Cosmic Breakdown

In the irradiated vacuum of space, five people in bulky multicolored suits worked to dismantle massive steel plating, hauling them away dutifully like leaf-cutter ants. Around them was a vanishing landscape of a colony ship, the exterior flying away into the endless void through which they traveled. Pulling out to a telescopic view, one could mistake the vessel for a child’s toy blown to a massive scale: a titanic ring magnetically free-floating about a skyscrapering needle, the engine burning like a stick of warding incense. There, engraved on the ring was the ending of a word, the rest lost to the work of the devouring welders: -ARROW Z-9.

It had taken Maggie a couple extra minutes to venture off into the skeletonized ring than usual. The crew chief today had been vigilant once they heard she was on duty; her reputation preceding her. Her magnetic boots clomped along the corroded metal, tracing pathways of the scrapping efforts near three generations back. The only light came from the LED access strips that she manually activated by twisting their batteries back to life. They floated, stationary in the eternal spin of the ring’s magnetic gravity, twinkling along the thin, ancient paneling like stars.

She muttered, “Merry Christmas”, a joke in a long list of one-liners meant for no one but herself. It was a way to cope in such a high stress environment. At any moment, the paneling below her could crack and break, or a stray piece of steel still spinning in the pull of the Habitat could smash into her and send her straight to Hell. Her legacy a marker, much like the mountaineers of their planet-bound past who died along the way to ambition. She stepped lightly over the foot wide bridge that teetered between the rictus jaws of stripped material, shuffling one foot at a time to make it to the old, old parts of the ship.

The further in you went to the stripped zones, the more efficient the stripping had been. Back then they still had access to the construction equipment meant for heavy renovation, and they’d been able to recycle computer chips and materials so efficiently that it had carried them longer than expected. Now though? It all had to be done by hand; no replacements, no material shipments, no nothing. Just crews of desperate people tearing up the floorboards to keep the fire burning, no matter how fast it made them take on water.

She descended down after a certain point, a stray access ladder leading into the ruined habitation modules. The screens and doors were all pried open on this one, indicating a type of failure not natural to simple breakdowns.

Sure enough, the first room she peeked into had a body, strapped to the bunk of the room, a mummy stripped of all nutrients by the void. It screamed eternally in the airless nothing.

It was a good sign, bodies that went un-recycled usually meant the crews dismantling were in a rush, the trauma overtaking the urgency and importance of their job.

She spent a good hour prying, dismantling, and strapping together a ‘care package’ of useful things she found in the puzzle piece of the poorly scavenged Habitat, circuit boards, tools, an honest-to-god still working printer: high value objects that would help with the punishment of straying from the crew.

It wasn’t what she really wanted though.

The last room she checked was the director suite. The only thing left in there was the desk, and that was all she needed. She pulled out her Door-breaker, a blocky cube with a u.s.b connector sticking out the bottom. It wasn’t intricate or sophisticated (Maggie couldn’t code to save her life) but it did the job. Within minutes, she had the files downloaded and ready to read when she got home.

The journey back was just as perilous, but she was focused now. The pathways here were only meant to have been used once. Above, the dark was like a pupil to an eye too large to comprehend. She shook the terror of open space away, the image of the grinning husks inside the dead module, and focused instead on excuses.

Sure enough, the instant she got into radio range, the others were on her ass about leaving. “Maggie’s back everyone! Round of fucking applause!” Was the first thing she heard before mocking laughter filled the lines. She ignored them; all of them, especially the crew chief while he chewed her out for straying. She’d given up on trying to explain or defend herself, and instead handed him the list of objects she’d recovered and pointed to the wide catch net behind them. The aperture was extended, and a half hour later the package she’d assembled and tossed into the ship's orbit was grabbed by the weaving of micro-filament and reeled in. They stopped giving her shit then, mostly, but it didn’t matter to her, the real prize was inside the Door-breaker.

The shift ended, the cubes of stacked metal plates and bundles of wires pushed into the loading airlocks. From there, the materials would be sent to refineries still operating for recycling. She sighed as she removed the suit’s helmet, the depressurizing hiss popping her ears as she left for the main Block.

Block 5-5 was nearly identical to the destroyed section she’d just been exploring, only this one was alive, like a snapshot of the former’s past. The ceiling gave down false sun-rays that flickered imperceptibly, the waning daylight simulated to match the planet cycle no one alive had ever experienced. Like a vivarium heavily planted with ferns, the Block 5-5 had grown dense, with ramshackle and newly constructed lodgings littering the once open air. It was a city of corrugated metal and printed plastic, of bead doors and darkly humored graffiti. Restaurants and drug dens clogged the undercarriage, and above were homes and boroughs separated by quiet, nervous factions that Maggie had no claim to.

