Day 1
Twenty-two hours ago, I woke up drowning.
Or at least it felt like I was drowning. My lungs were burning, my vision was tinged red, and the only thing I could think about was that time I almost died when I was twelve.
Jose remained calm the entire time even as he dodged my flailing arms and my kicking legs. Had I been able to make words, I would likely have cussed him out as he tried to extract the tube from my passageways.
In that moment, I wasn’t the appointed Head Surgeon of the Tau Ceti F Mission. For all my education, my training, my accolades, for those few seconds, I was more animal than human.
Once I voided all that gunk out of my lungs, once I could make words, I asked Jose who had been the first among us to wake.
Ten thousand nights asleep only to come around on a foreign planet, choking on chemicals meant to keep one alive. Considering how I barely managed it with my medic at my side, I couldn’t imagine how someone could survive the ordeal without help.
When I finally caught Jose’s eye, there was a hollowness in his gaze that made my heart stutter.
“Doc, the first one of us to wake up didn’t make it. Neither did the second. I’m the third,”
Those words didn’t compute. Not at first, anyway.
So started my first day on Tau Ceti F.
Day 7
The past week has been spent building. While clearly construction isn’t part of my job description, there wasn’t really a choice. Neither was it a choice for any of the surviving crew.
The first two casualties Jose had discovered were not the only casualties. Somewhere between our solar system and this one, we lost another five lives due to a glitch in the life support system.
Three of them were Engineers who had been tasked with the setup of our camp. One of them was the head of Geology, and the last…
The last had been the Architect who had been charged with ensuring everything got built to proper measure.
This leaves ten of us to continue the mission: one Surgeon, one Medic, two Geologists who specialized in terraforming theory, three Researchers and three junior Engineers. Putting our heads together, we managed to work out what the dead Architect’s blueprints meant, though that task in itself took far longer than it should have.
Lee, the most senior Geologist, assigned each of us specific tasks to complete. As he shoved my Robot-In-A-Box towards me, I wanted to make a joke. I wanted to ask ‘who died and made you boss’.
To my credit, I did no such thing.
Instead, I took my little Robot-In-A-Box and set off towards my little corner of Tau Ceti F. Two days of frustrating amateur programming later, my robot and I finally began to put together my new laboratory.
My robot is a squat little thing, outfitted with sturdy titanium ‘limbs’ which allows it to move about and to carry stuff ten times its weight. Sometime in those two initial days, I named him Spider. Sure, he looked more like a many legged sea creature of some sort, but nonetheless, the name stuck.
While Spider got to work, I’ve been taking on simpler, human-friendly tasks. Somehow, I still received a dozen papercuts.
Everyone else and their robots have their own piece of Tau Ceti F to build, which means that more often than not, Spider is my only companion. It’s not exactly the stuff of stories.
Actually, if I have to be honest…this isn’t what I thought the mission would be like at all.
Day 11
These few days as I worked with screws, nails and hammers, as Spider lifted beams and sank them into the ground, my thoughts have been wandering towards memories I haven’t revisited in a lifetime.
Perhaps it was the recent trauma of waking up gasping for air. Or maybe it was the boredom of menial labour. But the memory of a grey seaside day has been surfacing relentlessly in my mind.
Dad had taken us — Chris and I — out to the beach one Saturday with his new girlfriend Ellie. The fact that the sky was overcast did not seem to faze the two adults up front. I distinctly recall the way they were holding each other’s hands, the way their voices cracked as they attempted to sing along to some cheesy oldie on FM radio.
In the backseat of our father’s rusting Mazda, Chris spent the entire journey to the coast glaring out the window. Myself, I was curled up in my spot, reading an old paperback copy of Dune. Frankly, I wished my Dad had left me alone in my room to immerse myself in my book.
When we finally arrived, while Dad and Ellie set up beach mats, Chris stalked off towards a nearby pier.
As for myself, I — <corrupted file save>
Day 12
The good news is the well has been successfully dug. The bad news is, I’m not sure if the water is safe, though that was always a risk we anticipated.
Saani, the only Researcher qualified to lead chemical investigations, has been working tirelessly to ensure the water is drinkable. Her work is absolutely crucial because ultimately, the viability of our water supply is the only thing that could make or break our mission.
When the world first learned that water had been discovered on Tau Ceti F, civilization had exploded in global excitement.
Finally, we had proof. Proof that life resembling our own could exist somewhere else in the universe. Perhaps we weren’t sailing alone through the infinite blackness of space on our tiny green and blue planet after all.
