I think I have never done this before,

The spaceship dips or rises into the vast somethingness.

The only direction that matters here is the thread connecting them to their destination.

And things that stand in their way.

A man who’s skin been cracked and rendered unto paste is floating quietly, being haphazardly dragged along ship by a cable from his remains. 

Stuffed into a coffin on legs that serves as an ambulatory device.

He is alive and far removed from the screeching agony of his implosion.

The one that will experience it soon is curled up inside the brain of the ship.

The woman is dreaming. She dreams often, sleeps even more.

Her name is Aslan. Her mother named her after her father left to work. She has a six month stint to go through as the co-pilot but it feels longer than that. Time has slipped away. She has no reach to make tally marks on the spongy surfaces surrounding her. 

 The man she was in love with was called Adrian Kaplan. With a H or a P in the middle. He is dead now. She remembers his smile and the creases of his eyes.

She dreams of him now. He is sleeping in their old quarters, their sanctuary, the sheets twisted around his body, a gnarled scar starting from under his knee ending in between the bones of his ankle. Shines like fishing line caught in the sun. Could have been his left or right leg. Does not matter nowadays, sunlight streams in, she has seen the sun fifty entire years ago, the anniversary is approaching, does not matter now. His face is covered by the shawl of darkness. She almost reaches out but decides to examine the rest of her surroundings, the bookshelf is a small divot on the wall, always within arms reach. She remembers the year her back did not stop aching because she insisted on doing everything from the sagging mattress. Stretches fixed it. She does not recall if she mentioned to anyone other than the mirror. He shifts and sits up, the books are no longer on their shelf. His face is covered by a space helmet, an older design by the looks of it, cheap looking, won’t keep anyone safe. Ripped straight from the catalogues she used to browse, filled with amazing gizmos that are overpriced and useless.

His torso is sweaty, sparse chest hair and soft curves on a slight frame. The helmet  clangs to the side as he looks at her. Their gazes do not meet. She glances past the grimy white helmet, notices a chip near the semi circle all the way up. The most important component that keeps the seal, the part that prevents failure. Is chipped. It’s called the halo for a reason. He tries getting up but his legs are twisted in the sheets. He limply reaches for the helmet. 

She wakes up. 

The machine that keeps her alive, the tubing, the dew covered, mouldy machinery breaths a hiss of stream. Her brain is occupied by it, the folds of it lanced by cables. She has the awareness of a vegetable, her consciousness drifts in and out of dreams.

The skeleton crew has been ignoring her. Only glancing through the green tinted window. Her skeleton gleams through her skin like bioluminescent twigs. 

She is beautiful.

Her eyes see the moss slowly eating at the tips of her fingers. Someone needs to replace the air. 

It does not bother her. She likes the moss and the mould and the dew. It smells like the mattress they shared. Or the small samples of green plants they kept. She is an experiment, way beyond and behind the latest design. 

Her only company is the whale sized war machine she operates. A computer can calculate things faster than a human. Is able to run the ship on its own. Space is not kind to the current technology. A brain is a computer, computers were modelled after brains, she has lent most of herself as a processor. Chicken or the egg.

 Spends her time conjuring memories of pleasant days. 

She is wading through a pool and no one is around. It is way past closing and she is tired. Her eyes keep catching the scum that drifts on the bottom of the pool and she has fifty laps to go. A man that looks identical to the actor in some cereal commercial or some sort of how to video is looking at her, sternly, he is in a janitorial get-up. Likely waiting for her to leave to hoover the bottom. The clearest thing in the memory is the hoover. She remembers the illustration from a maintenance guide. It’s designed purpose is to clean her machine. 

She sinks to the bottom of the pool and sits. Her thighs scrape against the tiles. There is a mosaic at the bottom but the blue of the water makes it hard to make out the colours. Some sort of bird she thinks. From Herman’s guide to earthly fauna. Her most read book. She feels sad but does not know why.

The ship adjusts course and lists the side. Sudden.

 A crew member on the 17th floor flips a page in a book that is more dust than paper. Her name escapes Aslan so she is called the 3rd inhabitant of floor 17.

She has a magnifying glass and is holding a worn out book, she has read and re-read it many times, her goal is to transcribe it. Once and only once is the only chance she will give herself. The book is young enough to be subjected to its opening and closing. To be kept whole and held for a few more movements. She is entertaining herself. She also does pushups and stays grateful for the other two inhabitants of the floor. 

 She was nice to Aslan during their brief introduction, the memory is fuzzier than it should be since most of her brain power is busy interfacing. But she had a reliable look about her. She is not reliable at all but; is a good shoulder to cry on. After Adrian vanished she had patiently stared at her until her sadness shrank into a manageable sort of panic. They had talked multiple times after that but those pieces are missing.

