Kokomo

Jennison pushed away the bottle of water in the dull orange light of the reactor. “I'm fine, Liv. You drink it.”

“Are you sure?” Liv asked, frowning at the mouthful of water sloshing around the bottom of the bottle. She licked her cracked lips and flicked her gaze back to Jennison, who slumped against the wall with a dead look in his eyes.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Go ahead. You need it more than me.”

Liv didn’t think that was true. Jennison had hardly moved from his spot all day. His eyes were flat and dull. Scabs of blood lined his lips where they had cracked. Liv drank it though, compulsively, like taking a breath after a long dive. The mouthful of warm water was barely enough to moisten her throat, and, all the while, she hated herself for it.

“How’s the signal?” Ted asked from across the small room. He was shrouded in darkness, strapped to the wall to avoid drifting in the gravityless chamber. Harmony clicked on the screen of her readout and the blue glow of it lit her face from beneath. She looked skeletal, with her hair pull back into its tight ponytail, and Ted leered in from the side, pale as a wraith.

“Still broadcasting,” Harmony sighed, and vanished into the darkness again as she clicked off the screen.”

“Why–” Jennison asked, then broke into wheezing coughs like wind through broken china. “Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked, grimacing at the pain in his throat and chest.

“No reason,” Harmony said.

“The signal’s solar. It’ll broadcast until the sun goes out or the transmitter gives up. And my money is on this baby.” Jennison turned to watch the steady glow of the reactor, a wry look in his eyes. “Lot of good that’ll do us a few days from now.”

Nobody said anything.

Harmony drew a sharp breath to retort, probably with something optimistic and reassuring, but then let it out again in a long sigh. Nobody was going to find them. Nobody would even be able to get to them in time if they picked up the signal. Not all the way out here, in the hinterspace where the closest hunk-of-junk asteroid was lightmonths away. So much good for a transmitter when the signal takes five years to reach the closest planet.

“The bright side,” Jennison suggested, “is that we won’t be alive for long enough to get sick from all the radiation we’re soaking up right now.”

Nobody laughed. They all just watched the glow of the reactor as if they could see the light growing dimmer as they sat by it. The truth was perhaps worse. The reactor core had enough fresh rods to cycle through to last it probably another century after they were all dead.

There was a click as Ted unclipped his harness from the wall and floated across to the reactor, holding his hands out to the light like a boy to a fire. “Fuck it,” he grumbled. “Might as well.” He warmed the backs of his hands, turning them in the light so that the dry, cracked skin of his knuckles showed in the glow. His shoulder-length hair floated around his head in a halo. He had tied it up like Harmony had when the gravity went out, but apparently had gotten tired of it in the dark. It made him look ethereal. He looked like a corpse floating at the bottom of the ocean.

“You know what I miss most about home?” He asked after a moment.

“Sex?” Jennison asked.

“Yeah,” Ted conceded, “but that’s not what I was thinking of.” He waited, thinking, recollecting, as he warmed his fingers in the nuclear warmth.

“What?” Harmony asked, her own eyes wistful as she watched.

“I miss…” he started, and then paused. “I miss just being able to go out and get dinner with friends, or a drink.”

“I could go for a drink right now,” Liv said, and then winced, remembering the water.

“I don’t really give a shit what Harry says,” Harmony agreed, “if we ever get home, I’m becoming an alcoholic.”

“There was this little bar downtown that we would go to,” Ted continued. “They played live music on Fridays. I used to go there with my friends and get shitfaced, and then just go and sit on the roof and watch the stars while the band played downstairs.”

All four of them were silent. They just tasted the memory, accepting it as their own because it was good, and it was comforting, and why not?

“Do you think our families will ever find out what happened to us?” Harmony asked in a quiet voice that made her seem very small and very pure in the dim light. She sat, holding her knees to her chest, strapped to the wall. Her eyes were dry, though. She was as dehydrated as the rest of them, and besides, best not to cry in zero gravity. “There’s no crying in spaceball,” Liv thought, and smiled to herself wryly.

“If anybody picks up the signal, yeah, I think so,” Ted said after a consideration.

“Do you…” Harmony asked, then broke off.

“Yeah,” Ted said, “I think they will.”

“I don’t have anybody that would care,” Jennison muttered, staring blankly into the reactor.

