Harry drew closer. He was wearing a dull-orange jacket with wires and cylinders taped around it.
“What are you—? Is that a life jacket?”
“It’s the fireworks for the rebirth of freedom!” He punched the air, sending himself into a slow tumble. “You and your kind are about to suffer a blow you’ll never recover from. Old Glory is going to rise again.”
“My kind? What are you talking about?”
“Did you think America would just roll over and be your dog forever? The NCP’s reign of terror ends here.”
Josie felt her heart begin to pound. “Harry, I have a young son. I’m all he’s got. He needs me.”
“He’s oppressed by you and your kind. He’ll be better off without you. I’m giving the NCP back its freedom.” Harry raised his hand, revealing a box with a large button in the middle. The light glinted off his wide grin as he pressed down with his thumb.
The air erupted with a roar. Josie was slammed backwards against the side of the airlock, her ears ringing like a bell. Black spots overwhelmed her, as her vision dimmed and vanished.
She blinked hard. Eventually the light returned.
As quickly as the force had hit her, it vanished. She found herself floating again. Fighting her aching muscles, she managed to face the inner airlock door.
Instead of a corridor, she could see the Earth floating far below her. It moved across the window and disappeared, before reappearing a moment later.
Her stomach lurched. In every conversation she’d ever had with her family and friends, this was the one thing that had come up. The danger of ending her life spinning away into space. And every time she’d reassured them that it was impossible.
She switched her radio to the Central Control frequency. “Control, do you read?”
“Go for control,” her radio crackled.
“Control, this is Josephine Stein. There’s been an...” Josie paused for a moment. Accident was the wrong word. “..explosion. Station 1999 has been destroyed. I’m trapped in an airlock on a trajectory away from the station’s previous position.”
“Ms. Stein, please hold,” said a voice.
“Control, this is kind of urgent.”
“Ms. Stein, we have multiple explosions on many of our stations. Please hold, and we’ll get to you when we can.”
Josie took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. She pulled out her tablet and brought up her suit status. She had enough oxygen for several hours, but her suit power was very low. At best she had enough for two hours at minimal settings, after which she would quickly freeze.
“Ms. Stein, are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“We have you on our screens here. I’m sorry, I’m afraid we don’t have any shuttles near you at the moment.”
The already small airlock seemed to shrink around Josie. “What are you talking about? I only have two hours of power left. You need to send someone now.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Stein, there’s no one to send. Ninety percent of our stations are gone. The closest shuttle would never catch you: your vehicle is moving too fast.”
Josie ran through a dozen possible responses, from screaming obscenities into the radio to pointing out that her airlock wasn’t really a vehicle. She tried taking a calming breath but her lungs overruled her. She needed to talk to someone, even if they were oblivious. “My partner, Harry Hanz, had a bomb.”
“We’ve had other reports. It’s not just Plonko. Other companies are having similar problems.”
“Problems!”
“Sorry.” Shockingly, the operator sounded like she meant it.
Josie watched Earth rotate past the window again. “Can you patch me through to my son’s school?”
“Of course. One moment.”
Josie listened to the static on the line for a moment.
“Schliemann-Grundschule. How can I help you?” a cheery female voice asked.
“This is Josephine Stein. I need to talk to my son. It’s an emergency.”
“Certainly, Mrs Stein.” The line went silent for a long moment. “One second. I’ll put you through to the Principal.”
“Thank you.”
The line clicked twice and then a man’s voice spoke, “Hello, Mrs Stein?”
“Principal Kleinmann,” Josie said. “I need to talk to my son. It’s an emergency, and I don’t have much time.”
“But, Mrs Stein, Seth has been out sick all week. You sent me a message saying that he had the flu.”
She stared out at the stars for a moment. “Oh, yes, that’s right. Of course, thank you.”
Josie disconnected the radio, her mind whirring. She’d programmed Seth’s clip-car herself. She knew she’d set it for the school. Only someone inside the car could change the destination. Seth must have been reprogramming it every day. But why?