The ship is old enough for the layers around it to start rotting. The 17th floor is safe nestled deep inside the bowels. Knowing this, the 3rd inhabitant finds herself fastidiously checking for cracks and peeling vinyl. 

She notices a crack spreading as fast as glass breaking, and speaks “It’s going to blow up soon” she laughs. 

The list happens for her and the book slides down. She does not move and keeps staring into the wall,  her gaze settles into the back of her awareness as the situation dawns.

Aslan peels back into awareness, dimly aware of a creak droning lowly from the centre  of the ship. Tearing the ship through like a thick piece of rubber. Her hands twitch as she remembers the tacky feeling of a rubber sheet digging into her fingernails, the sting of sticky pressure.

 The ship itself pauses as the emergency system kicks in. Foam fills up around the cavity and the engines shut off.

A beat passes, as short as the swing of a cat as it bats at an unwelcome hand. 50 people rush out of their rooms into the evacuation station. The ship is screaming an unheard scream as all the air goes out.

Aslan picks up on fast footsteps, like an eight legged creature is hurrying down and down and down. Someone hacks through the foam, movements dulled by the bulky space suit. The oxygen gauge is orange from extortion. She has no idea who this person is. Wishes it was Adrian for a split second. He is dead.

 The ship judders, the crack is here, spreading. The crew member  backs down and rushes back up the stairs. Aslan hates them for it. Hates the ship and hates her position, she sacrificed herself for this, gave up her mind and body for a thin reward, time off or money or something. Just to be responsible, just for every one of those strangers to be safe. To go through space quicker. For faster processing in the food court or the med bay. So one of those faceless, nameless people would not have to spread themselves thinner. Took one for the team. 

She would 100% do the same. Would have sprinted outside and pushed people away, would have been the first one out. Would have-

She is ejected outside as the ship remembers what to do. The halo of her helmet is chipped. 

Screeching agony. Flesh torn asunder, then a hand. Reaching, reaching, reaching and catching. 

A sound, a single word caught in Aslan’s fading existence, then the pain is over.

The ship is lit up with the light of the escape pods leaving, like rats escaping a sinking ship. 55% of them make it to safety, all of them are manned. One unconscious crew member arrives three days later, brain dead. He gets yanked into the secondary engine for the vivarium, excuse to keep his organs alive long enough for him to be buried. Lilacs coming from no known seed burst forth from his body and no one touches them. The crops catch mould for 5 years after that.

Mourning in space is hard. Back on earth things would rot in predictable but infinitely varied ways. Decomposition was a science we understood. A technician could look at the leg of a fly, plucked from the eyelashes of a body,  identify it  and determine the amount of time passed from death to now.  A body would behave like a body. It would stay dead. In space things get strange, there is a chance however slim that one could come back. Burst into tumours, flowers, moss, dead bugs, organic material. Flowers made out of hair. 

Anything could happen to a body in space but decay normally, no bleached bones, swollen cavities or anything like that, still unpleasant to see and smell to a human or animal. But coveted, precious and strange, alien. 

 In current time, the third inhabitant quietly mourns. She gazes up at the mirror of her new quarters and wills herself to shrink the pain down. She gently thumbs at the adipocere stuck to the creases of her glove. All her clothing and the little valuables she collected are gone but the book is still with her. She was stupid going down there, did not know if she would be safe or not. She remembers a few more people behind her, rookies that never lived through a failure this big. She was too late to save her not by seconds but by days.

The hull was too decayed, Aslan would have been replaced sooner, likely by her. 

The rookies are all outside, huddled together when she opens her door to have a smoke.

“Are you allowed to have that” one of them asks. She walks past them as she nods. Not in the mood to explain herself, she didn’t know what she was doing when she dove in. Could have caused all of their deaths. They follow her to the vivarium, in current time, the dead crew member is not there, it smells like death anyways.

Aslan is still alive. She is herself now. Fully and entirely. She thinks about the pay check she lost. Enough for lifetimes of retirement. She is too old for this. 65 years of life, soon to end. 15 of it spent back home, then school, then a high school sweet heart, then hours spent laboring.

 She is diving towards some detritus. She considers flailing but assumes she is dead or dying already. Her bones are glowing through her skin, she wills her hands to move. They do. Her bones are loose underneath her skin. She senses them pulling and swaying. Maybe imagines it. She spreads her arms wide, her legs are not responding, and childishly imagines herself stopping. 

It works.

