The Space Pod

Clarabella knocked back the tasteless nutritional supplement no. 137 and then stared at the empty container - still hungry. She glared at the decrepit analog clock mounted to the metal siding next to the viewscreen. Not sure if she even knew how to read it, but she knew when the big hand got to the top and the smaller hand had moved to the next number down then the green light on the locked cabinet behind her would blink, signaling that another nutritional supplement was ready.

She tossed the empty container behind her; it hit the floor along with the other empties and then she swiveled back to the control panel in front of her. The array of lights blinking on and off was all normal as normal as being encapsulated in a space pod hinged to the cosmic barrier fence along the farthest reaches of the solar system could be.

She sat back and stared through the viewscreen; nothing had changed. The space she saw was what she had seen since she had arrived, and would have see, until she had served her time and could go home, back to Earth. Although she hadn’t had no home to go to.

“Take the fence perimeter,” her lawyer had said at her sentencing, “much better than the penal colony ships anchored at Uranus or the labor farms where they lose track of their prisoners and nobody cares that you’re, um, lost.”

“But I’m innocent,” she said, just as the judge’s gavel came down. Before she was hauled off to space dock and deposited here.

She had never been off Earth before; she had never been away from her daughter before; and she had never been some place where there was no sun, or fresh air, or green grass. Now she housed in a pod millions of miles away from Earth, she was expected to watch over the cosmos barrier fence, doing her time.

“It’s the best we can do,” her defense lawyer had said, wiping his brow with a dingy handkerchief, “considering the circumstances of your crime.”

Her crime? Believing a man who claimed he loved her; believing that what he said was true, when in fact he was using her naiveté, actually her ignorance, for his own machinations. Hope he was enjoying the labor farm. She stood stretching, trying to stretch the kinks out of her back. The alarm went off. Her movements in the pod were monitored, and if she deviated too many times and racked up too many demerits, her nutritional supplements were curtailed.

Hunger was real here in this cavernous space. She sat back down, silencing the alarm.

“Are you there? Have you missed me?”

The voice jolted her out of her thoughts.

“I’m here. I’m here.” She leaned forward. Was he out there? Could he see her? Was he truly back? Or did she just think she heard his voice and her mind was playing tricks on her?

“Are you there?” he asked again.

He couldn’t hear her. She frantically scanned the console. The communication channel; the only thread she had back to Earth was currently closed. Only her supervisor could open it if she wanted to check in with her, but she rarely ever did. Content to have her react to the automatic check-in system.

But in the far corner were knobs, and dials, and lights that were obsolete, left over from the last upgrade - the prison system once again went with the lowest bidder - when setting up this pod for prisoners. One light just out of her reach glowed green. She stretched as far as she could without setting off the alarm and hit the appropriate knob. A crackle of static screamed through the pod. She covered her ears with her hands until there was silence again.

“Yes,” she finally said. “I’m here.”

She heard him take a breath. “I am so glad.”

“Where have you been?” she asked.

He breathed long and hard, and the sound tingled across her exposed skin.

“Busy,” he said, “Did you think I had forgotten you?”

“No. No.” She lied. Her flippancy proved she was more courageous than she felt.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, laughing.

“It’s true,” she said. Her voice rose in her defense. “I didn’t miss you.” Even though she played their previous conversations over and over again in her head as she lay in her solitary bunk, she ruminated over what she must have said for him to go silent.

He laughed again. His amusement filled the pod. His mirth reverberated against the dense metal walls.

“It’s true,” she yelled over his laughter. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not.” She sat back, crossing her arms in defense. He was out there somewhere, on the other side of the barrier fence. Far enough that his ship wasn’t detected with any of the pod’s location sensors.

“Okay,” he said, merriment still in his tone. “If you say so. I did miss you.” His voice changed. She detected a sincerity she had heard before.

She leaned forward, staring through the view screen. Nothing had changed. The stars still held their positions in the inky space, the vastness of nothingness.

“You did,” she finally said.

“Yes.”