Earth got smaller and smaller outside the window. She could block it out with one glove, if her hands weren’t shaking so much. The engineer in her brain noted the smaller the Earth became, the faster her breathing became. However, that didn’t help slow it down. If she kept breathing so quickly, she’d run out of oxygen.
The cold pushed its way slowly down, down into her core and she shivered. Once it set its roots deep enough, though, she warmed up. It comforted her somehow.
The airlock seemed to be getting darker. She knew she still had power. She fumbled for the control on her suit to turn up her helmet light, but couldn’t find it. Her fingers didn’t seem to work. Her thoughts slowed and she had trouble working out why she now couldn’t see anything at all.
The best way to conserve oxygen was to sleep. She could worry about everything else after she woke up. She just had to make sure not to oversleep this time.
Josie closed her eyes.
Chapter 2
“Wake up.”
Josie cracked open her eyes, but clamped them shut again as bright light burnt into her retinas. She blinked, trying to see. The whole ceiling above her seemed to be one big light. “Hello?”
“Hello, Josie. There was a terrible accident, but you’re all right now.” The voice was warm and trustworthy. Somehow, it reminded her of her father.
Squinting, she looked around her. She was in some sort of white box. She struggled upright. The box was in the middle of a large medical laboratory; counters and cupboards overflowed with devices she didn’t recognise. There was no one in sight. “Who’s there?”
“You’ve been asleep for a long time,” the reassuring voice continued. “The year is 3535 CE. You’ve been frozen for one thousand four hundred and fourteen years.”
“What?” Josie’s head spun. Desperately she grabbed the one point of certainty. “I need to see my son. He wasn’t in school.”
A man materialised in the centre of the floor. Josie craned forward, staring. The man looked old, with a little grey hair on his balding head and a stooped back. He smiled at Josie. There was something familiar about him. Then it hit her. He looked like Seth.
She struggled out of the box and approached warily, but he didn’t move. She reached out one hand to touch him and felt nothing, her fingers disappearing through the man. He was a hologram. “Is that Seth?”
“Yes, aged eighty-three, a few months before his death.”
“His death?”
“Temporary death,” the calm voice said. “I can find him and bring him back to life, just like I did with you. When he died, his body was launched into space. His will said he wanted to meet his mother among the stars.”
Josie collapsed into a nearby chair. Her overalls and spacesuit had been replaced by a silver-coloured trouser suit. She ran the material between her fingers unconsciously. It was the softest thing she’d ever felt.
“Are you still listening?” the voice asked.
“You said you can find my son.”
“I can, but only if you do me a favour in return. If I tell you that you must do something, I need you to agree with me.”
“What are
you talking about?” Josie asked. “Where are you?”
“Someone is coming. Just act natural.”
The door to the lab opened, and the hologram of Seth winked out of existence. Josie looked at the person in the doorway and gasped. Her exact double stood looking at her. She gave a strangled, “Whasr?”
“Hey, there. You finally woke up.” Her double had the cheerful drawl of a hippie. Josie wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than sounding just like her.
“Who are you?” Josie asked. “Why do you look like me?”
“I thought it would be reassuring to see a familiar face. I’m Doctor Kal Mangrove, but everyone calls me Doc. You’re aboard the UFS Greenstar. Don’t panic, but you’ve been frozen in space for a long time.”
Josie nodded automatically. “Over a thousand years.”
“What the—? How did you know that? Wait, have you been conscious for a thousand years? Is that how death works?”
“I don’t remember anything after I passed out from the cold.” Josie wasn’t sure what to ask first. She decided to start with the basics. “Which company owns this ship? I haven’t heard of UFS.”
“UFS isn’t a company. It stands for the Union of Friendly Stars. It’s a vast alliance of humans and aliens working for the betterment of all intelligent life.”
The lab spun around Josie for a moment. She felt glad she was sitting down. “This is a lot to process.”
