Unlucky

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I ponder these words from Viewing Area 112. Twenty-four young scientists, pilots, officers, explorers and I quietly study the first probe that has returned. It floats just twenty feet past several layers of protective glass. Onboard is the first surface sample collected from an ocean 30,000 miles below. The planet we arrived at two days ago is a mess of lavender and green swirls. Sensors on unmanned probes that came before us had trouble discerning exactly where the edge of the ocean and atmosphere met. The third, and final, deep space probe never returned.

Our gigantic vessel resembles three spheres in a line. Each takes up as much volume as a skyscraper. Owned and flown by the Friend-Tronics Corporation, the front end sphere has the bridge at its outermost point. Then, a large portion is dedicated to generating power. The closest areas to the connecting sphere are crew quarters and laboratories for the scientists aboard.

The middle sphere is much more interesting than its dull grey, porthole covered brothers. About half of it has been craftily cut away and hollowed out. The remains of this section look like a helix with two connecting bridges spanning the empty core. I can see them above the car sized probe that has patiently waited for my friend's arrival. Most of the interior of this section resembles an office building more than a spaceship.

The tail end sphere is exclusively for the military security detail. Hidden somewhere between the rear engines and the access corridor to the middle sphere is the secret technology that allows humanity to travel lightyears in a matter of seconds. After generations of hoarding their technology, and no wars to fight, they now function more like the FBI than any standing army.

Several space suits come into view. Excited whispers between colleagues fill the air. One of the suits maneuvers towards us rather rapidly, shooting past the probe. It stops mere inches from the glass. The man inside adjusts the helmet and his face becomes visible. It’s my best friend Josher. I catch his eyes with a frantic wave. He waves back while talking to someone over his headset. Then, rolling his eyes, he signals that it’s time for him to get back to work by pretending to tap a watch he’s not wearing.

Josher turns using his suit’s thrusters and slowly heads to the probe. The other members of the spacewalk are still catching up when he grabs ahold of the probe. A small panel in front of him slides open. He begins pulling a two inch diameter metal canister out of the probe. After almost a foot of extraction, he stops. For a moment, nothing happens. Everyone eagerly awaits this first sample.

Josher reaches further down the cylinder to get a better hold of it. Suddenly, several of the thrusters on the probe fire small bursts. It twists violently, causing Josher to let go almost immediately. Before anyone can react, a fin on the probe’s exterior slices downward. It collides with the backpack area of Josher’s suit. My eyes go as wide as they can while I watch him frantically attempt to orient himself. The others in the room gasp at the sight of his life sustaining atmosphere vent out into the emptiness of space. Another member of the spacewalk reaches him, but it’s too late. Josher tosses about wildly for a couple more seconds, then goes completely still. Everyone in Viewing Area 112 stands breathless, almost frozen in time.

I storm out of the room.

“Ben!” yelled a colleague who followed me out of the room, sprinting to catch up to my brisk pace. I couldn’t place the voice in that moment. Not in this shocked state. It could be Chris, or Beth, or even the captain of this vessel, Lissa Kinner-something? I need to get back to my office as quickly as possible, so I continue without looking back. It’s the only place I feel safe onboard the Cubic Dynamic.

“BEN, WAIT UP!”

A surprisingly firm hand catches my shoulder and spins me almost a full 180 degrees.

“I’m sorry,” says Greg, a security specialist, who has chased me down. Standing uncomfortably close to me now and almost out of breath, he starts to continue in a soft voice, “He was-”

“I don’t need an apology,” I say, cutting him off with a louder voice than I thought I could muster. I tried to push his hand off my shoulder using my own, but I’m not strong enough in this moment. “I need to go.”

“I meant I’m sorry for your loss.” Greg is kindly dancing around my shattered emotional state. “Professor Josher and yourself have always been fun guys to see joking in the halls together.”

I bring my eyes up slightly to look into his face. It is a blurry picture with all the tears trying to make their way out. “Thanks, Greg,” I manage to get out in a low, monotone voice. His face is turning red and looks swollen. Could it have been from running me down through the hallway with a decade older body than mine? Maybe he too is feeling overwhelmed by a flood of emotion.