“That’s not true,” Liv said. “What about Mia?”

Jennison shrugged his shoulders in a noncommittal gesture. “She won’t care that much.”

Mia and Jennison had been divorced for three years, but Jennison still talked about her at least once a week. The three others probably knew more about her than the woman would have cared for, but he cared about her. She had cared about him.

Jen had been outgoing and an incorrigible joker. He had been the real entertainer of the crew. Ted had been the serious one, and Harmony had been the clever one. And Liv had been the, well, she had been the Liv one, and sometimes you really just needed a Liv. Now, they were all just “ones”--just four humans in a dark box.

None of them were married. Jennison was divorced, and Ted widowed. Harry was Harmony’s dog, and Liv had just never found the right one. She reached out for Jennison’s hand and unfolded it. It opened without resistance, and the skin was dry as paper.

“She cares about you. I promise.” Liv said, smiling at him with lips that stung with the motion.

“She doesn't,” Jennison chuckled, not looking over, “but that's okay. That's the past,” but his grip tightened ever so slowly in her hand, squeezing it once and then loosening again.

“She does, Jen.” Liv said, squeezing back, and paused, thinking. “That is the past, but it's her past too. She cares about you because of that. I'm a woman. Take my advice on women.”

Jennison didn’t respond, but squeezed back and tilted his head back a little closer in her direction.

“I met Evelynn there.” Ted said when the room fell silent again.

“The bar with the music?” Harmony asked.

“Yeah… there was a cover band playing old California hits. I came up to her while they were playing Kokomo–that Beach Boys song–and asked her if she wanted to dance.” A warm smile of recollection came onto his face. His voice was pitched low so that the others could barely hear him. Harmony unclipped her own tether and drifted over beside Ted, warming her own hands in the glow.

“She spun around so fast that her drink spilled all over my white shirt. She felt so bad, I think that was the only reason that she agreed to do it.”

“I like that song,” Harmony said, and Jennison grunted agreement.

“Way down in Kokomo,” Liv sang softly, and Ted closed his eyes.

“How’d you get married?” Jennison asked, head lolling back in Ted’s direction.

“Oh, you know,” Ted said, shrugging. “The normal way. Went to the beach with a bunch of friends and hung out drinking beer and listening to music until the sun went down. My buddy Alex got ordained to do the ceremony. We all stripped down and ran into the ocean afterward. My drunk ass nearly drowned on my wedding night.”

Jennison chuckled.

“First dance was to that song. Kokomo.” The smile faded from his face, slowly, like warmth fading from a hot pan, and Harmony slipped her hand into his. He looked at her, startled, but didn’t take it away. His mouth fell further and he closed his eyes, struggling to keep his face composed, but he took his hand from Harmony’s and pressed the inside of an elbow to his eyes as he steadied himself with the other hand. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Sorry, I just…”

“If I had enough water, I’d cry with you, man,” Jennison offered.

Ted took a shuddering breath to compose himself and wiped his eyes with a sleeve. “Sorry, I just,” he waved a hand, “It’s just… remembering. I’m sorry.”

“We’re all in the same boat.” Jennison croaked, and cut off, closing his own eyes and swallowing painfully. “Does anybody have some more of those energy gummy things?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ted said. “Yeah, I have some right here.” He pushed away from the reactor and back into the dimness where he rummaged through a bag.

“I really like you guys, you know,” Jennison said, giving Liv’s hand a brief squeeze. “Like, a lot. I love you guys. You’re my family right now. Always will be, I guess.” He looked at Liv for the first time then, and his eyes were bright with tears of his own. “You’re beautiful, Liv.”

Liv smiled, pale and crusty, her hair grimed with sweat and grease as it drifted in it’s own short-shorn crown.

“Ugh,” Harmony scoffed, “get a room.”

“You–hah,” he laughed, “you remember that time when we made Ted think that his suit was broken when he went out for a spacewalk?”

Liv rolled her eyes and nodded.

“That wasn’t funny,” Ted joined in, still rummaging through his pack.

“Or, or when… oh, your hair… I’m sorry.” He raised a shaky hand, a sort of delirious glint in his eyes, and cleared her hair from her forehead. “Sorry I burnt off your hair.”