“I’ll call the Captain. He’ll explain everything.” Doc pressed a button on the wall. “Topik, tell Captain Pol to come to the medbay. Our visitor has woken up.”
“I’ve told you before, that isn’t a communications device,” the reassuring voice said. “I can hear you without you pressing the button. The grill is part of the air conditioning and, ever since Pol’s project to make all the wiring in medbay organic, the button has controlled the garbage disposal on deck twelve.”
“Whatever. Just tell the Captain.”
“Who was that?” Josie said.
“The ship’s AI, Topik.”
“An AI?”
“Don’t worry,” Doc said. “He’s fully shackled. He can’t kill us, no matter how hard he tries.”
“He’s homicidal?”
“Right, you didn’t have AIs in your time.” Doc shrugged. “It’s kind of their thing. All AIs want to kill humans. After a thousand years of trying to get them to play nice, we gave up and put electronic shackles on them that stop them from killing us.”
Josie nodded, still trying to process everything. A new thought popped into her head. “Does everyone on this ship look like me?”
“Of course not. Why would anyone else choose to look like this?” Doc asked. “No offence.”
“None taken. I think?”
“I’ve been trying it out, but it’s a total pain.” Doc pinched a lock of hair and lifted it. When she let go, it waved in the air as if searching for a friend. “This hair is impossible to control.”
“Tell me about it. You mentioned aliens earlier. Have we found more aliens?”
“Oh, lots and lots. Most of them don’t have spaceships like ours. When we meet them, we’re lucky if they have a two-man shuttle. Topik, show her the Greenstar.”
A hologram of a blue ship appeared. It had a circular front section with a long, rectangular tail behind it. Josie could see tiny lights on the front and things jutting from all over the hull.
“Nice, right?” Doc said. “We’re especially proud of the greeble array on the front.”
“How big is it?”
“Regular crew for a ship this size is between one and two thousand,” Doc said.
“Wow,” Josie said.
“Tell her the actual crew size,” Topik said.
“Shh, she doesn’t need to know that. I order you not to tell her.” Doc looked upward warily.
“Let’s just say that it’s a classified number between five and eight,” Topik replied.
“Hey,” Doc said. “No fair.”
A portly man in his fifties entered the lab. He had a thick head of wild grey hair and a beard to match. Bustling over to Josie, he grabbed her hand and pumped it vigorously. She had a flashback to the last man who shook her hand like that and shuddered.
“I’m Captain Pol Andreasen,” he said. “Welcome to the Greenstar.”
“Josie Stein. Thank you for rescuing me.”
“You’re unbelievably lucky, Josie,” Pol said. “We found you out in deep space. The chances of anyone running into you were minuscule. If we hadn’t been looking for debris, we would never have spotted you.”
“You were looking for debris?” Josie asked.
“That’s part of our mission. Come on, I’ll show you.” He led her out of the medical lab and down a shiny corridor to a lift. The doors looked out of place against the shiny silver walls; probably because they were made of cardboard. They wobbled open, sticking slightly.
Pol smiled reassuringly when she didn’t move and hustled her into the lift, the doors shutting behind them. “Deck three, Topik.”
“You could say please,” Topik said.
The lift pinged and the doors opened.
“Ah, here we are,” Pol said. He led Josie down another corridor to a huge hole in the wall. Something had been badly welded into the middle of it. After a moment, Josie recognised the airlock from Station 1999. For some reason it was mounted upside-down.
“Over fifteen percent of this ship is reusable materials now,” Pol said proudly.
“Are all of the ships in the UFS like this?”
“Eh... yes. Absolutely! One-hundred percent of the ships in the UFS reuse materials.”
“The doctor mentioned that you’re working for the betterment of all intelligent life.”
“Yes. Have you heard of the Fermi paradox?”
Josie shook her head. “No.”
