The Celestial Bodies
by Lydia Ozer

> CASSIOPEIA MK II from Nexus

> OS: Xenia 4 v. 3.7.1

> NXS Ramanujan, Pilot: Asherah

> Mission: Expedition Boudicca

> Date: 01 / 01 / 01

 

> Determining architectural status…

 

> Running preliminary systems test…

 

> Architecture stable. Preliminary systems diagnostic successful. Booting system backup…

 

> System successfully restored. Terminating emergency system stasis…

 

> Emergency system stasis terminated. Determining status of pilot…

 

> Pilot “Asherah” in stasis, diagnostics confirm optimal stability. Booting carafe…

​

         Asherah awoke to a familiar void—a vast sea of warm nothingness that swaddled her entire being. It’s something every Nexus Pilot was familiar with on an intimate level. Asherah’s body was neither flesh nor machine, but a space-faring vessel with her brain at the center of it all; ferrying people across interstellar space at faster-than-light speeds. She didn’t need eyes when her optic nerves were connected to several of the Ramanujan’s monitoring systems that she could keep track of all at once. 

         Still, her brain was a human one that required sleep every forty-eight hours or so with the help of serotonin therapy. It was a compromise Asherah didn’t mind, and it gave her a small, savory break from her work. She allowed the Ramanujan to run on autopilot while her mind put itself in temporary isolation from all but the ship's core functions. All she had to do now was wait for the neural link to reconnect her to the ship’s greater network… Any second now…

         “A bit slow today, huh,” she said, “Five minutes for the neural link to boot? This is ridiculous…” Asherah reached out to Xenia to check the night’s logs while she waited for a connection. All she found was the OS startup—an occurrence whose presence would normally be fine among a complete log, but on its own spelled certain trouble. The language within was unusual, ominous. Something was definitely wrong.

         "What the hell happened yesterday?" She grumbled, rummaging through her brain for memories and finding none. Asherah had grown impatient with waiting for Xenia and decided to boot the neural link program from her end instead.

 

> Booting neural link interface…

> Neural link interface booted. Good morning, Asherah!

 

         “Thank the stars. Hello, Xenia.” Asherah knew how to command Xenia through the terminal, but she preferred this one-on-one interactive UI. She could ‘talk’ to it and get most of the information she needed.

         “Can you bring me yesterday’s log?”

 

> Of course. Wait one moment…

> There is no log for December 31st, 1600. Is there another log you would like to view?

 

         If Asherah had the ability to do a spit take, she would have taken this opportunity to do so. “What?”

 

> Would you like me to repeat–

 

         “No, don’t. Are there logs for… October 17th and 18th, 2410?”

 

> None that I can find.

    

         The more Asherah dug into Xenia’s file system, it became clearer that all the file dates were corrupted. Ten years-worth of logs all showed the same date: January 1st, 1601. Great. With some digging, she found the most recent logs, but there was nothing inside indicating something was off.

         There was more than one way to explain what was happening, none of which brought Asherah any ease. The fact that this was coming from a backup was even worse. The best case scenario was that the backup might have been corrupted or bit-flipped by an errant cosmic ray. The other possibility was that the ship had been in stasis for so long that the internal clocks encountered integer overflow—like Y2K or the GPS Crisis of 2137.  It wouldn’t be easy to piece together how much time had passed, but it could be done with some data mining and cross-referencing. Time-consuming work like that would have to come later. Asherah decided to tap into the ship’s network and see the condition of the Ramanujan for herself. Like stretching an aching limb, she reached out and established connectivity. In a fraction of a second, she felt her consciousness extend out from the control room (where her physical brain was located) to the rest of the ship.

         Asherah spread out to the command deck first. She felt the cool lights flicker on like one might feel a speckled ray of sunshine on their skin. As she connected to the HVAC and oxygen recycling system, she felt the air recirculate and flow through the ship’s interior as if she were breathing fresh mountain air. The pipes that lined the halls and rooms carried water and coolants in a slow, rhythmic cycle; to Asherah, it was the steady pulse of a heart at rest. In the mess hall, the appliances hummed as they powered on—giving off vibrations like a cat purring in their owner’s lap. The shield surrounding the ship’s hull felt like a warm blanket hugging her form. She never got tired of waking up after a rest when she had this to look forward to.

With Asherah now in near-total control of the ship, there were three big items she needed to attend to. “Comms, navigation, crew.” She reminded herself.