Chris, My assistant, has also caught up to Greg and I now. A look of confusion across his face matches his inability to find any of the right words in this chaos. His lips slowly moving about in an almost hysterical way, but no sounds following.

Greg’s hand gently releases me.

Suddenly, the hall is saturated with blinking red from hidden emergency lights and the chirping of a minor level alarm. I turn to finish my journey. Greg dashes away and Chris keeps pace with me. We reach the Office of Alien Contact. I slam the hinged door shut just after he passes through, and move past the wooden banquet table to the computer terminal at my desk. The center of wall behind me has a large, round hatch that accesses a panic room. The thought of locking myself in there crosses my mind.

“What the hell was that!” Chris gasps as he paces around the table. “Is he dead? That probe should have been remotely switched off before they went to it! And the proximity sensors should have canceled any attempts to maneuver. I mean, that’s what they're for, right? To keep us safe. Soooo, THAT… can’t happen, right?”

I’m staring at my terminal screen unable to comprehend most of Chris’s thought process through all of my memories. Our memories. They are flowing through the forefront of my mind like a flood. Washing away all attempts to divert them with a forceful ease. Josher was Chris’s best man just 3 weeks ago. He gave a speech so funny that even Captain whatever-her-name doubled over with laughter. I’m going to miss that.

Chris spends a few moments watching me watch my screen. Then, abruptly springs back through the door shouting, “I need to find Beth.” I’m finally alone but the memories keep flowing. Beth’s birthday party in the second week of our journey had been a huge laboratory mess. Chris had convinced Josher to help him construct a rollercoaster of fluids through pipes that crisscrossed the room. The end result was supposed to accumulate the fluids into a central container. Somehow, the combination of colored science-y fluids produced a large foam that shot all the way up to the ceiling before breaking the flask and spilling across the table, floor, and our shirts. I bet Josher had planned it from the moment Chris asked to use the lab. My shirt still has the orange to green stain after twenty washes.

The alarms continue to chirp lightly from the hall. The only words on my screen are 'The Tales of Josher the Jester: Part 1, The Wedding'. How long have I sat here now? I want to write something about him. Like a biography, but not so formal. I don’t want to forget the times he and I shared. Meeting in the crew preparation drills last year. Training our bodies for our three month long voyage to this still unnamed planet. Laughing on this ship. Talking in this room. I don’t need to write his life’s story. I lived it with him. I’ll remember him until the day I die.

Three knocks at the door and three members of the security detachment enter. “Mr. Ixonia, you need to come with us immediately. Captain Kinsleyland needs to speak to you. It’s urgent.” The seriousness of his tone puts enough fear in me that I can’t verbally respond. I rise slowly from my console seat and follow the guard who had spoken. My mind is such a mess that I will probably follow an order from a 5-year-old. The other two security members, with fewer symbols on their uniforms, follow close behind.

I barely notice where they are leading me. I turn my head away from portholes and viewpanes, afraid of what I might glimpse. A digital display shows the emergency condition of the ship has been in effect for an hour and a half already.

We pass by a corridor that would lead us to the bridge or captain's quarters. Captain Lissa Kinsleyland is known for showing up to conduct impromptu inspections throughout various,even mundane, parts of the ship. This helps keep the crew on alert for her presence, I guess. I always felt a little nervous after the time she arrived at my office a month ago and casually pointed out a few places that could use some tidying up. I swept most of the loose items from the areas into a wall drawer that I rarely opened since. The other thing she has a reputation for is being overly cautious. Something I don’t mind since she managed to smoothly sail the Cubic Dynamic to this unsettled planet. My, how things change in two days. “Why doesn’t she come see me?” I manage to ask.

“She can’t. A medical team is about to operate on her. We need to get to her quickly.”

“Operate!?” I blurt out.

“The Captain, herself, managed to get a sample onboard before an accident in the bay crushed it and her.”

