A Space Escape

Author's Note: As a few others have posted recently, here's my entry from the Space Picture Prompt Writing Olympics challenge. I don't normally write prose - but any feedback or comments are welcome!

Earth: 2/18/2318

Sirens and running footsteps echoing through the hall mimic the frantic beat of my heart.

“This is it,” Jeremy says.

For the last century, our planet has been basically on life-support. At least this is what I imagine life-support would have felt like back when there were still hospitals. Jeremy and I live in the Survival Compound, one of the last places the Governing Court still actually sends funds to apart from Nuclear Advancement. Which is why the alarms are blaring in our ears.

I check my pager at my belt to see if there's any news on the specifics of the alarm. The screen reads, "ALERT - ALL RESIDENTS REPORT TO ASSIGNMENT ROOM."

The Survival Compound is one of, if not the last, covert nuclear-safe facility. People like me who have what qualifies as Ideal Gene Selection are sent to live here until they pass the Age of Means, at 35, when then they’re sent back to fend for themselves in General Population. I would have never chosen to live here, despite its safety. The complete disconnect from the world outside, from my family, my work, is isolating.

I long for the outside world, even with though I’ve never known it outside its current hazy curtain of pollution. My grandma told me stories as a child of when there were still trees in cities, when there were so many birds, that they’d wake you up in the mornings, and she could travel without breathing masks and screens. I imagine now in the compound that I’m a caterpillar curled into my dark cocoon waiting to be lit on fire – we all know that any moment a Nuclear Strike could take us all, if the planet doesn’t self-combust first, so it’s hard to find anything that really matters. I’m not sure I would still be sane if I hadn’t met Jeremy.

I still remember the day we met two years ago, when he first arrived. He always had an upbeat attitude which is a rarity in a place like this. We had promised each other that if we ever got out of the Survival Compound we would find each other. I wasn't sure my family was still alive at this point. We had to break all ties when I became a resident here, so Jeremy is all I have.

Jeremy grabs my hand and we start into the hall towards the assignment room to find out what’s going on. Under my breath I whisper as we run, “it’s a drill, it’s a drill, it’s only a drill”. It appears that everyone else is heading that way too. And when we get to the room the news banner is too difficult to read with everyone crowding around close to see it.

We were all used to rooms being too tight and resources being slim. Governing Court is all about cost-benefit analysis these days. So because nuclear safe-zones are such a cost to make, they build them only large enough to serve their purpose. Hosting 20 full-time residents, along with the same number of master doctors, mechanics, and technicians who take an oath to keep the location safe and secret no matter what. The current political climate is just as polarizing as our weather seasons, so even the current President and Gov Court have no idea of the exact location of our compound. As the coasts were destroyed by hurricanes in the last decade, gradually everyone’s moved further and further to center-state, so even though the population is dwindling with disease, people are packed like sardines into make-shift cities. It’s a wonder that no one has discovered the compound right under our country’s most populated city.

Daily life generally consists of intense lessons on inter-galaxy survival, cultural adaptation, how to fly space crafts, and most importantly, we learn how to protect and artificially grow the 100 unique frozen human embryos intended to restart the population if something… if it happens.

And today, if this alarm is more than a drill, then today it is happening.

It’s sinking in just as Jeremy says, “I don’t think this is a drill, Becca. We must be under final-nuclear attack.” As people cycle back from reading the News Banner the room gets louder and louder. Finally someone in the front of the room confirms it, yelling, “Final Nuclear Attack, 15 minutes until impact”.

People are shuffling into formal rows, as we’ve been trained, waiting to hear from the Compound Director who has made her way to the front, still wearing her crisp navy suit and not giving away any emotion behind her expression. Jeremy stands still at my side. “Maybe they’re wrong, it could still be a false alarm, Becca” he says. But I can tell from the tone in his voice that he doesn’t truly believe it.

As I turn my attention back to the Director who’s reading a formal message that’s been sent in from the Gov Court, I wonder how many more times I’ll be able to hear Jeremy say my name. Do names matter in space, when no one else can hear it? Do they matter in death? And the only thing that terrifies me more than space and death, is a world without him in it.

I give a silent prayer to whatever gods or life-forms are still out there, that Jeremy will be chosen from the survival lottery. We were told that, because there is only room for one and it is more cost-effective, that if final-nuclear attack ever happened, only one person would be sent into space with the embryos. They only need one person to ensure the human population survives I guess.

The Director declares, "We will now begin the final lottery selection," and she points a remote towards a screen in front of us. I stand squeezing the hand of the only person I have ever truly loved in this world and time stops still as the lottery machine ticks off letters.

B.E.C.C.A. S.M.I.D.T.

I stop breathing.

“Becca,” Jeremy whispers, “it’s you.”

The residents gradually turn facing me, their faces reflecting envy, anger, or relief, maybe all at once. All I feel is panic, I had never let myself hope that I might be called from the lottery. “Jeremy,” I hiss as quietly as I can, “you have to get on that ship with me. There has to be room for us both.”

