The Inner Core

"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. How ‘bout we test that theory?” The tall older man in a tight space-suit leaned his ear toward the airlock as he pressed a button on the door controls. Two hands, desperately pressing against the other side of the observation window, immediately disappeared.

“Gosh. No, I guess I don’t hear anything.” A man’s body tumbled out into space, end-over-end, and then quickly vanished in the darkness. “And Jack was always such a talkative fellow. Ah well.” The tall man looked back at us, his collection of about 15 or 20 scientist, contained by three of his armed minions. He spoke, “but hey, you're all scientists; I’m sure they know the saying that one example isn’t data, it's just an anecdote. So I suppose we need to replicate our findings a few more times - just in case.”

He looked directly at me since I was toward the front of the group. “I’m sure you can appreciate the use of an appropriate methodology.”

“You son of a bitch!” someone beside me whispered, although a bit too loudly. He stood in his clean white lab-coat with his arms straight at this sides, fists clenched, reminding me of a frustrated but helpless toddler.

“Oops! Language,” the terrorist leader said in a sing-song voice with a smile.

A man was dead. Others were probably going to die. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around what he was saying; it sounded too much like a mustache-twirling supervillain from some surrealist novel.

From behind me I heard Andy answer, “actually one event is data. It can be very important in developing new experiments to test.”

I flinched and froze, thinking, “no no, now isn’t the time. Can you just stop being so - Andy - for like 5 minutes?”

“Wonderful!” Came the sing song voice again. “I’m so glad you’re interested in testing this little experiment with me.” His voice suddenly dropped an octave as he pushed more buttons on the control panel. “Bring him.”

At this, a guard grabbed Andy by the back of the neck and yanked him away from the group, pulling him over to their leader. Andy was still yammering, “you don’t need to test this. It’s well known that there’s no medium for the sound to travel in. You’re not going to hear anything. You won’t even hear the decompression of the airlock since the air gets sucked out too fast for the molecules to transmit the wave. It isn’t going to …” he ended suddenly as the very large soldier moved his hand from behind to the front of Andy’s neck, choking off his frantic attempts to talk his way out of the situation.

Pain in the ass that he was, something in me just wasn’t going to watch Andy die while doing nothing, and I blurted out before thinking, “we don’t even know what you want!”

The leader marched directly at me and I backed up, bumping into the other scientists. It seemed as if I was having to look straight up as he said, “of course you do. I’ll lay it out in a simple syllogism so even that one can understand,” he flipped a thumb at Andy, whose face was starting to turn blue. “Secrets are power, power is worth killing for, therefore I must be killing for ..” he paused, then nodded to the soldier who released Andy; he fell to the floor gasping. “Yeeees? Killing for??” The leader directed his question down at Andy, now on all fours, and still sounding as if he was choking between gasps.

The leader kicked him in the ribs. “Hey, Professor Lab Coat! I made the question just for you, so you better be able to answer it for me.” His voice had entirely changed again, it was sharp and scolding, entirely different than his other mocking and serious tones, almost as if it were a different person speaking.

“Secrets,” I answered quickly, but when he looked up, my instinct was that I better keep talking. “But we don’t have any secrets, all of our data is public record and our research reports go immediately the pre-print database. We’re not researching anything secret. We’re like the least secret researchers ever, I swear.” I intentionally stopped myself realizing that nerves might also provoke me to talk too much; that hadn’t worked out well for Andy.

“But that’s the nature of secrets isn’t it? People don’t admit to having them, unless you apply a little …” he pointed at me, “pressure.” His voice changed to a playful, child-like tone, “Buuut, in this case, we’ll apply a little vacuum. See what I did there?”

The soldier who had been by Andy was beside me in two steps. He grabbed my upper arm and pulled. I’m not very tall myself and had no choice but to walk painfully over to the leader on my tip-toes with my arm awkwardly in his grip above me, elbow pointed straight up, hand flailing around uselessly.

His voice was consoling now, “Someone here knows something, and even if you don’t, I’m sorry, but I’ll just have to keep flushing all of the know-nothings out the airlock till someone starts to talk. I’m trying to save humanity after all, I simply don’t have a choice.” He pressed another button on the controls.

At this point, I fully believed I had nothing to offer him and was only attempting to delay the inevitable. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk! But I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re looking for!” It was a more effective statement than I expected. The inside hatch to the airlock finished opening but he stopped.

Again, it seemed like a whole new person spoke, this time clearly and with no emotion, speaking to the whole room as if he were on stage or trying to entice an audience into viewing some new media production.“It has been 200 years now since man first traveled away from his safe little place in the world and floated out among the stars. It’s been 130 years now that we began to re-shape other planetary bodies in our solar system to make them habitable. It has been 20 years since the Medinara disaster and 15 years since absolute proof that we are not alone in the universe was finally discovered — discovered and hidden from the public. Secret experiments run on alien specimens may hold the key to significant technological advancements, certainly, but is the danger to society simply too great?”

I remember specifically thinking “he’s a crazy person,” and it was at that moment several truly strange things happened all at once. First, the evacuation alarms began to flash and scream their sirens. The second was that a station-wide voice could be heard: “Self-destruct initiated, make your way to the escape pods now. Automated countdown begins: 5 minutes remaining.” Finally, and seemingly most bizarre, the man continued to talk at the same volume, entirely unfazed, as if nothing was happening.

I nearly fell when the solider released my arm; I was surprised that he had essentially been holding me off the floor, seemingly without effort.

Members of the science teams were screaming and had pushed past the other soldiers in a panic; the leader continued talking blankly: “Our goal is to uncover and release the information on this station, and to prove that members of our government, right here on Mars, have conspired with alien races to exterminate our own people, to obtain … release technology …” the screams and panic became too loud for me to hear his continued monologue. I scampered away on the floor, backward at first and then turned to crawl, running into Andy, in about the same position.