Warmth spread through her body with his confirmation that she was missed.

“Clarabella,” he said. He had rarely ever used her name, and the way he said it made her giddy.

“Yes?” Leaning closer to the view screen, still scanning, looking for him. “I wish I could see you.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” she said, wondering if he too was sentenced to spending the majority of his life in a space pod alone on the edge of the solar system.

“I can see you.”

“You can?” She frantically sat back, afraid that she was exposed.

“In my dreams, I see you and me together under the warming sunshine, and your smile. Your beautiful smile.”

She relaxed. “I like that.”

“Do you want that?”

“Well,” she said, glancing down at the display panel for a moment, making sure that she hadn’t missed a check-in time. “I, um, truth be told. I can’t leave here.”

“Forever?”

“No. Just for a long time.” She turned, looking at the notches she had scratched in the metal siding when she first arrived, that were now abandoned.

Her check-in beeped, and the light on the panel blinked yellow. She paused, realizing what the noise was, and then hit the button. The light extinguished.

“Maybe I can help,” he said.

She shook her head, knowing that no one could help her. She was here in deep space, alone, paying for her own stupidity in trusting someone she loved and thought loved her. Her complicity was her downfall.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

“Don’t be sad. I can help. If you, want me to. You do, want me to, don’t you?”

“No one can help me. That’s why I ended up here.”

Silence hummed through the communication line, and she figured her words had cut him off.

“I can,” he finally said. Before she could reply, he continued. “But you have to want to be helped. You have to want to be free. Do you? Do you want to be free? Do you want to feel the sun on your face again, and the grass under your feet, and the fresh scent of the breeze rustling through the trees? Do you Clarabella? Do you?”

She ran her hands down the rough fabric of her coveralls. The rasp of the fibers under her palms echoed in the pod.

“Yes,” she said just above a whisper, knowing that her supervisor could opt in at moment and hear their conversation.

“What?” he said. “I can’t hear you. Does that mean no? You don’t want me to —”

“Yes,” she said louder, surprised by the forceful tone in her voice. “Yes.”

“Good. Good. Then listen closely, because you must unlock the barrier fence so that I can—”

“I can’t do that,” she said, knowing that she had to have supervisory permission to unlock any portion.

“I know,” he said, “you’ve been told you can’t, but you can. They’ve lied to you.”

“But,” she said, sitting back, her hands by her side, wondering if what he said was true.

“Don’t doubt yourself. You, and you alone, have the power to do this. They have no control over you. Trust me on this. None.”

She didn’t want to believe him; however, her entire existence in the pod was controlled by the supervisor, from when she could eat, to when she could get up from her chair, to when she was allowed to sleep. She had no free will. Some un-named person back on Earth in the penal system controlled her life. In fact, it probably wasn’t even a person, but just some artificial intelligence that was programmed to control her.

“Your silence tells me that we are in agreement. Or maybe you’re scared.”

She nodded, unable to find her voice.

“Freedom is scary, Clarabella. That’s why they fiercely protected it with their alarms, their rationing, and their constant possibility of retribution.”

She swallowed hard, suddenly very thirsty, but she couldn’t get up from her chair. The alarm would go off and, she wasn’t due for another nutritional supplement until the big hand was at the top of the clock, and it was close but still not there. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Okay,” she said, her hunger overriding any logical thought.

“Good. Very good,” he said, and then he recited the instructions to override the safety procedures for dropping the barrier fence. She followed his sequence of pressing the buttons on the console and twisting the dials, intrigued that there was a way around all the protocols that she had thought were impermeable.

The shrill alarm sounded, one she had never heard before. She sat back. A red warning beacon swirled around the pod; the view screen was now bathed in red. Through the loudspeaker, a woman’s voice called out her name, demanding to know what was going on. Her supervisor.

“Don’t respond,” he said. “They can’t get to you once you’re free.”

“Who is that? Who is there with you?” The supervisor asked, her voice booming over the alarm.

“Almost there, Clarabella,” he said. “Can you taste the freedom? I can. I can taste it. We will feast together once you are free.”

