Unification – Iteration 4: Stay Alone; Stay Alive

Iteration 4: Stay Alone; Stay Alive

The airlock was empty. David Baltimore sat down on a metal bench as he carefully removed his environmental suit. Jonas and he had parted ways as they approached the silent outpost. The airlock was a mess, even by ISC standards. Random pieces of environmental suits littered the floor while others remained hung in their alcoves. There were a set of a dozen or so military-grade lockers opposite from where he sat, some were wide open, others remained shut. It was as if everyone had tried to leave in a hurry, yet still did not have enough time to do what they needed to do. Papers, clipboards, even a few ration packets could be seen across the floor of the hollow airlock. Outside, the Martian winds hounded the 10-centimeter thick door: the only thing separating him from the unforgiving desolation of Mars.

At thirty years old, David was one of the youngest people to ever be accepted into the ISC. Now, six years later, he finds himself alone in a room on the surface of another planet, something which only a select number of people can claim, granted his arrival was not as glamorous as the rest. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, many of his peers believed he would become a sports star or famed musician. He had been deeply involved with both throughout middle school and high school, but something happened in his junior year. A chance encounter with a late-night documentary opened his mind up to the wonders of artificial intelligence. The mere concept of being able to create intelligence boggled and yet enticed his mind like nothing else. He immediately dropped out of every music class and sporting activity, spending almost all of his time dedicated to researching all that he could about the field. Though he was never an outstanding student, he never fell behind or dragged his feet. One could say, he was stubbornly average, but this fascination with creating something thought to be impossible became an obsession. He did just enough to graduate, yet did not care for any of the pomp and circumstance. The following day, he submitted his very own program for evaluation to MIT, IBM, and even the ESA. A week later, David received well over fifteen invitations to join their institution or university, solely based upon his program alone.

To say that he was a prodigy would be a dire underestimation of his passion for something he never knew he needed: companionship. The only child of a lawyer and an English middle school teacher, David did not have much of a home life. His preoccupation with sports and music merely filled a hole that was not being satisfied at home. In truth, the program he had submitted was unlike anything else ever created. What young David Baltimore had achieved was a program that was not just capable of machine learning, but learned like a human child, adapting to situations at an alarmingly exponential rate. Granted, his creation was limited in memory, the groundwork for what he had brought into being would later become the Analytic Neural Assistant and Analytic Neural Interface: ANA and ANI.

The following year, David would become one of the youngest nominees for a Nobel Prize in science and technology. For his efforts, he was contacted by the newly founded ISC to join them for the then top-secret Project Ebon Jaguar. Though he had never properly left the orbit of the Earth, David soon became a regular on various space stations, advising and designing various artificial intelligence programs for all kinds of projects and missions, yet deep down inside, the one thing he wanted more than anything else was to meet ANI and ANA, and so here he finds himself, upon the surface of an alien world, curious to discover what had happened to the first human colony on another world, but more importantly, to meet the other program he had helped create. In a way, ANI and ANA were his children, born out of desire, pursued by potential. They represented everything David had ever hoped for, the first step into the next stage of evolution.

Lost in thought, David nearly leaped into the air when a loud metallic bang rippled through the airlock. He turned all of his attention towards the empty decontamination chamber with terrified wonder. The sound continued rhythmically, like a pendulum or a church bell. Strike after strike against the reinforced bulkhead it went, until it abruptly stopped. The abrupt silence sent a shiver down his spine. Carefully, he removed his environmental suit and placed it aside. As he approached the door to the decontamination chamber, he felt as if he was being watched by someone or something. He turned back to face the howling winds. Whorls of copper dust and sand were all that greeted him in return. Taking a deep breath, David turned back towards the decontamination chamber, pressed his hand against the digital palm reader, and stepped inside.

The blood-red hue of the emergency lights pulsed within the 4-meter wide chamber. In the center was a cylindrical tube of glass, large enough to fit one adult person. Closing the door behind him, David cautiously stepped forward as the glass cylinder lowered into the floor below, allowing him to stand inside, before it raised again, sealing him within.

“I guess that’s a good sign,” he muttered to himself as the protective glass sealed around him. “At least that means there’s still power in the base.” 

