Elementalis

The Void

A beautiful marble of white and blue, the earth so small and elegant from out beyond the moon. Looking out the window of the International Space Station, Kale was sitting at a terminal looking out the small porthole window as he conducted daily systems checks. He often did his tasks quickly without much delay, but today he felt off. Perhaps it was because he had been on the station for eleven months now and the time was starting to get to him, or maybe, it was because he had doubts about the mission and his decision to leave home. He wasn’t an astronaut after all, he had won a lottery after buying an item off of Amazon. It had been twenty-five years since the founder of Amazon had taken his first group of Outer Space Tourists up for the first time. He was still active in the company, but he was starting to get old and had spent more time off planet than on. Between the two eccentric billionaires, they had colonized the moon, moved the International Space Station out passed the moon, and had started terraforming Mars. Kale's mission was simple, can the average human with little to no training be successful on a Space Research Crew. He won the lottery thinking he would be another Space Tourist. Instead, he was asked to work as a research assistant and maintenance tech for Research Crew 1536. He had a couple of military occupational specialties through his seventeen-year career in the Army. So, he picked things up pretty quickly and his crew was accommodating, motivating and were pretty good teachers…maybe a little impatient from time to time, but that was understandable. They had trained their whole lives to become astronauts and he just happened to buy the right pack of lightbulbs from Amazon one day.

Kale’s duties were small duties on board in comparison to his crewmates, and the actual scientists seemed to stay much busier than he did. Kale worked hard and looked for work to occupy his time, he served his time in the Army so he could talk the talk of a professional soldier, he wasn’t an imposing figure, but he was well built. Average height, a sturdy dad bod but stronger than he looked. Kale kept his hair short cropped and a well-groomed beard on his face. His duties made him feel important, but disposable. He had trained for two months at the moon colony before heading further out to the station. After arriving he conducted another two weeks of training and then was allowed to do one spacewalk tethered to an astronaut. This experience had been amazing, but it was time for him to go. His wife and daughter sent him off, excited for him…with fear in their eyes. Kale got to talk to them every day, the Starlink Internet system had taken over all other providers and allowed for video and voice calls with no lag from the moon colony to the earth. There was a small delay of a few seconds for the call to be relayed to the station, but at least he got to talk to them.

Kale had a little less than one month before he would go back to the moon colony, then after a week on the moon he would head back to Spokane, Washington. Kale shook his head and went back to work. He noticed a small flashing red light in the top right corner of the terminal. He had never seen this light before. In fact, he had always thought this was a photo eye that was there to read the light in the control room to save power. Kale picked up the mic, “Sal to the control room please?” He said into the station’s public address system. He could hear his voice echo in the distance.

“Kale, I was next door in my office.” Sal said as he walked into the control room. “You’re not done with your checks yet? You, ok? Doesn’t usually take you this long…” Kale turned around looking at the only scientist on board the station that had taken the time to get to know Kale over the last eleven months, he knew the others, but Sal he would describe as friend. Sal was the same age as Kale, his name was Salazar but he went by Sal. He was born in South Texas but his parents were from El Salvador. This was his third mission on the station, he was prepping to go on one of the Mars missions, in hopes of colonizing Mars without the need of fully enclosed city structures.

“Sal what’s that light? It just started blinking. I’ve never seen it flash before.” Kale turned back to the terminal touching his finger to the red flash. “This is the first time I’ve seen it as well, although I do know what it is. It’s a message alert from Houston. They’re probably checking the system and sent a test message. Well, you found it, press the light in and then hit enter on the keyboard.” Sal finished talking and pulled a stool up to the terminal and sat next to Kale. Kale reached over and did as he was told, a new light flashed from behind the terminal, and kale took a seat in his stool. The new light was a bluish white light almost looked like plasma screen but there was no physical structure. Sal smiled at Kale’s surprise, “never seen the holographic comms screen before?” He said looking from Kale to the now three by three-foot screen of light in front of them.

“This message is for Crew 1536 of the International Space Station. This is not a drill; I repeat this is not a drill!” The words came across the screen in a ticker style you may have seen on a Wall Street trading floor. Then the words were gone and a man in a black military uniform appeared on screen. “My name is General Casey; I am the Chief Science Officer Liaison for the United States Space Force. This message is live, this is not a recording. Two-way comms has been deactivated so I can relay this information in its entirety without interruption.” General Casey’s appearance partially disappeared as he turned to the side and reached for something. “I can see the two of you at the terminal, thank you for answering the message so quickly Kale. I’m glad you thought to get assistance from Major Salazar. I don’t know how much time we have, so listen carefully. Our deep space probes and drones have picked up some interference. Not the usual kind, this interference appears to be a void, but it is well within the effective range of the probes and drone’s communication abilities. The drone has a top secret experimental artificial intelligence operating it. Before we lost contact the A.I. sounded worried and as we lost contact it said that it was scared. Now, this A.I. wasn’t activated until the drone was near Mars. That means it has not had the ability to learn emotions from humans yet.” General Casey stopped talking, and looked into the camera as if to determine whether they were listening or not. Kale sat, nervously bouncing his right knee, while Sal sat up straight, a small notebook on his left knee and a pen in his left hand. Kale looked at the notebook, Sal had been writing every word the General had been saying.