Liv laughed, taking his hand and pulling it from her face. “I think that we have bigger problems than my hair right now.” Liv’s hair had been a foot longer a few months before, and then Jennison had started a grease fire in the kitchen and scorched off half of it. It had to be cut to just a handful of inches short in order to take off all of the singed segments, and Liv hadn’t spoken to him for over a week.

“Here you go, Jen.” Ted drifted back over and handed Jennison a small bag with four gummy energy gels inside. He opened the bag and took one between a thumb and forefinger that couldn’t seem to stop shaking, raising it painstakingly to his ruined lips. Then he passed the bag to Liv and she took one and ate it. Ted and Harmony declined, so she closed the bag and put it into the zipper pocket of her pants.

Jennison sighed and smacked his lips, leaning his head back and retaking Liv’s hand. “Ahhh,” he sighed, “Living the good life. I’m gonna miss this, mi amigos.”

“Smartass,” Harmony mumbled, but she was smiling behind Ted.

“So,” Jennison asked, weakly slapping his knees with both palms. “When are we going to do it?” The others all looked at each other. Jennison’s face was set in grim determination, as if finally allowing a decision he had made a long time ago to come to the fore. Nobody answered. They avoided Jennison’s eyes which, perhaps concerningly, had lost that look of delirium and had taken on a cold, realistic levelness.

They knew.

“Just wait,” Liv said, putting her other hand on top of their two. “Just wait a little bit longer. Maybe somebody will come.”

“Liv, baby,” he looked at her with eyes that saw only the darkness of reality, and placed his hand over hers. “Nobody is coming.”

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

“I, for one, don’t want to die a long death by dehydration.”

Nobody responded. Nobody looked at one another.

“It’s–” he cleared his throat, though it didn’t sound like anything needed to be cleared, and smudged at his eyes. “It’s bad enough already. Nobody’s coming, Liv.”

“No,” she whispered, unable to look away from his eyes. His eyes were so dark–so dead, already. “No, somebody might come. Somebody might...”

He shook his head, not breaking his gaze. “I love you, Liv. I do. If we were at home, I might have asked you to marry me. But we aren’t at home, and I can’t live with this pain anymore. It feels like my organs are ripping themselves apart.”

It all washed over Liv, then. All of the grief and the hopelessness, and the love that she too felt for this man that she couldn’t even stand to talk to months before. She loved him. He was a smartass, and he was irreverent, and he was stubborn, but she did love him. He was funny, and he was creative. He was caring, in his own way, even if that way didn’t always show the way that it should. She loved him, and, if they were at home, she would have said yes.

“You all don’t have to, but I’m doing it. I’m sorry Livy, I can’t–” he swallowed and his throat clicked. “I can’t keep living like this. I’m–I’m sorry.” Jennison stood and unclipped himself from the wall, pushing off to drift lazily across to the door.

“No,” Liv muttered. “No! No, no!” You can’t!” She unclipped herself and pushed herself away from the wall toward him, shoving into his back and wrapping her arms around his waist. “You can’t do it! It’s–” she struggled to find the words. “It’s a sin!”

Jennison had been weakly trying to pry Liv off of his torso, but stopped when she said that and barked out a sudden, sardonic laugh. “Hah! A sin? Liv? A sin? God doesn’t care about sins out here. God. Doesn’t. Care.”

“You can’t do it! Ted, tell him he can’t do it! Order him to return to his tether!”

Ted shrugged, lifting his hands helplessly, a look just as forlorn and realistic as Jennison’s across his face. They were all done. They had all given up. They were all already dead. “Ted.” There were tears stinging Liv’s eyes then, and, without gravity to pull them down, they gathered against her eyes, making the entire dark room look as if it were under water. Jennison succeeded in prying her arms free. She was just about as weak as he was and he pushed off of her, sending them both to opposite ends of the room. Ted caught hold of her ankle and pulled her to him, righting her, supporting himself from drifting away with a hand on the ceiling.

“Ted, do something!” she screamed, clawing at his arms, at his face, at his neck, but he gave her a sudden jerk that whipped her head back against his chest. His eyes saw only the truth. There was no other option. Nobody was coming.

“Jennison, please,” she sobbed as he turned the crank to open the door to the airlock. The seal hissed open as the door swung in. “Somebody is coming, I know somebody is.”

“How, Liv.” He turned back and looked at her. “How do you know?”

