Detachment: Obsolete
"Author's note: Just finished writing this one, so I'm sure it has all the fallacies of a first draft, and is in dire need of critique. It started out as just one scene, so I had to spin a coherent story out of it somehow, and I'm not quite sure how believable the premise is. It's sci-fi (ish), and is 1700 words. Yes, I know, the title is terrible."
He stared out of the window. The infinite, yet uninviting
darkness of space stared back. He had once been proud to look out of this
window, knowing that it was a view that few people were fortunate enough to
experience, but not now. Not anymore. Space had once looked back at him with
respect; now it mocked him.
He, Lewis, had been living in this floating spaceship for far
too long. He shared the ship with only one other astronaut. They were both
incredibly gifted people, and the two of them were probably a selection of the
most intelligent humans that had been on the planet. And they were part of a
space agency that employed several hundred more intelligent humans. And yet,
they'd made such a frustratingly simple mistake. And worse, they hadn't noticed
it for years.
They were on their return trip now. After years of living in the
floating metal behemoth, traversing the solar system to carry out research
tasks that had once seemed drastically important but now felt feeble and
uneducated, Earth was practically at arm's length once again. But they wouldn't
make it. The ship would, of course. All their research would survive. It would
help progress humanity's understanding of other worlds exponentially, and the
astronauts' names would be forever tied to that progress. That was supposed to
be their consolation. Some trade, thought Lewis.
The fact was that the two astronauts would not breathe for much
longer; and it was a definite fact. After days of what the people on Earth had
claimed to be painstaking efforts to save the crew, they had given up, saying
that the only plausible solutions were too costly to even consider, and had
retired their lives with infuriating formality. Lewis was convinced it was due
to a combination of manned expeditions becoming less necessary; astronauts
becoming surplus and expendable; and the fact that the two on the spaceship
could easily be held accountable for their own ignorance. Their families had of
course been given the opportunity to speak to them for one last time, although
it had felt less like a goodbye and more like speaking to the casket at a
funeral.
An oxygen leak. Embarrassing, really. Children could have
planned for it. But Lewis was not angry at anyone – after all, he had been on
the ship as well, and hadn't noticed, not for years. He had been a fool in good
company. No-one had noticed the small leak – and it was indeed so small that it
would not have mattered, even after months left unfixed. But after years, it
mattered. Especially since the mission had once been extended, giving the leak
even more time to do its work. The leak was patched now, and it had been
annoyingly simple to fix, but the damage had been done. They no longer had
enough oxygen to make it home.
The ship had had oxygen stored far in excess, of course – but
even this precaution was ultimately squandered by the stubbornness of time. It
was stupid that neither of the two astronauts had noticed. Science-fiction
would have dealt with this by using a computer system that easily detected the
dwindling oxygen supply and alerted the crew – but these ships had been
designed with the simple assumption that the crew would be competent. If times
had been different – if they had been a few years into the past, at the birth
of extended space-travel – a leak such as this would have been defeated by
simple routine-checking. But no one really expected such elementary mistakes
anymore.
Lewis closed his eyes. Perhaps he'd thought, deep down, that
looking into the infinity of space would have inspired something in him – something
good, noble, or even heroic – but it had only made him sick. He wanted to go
home.
He turned around and walked to the other end of his white-walled
shuttle-room. He pressed the button to open the door, and the large, silver
plates slid apart satisfyingly. He walked through the small connecting corridor
and found himself in the main section of the ship. There was no trouble
walking, of course – the centrifugal rotation of the entire spaceship simulated
earth gravity perfectly – a concept that had been perfected for decades. It was
darkly humorous that they had mastered walking in space, but not breathing.
The actual design of the ship had not stopped seeming clever to
Lewis, despite every other part of space-travel now being infuriating. He was
the type of man to appreciate good design above most else. The ship had been
manufactured as building-blocks. Expensive and high-tech building-blocks, but
building-blocks nonetheless. Every room was a perfectly measured cube, called a
shuttle-room. The main room of the ship was multiple cubes long and stretched
through the middle, and auxiliary rooms were attached symmetrically along it.