It was in one of these empty boroughs, with empty server racks and empty arm-thick cabling that she was living, alongside two others. No one was alone in 5-5, unless you wanted to be stabbed in your sleep and had your corpse sold to the farmers two Blocks over.

Pitr was busy as usual, getting high. He was an inventive person about drugs, and in such times, inventiveness was all they really had left. Or at least that was the lie everyone was sold. His goggles were black pinpricks as he groggily worked over the chemistry equipment so lovingly preserved by constant use and cleaning.

“What is it today Pitr?” Maggie asked as she walked through the beads, not even prompting a look from the half-alive bald man.

“Fuel cells…” He exhaled as though he were dying. She wanted to chastise him, to say something, but there was nothing that it would achieve. He’d made his choice long ago.

Her other roommate was deeper in, like some kind of cave monster who’d dug so deep into the electrical lines that she was afraid he would hit the exterior and vent them all into space. Luke heard her coming and swiveled around in his chair, the sweltering heat of his full server racks giving his gaunt frame a withered look. He was bare chested, the printer tattoos over his pectorals spelling “DOOM” with a mass of strange steel devils dancing over his ribs.Bulky cargo pants were the only clothing he had, full of spare blades for splicing wires that had already nicked his thighs many times over.

He cut to the chase, part of the reason she liked him as a roommate. “Any luck with those dead idiots Mags?”

Already holding out his hands, she tossed the cube to him. “You tell me. Hopefully this one isn’t as horrible as the last one.”

“Beats the fifth viewing of whatever shit movie Pitr likes.” He slammed the tool down into the access port, a little harder than he needed to, eyes narrowed at the flickering screens. “This one’s black box is pretty well preserved, good on whoever was in charge.” He tapped a couple keys. “Alright. We should be good to go. Mostly it's just reports up until Accident Day.”

“Want some popcorn?” She joked.

His eyes widened, not getting it. “No! Heeeellll no. Don’t waste the food vouchers on that crap, I’m serious.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure, what do you want instead-”

He brightened. “Pralines please, and a big thing of Energy Snake, the blue kind.” He waved her off, typing a bit more. She rolled her eyes, but obliged him, the luxury printer whirring in the hallway outside their den.

They had an uncomfortable run-down couch pulled out into the center of the room with the nice monitor against the wall. The lighting dimmed further into false dusk, casting snake shadows from the cabling everywhere. She clicked on the footage to start.

A similar view stood outside the office she’d been in earlier, now brand new in the footage of the past. A man sat at attention to the screen, but the two viewers were more interested in what sat behind, in the window.

Luke squinted, “A lot browner than the pictures.”

“It’s why they left Luke.” Maggie’s eyes narrowed, trying to make out the Earth’s landmasses and failing.

“I know.” He shrugged. “Just sayin’.”

They sat watching, going through anything they thought would help, honing in on the week leading up to Accident Day.

Luke sighed. “We know how it goes Maggie, do we really need to-” She got out her pen and paper.

There was something freeing about watching the footage of the old days. When everything was hopeful. The Block captain in the reports would talk so assuredly of hope that it didn’t feel like the hollow jokes made by the few remaining leaders aboard the Habitat. Petty squabbles with grand purpose, it all felt an impossible distance away, the black eye of space twinkling malevolently.

Then it ended, just like it always did. Panic, confusion, terror. Something outside the ship? Maggie narrowed her eyes at the grainy window in the footage. There was nothing, just more black. Luke sighed, obviously discomforted while stating, “I’m going back to my game, let me know if there’s any surprises?” He leaned over the couch, kissing her forehead while rubbing her hair, but even that wasn’t enough to turn her attention.

The video began to distort now. Half-phrases and word salad replaced the dialogue, flashes of purple, white and red drilled at her eyes like wasps. The black window cracked, glass splintering, the star of fracture blocking the view. The Hab captain was in a suit, conscious, screaming, “No! No! God! You can’t do this!” in bursts of desperation so edged that she could feel it reaching to cut her ears. She winced, and like a spell, it was over, the feed switching into blackness. Lingering like the dark of the space outside, pressing down on them all.

She leaned back. Another dud. She said so aloud.

“What did you expect?” Luke replied, but didn’t realize how biting it sounded in the sweltering air.

Frustration overtook her and she bit back, “Something. I expected something Luke, unlike you.”

He frowned. “Oh really? And this something would save the ship?”

The sudden tiredness from the excursion hit her all at once, an avalanche of anger and sadness pushing her mood off a cliff. “Maybe! Maybe it would, Luke! Unlike everyone else here, I’m still trying!”

