Sweat drips across my lip and sinks, salty and harsh, into my mouth. I try to level my breathing, but I can tell my increasing heart rate has been registered by control. A little light on the edge of my wrist blinks. The containment tube is prepped.
There is only one reason anyone’s heart rate spikes nowadays.
I swallow. My throat is already dry from the air in my suit. It smells of burnt hair in these. They have done so for a decade, even when they say they don’t. Even when they run a deodoriser that’s supposed to smell of pine trees.
No one I know has smelled a bloody tree. It just smells of pee.
Still, it’s all I can focus on. Burnt hair.
I’m thankful I have something while I try to steel myself for what I have to do next. I have to deal with the alien.
It’s slithering, undulating. It’s bright against the backdrop of space behind it. The colour of an infected pustule. Jerry says they’re apple-green. I’ve never seen an apple in real life.
As always, the thing is trying to slide itself into a seam in the metal. Our space-station is watertight. Especially now that they’ve shown up. There are no sharp edges. Nowhere can any of them hide. Though they don’t really try.
They show themselves pretty easily. Well, I don’t know if they even think to hide. Or if they can think. I’m not smart enough to know what they are. Or where they come from. The company refers to them as ‘the mass,’ like they’re one big entity that breaks off into little parts.
The thought of that gooses my skin.
They don’t fight or resist much. It doesn’t seem to notice me as I near. Does it even have eyes? Or things it uses as eyes? It oozes forward towards an indent in the metal. I prep the tube for extraction. The thing then presses itself flat like it’s trying to run or hide. It wobbles, almost liquid for a moment, spilling harder into the crack. Guilt hits my chest in a small cold pang. It’s an ant caught in a glass. There is nowhere for it to go.
I can hear my company’s mandate running through my head.
Don’t let the passengers see the mass. Clear the mass quickly. Don’t talk about the mass.
Even if they start to gather in my nightmares.
The weird vacuum systems we now have to carry are cumbersome. I can’t lift my arms past my chest. I put the hose nozzle just above the mass. It slides straight in with a push of a button. Hoovering up in a big chunky lump like the phlegm from a reverse sneeze.
It’s on my back. My mind tells me I can hear it sloshing around as I move. Jiggling and whooshing like shaking a snow globe. My hairs stand up across my neck.
I had a nightmare the other night about it sneaking into my air vents. Squeezing itself wire-thin and swimming up into my helmet. It wrapped itself around my face, blocking my nostrils, and stopped me from breathing. It smelt of pine trees. It was overwhelming. In my dream, Jerry from the night shift makes a comment about how I look like a cartoon character. One who blew a giant gum bubble only to have it burst and suffocate them, dying in a stupid way.
Is dying by alien a stupid way to die?
I was stuck in a silent scream, my features covered with stretched green goop while everyone gathered around looking down at me. No one bothered to help.
It’s Jerry from the night shift who’s talking loudly in the canteen when I approach.
I’d followed protocol. It’s an extra door. You aren’t supposed to get out of your gear. You let the steam jets pulse over your suit. Disinfect. Enter the big white room with the capsule in the centre. It’s the shape of a painkiller pill. It has a window to see inside, but I turn away from it. I don’t want to see.
I flash my ID. Everything beeps. A section spirals open. The nozzle connector rises. I connect the vacuum. Press reverse. In my head, I hear a slurpy, wet noise but it’s not really there. It just sounds like all machines do. Loud whirring.
I get out of my gear and use the shower. I’ve sweated so much. I scrub and scrub. Get the smell of burnt hair off my skin. Skin that’s still nettled by seeing those bloody things.
Whatever they are.
The front of my short hair is still dripping when I turn into the canteen.
Night shift is having their breakfast. I take my tray to the dispenser for that, too. Breakfast for dinner. Why not? The canteen reeks of stale food. It has formed a strange slick film across the windows that open to wide space. I’d like it if I could see more stars. Most of the time you just see transport ships moving caterpillar slow to trade posts slightly out of view.
“Nah, you’re talking rubbish.”
Jerry’s voice fills the room. Something in my chest recoils, jolting behind my lungs. I don’t want to talk to him. I’ll have to. You can’t avoid talking to him. He takes up space in all capacities.