 It works and she stops, her knees hits her chest and something gives. She is naked and glowing in the middle of nowhere. The ship is a grain of sand in the distance. No stars, are visible where she looks. But things are bright in her periphery. She spins, bringing her arms close to her sides and wiggling her toes. Everywhere she looks has nothing. She panics for a second, not knowing if she is hallucinating or if this is another dream or memory. She needs to find the ship and scavenge, call for help. Does she need help? 

 She flaps her arms and imagines she is swimming. Feels water lapping up when she closes her eyes. Smells the chlorine. Opens her eyes and the ship is in front of her. Feels the pull of it, her scalp stinging, she has to avoid the hull where she was rotting. Suddenly paranoid, an image of a fork stuck to an outlet comes to mind. 

 Aims herself towards the ship and launches. Her eyes are stinging, the water coalesces and clings to her face, her hair is whip straight, long enough to tickle the top of her legs. Her arms are bunched back, the skin in between her shoulder blades are greasy, the hull of the ship is a small grey dot in the distance. Best case scenario is; the ship is mostly functional, has a spare escape pod with enough fuel, med bay has some IV bags, oxygen is optional. Eating could be optional too. Would be funny if she still had to use the bathroom. The least she needs is the location the escape pods went to. Shower would be nice a mirror would be nice, an explanation would be the nicest. Her mind is perfectly blank, she feels the need to think about her outline. She was agonising over her paycheck, she was angry but 

The hull of the ship is sagging, it looks like a pillow cut in half, the foam has hardened in place. The emergency lights are on. A thick length of chain almost hits her, it curls, hits the top of the hull and dents the name of the vessel, A P R I C O T turns into A P R I CUT, the top half of the o sags inwards. Aslan tries her best to wade away as another shock goes through the chain, like a struggling snake. The links seize up completely and stop moving. 

Aslan shuffles her thoughts back and forth. She is somehow surviving the vacuum of space. The ship is fucked, all the escape pods are emptied out, cleanup might arrive one day but the whole operation was on its last legs. She does not want anything interesting to happen to her, that seems inevitable now. The chain is doing some weird stuff. She should check it out.  

All the crew she has ever met had been superstitious.   She is vaguely aware of signs and the divine and whatnot. Mainly she is hideously curious.  She swims up, has to picture the ceramic of the bird for a moment. Going up is a lot harder than going straight. The stars are still missing, her brain is set on ignoring their sheer number. 

She gently touches the chain, her brain flashes. She loses time. She is on top of a white cube. It is slightly bigger than her wingspan, has a rippled surface like marble carved away with water, her toes are firmly splayed, in between them is a seam. The seam opens, she can hear crickets, inside. Her gaze inward sucks her in. Adrian is inside. Cracks an egg into a skillet. Some of the shell falls in. 

“Was I dreaming this whole thing?” She asks. Adrian looks up, he is still wearing the helmet. He has a stained bathrobe on, he is wearing his thinnest, most worn pair of boxers. He is younger than she remembers him being. His liver spots are gone, he has a freshly sewn cut in between his pointer and thumb, bright green thread made from modified grape vine. The kitchen is one neither of them inhabited for any amount of time. There are linoleum hearts on the floor. The walls are a strange brownish red with mint green flowers. He flexes his hand and watches the pull of the thread. “No” he breathes. 

“You missed me that much.”

Aslan is thinking really hard about something, she has not done this in years. She thinks about love crew feel for each other. She thinks about the 50 transient people she tried to know but people kept getting swapped out. Now that she is out of dream land she is unsure if she actually liked her husband, whether they just huddled together cause they were both warm and creaky, whether they felt love, she is unsure.

“You are not him.” She says, coldly. “You are not her” he responds. The egg spurts in the pan. He flinches when the hot oil hits his bare chest. 

1. How come?
2. You are thinking for a start. 
3. You are not him, tears of frustration well up. The scrape of her thighs are back, she feels old and ugly and stupid, mashes her hands to her face, feels jagged bone and wire, something squelches when she rolls her hands up and down her face. “MIRROR” she gasps. Adrian turns towards her. She is panicking. She feels fear in the bottom of her spine, a sensation of falling comes to her unwillingly.

Adrian sees this and leaves the egg alone. He grabs her by the elbows. She tilts her chin up and sees a green glow. The colour is the same as glow in the dark paint. Something yellow peaks out from her brow. Frozen human fat, same consistency as butter. 

She is a skull, her face and personhood is gone, an injury that is improbable has stricken her. Her eye sockets are empty, her lips are gone, a grinning Halloween skull stares at her, bordered by a sickly grey of skin. How does she see? How does she speak? How is she alive?

Aslan looks beyond the reflection and sees a twitching spinal column, Adrian is dead. She is dead. The ship is dead. The plants on her windowsill are dead. The mission is dead. 

Good god. Why is she still around.