Then, we round a corner and I realize exactly where we are. I came here last night to help Josher clean his lab in preparation for the first samples. We cut straight through the room. Scientists and technicians scramble about, almost in a panic. I hear a scream from ahead of us. A woman in a lab coat, standing at an empty table to my left, gasps so audibly that it sends shivers down my spine. A few seconds later we are out the far side of the lab and take four steps directly across the hall to a small, emergency medical bay.

Doctors scramble around the table where the captain lays. Most of her light blue Friend-Tronics crew uniform is cut away and the rest is stained with blood. A small partition is placed below her chin by a doctor who tells her “The drugs should stop the pain soon. Try not to move.”

“Captain, he’s here” The decorated security officer yells before pulling me past himself and directly beside the table. I try to step back when I see her right side has been crushed. Her right hand is strangely darkened like a burnt marshmallow as well.

“Benjamin Ixonia,” she says to me with her head tilted in my direction but eyes staring more towards the corner of the room. “You are the Head Records Keeper for the Office of Alien Contact on this ship, correct?”

Her words are concise, and she seems to be trying to hide the fact that they are being forced out with great difficulty. It’s as if she’s racing against the slow trodding of time itself, and she’s about to lose.

“Y-Yes,” I reply. “I am.”

“Good. I hereby relinquish command of the Cubic Dynamic in accordance with the Articles of Intelligent Alien Contact.”

“Captain!” the security officer yells from next to my ear. “We barely know what this stuff is. It may not even be alive, let alone intelligent.”

“General Mains, you heard my order. Now help him find a way through this mess.” She continued in a soft, almost fading, manner.

This is General Mains? I had seen him from afar in the initial muster for boarding, but never met him. I had heard he coined the nickname “CD” for our vessel. Mates snap their fingers when they use it as some old homage to music playing devices. I never paid much attention in my history classes that covered the time before eighty years ago when interstellar travel was achieved. Biological cells discovered on Jupiter’s moon Io helped leap technology forward through chemical reactions that shed electrons like mad before returning to scoop them up. New electronics were developed that harnessed this process as free electricity. The CD had a section of the vessel, between the bridge and public offices, full of it to keep us happy and comfortable through our travels. After 27 years of sailing through Earth’s solar system, interstellar travel was developed. No sapient lifeforms have been encountered, but hundreds of planets have been discovered with unique and strange single celled organisms. It seems nobody told the universe to wash its hands… like, ever.

Mains concludes the conversation with a firm “As you wish, Captain,” and pulls me back through the doorway we had entered. The hall is surprisingly quiet as the alarm had stopped chirping at some point. “Let’s get moving to meeting hall twelve. Everyone is probably waiting to get their stupid questions answered.”

“What questions?” I ask as I try to come up with anyone’s name on this vessel that didn’t have a question right now.

Mains begins to walk down the hall, then stops. His head is turned to look at me, and his right eye studies my face as he speaks. “Maintenance wants to cut around the floor of the sample to transport it to the labs. Some civilian scientists think it will damage the sample. The captain said it’s some form of alien life, so nobody wants to touch it.”

Alien life. I suddenly understand. As the Head Records Keeper for the Office of Alien Contact, I have my degree in Extraterrestrial Lifeform Encounters. It really took off about thirty years ago when everyone thought humanity would find another intelligent species out there. After ten years of the same old bacteria ridden planets, the popularity steadily declined. Even I don’t really believe anyone takes my position seriously. I just wanted to see the stars. Traveling from the station in Alpha Centauri where I was born, to Earth for studies, and onward across the vast vacuum of the unexplored, was my goal. Doing so as an Alien Contact Records Keeper was just how I decided I would do it. In the Articles of Intelligent Alien Contact, it states: in the event of contact with intelligent alien life, the Head Records Keeper for the Office of Alien Contact will assume emergency authority over a vessel and her crew. We're definitely in a state of emergency, but there’s no way that something intelligent lives on this cesspool of a planet… is there?

“Are you going to be able to handle this?” Mains asks in a skeptical tone. He must have noticed me going off on a tangent in my thoughts. “I know you’re getting thrown into the fire here, but I’m not willing to throw away my career by going against the Articles. The captain says you are in command, so until she says otherwise, you will be.”

Written by Brian Christie

Edited by Jake Dziegielewski