“Everything you will need will be in this box…”
When you first go into space it is the most desolate and strangely beautiful thing you’ll ever see. There are vast tracts of inky emptiness, pin pricks of light shimmering in the infinite distance but every so often you see something wonderful that sears itself into your consciousness forever.
Now, I can’t even bring myself to look out of the window at the gaudy lights and boiling gas of the nebula beyond the station: it looks fake, like a bad holo-reproduction. The medical centre is a vast, cold tundra of healing. All the staff are methodical and pleasant enough yet at the same time brash and thoughtlessly noisy. My room is a painfully clinical, porcelain white cell with sharp edged lighting. Even the bed sheets feel hard and unforgiving, scratching against my survivor’s guilt at each slow turn of my tired body.
I had been in cryo-sleep for just over 65 years when the crew of the Anagolay found me. Once the cryo-bed had been cleared to enter the station it had taken the Techs over a standard week to work out how to open the chamber without killing me: technology like this doesn’t exist anymore, not since the “hyper-lanes” were discovered.
They tell me that, according to old medical databases, disorientation is common after a prolonged cryo-sleep. They also mentioned that I missed the record for longest sleep by 2 months – helping my unwanted celebrity status to wane more quickly. The physical effects don’t really bother me. They’re slowly passing and I feel stronger every day. I’m now well enough to walk around unaided. I’m slow and shambling, I am technically nearly a hundred, but it is good to feel my body move again. The food here is good, much better than the ration tubes on the Ampelos, and the water tastes a lot fresher. I’m looking forward to my first real cup of tea.
I need to concentrate so much when I walk it stops me remembering, thankfully, stops me grieving for my mothers. Bev and Anika were both lost decades ago never really knowing what had happened to me. They must have grieved and, I hope, found ways to move on.
At least they had each other.
The Ampelos had been eighteen standard months into the survey mission when we were woken from cryo-sleep. The ship, as planned, had manoeuvred us alongside the class three asteroid. The captain reviewed the mission logs and deemed the risks to be within acceptable parameters so set us all to work. I spent most of the next two days in the tech bay running the diagnostics on the mineral probes we’d soon be firing into the slowly twisting lump of unremarkable looking rock.
I was intent on the telemetry readouts as the probes hurtled toward the asteroid when the warning alarms started to blare out. The displays in front of me started to shudder and vibrate, the screens fizzing with static. Then the support struts and wall panels undulated in a nauseating ripple along the tech bay and I was plunged into a furious darkness. My earpiece that had been filled with a melee of shouted commands, bursts of white noise and terrified questions abruptly snapped into silence.
It was over in seconds.
By the time I regained consciousness Harper and I were the only two left.
At first It all seemed impossible. Once we’d dealt with the remaining bodies, we started to salvage what we could. We were able to keep the area around the tech bay habitable. We collected all the rations we could including four crates of the dreaded “meatloaf.” I managed to get the water and air recycling systems working. After days of arduous work, Harper rigged up a solar sail and we were able to point the ship in the direction of home. As we limped away from the asteroid, we mustered up the tiniest sliver of hope.
What seemed even more improbable was that Harper and I fell in love. I joked that it must have been my magnetic personality. Harper countered that when they found my personality they’d have to re-evaluate the situation. We celebrated our first anniversary in the water processing room because it had the most romantic lighting. We shared a whole bottle of cherry cola that Franklin had smuggled on board and topped off our decadent meal with two tubes of my favourite: chocolate brownie.
Almost a standard year later a meteor shower shredded the solar sail, leaving us only a fraction of the power we needed to run the ship.
We closed down more sections of the vessel and even more non-essential systems, jettisoning what we could live without, stretching what little we had left as far as it would go. For four days Harper was by turns silent and testy and would disappear for hours on end only to return later all apologetic and clingy. Then, at the end of the fifth day, they showed me the two boxes. The first was the single viable cryo-sleep chamber that they had managed to repair. The second is on the night stand next to my bed.
In the half-light I look at the small plastic box. It is unremarkable in every way. Yet, it was the last thing Harper ever handed me. I remember the warmth of their skin as they placed the box in my hands; the sadness and longing in their eyes; that taut, beautiful lopsided smile. I close my eyes and pull up the hospital covers. The box was left next to my bed on the second day I was here, after it went through a full decontamination cycle. I still haven’t been able to open it.
Everything here feels wrong.
Jenna is my physio and I really like her. Today we stopped the session early, finishing with a walk down the main corridor from medical to the rest of the station. It’s a broad, vaulted space with an improbable line of cherry trees down the centre. Even when its full of people, like today, I don’t feel overwhelmed here. We found a calm spot under a particularly large tree and sat on the wooden bench that encircled its trunk.
“You know what I’m going to ask, don’t you?” Jenna looks at me.
I breathe deeply, finding it easier today to supress the sudden bitterness in my throat. I do know what she’ll say next, the same question she has asked since we first met. An innocent enough question really, it’s just one I don’t want to answer.