The presence of water on Tau Ceti F, was also the main reason why our ship only carried a two month supply of water. Though, I suppose, now that a portion of our crew is gone, we can theoretically rely on our supplies till month three.
The work has been hard on Saani not least because our lab-hospital is still very much a work in progress. Much of her equipment is still stashed away in crates, waiting to be laid out in the space I was meant to share with her.
Despite the disarray, while Spider and I laboured, Saani has nonetheless been able to continue her work through sheer determination. Tools and containers were decontaminated and repurposed into temporary lab equipment. The Robot-In-A-Box she’d been given to assist with construction is now her unofficial lab assistant.
She’s put a band sticker on the side of her little robot. However, unlike me, Saani hasn’t named her creature yet.
“Deadhead,” I pronounced as the spindly thing moved about the unfinished lab-hospital. “That’s what I’m gonna call him,”
“Whatever floats your boat,” Saani muttered distractedly as she continued her work.
Day 14
The waters of Tau Ceti F are safe, as Saani confirmed not a few hours ago.
In celebration, we popped open one of the few bottles of champagne we’d brought along. Sitting in the ship’s small mess area, we toasted each other with varying degrees of cheer, relief and exhaustion.
I haven’t slept properly in days. Perhaps my body is rebelling against the notion of going under once more, even for a mere eight hours. In a way, this does make sense — after all, I’ve just spent literal years in a medically induced coma.
Or perhaps I’m just tired because of my dreams.
Every night, I dream that I’m once again a child standing by the edge of the Gulf. In my hands, I hold a broken conch shell, the cracked edges of which scrape against the skin of my palm. Behind me, I can hear the laughter of adults falling in love.
In my dreams, the sea beckons to me exactly the way I remembered it. Perhaps it was the warmth of the waves curling around my ankles, perhaps it was the way the waves seemed to sparkle under weak sunbeams…
My mother had insisted I learned to swim even as an infant, same as every mother in my community did. There was too much water surrounding us, too many countless tragedies over the years, to leave things to chance.
Perhaps there is irony in this, but in the end, she’d been the one to succumb to the lake behind our house.
Dropping the broken shell in my hand onto the shifting sands of the beach, I waded further into the surf. When the water reached my chest, I took a deep breath and dove in.
Even in my dreams, I can feel the welcome embrace of the Gulf.
Here, on a planet that should theoretically hold life, the memory of a warm ocean seems like such a distant dream. Perhaps my mind is reaching for — <corrupted file save>
Day 20
It has been a very odd few days. Saani collapsed in the middle of the night after our little party. This little fact has taken precedence over everything else.
A quick check-up and scan has revealed nothing. When Saani came around that first time, I had prescribed some bed rest, plus a firm warning to stop overworking herself.
“We can’t afford to lose someone as stubborn as you,” I had told her, trying to lighten the mood.
“No, I don’t suppose anyone here knows how to set-up a basic litmus test,” she’d retorted, though there was none of her usual vigour.
“I’ll have you know, I aced high school chemistry,” Jose piped up, relief evident in his eyes.
The man had taken those earlier casualties personally. Too personally, in my professional opinion. I know he had imagined that either of us could have somehow prevented those losses had we awoken first, as had been the actual intention.
There is nothing I can say however, that can quell his unspoken ache. Instead, I simply raised his dose of Sertraline by 25mg, same as I did for myself. There was not much else I could have done, but it was better than leaving things to chance.
Nodding tiredly, Saani had stood up from the infirmary pallet. Shuffling towards the exit, she almost made it to the threshold before her legs gave out beneath her. With a loud crash, she sprawled into a heap.
Since then, the lab-hospital I’ve been trying to set up has become the first completed structure in our little camp. The space, from what I’ve been told, has been outfitted first and foremost as a field hospital.
We hadn’t anticipated needing one so soon, but here we are.
Regardless of its purpose, I haven’t had a chance to set foot in my completed hospital just yet.
In the ship’s infirmary, Saani has been steadily growing paler and frailer. For all our efforts and knowledge, Jose and I still have no idea what we can do to help her. Moving her is out of the question, simply because we have no idea if she can survive the short journey, weak as she is.
When she sleeps, she mutters softly, calling over and over again for someone. From the sounds of it, I don’t believe that she expects her plea to be answered.
Outside the ship, more robots have been activated to replace Jose and I. From the window of my little infirmary, I can’t pick out Spider from the rest.
There is something silly about how quickly I have become attached to my metallic companion.
The Software Engineers on earth had given Spider and each of his robot buddies a personality of sorts.