Multiple shuttle-rooms had been designated as spaces for each astronaut's
research; each astronaut had their own private room where they'd sleep or spend
their time how they wished; a few computer rooms with enough processing power
between them to run anything required ten-fold; a handful of storage rooms; and
of course, many engine rooms, usually furthest out from the main strip of the
spaceship, with thrusters to make the mammoth move as necessary. All of this,
as a series of white cubes with more cubes protruding from each face.
Wonderfully efficient.
But perhaps Lewis appreciated it for other, less innocent
reasons. His own guilt prodded this thought into his head – was he about to
desecrate the pristine design with his disgusting actions?
Lewis' mind continued to be flooded with doubt and apprehension,
and yet, he walked on with such blind determination. He did not want to die on this
spaceship. His morals were well and good, but he was not ashamed to say that he
valued his own life above anyone else's.
Had anyone been looking at the spaceship, be it by technological
surveillance or divine omniscience, they would not have noticed anything
strange. The many-cubed spaceship continued on its doomed journey, spinning
through the emptiness of space. There were far less cubes now than there had
been when the mission had started, of course. Many of the engine rooms had
become obsolete – and like all obsolete thrusters, they had been ejected. Their
cubes – the outermost cubes – had been detached from the spaceship. Lewis had
been the one to detach many of them.
He strolled through the bulk of the spaceship, his breathing
barely noticeable. He came to his destination; a shuttle-room on the other end
of the ship. It was strange, he thought, that the design could be so easily
exploited for something like this. Private rooms on the edge of the ship, so
that astronauts could have a view of space. Perhaps it was not as clever as it
had seemed.
The shuttle-room was Mark's private room. Lewis' partner; the
astronaut who had worked alongside him for years. He would be in that room now,
perhaps lost in thought, equally crushed by the fact that his breaths were
limited. Could he have had the same fleeting thoughts as Lewis? Or was he too
good of a man?
Lewis' contemplations over the last few days, combined with his
superior logical capabilities, had led to his understanding of a few important
factors. The first was that, as all the shuttle-rooms had been connected to the
ship in the same fashion, and had been designed before their purpose was
designated, they would all have the same functionality – functionality that
Lewis used very often. The second was that his life may not be entirely doomed.
Every infuriating calculation about the remaining oxygen levels had been done
using a single derived factor – their combined living conditions. There was
certainly not enough oxygen to last them both. But it turned out that there
would be just enough remaining if the demand was cut in half.
There was a plane of plastic in the door to the shuttle room
that served as a window. Lewis could make out the blurry figure of Mark, lying
down in his sleeping quarters, unaware of the judgment that had been placed on
him.
Lewis opened the control panel next to the metal door. He
thought about the magnitude of the decision he had made – but there it was: it
was already made. He wondered again why the technologically infallible behemoth
even allowed things like this to happen; but again, it had been designed under
the assumption that the crew would be competent.
Lewis typed in a few numbers. Remarkably few, in fact, but this
was merely a routine procedure to get rid of obsolete shuttle-rooms. It was a
simple task. He pressed the final button. He heard the whoosh of suction that
he had heard many times before, as Mark's shuttle-room detached from the ship.
The black, rubber border around the double-plated door split in two, leaving
two entirely separate entities floating in space.
The detached shuttle-room was mere centimeters from the ship,
but it was done. There was no way for Mark to return. Lewis knew full well the
weight of what he had just done; willingly taken a life.
Mark had heard it happened; perhaps he had felt it. As the
shuttle-room drifted slowly away from the ship, centimeter by centimeter, he
ran up to the window on his door. He pressed his face against it. Lewis
watched. The two men were an inch apart -- one doomed early; one saved.
Mark began shouting. He pounded against the window. Lewis stared
unmoving, deaf to the sound. It could not traverse the miniscule vacuum.
Mark's pounding was accompanied by a face of equal parts fear
and anger. But no disbelief. He knew what had happened. He was doomed; to a far
more swift doom than before.
Lewis looked down. The sound of the pounding and shouting may
not carry, but he could see Mark's expressions, and he didn't want to. He was
certain of his choice, but wasn't proud of it. The shuttle-room continued to
drift. Lewis began to walk away.
Mark would last minutes. Lewis would now last the journey home.
What would happen after he arrived on Earth? After the man who should not be
alive returns alone? He would be called a coward. His arrival would be
announced by global shaming. He would be condemned for murder. And rightfully
so. He wouldn't argue; but at least he'd be alive.
Points: 1743
Reviews: 229
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