Amon was pulled from a dream and thrust into a nightmare.
The small frame of Mali lay thrashing on the wide planked floor. Foam was beginning to well out of her mouth as she started to gag with every stifled breath. Papers from the table were fluttering down to the ground from where she’d knocked them aside as Basilio and Amon raced into the dining room. Off in the corner her tablet was flashing with searing intensity, white, red, green, blue, black and white again; smoke was beginning to pour from its side. Stephanie crashed through the door at the bottom of the stairs and raced across the room, hair flying wildly as her eyes blazed with love and determination with equal intensity. They could only stand by and watch as Stephanie flew into action without missing a beat, rolling Mali into a safety position and cushioning her head to soften the worst of her trashing.
“What in the hell is going on?” a bleary-eyed Anya wondered, finally coming upon the gruesome scene. Stephanie only shot her a cold look as she tried to clear the furniture away from Mali’s trembling, helplessly flailing limbs. “Oh shit!” Anya said minutely as she took everything in.
“Ay Dios Mio!” Basilio yelped as next to the couch the smoke from Mali’s tablet had increased from whisps to plumes. He snatched it up before he could think, burning his fingers, and threw it quickly into the sink and turned on the tap swapping the smoke from sparking electricity.
“For Christ’s sake do I have to do everything!” Stephanie bellowed snatching the fire extinguisher from next to the stove and sending a gout of retardant over the protesting device.
Mercifully, the worst of Mali’s seizure abated as Stephanie returned to her side. She turned her tiny, dark friend back on her side and helped clear her airway, pounding at her back until at last Mali was able to draw a feeble breath.
“Amon, go get me some towels from the closet upstairs. Basilio, now that you’ve turned the sink into a shock hazard go to the outside tap and bring me some clean water,” the nurse barked, leaving little room for argument.
They raced to their duties and Anya set about collecting the chaos of papers that had shot about the room. With clean towels in-hand Amon knelt down and helped Stephanie make a cushion for Mali’s head and cleaned up the worst of her spittle. Basilio returned with his water before he set himself to pacing restlessly. Mali’s thin chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly, her breaths inaudible even in the stone silence of a summer’s night. Only Stephanie’s stern face gave Amon any clue that her patient’s condition wasn’t worsening.
It was Anya who finally broke the brittle silence, sounding smaller and more fearful than Amon had ever heard her. “Guys. I think Mali was up tonight doing more research into the ship’s libraries.”
“What of it?” Stephanie snapped. “She’d stay up every night prying into every nook and cranny she could weasel her way into.”
“Well...” She said shakily. “I think she found something.” In her hand was a freshly inked piece of paper with an elaborate map drawn upon it, above it all in bold letters was written Cryo Hall #87.
The sky was just beginning it’s brightening sequence when they finally got Mali up into her bed and stable. Her breathing had returned to at least a semblance of normal and her seizure had died down to only occasional tremors that raced along her dark skin like electric shocks. But she stubbornly refused to wake, so Stephanie refused to leave her side. She sat next to the bed gently mopping Mali’s brow and fussing over every little movement her friend made. The three others couldn’t bear the spectacle any longer and had reconvened around the great table hoping a searing cup of coffee would jolt a plan of action into their minds.
Basilio had done his best to try and get Mali’s tab up and running again to figure out what she may have been looking into when her seizure began. He was having little luck and began to spew a soft stream of Spanish profanities at the inert chunk of glass and metal.
Finally, Anya had to cut in. “For fuck’s sake Baz, it’s dead, give it a rest already.”
“We don’t know that! Not yet,” he pleaded in response.
“What’s the damned point?!” She shrieked. “So you find out what she was looking at, how does that relate to our friend who’s clinging to life upstairs right now?”
“Maybe she found something really important, maybe something she wasn’t supposed to see, maybe the tablet destroyed itself.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Anya laughed cruelly. “You really think her tablet just accidentally opened up some mysterious key piece of information for a moment, realized it’s mistake and then blew itself up to try and remedy the situation. Amon help me out here, we have to talk some sense into this lunatic.”
Amon wanted no part of this squabble, but he felt compelled by reason. “Basilio we all saw it smoking shortly before it was hit with water and fire retardant. Those things are pretty tough, but not that tough. Besides, those battery cells almost certainly have enough energy left in them to shock you or start another fire.” The Bolivian looked on the edge of tears, so Amon softened his tone. “Just put it down for now, we all want to know what happened to Mali, but it does seem much more likely that she dropped it hard enough to rupture a battery cell than some sinister intent from a tablet.”
