Fidelio

A amateur science fiction story.

    It’s time to wake up, Tom.
    The light is cold and sterile in what has become to be known as the bedroom, really nothing more than a wall-hugging sleeping tube surrounded by recessed lockers and fluorescent lighting. There is always an electric hum.
    It’s time to wake up, Tom.
    It’s Fides, the ship’s computer waking me. Her voice is calm and soothing as it emanates from hidden speakers throughout the ship.
    It’s time to…
    Her speech cuts short as I sit up in bed.
    Good morning, Tom. How did you sleep?
    “Like a rock,” I say and rub my aching shoulders.
    Rocks do not sleep, Tom.
    She does have a sense of humor, I’ll give her that. From the smooth sleeping tube it’s only a few paces to the “shower”, which in reality is more of a laser-scrub for the whole body, burning off dead skin and jettisoning them out of the spacecraft. Fides rattles off as I step into the tiny stall and close my eyes to the red beams that cover me.
    It is 8:43:06 AM Pacific time on Earth, the temperature is 74° F with an Eastern wind…
    I only half listen as my body is covered in what feels like a hot blanket. Fides is programmed to keep me up-to-date on my hometown, to help prevent what astronauts refer to as the Misplacement Effect. Being so far away from Earth can be psychologically crippling without any reminders, and sometimes the little things help.
    There’s a low whirring noise as my body is rinsed of the ashen skin by a powerful suction, and I’m left with a bright, pinkish complexion as I step out from the stall.
Through a narrow walkway is the Den, where meals are eaten and my daily regiment of exercise takes place. I take a seat at the white table, and while Fides controls robotic arms that put food in front of me, I stare at the three empty stools that border the rest of the table.
    I am alone on this ship. I have been in space for almost two years, and only just recently reached the mission’s destination. Fides relays the ship’s levels of oxygen production, and retracts a mechanical sheeting covering the large bay window to my right. As she does, the frozen moon, Europa, is revealed before me.
    We’re in a close orbit with it, and I can clearly see the highways of spider-web cracks that cover its surface, sealing in the mystery I’m here to solve--Could there be life in its frigid oceans? In the background, the usual empty-blackness of space is filled with the churning reds of Jupiter and its endless storms. I catch myself forgetting to breathe, and turn away to the plate of eggs and ham Fides has laid in front of me.
    “You’re quite the chef,” I murmur, slicing through over-easy whites and letting the warm yolk pour onto the plate.
    Would you like a cup of coffee, Tom?
    “I’d love one,” I say, falling into my strange relationship with this ship-wife.
On the wall opposite the window, a flat screen shows a countdown timer. It’s nearing the time when we’ll be able to send a probe to Europa’s surface and begin investigations. We have seven hours.
There’s a transmission coming in from Houston, Tom. Would you like me to connect you?
I finish my coffee and salute the room. Soon a crackling voice fills the room.
    “Tom, good morning. How are things at the Outer Rim?”
    It’s Jackson, the mission coordinator, cracking jokes per usual.
    “Fantastic. Yoda’s coming by for lunch, and then we’re going out for ice cream.”
    “Glad to hear you’re keeping busy. Listen, can you do me a favor and recalibrate your receiver? Took us damn near half an hour to get in contact this time.”
    “Sure, sure.”
    “Thanks. I have a bit of good news for you, also. The Pachyderm is showing optimum status, and seems to be holding up against Jupiter’s radiation much better than we expected.
    “That’s great, Jack. But how am I supposed to get a good tan if you guys keep blocking all the good stuff out?”
    “Well, if you like I can try to drop the shields for a bit and we can play ‘How Long Does Cancer Take To Form’…”
    “I suppose not then. Ready for a system’s check?”
    “Go ahead.”
    “Fides, give him the rundown, please.”
    Structural integrity at 100%. Oxygen to hydrogen ratio…
    Fides rattles off the status of the Pachyderm back to Earth. The ship really is faring quite well, exceeding at least most expectations that I would be crushed into a diamond during the slow approach to the biggest b***h in the solar system. Built specifically to withstand the intense conditions around Jupiter, the ship is a huge ball with layer upon layer of radiation-shielding infrastructure. They had to build most of it in Earth’s orbit--it would’ve been too big and heavy to get out of the atmosphere like the old days of shuttle launches. Covered with multi-directional thrusters, it has the deceptive appearance of a very small moon itself, albeit one with windows.
    “Alright, everything checks out on our end. Have a good workout, and we’ll call back in a few hours.”
    Jackson signs off, and I climb onto a stationary bike for my morning ride. It faces Europa, and for the next forty-five minutes I watch over it in a numb sort of way.