“Decontamination sequence initiated,” came a familiar feminine voice with a light British accent. Almost human, David thought to himself. A brisk whoosh of air quickly filled the cylindrical chamber, emanating from the top and bottom of the contraption. The emergency lights briefly changed from the gloomy emergency red to an eerie algae green. Whoever chose that shade of green should really get fired, he continued to observe as the cycle proceeded to neutralize any and all unwanted bacteria and viruses. The chamber continued to fill itself with the sanitary concoction for nearly two minutes before halting.

“Decontamination sequence complete,” the artificial voice reported. “Welcome to Ares Prospect-1, Doctor Baltimore.”

“Ana, is that you?” David inquired, only to be answered with silence. “Guess not.” He stepped out of the decontamination unit and headed towards the exit. As he approached the door, a sharp pain shot through his head like a migraine, yet before he could raise his hand to his head for comfort, it vanished. Why do I feel more contaminated than before? Not wanting to waste any more time, David pressed his hand against another palm reader next to the exit. The LED scanner passed over his hand. He watched it intently as if he would catch something unusual about it, and for a brief moment, he did. He saw the pad flash a bright “Access Denied” orange, before changing to a cool “Access Granted” blue. As the metal door opened, David felt his stomach sink.

That’s not how those are supposed to work. It’s either you’re approved or denied. The AI specialist stood and stared at the opening before him. More silence greeted him from within Ares Prospect.

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The sandstorm raged on relentlessly. Sarah did her best to control her breathing. She was not going to let years of her training go to waste just because her mission refused to go to plan, or else what would be the point of training in the first place? She could hear the individual grains of sand pelt her visor like raindrops of stone. She checked her instruments again: vitals remained steady, oxygen levels were still good. She had been walking for nearly an hour, but with very little direction or indication of how much land she had traversed, it was hard to tell how much further she had to go. Still, she pushed on. 

She remembered the first time she had done a proper spacewalk. She, along with two others, was assigned to replace a malfunctioning conduit on an experimental X-Ray telescope recently mounted on the International Space Station, which after its completion, had been renamed to Pantheon. Everything had been going smoothly. The conduit was located, the faulty equipment replaced, and the telescopic was functioning once again. The trio made their way back when a noise caught Sarah’s attention, or rather she felt something. She rotated herself and looked back at the telescope, thinking she may have forgotten something, but nothing seemed unusual. Reorienting herself back towards the airlock, she faced her crewmates. One of them turned back at her, with some concern on their face.

“Everything alright, Hutson?” they asked over the radio.

“Yeah, everything’s fine Tom. Just thought I heard something,” she replied, relief dancing on her syllables. Her crewmate laughed. The other crew member had turned around at this point as well, overhearing the conversation.

“Didn’t you watch that one film about how ‘in space, no one can hear you scre—” Like a bullet to the head or a knife in the back, everything went silent, but Sarah saw it all. Something traveling at a high velocity struck the unfortunate astronaut, broke through her protective visor, shattered their skull, and exited out the back of their suit. There was nothing she could do. 

“Jesus Christ — command, we have a situation!” screamed Sarah over her comms. Tom spun around just in time to see the destroyed headpiece of his former colleague.

“What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know, something struck her, I didn’t see what it was.”

“We need to get back inside, pronto,” but before either of them could make a move, another piece of debris struck Tom in the side, rupturing his suit, shredding it like cheese through a grater. His blood began to float out into the vacuum of space, burning and freezing at the same time into strange icicles. His face had already begun to turn pale. Sarah was by his side in no time, but there was very little she could do. Nothing she had could seal the hole, and he was rapidly losing atmosphere as well as blood pressure. 

“Command, I need an evac now!” Sarah frantically latched herself to Tom’s harness then began to move towards her other crewmate. Doing the same to them, she tried to tow them towards the airlock. As she made her way towards the safety of the airlock, the sun began to creep across the horizon of the Earth, one of sixteen throughout her day. A golden light erupted from the sickle of lumination that cradled the curvature of the planet. Suddenly she could see it coming, all of them, hundreds, thousands, possibly even millions of rocks. There was no need for an investigation, she knew exactly what it was: a meteor shower.