She hit the last button as he instructed, ignoring her supervisor’s admonishments. The barrier fence, invisible to the naked eye, fell. More warning lights and alarms sprung up in front of her. The pod began to vibrate, shifting hard to one side, knocking her from her chair. She hit the floor with a thud.

“I’m coming,” he said. “I’ll be there. You’ll be free.”

She struggled to get back on her feet now that the moorings for the pod were releasing. The view screen was losing its connectivity; however, she could see the ship on the other side growing larger and larger as it came closer and closer.

“What in God’s name have you done!” Her supervisor yelled. “Clarabella. Can you hear me?”

She turned to hit button on the speaker, but then he spoke instead.

“Don’t bother. She means nothing to you now. None of them do. All of yours, are now one of ours.”

The shuddering of the pod grew stronger.

“Are you coming for me, because this is breaking up and I don’t have an escape?”

He was silent.

“You are coming for me. Right?” she asked again.

“No,” he finally said. “You’ve made your choice. You are now free, just like I promised you.”

Free? She grabbed the edge of the console trying to balance herself in the ever-shifting pod. “No. You promised sunshine, and fresh air, and food. You said we would feast. You promised. You—”

He didn’t respond. Between the alarms, and the garbled sounds coming through the loudspeaker, and the erratic tilting of the pod as it broke from its moorings, she knew he had lied. He used her, just like she had been used on Earth.

Complicity. She followed her heart once again, believing the lies rather than the truth, but this time was different. She was different.

Scrambling across the pod to the far edge, she stepped on the broken pieces of the analog clock knocked from its place on the metal wall. She yanked on the red bar on the far cabinet that she never touched. It popped open, and she grabbed the lone key inside. It was heavy and cold in her hand. She stared at it for a moment, wondering if she should in fact do what she was thinking of doing, when he spoke again.

“Clarabella, your life was not in vain. You must know that. I promised only what I could deliver. How can you ask for more?”

“I hate liars,” she said, not caring if he or anyone else was listening. The deafening sound of the alarms and the crack and torque of the metal as the pod desegregate override any conscious thought. She flipped the cover up over the one keyhole on the far side console and stuck the key in.

“I hate liars more than I want my freedom,” she said, turning the key a quarter turn. Then the pod lurched, tossing her to the floor. Hitting her head against the far bulkhead, she laid there amongst the empty containers of her nutritional supplements. How long it would take, what it would feel like, and mostly was she was too late to stop him?

“What have you done?” His voice cut through the ongoing blare of the alarms.

She struggled to right herself. The heat of the combustion had started. The console was too hot to touch. She pulled her hands back; the skin on her fingers sizzled. The rancid aroma of her burning flesh assaulted her. She immediately started to retch the contents of her stomach.

“Clarabella! Talk to me. Talk to me,” he said.

She swallowed the putrid vomit, leaning against the fall wall as the intense heat buckled her. She tried to shimmy toward the middle of the pod, looking for a safe place, but even the floor was hot. No place was safe.

“Stopping you,” she said. The view screen, what little she could see from sitting on the floor, was dim. The heat of the fire, as the pod burned, would eventually make it the first place to fail, and then once that happened the pod would be lost and she with it.

“Why?” he said. “Why?”

“I can never be free,” she said. The intense heat stung her eyes, blinding her. And as she breathed in, her throat was choked by the smoke, making it almost impossible for her to speak.

“But even so,” she said, each word more painful than the last. “I can’t let you take the freedom of others. I won’t let anyone be all yours.” The flames licked at her feet, incinerating her coveralls and skin simultaneously. Blinded by the fire engulfing the pod, she gasped for air, breathing only the flames that surrounded her.

He spoke, but she couldn't hear anymore. The end was near. She cringed as the pain of her decision engulfed her. Her daughter, still on Earth, would she know her mother had sacrificed herself to make sure that Earth was safe from whoever this invader was. She hoped for once she had chosen well. Her last thought as she lost her consciousness and succumbed to the fire.