Cosmosis

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When Daniel woke up, he began moving out of shock.

It wasn’t surprise or horror, but indescribably numbing shock .

Caleb was gone from his bunk already. Daniel just sat up and started acting out whatever routine he could justify so he didn’t have to sit still. Use the lavatory, wash his hair in the sink, try to clean his teeth with a rag. It was an awful facsimile of mornings back on Earth.

‘Back on Earth’. He should have been more focused on the fact that he was on a rocket hurtling through space. It had been the last straw for his composure, but the bulk of his shock was—

He shook his head. He was sitting still.

If he sat still, his mind would wander down to the nearly two dozen bodies a few levels down.

Over the past… day. Two. Four. It was impossible to keep time. Neither of them knew how long they slept. Neither knew how long they were awake. But he’d fallen asleep three times so far on the spaceship. Each ‘day’ had been the same. Wake up. Wash up. Wander. Try and fail not to think about the dead kids. If there was anything else he could have done. If they could have saved them.

Once he thought about that long enough, he’d fall into this quiet anger and simmer over who could have abducted so many people into space.

Daniel had thought he’d heard something from one of the sealed rooms below the mess, but Caleb hadn’t been close enough to confirm it. It was so easy to get angry over little things.

He found Caleb sitting in the mess, chewing on something.

Still numb, Daniel wondered if Caleb had some food on his person when he was abducted. But the other survivor saw Daniel first and was ready for him. He tossed a square foil puck to him, maybe an inch thick.

“Here,” Caleb said, holding his own puck up. “Food.”

He eyed the foil package suspiciously. By Caleb’s own reasoning, this was alien food. But it had been too long since he’d eaten anything. He had to swallow his reservations unless he wanted to starve.

Daniel unwrapped it to find a very unappetizing smell, like protein powder mixed with gruel. Caleb was eating his with a grimace, but he was eating it.

They were just too hungry.

Daniel sat down and took a bite. It tasted how it smelled, and it felt like swallowing gravel.

“I found them in there.” Caleb pointed out a door attached to the mess that looked like it would be a closet. “Seems like a pantry of some kind. They made sure we had water. Figured there was food somewhere too.”

“Who’s they?” Daniel asked. The sound of his own voice surprised him. It was more of a hoarse croak than speech.

“Don’t laugh,” Caleb said, “but I think aliens.”

“I’m not in a laughing mood,” Daniel said darkly, though he did doubt the guess.

“Everything I look at makes me think this wasn’t built by people,” Caleb continued.

Daniel looked up at him, gauging his face. The kid wasn’t fascinated by what he was saying, not even a flicker of awe. He wore the face of someone who’s entire world was just ripped out from beneath them. Someone who hated every word coming out of their mouth, but had no choice but to believe.

“It’s the proportions,” Caleb said. “look at the ladders, the doors. They’re clearly made to fit people, but they’re the wrong size, just by a tiny bit. The doors are too wide, but the ceilings are too low. Only by like an inch, but still. You can feel it when you walk around.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be that interesting,” Daniel said. “People did this, someone real. Not little green men.”

Caleb frowned, hurt. Daniel found himself hurting too.

“Sorry,” he muttered. Caleb was the only other person left. Daniel didn’t want to burn the only bridge he had left.

Guilt welled up in him and he forced himself to squash it down.

They were dead, but he and Caleb weren’t, not yet. And there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep it that way.

In a way, Daniel felt responsible for them all. At least Caleb. Daniel was older; it was just his instinct. He was the oldest, he needed to start acting like it again.

It wasn’t that easy though. But he could try and stay positive. His attitude was pretty much the only thing still in his control.

“What’s that?” he asked, trying to change the subject. There were a few notebooks on the stool next to him.

“Got my backpack from…” Caleb trailed off. They both knew where from. “I wanted to try writing some of this down. Stay organized, you know?” The other kid pulled out a piece of paper from a backpack and showed it to Daniel. “I drew the layout, best I can.”