The smaller fragments began to pelt her suit, like thousands upon thousands of sand grains against a windowpane. She did her best to keep her helmet turned away from the oncoming onslaught, but with the airlock in the direction of the debris, this was a near-impossible task. Sarah prayed that only the small particles would strike her, but this was only wishful thinking. Yet when it was all said and done, she managed to make her way to the safety of the airlock. Her fallen crewmates in tow, she collapsed on the floor even before her helmet was off. Most of the meteor shower struck the station with minimal damage, still, Sarah couldn’t help but wonder why she had made it when her colleagues were taken out so abruptly. Why her? Why now? Why this way? One would think that these questions would keep a person away from the very danger that had given rise to them, but Sarah fought even harder to return to orbit.

She volunteered for every off-planet mission and even sought to help establish the first permanent lunar base, Selene Prospect-1, but that day, that particular moment stuck to her, like a sore throat that refused to clear, something that never goes away, you simply get used to it until you no longer notice it. A kind of haunting permeated through her, but the ghosts which gnawed at the deep well of her subconscious was not of her lost comrades, but of something else that called to her from the eternal void of the Universe, a voice without a sound.

☍

Jonas Salk entered the airlock full of terror. The door’s automatic mechanism suffered a major malfunction as he stepped through the aperture, causing the reinforced steel bulkhead to come crashing down where he stood. He had barely managed to leap out of the way as it cut him off from the outside. A second more of hesitation, and it would have spelled the end for the astro-archeologist, leaving him half within Ares Prospect and the half outside upon the Martian soil. 

After examining the bulkhead, Jonas determined that despite its malfunction, it had done what it was supposed to do: seal off the airlock. All around him lay debris of half hanging environmental suits, discarded papers, office supplies, and even a plasma saw. It was an odd assortment of things to find within the airlock. Clearly, something unusual happened. Continuing on, Jonas examined the various lockers opposite from the environmental suit hangers. Most of the lockers were shut, but the few that remained open sent a chill down his spine. The first few lockers contained the things you’d expect to find: photos, personal belongings, datapads, and even a copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune. It was the final locker that had frightened the normally collected commander. Inside of locker #913 lay a Browning Semiautomatic Rimfire Pistol. A box of ammunition lay next to it with several rounds taken out. The pistol itself did not seem to have been fired, merely loaded, yet that did not quell his unease. Weapons were forbidden from any ordinary mission, let alone one with as much gravity as this one, so how one managed to get one all the way to Mars was beyond his understanding for the time being.

A loud banging sound suddenly ripped through the airlock. Jonas jumped in fright and faced towards the rear of the enclosure. The sound ended as quickly as it came by, like the steel frame of a car being dragged down the hall or a sheet of metal siding blown away by a tornado, just like back home.

Home, he was so far away from home, and while it had only been a few months since he left Earth, the past 24-hours had made it feel even longer. He pictured the endless fields of golden wheat waving lazily in the summer heat, breathtaking vistas of blues and whites in the endless skies above. He would run as a child for hours on end, always aiming to catch the horizon, sometimes coming close, or at least that’s what he told himself, but never quite catching it. These excursions of several hours allowed the young Jonas to explore the world around him, and despite the vast fields and eternal skies, it was the little things beneath his feet that fascinated him the most. First, it was lizards and field mice, then it became insects and other creepy crawlies, always searching for smaller and smaller denizens. By the time he was in high school, this fascination with life, especially minuscule life, had taken a dramatic turn. It was the Spring of 2013, Jonas and his parents were watching a film on the ancient Greek when the topic of philosophy arose. There, a spark would give birth through a simple question: where did it all begin? This ignited a firestorm within himself and immediately dedicated himself to a nascent career – astro-archeology. It was not just a search for life on other worlds, though that had been part of the allure, simply knowing how things came to be not just on Earth, but everywhere in the Universe. Studying a past he could see but not reach drove him higher and farther than any of his peers. He wanted to know firsthand the genesis of existence. 

He had been slated to go on the first mission to Mars as one of the top researchers within Ares Prospect, but a faltering relationship with a fellow colleague halted all of his advances. It was not like the break up was harsh or bad in any way. In fact, it was fairly mutual as they both saw this opportunity to be larger than either of them. With all of that, Jonas opted to remain on Earth, as his ex flew to Mars as the project lead. They did not speak to one another unless it had to do with the project. He told himself that he had to do it this way so that he would not get distracted from his work and responsibilities, but down inside, he knew he just wanted a reason to let her go and bury the heartache.