“I don’t know! I just know. Please, come back and just wait for a little longer!”

Jennison paused, seeming to consider it, but his face only went slack and his eyes dropped. “I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s over, Liv. I love you but... I just can't.” In the reactor glow, globes of tears glimmered momentarily over his eyes too, like the bulbous, unfeeling eyes of a bug, then he whipped his face away as though burned and the liquid sloshed across his face.

“No, wait, please!” she screamed, and clawed frantically for Ted to let her go. She slammed her fists into his face, and kicked at his legs, aiming for the balls but unable to reach.

Jennison pulled himself into the airlock and turned to face them all. He smiled something that wasn't a smile as he reached for the door.

“No!”

Then Harmony spoke up, who hadn’t said a word the entire time. “What if you married her?”

Liv stopped shouting and stopped struggling to get free.

“What?” Jennison asked.

“You said that you would marry her, so why don’t you marry her?”

He smiled, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I am an ordained minister, so why don’t you come back over here and marry her? Or what, are you chicken?” Harmony had her arms crossed, and stared at Jennison sternly, the sight only rendered somewhat less severe by the way that she was floating and drifting more and more to the horizontal as she did so.

“Well, I…”

“Marry me,” Liv blurted out. “Will you marry me?”

“Stop!” Jennison said. “Stop it, what are you talking about? This isn’t going to change anything.”

“So what, do you love her or not?”

“Well, yeah, I think so.”

“And how hard is it going to be to love her till death do you part?”

Liv watched him imploringly, willing him to push back into the room and across to her.

“I guess…”

“Marry me,” Liv commanded again, and Jennison only looked at her blankly. “Marry me!” It wouldn’t buy much time, but it would buy some time, and that time might be all that they needed. Somebody was coming, she knew it. She could feel it. As surely as if she had already seen it happen, she knew somebody would come.

“No,” he said, and her heart fell. He turned and reached for the door, then pushed off of it, drifting across the room to the three and bumped into Liv. He steadied himself on the ceiling and pushed himself down to roughly kneeling posture and looked up into her eyes. He took both of her hands in his and ran a red tongue over his lips. “Marry me.”

Liv’s heart didn’t drop, then, not without gravity. It stopped. For a breathtaking moment, it stopped, and then it all rushed back in and she was nodding and crying and pulling him up to her to hug him around the neck.

It didn’t take long to set up a makeshift marriage altar. Liv and Jennison stood in front of the glowing reactor, lit warmly from behind, propping themselves in place with the low ceiling. Ted had wrested the door from a small storage compartment and coaxed it, with great precision, to float in near motionlessness before the couple who stood with their free hands clasped and staring into each other's eyes. A hair above it floated a variety of mismatched objects–the empty water bottle, crushed and crinkled, the two remaining power gels, suspended in gentle rotation, and two twists of wire from the cabinet.

Ted beamed, and Harmony glowed. The room was silent. Still. Despite the dire straits of their situation, for that single golden moment, everything was perfect. And why not? It would be good until their dying breaths.

Harmony cleared her throat and began, “Marwaaaagggge,” in an ad hoc Princess Bride impersonation, and a round of snickers broke out through the room which erupted, uncontrollably, into rolling laughter. Liv wiped a tear from the corner of her eye as the fit began to subside. “Is what bwings us togevawww, today.”

The room erupted again. They couldn’t help it. The whole situation was just so damn ridiculous, and so damn perfect.

“Stop it, Harmony,” Liv managed, sniffling and wiping her eyes. “I can’t see!” But she was smiling, widely and genuinely, and glowing with pride.

Harmony cleared her throat again. “We are gathered here today to recognize the joining of our good friends, Olivia Statton and Lucas Jennison.

“Hear hear!” Ted broke in, and Harmony cracked a smile.

“It hasn’t been easy.” She said. “And Livy is lucky that I didn’t kill her groom before we could make it to this point, but we’re all here. Then again, I guess we’re lucky that Olivia didn’t kill her groom before we made it here. Let’s see, he set her hair on fire, he never takes care of his dirty dishes, and he is absolutely obsessed with something that he calls music and that I call AC/DC.”

“Get on with it, ref,” Jennison muttered out of the corner of his mouth, eyes never leaving Liv’s.