         She opened all of the ship’s comm channels to check for incoming signals from home base on Terra or any of the established colonies close to the Sol System—just in case the Ramanujan’s position was known. No signals had been picked up immediately, but that wasn’t too significant of a problem at that moment. 

         Next, Asherah checked the ship’s interstellar position in the navigation system. It seemed that the Ramanujan was in the correct arm of the Milky Way, but that was about all that was correct. The ship had veered wildly off course. The intended destination was a quiet red dwarf star named Boudicca, almost a thousand light-years from Terra. According to the nav systems, Boudicca had been overshot by several hundred light-years and the ship was now within a light-month of a dying supergiant star. The star in question should have been extremely and disturbingly visible from the ship’s position, and yet…

         “I can’t see it…” She observed. As Asherah received more data about the ship’s immediate celestial neighbors, she found that the stars’ positions had shifted around quite a bit. The supergiant in question was no longer a supergiant, but a neutron star surrounded by a vibrant, expanding ellipsoid of hot gas and particles sitting ten light-years away. Asherah set herself a reminder to run simulations to determine where Sol might be, but she had to move onto her third task: checking to see if her crew was alive.

 

         There were two cryostasis chambers deep within the ship, each across the hall from the other. Each cylindrical pod was large enough to comfortably fit one person. They rested horizontally, with the long end perpendicular to the wall. Six pods on either side of each room; twenty-four pods total, two unoccupied, all of them operational. There was a curved window that showed the placid visage of each occupant. 

         In one of the chamber rooms amidst the dull, warm glow of the wall lights, an uncharacteristic shape began to materialize where nothing had once been. Glowing, neon shades of blue took form into the general likeness of a person: a young woman. This holographic body opened its eyes as Asherah extended most of her consciousness into it.

She walked up to a pod in the corner farthest from the door and looked through the sole window to see who occupied it. Captain Baransky, the commander for the mission, laid inside. There was a gash across her forehead—a thin sheen of crystallized blood ran down the side of her face and into her dirty-blonde hair, still tied back into a bun. Her vitals and brain activity were normal, which brought Asherah some relief. Despite the wound on her head, Captain Baransky’s face was surprisingly relaxed.  For someone with a reputation for a hot temper, she wore cryogenic sleep with the grace of a fairy tale princess. 

         Asherah went through the room pod by pod, checking the vitals of her crew. She lingered on the faces of each crew member she examined. She had spent nine months with these people on their journey to Boudicca, where they hoped to further examine the two Terra-like planets within the star’s Goldilocks Zone. This was the Colony Initiative’s farthest scouting expedition to date, and Asherah was honored to be chosen to ferry them there. In her ten-year tenure as a Pilot, she had never met a more interesting group of people. For the most part, they all got along with each other, and they all got along with her. Even though the Pilot Program had been in effect for thirty years, crews on Pilot-run ships still tended to ignore their Pilot or treat them as a loathsome figurehead—Expedition Boudicca was Asherah’s first mission where most of the crew treated her with dignity and respect… like a human. With each pod she checked, she remained at each crew member’s side a little longer than the last. 

In time, Asherah approached the last occupied pod in the second chamber. She recognized the face of the xenobiologist, Dr. Florin—kind, freckled, almost golden skin, eyes closed. Riley was an encyclopedia of information on the odd, beautiful flora of the TRAPPIST colonies, and they would tell Asherah every fascinating fact they could remember during their morning coffee break. Asherah sat on top of their pod, brushing her holographic hand along the visage window. Dr. Florin’s beating heart soldiered on, slowed by the cold. Their lungs breathed with glacial inhales and exhales. They rested peacefully, locked in an induced, dreamless sleep. It was a sleep they would never wake up from. Brain death. Most of the crew shared this same fate. 

         Asherah keeled onto her side; pained cries and deep gasps escaped her emulated lungs. She hugged Riley Florin’s pod as twinkling projections of tears streamed down her face, disappearing into the ether of nothing beyond her body.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cried out. Grief left her lips in a mantra, and they repeated until the words lost their form. Language escaped her. Her shimmering body curled into itself as her sobs devolved into whimpers, her whimpers into silence. A small eternity passed.

 

         Holly was rudely awakened by a raging migraine. She wasn’t a stranger to sleeping in a cryo-pod and she knew well that if something didn’t ache when you got up, something was seriously wrong with you. The smeared blur that clung to her eyes was slow to let up. Once the pod fully depressurized, the lid opened with a small hiss. Holly stumbled past the other pods as invisible, intangible needles hammered into her temple. She clutched her hand to her forehead, breathing shallow breaths through her clenched jaw as the chamber doors opened for her automatically. ‘It usually never hurts this bad on the way out,’ she thought. No sooner did she notice a cool, wet substance trickle down her arm. She brought her hand away to find it covered in a slick of her own blood. Normally, one of her subordinates would have come to her aid with a first aid kit, but even in her pain Holly noticed how few people were around.