The loud metallic sound returned with a vengeance, snapping Jonas from his introspection. He headed towards the rear of the airlock where the decontamination chamber lay. The banging was steady at first, like a ticking clock, but as he approached the metal door, the rhythm increased, almost frantically as if anticipating his approach. Jonas cautiously raised a hand to the dorm the banging grew in intensity, almost maddeningly so. It reminded him of those old viral videos he watched as a child of people placing bricks inside of washing machines, yet as his fingers came into contact with the cold steel, the noise stopped. Even the howling wind from outside seemed far, far away.

A cold sweat broke out upon his face, yet his curiosity kept him focused. He lowered his hand and placed it upon the palm reader. The device blinked on, scanned his hand, then turned blue. The metal door before him opened with a rush of pressurized air. Inside, Jonas found the decontamination chamber waiting for him. The ruddy red emergency lights pulsed to the beating of a whale’s heart as he cautiously stepped inside. The door closed and secured itself just as he passed the threshold. As he made his way to the center, he noted that the cylindrical glass tube which held the personnel was already lowered, which was not part of its default programming. Either this was a new protocol or someone had changed it. Regardless, it was not his area of expertise, and would not know where to begin. He continued until he was within the chamber’s radius. The lights changed from the pulsing red to an eerie green. The glass tube arose out of the floor and connected to the ceiling and was soon followed by a gust of air filled with chemicals and disinfectants.

“Decontamination sequence initiated,” came a robotic, almost human voice. Jonas recognized it immediately. In a strange way, Ana’s voice was almost as famous as the HAL 9000. The primary difference is that Ana created her voice after analyzing billions of samples across hundreds of dialects. The program ran through its cycles as Jonas relaxed, letting the machine do its work. For a brief moment, he dozed off. His eyes closed, but he shook himself awake to find a woman standing just outside the chamber wearing absolutely nothing. Her skin was pale and taut and was covered in inky markings or runes, Jonas could not tell. Her hair was black and matted, and at her feet was an unmistakable trace of Martian soil. Before he really knew what he was looking at, another gust of disinfectant filled the chamber, forcing him to shut his eyes. When he reopened them, the woman was gone.

“Decontamination sequence complete,” the AI proclaimed. The glass tube lowered back into the floor and Jonas stepped out. A sudden urge to vomit filled his mind as he bent over, placing his hands upon his knees. That is the worst decontam I have ever experienced, he told himself. When his nausea passed, he reached for his communicator and called David.

☍

“Hey David, do you read? Over.” David’s communicator came to life with a static hiss. 

“Yes commander, I read you. Barely.” David looked both ways down the empty corridor that he found himself in. Several papers and folders were scattered along the floor, even a few digi-pads and random equipment littered the area. It was just like the airlock.

“Did you notice anything strange about the decontam?” David heard the question, but it did not immediately register with him. The hollowness of the corridor tugged at him like the nectar of a pitcher plant. He felt something was devastatingly wrong, but could not quite place a finger on it yet.

“Yeah, it was almost as if it was doing the opposite of its intended purpose.”

“Was thinking the same thing.” Jonas paused, thought about asking more questions, but chose to reserve them for later. “Alright, let’s start looking around and see if we can’t figure out what’s going on and also find Hutson.”

“Roger that, commander,” replied David in a mechanical manner. He just kept staring down the empty corridor. What the hell? was all he could say to himself. “Hey, commander?”

“I’m here.”

“Did you happen to hear a loud banging noise while you were in the airlock?” Another pause. Another anxious wait.

“As a matter of fact, I did. It was like listening to a bowling ball inside of a washing machine.” David turned around and stared down at the other end of the corridor. More papers and more folders.

“It’s curious, commander. I’m standing in the exit corridor, I think on the west end of the base. The sign in front of me states that I’m in the General Habitation Pod, but I don’t see anything around that could cause such a noise. The structure is intact and all I see are some papers and scanning equipment. Nothing larger than my hand.” Jonas quickly spun around, sensing someone or something was behind him only to find nothing. “Not to alarm you commander, but I feel like I’m being watched.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, the base has its own surveillance system after all.”

“No, not from the cameras, sir. I can’t quite explain it.”

“You think someone is spying on us?”