“Pucha!” He barked, swapping frustration for fear. “More likely than an assassin tablet, fine. But none of it makes any sense.”
“No, that much is true.”
“And she certainly was onto something new. I’ve never seen this map before, and we’ve never tracked anything to do with Cryo Hall #87. We’ve explored miles of the ship that had opened to us, but hardly ever anywhere interesting. Do you think we could make it all the way down there?” Anya was studying the map. “Look here as well, in the corner, she scribbled a little note.” She turned the paper around and in a hasty scrawl Mali had written sleepers: number, status, remaining time, temperature (nom. -30c).
“Maybe that’s what she thought we should look into if we could get into one of the halls. It would be a relief to know if everything was still going alright with the people in cryo, make sure we’re not just burning time here on the farm while people are dying.” Basilio pondered. “Should we take a trip down there?”
“Beats the shit out of sitting here. Who’s going to tell Steph?”
Stephanie, it turned out, brokered no protest to this new plan, in fact she hardly looked up from her charge. So the three of them ate what they could stomach, got dressed, packed a bag with some food in case the walk was longer than anticipated, and grabbed Stephanie’s tab on their way out– Mali had backed up most of her research there. The sun was just cresting over the trees as they wound their way through the garden, a crisp breeze blew in over the paddocks, the roosters were shouting their pride, and the smell of fresh dew lingered over the scene of bucolic tranquility. In spite of everything, Amon was beginning to feel like his old self once more with his boots well laced, legs that remembered their old strength, and a sense of purpose that propelled him forward.
It propelled him right up to the threshold. Amon stopped one step short of the air curtain, even as Basilio walked through without breaking his stride, his body was physically fighting the next step he knew he must take. His mind was all but certain that if he was to help Mali they’d have to get to the bottom of whatever was going on with the ship, but his body knew that here in the farm was safety and out there in the halls was unknown. He would step through the doorway and the temperature would drop, the feel of soft dirt beneath his boots would be replaced by hard stone, the living sounds that surrounded him would fade, replaced by replications fed from a mechanical mind.
Anya felt it too, and stopped as she drew up beside him. She took his hand gently, “Basilio doesn’t know how goddamned hard this gets yet, but he’ll understand soon enough.” She pulled him slightly forward, “Come on, you’re tough enough for a trip into the belly of the beast.”
They stepped forward together and at once cold reality overtook their senses, with each step the comforting dream of the homestead fell further and further into memory. Before long it was just a pinprick of light at the end of the hall, and then they turned a corner and it was gone. The only refuge they had out in the deepening stretches of space disappeared into the past like the bubble of illusion it was.
It wasn’t long before they hit their first junction. Basilio and Anya immediately pulled out Mali’s map and conferred over it animatedly for a few moments deciding how it should be oriented. Amon simply stood with his mouth agape. Five years aboard, and he’d never been faced with a choice out in the ship. Halls had been illuminated and opened well in advance of his coming, all he ever had to do was follow the open path before him. Now, for the first time in an eternity, he was faced with an actual choice.
“...no you twit! This one on the left goes back to dethaw, you’ve got the map turned the wrong way!” Amon tuned in just as Anya sent a light smack up the back of her friend’s head. “Ayyye! Easy, fine, you win, right we go. Unless you think differently Amon.”
“Whaaa...” was all he could manage, his mind still confounded by even the simplest choices.
“Christ alive, he’s barely even with us.” Anya proclaimed, exasperated. “Amon you’ve got to get your wits about you man, it’s not like before on the ship. We don’t know what passages are open or where they will lead; we can get lost out here, we can die out here if we don’t pay attention.
“Cabrón, I can’t imagine what this is all like for you, but we all have to be sharp, we can’t just drag you along for fun.”
“Ok, ok. I’m sorry.” Amon blurted, his mind racing to catch up and orient itself. “Anya, I think you’re right, it’s tough to remember but I think we came out of the left tunnel when you guys came and picked me up, I don’t remember this other door but it must have been here.”
“Ha!” Anya exclaimed, with a smug grin. “Give me that map you meathead.”
“Jailon! You’re no help at all, and then you side with her? We’re all as good as dead.” He threw up his hands. “I’ll remind you who was the voice of reason when we’ve gotten ourselves good and lost for a couple of days.”
