According to the chime of the computer's clock marking the hour, I should have gone to sleep seven hours ago, but with that hissing there’d be no way I could sleep. It’s everywhere, I’ve wandered the hab complex (what’s left of it anyway), all three rooms of it, all four of its cramped access tunnels. I can’t find anywhere where it’s noticeably louder or quieter.
The only computer consoles I have are in the command blister, and I don't like the place one bit but I needed to query about the hissing. The overhead triple-pane glass dome just reminds me of the vastness beyond the bulkheads, each star in the blackness the watching eye of an alien, a stranger, an enigma. I'd learned pretty quickly into the trip that I would be having an antagonistic relationship with that compartment of the ship. At least until recently I didn't really have too much reason to be in there. These days I have to go in, but I know to avoid looking forward or up.
There used to be more to the hab complex than the bunkroom (with its adjoined pair of washrooms), the command blister, and the forward lounge, but that was weeks ago. The two sealed hatchways in the lounge and the dead-end access tunnel leading aft from command are a testament to that. What’s left aft of those three sealed blast doors with their glowing red warning lights I can only guess at, and if the computer knows it won’t tell me. Its wireframe diagnostic just shows those parts of the ship in a dim gray that I vaguely remember means that the ship’s computer has no working systems in those areas.
There was even more to the crew than just me, but I'm trying not to think too hard about that.
I’ve tried all the tricks I know to find the leak, using the computer and otherwise, and all have failed. It’s here, somewhere, and there’s only so much pressure hull left. There's nothing for it but to comb every square inch looking for it manually. After all, if I don’t find it, pretty soon the recirculators won’t have anything left to recirculate and that’ll be it. Manually checking every surface with my hands is taking a long time, too long. The hissing is all there is in the silence of the ship, though, and I’ve nothing else to do about it besides curl up in a corner and wait to die.
I flip Mack's lucky buffalo nickel to decide where to start - the lounge, or the bunkroom. No matter what, command will be last. I fail to catch the spinning coin, and it falls to the floor with what seems to be an ear-shattering metal ringing sound as I scramble to stop it with my foot. The coin comes up tails when I finally stop its roll, so I head for the bunkroom.
”You’re never going to find it that way.” I can imagine Celeste, the computer tech, saying as I comb the bulkheads behind the double-stacked beds. I can almost imagine her petite, slim, olive-skinned form curled up on the bottom bunk in the aft corner, one slim hand cradling a multiop slate and the other tapping idly at the controls on its surface. ”If you fix the computer, it’ll find it in ten seconds.” She suggests, in a tone that implies that it’s of little concern to her but that she is just offering friendly advice.
”That was your job, Cel.” I shoot back, before I remember that Celeste, like the others is gone. She’d been in the aft part of the hab complex. Her bunk, like all the others, is empty, but made tidily by my idle hands days ago. Only my bunk, on top closest to the door, is in a state of disarray, the sheets and thin blanket thrown haphazardly aside when last I rose. ”I can’t do it myself.” I finish my retort quietly, not that anyone’s here to hear it.
Another hour, and I’m satisfied that the bunkroom isn’t where I’ll find my leak. I go into the forward lounge, and beginning to feel the number of hours I’ve been awake, I type a command into the food processor, requesting coffee. While it complies, I feel carefully around its housing for the tiniest draft, the faintest spot of cold that would signify an atmosphere leak. There’s nothing.
Given that I’ve been awake almost a full twenty-four hours by this point, I know the coffee’s only a stopgap. And depending on the size of the leak, if I fall asleep, I might wake up, or I might not - it’s hard to say, with the computer cheerfully telling me that nothing’s wrong. Luckily, the machine only takes about two minutes to make a pot of coffee, and its upbeat chiming noise interrupts this dismal train of thought, reminding me to grab a mug from the cleaner, into which the aromatic black liquid is dispensed. Yeah, the coffee from the machine always tastes indescribably wrong, but at least it’s dispensed at exactly the proper temperature to be sipped immediately. I take grateful advantage of this fact before setting the mug on one of the lounge’s small tables to check the next section of bulkhead.
As I pass Mack’s favorite lounge chair (not that it was any different than any of the others, mind you, no-one but him could ever tell the difference), I wish for the hundredth time that I had someone else to help me. Not that Mack would - the tall, thin, hawk-nosed pilot never was one for repetitive tasks, or really labor of any kind. ”Bah, you think the computer’s lyin’ to you about a leak, and you trust the rest of what it says, Rob?” He’d probably be saying. ”You’re going off all half-cocked again. Look. If the computer’s gone south you might have bigger problems. If it hasn’t, then there’s no leak and you’re just hearing things. You’re not doing yourself any favors feelin’ up the whole ship.”