A long rectangle stretched along the page, divided into slices for each level of the rocket. The bottom had a slice with a question mark, and above it the next level was marked ‘cargo bay’. Two ‘x’s were between the mystery level and the cargo bay.

It was the two locked hatches in the floor of the hangar room. The next level up was further subdivided, mostly with the two small rooms on either side of the rocket with a large mystery chamber between them.

‘X’s marked the locked doors on that level too.

They’d both kept themselves busy poking around.

“You know what’s got my attention?” Daniel asked.

“The sealed off floor,” Caleb guessed, tapping the level between the cargo bay and mess.

Daniel nodded. Imagining what, or who, might be behind those sealed areas kept him awake almost as much as the shock

“Everywhere else, they just sealed off the whole level at the hatches. But those are the only locked doors .” Daniel said. Even across all three levels of dormitories, not a single one of them had been locked.

The possibilities bubbled up in his mind. The sealed hatches leading below the cargo bay and above the dorms were mysterious, but it felt conspicuous that an entire level of the rocket was sealed off.

It was darkly invigorating. Asking questions felt like it woke Daniel up, gave him something that needed to be pushed against.

“The water, the food pantry, plus the number of bunks…” Daniel said. “We were all supposed to survive.”

“So why didn’t they?” Caleb continued.

“Maybe whoever’s piloting this thing fucked up?” Daniel asked.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure this whole rocket is automated.” Caleb replied.

Daniel raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Think about it,” Caleb said. “Everything that’s happened has required our intervention. We had to open our own coffins, we had to open the hatches, find the water, even the food was just sitting in crates. If there was anyone or anything on this rocket, they would have already intervened.”

“So the locked sections aren’t sealed to protect anyone on the other side,” Daniel followed.

Caleb nodded, “I think they only want us in places we can’t affect the ship from.”

“It would explain why we haven’t found anyone,” Daniel nodded.

“And if there isn’t anyone, we might be here long enough to break into the sealed sections anyway.”

Daniel hefted the food block in his hand, trying to guess the weight. “Twenty-four people… if we can guess how many calories are in these, and then count the total, we should be able to ballpark how long we’re going to be flying.”

Caleb darkened at that. Daniel didn’t miss the reaction either.

“What?”

“Automated or not, aliens or humans, you’re right that someone did this to us. To them ,” Caleb said. “First, they want us alive. Second, they’re keeping us penned in, away from all the important parts of the ship. That means this is a delivery . Someone is waiting for us at the other end of this trip.”

Daniel’s own mood tensed too. He’d been focusing on home, how his family was reacting to his disappearance. It was just too easy to miss home, he hadn’t been prepared to have it taken away.

But as terrible as their abductions had been, as awful as listening to the other abductees’ coffins go silent, Caleb was right.

There was still more to come.

But… he was disturbed to realize he wasn’t that scared. He was, for sure. But he just wasn’t that scared. How could anything be worse than what they had already experienced?

·····

“Alright, then it’s… forty days, give or take,” Caleb said, looking at the scribbles of math.

Assuming each block was all they needed to eat, since if that wasn’t the case they had other problems, and that they would eat roughly three per twenty-four hours…

Daniel frowned; their math needed too many estimates here. They couldn’t be sure how nutritious the blocks were. Going by his parent’s adage, they were probably super healthy, because they tasted like ass.

“Wish we knew how far we’d gone already,” Daniel said. “Might help us.”

“If we knew the time, we could figure it out, but without an actual time, our math is going to get messy,” Caleb agreed.

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked, “we’d need to know how fast we’re going.”

“We do know, more or less.” Caleb frowned. He picked up a pen and dropped it from shoulder height, as if to demonstrate.

Daniel returned the look blankly.

“The gravity?” Caleb said leadingly, and when Daniel continued to not get it, he explained. “We’re in space, but we’re not floating. So, we must be accelerating.”

For the first time, it clicked for Daniel that he was in space, but his feet were still firmly planted on the floor.

“Wait, why aren’t we floating?” he asked.

