Station Atlantis Chapter 1

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Randall found himself questioning that fact upon hearing Rachel and Jamie in the room next to him. Not since he was a freshman in undergrad did Randall Jackson have to contend with roommates having loud sex at the witching hour. On his day off. He had heard them going at it at around 21:00 SIM Time the night prior, just as he began preparing for bed, and had thought that they were through with it then. Nope. Whatever spark of passion inspired them to wake up at 04:00 and fuck was beyond Randall's knowledge. No way their circadian rhythms still aligned with their home time zones on Earth. Perhaps their bodies had gotten too used to the emergency drills and now woke up at random times in the night. Maybe one of them had a nightmare of a Xenocephalopod devouring them whole, he had nightmares like those sometimes. Or maybe one of them had a dream of home, and awoke homesick and in need of comfort. Randall had dreams like those too. At Station Atlantis, built into the icy crust of Europa, intimacy was easily ignited by loneliness. Regardless, Rachel and Jamie were awake, and so was Randall. Knowing he wouldn’t fall back asleep, Randall sat up and stretched before inching out of bed. Amid the thumps and moans arising from the other room, he changed out of his nightclothes into a tank-top and basketball shorts, and made his way towards the exercise room.

Randall was hardly the only person awake at the given hour. Over 3,000 active personnel were present at Station Atlantis, and at least a third of them were awake at any given moment. Dozens of engineers working constantly to keep the base’s life support systems running. Teams of doctors standing by for medical emergencies and monitoring daily changes in the physical condition of personnel. Physicists and software engineers making sure that the geothermal reactors were performing properly and kept constant communication with NASA base operations on Earth. The list went on and on, and thinking about it made Randall feel that marine biologists like himself were basically freeloaders that took all the credit for the discoveries being made at Station Atlantis. Well, to his credit, he thought, the marine biology research wing had produced some of the most exciting scientific discoveries ever made, and he was joining a legacy of groundbreaking research. He was only eight in 2047 when life was discovered in the oceans of Europa beneath miles and miles of irradiated ice and fascinated the entire world. Not just bacteria or algae or some green slime, but complex life. Sustained by vast ranges of geothermal vents and subsurface volcanoes, Jupiter’s fourth largest moon supported a sea as rich as any on Earth. Gelatinous Gulper-Stars drifted through the currents, filter-feeding on plankton like some chimera between a jellyfish, a seastar and a whale shark. Xenocephalopods ranging in size from minnows to school buses, shaped like stingrays except with two dangling tentacles extending in front of them. The shark-like Mortodonts, sleek and powerful predators that stalked the depths. And so much more. Many compared this ocean of strange lifeforms to the Cambrian Explosion of the early Paleozoic, when complex lifeforms on Earth first diversified into a myriad of different forms. Except for that all of the sea creatures of Europa were all blind. Eyeless, like cave-dwelling fish on Earth. There weren’t any bioluminescent organisms either. Europa’s subnivean sea never knew light until NASA’s first undersea probes broke through the ice and showed humanity aliens for the first time. Even as a young child, Randall already knew from ebooks and documentaries how much the Earth’s oceans had lost in the decades preceding his birth. The vaquita had become extinct. Coral reefs had been bleached and diminished. Fisheries had collapsed almost everywhere except in Antarctic waters. On Europa, Randall could find an ocean as rich and unspoiled as the one early mariners knew.