    Contact.
    There’s a flutter in my chest when I finally hear that word. There should be, it’s been almost two years of spaceflight in the making. The probe streams back a constant video feed from the surface, and as I watch the monitor I can see the still landscape of craggy ice. Its landing was perfect, and already I can see it tipping its cylinder shaped payload to melt itself into the frozen crust of the moon.
    There’s a small thermonuclear power source inside the drone that is slowly melting away the top layers of ice, the same kind seen in Antarctica back home. I can see whiteness churning and melting away, and soon the probe is sliding into the surface like a determined sperm shoving into an egg. White gives way to darker blue, and then there is nothing as the probe begins its decent into the moon. We aren’t sure if it will takes hours or days to get through it all, no one’s really sure how thick the ice is here. But I’m glued to the black screen, waiting.
    Epsilon Six is on approach, Tom.
    Fides snaps me awake. I’ve been dozing in a chair in the control room. I’ve almost forgotten about the second ship, sent to study Titan, the hazy giant moon of Saturn. It’s the more prestigious mission, with an eventual aim at terra forming slated for Titan, while Europa is treated more as a science project by the space program. There’s more funding for them as well, with a bigger ship and several astronauts aboard.
    There are three more empty chairs in this room also.
    “Well let’s say hello, shall we?”
    Yes, Tom. I’ll connect you.
    I have a momentary déjà vu at the sound of Fides’ voice, then there’s a static hum as our two ships become linked. It’s much clearer than Houston’s connection, and a familiar deep voice soon fills the room.
    “Epsilon Six, responding to Pachyderm, go ahead.”
    “There’s no need for formality, Bob. I think we’ve all been too long in the black for rigid protocol, don’t you?”
    Robert Gafferty is leading the Epsilon crew, a pretty distinguished astronaut back home.
    “…It’s good to hear another voice out here,” he says, and seems to relax a little. Long space flight can make you tense up.
    “How’s your crew?”
    “Good. We had a little problem with the oxygen filters back around Mars, gave us all a nasty headache but we’ve got it all straight now.”
    “How many with you?”
    “Four, altogether. I think you know our mission specialist, Nancy Hagen?”
    I remember Nancy. We met at the briefing with engineers and NASA higher-ups to discuss the possibility of life on the outer moons.
    “Sure. Say hello for me?”
    “Will do. How are you faring? You’re flying this one solo, right?”
    “Just me and my silicon lady.”
    “You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that. Any problems?”
    I know what he’s implying, and I take a little offense.
    “Smooth as silk.”
    “…Alright then, Tom. We’re heading to bed. Good to hear from you, though. Give us a buzz if you need anything.”    
    He wants off the communication. I must sound strange to him.
    “You too, Bob. Happy sailing.”
    The room dies down to the low hum of the instruments again, and it feels like I’m wrapped in a warm blanket.

