverall. Replete with catheter system as part of the internal rigging. The only one not wearing that was Ravindar Rashida, a level three cert generalist mechanic who was married to Lt. Anise Rashida, a security chief in your section ma’am.” Cathy Taylor looks up from her large stack of reading materials. “Wait. What was he wearing?” “According to the visitor logs, and the crew manifest from the capsule named Gemini, he had on the new experimental Nano infused system, that melds with his DNA/RNA identifiers. Pretty high tech stuff. I guess he was gearing up to work deep space, or now this is sketchy but, I saw mention that he had been selected to be working on something called a Fabric of Reality field generator. The Company had it listed as an Zulu Alpha Prometheus level priority. Never heard of that before. But I can’t cross reference that with anything else, so it could be nothing but a red herring.” Says Todd.

“Incoming call on line one for HR Senior director Catherine Taylor. Priority one call from the off station CEO of The Company.” The automated pa system rings straight through to Cathy’s suites. Sitting up in bed, in the darkness of night, a handful of words are displayed on the wall opposite her bed. “An emissary from The Company has been dispatched to Torus station. ETA ninety days – end transmission.” “Well now, this is an interesting development.” Cathy flops back into bed. The darkness surrounds her.

 

PART XVIII

 

“And now – for the exciting conclusion to…”

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Booms the deep gravelly voice from the media screen. “Oh turn the crap off would you. I’m sick to death of hearing about that stupid fucking ship.” She says it to me from behind her console. Lt. Anise Rashida. Dressed in her baggy black jumpsuit, her maroon hair braided tightly to her scalp. The pale mocca colour of her skin looks vaguely blue in the backwash of her monitors glow. From the rolling nature of the glow I can tell that the security data she is looking through is scrolling at an incredible rate. If it weren’t for her slight modifications from a childhood injury she would never have been able to take it all in. Bionic eye implants gives her an extra external memory core so that visual data can be saved in snap shots and rendered into code directly inputted into her brain and via her visual enhancement processors. Makes for a great cop who can recall everything she has ever seen. “Babe, you know that whatever info they are releasing about the event will be heavily doctored or reframed to depict The Company in the best light possible. What a crock. I see “official” documents all day long. Some of them are from cases I worked and what gets archived or purged from the system, or even reported up the chain of command can be wildly different from the actual events on the ground.” She is non plussed by her admission. Just a matter of fact. Well, more like fiction. But to the masses still aboard the torus station, what gets passed down to them is expected to be taken as gospel. Loose lips sink ships, so they have cracked down hard on the conspiracy theorists, and anarchists alike. Quietly transporting them off station, never to be seen or heard from again. Only their closest friends and family know that their presence has been totally erased from the ship board archives. Some real Gestapo shit. But, we’re paid well, always busy, and are provided with more entertainment options than you could ever grow tired off.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that the station has become so empty over the last few years? Like shift change used to be this momentous thing, three times a day. Now you’ll be lucky to get eight people in a power lift down to the main concourse. Where has everyone gone?” I ask this question daily, and my glorious security chief wife just rolls her eyes at me and continues to work from her spot in our joint gel couch. The covers pulled down around her waist in a fluffy puddle of fabric. Although she is still wearing her coveralls she has removed all her webbing, strapping and holsters. Her cache of side arms and her baton and cuffs are securely squared away in her closet lock box. If we are ever hit with a pocket sized nuke, right in our rooms, that thing will still manage to survive unscathed. Without those bodily restrictions her coveralls look rather baggy and almost comfortable. The tough teflon weaved fabric can soak up a knife stab as well as a ballistic projectile from a small to medium sized weapon. Up to a .45 caliber bullet, but that would likely break the bones directly behind the path of the projectile. Not that the station engages in much small arms fire. We’re more likely to suffer meteorites, close calls by comets or kamikaze spaceships or crewed transports. The criminal element aboard the torus is mostly fixated on unlicensed sex and drugs. Quick and easy, simple to hide. Except when a curious case of VD sweeps through certain sections of the station. Things are drying up, now that the station is not the huge concentration of people it once was. The remaining security teams are bored, and spend most of their time on rounds checking for hull breaches or previously undiagnosed damage from the fallout of the events that surround Margot’s Fever.