“Come on!” I said as I smacked his shoulder to get this attention. I made it to my feet as the other two soldiers were distracted, the leader was still monologuing, and the other soldier was doing something to manage the controls.

I ran away from the airlock and into another passage, glancing back briefly to see Andy stumbling along behind me, and continued toward the main bridge. “We have to turn off the self destruct.” I shouted back at him.

He was holding his ribs as he jogged, “There’s no reason for a space station like this to have a self-destruct. I don’t think we need to.”

“4 minutes 30 seconds remaining.”

“Well then why the heck is that going off then?” I was looking back down the corridor at him when one of the soldiers appeared at the other end. I grabbed Andy by the labcoat and led him into a side room, locking the door behind us.

“It’s probably a fake.”

“A fake alarm? Why would anyone have ..? Ok, shut up now, Andy.” I uselessly yanked at a table to try to pull it over to the door - but it didn’t move.

“This is a space station. Everything in a space station is bolted down.”

“Therefore the table is on a space station? Gosh that guy really called you on on those syllogisms didn’t he?” I said giving up on moving the table I grabbed a fire extinguisher and bashed at the large air vent on the floor.

"Huh?”

“Nevermind,” the vent broke open.

“Wow, you’re strong for a girl,” said Andy.

In the face of impending death, you ignore these kinds of things. “In in in.” I pulled him down along with me as I crawled in first.

“4 minutes remaining.”

“It’s probably to scare off the terrorists.” Andy observed in a somewhat apathetic tone.

“What is?”

“The fake alarm.”

Sometimes Andy hurts my brain. “It’s not a fake alarm.” I crawled faster.

“You sure”

“Even if it was fake, the terrorists aren’t. A little perspective??”

“When I came I didn’t think there would be girls on the space station.” He said as he crawled along behind me, probably looking at my butt.

“Which way do you think the control room is from here?” I knew it would be down and to the left, but mainly wanted to change the subject.

“And you’re pretty.”

It’s impossible to describe how surreal this situation was. Trying not to get blown up in space, running from crazy conspiracy-theory goons, who work for some over-the-top terrorist “mastermind” that’s trying to prove the existence of aliens … while being hit on — badly. “Shut up Andy we don’t have time for this.” Yes, it was more nervous rambling.

We scampered like mice through the vents; Andy still trying to make conversation. I’d worked with the guy since the came on board several months prior, but I don’t remember him ever having said two consecutive sentences to me before — boy those were the days.

“Are you from Egypt, Lakshmi?”

The stupidity of the question was almost physically painful. It was as if he had a checklist of what not to say and was marking it off as we went.

“Is that the only country in Africa you know?”

“Oh, no, I know all the local governments on all three planets.”

“Indian science team.” I kicked at the vent. “See the coat?? You. Absolute. Dumbass!” Kicking seemed to be a good way to take out my frustration. If only it were Andy’s head. It didn’t come off, but bent and the corner enough to squeeze through. I immediately went to the control console and saw the live countdown displayed on the screen right as the audio came on:

“3 minutes remaining.”

I began working at the controls as Andy squeezed through the grating, getting his coat caught, and tangled into knots as he tried to take it off. Finally, he turned around and backed out of the coat and through the grate, ripping his pants on one of the twisted bits of metal. He cursed loudly in the the background as I tried to concentrate on the task at hand.

“Funny, the command codes have been entered so we have complete control of the station from here, maybe the terrorists did it before rounding us up? Oh, but all the files are open right here, they could have seen everything we were doing for themselves.”

“So are we going to explode?”

“Uh. Well I’m working on it. — Looks like I could shut off the self-destruct but someone’s apparently attached it to a relay so they can control it remotely. I can’t do anything as long as they’re connected to the system. Oh we’re so screwed. I can run the systems from here but I have no idea how to disconnect this console from the external receiver.”

“Oh, I can do that,” he said, starting to crawl under the desk area.

It’s impossible to describe the sinking feeling I had realizing there was nothing I could do and my fate was in the hands of a man who might very well get confused by the plot of a nursery rhyme. I literally lost all muscle tension and collapsed to the floor in a heap of surrender.

Andy disappeared under the console, legs sticking out from the end. “Thirty second remaining” came the automated voice.

“Andy?” I called, but not even loud enough for him to hear me. I no longer thought it mattered.

He responded, “Ok, I’m done.”

I was shocked to the point that I didn’t move. “You’re what?”

“25, 24, 23..”

“Shouldn’t you stop the self-destruct now?” He asked sounding slightly curious.

I rushed the console and entered the commands.

“Yes!” I was so thrilled and exhausted at the same time, I again collapsed, but into the chair this time. “How do you like that! Forget saving the day with one second to spare, I did it with an extra 19 whole seconds!” I joked.

“It’s a prime.”

I just closed my eyes. “Of course it is.”

Andy stood beside me. “Do you think it was really a self-destruct? Why would they have that?”

“Maybe the terrorists did it?” Honestly, I didn’t care at that point.

Andy poked at the screens a few times. “Um, I don’t really know how to work this. Is this a new directory? I haven’t seen it before.”

I looked up, and Andy was actually right about something else. I poked the screen a few times myself and then froze. This was was the kind of moment in life when you know things will never be the same.

“Um, Andy. This is an entirely secret directory. It’s only accessible because of the command codes. And it definitely looks like some kind of biological research. What is this?”

“Huh,” Andy said, looking over my shoulder. He was a bit too close for comfort and his butt hung out of the back of his ripped pants. “Looks like the terrorists were right. Aliens. Neat!”