Except, of course, that Mack would have known that I was no computer whiz - I can barely muck around with the basic queries and commands. Four months of travel in, Celeste still hadn’t gotten me to learn much more than the basics. I suppose I could open the computer hub itself and take a look, but what would damage look like? It’s not like a modern computer’s components turn to black ash when they malfunction. In fact, I am pretty certain that a broken component will look to the untrained eye just like a working one, and that just by messing around in there I could break the computer worse than it might already be. Mack would understand that, and he’d probably just go check the computer himself, or more probably get Celeste to do it, muttering about “useless deadweight PhDs” all the way.
Mack’s piqued exit, of course, would probably prompt Jamie to speak up. ”Ignore him, Rob.” She was the ship’s doctor and psychologist, a middle-aged woman about my age, who’d managed to cross the forty year barrier still in shape where I had not. ”Just keep yourself busy, whether that means trying to help around here or not.” I could almost imagine her seated across the lounge behind me, a mug of coffee cradled in her lotion-softened hands. ”You do that, and we’ll get you there, don’t you worry.”
Jamie, of course, wasn’t there - the chair where I’d imagined her voice to come from was empty when I turned to look. I wished she was, though. Of everyone on the ship, she and I were the only two who hadn’t been trained more than cursorily in the workings of the vehicle that would be our only habitat for almost a year. That meant she'd at least understand my predicament. At least Jamie was onboard for a reason - she kept the people, rather than the mechanics, humming along. I was practically part of the cargo. Ironic, that now I’m all that’s left.
I realize that I’ve been re-checking the same bulkhead panel for who knows how long and grab my now-merely-warm coffee, draining the mug. As I turn back to the bulkhead, I realize something - the hissing is gone. Or am I just so used to it now that I can’t hear it? I hold my breath for a few seconds, listening for the hiss until my heartbeat thuds in my ears and makes listening for anything impossible, and I don’t hear it. The ship is perfectly silent. I laugh aloud in joy and drop heavily into one of the lounge chairs (Mack’s, in fact). Whatever the hissing was, it’s gone - maybe the computer found the leak at last and sealed it off?
I wage a silent struggle, debating whether to get up and navigate the access tunnel to the bunkroom. It only occurs to me that I might fall asleep in the chair, coffee or no, long after I’m too far along to care if I do.
The next thing I know, Jamie’s leaning over me, fingers to my throat. ”He’s just sleeping.” I hear her say with a touch of relief, and in response I shake my head clear of the cobwebs and groan. ”And now he’s not. Gave me a scare there, Rob.”
”Wha?” I struggle to piece things together. The last thing I remember is falling into this chair, alone on the ship, after the hissing sound stopped. ”What’s - ”
”We were in the aft lounge, and tried to call up to see if you were up for a game of cards.” Mack fills in from behind Jamie. I see Celeste standing behind him, in the open hatchway - one of the two I think I remember being sealed. ”Are you? The others are watching some horrible old holoconvert movie back there, and we need a fourth.”
”But I thought - ” My mind races. Why do I remember two weeks alone in the forward section of the hab complex, and certainty that everyone else is dead? Was it a dream?
”You thought it was a good time for a nap.” Celeste chimes in, interrupting, and Mack chuckles a little. Jamie just shakes her head, and straightens. ”Come on, Rob, you in?”
With a sigh, I stand creakily from the chair, and Jamie steps aside to let me follow Mack and Celeste back aft. I stop, though, at the open blast doors. The access tunnel to the complex hub looks perfectly normal, and the two younger crew don’t notice my hesitation. Jamie, though, does. ”You all right, Rob?” She asks with a touch of concern.
”I think so.” I say with a sigh, turning to her, putting my back to the hatchway. ”Just a bad - ”
There’s a sickening crunch from behind me, then the sound of metal tearing, which builds into a shriek of air rushing. I find myself pulled backwards by a sudden rush of air. Jamie lunges forward to grab me, but our hands merely brush as I topple backward into the rush of air, sucked back, and toward a gaping hole where the hub used to be. The blast door seals and I lose sight of Jamie as I tumble backward in the rush of air.
I get one look at the infinite blackness beyond the torn edges of the ship, and -
I jolt awake with a start, my adrenaline pumping. I remember the dream perfectly - what a cruel, unfair thing of my brain to do, I mentally grumble. Just to be sure, I stand and take a good look at both blast doors on the lounge’s aft bulkhead. Both are sealed, and the panels set in the middle of each glow red to signal the loss of pressure on the other side.
”Jamie would think I was losing it.” I mutter under my breath, turning to go to the command blister to check on the status of what's left of the ship, still powering along on autopilot toward its destination.
”You are.” I imagine Jamie’s voice from behind me in the lounge, replying. ”But would you rather it had gone like it had in the dream, with our positions reversed?”
I stop at the open blast door that stands between the lounge and the command blister access tunnel. ”Not sure. Would you?” I reply, answering the imagined question with another question.
Jamie doesn’t answer, though, no matter how long I give her. All I hear in response to my lonely words is a directionless hiss permeating the air, the sound of air slowly escaping into space.
This story written for Klazzform's Short Story Competition on dndonlinegames.com.