The dispenser blobs cinnamon porridge into my bowl. I normally quite like it, but it jiggles as I move my tray and my mind mushrooms with apple-green aliens.
I fill my water bottle with citrus-flavoured electrolytes and try to focus on Jerry.
“Mornin’, Greasy.” Jerry waves his grubby fork as I kick my chair under me.
Greasy. My hair isn’t greasy. The water here on the ship has some kind of limescale-thing going on. I never feel clean, even though I am. My hair hates it.
It looks greasy. So that’s who I am.
“You just finished your shift?” Amanda asks from opposite. Her blonde hair has a tinge of green. I wonder if her bleach has also fallen victim to this ship’s horrendous showers in a different way to mine.
“Nah, he always looks like that!” Jerry is a fat old man who thinks he’s funny.
His teeth seem extra crooked as he chews on a mouthful of fake-bacon.
Heat starts rising into my throat, curling at the base of my neck.
Why do we still have to have meat products for the old men? It’s probably made of bugs. Why can’t men like him just be vegetarian? Why do they need so many resources? Why do they need to feel like they’ve killed things to be men?
“You see a booger while you were out, Greasy?”
The question rips me out of my anger-growing reverie and into a new one.
“What the hell?” I say, my voice rising louder than I mean it to. “Why would you ask me that?”
Rage is a new hot flicker poking angry fingers into my chest.
Why the hell is he risking our jobs? Some ballooned prick-wit that already has a pension? His boiler-suit doesn’t even shut all the way to his chicken neck anymore.
He seems to notice that it’s annoyed me, a little of his irritating jolliness has fallen out of his features. His jowls wobble with his slight frown. He’s missed a bit shaving; it looks like mouldy moss is growing in a dented patch of skin.
“Just making conversation, Andrew.” He tries to smile. I notice he used my name, finally. “You look a little haggard.”
“I don’t like going against the mandate,” I say.
Amanda pulls a face. Her lip ring flashes white. When did she get that?
“You sure, mate?” Jerry asks. He moves his insipid scrambled eggs to a sad pile in one corner with his fork. “I know you’ve been a bit up and down since the missus left.”
Thanks.
That’s what I wanted to think about.
He realises he’s been an ass and shuts his flabby mouth. The thrum of the ship fills the silence. Amanda’s cutting into a dry oat cake in harsh stabs. It moves her tray; the squeak is as loud as a scream.
“Did you see a big one or something?” Jerry asks, leaning towards me. “Did it have trouble going in the capsule?”
They seem to know I’ve encountered one every time I sit down. Well, I have seen them every time I’ve been out this week. Hmm.
I hadn’t thought about that.
“Where are they even coming from?” Amanda says to her oat slice. It looks like a piece of old concrete.
“I mean, we get a lot of ships stop by here.” Jerry moves, and his name badge catches the light.
His name badge is spelt with a G, Gerry. But it’s not.
Jerry.
Jerry doesn’t know how to fill the paperwork out to get it changed. His wife did that. She did anything to do with words before the divorce. I think that’s why she rinsed him. Jerry didn’t want to change or improve himself, so she left.
She left.
Like Steph left.
Was he my future?
“They just appeared out of nowhere, though.” Amanda lowered her voice. “All at once. I wonder if we passed through a floating field of them or something, and we’re just cleaning them up because they hide really well?”
Jerry shrugs a shoulder, the seams on his boiler suit strain.
“I think there’s a big one somewhere we’re all missing,” he says. “And we’re just finding its babies.”
I think about an old picture I saw as a kid where lots of eggs were gathered on the seam of a leaf. Maybe there is a part of the ship where eggs are gathered. Round green eggs with black embryos flickering inside like eyeballs.
I dig my spoon into my porridge. White bubbly mush and black specks of cinnamon seasoning. My stomach gnaws on itself and I push my bowl away.
“I can get why you wouldn’t want to talk about alien babies,” Amanda says, a little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth like an invisible string.
“It’s not that,” I say. “I just feel weird about not being able to talk about them.”
“It’s some bull, right?” Jerry’s food moves from one side of his mouth to the other in an awful tumbling swirl. “Who gives a toss if aliens are outside the bloody ship?”