But shit, being in space for four years and working in ten-day shifts was rough. Randall walked past a team of IT staff as he entered the exercise room. It looked like Scott Friedman was doing weights, which was comically underwhelming in Europa’s one-sixth gravity. Randall liked Scott the nuclear engineer. When their off-days overlapped, they would often play video games or ping-pong together (ping-pong usually turned into a contest of how far they could send the ball flying). As a nuclear engineer, however, Scott worked a more traditional five-day shift with two days off, as opposed to the ten-day shifts with four days off that the marine biologists worked. Although Station Atlantis’ systems were largely powered by geothermal energy from hydrothermal vents, there were multiple thorium reactors that would perform as backups in the case of a system failure, which required constant mainteneance and inspection. Scott faced away from the door and had earbuds in, and didn’t appear to notice Randall, but Randall guessed that Scott was getting some weights in at the end of his shift before going to bed. Normally Randall would waltz on over and strike up a conversation, but being woken up so early on the first day of his off-days dampened his desire to chat. Daily exercise was a necessity in Europa’s low gravity in order to prevent muscle atrophy, but Randall knew that this would be a light day. Just five miles of jogging on the treadmill, the physicians could send him a nagging email to exercise more later, he didn’t care.

Randall zoned out on the treadmill as he jogged. While he exercised every day, he found that his mind wandered more often on his off-days, to either fanciful or mundane places. His thoughts bounced like a drop of water in zero-gravity. “Man I’d kill to go kayaking again.” “I miss fried chicken that isn’t lab-grown.” “Maybe I can convince Wendy to come over to my room this evening.” But quickly his thoughts turned to breakfast. Dinners were generally held communally in respective teams at Station Atlantis, but breakfast and lunch were usually eaten in solitude. Granted, breakfast was usually seldom more than one of NASA’s patented Space Bars. Children loved to get them at museum gift shops- Randall himself once asked his parents for an entire box’s worth for Christmas one year as part of his “astronaut training”. How young and innocent he was, and how foolish. They were fine to eat perhaps once a week, and they were satisfying in a pinch, but eating them almost every day turned them into the most monotonous bar of calories he could imagine. Thank God there were different flavors, otherwise he might’ve gone insane. Today was no day for a Space Bar, however. It was Randall’s day off, and he was going to have a proper breakfast. He didn’t realize how fast he was running until the treadmill beeped beneath him. It hadn’t even been forty-five minutes and he had already ran 5.5 miles. He decreased the speed to a walking pace, at which point he noticed Scott had just finished wiping down the weight machine and was walking up to him.

“You’re up early!” Scott said with a grin that seemed too chipper for having just worked a 10-hour shift and then lifted weights for an hour. “You’re up late.” Randall replied with a wry smile. “So how’s work man?” This dickhead, Randall thought. “Oh you know, same shit different day. Propagating aliens in test tubes for days on end, no big deal.” “And how’s that been going? Are you going to accidentally kill us all with some mutant alien octopus, the story of which will get turned into an award-winning movie?” Randall just looked at Scott with a shared look of amusement. There was a tiredness in Scott’s eyes that conveyed a desire to keep this chat short and sweet, with which Randall was happy to comply with. They were friends, but it was still Randall’s day off, and he wanted to get to indulging himself. “You know, we’ve actually been having success with growing the Xenocephalopods, but it’s the Benthodonts that have been giving us the most problems.” “Yeah? What’s special about those guys again?” “Well,” grunted Randall as he deactivated the treadmill and grabbed a disinfecting wipe, “You know how there aren’t any fossils here on Europa?” “Uh huh?” “So genetic analyses have shown that the Benthodonts are the most basal of the Pseudoelasmobranchs, the ‘fish’ of Europa including the Mortodonts.” “Oh cool! So you’re trying to do some common ancestry stuff then?” “Exactly.” Randall said as he wiped his sweat off the treadmill. “But that’s what you do every day, doesn’t explain why you’re up so early.” “No it doesn’t, and today’s my day off man!” “Why the fuck are you up so early then?!” Scott asked laughing. “Two sweethearts named Rachel Bernstein and Jamie Grant.” Scott’s face turned to surprise. “Oh shit? When did those two start seeing each other?” “At least a month ago, although I remember him talking about watching movies with her starting like three months ago.” “Goddamn.” Scott said as he turned to get his bag. “So what’s your day looking like then, Rand? What activities you got planned for yourself?” he asked in a silly tone. “Breakfast, then fuckin’ nothin’. I need to not stretch my last six brain cells thin on my days off.” “Fair enough.” Scott said as he turned to leave. “Welp, goodnight man!” “Morning dude!” Randall replied jokingly. Scott shook his head and chuckled as he went through the door and walked away.

