Any Paradise

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Lena thought about this nugget from the orientation classes as she tightened the seal on her helmet. She had to stifle a quiet groan when she realized she might be testing that theory today if it all went to hell. And there was every chance that it would.

Helmet secured, Lena lifted her backpack off the floor and jogged across the room toward Jonas. He was already inside the chamber, frantically zipping up his suit, his own helmet catching the light like a glossy bubble of tar. She had always hated how he put his helmet on first, then zipped up his suit to finish attaching the two. That wasn’t the procedure. The classes made that quite clear. Jonas glared at her and barked, “Come on! We have to get up there now.”

The technical fabric of her suit gathered between Lena’s thighs as she hurried after Jonas. She never bothered to get her suits tailored. She had not intended to stay long. Not this long. The heat of her breath filled her helmet as she passed the threshold and entered the chamber.

She turned around and looked back. A simple arrangement. The “living room” sofa, a dismal taupe. The closet-sized kitchen. Clothes strewn all over the floor in their rush to leave. A small canvas seascape she had managed to smuggle in, its orange sky violent against the mud-colored walls. The marked absence of a single window. As Jonas rifled through his pack, Lena’s eyes settled on her old headphones. She wished she could press them to her ears and hear ocean waves one last time. Where she was going there would be no sound.

Lena closed her deep blue eyes, abruptly ending her last look at the weary dwelling they had been assigned at assimilation. She wondered how many of the original evacuees from their group had to die before the Company announced the inevitable collapse of the surface. Too many. But it would never reveal the numbers.

Her pack was heavy and she hoisted it over her shoulder. She reached down into her front right pocket, her fingers finding a heart-shaped locket on a silver chain. She knew it would be there, but she still exhaled with relief. Then Jonas’ gloved hand was on her shoulder, his other hand fiddling with the control panel.

“You all right?” Jonas glanced anxiously at her while his fingers worked away.

Lena gulped. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Good, because you gotta be focused on this. We may never get this chance again.”

“I’m just trying not to get my hopes up is all,” Lena said. Her heart flailed around in her chest. She hadn’t been to the surface in four days. She feigned sickness and when Jonas had left for the plant every day, she prepared, listened to the ocean, and prayed to a god she no longer believed in. Just in case.

The chamber closed with a sharp suction noise. It began to move upward and the door to their home slipped away beneath them. They slid past layers of coarse black rock and thin veins of coveted blue ore. The occasional metal rungs that kept the tunnel from caving in whizzed by with a deafening whong. Lena creased her forearms tightly into her stomach, trying to control her nausea. Blood pounded in her ears. She squeezed the locket. Here it comes, she thought. The silence.

As the chamber reached the surface and was pushed out of the tunnel, a rail system seamlessly guided it onto a horizontal track. They glided toward the plant without a sound. All Lena could hear was the thrum of a dull headache as she pressed herself into Jonas’s arms, their helmets gently touching. Coming to the surface made her sick. It always had and he had always held her. This would be the last time.

Her head tucked next to Jonas’, Lena stared stoically through the clear chamber walls. She scanned the monotone landscape before her looking for any change, any color that might have shot up from the earth to protest this disastrous experiment. She saw nothing but black, craggy rock stretched before her like a dark lake that had never trembled in the wind. There was no wind.

“You’re thinking about him again,” Jonas said.

This time she hadn’t been. She had been transfixed by the wasteland before her but Jonas called her back from her trance.

She felt a defensive heat rising in her cheeks. “And I shouldn’t? I shouldn’t ever think about him?”

Jonas shook his head. “You have to let him go, Lena.”

Lena blinked back stinging tears. She was suddenly angry at herself for this show of weakness after she had summoned so much fortitude to prepare for this day. “We couldn’t bring him here. We made the best decision–”

“That we could make at the time, yes, I know, Jonas. There was nothing else we could have possibly done! I know.” Her voice trembled and tears rushed down her cheeks in a warm wave.

Jonas was silent. She wondered if he had ever cried the way she had, violent, lonely sobs in the windowless house. Or even while suited up, sailing along in the silent chamber on his way to the plant every day. She guessed if he had, he would never tell her.

“We would have buried him three years ago,” he murmured.

Lena’s mouth creased in fury. “You don’t know that,” she seethed.

Jonas erupted. “I do know it!” She could barely make out his eyes inside the tar bubble helmet but she knew they were flashing. “And I knew it then, too! Have you actually looked at this place, Lena?” He pushed her against the chamber wall, her helmet slapping it with a sharp crack. As she rolled away from him along the wall, Jonas slammed his fists against the space where she had been. “He never would have survived here and you fucking know it!”

Lena steeled herself. She grabbed for the locket again, made a fist around it, then let it settle deep in her pocket. The plant loomed before them.

Jonas groaned, his outburst finished. “We’re almost there. Let’s hope this is it.”

The chamber came to rest and opened like a trap being set for prey. Lena followed Jonas onto the gray platform. She would only have one chance. He began to run and she followed.

“Running is not permitted on the platform,” a voice thundered. It was the plant’s main computer. The order echoed through the empty corridor. There’s no one else here, Lena thought. Good.

As they approached a door, it whooshed open and the voice returned. “Please enter the vestibule. Stand on the number assigned to you by the Company within the last six hours. If your number has expired, you will not be admitted to a capsule.”

