The Fuchsian Expanse

Chapter 1 - Ascent

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I wish it were true. I wish you could look a man in the eyes as he begs for his life and hear nothing. But they’re wrong. The brain has a way of connecting the dots. You see the contortions as your mind spins around like a carnival. You wince as the body twists in agony, piercing the vacuum with a desperate concoction of emotion. You hear something much worse without sound. You hear something that thrusts into your brain like a thousand needles; an orchestra of discordant strings in a crescendo suddenly ceasing all at once within a fraction of a second. This conjured terror is louder than any audible scream and feels colder than any crevice of the Earth. The sound of a dying scream through the air on Earth is a warm lullaby compared to the death rattle heard within the vacuum of space.

***

"We're making our ascent now. David and James, retire to your cabins."

Our mission consisted of three crew members; David, myself, and our captain Tom. The ship BioTech granted us was extravagant. Christened “The Caesar,” it came with complete autopilot and docking capabilities. With no piloting necessary, the label of captain was essentially a formality to establish a chain of command. Preserving the chain of command drew ire from the crew. David wasn’t much of a talker, but you feel it in his actions and words.

While tensions were high, our cabins made for a nice reprieve. Styled to mimic an environment of our choosing, the cabins made traditional ship living quarters look like prison chambers. We spent a disproportionate amount of time alone, collaborating as needed. My room resembled the interior of a remote, lavish woodland cottage; a wood-paneled circular hot tub and shower were the tip of the amenities. Further in, a fully stocked kitchen lined with preserved food shared the company of an artificial livestock materializer. The livestock materializer came fully equipped with a BioTech brand livestock-to-table processor. The only odd contrasting section of the cabin was a rigid metal door with a red tinted light above the doorway, which was only to be used in emergencies. In the event of a catastrophic breach, the ship’s chambers would lock, opening the emergency hatch.

Our mission was simple. An uncontrollable, highly infectious disease was and is ravaging the world. We were to study it in the vacuum of space and return to Earth with a cure. That's how BioTech packaged and sold it to the press. Creating a perfect vacuum within an established atmosphere is nearly impossible, and the virus alone was too dense outside the human body to study effectively.

Several years ago, an exploratory vessel voyaged into the Kuril–Kamchatka trench, commissioned by the International Deep Research Alliance, or IDRA. New life forms were found and studied, but unknown to the researchers at the time, they returned to the surface with something much worse than research data. Of that crew, less than half survived. These survivors unleashed a plague on the world. Within months, 83,162,720 people were infected. The virus came to be colloquially known as IDRA’s Bane. No one cared much for any official label tacked on by international organizations. The virus was deadly enough for multiple planets to place embargos on Earth, quarantining it from most interplanetary travel.

The virus slowly conquers the body, proving fatal in most cases. The first symptom is a tingling sensation in the tips of your toes and fingers. Over the next 24 hours, it slowly crawls through your nervous system. I remember after retiring to my cabin as we made our ascent, waking to find this same sensation in my toes, but not quite in my fingers. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. It was possible that it was from having one too many drinks the night before. I paid no more attention and began readying for our study; time was in short supply.

As I stepped into the shower, I noticed what looked to be a camera in the corner of the shower wall. It had very subtle movements, but the sharp reflection on the lens gave away its position. I knew that I would surrender my privacy for this mission but had no idea the degree. I had decided to present my middle finger to the camera. I didn’t resent the observation. I wanted to see to what extent they were actually observing me and to test what would be taken up to me directly. I wanted to know what would happen if I appeared delinquent. I continued preparing, lacing up the designated suit and heading through my cabin’s airlock, clicking to open the door.

*click*, *click*, *click*.

*thudthudthudthudthudthud*

The door to leave the cabin appeared to be stuck. A red light flooded the station within seconds, and a foghorn filled the artificial air. The metal door shifted open, inviting me in. I assumed something catastrophic had happened and ran through. The lights weren’t on through the next hallway, with the red light fading fast as I progressed. There must have been an issue with the power. I pushed onward. As I ran through the darkness, the last thing I remembered was that I felt the saliva on my tongue beginning to boil. The room grew colder as the ground started to leave my feet. My soul was desperate to leave my body.

…

…

*dumdun... dumdun... dumdun..*

…

My eyelids were frozen shut and resisting all efforts to open naturally. It was dead quiet. The only connection I had to the universe was the stinging pain throughout my body and the sound of my heartbeat. Every vessel in my head rang out in an agonizing choir. I slowly grew frustrated and sad, realizing what had happened to me. My mind raced back to a conversation I had with Tom.

“We need to study this virus on an infected human instead of through an electron microscope. We’re not seeing it clearly from all sides unless we observe the interaction. We must find a willing person and take them onto the space station. We have to attack this thing from as many angles as we can for the sake of humanity.” I remember distinctly arguing.

