No One Can Hear You

Today is a Wednesday but it sure feels like a Monday. On the day that was actually Monday, Headquarters was made aware that contact had been lost with one of several manned deep-space research vessels. Details began to trickle in. There was an emergency of some kind which resulted in the total destruction of the ship. The data has just arrived; logs, experimental data, telemetry, audio, video, everything you could cram into a ship's computer. There are a dozen eggheads itching to tear into it from all angles, but that's not why you got out of bed this morning.

Eighteen hours after last contact, an escape pod was found containing the only survivor of the catastrophe. Kara Reid, a 28-year-old civilian data analyst, had been the only one of 14 crew members known to have made it out alive. It's going to be your responsibility to debrief her once you arrive at the station where she's recovering. They didn't want to send some hardened military type or a detached G-man. The situation calls for a gentler approach, or at least someone who has studied such an approach. Being the first point of contact for trauma victims fresh from the Final Frontier isn't what you had in mind when you got that counseling degree, but here you are, somehow. But before you get to the station, you need to watch the footage.

You park yourself in an empty conference room and surround yourself with coffee and coffee accessories. You ready a pen and notepad and press play.

The escape pod was a small metal room designed for up to four people to strap in and await rescue. Three walls and a door with a sturdy round window. The walls adjacent to the door had two seats each, and the wall opposite door had compartments full of essentials. It also contained a wide-angle camera mounted above head-height. You fast-forward through a few minutes of nothing at the start of the video.

All at once, the door opens and a young woman scrambles into the room. The door shuts behind her, and she leans against it to catch her breath. Kara seems to be sporting a tank top, shorts, bare feet and an impressive bed-head. You guess that whatever happened, it interrupted her sleep. A morbid thought crosses your mind: perhaps some of the crew slept uninterrupted to the end. Rather than making her way to a seat, Kara slides to the floor. She looked around at nothing in particular, most likely still wrapping her mind around the events unfolding behind her.

You hover your hand above the fast-forward key, but there's no need. The image flickers once as the escape pod adjusts the light and atmosphere within itself. Where there was light outside the window, now is darkness. You cast a glance at some supplemental data. It seems the pod was launched by the ship's computer, an automatic process that kicks in when several "emergency" parameters are met. It takes Kara a moment to realize she's no longer attached to the ship. She looks at the window above her head and notices the darkness. You doubt the launch was so smooth she would miss it. That's shock for you.

After a few more moments, Kara stands and moves to the wall beneath the camera. You hear a muffled burst of static followed by the sight of Kara pounding at a control panel. Ah, bad luck. The communications system wasn't functioning. You can't tell from your limited scope whether there was physical damage, a computer glitch, or some external interference. That's a case for the eggheads. What this means for Kara is that, if there's anyone out there, she can't hear them and they probably can't hear her. What it means for you is that the computer didn't record any audio outside of that static.

You watch Kara continue to fiddle with the controls, shouting wordlessly as if increasing her volume might increase her chances. But Kara's no engineer. Soon, she gives up and turns her face to the camera. She stares into a lens that might resemble a single human eye if she uses her imagination, but she knows that no one is looking back at her, at least not in the moment. Even in the present, you're not looking Kara in the eyes. There's been a change at the window behind her. A pair of gloved hands press against the inches-thick glass.

The hands tap gently, too gently, you guess, to make a sound inside the escape pod. Kara continues to look into the camera, sometimes seeming to take a breath or open her mouth as if to speak. But she closes her mouth or lets go of the breath. You guess that she doesn't know what to say. You wonder whether she knows that no comms means no audio would be recorded. If you were an optimist, you might wonder if she has hope she'll be rescued and live to tell her tale in person. Right now, you wish with all your caffeinated will-power that Kara would turn around and notice the figure at the door.

Eventually, she does. She rushes to the window and presses her face against the glass. There's too much between you and that window, time, distance, glass, ones and zeroes, and probably a space helmet, for you to make out a face on the other side. It looks like Kara recognizes them, though. She rushes back to the controls to try one more time, getting nowhere. The figure outside raises their arm and tries their comms controls on their arm. Kara turns around and gestures wildly at the pod's controls. She puts a hand to her ear and shakes her head emphatically, then raises a hand toward the controls shrugging. She starts to move back to the door, but pauses to look to the camera. She speaks to you, exaggerating the shapes of her words.