My skin is crawling. His lips look extra wormy as they smack together.
“No one would care that we have evidence of gummy arse aliens,” he says. “Everyone still has to go to work in the morning.”
That’s true.
No one really thinks about things very long.
Two years ago, a hacker opened the evacuation pods on the only cryogenic testing ship launched this century. Thirty people were hurled into space. No one realised for two months. Thing is, people were woken up as soon as the process of launch started. They were conscious all that time. They only found one guy alive.
He’d been tube-fed and, like the rest, it had run out a week before anyone was found. However, he’d been a really healthy guy. He’d worked out like crazy before the trip to lessen his recovery time. He spent a month helplessly spiralling into endless space. Starving in a tin tube with a tiny window to nothing but stars.
He survived. So they said.
I wonder about him a lot. How do you go back after that? Does your mind even work the same? Is a person still a person after that long with no stimulation?
But that was a thing that could happen. A thing we all became aware of. Hackers could open ship hatches and blast people out into space. Was the talk of everyone for exactly three days.
People still had to go to work near airlock hatches anyway. Sleep in a detachable pod like I did.
Hackers from various groups were a constant threat. People demanding this or that. Eco terrorists for a planet that’s already dead. Eco terrorists for others that were in the process of dying. Nationalists for nations that pretend they exist. Racists. Humanists. People who don’t believe we should even be in space. Antinatalists.
I still have to go to work. I do read the news, though. I try to keep up with a galaxy full of stories.
Still, surely gummy aliens would just get lost in the noise?
Something really perturbs me about that, what do you mean I can’t tell anyone? Why can’t we?
“It’s just a bloody space slug.” Jerry is trying to be reassuring; I can tell by the way he waves his pudgy red fingers. “You’re both just weird to worry about it.”
I remembered a history podcast I listened to about a guy who ate a slug. It had a worm in it that paralysed him, and it took him years to die.
Do we even have slugs anymore, or did they all die when the planet did?
I drain my electrolytes and feel tired. Really tired.
I stand with a squeal of my chair. They both watch me move.
“I’m going to bed,” I say.
“Already?” Jerry asks, balking. I know he’s about to launch into a tirade about how young people don’t work hard enough. How young people don’t do enough.
I don’t feel young.
Steph said that some guy in Ancient Greece thought that learning to write would make young people dumb.
I feel dumb without her.
I throw my plate of nibbled porridge and cup in the wash bin and walk out without saying goodbye. The band on my wrist flickers.
I open it, a neon window unfolds above my skin like a flower. I walk under the strip light that hums the loudest on the ship. There are little shadows of spiders who’ve become stuck in the glass and starved. How do the spiders even survive on ships to get that big in the first place? I think of them dying in a bright white room, watching smears of humans walking under them and never noticing them scratching on the glass.
I have a meeting in the morning with Celia, the boss. She must be back from her holiday.
I stretch, and my back pops. How long can I sleep in?
They’re lax with us now that the aliens have shown up. I think they know we could blab, so they let us slack off. I do want to slack off. I want to switch my brain off from thinking about things that ooze for as long as possible.
I’m lazy with how I climb down the ladders into the staff quarters. I let go and drop halfway each time. Each time I feel my knees age a little more. Sometimes I can’t tell if the groan of protest is the floor or my joints. The corridor to my room reminds me of hospitals in really old movies. It’s bright white and the doors are uniform enough to look dizzying as they spiral into the distance.
My room isn’t far though, so ten steps and I’m sliding through a door that’s fitted with evac protocols. Just enough to get me launched into space by someone that doesn’t think space babies should exist. But I’m a space baby. This is my room.
It has just enough space for two people but it hasn’t had two people in it for months. My bed is unmade, and my clean laundry is in a big pile. I haven’t been bothered to put it away.
I go to the bathroom, pull down my boxers, and sit. I sit to pee.
Weird habit from when she was still here. Steph slept so, so poorly. A lot of people in space did, I heard. She was the first I came across.
When she did sleep, it was extremely light. A flicker from a notification, if I rolled over too fast, if I cleared my throat, her eyes would fly open. She’d stare at the ceiling for hours.