    It’s time to wake up, Tom.
    I come to slowly, and feel stranger than usual. I’m in the Rec room, sitting cross-legged against the row of green metal lockers that line one side. I don’t remember coming in here.
    The drone is pushing through, Tom. Would you like the video feed?
    I have to shake off the uncomfortable feeling and focus.
    “Let me have it.”
    A dim picture comes on the large screen at the back of the room. There’s bubbling on top of black-blue, and all the churning seems a bit out of place with no sound. I hold my breath. It’s only a few minutes before the drone finally makes it through the last layer of ice.
    “How deep was it?”
    49 miles below the surface ice, Tom.
    “Jesus. Still, ten miles better than most estimates.”
    As the light kicks on at the end of its torpedo-like nose, the drone automates small propellers at its rear, and now it’s moving through water. It’s murky in low light, but the water is a frighteningly clear blue. It’s beautiful.
    “Temperature?”
    -275° F, Tom.
    I try to imagine what it would feel like on bare skin as the drone putters around. My heart’s thumping in my chest as I watch the big empty screen. It’s so empty that I’m expecting…I don’t really know what. None of us could hypothesize what might be in the water here. Some theories were made about the tidal tug-of-war Europa is in the middle of with Jupiter and the surrounding moons, which could attribute heating closer in to the moon’s core. The drone is diving now, and all I see is bottomless blue. I feel queasy.
    “Keep me posted,” I say to Fides, and turn my back on the screen.
    Thankfully the drone is automated, programmed by people much smarter than me, and I have the luxury of being able to ignore the upsetting ocean. I’m really just here as a babysitter for the billion dollar toys.
    Back in the main control room I sit down at the table, and try to ignore the three empty stools while I look at Europa through the window.
    It’s a startling sight. The moon is one of the brightest spots in the whole system, with an incredibly smooth surface that reflects almost all of the sun’s light. It’s infinite cracks give it the look of having veins, and the whole thing seems like a diseased eyeball. With the menacing behemoth of Jupiter in the distance, I’ve never felt so alone.
    I notice how quiet the ship is. How, aside from the low hum, there is no other life here. There’s only dead space, and a thirty-two year old monkey that does what a computer tells him. I start to feel the distance from Earth, really understand the fact that I am over fifty million miles from anything I’ve ever known. My palms are clammy, and I decide maybe I should go lay down.

    The dreams aren’t frequent out here. Usually it’s just fragments, and I lose most of those when I wake up. I see snapshots, mostly. There’s the intersection I used to cross when I walked to school as a boy. The museum where I first saw a model of the solar system, with Jupiter’s massive shape and its armada of satellites sticking out like a sore thumb. My first girlfriend, Susie Lochwood. She smelled like strawberries. There’s a glimpse of NASA’s training facility, and the feeling of pride. Then I see a movie. I’m going up, up, up as the ground and the buildings and all the people of the world get so small until they’re all just specks of dust on a blue ball that itself is just dust in a big black soup of nothingness.