Each one of them is programmed to respond to the timbre of our voices. Spider in particular, seems particularly attuned to my moods. When I’m frustrated, my little metal friend picks up the pace of his work, before chirping excitedly as it waves its many limbs in the direction of his achievements. When I’m bored, he rolls around in front of me as if he means to provide entertainment of some sort.
I think I shall step out for a few minutes later, and bring him back to the ship. Perhaps I’ll bring Deadhead too.
Who knows — it might help my patient.
Day 22
Yesterday afternoon, Saani beckoned me to her side.
Leaving Spider to pack my books away, very carefully, I settled myself by the bedridden Researcher.
“What do you think this place will look like in a hundred years?” she rasped at me. I took note of her sallow complexion, of the dullness in her once-bright eyes.
Every day, her vitals read worse, and all I could do was watch, confused, frustrated…and angry at myself for failing.
“I expect we would have ruined it the way we have ruined everything else back home. I expect we’ll have fast food chains, a shopping mall or two…probably some social media influencers prancing about taking selfies,”
“What’s the point then eh?” she laughed softly, before that gave way to a violent cough.
“You should eat something. I think I can find some dried fruit…”
Waving away my offer, she closed her eyes.
That was yesterday.
This morning, we buried her just outside the perimeters of our camp along with our other dead.
Day 27
That day by the sea, I allowed my mood to lift as I floated on my back, staring upwards at the grey sky. Salt-scent flooded my olfactory sense, as the cry of seabirds filled the air.
Above me, I spotted Chris leaning off the side of the pier, staring gloomily out at nothing.
Flipping myself over, I splashed loudly to get his attention before waving up at him.
Rolling his eyes, he waved back at me. A smile cracked through his morose facade, revealing the boy underneath who could still enjoy things without a well practiced sneer.
Deciding I would join him after all, I turned back towards the shore.
To this day, I can’t remember if I had really heard him screaming my name as the wave came up from behind me. What I do remember, was this crushing sensation on my person as— <corrupted file save>
Day 30
I guess we have officially been here for a month. In five more weeks, unless something untoward occurs or has already occurred, the next batch of crew will be here.
The company sent out three batches of crew. From what I gathered, this was a precautionary measure. If everyone survived, great, we were establishing a proper colony. If one of the ships malfunctioned, at least we still had two crafts to count on. If only one ship survived the trip — that was better than nothing.
No one talked about what would happen if all three ships failed. Not to us at any rate. That was a conversation for the accountants and the lawyers.
In the days since Saani’s death, I’ve had two more patients in my field hospital. One of them is an Engineer, the other, a Geologist.
Their symptoms are almost exactly the same as Saani’s had been. It started with physical collapse. Before long, their malaise had them drifting in and out of consciousness. As with Saani, they whisper as they sleep, imploring for things I didn’t understand, for gifts that were not mine to give.
Jose has been forcing me to take breaks. Myself and Spider to be precise.
“You can train that thing to fetch you know,” he told me the other day. “The day they were demo-ing the bots, you drove off to Wendy’s instead for a baconator,”
“What’s the point?” I asked in confusion, trying my best not to think of unctuous beef and cheddar cheese melting together. The mission rations were dismal and dull, and hardly what I consider real food.
“Why make a construction robot learn tricks?”
“Point? There is no point. It’s for fun,” Jose quirked a half smile at me.
The sight of his cheerful demeanour was almost shocking. Reflexively and sincerely, I grinned back at him.
Bidding our patients a temporary farewell, I went for a walk around the perimeter of our camp with Spider by my side. Spotting a short wooden dowel laying on the ground, I paused.
“If I throw this thing, are you gonna bring it back?” I asked Spider, feeling a little stupid as I uttered those words.
As expected, Spider did not react.
Shrugging, I bent down and picked up the strip of wood. For a moment, I considered the fact that this piece of wood had been harvested and processed somewhere in another solar system. The people who had cut the trees, who had stripped and cut this small strip of pine…had they known this tiny dowel would make such a grand journey across space? Before it got unceremoniously tossed aside anyway, like so much human detritus…
Experimentally, I threw the dowel a short distance away, out into the wasteland.
Spider sat motionless.
“I guess…go fetch?”
Before I could blink, Spider was off, skittering at top speed over loose rocks.
He came back with a smooth pebble in his pronged limbs. Proudly, he presented it to me like a prize. I couldn’t help myself — I laughed.
Until a flash of unexpected movement flickered by the corner of my eye. Tilting my gaze, I spotted Deadhead.
Saani’s old robot was perched motionless over her grave. His front limbs were folded in front of him, as if he were resting against his former human companion.
Dropping the stone he had brought back to me, Spider approached the other robot before adopting the same posture two feet away from Saani’s grave marker.
