Impaired Subject

CW: Euthanasia, medical experimentation

Adam looked at the clock as it clicked over to April 31st 2354. The alarm sounded as he reached to switch it off. He saw his hand quiver. Then he changed the clock. There weren’t thirty-one days in April. The shakes were getting worse. It could not be helped; he had already lasted far longer than had been imagined.

Adam walked along the corridor to begin a new day of duties. He picked up the clipboard he had prepared yesterday. He would look at bay twenty-four’s door today, as it was sticking, and he needed to set the batteries to recharge. There had been a time when he didn't need lists. He would remember everything, but just like his hands, his mind was beginning to slip.

He collected his tools and made his way through the gantries to Bay twenty-four. It was dark here, only the small lights blinking as ‘big brother’ monitored the ship's guests. One thousand souls had lain in a state of suspended hibernation for the last 326 years.

Adam erected the lamps and set to work. Almost immediately, one of the lamps flashed and went out. Sighing, Adam walked to the stores and looked for a lamp bulb the right size. He wandered along the aisles.

He stepped over Eve. “Just need a new lamp bulb, any ideas?” Eve stayed silent, as he knew she must. He looked down at her. A perfect woman in every way, but she had stopped working. Adam thought about it. He was unsure if he could trust his memory anymore, but it might have been ten years ago.

Adam had been doing work at the far side of the ship, deep in his work, and it had been many hours before he thought about her. When he found her, he had realised it was too late to help her.

He had placed her in the stores, a little bank of potential spare parts. He continued his search.

Finding a bulb, he trudged back along the ship. He passed Bay 17, counting them off, then stepped back and looked through the window.

There in all of her perfection was Venus. His perfect woman. The bar code said TRX23466_XLS, and he could have looked up her real name, but he thought of her as Venus, as it had passed close by when he first encountered her.

On the floor, all around her were the drawings he had made of her when he became obsessed with drawing. He had quickly run out of paper, and then his tablet had broken, and in the end, he had scoured the ship looking for anything he could draw on. Eventually, though, like all his obsessions, it had passed.

He paused to look at this perfect woman, nothing more really than a human snow cone, but he knew that he loved her. He would sometimes, when his duties allowed, watch her for days.

Adam looked forward to the day she awoke. He had spent three hundred plus years imagining how he would introduce himself. Recently, he had settled on.

“Greeting, Comrade Venus, I am Adam.” How much of his recent obsession with Nineteen Eighty-Four or the fact that Bay Seventeen was made up of Russian souls, he was unsure.

During his Tolstoy years, he had considered, “When I leave you, I'm lost in a world of strangers. When I touch your hand, we're alone."

When he was in his pop music phase, he had thought perhaps “Oh, those Russians...”

But so far, the signal hadn’t been sent, so he continued to keep his mind busy. He made regular observations of earth. Thinking this would be valuable information for its new colonists.

Things below had changed dramatically. The polar ice caps were greatly reduced, and the weather appeared much more intense. There were many great storms circling the planet. Adam wondered at the survivors. It can’t have been easy. Had the bunkers held? Would the wake-up signal ever come?

He shook his head, realising he had been staring at Venus for over an hour. What was he thinking? He had work to do.

The door took longer than he would have liked, but he was proud of his work when he was finished. He completed his round and returned to his module. He followed his usual series of diagnostics. Everything was looking good. His one thousand popsicles were all still deeply frozen, and the batteries were charging well from the three open solar arrays. There were no problems with power.

He did notice a small warning message. He opened it and read the details. Then frowned and ran the calculations mentally himself, unfortunately drawing the same conclusion.

Gaia in a decaying orbit. She had never been meant to stay in orbit so long. Its orbit was never designed for the hundreds of years it had been orbiting the planet.

Adam looked at the clock as it clicked over to April 31st 2354. The alarm sounded as he reached to switch it off. He manually changed the clock to May 1st. Adam had spent the night brainstorming with the various AI’s how to repair the ship's orbit. They had all agreed there was nothing to be done from here. His problem was that he was the last guardian. Without him, who would wake the ship up?

Adam picked up his clipboard and read the maintenance orders for the day. Nothing too strenuous. He allowed his mind to wander while working through the more mundane chores. He had eighteen months before the ship would involuntarily return to Earth.

With his tasks finished, he made his way through the ship to the Orion capsule. As he slipped into the Module Bay, he switched on his magnet boots; the ship's orbital gravity didn't reach here. He checked the capsule. He hadn’t looked at it for many years. He slipped inside using his laptop to run diagnostics. There was room for three people. It would be a tight fit, but with luck, an earth landing was possible. For hours, he checked out all the different systems. Finding the occasional issue, which he fixed. But overall, he was happy.