“Oh, yeah, that would be the best case scenario. But James, you’re a rational person. We can’t willingly place a person into a vacuum; they’ll die within minutes. We should stick to the humane route. If we need to study the virus infecting a person, we’ll isolate a sample and throw that under a microscope. We need to take baby steps first, then modify the experiment as needed.”

“Dave. You don’t understand. One life weighed against the insurmountable toll this has already taken on humanity? It could take weeks to modify the experiment! You call those families and tell them why we were too late!”

I remember this conversation distinctly because after I had kept pushing on, Dave pulled me aside and asked me to follow him into the bathroom. He put his hand on my shoulder and stared directly into my eyes.

“James, I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but we will be studying the effects on a human test subject. I’m not allowed to disclose this information because I’m not technically allowed to know either. They were going to disclose this to us once we boarded the space station. They didn’t want us to have a moral dilemma and back out. It sounds like you have no problem with this, so I’m telling you now.”

I fell right into it. My ego beat out my intelligence. I always felt like I was the least respected of the crew, but now I know that’s how everyone felt. Tom only talked to me for work-related endeavors, and Dave barely spoke to me at all. I’ve become our experimental cadaver. I wasn’t going down without a fight. If I've survived this long, I must have a chance. After some time, I could feel the ice on my eyelids slowly melting. Finally, able to force them open, the light came through as I gazed into a blurry abyss. I couldn’t tell if the lights around me were artificial.

Was this my karma? Having been so self-centered, I now have become the subject of an experiment, being studied by prying eyes just beyond these lights.

As my vision steadied itself, I grew a bit colder looking forward. I was slowly rotating alone in the vacuum of space. The lights were distant hot, boiling mass congregations, barely pushing their light out to me. Surely I'd see my crewman shortly, at least.

The thought of looking up and praying to a god crossed my mind. But which way was up? God does not venture out here.

The numbness I had felt earlier was undoubtedly a sign of the infection spreading. I tried accessing my arms, neck, legs, anything. I struggled to move any other part of my body as I slowly rotated. The symptoms of the virus were similar; the infection spreads, causing you to lose control of your entire body. Many describe this as an out-of-body experience. In rare cases, spasms can become so intense that limbs will snap in erratic directions, breaking bones. I wasn’t entirely out of my body yet, but I could tell it was soon to pass. I shuffled my eyeballs around, hoping to find something nearby that wasn’t dead space. Eventually, my field of vision rotated into view of the space station. I could see two figures emerging from the bay. It was Dave and Tom. They were coming out to study me, assuming I had perished in the vacuum. A faint, distorted spark of hope went off inside me. My body suddenly stopped rotating.

I don’t know what kept me alive, but it can’t be a force of goodwill. Fear sets in, and the physical pain begins to subside. My consciousness was slowly losing ownership of my body. I need to regain control, but to what avail? I would die in seconds. I could feel myself taking a backseat as something terrible began to take over.

"Tell them to head back."

"Tell them it's a trap!"

They drifted ever so slowly towards me from the station. As I attempted to scream, I realized I was immobilized. My heart palpitations were the only thing ringing in my ears. They were unusually slow, despite overwhelming fear racing through every ounce of my body.

"Get away from me!"

Once they were 25 feet out, something wicked erupted from me. My heartbeat shot back up immensely as I regained control.

A ghastly white visage shot out of my chest, directly towards the heads of the other astronauts. Like corrupted lightning, it crashed through their helmets, shattering the faceplates. Their eyes went wide as they tried to turn around. It wasn’t fast enough. The demonlike cloud had inhuman movement and began devouring the crew.

The entity wrapped around their skin as a thin veil of static. Their faces twisted into a Proto-Expressionist nightmare. Their jaws expanded beyond the confines of their tendons, and their eye sockets turned pupilless with darkness from which no light could escape. As their bones became exposed, they were quickly enveloped by the now purple static. They were being stripped of their existence, bone by bone.

I knew they had betrayed me, but it didn’t help the feeling in the pit of my soul. They were the last humans I may ever see. Their screams were not deafened by their betrayal, or the vacuum of space. Once the ritual was complete, I scanned their remains hoping we had succumbed to a similar fate. There was no trace of humanity. Our paths had diverged. Their mangled space suits were all that was left, pouring forlorn oxygen into the void of space. Only the absence of catharsis lingered.

The white visage has now turned a darkened pinkish hue. It’s focusing its attention back on my body. This split second spread over infinity. Now having complete control of my body, I look intensely at my specter. I form my mouth into what should've been a spiteful scream, knowing it may somehow still pierce the vacuum of space. As I gave out what I thought would be my last breath, the being darted back into my chest where it had left moments before. The feeling was much different this time. I felt complete.