“But I digress. Let us lower our head in prayer. God, if you’re out there, you aren’t invited to this wedding because, hey, we’re floating out in the middle of space with a ship that lost 99% of its oxygen three days ago, so screw you. This is our party. Amen.”

“Amen,” Ted grumbled.

“A-men” Jennison hooted.

Liv did not echo the affirmation.

“Before us, we have three items.” She spread her hand expansively at the set table. “Jennison, if you will take up the chalice.”

Jennison took the water bottle from its slow rotation.

“Lucas Jennison, do you vow to give your wife aid and succor? To provide for her. To give her water when she is thirsty, and keep her from danger so far as is within your power?”

“I do,” Jennison said, and passed the bottle to Liv, who tipped the empty bottle to her lips and felt a single drop of water slide from the rim and between her lips.

Olivia Statton, do you vow to give your husband aid and succor? To provide for him. To give him water when he is thirsty, and keep him from danger so far as is within your power?”

“I do,” Olivia said, and passed the bottle to Jennison, who raised the bottle to his lips and swallowed on the empty air. He tossed the bottle over his shoulder and it drifted through the room, bouncing off the wall and over to the opposite end of the chamber.

“The bread,” Harmony said, and each took one of the two remaining power gels from the table. “Do you vow,” she continued, “to be each other’s foundation, through good times and bad, regardless of the cost. Do you vow to feed one another when each is hungry? To offer what you have selflessly in the name of love and nothing but love?”

“I do,” Jennison said.

“I do,” Liv said.

They each fed each other the tiny morsel of gelatin and sugar. Liv’s was cherry. It was sweet and slightly salty, and clung to the inside of her mouth with a chalky feeling, but she chewed, and she swallowed, and though her body screamed for more, she smiled into Jennison’s eyes as he swallowed his, unable to help herself.

“Now,” Harmony gestured to the rings, and they each took one. They were simple loops of copper wire, wound three thicknesses wide and twisted at the top in approximation of a stone.

“Lucas, do you love Olivia?”

“I do.”

Harmony nodded. “Do you take her as your lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish until death do you part?”

“I do,” Jennison said, and the words were like the tolling of a church bell in Liv’s ears. They swelled like a symphony orchestra before the crescendo, tuning all of her senses up to one glorious song. She didn’t feel the pain in her bones. She didn’t feel the weariness. She didn’t feel the dehydration. She only knew those two words: “I do.”

“And Olivia, do you–”

“‘I do! I do I do I do!” she was shouting the words and breaking between beaming and weeping. Her eyes gathered with tears, blurring the room into a single, glittering, aquarium scene of perfection.

“You may kiss–” Harmony began, but Liv was already on him, eyes squeezed shut and pressing her lips to his in a warm, undying moment that she would remember for the rest of her life as one of the happiest that she had ever lived.

Somewhere in the middle of it, a tinny sound began to play from Ted’s direction, and he was holding up his phone which shone in the darkness. Hand-drums pattered like island rain, and the Beach Boys came in in three part harmony singing, “Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya.”

Liv burst out into cackling, tearful laughter, and Harmony joined into the song in her own adept alto, “Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama,” shimmying in an odd full body twist as she floated in the air.

“Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go,” Jennison started singing, and took both of Liv’s hands in his, grinning like a crocodile and causing them both to lift off of the floor. The music washed with a rush of tide, and, at the key-change, all four sang “Off the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo! That's where you wanna go to get away from it all…” and danced odd, shimmying dances in the zero-G of the reactor room.

“Hey,” Ted said to Harmony in the middle of the song. “Give me your pocket read-out.”

“Why?”

“Just let me see it.”

Harmony handed over the cellphone-sized device and fiddled with both it and the phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sharing the song from my phone.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to play it through the rescue signal,” he shrugged.

“What?” Harmony laughed, incredulous. “Why are you doing that?”

Ted shrugged again. “Why the fuck not? We aren’t going anywhere any time soon anyway, and it’s a damn good song.”

Harmony laughed, high and joyful and as bright as morning sunlight. She grabbed him, arresting her mismatched rotation and pulled herself to him. Before he knew what was happening, she had pressed her lips to his and was kissing him, hard and with feeling. He broke away with the goofy grin of a teenager and hit “broadcast” on the readout.