But a grin had spread across his face and they set off down this new hall, that did not in fact go back to the dethaw chamber. It led further and further astern of the ship into a maze of endless hallways that circled the outer shell of the ship. Four hours, they chased through the polished tunnels that bored through the rocky crust of the Fable, each hall ending in a juncture of two or three new halls. There were no landmarks to be seen, no way of truly tracking their route. Even if they felt like playing Hansel & Gretel and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way home, the ship would clean up their traces before they could serve any actual use.
The walls looked like moulded plaster, the floors looked like polished stone. But like so much else on the ship, it was a facade. When needed, the ship could open new doorways, create new routes, make drains and lounges and whole mess halls given enough time, all to suit its crew. So all they had to rely on was Mali’s carefully hand-drawn map, and their own fallible memories. Anya and Basilio bickered at every corner, and quarrelled playfully along every stretch of straight hall, Amon simply wound his way deeper and deeper into his own head trying in vain to remember the exact sequence of turns they had made. The reality of losing their way in this sprawling maze came more and more to the fore with every turn.
But eventually, by skill or luck or divine provenance they turned a corner and found their quarry. The hall gradually ramped up and overhead the ceiling rose and then rocketed up hundreds of feet. Over the entrance to this cave of cold storage read: Cryo Hall #87.
The last few degrees of comfort left to them drifted slowly away as they entered this temporal tomb. All three sets of teeth set to chattering even as they looked up awestruck at the room, overwhelmed by its grandeur. The dark ceiling soared hundreds of feet above them as ten matching rows of cryogenic stasis caskets marched off into the darkening distance, each containing two thousand sleepers. Knowing that this was just one of one hundred matching chambers within the ship only added to their crushing feeling of insignificance. Truly the human mind wasn’t built to comprehend spaces so vast. It was one thing to live on the farm and let yourself be tricked, or walk the halls and imagine that they were part of some endless mine, but to face a place like the cryo halls was to confront the true inhumanity of their lives.
“I...I’ve never seen one of these halls before.” Amon stumbled after several stretching seconds. “Five years awake, and how much of this ship have I truly seen?”
“Maybe you’ve just seen all the good parts amigo.” Basilio put in hopefully.
“I highly doubt that,” Anya quipped. “More likely the lot of us have been confined to the bowels of the ship for the rest of our lives. In any case, I can’t say that I missed much not coming here during my stint.” She pulled out Stephanie’s tab, and began searching through the readily available files. “Now what the hell do we do?”
“Well there’s got to be some diagnostic type of access for emergencies.” Basilio said striding across to the end of the nearest row of caskets.
Just one row was an immensity of technological miracles. Each casket the size of a station wagon; they were stacked four high in pairs that marched off two hundred and fifty lengths towards the far end of the hall. Above, a soaring system of rails and pullies swooped through the open air, waiting for the day they’d be called on to start dismantling the great machine. At the end of each row a massive pump droned away supplying it’s sleepers with necessary water and coolant and electricity. If the room wasn’t so massive the incessant drone of these towering pumps would’ve bored straight into their subconscious, but as it was the sound barely seemed to scratch the overpowering silence of this manufactured crypt.
“That would make some sense I suppose.” Amon hesitantly agreed. “The dams I worked on back outside Cairo always had emergency access ports, especially for the hydroelectric equipment. Maybe we should see if there’s a maintenance door in the pumps?”
“You mean like this one?” Basilio said with a smile, pulling open a hatch on the side of the nearest pump.
They all stepped inside and the hammering hum of the machinery immediately became overwhelming in the confined space. But sure enough just inside the door was a diagnostic center with several displays showing the rows of caskets attached to the pump along with a docking station for a tablet. Without bothering to yell over the roar Anya slid Stephanie’s tab into the cradle wherein it immediately opened up a new program and a stream of data began to slide across the screen, all completely incomprehensible to the trio as they looked on, except a progress bar at the bottom that began to fill at an almost imperceptibly slow pace.
Anya waved out the door and stepped out with Basilio, Amon hung back and took notes of all the data available on the screens in the station, unsure what may be of use but unwilling to trust a tablet entirely after what had happened to Mali. When he finally stepped out, cold air and sweet stillness greeted him.
“Well it looks like we’re here for quite a while,” Anya grumped. “Why the hell would a diagnostic program take so long to run?”
“Cuidado opa, if it wasn’t for Mali’s work we wouldn’t have anything to go on.”
“Goddamn it Baz, let me bitch,” she said, throwing her arms up in the air. “Fine, you two go make yourselves comfortable where it’s a little warmer out in the hallway, I’ll keep an eye on the tab for now and see if anything changes.”
