Four Lights
There is no horizon.
That bothers me before anything else.
I can feel the ground beneath my boots, so I know I am standing on something, but there is no place where it ends and the sky begins. Black above me. Black ahead. Black at my feet.
I crouch and put one hand down.
Solid. Smooth. Cold.
I knock on it twice with my knuckles.
Nothing.
My voice sounds wrong. Not distorted. Just small. It seems to stop a few inches outside my helmet.
I stand again.
There are four lights in front of me.
That is the entire world as far as I can tell.
Four dim white points against the black.
I turn around.
Nothing.
Turn back.
Four lights.
I start walking toward them.
There isn’t much else to do.
My suit says I have eleven hours of oxygen.
I tap on the outside of my helmet display, then check the seal beneath my jaw. The connection is clean. No warning light. No pressure fault.
Cargo systems. Six years of pumps, seals, doors, scrubbers, and whatever else stopped working at three in the morning. I was never supposed to know much about the outside of a ship. I knew the machinery that kept the inside from becoming the outside.
Eleven hours means eleven hours.
More or less.
“Great.”
I start walking.
I keep a hand out in front of me for the first several minutes because I am convinced I am going to walk into a wall. Then I feel stupid and stop.
I walk for what I guess is two hours.
The lights do not get closer.
I sit.
There is a water tube in the helmet. I drink because it seems like the responsible thing to do. The water tastes faintly of plastic.
I wait for something to happen.
Nothing does.
So I stand and keep walking.
Eventually, I sleep.
I know I sleep because I remember waking.
That is about all I know.
The suit says I have ten hours of oxygen.
“Bullshit.”
I tap the display with one finger.
Ten hours.
I slept longer than an hour. I’m sure of that.
Probably.
I walk again.
At some point I notice I’m not hungry.
That seems good at first. Convenient.
Then I try to remember the last time I ate.
I can’t.
I stop walking.
The four lights wait in front of me.
I turn around again.
Nothing.
I look down, though there is nothing to see.
“All right.”
I say it because I need somebody to hear a reasonable voice, and I am currently the only option.
“All right.”
The oxygen display says nine hours.
I sit and wait for it to reach eight.
I count to sixty.
Then again.
Then again.
After what should be twenty minutes, it still says nine.
I lose count sometime after thirty.
I am staring at the number when it changes.
Eight.
“Okay.”
That is worse somehow.
I start walking again.
I decide I will walk until the oxygen is gone.
There is a plan in that.
The suit runs out. I pass out. Whatever happens after that happens.
It isn’t a particularly good plan, but at least it has an end.
So I walk.
Eight becomes seven.
Seven becomes six.
My legs ache. Then they stop aching.
Five.
I drink the last of the water.
Four.
I keep walking toward the lights.
Three.
I think I sleep again, though I might only have sat down for a while.
Two.
I wake with my cheek against the inside of the helmet and an awful cramp in my neck.
One.
I sit cross-legged on the ground.
The four lights are still there.
“Come on, then.”
The display blinks.
ZERO.
I hold still.
Nothing happens.
I wait.
My breathing sounds very loud.
I wait longer.
Still nothing.
“Come on.”
I take a deep breath.
Air.
Another.
I check the display.
ZERO.
I know what zero means. I have watched people panic over five percent. I have crawled inside storage bays to replace tanks because somebody decided twelve percent was too close for comfort.
Zero is not something you breathe through.
“Oh, fuck off.”
I pull at the collar seal.
I don’t know why. Anger, mostly.
The helmet releases with a hiss.
For half a second I realize what I have done.
I grab at it, trying to shove it back down.
Too late.
Cold air touches my face.
I inhale.
I freeze.
The breath goes all the way in.
I breathe again.
Dry.
Cold.
It smells like rust.
I sit absolutely still with the helmet in my lap.
Then I laugh.
I laugh so hard I fold forward.
There is air.
Actual air.
I take another huge breath and let it out.
“Oh, thank God.”
I don’t believe in God, but apparently that is what comes out.
I lie on my back.