“It would be nice if you stopped…” He whispered.

She still heard it. “Oh yeah? Really? Well maybe I should stop Luke! After all, that’s what’s left for us, isn’t it, to just stop, forever?”

“No, I meant that-”

“Maybe, we should just open the airlocks and give up Luke, since you’re sooooo, sad and bored waiting to die, fucking around with media from hundreds of years ago. That's all anyone here is doing!” She threw the remote, the bounce of it snapping into pieces. Around them, the dark of the chamber worsened like fog as night cycled in.

Luke held his tongue. He knew he had said wrong, but it was hopeless, futile. Everyone knew it. The vastness around them, the reality of the universe and its cruelty had sunk into them since birth.

Mags continued to insult and rage, tearing at her hair. “Why?! I just don’t understand Luke, help me understand, what are we still alive for?! Why haven’t we just killed ourselves when we know there’s no hope!? The ship’s crippled, we can’t harvest anything except dead pieces here, why not just hold a vote and blow it all up?!

He finally snapped, bitterly shouting, “Because it doesn’t matter Mags! None of it matters anyways! No one, no human alive anymore cares about the future, and they’re right not to! There’s nothing but right now! What, you think repairing this doomed voyage is gonna mean anything in twenty years when we’re all dead anyways?!” He cackled, covering the hurt he felt, “You want to know why we don’t all just end it fast? Because there’s still fun to have in dragging it out! Look at you! Those suits don’t protect you from the outside! The med-bays don’t work on long-term care, you’ll be dead from radiation poisoning sooner than me! You’re killing yourself doing it, just like all of us, the only difference is that you care about something that everyone knows is over! O! Ver!” He huffed, eyes strained and bulging, mouth dry. “So just fucking stop! Pretending! Like you can solve this nightmare, and getting angry at me when you know I have GIVEN UP!” He panted and held his heart, more furious than he’d been in years.

Maggie stood up from the couch. She walked over to where Luke was sitting, and hunched down at his eye level. “Luke.”

He knew what was coming, trying to avert himself from it, like a ship turning to avoid a torpedo. “Don’t. Don’t fucking do this.”

“I’ve said it before.” She started, calm and serious as water now. “I want kids. I want children with you.” She held his cheeks with her soft calloused hands, his own clenched so hard they bled. “I want to carry all this forward. That’s not possible if we know it's doomed. It can’t be. We have to-”

“You have to.” He insisted desperately. There was weakness there though, a horrible gaping terror that he knew she climbed into with ease. He accidentally saw her face: green eyes like sun-dappled plants, left-crooked nose, red-brown locks, and he cursed himself for his weakness.

She held his hand, caressing him. “We have to. You and me Luke. There’s something out there. Some reason this happened. You know it, I know it. The proof, the solution, it's here, on the Habitat.”

“Why?” He hissed out air, deflating sadly. “Why would it be here, of all places? In the whole universe?”

She pulled his console over, tapping. He knew what for. He didn’t say it, but sometimes he looked at it, even if the sensors saw nothing.

The exterior camera she installed on her excursions blinked its view into the monitor. The dark stared back. Pure dark.

No stars. No planets. No asteroids. Nothing.

Black.

Empty.

Void.

They had been born after Accident Day. Those who’d stuck around had said that the stars had once been legion across space. Now?

“There is nowhere else Luke. That’s why.” She finished. He sagged in defeat.

They stared at the screen. It did not stare back.

“I’m sorry for yelling.” She pursed her lips, the “Doom” there on his chest flexing like a chain.

“No, I-” He paused before clumsily blurting “Me too.” The quiet aftermath of the fight stuck with them both, sticky like spiderweb.

Finally, Maggie slicked back her hair and began whirring to life again. “Do you want anything? I’m going to get some groceries and see if Pitr’s dead yet.”

He shook his head no. “I’ll keep the bed warm.”

As she walked off, Luke stared back into the black screen. There was nothing.

When he was sure she was off in the markets, he stuck a thumb drive into the banks.

There, inside the data he’d scraped off the recent finding, he saw it. A blinking light that had been picked up by one of the dead Habitats, far from here and just before Accident Day. He loaded the footage.

Something horrible, unspeakable stared back. Something else. It widened, the dark eye growing larger and larger, swallowing the pinprick lights beyond as it expanded, the edges like the rim of a black hole.

“Not a stare.” The sudden gravelly voice whispered into his ear, reading his thoughts. He jumped, going for his knives when Pitr set a spindled hand on his shoulder. Pupils wide like a cats’, staring for dear life and sustenance.

All Luke could think to say spilled out. “Then what? What is it?”

The druggie narrowed like a bullet, chapped lips sweating.

“A mouth.”