Dance with Me in the Cold and Gray
A Short Story
“Dance with me.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
And he didn’t. Lieutenant Manuel Harper was a man of science. But of course, what was this apparition other than the uncanny fruit of that sibylline field?
“Come on, Manny. Don’t be such a sourpuss.”
“You’re not her. Not really Laura. I know that. God, I know that. Hell, God? What am I talking about?”
“I don’t know,” she said, leaning eagerly towards him, that not-quite-right bluish hue ringing her young, lithe form.
“I don’t believe in God,” he said.
“Or ghosts,” she said, giggling.
“Right.”
She said nothing in response, her periodically flickering face now wilting into the computer’s idea of what Laura might look like in a state of disappointment. But it was all wrong. It was a vague concept of disappointment projected onto her compiled composite “face”. She had made a different expression when Manny’d let her down, when she was alive.
He turned, his first fleeing footfall thudding forlornly upon the titanium deckplating, a meaningless and unfathomable sounding into the lonely, abyssal silence of the one-man ship.
“Don’t go,” came the voice from behind. Quite like Laura’s voice.
“I didn’t,” he said.
Manuel tapped at his wrist controls and the bluish glow fizzled out behind him, darkening the room to near-blackness.
He sounded the depths again, now with a heaving sigh. There was nothing to answer.
Eleven months. Eleven months and 662 pounds of bland, reconstituted freeze-dried nutrition slop consumed (with as much to go for the return voyage). Fourteen-thousand pounds of seemingly blank bulkheads, punctuated only by coldly flashing instrument panels and a single viewport into more nothingness (the stars having long lost their capacity to induce wonder), all of it staring dumbly back at him: the soulless, weary eyes of the void without. Fifty-five pounds of paperback books he’d already read through (sure, he could have brought them along digitally, but the reader hurt his eyes and he liked the smell and the feel of paper copies. It was a small luxury and a negligible increase in the craft’s bulk). A bit over nine-hundred pounds of potable water at the outset, now probably 80% or more recycled piss and recovered condensation.
And of course, an inestimable weight of grief that had by an arcane, long alchemy dulled into an unnameable ache.
On trips like this you tend to keep track of the things you can. It makes the burden of the things you can’t a bit less crushing.
Of the things that could be tracked were the dosimeters’ readings from the orbiting probes that were soaking up the radiation data from ubiquitously-cratered Callisto, that impossibly old and dead Galilean bastion of pointless survival. Lt. Harper was only a few days away from a routine EVA to service the probes and then it would be the ten month journey home, in relative solitude. Some mission protocols along the way there had required activation of the ship computer, but otherwise he kept the damn thing in the permanent “off” position. He wasn’t thrilled to soon boot the thing up, but it would be an unfortunate necessity in light of the upcoming maintenance work. He and the damned AI were the only crew to speak of and the task was a two-man job, in a manner of speaking. He’d powered it on thrice since departure and now soon again and thrice more on the way home. Well, ain’t seven a lucky number? He didn’t believe in that sort of thing either.
Manuel sat down to a cold glass of rehydrated milk powder. The resined carbon fiber tabletop was cold and gray. He felt like a child. Milk and aloneness.
He thought of Laura. How could he not? Taken so young. All the science and technology and Promethean triumphs of the last hundred years and still people were eaten from the inside by an incomprehensible disease. The singularity never came. The greatly hoped for conquering of death through endless extension of human consciousness fell prey still to cold and gray reality and the omnipresence of death and the inherent frailty of Man which it victimized. Some still held out hope. Hope for an endless, shining tomorrow. Laura’d had it, in her own way — a quaint, religious way. As she was “passing away” (that cruel euphemism) she had said she would watch over him. Manny wanted to believe it, but he simply could not. He did not doubt her faith, nor her intelligence, but he simply could not follow her all the way into the warm embrace of the everlasting. It was all cold and gray, if you could stomach but to look at it. And now he lived with the chill of her absence and the heavy guilt of worry that maybe she had thought him, all those years, condescending of her devotion to something greater. Well, she was bound to forgive him, if she were somewhere else now. Wasn’t she?
He gulped down the milk. You could tell it was fake, somehow. Or maybe the knowledge colored the taste. The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven. The ship hummed its unintelligible hum around him.
He crashed into his bunk, cracked an old copy of The Stranger. He read the first line for at least the fifth time in his life, but the mere mention of death put him off and he couldn’t read on. He tried a few more times, but it seemed as if the words might as well have been in the French he’d never learned. Setting the book aside, he passed into a merciful blackness.
The day (if one could call it that) dawned (if one could conceive it thus) for the data collection and maintenance checks on the probes.
Lt. Harper opened bleary eyes unto a blank gray ceiling. A thin sheet of metal separating what little there was from nothingness. The hum hummed. The silence interjected, coolly.
He stood and donned his coveralls. He ate oatmeal, or something resembling it.
A beeping noise came from the wall panel. The first probe was docking. Time to summon his best friend from whatever oblivion it lived in when it was powered down.
He tapped at the wrist controls that seemed at this point to have grafted themselves into his space-pale skin.
“Good morning, Manuel!”
The voice was everywhere and from nowhere.
“Hi, Gerry.”
Ship Command Assistant GRE v2.13, also known (not-so-by-Manuel-Harper) affectionately as Gerry, was designed to be spoken to like another crew member. And so you would speak to it, or it wouldn’t work right. The imposition of meaningless friendliness, inflicted by the faceless, soft force of bureaucratic authority and its subsequent artificial necessity. A.k.a. bullshit. Tedious bullshit.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Let’s just do this thing.”