    Where are you going, Tom?
    I wake up in the small detachment pod, a vehicle built to escape from the Pachyderm if something goes wrong. I’m buckled in and the controls are active. It takes a moment to understand.
    “Nowhere. Just playing fighter pilot.” I say, and chuckle to myself.
    I unstrap myself and head back into the ship.
    The drone has collected some samples, Tom. Would you like to see?
    I have to hold the wall. Samples can only mean one thing--there’s something in the water to take samples of. I head back to the control room in a jog, and the false gravity of the ship is making me dizzy.
    “Show me.”
    The drone has collected two samples, one of a possible igneous rock from the bottom of the oceanic layer, and the second. . .
    The lights in the ship flutter, and everything goes black. All the instrument panels turn off, the low hum of the ship is silenced, Fides’ voice drops off, and I feel myself float gently off the floor and into zero-gravity. My heart seizes as my worst fears are realized, and I vomit a green cloud of protein liquid, wondering how much oxygen is still in the room. The ship is pitch dark, and now the only light is from the frozen moon, staring up at me.
    It’s only a few seconds before everything kicks back on, and I land on my left shoulder as the gravity reinstates.
    Sorry about that, Tom. There was a pulse of interference from Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
    I’m trying to stop shaking.
    “Well tell it to call first next time, huh?”
    I set about cleaning up my sick.
    “Is the ship alright?”
    Structural integrity is at eighty-nine percent.
    “Where did we take the hit?”
    Hull shielding at Pachyderm’s stern has a tear.
    “What kind of tear? How much radiation is getting through?”
    153 rem, Tom.
    This isn’t fatal, but I might be getting sick in an hour or two.
    “Can we fix it?”
     I’m already sending out the automated arm, Tom. We should have little problem repairing it as long as Jupiter’s flux stays away from us.
    I calm down a little, but now the mission is actually in jeopardy. The thought I’ve been pushing away for so long resurfaces, and I imagine what it might feel like to die in space. I dismiss it quickly; if I die it won’t be from floating in a vacuum, it will be from accelerated radiation poisoning, which will be much worse.
    “Why don’t we give Epsilon a call, huh? Think maybe we could do with some friends with a thicker ship.”
    I’m sorry, Tom, there’s too much interference. I can’t reach Houston either.
    I’m alone here. I’ve got the sinking guts feeling of fear and radiation sickness, and soon I’ll be a floating body in a new metal moon for Jupiter.
    “Keep trying.”
    Of course, Tom.
    I head to my bedroom, and pull a small, tightly packed duffel bag from my bedside locker. It’s chocked full of emergency equipment, and I take it gingerly down to the detachment pod. I’m hoping Fides can repair the leak, but I’m not taking any chances.
    I stop at the bathroom and grab the Medi-kit. There’s injections for radiation poisoning, but if any higher levels comes through the ship, it won’t matter anyway. Jupiter will put off enough to kill me long before I could even get the needle in my skin.
    There’s a buzzing in the air, and I can feel it in my brain. A numb kind of calm washes over me. The lights flicker, but stay on.
    “Fides? Another one?”
    Yes, Tom.
    Even the computer seems worried.
    “Rem count?”
    455 rem, Tom.
    “I’m going to have to leave you soon.” I say, sullied.
    I understand, Tom. I will prepare the detachment pod for launch back to Earth.
    “I won’t make it back in time. Plot for the site on Europa where we sent the drone. I’ll have to see if I can get enough speed to break through the surface ice. If I can get a few meters underneath it all I’ll have enough shielding from the radiation to wait for Epsilon Six to get our distress signal. Assuming the pod doesn’t destroy itself on impact, that is.”
    Alright, Tom.
    I’m sweating as I strap into the pilot chair in the pod. I’m starting to feel sick, and I realize the runny nose I’ve been nursing has a copper taste to it. I wonder if Fides feels sad, but don’t have time to reflect any farther when she fires me off from the ship.
    It’s all so sudden, this feeling of helpless exasperation that fills me as Europa’s tiny cracks grow wider and deeper before me. After so much time away from Earth, I feel adrift like never before. I close my eyes and let the autopilot take me down along the plotted course at breakneck speed. There’s a flash of images again, and I myself wonder how I could dream at a time like this. I hit the ice crust with tremendous force, and I feel two ribs break as my torso jerks forward. I see my fifteen year old hands gripping a steering wheel as I T-bone a station wagon. I’m slamming through miles of frozen alien landscape, and it’s almost too fast to comprehend when I hit dark, foreign water. I’m diving in a swimming pool that feels so soothing in hot summer air. There are flashing lights on the console, and loud alarming warnings blaring across all screens. I’m sitting with my family as a child around a brightly lit Christmas tree, singing carols from the old days. There’s a crack splintering down the middle of the front-shielded window, and drops of strange water pooling alongside it. I’m watching a rainstorm through my bedroom window. The pod rips open and I’m taken into the freezing black, floating stiff in a dead womb. I can’t move, and soon I will be nothing more than a fly caught by this spider-queen of Jupiter. I’ll float motionless here for eternity, petrified by the intense cold of the moon, undisturbed until the sun becomes a red giant and superheats the solar system. Europa will warm, and the ice of the crust will melt to unchain this endless ocean, until the heat breaks me down to be assimilated into it like the stardust we were all born from.  

Author's Note

First draft.

Reviews

[DavidRyanM]

Jesus, man. S**t got heavy at the end. I like how, even when you're writing about things in the future, your writing still has that old feel to it. He's surrounded by a machine that talks, a shower that doesn't exist yet, and technology only seen in sci-fi stories, yet I still feel like, when this character gets home, it could easily be 1950. I was thinking about your stories all collected into one volume and, despite the differing subject themes and time periods, they would all fit perfectly together. The only thing I would change is when you mention the shower at the beginning, I'd take away the quotations. The description that follows that part does the job that the quotations would otherwise have to do. Other than that, well done, man. Damn you.