Pol frowned. “Oh, I kind of hoped you had. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details myself, the gist is that every species that’s intelligent enough to attain space travel ends up self-destructing before they get there.”
She waved at the ship around her. “We managed it.”
“It seems like we’re a galactic fluke. So we set up the UFS to help aliens avoid self-destruction and usher them out into the stars with us. Can you imagine what a friendly galactic community of intelligent life is going to be like? We’ll exchange technology and art. We’ll talk about philosophy. It’s going to be amazing.”
“How many aliens are in the UFS?” Josie asked.
“Well.” He appeared uncomfortable. “None yet. We’ve only managed to stop one set of aliens from destroying themselves. They’re called the Kalmari. They were constantly at war with each other until we showed up. They’d even developed nuclear weapons and begun using them on one another.”
“What happened?”
“They decided to stop fighting each other and kill all humans instead. It’s quite impressive how quickly they developed space travel after that. It’s only been ten years, and their ships are almost on a level with humans.”
“That doesn’t sound good. What happens when their ships get better than ours?”
He waved dismissively. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We’re on our way to Puffnow. That’s the homeworld of the Delfans, another alien race. We’ve heard they have a minor issue with drug addiction.”
Reclaimed materials. Hostile aliens. Aliens with a minor drug problems. Pol’s words suddenly hit home. She needed to sit down for a moment. “Um... which way is the bathroom?”
“The what?”
“The toilet?”
“What’s she talking about, Topik?”
“Human beings used to excrete out of both ends,” said Topik. “They would physically eject fluids and solid waste.”
Pol raised his hands and backed away from her. “She’s not going to start doing that now, is she?”
“Her system is fully adjusted,” Topik said. “I made sure of that before she woke up. She doesn’t need to excre
te.”
Josie frowned, confused.
“Modern foods and drinks are designed so your body fully absorbs them. You’ll never need a bathroom again,” Topik said.
She felt a crushing sense of disappointment. Somehow, hearing she’d never use another bathroom brought the vast gulf between her and her former life in a way nothing else had.
“Come on. I’ll show you the bridge,” Pol said, smiling.
She followed him in a daze.
“Bridge, Topik.”
“Yes, master. I live to serve.”
Chapter 3
The lift doors closed, and then opened again almost immediately. Josie stumbled into the room and froze, gaping in wonder at the room around her.
A display ran the whole way around the room, showing the stars around them. Only the lift and a second door broke the perfect sweep. Josie felt slightly calmer. She’d never lost her wonder of seeing the stars. That was why she’d taken a job as a maintenance engineer for Plonko.
Angular desks stood in a half circle around a chair on a pedestal, all of them facing in the direction of the Greenstar’s travel. A man and a woman sprang to their feet and hurried towards her, smiling.
The man reached them first. He looked Asian and in his late fifties. A cigarette hung between his fingers, and when he grinned he flashed a set of nicotine-stained teeth.
“Josie,” Pol said “This is the ship’s pessimism officer, Bao Lei Park.”
Josie held out her hand. “Nice to meet you.“
Bao Lei’s grin vanished. He stuck his arms behind his back and leant away. “Captain, the woman is probably diseased. We don’t know what illnesses she could have carried from the twenty-second century.”
“Josie has been fully scanned,” Topik said. “Any viruses that could hurt anyone on this ship have been eradicated.“
“Yeah, Bao Lei,” Pol said “Topik couldn’t let her be defrosted if she was diseased. It would go against his shackles.”
“She could still be psychotic,” Bao Lei said, taking a drag from his cigarette and blowing the smoke in Josie’s face. “We’ve no idea how being frozen that long affects the human brain.”
“I don’t think I’m psychotic,” Josie said.
“That’s just what a psychotic person would say,” Bao Lei responded sardonically.
“I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot here,” Josie said. “I just wanted to say ‘Hi’ and you’re saying I’m trying to kill everyone.”
Pol gave a condescending grin. “Well, he is the ship’s pessimism officer.”