I felt so bad for her. I tried everything to help. Massages. Teas. Podcasts about nothing.
She was a chronic insomniac.
It’s nighttime in most space zones right now. I wonder if she’s finally asleep somewhere. I hope I’m not the reason she never slept, but I won’t really know.
But I was always aware of how loud I peed. I started sitting down in the morning before my shift. Fold a couple of tissue paper squares over the bowl to dampen the noise against the metal.
“I hope she’s with some real wrong ’un, getting what she deserves after leaving a guy like you,” Jerry had said as I emerged puffy-eyed on shift. Her stuff was missing. Big open maws in my wardrobe and drawers. She’d blocked my number.
Final. End. Gone.
My co-workers sat around and insulted her for an hour while I was trying not to cry.
I didn’t agree with anything that was said. Was it wrong to want her to be happy?
She left because she wasn’t.
Even though I really wanted her to be.
She was ambitious. I didn’t want to leave this job. I didn’t want better. It was fine as it was.
I looked at the weird little indents where her magnets scuffed the walls. Her photos were missing. Photos of her family and friends. Her pets.
I’ve never had a pet.
“You were right, Steph,” I say to the empty space.
If I’d looked for something new, I wouldn’t be in this mess.
Was it a mess? I wasn’t sure what to call it. I was just feeling strange about the aliens outside the ship I wasn’t supposed to talk about. I wanted to talk about them.
I want to talk about them to Steph.
She was so smart. She’d know what they are. What they want.
I was sure.
Steph left. Aliens arrived.
I make the bed before I get into it. I’m not sure why. I’m just going to mess it up again.
It’s so empty.
I used to get into bed after shift, and Steph would already be tucked in. Reading with her back to me. I’d let my fingers brush her pale hip. Feel her warm, soft skin. The lacy edge of her panties.
If she wanted sex, she’d roll over to talk. Her nails would find my chest in the same way every time, like she would be ticking off a list in her head. She always touched my collarbones. Traced down the divot between my pecs. I worked out then. She’d talk and talk before her leg would rise to hitch over mine, and I’d roll on my back. Always starting on top. She’d kiss me. Get what she needed before letting me lay her on her back. Get what I wanted. Feel the sheets under my palms. The duvet wrapped around my knees.
She liked to kiss the whole time, though.
I wasn’t even sure I missed the sex as much as the kisses.
If she didn’t want sex, she’d scoot her bum towards me. I’d spoon her and let her tell me about what she was reading. I liked having my nose in her delicate blonde hair. Her soft behind pressed into my hips. She was so comfortable. She smelt of lavender shampoo.
I tried to listen to what she was telling me. But she was so comfortable.
I felt safe. I’d fall asleep.
Maybe that was annoying.
I lay on the bed with no one else in it. I don’t want to dream about aliens. I want to dream about Steph.
I flicked the wall near my head, and a screen opened. I could look for jobs.
Nothing was stopping me.
I had training. They always needed outside maintenance workers. A lot of people were too claustrophobic for walk-work. Robots were too expensive. Too often fried by radiation.
Humans took a while to develop the problems they did instantly.
I didn’t look for jobs. I read the news.
News.
Not really. I read about people dying.
Can talk about that. Can’t talk about aliens.
I read until the words smear. Darkness feathers my vision and wrenches me down to sleep.
I wake up with a start, a breath in that makes me cough on spit. My arm was still raised where I’d been scrolling. My finger lost its blood and it feels like a thousand fleas are nibbling at each nerve.
I don’t remember what I dreamt about. I’m thankful.
I’ve not liked dreaming for a while.
I get changed and run a comb through my hair before I make my way to my meeting.
Someone’s mopped the deck, it reflects the lights in big white stripes. Everything smells like bleach. I wave my wrist at door seals that blink red. The final door, to the deck, opens with a mechanical iris. It needs oiling. It squeals. Not my job.
Celia is at her desk. She’s back from wherever she went for the last two weeks. I can see her desk is glowing. No one else is at the helm. The window ahead is mostly blocked by notification screens. Little insectoid lights scatter across the panels in every direction. Numbers and signals running to every end of the ship.
“Hey, boss.”