Appearing satisfied by what he saw of the two men, General Casey began speaking again. “We don’t know what it is, but the moon-based sensors have begun picking up unusual readings and there seems to be something moving toward earth. We have not seen anything; the readings provide no real information. We are currently referring to it as “the void,” You will get firsthand readings, sightings or maybe even contact with whatever this may be.” The General took a breath, looked down and back up at Kale and Sal. “I do not know what any of this means, it may be nothing at all. But we need you to be our early warning system. If you experience anything out of the ordinary, call us immediately. We have our low orbit fighters on alert in case this is a military threat, but you and the colony will only have the moon defense guns. If all goes well, we will have a shuttle retrieve you in three days.” General Casey finished his statement, dipped his head in appreciation, then the room went dark and the screen was gone.

“What does this mean?” Kale mumbled, looking more and more frightened as he thought about the implications of the message. No, not frightened he had seemed to be showing signs of fear, but something had changed in his face. This was the soldier, the initial shock of the unknown probably worried him, but now he was focused. He was a soldier again, with a mission, of course he didn’t have a battle to fight, but he now had a cause to strive for. “It means we need to wake everyone up and have a meeting.” Sal said as he turned around and headed back toward the door.

“Kale, did you make any coffee?” Asked Mara, the medical officer for Crew 1536. Mara was a short British woman with a pixie haircut. Not that she was required to keep her hair short, but it “allows for minimal water usage for proper hygiene.” Always said in an almost Marry Poppins accent and mannerism. “The coffee just finished brewing, y’all know its almost noon, right?” Kale said with a slight smile on his face, watching as the rest of the crew walked into the kitchen. “Time is rather relative out here on the edge of light.” Said Kaia, he said it flatly walking straight to the counter reaching for the coffee pot. He was an American astronaut, that had been born somewhere in India prior to the collapse. He doesn’t talk about that time of his life, only that he was rescued by the United States military and brought to Virginia as a youth. Kaia was a middle-aged man, very direct and focused on the natural world and Earth Science. He would get excited and start explaining how the Earth can be cleaned and fixed naturally, but he always said the answers were most likely found while working to create a life sustaining environment on Mars.

Allen was the last to walk in the room. Allen was a quiet, tall man, with dark skin and an unusual strength for a scientist. Allen had been in the United States Marine Corps before moving to Calgary, Alberta where he studied geology and continued to practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Allen got into the Canadian Space service after he married a Canadian woman and became a dual citizen. Kale had always been impressed by Allen, but he was very reserved so Kale never really got the chance to get to know him. He had even tried to roll with Allen in the gym a couple of times, but the little bit of Army Combatives he remembered was not a match for the well-trained martial artist that Allen was. Allen had offered to coach Kale, and they had a few lessons, but it didn’t go much deeper than that.

Sal stood at what was referred to as the “front” of the kitchen, no real reason other than to provide direction as needed. He stood there looking professional, slightly concerned, he had been thinking on what General Casey had told them, and truth be told he was probably over thinking it. Being the ranking astronaut on the crew he was the default commander, but he never acted like one. Sal watched as the others started to sit at the tables with their coffee and breakfast meals, he appeared to be at a loss for words. Kale stood up and approached “you, ok? I thought this wasn’t that big of a deal?” Sal looked at him and whispered “the General isn’t telling us everything.” Sal looked over Kale’s shoulder and moved around him to address the other three astronauts. “Ok, listen up everyone. We received a live call from General Casey back in Houston.” Before he could continue, Allen interrupted, “General Casey, the Science Liaison? I knew of him in the Marine Corps, not a bad guy, just always outside of everything. He seemed to always be looking inside an incident or operation from outside it all, dropping little crumbs of guidance. What did he want?”

“General Casey has tasked us with being the early warning alert system for Earth…” Sal hesitated looking from one to another of the crew members stopping at Kale. “Space Command has been receiving unusual readings from probes and drones out just beyond Mars. They cannot read or comprehend the information that is being received, but it appears as though something is moving toward earth.” He finished speaking, pointing to Mara, and nodding in her direction. “I thought our antennas were misaligned; I was planning a calibration for tomorrow morning. I’ve been receiving bad scans for about sixteen hours. However, if they’re saying all our equipment is pulling bad information then I don’t need to do the spacewalk.” She finished speaking and looked toward the others.