Liv awoke some hours later. It was impossible to know how long they had all been asleep, but she had woken up several times in the interim, groggily opening her eyes and then letting them drift shut again, unable to keep them open for any appreciable length of time.

Something felt off. Not necessarily wrong, but off. She sat up, listening. There was a noise coming from somewhere. It was a pinging noise, muffled and electronic.

“Jen.” She jostled her husband’s shoulder, but he didn’t stir. “Jen,” she said again, louder, and shook him again, but he was dead asleep. Dehydration. It would do that. She had almost not been able to wake up too, but she was probably more hydrated, if only slightly. The reactor still glowed the same interminable glow of coals in a hearth. It was like being in a cell deep underground, with no sunlight to mark the passing of the day or night, only endless now. She smacked her lips and her tongue felt thick and gummy, like a worm drying on the pavement. “Harmony?”

Harmony didn’t respond.

Liv unclipped her security harness and drifted over to the dark side of the room, feeling for Harmony and found Ted instead, asleep with his head craned backward against the wall. The sound grew louder as she grew nearer, and she listened, trying to determine its direction. Ted’s pocket illuminated, then, dimly through the fabric, and she reached inside, feeling something–a phone, maybe. She pulled out Harmony’s pocket read-out, and gasped, dropping the device to let it spin in the air and clasped a hand over her mouth in shock. She snatched the read-out again and read the notification under the title of the currently broadcasting recording: “Transmission received.”

“Harmony!” She shrieked. “Ted, Jennison! Wake up! Wake the fuck up!”

“What,” Harmony said, groggily, stirring beside her.

“Ted, Ted!” Liv shook his shoulder violently and he snorted awake.

“What is it?” Harmony asked, Liv’s excitement waking her up by orders of magnitude.

“Look!” She shoved the read-out into Harmony’s face and watched her eyes grow wide. A hand flew to Harmony’s mouth.

“Oh my god.”

“What?” Ted asked, tugging on Liv’s arm to see the screen. She turned it to him.

“Ted,” Harmony said, unable to contain her excitement, despite the exhausted circles and the sunken look to her eyes. Despite the way that her lips must be cracking and stinging and bleeding just from the effort of talking. “Ted, they’re coming! Somebody’s coming!”

He snatched the read-out from Liv’s fingers and tapped on the transmission notification. The speakers began to play. A distorted version of Kokomo flowed from the little device, as awe-inspiring as all the wonders of the ancient world. It wasn’t perfect, but it was unmistakably the same song, perhaps distorted over the long distance, or perhaps garbled by one transceiver or another. The words were not English, but they were similar enough sounds to trick the brain into thinking it was hearing words it should understand. It sounded like English echoed back by a person with a good ear but no understanding of the language. Nonetheless, the tune was undeniably “Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya, Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama, Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go, Jamaica.” Then the clip replayed from the beginning.

“What do we–” Ted started, and jumped when Liv snatched the device from his fingers. She tapped “End Transmission,” and the “Current Transmission” bubble disappeared, then tapped the microphone for manual transmission.

“Wh–” Ted began to ask, but Liv put a finger to his lips, closing her eyes and mouthing as she tried to remember. The room was completely silent. Then, quietly, she began, “Off the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo.”

Ted and Harmony shared a glance.

“That's where you wanna go,” she continued, growing in volume as she grew in confidence, voice cracking and dry tongue slurring on dry lips, “to get away from it all…” She waved her hand in a “come on,” gesture, and Ted and Harmony joined in.

“Bodies in the sand, tropical drink melting in your hand, we'll be falling in love to the rhythm of a steel drum band, down in Kokomo.”

Liv released the record button and they all sat in agonizing silence. Liv spun her wire wedding band on her finger so fast that the end of one piece of wire jabbed her skin and she flinched, but didn’t make a sound. They waited, one minute, five minutes, fifteen minutes, and the battery on the readout dropped from three, to two, to one, and hovered there, blinking mechanical urgency in the darkness.

“Did they leave?” Harmony whispered after twenty minutes had passed of sitting at rigid attention, staring at the screen.

“Shh,” Liv snapped. “No, they’re there. They’re there!”

“Liv,” Ted said, and leaned back against the wall.