I could just see the top of her head. She’d had her hair braided since the last time I saw her. It’s in tight rows close to her head.
“I wanted to see you, actually, Andrew. I’m glad you’ve come in.”
I’m not sure why she said that. I got summoned by mail.
She moves to face me, her white chair swivels with a hiss of air. The bottoms of her braids are woven with shells. They can’t be real. I mean, some people do take things from planets. Steal resources even after the Earth fell into such a state. But she doesn’t seem the type.
They’re glowing slightly. Not really bright, just a little hue to highlight the blue undertones of her umber skin. She’s a gorgeous woman. But she’s ambitious. Wouldn’t take a second glance at a guy like me.
She shouldn’t. Steph did. I think I made her miserable.
Celia’s brow folds slightly. She realises I’m not thinking about the task at hand.
My stomach twists and I wring my fingers. I have a panicked urge to fill the heavy gap that’s appeared.
“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Oh.” Her face wipes away the look she was giving me. “While I was away, I went to a meeting about—You know.” Her face hardens then, a neck tilt and a glance out of the corner of her eye.
A you’ll lose your job if you don’t speak in riddles, kinda look.
“What did they say?” I say, without knowing what else to ask.
“Well.” She moves her hand over the desk in front of her but doesn’t activate any buttons. Just something to do. Something to suddenly avoid looking at me.
“They’re concerned about the sudden increase in incidents.”
I want to swallow but my throat feels thick. That porridge I didn’t finish sticking in my throat.
Still, it somehow lets words slip through. “Is it just us?”
She doesn’t meet my face. “It’s just our ship. No one else has reported them.”
My mind peels through all the lists of thoughts I’ve had since I was first shown one. Slopping around inside a glass canister like a broken lava lamp. A meeting with someone on deck I’d seen but didn’t know his name. He smelt of stale old coffee and looked as if he hadn’t showered for a while. I think he debriefed every member of maintenance in a big line.
The first time I hoovered one up, I found it a bit funny. Disappearing up the tube in a big slorp. A strange thing to think about. A distraction from my recently empty bed.
Then they appeared every single time I suited up. It wasn’t funny anymore. I started thinking about space-wide pandemics. For a while, I got addicted to washing my hands. The skin between my fingers started to peel and fray. It stung every time I disinfected.
It felt grounding. Something human after dealing with something so not.
Then where the hell are they coming from? Why here?
The questions push behind my lips as Celia talks.
“People are coming aboard to take the capsule,” she says.
It shoves my questions to the side.
She leans backwards and fishes something from her curved desk. A clipboard and paper. It feels a little strange. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen paper.
Can’t hack into paper.
Paper can be burnt to nothing. Nothing to support the ramblings of the low-paid grunts who scrub the outside of the ship.
Her fingers make a soft whoosh as she feels across the indents of her pen.
“They want to slowly evacuate passengers, but in a way that doesn’t arouse suspicion. This place is old, after all. Needs refurbishing.” She moves the paper, it crunches. Her handwriting is cursive. Joined-up. I can’t read it. I wasn’t taught to.
Does she know? She doesn’t move to cover it.
“We’re keeping the windows shut for now. No other ship has reports of such creatures.”
I finally let the breath I’ve been holding form words. “Why us?”
“That’s what they’re coming to find out,” she says. “They’re almost like bugs. Whatever they are, they aren’t intelligent beings.”
My skin at the back of my neck starts itching as if something skitters there. I can almost feel feet. I resist the urge to smack it, gently raising my hand and trying not to panic. My fingers brush skin that’s clammy and smooth. There is nothing there, of course. I knew that. Didn’t feel like it though.
“I’ve put you on an extra shift today, if that’s okay,” she says, her mouth twisting to one side. Sympathetic. “The night shift needs to be debriefed because of an earlier incident.”
“What was that?”
She doesn’t look at me. “Nothing to be worried about. But you’re good at what you do, so would you mind going out there?”
Good at what I do?
I keep my mouth shut.
Something’s happened that they don’t want the night shift to see? Something they don’t want Jerry and his huge flapping mouth to know?
“I can do that,” I say it but I don’t mean it.
I do mind. I don’t want to see any more apple-green aliens.