They entered a grey, rectangular room and the door suctioned close behind them. They removed their helmets, Lena hiding her tear-stained face from Jonas. This is it, she thought. She felt a spike of grief, of guilt – this time about Jonas. She knew this would destroy his chance to go on to the next site. They would blacklist him now. She blinked a few stray tears away and clutched the strap of her pack. Not now, she thought.

“Seventeen… seventeen,” Jonas muttered, frantically scanning the twenty or so circles on the ground, his pack swinging from his shoulder, helmet gripped in one hand. Then he saw it, about thirty feet away. He rushed over and jumped on the number, tossing his pack down in excitement. The circle lit up with a bright orange glow. “Lena, here!”

She walked toward him slowly, deliberately. Her timing and resolve were paramount.

“Group Seventeen,” the voice barked. “Your capsule is ready. Mind the sliding doors. Your capsule is ready. Mind the sliding doors.”

The thick, transparent capsule doors opened behind Jonas, the doorway framing him in a strange, almost comical way. A target. He stared at Lena, then looked back at the capsule. Now.

Lena dropped her helmet. It clattered on the ground. She saw the surprise in his face. She began to run toward him, sliding her pack off her shoulder, the strap squarely in her hand. She swung the pack down and then up sharply, directly into Jonas’ face as he turned to look at her. With a yelp of surprise, he dropped to the platform, helmet skittering away.

Lena scooped up Jonas’ pack with her left hand and continued running into the capsule. She flung both packs down and turned to the control panel, her breathing quick, anxiety spiking like a thousand needles in her chest. Jonas picked himself up and spun around. With a practiced move, Lena pushed CLOSE with her left hand, then punched the LOCK panel with her right. Jonas slammed into the capsule exterior. “Lena!” he screamed. “Lena, what the fuck?!”

There was no turning back now. She fished around in her pocket and hurriedly pulled out its treasure. A silver filigree heart, tarnished from years of hiding inside the seascape’s canvassed frame. She twisted it open. There he was. Emerald eyes, curly brown locks cascading over his forehead, ecstatic at his fourth birthday party. The greatest smile she had ever seen.

Lena was nearly floored by a wave of memories and emotions. The pure joy of her son’s existence. The glow of that birthday. The pain of the insidious illness taking over his frail body. The endless nights by his bedside in bombed-out hospitals while the whole world fell to ruin outside. The Company’s offer. Jonas’ drive to leave. To leave their son. To unknowingly come to a world somehow worse than the crumbling, diseased one they left behind – the place where they told her Ethan still had a small chance at life. But only if he stayed.

Lena snapped back to the present. She grimaced and ripped her smiling boy from the locket. He drifted downward as she pulled out a tiny slip of paper that had been nestled behind the photo. The locket and chain clattered on the deck. Lena unfurled the paper, jumping a little with each slam of Jonas’ body against the capsule. He was screaming.

The voice, inside the capsule now. “Please enter the code assigned to you by the Company within the last six hours. If your code has expired, you will not be permitted to leave the surface.”

Trembling, Lena stood in front of the control panel and scanned the faint, handwritten numbers and letters on the shred of paper. She began pressing the corresponding keys on the panel. S, L, 6– slam. Jonas against the doors. J, 7, I, L– slam.

“64T, 58Y–” Lena mouthed breathlessly as she entered the lengthy code, her vision blurring, her heart slamming in her chest. Jonas suddenly stopped his attack on the capsule and spoke calmly. “Lena. Listen to me. You always get sick on the surface. You’re just confused. They aren’t going to give this to us again, we can’t blow it now, baby.”

Lena breathlessly pressed buttons and did not look at him. “Lena. I’m serious now."

Almost there. The calm faded from his face and he let out a demeaning chuckle. “Where do you think you’re even going? You’re useless without me. Let me in, Lena.”

As she entered the final digits, a sob of relief welled up in Lena’s chest. The capsule emitted a series of five musical tones and a warm orange glow enveloped her. She thought of the painting left behind underground – the sunset that had kept her secret. “Master override successful. Jettison protocol commencing.”

Lena felt a low rumble beneath her as she locked eyes with Jonas. He finally understood.

“No. No!” He scrabbled at the doors.

Lena backed away and sat down in a padded chair with armrests. She pulled the harness around her and buckled it with a satisfying click. Jonas exploded in a final, violent rage. His words slashed at Lena like daggers. “He’s dead, Lena! Ethan is dead. You’re going back to a literal hell and for what?! All you’re gonna find are fucking ghosts.”

Lena glared at him. “You’re right. He might be gone. But I’d rather live in what’s left of a world where he existed than live in any paradise with you.”

“Prepare for jettison. 5, 4, 3–”

“LENA!” Jonas screamed.

“2, 1–”

The capsule rumbled and detached from the platform with a deafening whirr. Lena felt everything levitate for a millisecond, then watched Jonas’ face shrink to the size of a microbe as she rocketed away from him. As the capsule achieved orbit the locket floated up to meet her, tarnished heart hanging open, the crumpled picture of Ethan wandering close behind.

“I did it,” she said aloud, steadying her breath. “I’m coming home. Whatever is left. Wherever you are. I’m coming.”

Her journey stretched before her like all the black of space – soundless and without answers.