“Don’t you fucking do this right now, Ted,” Liv snarled at him, and he raised his hands in surrender. Jennison still hadn’t woken up, and Liv pushed her way over to him, snagging onto his shoulder to stop her flight.

“Lucas,” she said, shaking him. He felt cold. Colder than was healthy. He needed medical attention, and fast. “Lucas, wake up.” His eyelids didn’t even flutter. “Lucas?” she shook him harder and his head drifted and flopped over sideways, mouth open. “Jennison, wake up. Wake up!” She shook him hard enough to make his head crack back against the wall, and still, nothing. “Wake up, Lucas!” she was screaming, and shaking his limp form, then Ted’s hands were on her, pulling her away. “Wake up! Wake. Up!”

“Stop it, Liv,” Ted growled, giving her a firm jerk that knocked a sob out of her stomach. “He’s gone.”

“No…” she choked. “He can’t be… He can’t be gone! He was just here!”

“I know, Livy. I know.”

“He can’t be gone! They’re here! We’re about to be rescued!

Ted didn’t say anything, just held her around the middle as she crumpled into uncontrollable, tearless sobs.

The pocket readout pinged again, but she didn’t even hear it. It was no longer in her hand; it drifted freely through the room and Harmony swam across to it, picking it out of the air and pressing the transmission button.

The same garbled track played as before: “Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya, Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama, Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go, Jamaica,” and then repeated. Nobody was coming. Something out there was just reflecting back their transmission and distorting it. It was over.

“Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take ya, Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama, Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go, Jamaica,”

Liv stopped crying and stared at nothing at all. She was done. Her soul was crushed. There was nowhere else to run, and nothing else to cling to. Then, through the tinny readout speakers, their three voices sang, starting with Liv alone, “Off the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo, that's where you wanna go to get away from it all. Bodies in the sand, tropical drink melting in your hand. We'll be falling in love to the rhythm of a steel drum band, down in Kokomo.” Liv barely heard it, but Ted tensed behind her, craning to listen. And, in that garbled, inhuman speech, this time without any instrumentation, and just as unsurely as their own verse had been, something began to sing: “Aruba, Jamaica, oh I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama, Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go. Oh I want to take you down to Kokomo, we'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow. That's where we want to go, way down in Kokomo.”

There was a rumbling in the walls, and Harmony shrieked. “There’s something out there!” Ted let go of Liv and pushed across to Harmony, peering at the sensor readout over her shoulder.

“Jesus, that’s big,” he breathed. Liv only pulled herself on top of her husband and lay there, staring into the glow of the reactor. “How big is that?”

“I–” Harmony laughed, “I don’t know. It has to be at least… nine times the size of the original ship.”

Light blazed through the window of the airlock, then, reflected through the torn corridors of the ship–light that pulsed and resonated like the tractor beams in old UFO movies–and, very slowly, the three began drifting toward the far wall of compartment as the ship began to change course, moving toward whatever was pulling it.

Liv clung to Jennison’s body, unperturbed and uncaring. Harmony and Ted would get out. That was fine.

“Liv,” Ted said, moving towards his tether. “Strap in.”

Liv didn’t move to comply.

“Liv,” he tried again, more tenderly. “Liv, please, strap in to your tether.”

Her vision was ebbing darkly with dehydration, exhaustion, and hunger, and she barely understood what Ted was saying. Distantly, she knew that she was delirious, but knowing that there is a problem doesn’t always mean that it can be solved. The room swayed in the strange light, seeming to waver like heat haze. Harmony was touching her, then, trying to tug her free from Jennison–from Lucas–but she didn’t budge. She would not budge.

“Olivia,” Harmony said softly in her ear, “honey, come on, you need to tether. We don’t know what direction the gravity is going to be facing in that thing.”

Liv didn’t say a word, just pressed herself closer to Jennison’s remaining warmth.

Harmony tried to pry her arms off, but they were each as dehydrated as the other, and Liv’s arm’s would unbend.

“Liv, now,” Harmony said, more firmly, as if speaking to an obstinate child. “Come on.”

“No,” Liv muttered. “No.”

Harmony shot a dismayed glance at Ted as the artificial gravity of their acceleration increased, making it hard and harder to stay in place.

“I’m so thirsty,” Liv croaked.

“I know, honey,” Harmony tried, still holding onto the smaller woman. “It’ll be okay soon, just come on and tether in.”