Back in the Marine Biology Wing dorms some half-hour later, Randall watched beaten eggs slowly fall from the egg dispenser into the blender. Between the natural viscosity of eggs and Europa’s low gravity, it felt like an age for the egg mixture to finally settle into the blender. For lab-grown egg yolks, they actually tasted pretty good, but the issue was that one could only get the mixture instead of a crackable egg, so the options were limited to scrambled eggs or omelets. This was an omelet morning. In a pan on the stove, Randall was frying onions and mushrooms on low heat. Seeing that some were beginning to char, he poured a cup of water on them, falling into the pan as orbs rather than a stream, and threw in a spoon of brown sugar. It was a shortcut to caramelize them, and it would make them soft and delicious. He mixed oregano, thyme, rosemary and black pepper into the egg mixture, and set the blender to mix for a moment. He scooped the onions and mushrooms into a bowl, poured the eggs into the pan, and then dashed towards the fridge to grab some cheese. While their food lab could generate milk, making cheese was a difficult process in low-gravity, so Station Atlantis personnel resorted to plant-based cheese substitutes shipped from Earth. Randall grabbed some vegan mozzarella, brought it over to the stove, and began shredding pieces onto the eggs, where it quickly melted. When cold and solid, eating it was a slightly unpleasant experience, but when melted it actually tasted quite good. The fake cheese melted, Randall tossed the caramelized vegetables into the omelet and folded it.

It was past 06:00 SIM Time now, and others were starting their day. Jamie entered in the kitchen and grabbed a strawberry Space Bar from one of the cupboards. “Morning Rand!” he beamed, seeming energized. “Morning Jamie.” Randall smiled as he positioned his omelet on a spatula and placed it on a plate. Jamie approached Randall somewhat awkwardly, and quietly asked “Hey, so, Rachel and I didn’t wake you up earlier did we? We’re really sorry if we did.” Randall briefly glanced over as he searched the drawers for a fork and knife. “Ah don’t worry about it man, it was either that or waking up to piss anyway.” he said smiling. Grabbing his utensils and a cup, he walked over to the beverage dispenser and filled it halfway with white wine. Jamie looked on with amusement. "Getting ritzy on your day off, I see?" "You bet man!" Randall answered as he shuffled over to the carbonation machine. He placed the glass in the apparatus and lowered the straw into the wine. He turned on the machine, which hummed loudly for several seconds as it flushed the wine with carbon dioxide bubbles before automatically deactivating. Moving back over to the beverage dispenser, he filled the rest of the cup with orange juice. "Jealous." Jamie said ruefully. "I've got another six days before it's my turn to relax." "Well just try to find purpose in your work." Randall sardonically replied. "Any updates on the Benthodont embryos?" "None. I don't get it, it's been easy enough to get the zygotes to join, but they just stop developing after that with no explanation. Rachel said she wanted to run some trials manipulating temperatures to see if that spurs any development." "Speak of the devil, and she will come." Jamie snorted as Rachel hurriedly strode in and grabbed a banana Space Bar, brushing sweetly against Jamie. "Morning to you too Rand!" She said grinning while turning about to find a coffee cup. Despite them waking him earlier, Randall was glad to call these two his friends and labmates. The trio of them were only a small number of the two hundred or so marine biologists at Station Atlantis, but they were bonded in their project of determining the morphology of the ancestral Pseudoelasmobranchs. These creatures displayed remarkable convergent evolution to fish on Earth, and using embryos to observe their ancient forms would help illuminate the evolutionary history of the organisms in the lack of fossils. And the three had been through it all together- flight prep, quarantine on the moon, the long and lonely space voyage, quarantine on Mars, an even longer and lonelier space voyage, quarantine on the Europan ice crust, orientation and submarine trips. Honestly, Randall was surprised it had taken this long for the two to become intimate. Casual sex was incredibly common on the Station, and close coworkers usually had a fifity-fifty chance of getting together, and the two had always been closer to each other from the start. Whether or not that would continue in a year when the three would finally journey home was another question, but not one that was urgent or pertinent.