Kaia looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t say a word. He sat there quietly, thinking, thinking, always deep in thought. But now there seemed to be lots of nothing really to think on. No one has anything that even resembles accurate information. So, Kaia just sat and listened. Allen spoke up again. “What exactly do we know? Anything? Or are they getting bad information and dangling us out here as the guinea pig?” Allen looked almost angry, what about, only Allen knew. There wasn’t anything to be angry about, it’s just a lot of unknowns to be identified.

“I understand this sudden change in mission and complete lack of information is frustrating, but we have a job to do, it may not be anything…but it could be everything.” Sal said as he opened a notebook and set it down on the table in front of him. “Here’s what we’re going to do, we have three days to gather as much information as possible then a shuttle will be sent for us.” Sal continued to lay out the responsibilities for each crew member. He explained each detail and then talked with each crewmember to ensure they all knew what was expected of them.

Kale felt exhausted, today was weirdly stressful. It’s the unknown, people are always afraid of the unknown. He walked back to his quarters, opened the door and walked in. He sat on his bed and took his shoes off. These ugly, plain, white slip-on sneakers. Kale couldn’t wait to get home and wear something other than these flat soled shoes. Kale changed from his jumpsuit to a pair of sweatpants and a tank top. Being in the far reaches of space, Kale expected it to be much colder, but it was comfortably warm during the day which means it was to warm when he went to bed. So more often than not he would wear sweats and a tank top or gym shorts and a t shirt. Kale tapped the screen in the wall at the foot of his bed. It flashed and a few seconds later an image appeared on the screen. Kale’s wife and daughter appeared on the screen; it was the waiting screen. It had a ticker along the bottom of the screen, “Thanks for your call, sorry we missed you. We’re at the Rock Gym, Kale if we missed you, we’ll be back in a couple of hours. Leave a message, thanks!” Kale looked into the camera’s eye and sighed. “Hey guys, I’m tired, I had a long day. I’ll try and call again later, but we have an urgent job that we have to get working on. I love you guys, have a great day. Glad you’re at the Rock Gym, keep up the hard work. I’ll talk to you later.” Kale swiped the screen and it went dark. He laid back in his bed and closed the privacy curtain. He didn’t share his room, but the curtain made it easier to sleep. He started counting down from twenty, and as he started to say eight, he drifted to sleep.

“Incoming!” Kale awoke with a start, dripping with sweat. He hadn’t dreamed of the war in years, let alone the first indirect fire attack he experienced. He had taken a piece of shrapnel in his right leg, was treated at the camp med tent and was back to the wire the next day. They say necessity is the mother of invention, well, perhaps Combat is the father. There’s nothing like a war to advance technologies. Especially if it is a big one, the Hemisphere War was just that. It was a war that covered the Northern Hemisphere, no one was safe, at least that’s what the United Front wanted you to think. For his part Kale fought in Central Africa, and had another deployment to Northern India, that was just before the complete collapse of India, China, and Pakistan. Many blamed the war for the collapse, but that area of the world had been in a death spiral for a long time. The Hemisphere War just finished them off. Kale had often wondered over the last year, if he had been involved in Kaia’s rescue. He doubted it, and Kaia refused to discuss it.

Shaking the dream from his head, Kale walked to the sink and mirror on the wall by his desk. He splashed some water on his face and got dressed. Kale stepped out of his room and walked toward the observation deck, this room always gave Kale an uneasy feeling. It was a room about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide, with one large bay window looking out and one door at each end of the cylindrical room. As he walked in, he noticed Mara sitting on a bench near the window, lost in thought...no, not lost in thought staring at something, consumed by fear!

"Mara, you ok?" Kale called out as he walked into the room. "Kale, what do you see?" Mara said never taking her eyes from the window. Kale turned his head to look outside, before he could even focus on any one image, he saw it.

It was everything at once; simple and complex, large and small. Kale wasn't sure what he was looking at, "Mara, what is that?!" Kale exclaimed placing a hand on the window to steady himself as he suddenly felt a loss of balance. Consumed with a sudden fear he became immediately aware of two facts: One, this unknown object in space was traveling towards them. Two, it appeared to open and although the object was right there in front of them maybe a mile from the space station, the opening seemed to provide a light from a great distance. "It looks like a tunnel, what do we do?" Kale said turning his head slightly to look at Mara.

Mara was already on her feet reaching for the microphone on the wall. "Alert, Alert, Alert!" Mara said as calmly as she could manage, voice sounding on the edge. "All crew to their stations, begin emergency evacuation procedures!" Mara finished almost panic in her voice.

"What is going on?" Sal said as he ran into the observation deck, stopping in front of the bay window gaping at what he saw. Kale and Mara standing side by side, still a little dumbstruck, said in unison "The void!"