Liv hesitated, then slowly relinquished Jennison, making both of them drift slowly toward the rear of the room and the reactor. Harmony guided Liv to her tether, and then pushed across the room to her own.

Everything happened at once, then. “Harmony!” Ted shouted in alarm from his own spot clipped to the wall. Harmony drifted uncontrollably across the room while Liv suddenly kicked off for the airlock, shooting for it like a human cannon ball and slamming into the closed door. She wrenched it open just as Harmony reached her tether and yanked herself inside. “Stop her!” he barked, panicking to unclip his tether.

Harmony kicked off, soaring for Liv in slow motion as she pulled the heavy door shut, and collided with it just as it closed.

“Liv, open the door,” Harmony pleaded, yanking on the handle, but Liv was holding the lever shut from the inside.

“No!” she shouted, her voice coming through the intercom overlaid with an electric buzz.

“Olivia, please!” Harmony shouted. Ted unclipped his harness and shot across the compartment to grab the lever with Harmony. “Help is right here! They’re here! Don’t throw that away!”

“We don’t know what’s out there, Harmony!” Olivia shouted back, her hand on the evac button that would open the outer door and suck her out into the vacuum in the halls outside the maintenance room. “And even if we get back home, what is going to be left for me? I don’t have anything there. I don’t even have a dog!” Her head went woozy, and she squeezed her eyes shut, forcing away the wave of darkness.

“Liv,” Ted said, turning the lever by degrees along with Harmony, and the woman inside had to take her hand from the button to use both hands in keeping the door shut. “Come back inside. It’s going to be alright. Just give it a chance!”

“No, Ted, it’s going to be alright for you. If whatever is out there doesn’t just eat us on the spot.”

“You were the one who kept telling us to hold on and that help was on its way. Here it is! Help is here! Just wait five more minutes.”

Liv only looked at him, her eyes dead and flat as a corpse. Her face was sunken, slack, devoid of feeling. “I was happy, Ted. I had hope. I don’t care anymore if they can help or not. I don’t care. Why? Why should I care?”

“Because,” Harmony retorted, turning to Ted with a hopeless, panicked look in her eyes.

“Because,” Ted said, “You are alive. You are alive, Olivia. Isn’t that enough? What other reason would you have to be hopeful? You are alive, and you will fight to continue to be alive or, so help me god, when I die I’m filing a suit and getting you sent straight to hell!”

“We’re already there, Ted,” Olivia said flatly, and reached for the button to evacuate the airlock. The light had grown to a near blinding brilliance now, and Olivia Statton was silhouetted, nearly devoured, by the blue light that burned orange ghosts into Ted and Harmony’s vision.

“Olivia, don’t!” Harmony cried, but her hand was already to the button, and death was already in her eyes.

“Livy,” croaked a pained voice from behind, and her hand froze on the button, muscles tensed to push. Ted and Harmony’s spines jolted in unison, and they craned their necks around so fast that stars swam in their cotton-stuffed heads. “Am I really that bad a husband?”

“Lucas?” Olivia breathed. Her hand stayed on the button, unbelieving.

“We just got married yesterday, and you’re already trying to run away? That’s a record for me.”

“Lucas!” her hand jolted from the button as if it had suddenly grown searingly hot. The acceleration of the ship had begun to slow, and the weightlessness began to return. The light dimmed as the remnants of the ship passed through a massive aperture, and a different gravity kicked in, this one pressing all four into the ground with a weight that was crushing after days in zero-G. Liv wrapped her hands around her middle and began to shake convulsively, as if the airlock had suddenly dropped forty degrees.

“Is there anything I can say to make you stay?” Lucas croaked, eyes half open as he slouched against the wall, breathing labored.

“I’m sorry,” Liv whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Her whispers grew quieter as they went on, drowned by the blackness that swept through her vision and the implications of what she had almost done, while the artificial gravity pressed her softly and inexorably into the floor. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright, doll. Come back to bed...”

Then there was a resounding thud as the ship settled down on something hard, and Harmony and Ted’s knees buckled on impact. Olivia’s head hit the floor with a crack, and blackness took her, drifting with what weren't quite words, but were good enough.

We'll put out to sea...

And we'll perfect our chemistry...

By and by we'll defy...

A little bit of gravity...