Spaced Out

Spaced Out
Chapter 1
Henry tasted sweet inside and out. Three months of sleep and the first thing he felt was the incredible, almost unbearable sweetness. It wasn’t just in his mouth either. Gushing through every vein, slipping up his spine, tickling his brain, was some sort of feeling of sweet like too much frosting on a birthday cake. He couldn’t move just yet, the antifreeze hadn’t drained from his blood. Henry could feel the needles sipping the sweetness, the glycal-infused blood that prevented death from frozen blood ripping holes in his veins. As they sipped, he felt the most profound, vampiric thirst he had ever known. But soon, clean blood flowed back through the tubes and Henry became full with it. He tried to sigh but he couldn’t yet move a single muscle in his body, he wasn’t even sure if his heart was beating. So Henry stared at the ceiling through the small window of his pod, unable to blink. At first, the ceiling was white like a sheet that Henry's son had worn over his head on Halloween. But darkness began to fade around the edges of his vision, along with an intense migraine. Henry was on the verge of passing out, slipping between conscious and unconscious as the last moments of the dream he had been having began to play before him as if the write ceiling were a movie screen and his eyes the projector.

He didn’t remember his dreams, but Henry supposed three months of having the same one would etch it into any man’s mind. He dreamt of his mother sitting in the living room of the beach home they used to rent when he was a kid. For some odd reason, it was snowing outside. The house itself had none of the sand colored cushions and stained wooden frames of the furniture Henry recognized. Instead, it was filled with pull-out couches and air mattresses and bundles of blankets as if it was being prepared to host refugees. His mother sat on the only chair in the room, which just so happened to be his oversized, leopard-print reading chair from his first apartment. Henry’s mother wore a black pantsuit as if preparing to go to a rather informal funeral. She sobbed and yelled, repeating the phrase, “You will never go to space!”

Henry had thought it was a memory at first. But he had never been to the lake house in the winter. It had never had any furniture other than the sand colored couch and matching chairs. His mother wasn’t supportive of him going to space, but it was because she didn't think it would happen, that he was getting his hopes up for nothing. But as Henry recalled more and more details of the dream, he realized that she may not have been talking to him at all. Her eyes, bloodshot and swollen scanned every inch of the room as if looking for something, but seeing nothing. They leaked tears down her red, chapped cheeks which he saw become more tenderized as her head swiveled back and forth to aid her eyes in the same blind search. Her voice steadily grew hoarser throughout the dream until, by the end, she was croaking out the words as if she had never quit smoking, “You will never go to space. You will never go to space.”

The nausea hit Henry at the same time he regained control of his eyelids. He winced, wishing he could throw up or clutch his stomach or curl up into a ball, anything to ease the tug-o-war between his feet and his head over who got to have his stomach over for dinner. He remembered in basic training, he had been told about post-cryo nausea by one of the white coats. “You’ll feel some stomach discomfort, maybe have some butterflies, but you won’t lose your lunch,” she had said behind a clipboard and glasses that nearly fell off her nose. To Henry, the butterflies felt more like locusts.

Henry’s pod swung open to the left side, the pressurized door chugging like a train engine at its final stop, air escaping in low, tired whistles from the sides. He tried to move only to wince at the surprise of needles exiting his veins, applying bandages before he could lose a drop. He rose from the pod unsteady, shivering and struggling over the side. He gagged and coughed, emptying some bile onto the side of the pod, dripping down to the uniform white floor. Henry took heavy breaths and wiped his mouth, looking up to observe his ‘bedroom.' The ceiling of the room hung low, only about half a foot of space between him and the white sheen. He could see his reflection in it but was unable to make out features beyond a messy mop of blonde hair, ghastly pale skin, and bagged eyes.
He looked to his side at the cryo-pod. It looked like a fridge. It looked like a fridge he would buy at a garage sale that someone tipped over and vomited on. He realized that was half true.

Finally feeling the strength to stand, Henry moved out of the room into the common area where all the ‘astronauts’ were supposed to eat together. There, he found not a single soul. The entire lounge, like a spotless, chromified restaurant right before opening laid unused. Henry ran a finger along the table. He examined his digit to find the smallest layer of fine white powder. Someone had to be here.

Henry walked out of the common area into the kitchen. Empty. He peaked through the closest door into a dormitory. Unused. He jogged through the kitchen into what seemed like a meeting room. Not even a speck of dust. He ran through the other meeting room door and found himself back in the common room. Henry was gasping for air and the bandage on his left wrist was starting to come loose. He held it against his chest to slow any potential bleeding.