His hazel eyes lock on mine, for a moment I wonder if he’ll say no. Our eyes are still locked as two of the ship mechanics in blue overalls each grab one of my arms. A small lady in a wrinkled lab coat pulls out a sensor needle and pricks my shoulder with it. The sensor beeps twice, then flashes green. “Her vitals read clear. The resident is ready to depart.”

The mechanics pull me towards the space launch room, as three more technicians in lab coats take turns reading off material we’ve rehearsed in our classes hundreds of times. “Check the central tank every 48 hours.” “Their nutrition intake valves must be kept clean as a priority.” “Be careful when you open the second throttle.”

I nod, not really taking any of it in. A cart is wheeled around in front of me and a male doctor with thick glasses and shaking hands is carefully marking on a chart the information for what I recognize to be the embryo case.

“The continuation of the human race is with you now” the lead technician says, putting a hand on my shoulder.

The heavy door of the ship opens behind us, and Jeremy tumbles violently out.

I rush over and help him up. A disheveled ship mechanic steps out from inside the ship’s door, “This one was stowing away, four centuries worth of science and history volumes could have been lost, he had thrown them out of the ship”.

The mechanic points towards four large books that are resting on the outside of the ship. The technician struggles to pick up one of the books and motions for the doctor to help him.

Jeremy pulls me closer. “Don’t make me go alone, there’s room for us both.” I beg.

The sirens that had been blaring, pause their ringing tone, and over the intercom a robotic monotone reports, “nuclear-shut-down five minutes from impact.”

The technician shoulders Jeremy away from the ship while trying to balance the large book in his arms against his stomach. “The plan calls for one. One was chosen. We don’t have time for this.”

Jeremy wrestles the book out his arms and pushes past the technician to stand by me again. The doctor next to the embryos speaks up, “I need three minutes to oxygenate these inside the ship. Get these kids strapped on the ship, or this is all for nothing. Leave the history books, without these kids, our history will have no meaning because there’ll be no future.”

Hearing the desperation in the doctor’s voice, I hope it will convince the technicians to allow us on board. I’m not sure what I will do if the intercom reaches four minutes, but for a few seconds longer, I hold on the hope that Jeremy and I will be able to leave together. Jeremy and I walk towards the ship, holding each other’s hands tight. The lead technician pauses for a moment staring at the books at his feet then looks up, marches up to the door and pulls his key-card from his lanyard. The other two technicians are still arguing with the doctor, but my eyes are on the lead technician. He swings the key-card across the main lock. My hopes rise, Jeremy and I can leave together!

Red lights flash, the door doesn’t click open. “It’s locked,” his voice is panicked, “it’s locked from the inside! Someone is already in there.”

I rush forward and start hitting the outside of the door with my fist, not knowing anything else I can do.

The other technicians fall silent, pushing towards the door and desperately trying their own key cards. Each time the red light flashes again. The intercom voice returns, “four minutes from impact”

“It’s Harris”, one of the technicians says defeated, “Harris, the ship’s main engineer, he’s going to fly this out of here. Despite everything we have worked for.”

I realize he was talking about the man who had just a minute ago pushed Jeremy out of the ship. He had been inside the ship to sneak away himself.

The doctor begins pounding on the door as I had been before, adding his voice to the sirens, “Open the door, open the door! The embryos are still out here! Please, open the door! This is our only chance.”

The ship begins shaking as the grind of the ship’s engine starts. The technicians have to pull the doctor away from the ship. He finally submits and turns away from the ship holding his forehead. He makes slow steps towards the embryos, then places a heavy hand on the case. The embryos he has lead the efforts in keeping perfectly frozen for the last fifteen years, one which holds his genetic material, are useless now.

The lead technician shakes his head and kicks the history volume at his feet. Hundreds of years of knowledge, poetry, history, and science painstakingly collected to carry a planet’s culture, hopes, and warnings was left behind. And who is to know what Harris will do with those history volumes still with him on the ship. Would he pass them on? Would he remember the warnings against ignoring science, and disregarding rising political tensions? Would there be anyone from similar survivors from international compounds to warn?

I stumble to the ground settling into the awareness that these were my last moments. That almost all that mattered in my existence would soon be miles and miles away from where I was now, in that ship. And I could have been there in the ship too. Soon, no one would remember me.

Jeremy crouches beside me, wrapping both arms around my shoulders. Here we were, together. Did it really matter that we loved each other when soon our planet, our cells, our history would be erased? I wasn’t sure, but I pulled Jeremy’s arms closer.

The room filled with smoke, as the nuclear-safe ceiling lifted to allow the space ship to leave. As the ship lifts in a cloud of fire, the noise drowns out the sirens, and the intercom speaks once more, “three minutes.”

My lungs soon burn and I bury my face in Jeremy’s shoulder until at last I have to gasp in a breath of the thick toxic air. The last sound I hear is Jeremy saying, “Good bye, Becca.”