I leave her, walking back into the corridor. The windows are indeed shut. I hadn’t noticed. I wonder what else I don’t notice.
The shutters make the outside of the glass a black slate. I can see my reflection. I look rumpled.
My dad used to use that word. Rumpled.
He had a job that was like mine but had no training. So he was one step away from being disposable. Why he didn’t live much past fifty. Too many exposures to different chemicals rotted his organs. Melted him from the inside out. Pink flesh turning black and liquidising in front of me in a series of scan images.
Is that what stopped me from leaving this job?
The station is nice. It’s clean. I like the food.
“But don’t you want more?”
Steph had a cap-phone. It wasn’t really a phone, you could use it for inter-planet messages, but no one did. Everyone used them for portable media. Well, everyone, meaning people who could afford them.
She’d often project stars into the room. Different systems coating my walls in pin-dot flakes of white. She’d run her hand through the static, dodging and pausing as if their light really touched her skin. She looked like something from a myth. A woman standing with her arms full of stars.
“Don’t you want to know what’s out there? The limits are endless.”
I looked at how my shirt had wrinkled in a strange Z shape at my hip. This was my end. This was as far as I’d gotten. I’d not wanted to change.
Change found me. It was green and oozed.
I want to wash my hands. The skin between my fingers has healed. When did I stop over-washing?
I rub between my knuckles as I continue to my station. My skin has a strange blue tint in the overheads. I run my hands over my arms, moving hairs. Self-soothing, I’ve heard it called.
I have to hop-skip suddenly, there are colourful wires spilling out onto the floor like the ship has a mortal wound. Is this part of the ruse or normal maintenance? The ship needs a refurb. Everyone has to leave. Feels intelligent to start making it look like something’s wrong.
Whatever they are, they aren’t intelligent beings.
Then why can’t we tell people about them?
My tongue feels dry, every one of my molars leaves an indent.
I open the door to the maintenance rooms. The screen flashes cerise. I pause. I put my hand up to it; it’s so bright it makes me squint.
Clearance D flashes in big white lettering.
I have higher clearance. Almost enough to get on main deck without prior arrangement. I think about Celia and her shells. Makes sense. I do know more things than I should.
The door zips shut behind me.
Who would listen to me anyway? Even if I found a way to film it, could afford the data storage, who would believe me? They’d say it’s AI.
Because if you could afford data storage and could send that data somewhere where people would actually read it. You could also afford AI.
My suit folds out into the room on a semi-circle conveyor belt. It looks like a soldier marching for inspection. It’s big and puffy, the texture of stitched grubs. The glass only covers the front in a little face-shaped porthole. Funny how the suits haven’t changed much in centuries.
Ain’t broke. Don’t fix it.
It’s not armoured or protective from impact. It would split easily if something attacked me. It has hundreds of weak points.
I have visions of the green mass bursting into every seam, bubbling up to fill my helmet like a fish tank. Coming to cover my face and drown me like in my dream.
I start getting into the suit anyway.
It feels like the bad beginning to a space movie.
I went off station with Steph to see a movie once. It seemed like a waste of credits.
The alien was CGI, it had a body that wouldn’t have possibly evolved. Arms and legs everywhere. It was so hairy, why was it so hairy? It had human-looking eyes.
I wasn’t impressed.
She was jabbering away at me after, putting on her seat belts. Her lipstick had a purple hue, and it showed the whiteness of her teeth when she smiled.
The movie was stupid. How could she like something so stupid?
I remembered her face falling. What she liked was stupid.
Why did I have to say that?
What a prick. I’m sorry, Steph.
I want to watch a movie with you again.
It’s not stupid. I just think I don’t like anything right now.
I pause, hooking the vacuum over my arm.
I don’t like anything.
I feel my face with my pudgy gloved fingers. Is that what’s wrong? Why haven’t I noticed? Do you notice? Do you notice when nothing makes you happy? Is there a moment? I don’t remember there being anything like a switch.
On. Off. Happy. Sad.
I want to see Steph.
I can’t see Steph.
The helmet clicks and whirrs as I go through the airlock protocol. The hatch opens, and the oxygen mix around me rushes out in a gasp. The motion makes the air look like clumps of hair.