“…We’re accelerating,” Caleb said. “Upward. Well, as much as there can be an ‘up’ in space… Normally gravity pulls us down with constant force. We don’t constantly accelerate on Earth because things like air resistance and, you know, the ground get in the way and stop us. But as the rocket pushes itself forward, there’s nothing in space to slow us down or mitigate the acceleration. So as long as the rocket is firing and accelerating us ‘that way’,” Caleb pointed at the ceiling, “then we have faux-gravity.”

“Yeah, I got it.” Daniel said, remembering sophomore physics. “I’ve just watched too much Star Wars. But then aren’t you assuming we’re accelerating at the same rate as Earth’s pull?”

“True, I am assuming that. But I’m pretty confident we are. I play baseball; you get a sense for how much the ball drops when you throw it over a given distance. I don’t feel any heavier or lighter, so I’m pretty sure we’re accelerating nine point nine eight meters per second squared straight up .”

Daniel squinted at him for a second. That didn’t seem like a sound assumption, but why would Caleb lie to him? He shook off his paranoia. It was probably correct. Daniel didn’t feel any heavier or lighter either.

“One half ‘a’ ‘t’ squared,” Daniel remembered. He took one of the papers from Caleb and scratched out his own math. “Forty-day trip, even if we do a flip turn and decelerate on the back half. We’ll go… more than nine billion miles in just the first twenty days.”

“That’s…” Caleb flubbed at the number, “a really long way.”

“It’s ‘out of the solar system’ long,” Daniel agreed. Caleb clearly knew his physics better than he, but Daniel was no slouch in science classes either.

“ Shit, ” Daniel swore, feeling his heart start to race more. They’d just come in the pantry to tally their food stock, not to laden themselves with more existential terror. He’d dismissed the idea quickly before; it was just too much to entertain seriously. This whole thing should have been some elaborate but mundane conspiracy, like Russians kidnapping some American kids, or some other fucked up secret CIA program. But if they were going that far, Caleb’s presumption didn’t seem so impossible.

“Fucking aliens, ” Daniel hissed.

·····

Four ‘days’ later, Caleb and Daniel had settled into a routine. Wake up, eat, exercise, and subsequently lose their minds for hours, exercise some more, frantically try to avoid thinking about the infinite abyss around them, exercise some more, and then finally sleep again.

It was wearing on Daniel.

Caleb seemed to be taking it better. He had taken to occupying his hours by seeing what parts of the mess he could take apart. He’d managed to unscrew one of the cabinet doors over the course of a dozen hours.

But Daniel was finding himself going stir crazy. He was bored , and that ate at him in a sinister way. People were dead, his life was at risk, and he was bored to tears.

He liked Caleb, and not just by default. The kid was handling the situation a little better with each day, and he wasn’t giving Daniel any too-curious glances when he sat in a corner with his head between his knees. So when Daniel found himself snapping at him, he felt worse and worse.

Things didn’t get any better once the walls started screaming at them.

“ Puta madre, que hiciste? ” Daniel yelled, but Caleb was on the ground screaming too.

They’d both rolled out of their bunks when every piece of metal started humming like it was about to explode. The drone was deafening and growing louder and louder with every moment.

“Downst—!” Caleb shouted. He clamped his hands over his ears and bolted for the hallway with the ladder. By the time both of them got to the mess, the hum was more like a rumble and whine simultaneously, and they were both completely inaudible.

Caleb stumbled over to the mess window and pushed the button with his elbow. Daniel saw a spot of blood drip from Caleb’s mouth. His gums were bleeding.

The window retracted in time for Caleb to fall to the ground. His arms fell limp next to him.

Daniel shouted his name, but the screech seemed to come from more than just the walls now. He felt his own bones scream at him from beneath his skin. The pitch reached a climax, and everything went white.

·····

Daniel dreamed he was standing in front of the coffins again. Twenty-four. One. It didn’t matter how many. They were still shut. Each one living up to its name.

He realized he was even still inside his. Stuck in a pitch-black box, banging on the interior. His heart wrenched as he tried to break out. A scream ripped its way out of his throat when he remembered just what happened. He was trapped just like they were. Just like they had been.