Rachel and Jamie parted and made their way to the lab, meanwhile Randall went to the common area. The lighting was just a tad too bright, so he dimmed them slightly and planted himself on a couch, his omelet on a plate in his lap. He turned on the large monitor and accessed his account. In the early days of space travel, astronauts had to contend with long delays in communications between them and the Earth as radio signals traveled across vast distances of space, before the invention of AtomicNet. AtomicNet connected quantum supercomputers together using quantum entanglement, which allowed for instant communications faster than the speed of light. No excuse not to video call his parents, Randall thought. Actually, it was still hours before sunrise on the West Coast, that could wait. His brother and sister-in-law were on vacation in Malawi, he’d check in with them another time. Just a good streaming show for now, he still had his breakfast. He began flipping through titles when he heard a familiar set of footsteps growing louder. “You’re up early for someone not working today.” Wendy Zhou said gleefully. Randall thought about saying something clever but couldn’t come up with anything. She leapt onto the couch and wrapped her right arm around his shoulders. “Careful, don’t make me drop the omelet!” Randall exclaimed. Wendy giggled and kissed his cheek. “Can I have a bite? I haven’t eaten yet and I gotta get to my studio in like fifteen minutes.” Randall sighed but obliged, offering her his fork, which she used to take an inordinately large bite. He didn’t mind. As a scientific illustrator and one of the artists-in-residene at Station Atlantis, Wendy was involved in nearly research project at the base, and in Randall’s opinion was one of the smartest people he’d ever met. Her artwork was both meticulous and expressive, showing impressively detailed works that were scientifically accurate and emotionally moving. She was a master in both documenting the many biological samples they collected, as well as drawing different tools and equipment used by Station Atlantis staff. And she was cute as a button. Randall still wasn’t sure why someone as amazing as her would want to hook up with him, but he decided not to argue with a good thing. He looked down to find that she had eaten half of his omelet in all of a few moments. “What’s on the agenda for you today?” “Today I’m in your lab!” She said, finishing chewing. “I’m gonna take a look at those Benthodont embryos you’ve been growing and try to draw them at this stage in development.” “More like spawning than growing.” Randall lamented as he drew a sip from his makeshift mimosa. “We’ve been trying to get them to propagate for weeks and nothing.” “Well that sucks.” Wendy said, returning the fork to him. “So what’re you doing today then, lazy boy?” she asked, affectionately running her hand through his hair. “Well first,” he said, lifting a forkful of omelet to his mouth, “I’m going to finish this om-”

Randall was cut off by the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, springing both him and Wendy to attention. Many of the Station personnel were former military, and while neither Randall nor Wendy were veterans, they had trained extensively for various emergencies and protocols, and treated running as a sign of danger with the attitude of a marine. It was Rachel, her face red from exertion, sweat building on her forehead, her eyes as wide as Jupiter. “Guys!” she shouted before stopping before them, and bent over to catch her breath. It was immediately evident that there was no danger present. “Jesus Christ Rachel, don’t scare us like-” “The embryos! Dividing! Viable!” she said enthusiastically between breaths. Randall’s eyes widened, and a smile burst across his face. “Holy SHIT!” he exclaimed, and he immediately ran to his room, grabbing his labcoat from off the door and began to follow Rachel as she ran back down the hall to the lab. “Guess there’s your answer!” he shouted back at Wendy. Still perplexed, Wendy followed slowly behind him, not as eager to sprint. “Too bad for your day off!” she said.