As Basilio and Amon descended the ramp back down into the relative warmth of the hall several previously invisible panels in the wall slid aside revealing a small bunk room with a pair of cots and a latrine. They sighed heavily with relief not only at having somewhere to sit in relative comfort but also at having a den to hole up in amidst all the unknown in the far reaches of the ship. Their most primal minds seeking security any way it could be found in the face of uncertainty.
“Basilio, could you pass me Mali’s map and notes?” Amon asked as they sat with relief in their new nook.
“Por supuesto. What are you looking for?”
“I just took the readings off the main display in the pump; if it’s accurate it had a good deal of the data she was looking for, I’m just curious if she had indicated any baselines that we should be looking for.” He scanned through the scrawled pages and found the chart he was looking for, a basic listing of cryo casket information, not enough for detailed diagnosis but enough to see if anything was going catastrophically wrong. Row by row he compared the figures.
“Huh, check this out Basilio. So we have most of what she was looking for, at least at a high level, and it all seems normal. All the power, water, and coolant metrics are right where they ought to be. But the temperature readings from the pump are broken down into three parts.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“Well, I’m not sure, but the pump display shows extremity temperature as being quite a bit colder than Mali’s baseline, core temp being a bit warmer, and cerebral temperature is almost twenty degrees warmer than the baseline.”
Basilio sat up with a shock. “So you think the caskets are warming. Do you think we’re losing passengers? Did the ship wake us up to fix it? But why wouldn’t it tell us?” “Well we can’t jump to that conclusion yet, if we average all of the temperatures it’s right about on the baseline. I imagine if we did a more accurate average by volume we’d be right on it.” He laid back on his bunk shuffling through the papers in his hands, letting his mind roam. “We know that the ship was still in contact with Earth after we left, but we don’t know for how long. Maybe they found a way to have more success with the cryo by creating different temperature zones in each casket. I mean the display didn’t show any lost caskets, you have to figure if something was really wrong there’d be more to go on.” “Maybe...” Basilio sighed, lying back. “Pucha! I wish Mali was here, she’s the only one of us who has any clue what to look for, we’re just stumbling around blind.”
Amon tended to agree with the sentiment, but didn’t want to encourage the big man’s negativity so he simply put the papers down and closed his eyes, willing away the problem in hopes that a solution would come to him in it’s own time.
In spite of it all, the uncertainty, the threading mysteries, the chill of the ship and the looming crypt just up the hall, as Amon laid on the hard little cot unwinding the threads that had chased through his mind he found himself slipping into irresistible unconsciousness. The scent of warm pine flooded through him and try as he might he could not fight the sweet beckoning of sleep.
Amon stood on the porch of the old farmhouse that he knew so well yet could barely recognize. Before him lay the path that wound through the gardens and paddocks and off into the vast wood beyond. He knew, in spite of nearly all experience, that if he peeked around the corner instead of seeing a line of trees a couple hundred meters off that he’d see a mirror-flat lake stretching off miles toward the horizon. He knew, for the second time, that this place was more real than the farmhouse he’d known all those long years.
Curiosity drove him inside. He grasped the door and it swung open without so much as a squeak, and took a tentative step inside. It was all the same. Just like he left it all those untold years ago. Out the back the windows were open to the lake off in the distance, not boarded up by lost watchers scratching out spare living space like some kind of furtive fever dream. It felt right, it felt like home.
But who lived in this home? All the furnishings were still there, neatly kempt in their places. But somehow he knew this was not his home, no matter how much his soul yearned to tell him otherwise. Amon turned towards the stairs to head up and investigate the bedroom. The stairs creaked and protested his weight, same as they always had, and when he opened the door everything was once again familiar, austere furnishings tidily kept in place.
All except one thing. A woman, dosing atop the covers of the neatly made bed. She wore a flowing blue dress that drifted over the navy of the duvet, her dark skin glowed warmly against the crisp white of the linen, and her hair tousled in a great halo about her head. She was every woman he’d ever met, and yet no one he’d ever known. She slept so peacefully that Amon imagined no earthly cataclysm could disturb her perfect rest, but he had to know this woman.
So he reached out for her bare shoulder, hoping that a gentle touch would rouse her even when all else would surely fail. Amon lightly touched her shoulder and whispered “Wake up.”
Her eyes opened in an explosion of light and sound.
Amon sat bolt upright on the cot heart hammering just in time to see the light from the explosion fade and hear its reverberating sound crash through every shred of his consciousness.