For a moment, I face complete blackness. I can’t even see a star. I want to. I lean a little too far forward. The platform hurls forwards and almost decapitates me as it thunks into place.
I hop onto it. The side of the ship is sealed off. I can’t see any windows.
Sometimes passengers like seeing us. Especially kids. The underside of my boots as I walk along the glass with a brush. No upside-down in space.
I heard that there was an illness when humanity first went interstellar. People born on soil couldn’t deal with the lack of a horizon, like a fish with a faulty swim bladder. They’d get seizures and migraines without a sense of up and down. It was why they pushed to have babies born out in space. Well, so they said.
I think it was because the planet was dying.
Ahead of me, the station curves. In the distance, a trading post glimmers, catching the ray of some distant sun. It sends a beam of light towards the station. In a bright rhombus, it moves across the metal in front of me and highlights three of them. The mass.
There are three. Three.
How long can they keep these things a secret?
I need to engage my boots to move a little more easily. I need to press a series of three buttons, then snap the little switch down. Hear the thuds of things sliding into place.
But I don’t. My finger hovers, cocooned by the thick white worm of my suit, protecting me from the temperature out here. Why aren’t you frozen, little aliens?
Again, I’m suddenly tired. Just so tired.
I move my finger, press two buttons. Flip the switch up, not down.
A hiss, a whirr, a slunk. My boots don’t grip anymore. My stomach lurches but not in a dramatic way. That same way it always does when you’re ungrounded.
The station spins, I don’t normally feel it. Now it’s spiralling, snail-slow.
A boy in my class in primary school had a snail, I’d forgotten that. It had a shell that was patterned and curled like an ammonite.
I asked the teacher. “Are ammonites the same thing as snails?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
Aren’t you supposed to know that kind of stuff when you’re teaching kids?
I watch the little creatures slide around on the metal. They are so green and slimy, like something blossoming from a petri dish. Maybe they are? Maybe they aren’t aliens, maybe they’re grown on the ship?
I don’t think it matters. I don’t want it to matter.
The tether around my waist is pulling taut. I’m slowly unravelling. I’m floating away from the ship into nothingness. The trade ships in the distance inch across the sky. I always think I should be able to see more stars. I want to see more stars.
I wonder about that guy in the evac pod. Awake for a month, staring at nothingness. Just spiralling among the stars. How many did he see? Did he count them?
I float. If I drifted into nothingness, would anyone notice? Would it take two months of starving before anyone thought to look?
A little button keeps me anchored. Keeps me from spiralling.
I could press it.
Suddenly, something in my suit beeps. I’ve never heard that beep before. In my mind, I think of a little mechanical bird. There is a whooshing noise. Fresh air blasts gently, it wobbles my hair. It smells strange.
Steph told me about people who work in colony data centres. The shifts are so hot, and they’re treated so poorly they have constant violent breakdowns. The companies there developed special AI that notices when someone is at their limit because of their bio-signatures. Their coms start playing soothing music and a slideshow of family pictures. Pictures of people who love them. Pictures of their pets.
I want a pet.
The air fills with a strange smell of piss. Pine trees. This is my slideshow.
I’m looking at a green alien, smelling pine trees from a planet that doesn’t have them anymore.
Apple-green. Pine-scented.
I drop back down to the station and hoover them all up. They give no resistance other than the strange flattening they do. Their version of running, I think.
I enter back into the ship; I wonder if anyone will message me about my free-float. You really aren’t allowed to do that.
Will I get in trouble, or will they never mention it? They’re treating us differently, after all. We deal with the mass.
The disinfectant jets fluff over my suit. I want a shower.
The nozzle rises out of the big pill-shaped tube. Someone’s coming to take this thing away. I wonder if they’ll dissect the aliens. Can they? Will it hurt them?
I empty my pack into the holding cell. There’s a porthole of glass, a window, on the left side. I always turn slightly away. I never want to see.
But this time I stop. I lean slightly to look inside. Inside at the green moving mass.
A face is pressed against the glass. It moves, cheekbones squashing flat. Its maw wobbles and stretches.
An eyeless screaming face.
I think it’s mine.