“No, I haven’t,” I try and keep my voice even because I really do like Jenna: she, unlike the others, is genuine and patient and this feels like a real connection, the first since I woke up.
“Okay,” she pats my knee gently. “One day, eh?”
I offer her a small smile. Yes, one day, a part of me thinks, the less charitable part of me thinks. That is never going to happen. As long as that bloody box stays shut, I’m safe. I look out at the station beyond the expanse of window, gleaming pods and gantries and corridors all filled with the hustle and bustle of daily life.
A small red and yellow stripped ball rolls over my foot, followed by an excited little boy who can’t stop giggling as he kicks the ball further away. His mother following behind, mouthing “Sorry!” at me. A look flashes across her face as she recognises me as “that man from the long-lost spaceship, the one off the news-vids.” I smile as best I can and wave her apology away.
“Life goes on,” says Gemma with her warmest smile. I keep looking straight ahead beyond the shadow of the cherry tree.
On my nightstand, next to the plastic box I now have a framed picture of my Mums. A station administrator found out some details of my parents’ life after I was declared “lost/presumed dead, on mission” and among the dry records they found this photo. My Mums are sat in a lovely garden that I don’t recognise, a massive cake on the table in front of them. Happy 70th Bev! is emblazoned in flowing yellow icing across the rose-pink fondant top. Anika has her bangle covered arms wrapped tightly around Bev’s waist. They are beaming at the camera; they both look beautiful and I am glad that they were happy. I wish they were here to tell me how they managed to sustain that.
It’s late, I know that I should sleep: I have another psych evaluation tomorrow, hopefully my last. The station administrators have arranged for me to have a small unit in one of the habitation rings. If all goes well tomorrow, I could have my own place soon. I look at the small plastic box and hear Bev’s booming voice Don’t be daft love! After all you’ve been through there is nothing in that poxy box that’ll actually hurt you. I can almost see Anika nodding vigorously in agreement as she warms her favourite teapot. I reach out and touch the box. It feels small, brittle and old like me.
The garden party is in full swing.
In the peace of the tastefully furnished living room hangs an old-fashioned wooden picture frame. At the bottom the small metal plaque reads “Everything you will need will be in this box…” In the top left corner, a small, faded colour picture – Harper and Ari in what looks like a water treatment centre. They are both grinning. Ari looks at the lens, Harper looks at Ari. They each hold up a 10-centimetre-long silver tube for the camera, if you squint just so, you can see the labels say “Authentic Chocolate Brownie.” Below the picture, a neatly flattened square of silver foil, bearing the same label as in the picture. Beneath that is an old plastic ration box from the Ampelos, to the right of all these items is a hand written letter…
My Darling Ari,
By the time you read this you should be far way and I will be long gone.
I do not regret my decision.
I never will.
When we were surveying and repairing the ship immediately after the incident, I realised that one cryo-bed was potentially viable. When the solar-sail was damaged, there was only ever one course of action. I knew you would argue and plead with me to find another way. I was prepared for the tears and the tantrums but as you know I am a very stubborn man.
I think now is a good time for a confession!
I liked you from the first day I saw you.
Way before we boarded the Ampelos I had my eye on you. All through orientation and those boring safety lectures that, for some insane reason, you seemed to love so much, I couldn’t take my eyes off you. There was a rhythm to your walk and a strength in your shoulders that was so bloody sexy and the best part was, and still is, is that you didn’t realise it.
Do I wish we could have had more time together?
Yes.
I can envisage a million, million different possibilities for the rest of our life. I know everything about the house we’d share – I know the ugly sofa’s you’d pick out and I know you wouldn’t like it when I played my music too loud. I know we’d have a cat called Chaka and a big, dumb old dog called Rufus. You would learn to cook and I would try and pick my dirty clothes up off the floor once in a while.
I know we would have been happy.
Instead, I have to content myself with watching over you while you’re in cryo-sleep. Your eyebrows wriggle as you dream and I’m left wondering what you’re dreaming of. I imagine your dreams as a moving mosaic, a collection of impossible fairy tales and dumb jokes tumbling over themselves to be told – a perfect picture captured in a soft kaleidoscope of dancing colour and light.
Yes, I’m becoming quite the poet!
The hardest part is imagining you out there on your own. Alone. I can’t picture you alone. I don’t want to and I don’t want you to either. I know you want everyone to think you’re capable and independent, but, if that is what you keep projecting outward, you’ll end up hiding behind the projections, screened of in melancholy isolation.
That might feel safe, but it is not a life, and you, my nearly-perfect man, you deserve a life.
A long and fulfilling life.
So, start with the enclosed: the very last of the Ampelos Brownies – I kept it hidden to give you on a special occasion. I am assuming that brownies still exist in the future and that they will be much better than these dusty old tubes. Once you’ve found them, try them with a good, strong cup of coffee – trust me brownies and tea are not a thing and never will be! Once you’ve done that try something else, then something else, then something else, then, maybe, chose someone else and slowly you’ll build your new life.
I know it will be magnificent.
Live well my love.
H x
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