“Of course. I just wanted to make sure you were well.”
He wouldn’t thank it. Something in him cried out against his stifling of routine cordiality, but it was a damned computer and the more human he made the thing the less so he would become. Or so his line of reasoning went. Who knew anything anymore?
“I’m fine.”
“That’s great!”
It seemed to be waiting for a reply. Manuel nonsensically imagined its feelings hurt by the ensuing silence but kept it anyway, until the algorithm that was the machine’s soul felt it time to move on.
“Probe Alpha docked and ready for download,” came the voice. “Data collection on your mark, sir.”
“Proceed.”
“Excellent. Download in progress. I’m hoping for great results!”
Manuel kept the same former silence. The ship’s hum hummed, tinged with frustration now, perhaps.
“You’ll be preparing for EVA for physical checks?”
“Dammit, Gerry!”
“Sir?”
It sounded so innocent. He hated it.
“I know what to do.”
“I know, sir.”
“Good.”
He sent another sigh into the deep. Fathomless still.
“Manny…”
“What is it?” Manuel replied.
The machine answered: “How do you mean, sir?”
“You just said my name.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I did not.”
“Are you messing with me?”
“I can assure you I am not. It would be far outside the bounds of my programming to play psychological games with you, even in jest.”
“Manny…”
He heard it again now. Softer. Quite like Laura’s voice…
“Honey!?” he called in a strange desperation, far away sounding, such that he wasn't certain a fourth voice hadn’t uttered it. His legs seemed to run ahead of him, thudding against the decking, and before he knew what was happening he stood in the empty room where the projection had been a few days ago.
Nothing.
“Manuel, are you okay?” Gerry asked, feigning concern. “Who were you calling for?”
He considered for a heart-stricken moment how to answer, and decided on not.
“No one.”
“Are you feeling up to it today, Lieutenant? Regulation would allow a small delay in maintenance if needed. Your mental health is important to us.”
Manuel shuddered, cold slithering through his veins at the thought of spending another moment longer than absolutely necessary in this accursed metal bucket. And fiery anger flamed after it, reheating his blood with the indignation of being talked down to by his government overlords through the “mouth” of a patronizing robot.
He was tempted to unload a string of profanity on Gerry, but relented, opting for coldness, which is professionalism.
“No delay, Gerry. Let’s get going. And let’s keep the talk to the task at hand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean it.”
“Okay.”
“In fact, unless it pertains to the probe maintenance specifically, let’s not speak.”
“Understood.”
Then, the hum and the silence, now become one, all and yet nothing.
Peace: or something like it.
Then the voice, quite like Laura’s…
No. No…
It was Laura’s.
“Manny…”
No, no…
What a time to lose his mind. Just finish the job. In and out. Well, out and then in. And then home. No more of this. This madness.
“Manny…”
“You aren’t there!” he yelled.
His face was hot. Tears. The salt taste rolled over his lip.
The humming silence.
He ran back to the projection room. Empty. No more of this madness.
Thud. Thud. The jog to the airlock.
“Manny…”
“Stop! Stop!” he cried out.
“Don’t go,” Laura said. The voice said. Where was she? She’s dead. Manny, she’s dead.
“Honey?” he tried again, plaintive.
“Don’t go.”
“I’m not. I didn’t. You left me!”
He fell to his knees, rivers for eyes.
“You left… me,” he choked out through fits of heaving sobs.
Then again the hum and the silence. One and yet nothing.
He rose, slammed a fist on the door control. The hydraulic hiss gave way to the airlock. He unracked his suit, climbed in ungracefully, face still hot and wet. Seating his helmet, he engaged the latch. Wrist controls showed life supports were all a go.
He began cycling the airlock.
“Don’t go.”
He turned his now-bulky frame towards the hatch. Something shined, gem-like on the door. Little crystalline specks dotted it all over. The deckplating below him increased the everpresent hum to where it was again perceptible as something different than the silence, something more sinister. His helmet displayed a rapidly dropping temperature.
“Don’t go… Manny…”
Suddenly, a roar, deafening through the suit microphone, and the world was spinning. All spinning and sucking and compressing, crushing. Everything flickered in and out of existence as it spun.
And just as quickly as it began spinning and roaring and crushing everything became still. Weightless. He was floating.
His sight returned, and he saw the ship. The ship that was his only way home, floating in the star-ablaze nothingness and the hatch door floating too and flotsam of everything not tied down from in the airlock.
There was no way back. No means of propulsion. Nothing to save him from the blackness. The cold and the gray.
He was cold indeed.
His lungs ached.
He heard a hissing sound. A leak somewhere. The slow bleeding out. A shard of something had cut the suit.
She was telling me not to go, he thought. Is that possible?
He felt as if he was expanding, a swell from the rapidly changing pressure.
Fire in his chest now. His heart racing and thundering in his eardrums.
He wished for a moment for the hum and the silence again. To go back.
Then he wished only for Laura. Perhaps it was true. He couldn't know, but he would find out.
Then her voice again. Her beautiful voice. It was the most radiant and shining thing in all the universe and it made the stars as dull as the blackness that was their home.
“I love you.”
That was all she said.
Manuel Harper, Manny, Laura’s Manny, twisted the oxygen feed valve.
The world faded. A brilliant light flashed and his whole body burned and he spent his last seconds of life engulfed by the flames of eternal love.
The ship remained. Floating. The hum and the silence. Cold. Gray.
Really enjoyed this.