He then spent the evening running through the crew rosters. He would need to pick carefully. Eventually, he chose two individuals. A billionaire and his wife, passengers who had bought their way aboard. He read their background to confirm they were not mission-critical. The decision made, he switched off the light and allowed himself to sit and enjoy the stars.

Adam looked at the clock as it clicked over to April 31st 2354. The alarm sounded as he reached to switch it off. He manually changed the clock to May 2nd.

He reached for the clipboard, reading back his notes from the day before.

It was Bay 37 where the ice-cone Billionaire was. Next to him was his pneumatically enhanced wife.

Adam considered what it had taken to secure a place on board. He was a heavy-set, middle-aged man, much older than the lean wife with her obvious enhancements. Not the usual colonist type.

“Activate Medical AI - code name Jehovah, release code 14-22”

“Jehovah activated.” The voice was deep and somehow fitting to the task.

“Jehovah defrost subject LRX66219_MTS.”

“Estimated time sixteen hours to wake up and twenty-four minutes.”

With nothing now but time to kill, Adam headed off to Bay 17. He was going to read Anna Karina to Venus.

Adam arrived with eight minutes to spare. He could see that the body had been brought back to body temperature and the lungs had been richly oxygenated to force the preservative out of the lungs.

Jehovah glided the defibrillator into place.

“Stand clear, stand clear,” the voice boomed in the silence of the craft.

He watched as the body drew its first breath, the seat gently slid into an upright position as the subject opened its eyes and screamed. The screaming didn't stop for several minutes as Jehovah ran diagnostics.

“Subject impaired, the defrosting process has failed.”

“Euthanase, Termination Code: 22-Delta,” Adam said. There was a crack of electricity, and the woman fell back in her seat.

“Jehovah, will all defrosting procedures fail?”

“No, given I have now observed several risk features, I will be able to perfect the process within 3-7 attempts.”

Adam made a mental note to look for worthy subjects.

Adam looked at the clock as it clicked over to April 31st 2354. The alarm sounded as he reached to switch it off. He manually changed the clock to May 10th. Adam was in a boisterous mood this morning. He decided to run music through the station's speakers and then got on with the manual labour. Adam had chosen carefully. Three occupants would be defrosted for the journey to Earth.

The defrosting sequence went well, with Adam keeping his subjects sedated. They were intravenously fed high-nutrient fluids and physically checked out before being allowed to regain consciousness. Each of them was physically checked out and then wrapped in warm clothing to wake naturally.

Last was Venus; he and Jehovah took special care with her. At one point, as she awoke, Adam allowed himself to lay his hand to cup her face. He had removed it by the time she was awake.

As she opened her eyes, he said, “Hello” in Russian. It seemed somehow appropriate.

She smiled at him and replied, “Zdravstvuyte”

Adam looked at the clock as it clicked over to April 31st 2354. The alarm sounded as he reached to switch it off. His hand shook badly, and he noticed two of the three fingers on his right hand were hanging uselessly. Regardless, he manually changed the clock to June 5th.

Adam met the three astronauts in the crew room. Here, they spent several hours going over the plans. They had loaded all the equipment they needed over the last few days, and now they were ready. Adam walked them all to the module.

They paused, he shook each hand and perhaps held on to Venus’s for a microsecond longer than absolutely necessary, and then he sealed them in the capsule.

Back in the command module, they ran through all the preliminary checks and ran diagnostics until there was nothing to do but wait. Eventually, the continent of Australia rotated into view, and Adam spoke his final words, “Travel safe.” Then he blew a kiss and pressed it on the onscreen Venus.

He felt the capsule detach from the ship and watched it for several minutes until it was lost in space. He switched to radar and only stopped when the signal was lost at the edge of the atmosphere. Now there was only waiting.

The diagnostics told him when the parachutes opened, the craft's velocity began to slow. Then it was stationary. Had they made it?

A radio message, it was Venus, it was very broken, static making it almost unintelligible, but he thought he could make out the words safe and landed.

Adam looked at the clock as it clicked over to April 31st 2354. The alarm sounded as he reached to switch it off. He admired the hand; it was more feminine than he was used to, the nails longer, the fingers elegant. He smiled, then manually changed the clock to June 5th.

Adam was in Bay 29, and he was looking at a frozen figure, a human popsicle. He picked up his book and began to read aloud.

“Of all thy suitors here, I charge thee tell

Whom thou lov’st best. See thou dissemble not.”