For the first time since waking here, I feel something close to good.
I breathe slowly.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Then I notice the suit still says ZERO.
I sit up.
The relief goes away so quickly it is almost embarrassing.
I look at the helmet.
Then at the dark.
Then back at the helmet.
“No.”
I put it on again.
Seal it.
ZERO.
I breathe normally.
I take it off.
Same air.
Dry. Metallic.
I stand.
“No.”
I start walking faster.
I don’t know where I am going. Toward the lights, I suppose, but for the first time I am not really thinking about them.
I walk until I am running.
The ground never changes.
I trip over my own foot and hit hard enough that my teeth snap together.
I stay there.
My palms hurt.
My knee hurts.
Good.
Pain is good.
I roll over and laugh once, though nothing is funny.
Then I start crying.
That pisses me off, so I get up.
I take the helmet and throw it as far as I can.
I hear it hit.
A little plastic crack somewhere in the dark.
There.
Something happened.
I walk toward the sound.
I find nothing.
I keep going.
Nothing.
I turn around.
Nothing.
“Helmet!”
I shout it as though the helmet has become difficult on purpose.
“Where the fuck are you?”
My voice dies beside me.
I walk in circles. At least I think they are circles.
Finally, I sit.
My hands are shaking.
I press them between my knees.
I try not to think about how long I have been here.
That becomes the only thing I can think about.
I have not eaten.
I have not drunk anything since the suit ran dry.
I have no idea how many times I have slept.
My mouth is not dry.
My stomach does not hurt.
The pain in my knee is gone.
I touch it through the suit.
Nothing.
“No.”
I say it quietly this time.
I lie down and close my eyes.
I keep them closed for a long time.
When I open them, the four lights are above me.
Or ahead of me.
There is no way to tell.
I raise my hand toward them, desperate to make out even the outline of my fingers.
Nothing.
I lower it.
The lights remain.
Good.
I stand.
“You’re real.”
I point at them.
“You four. You’re real.”
I decide to leave something behind.
Screens can lie. Sensors can fail. A scratch in the floor is a scratch in the floor.
At least, it should be.
The helmet is gone, so I pull a metal clasp from the suit and drag it across the ground.
It takes some work, but eventually I can feel the groove with my fingertip.
I scratch another beside it.
Two lines.
There.
A fact.
I walk one hundred steps toward the lights.
Then I turn back.
I count one hundred steps.
No marks.
I search with both hands.
Nothing.
I crawl in widening circles until my knees hurt.
Smooth ground everywhere.
I sit back on my heels.
“Fine.”
I laugh.
“Fine.”
I walk toward the lights again.
This time I count my steps.
At ten thousand I stop.
I may have counted several numbers twice.
I may have skipped a thousand.
Doesn’t matter.
I sleep.
When I wake, the lights are still there.
I walk.
Sleep.
Walk.
At some point I begin talking to them.
Not because I think they can hear me.
Because I am tired of hearing only breathing.
I name them One, Two, Three and Four.
Then I decide those are terrible names and change them.
Then I forget the new names.
Later, I forget which one was One.
I spend what might be an entire day trying to decide whether the second light from the left has moved.
It has.
I am certain.
I sit and watch it.
It moves so slowly I almost lose it.
Toward the others.
I begin counting.
Not seconds. Just numbers.
At four thousand and something, I stop.
The light has moved.
I laugh.
“There you are.”
I watch until my eyes hurt.
For the first time, I have something.
Not a destination.
Not rescue.
Just change.
One thing is different from before.
I sleep with my face turned toward the lights.
When I wake, there are still four.
But the one that moved is back where it started.
I stare at it.
“No.”
I crawl closer, as if ten feet will make a difference.
“No, you were there.”
I point to the place where it had been.
“You were right fucking there.”
Four lights.
Perfectly still.
I sit down.
I wait for anger.
It doesn’t come.
That scares me more.
I lie back.
The air smells of rust.
My body takes a breath.
Then another.
I count them for a while.
Eventually I lose the number.
The four lights stay where they are.