Every piece of him pressed against the walls as they closed in on him. Something snapped in him, and his fear and sadness turned to anger. All it would have taken was breaking them open, pushing back on the walls closing in.

An image came to him, something tearing through the coffins, the locked doors, anything . It was something to rip and tear through anything.

But he woke up before he could consider it further.

·····

Someone was screaming in his face.

“Come on!”

Daniel felt a blow crash into the side of his head.

“Come on, wake up! Wake up! Wake—” More blows rained down on Daniel’s face and he lashed out, kicking at the attacker. It wasn’t a gentle kick, and Caleb was caught full in the stomach.

He fell backward and crashed into the remains of a stool that was halfway pulled apart at the screws.

“C-Caleb?”

The other abductee gave a cough, “Oh th—thank God.”

“What happened?” Daniel asked frantically, sitting up. Something was different, “Why…”

He trailed off as he looked around the familiar mess hall. He was still on the rocket. Caleb was here. The others…

Daniel clenched his teeth, ignoring the thought. In the long hours of boredom it wouldn’t have been so easy, but there were pressing concerns in front of his eyes that took priority.

Literally in front of his eyes.

“What… fuck . Oh fuck…”

“You okay?” Caleb asked.

Daniel shook his head, “No, I’m hallucinating.”

From every surface, images were… ‘overlaid’, like a hologram. Pieces of the wall peeled away; the ceiling cut itself into ribbons.

He looked at Caleb and saw the image of an ethereal spike twist its way harmlessly through his belly and up out his skull.

“Oh,” Caleb said. He almost seemed relieved, “join the club.”

“You’re seeing this too?” Daniel asked, backing away frightened from a disc that threatened to come up from the floor like a table saw.

“I’m not seeing things,” Caleb said, “I’m hearing voices. Clicks, words, I think. I can’t understand any of it. It’s there even when I’m asleep.”

“Asleep?” Daniel said. “How long has it been?”

“Don’t know,” Caleb confessed. “It’s been at least two days since I woke up though. So… with water, can’t have been more than three since… whatever that was . ”

“Fuck!” Daniel yelled. Caleb gave a start. “How many times are we just going to get totally fucked by this shit? Getting abducted wasn’t enough? Sitting in a rocket full of dead kids wasn’t enough of a nightmare? Now we have to contend with fucking hallucinations, blackouts, and losing our minds! ”

Daniel angrily climbed to his feet, looking around. “What the fuck happened here?” Daniel asked.

The mess hall looked like it had been half disassembled. One of the tables was completely in pieces, and if he was counting correctly, at least one of the stools was missing.

It was hard to keep track of what he looked at with all the phantom images that kept leaping off every surface. The blood in his brain felt like it was on fire.

“It took a million hours, but I managed to get some of the bolts free. I’ve been trying to pry open doors and hatches with the pieces of the stool.”

“And that worked?”

“No, but it could still. Hasn’t been that long.”

“…What were you slapping me for?” Daniel asked.

“You started talking,” Caleb said. “I barely heard it from the cargo bay, so I thought I’d missed you waking up. So when it seemed like you fell back asleep again… I…kinda lost it. It’s been a rough time with no one else to talk to.”

“Were you trying to open the coffins down there?” Daniel asked incredulously.

“No, the hatch to the lower level. I figure if the ‘rocket’ part of this ship is down there, then that’s what we want to break if we don’t want to get ‘delivered’.”

Daniel pinched his nose in exasperation. “S-show me.”

“Okay…?” he said.

Caleb didn’t move. Instead, he just stayed kneeling next to the pad that had been laid out in the mess. He must have torn it out of one of the bunks and brought it down to keep Daniel on.

But he still wasn’t moving.

“Daniel?” Caleb asked.

Daniel whirled and saw Caleb across the mess, ready to climb down the ladder. He looked back at the image of Caleb he thought hadn’t moved. It was another one of the hallucinations.

His gut did somersaults as he walked to the ladder and went down.

Losing your mind was a terrifying thing.