Henry found a door in the common room he had missed. It lead to one of the smaller lounges. Henry moved, each step reluctant, as he wondered what could empty an entire moon base. But then his ears perked up. There was sound. There were voices, several of them. He heard laughter. He heard a woman and a man talking. Henry’s steps thudded on the white floor exponentially faster as he moved through the hallway to the source of the sound. Henry opened the door with his shoulder, ramming it like the football players his older brothers were. Henry found a television sitting directly in front of him, playing a rerun of I Love Lucy. Henry’s breath slowed and his heart sank.

Until he heard a small metallic clank to his left. On the couch, making the clanks with a metal spoon and a ceramic bowl, sat the pilot. On the rocket here, it had been his job to stay awake during take-off, make sure everything went smooth. Staring at Henry like a child caught with the last cookie, he raised the spoon from the bowl slowly, putting vanilla ice cream covered in sprinkles into his mouth. He lowered the spoon back in the bowl as if he were trying not to startle a wild animal. The man was dark-skinned with black hair that might be an afro given a month or two more to grow out.

Finally, Henry spoke, “What are you doing?”

The man stared at Henry with fear and wonder for a moment before gesturing down at the bowl with his spoon. “Ice cream?”

“No,” Henry responded, in a befuddled frustration, “I mean, where is everyone? The other employees? There’s supposed to be hundreds of people here!”

“Oh,” he said, a mixture of relief and disappointment painting his face as he looked at the ground, searching for words. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Henry said with increased frustration.

“Yeah, I don’t know.”

“So why are you sitting on a couch eating ice cream?”

He paused for a moment before saying, “Well, I couldn’t find anyone when I woke up. But I did find ice cream, a DVD player, and some DVDs.”

Henry furrowed his brow. A joke was being played on him, he thought. This whole situation was too ridiculous for Henry’s recently unfrozen brain to process. He wondered who even owned DVD’s in 2019, let alone brought them aboard a rocket ship to the moon.
“So,” Henry said, “You wake up to find yourself in an empty moon base after 3 months of hypersleep and the first thing you do is eat ice cream and watch TV?”

“Well,” the man defended, “It was not the first thing I did. I found a trash can to throw up in, searched the base, found your pod and couldn’t open it, found the control center and couldn’t access it, cried for a bit, slept for a few hours, got up, made breakfast and lunch, and now I’m having a bit of dessert with my lunch while I enjoy some television.”

Henry spent some time in thought, “You couldn’t access the control center?”

“Nope. Needs an ‘administrative activation code’ or something. I’m a scientist, not a programmer.”
“I’m the programmer,” said Henry, “And I think I know what those codes ar--”

Henry bent down and threw up a bit more.

The man got up and grabbed a nearby trash can, giving it to Henry to use while he patted Henry on the back.



“My friends call me Pax, by the way,” he said as they walked down the hallway that lead to the control room.

“What does everyone else call you?” asked Henry.

“Uh,” Pax thought, “Pax. Most everybody just calls me Pax now that I think about it.”

They entered the control room. Henry had always pictured a supercomputer with a giant screen and processors filling the entire room. Instead, the room was empty except for a coffee maker and a desk with a rack of three processors and a single screen that looked just like any other ordinary monitor. Henry sat down and pressed ENTER on the keyboard. The computer lit up, asking for a password.

“So what’s a programmer doing in space anyway?” Pax said, looking over Henry’s shoulder. “Couldn’t you do this all remotely from earth? All the programming stuff?”

“Well, probably,” Henry said as he made another wrong guess of the password, “But I happened to have a meeting with Chiavare, Rico Chiavare. He’s the main investor for this whole thing, right?”

“Yeah, I remember that guy. Didn’t seem like much of an academic. Surprised he funded most of this,” Pax mused.

“I guess he just wanted to be remembered for something,” Henry said, “Anyway, I convinced him that the 8-second delay that it takes to send code from Earth to the moon would cost him more money in the long run than just sending me to space. So he did.”

“Jesus,” laughed Pax, “You talked your way into being an astronaut?”

“I mathed my way into being an astronaut, thank you,” replied Henry as he entered the correct password.
“Nice hacking,” smiled Pax.

“It wasn’t hacking, I just had to remember what password I set for this thing. I have like five or six I use interchangea--”
Henry and Pax stared at the screen. It showed the date in big, bold letters.

DECEMBER 29TH, 2099.

“I,” began Henry, “I just wanted to get away for a while.” He fell onto the floor and clutched his knees. “I needed some space,” he continued, “From a nagging mother, an ex-wife, friends more interesting than me. It was supposed to be four years. I would come home and get to tell my son’s 6th-grade class his dad was an astronaut. None of my friends would be too busy to grab a drink and talk about space with someone who was there.”

Henry continued to talk and Pax kneeled down to pat his back.

“I didn’t know it would end like this.”