“Maybe observing is the right word.” Jonas spun around yet again. The structure groaned in the ongoing sandstorm. Trickles of dust pelted the walls and windows wherever they stood. The silence echoed in a numbing nothingness. “Sir, if it’s alright with you, I think I’d like to check the primary computer core, I might be able to get some answers there.”

“Agreed. I’ll head towards the living quarters and see if I can find anyone. And David?” Another moment of silence. “Be careful.” The image of the gun flashed in Jonas’ mind, wondering why such a thing would be needed in the first place.

“Copy that, sir.”

☍

The first airlock Sarah Hutson reached was damaged beyond recognition. The second airlock she came across was sealed from within. By the time she got inside the third, her air tanks had been empty for nearly a minute. She removed her helmet the instant the pressurized doors closed behind her. Her lungs gasped for air like a fish out of water. To die on Mars is one thing; to die inside your suit from suffocation on Mars is another.  Her head spun in dizzying circles as she rolled over and laid on her back. Keeping her eyes closed and arms spread at her sides, she let the refreshing air refill her hungry lungs. Her gasps echoed within the empty airlock. Even the winds outside could not overcome the sound of replenished life which Sarah drew in with every breath.

It had been nearly an hour since she left the wreckage of the Marathon. How she managed to get to Ares Prospect is a miracle for all she cared. Still, she made it to Ares Prospect, and that is what really matters. How she will get off Ares Prospect is an entirely different problem. Suddenly she wondered if David or Jonas had made it to the base as well. She shot up from where she lay and immediately searched for her communicator. An uneasy air hung in the room as she searched for a clear frequency.

“Doctor Baltimore?” she called into the static void. “Commander Salk? This is Doctor Hutson, do you read me?” She waited for an agonizing minute for a response, but only heard a monsoon of static in return. She changed frequencies and tried again, only to receive the same wall of noise. Sarah gave it three more attempts before conceding to temporary defeat. “Either there’s something jamming the signal, my communicator is busted, or neither of them are here,” she reasoned to herself aloud.

Once the shock of having made it to the base wore off, Sarah got out of her environmental suit and proceeded to hang it up in one of the empty compartments. It was here that she realized all of the debris and miscellaneous objects scattered around the airlock. Reports and research papers littered the floor like confetti, various articles of clothing hung from the personal lockers, it all seemed as though everyone left in a hurry or was trying to get away from something. A sudden shiver ran down the microbiologist’s spine, just like when a prey senses a predator but does not know from where. Sarah spun on her heels with lightning quickness despite her exhaustion and stared back out towards the Martian dust storm. She half expected to see someone there through the massive door’s portholes, but there was only a sheet of rusty sand.

Sarah took several slow and deep breaths, calming herself. It’s just your adrenaline heightening all of your senses, Sarah, she told herself, nothing more, nothing le—

A loud metallic crashing sound abruptly filled the airlock, as if something large had fallen upon the roof of the structure. Sarah jumped in fright and let out an audible yelp. The noise was gone as soon as it came, but the tension she felt remained all the same. Her eyes focused on the rear of the room. The Martian base groaned under the stress of the dust storm, but her eyes remained upon the door leading to the decontamination chamber. After what felt like hours, she managed to shake herself out of her trance and proceeded to check her gear. It must have been some loose gear or something, she kept telling herself.

When she was done, she walked towards the rear of the airlock and placed her hand upon the palm reader. The device immediately flashed several times in a bright orange hue accompanied by a soft buzzing tone. Instinctively, she wiped her hand upon her pants and pressed it against the scanner once again. This time, the device turned green and the pressurized door opened. Sarah stepped inside and the doors closed behind her. Feeling uneasy once again, she looked back and over her shoulder, but the door was already lowered beyond her field of view. Had she turned sooner, she may have seen the strange silhouette of a person standing perfectly still against the airlock door out in the Martian dust storm with no environmental suit.

Inside, she found what her companions had discovered an hour earlier. Ana’s voice initiated and completed the decontamination sequence. Sarah also found that she felt much worse after the sequence than she did before, but she would not know anything was truly wrong until she caught up with the other two. Things were clearly filling up in her mind, but she had no way of organizing them yet. It was as if someone had tossed her a few, thousand-piece puzzles without their boxes and asked her to put them together while trying to navigate a hurricane. A few hours earlier, she had been in orbit around the planet, the shock of all of these events was not lost on her, or her crewmates, but everything was just outside of their grasp of comprehension.

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