“Here,” Caleb said, “I managed to flatten the end of the stool leg and wedge it between the hatch and floor. Something bent yesterday, but I think it must have jammed somewhere, because the hatch isn’t opening more than a tiny, tiny crack.”

Daniel half listened as he forced himself not to look around the cargo bay. Especially not toward what still hung from the ceiling.

Caleb had dragged his own empty coffin over, and had managed to lift it high enough to jam the metal legs of the stool underneath.

Had he jumped on the coffin repeatedly to hammer the leg-ends flat?

The third leg of the stool was wedged into the lock side of the hatch. If he leaned in super close, Daniel could make out the slightest asymmetry to the gap. It was less than a quarter of a centimeter, but Caleb had pried something out of place, enough for the tiniest gap to appear.

He rubbed his forehead again stressfully.

“Caleb…” he began, “you need to stop trying to tear the rocket apart.”

The other kid furrowed his brow, “What, are our abductors going to ‘punish’ me for breaking their stuff?”

“No, but I think we should have talked more about what our game plan is, because ‘break apart the rocket’ is not a safe strategy.”

“I’m not trying to kill us. But if we can get somewhere important, we could figure out how to divert the ship! I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want to end up ‘delivered’ to whoever is waiting!”

“Yes, you do,” Daniel said. “Nine billion miles, Caleb. Where are you going to divert to ?”

Caleb faltered, “I-I don’t…”

“Because if we do anything to mess with the trajectory, even by the slightest millimeter, that error could get compounded a million times over the course of billions of miles. We could end up hurtling through space for hundreds of days, not just forty, before dying in agony—assuming we don’t kill ourselves or each other first!”

Caleb clenched his jaw while Daniel yelled at him, but he didn’t retort.

“We have to be smart Caleb. We can’t just run headfirst into this stuff. I don’t want to end up in the hands of fucking aliens any more than you do, but we ARE going to do everything we can to survive because everyone else in this room died … and I can’t watch that happen to us. Not again.”

Caleb nodded. He might have been trying not to cry.

“…Sorry,” He stammered. “I-I wasn’t thinking straight.”

The kid dropped to the floor, “The last few days have been awful. Even worse than the first one.”

“Just don’t do anything without running it by me,” Daniel said. “Okay?”

Caleb nodded.

“I’ll do the same,” Daniel said. “We’re in this together, our decisions affect both of us.”

“You probably just saved my life then,” Caleb admitted. “If I’d gotten through this hatch while you were still asleep, I probably would have tried to break the first thing I saw.”

“You owe me one,” Daniel said, trying to be funny, “and, dead serious, I’ll collect.”

Caleb managed to crack a smile and Daniel returned the expression.

He had to ignore the erratic pieces of the room that appeared to move toward Caleb and pierce through his body.

A million dark thoughts went through Daniel’s head. At the forefront of them was a tiny ashamed part that had to imagine Caleb actually being sliced apart like he saw. Because as awful as it would be for him to die like that? At least it would be quick.

Unlike the people who died in their coffins. Daniel hadn’t been in this room since that first awful time he woke up. He didn’t want to be back. He felt responsible. It was utterly ludicrous, but he couldn’t help it.

His mind burned again with the guilt he felt.

If only he could have known there was something that might have saved them, that might have sprung the coffins. If there really was something they could have done, then he would get to be angry at himself for failing.

But instead his mind burned.

Caleb mentioned that he was still hearing things, even when he was asleep. Daniel still saw the slices and spikes growing around him even when he closed his eyes. In fact, it seemed like they grew even more vivid with fewer sights to compete with.

This was all too much. The deaths, the looming terror, the uncertainty. It really felt like he was burning from the inside. And it would, so long as the guilt of his feelings, his gladness , weighed on him. Because if they were doomed from the start, then nothing Daniel hadn’t done or thought to mattered. And then he could be glad it wasn’t his fault.

His mind recoiled from the idea like a hand thrust into flames. Twenty-two people were dead. And Daniel hated that he could be glad that nothing would have saved them.