“Jesus.” A loud in draw of breath from the bedroom. A gasp. Something Anise has never done before. Ever. And she was apart of the crew that had to go out and collect the masses of corpses from around the station after the accident. “What is it? What’s the matter?” In the span of a heart beat I’m up off my chair, across the adjoining room and at the foot of our bed. “I’m being transferred. To someplace listed only as UB313. Where the fuck is that? There’s no sector on this ship with that designation.” A strange look is upon her face. She must be trying to access the external visual memory to cross reference the place name. “How are you finding out about this now, at this hour?” I ask. “Oh, well you know that Lt. Dave is dealing with his daughters leukemia, and he gave me a field promotion and access to the intranet within the security force. Who boy, and I thought I knew a lot of shit before. Some of the notes, appendices and evaluations logged here are super strange. I don’t even know why we’d even have half of this stuff. Looks like I’ll get notified on Friday morning. With orders to ship out on Saturday night. Says you aren’t on the manifest to join me. Well, fuck me. How do you like that, fucking bullshit.” A mask of calm covers her face, the briefest moment of rage suppressed by years of training and personal will power. “Right. Well I’ll have to get that sorted. Don’t worry babe, I’ll not leave you behind.”

Dear god, why didn’t she just leave me behind. The cramped dark cell is wet from the damp air, and human waste. There isn’t even room to stretch out my legs, or to raise an arm. The only light visible through the bars of the dog kennel sized door is a sickly pale green. I have not seen nor heard from anyone since I boarded the security vessel on our trip out to UB313. I was directed to climb into a separate crew compartment than my wife, and the last thing I remember was falling to the ground. Like succumbing to a gas attack, or anesthesia. Then I woke up in here. I screamed myself hoarse over the course of three days. Not a soul responded to me. This cage is so tight I am unable to look at my biometrics implant in my forearm. I think I’ve been left here to die.

“Right this way Lt. Col Rashida, we have a med pod couch for you up at the front. This will be an extensive trip and your duties rigorous. We have some rejuvenation treatments set up for you aswell.” The ships captain is leading her away from me. A tug on my right elbow is the only direction I get as I’m led to a soldiers bare bones gel couch at the rear of the vessel. There are a whole slew of empty berths surrounding a huge metal canister. I’m roughly placed into my couch and the glass door shut unceremoniously. Before I can even say thanks, the room goes black. My vision immediately begins to swim as a soft hiss can be heard by the vents near the headrest. There’s no coolant gel, no sedation. This is different. I can hardly breath. What the fuck is going on here…

“Welcome back to the land of the living Lt. Col. Rashida. We have some troubling news for you. Your husband Ravindar didn’t survive the transit. The far crew compartment suffered an ammonia leak from a micro meteorite shower we were breaking through upon deceleration out near Saturn. We are so sorry for your loss ma’am.” The junior office starts to turn away from the gel couch, as the Lt. Col starts to ask a question. “Please, can I see the body. I’d like to gather his personal effects.” Rising from the couch, feeling slightly woozy from the rejuvenation treatments. “That will not be possible. Company protocol is to jettison all dead crew from the ship upon detection, so as to limit any possible exposure to decay, bacteria and airborne contamination.” With a crisp salute, he exits the med bay where the pod is located. A few members of the medical staff can be seen milling about. Death in transit has unfortunately become very common place these days. No one is safe. Before she can even think to dwell her wrist chirps with her new orders. Looks like she has about twenty weeks of intensive zero g combat training to augment her current skill sets. No time to think. Her wrist alarm is telling her she is late to meet her XO, and get debriefed. The darkness out here is pervasive and deeply oppressive. The black ops site runs dark both figuratively and quite literally.

 

PART XVII

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.

Editing the collection of short stories.

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Although I do a few drafts of each short story, I have finally been able to collect them all together in a word processor for a full on, hard, deep dive editing session. All 30,000 words of short stories. Fourteen that are interconnected,  and seven that are random one offs. At least for the moment. I never know if a story warrants a second view or not until it’s written. Also, work is heating up, and the day job pays the bills, so if I want to have paid invoices coming in, I have to have work going out.

To those that are reading my short stories, and leaving comments and likes. Thank you, very much appreciated. I never knew that writing on my phone could be so much fun!

Best of luck to you all.