Unsure what it was I was looking at, I turned back towards the camp, back towards my patients.
Day 35
“I keep dreaming about the time I nearly drowned,” I told Jose.
“That’s disturbing,” Jose took a long sip of his flat beer.
One of our two patients — the Geologist named Maria — has found her way back to her side of camp. Her robot, the one she named River, had gently herded the girl back to her seismic equipment and her noisy machines.
The Engineer on the other hand. Saeed.
Saeed has been buried beside Saani.
The bot he had been assigned continued plugging away with the other machines, seemingly oblivious to the passing of his human.
Sitting on Saeed’s empty cot, I followed Jose’s example and drank deeply. Someone in the crew had brought brewing supplies with her. While that had been quite against the rules, I have to admit, I am thankful now that she did what she did.
Outside, night was finally beginning to fall after thirty-five days of twilight. Sitting in our thick parkas, I wondered if this was what it had felt like for those explorers trying to find the Northern Passage.
They had found nothing but death.
“Morgan?” Jose studied me with some concern.
In one corner, Spider stirred at the sound of my name. My robot padded over to me. Gently, he placed a metal limb on my knee. Jose’s own machine was sitting silently at his feet. Every once in a while, she would chirp up at him as if to assure him she was still there.
Blinking at Jose, I cleared my thoughts with a shake of my head.
“In my dreams, I keep getting sucked under the riptide. I can literally see the waves rolling over me, and beyond that, I can see the surface rippling. I can’t really move though, because the water’s got me lodged in place,”
“Wait, did this really happen?” Jose frowned. “Or is this purely something you dreamt up?”
“It did happen but yeah, I’m also dreaming about it a lot. I was just a kid when it happened. My Dad was onshore with his girlfriend and my brother was off being a brooding goth kid. I remember looking up from the seabed, thinking to myself ‘I’m going to die’. I wasn’t panicked or anything. It was just this weird understanding that I was going to drown, and that would be it,”
“Jesus,” Jose rubbed a hand across his face. “Jesus,”
“Obviously, I didn’t drown,” I pointed out. “I’m right here,”
“How did you survive?”
“My idiot brother dove in and yanked me out. He could have broken so many bones,” I grimaced at the memory.
“I remember choking, and vomiting once we got ashore. Ellie wrapped me in a beach blanket while she shouted at my Dad to call an ambulance. She rubbed my back and asked a bunch of questions…she was a doctor of some sort,”
“Right,” Jose nodded. “So that’s how you got into this business,”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “She was a bit too smart for my Dad. When she left him, she hugged me a good long while. I really missed her after that,”
Jose shifted where he sat.
“I’ve been having bad dreams too. I keep dreaming about the moment my mother died. Her eyes didn’t close properly, and her mouth was hanging open. I remember wanting to close her mouth for her, but my aunt held me back. Maybe it’s wrong, but I still haven’t forgiven her for that,”
My companion inhaled a massive gulp of weak beer.
“Shit,” I stared at him. “Fuck that’s messed. I’m sorry,”
At his feet, his robot was up on its many legs. Small frantic chirps emanated from her voicebox.
“Hush,” he coaxed her down. To me, he said, “I have a theory on this…wasting disease,”
“I do too,” I admitted.
“It doesn’t make sense does it? Everyone had to take a psych eval before the mission,” he shook his head.
“Being well on earth, where everything is possible, doesn’t always translate in a place like this,”
“I suppose,” he sighed. “There’s a whole lot of nothing here. It’s easy to lose hope,”
“Hope can be cruel,” I said after a moment, thinking on poor Saani’s last words to me. “But yeah, the alternative is to see nothing. To stop completely and utterly in one’s tracks,”
“Odd isn’t it?” Jose placed his empty glass on the ground. “That you and I and the rest seem fine. That Vicky recovered when no one else did,”
“Not really,” I shook my head.
I thought of our dead buried outside of camp. Of the reason we had travelled out here to begin with.
Of the fact we were one of the first humans on this planet to have a beer, shitty though the brew was.
“We should get some sleep. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and only a few more weeks to get it done before the others arrive,” I told him.
“Fine, but you need rest too,” my companion admonished. “Can’t afford to have you keeling over. At least not till the next Surgeon gets here,”
As he and his bot left, I began to tidy the place up while Spider attempted to make himself useful.
Day 36
I awoke from a dreamless slumber to find a wooden dowel laid across my chest.
By my bed, Spider waited expectantly for me to stir.
“Good boy,”I told him with a yawn.
There is so much to do, before — <corrupted file save>