"It's Kepler!"

You write the name "Marcus Kepler" on your notepad and scrub back through the video to make note of the time he appears. Kepler is, or was, a 32-year-old engineer. You have so many questions. How in God's name did he get to the escape pod? How did he have time to get suited up? Or was he already in the suit? Was Kepler on a space-walk after hours? And never mind all of that; why wasn't he caught in whatever destroyed the ship? You take a moment to brainstorm. Perhaps whatever happened had not yet finished happening. You take a deep breath, pour another coffee, and resume playback.

Kara is gesturing at the pod's controls again, but Kepler waves a hand to say, "negative." Kara's mouth falls open. Next she checks the door, examining the seal, the mechanisms. She looks to Kepler and mimes opening a door. She doesn't wait for a reply; Kara rushes to the supply compartments and digs out a space suit. She jams the helmet over her head symbolically and returns to Kepler, making the door-opening motion a second time. Kepler's hands wave another solemn "negative," and he's right. Maybe Kara is an optimist after all, but there was no chance.

Opening the pod under these circumstances and all by herself would carry a phenomenal risk. Could Kepler have walked her through it? Maybe. But he shouldn't. He knew it, and, hopefully, made peace with it. You wish you could say you'd have made the same choice, but it's never that easy. You never know what someone will or won't do under pressure until it's too late for speculation.

Kara removes her helmet. You can't be sure from this angle, but it looks like she's crying. She looks up into Kepler's face, and she straightens up a bit. He's done something that's gotten her attention. Kara tilts her head, then shakes it as if to say "I don't understand." Kepler's gloved hand points into the pod. He points at the camera. He points to you. You press "pause." Your breath catches for a moment and without thinking you cast a glance around the conference room. It's still empty. You're still alone. You're not sure if that makes this better or worse.

You press "play." Kara turns her head and look thoughtfully at the camera. She nods to Kepler. She understands. Kara gently presses her face against the glass, and you guess that Kepler is doing the same, as much as he can from inside a space helmet. Their faces are as close as they can get.

Kara raises her left hand to the wall beside the door. With an open palm, she begins to beat a rhythm against the metal. It takes a moment for your emotions to get out of the way so you can use your brain. It's not a rhythm. Of course, it's Morse code.

You're not very good at interpreting Morse code, but you're the one party to this conversation with the luxury of time. On a clean sheet of paper you dot-dash your way down the page. Every 15 seconds you back up to make sure you got it right. If only your heart would dot-dash as slowly as this message. And then, suddenly, it's over.

Even without an accompanying sound the bright flash startles you. When the image returns, Kara is on the floor, covering her face with her hands. You're not sure yet whether she was hurt by the flash, but even if not, she'd likely still take some time to lie on the bare floor and sob. You watch her begin to let it all out. You sort of feel like doing the same. Hell, you could, there's nobody here, but you might end up on some other counselor's computer screen if you did.

You pause the video for the time being and pull up a guide to Morse code. Time to get to work. You try to focus on one letter at a time. If you let the message come together too quickly, this might be more difficult than it needs to be. One by one by one, your page fills with letters above the dot-dashes. Eventually, you slam the pen down and take a deep breath. Now, let's see:

"Kara: You're doing great. It's been an honor and privilege. We'll be watching; you'll go far. HQ: Tell Stacy I love her. No pain. Chin up. Earth is blue and ther—"

"Oh, Marcus..." you whisper aloud. He was a long, long way from Earth, but the sentiment stands.

You decide you need a break. No, you need a nap. The video will still be here when you come back, and you're pretty sure all that's left is to watch Kara cope for hours in isolation, in fast-forward, until rescue arrives. You start to calm down as you send your findings along to the need-to-knows. You also send up a silent prayer of thanks that they're not sending Kara a military man or a "special agent." You're sure that the moment you lay eyes on her, in the flesh, in the present, the first thing you'll do is give her a hug.