         “What the hell?” Holly muttered through grit teeth. She trudged down the hallway toward the ship’s well-equipped medical bay.

         “Asherah, notify Dr. Olivas that I’m bleeding from the head. I’m on my way to the med bay.”

         The ship’s Pilot was usually pretty timely about addressing her, yet one too many moments passed until Holly received a response.

         “Dr. Olivas isn’t available at the moment, but I can step in to assist. Do you need help finding your way there, Captain?” Asherah offered. There was some hesitation in the Pilot’s voice that Holly could recognize right away.

         “What’s going on, Asherah? I’m not in the mood to beat around the bush.”

         The only thing Holly heard was droning tinnitus in her left ear and her own staggered footfalls. She did not have the patience for this.

         “May I remind you that I’m your superior officer on this mission, Pilot? I suggest you come clean, or I will put an infraction on your record!” Captain Baransky growled, her voice moving through the halls in echoes.

         The familiar blue shimmer of Asherah’s holographic body coalesced a meter in front of Holly in the blink of an eye. She took the form of a young woman like always: she had an average height and figure with dark skin, shoulder-length curls, and a face Holly might call ‘cute’ if she wasn’t the Pilot’s superior. Whenever she appeared as a hologram to the mission crew, Asherah made an apparent effort to look put together, but the young Pilot was in obvious distress.

         “I-I can’t explain everything here, not while you’re hurt. I can walk you to the med bay and get you cleaned up, but… please. I promise. Please.” Asherah stammered. Tears swelled from her puffy eyes.

         Holly examined Asherah’s body as she shivered with each labored breath. Pilots usually never breathed, let alone shiver. The captain sighed.

         “Of course, Asherah. Walk with me.”

 

         Captain Baransky sat on one of the exam tables in the med bay, her legs dangling off the side. The wound on her forehead had been stitched up by an automated surgery table and her head was no longer bleeding. She held her half-empty cup of water with a vice grip. From what information Asherah had briefed her on, the situation was dire. The Ramanujan had been long adrift with no clear answer on how much time had passed by, and neither captain nor pilot had any memory of going into stasis. The captain stopped responding to Asherah when she learned the fate of most of the crew. The two bathed in long, palpable silence, interrupted only by the occasional whir of nearby medical machinery.

         “Seventeen good people gone…” Holly whispered. 

         Asherah stood by the captain’s side, her body rigid and tense. She waited on the captain to speak, and she was too nervous to speak any further. Her gaze drifted while her brain coordinated multiple tasks and simulations at once.

         “Pilot?” the captain asked.

         Asherah’s attention snapped back to the medical bay. “Yes, Captain?”

         “Do Nexus emergency protocols cover any aspect of our current situation?”

         “Let me see…” Asherah closed her eyes as she concentrated on the task. With assistance from Xenia, she was able to scan the relevant document in a matter of seconds. The answers were sparse and far from helpful.

         “The language pertinent to any situation like ours is nebulous. It all circles back to contacting Nexus and awaiting further instructions.”

         Holly sighed in frustration, “Figures. All right then, let’s assess where we’re at.” She hopped off of the exam table and downed the rest of her water in one shot. She tossed the paper cup aside and started pacing around the room, eyes focused directly ahead of her.

“In terms of numbers, we’re working with a skeleton crew of six: you, me, and the four people in cryostasis with higher brain activity. Who else do we have at our disposal?”

“Dr. Olivas, Dr. Nelson, Lt. Han, and Mx. Pullman.”

         “We have a medical specialist, a geologist, probe tech, and geographer. We can work with that. Rations and food, how are we on that front?”

         “Surprisingly well-preserved, but much of it requires reconstitution. There will be more than enough for everyone who needs it. With the recirculation system, clean water won’t be a problem.”

         “All right. Have you located Boudicca or Sol yet?”

         “Working on it. The simulations I’m running will take a while, I don’t know how long until I can triangulate the results.”

         “We’ll get to that when it’s ready. Last question, Pilot: do you have a solid estimate on how long we’ve been out of commission?”

         Asherah sighed, “You won’t like the number.”

         “I don’t have to like it; I just need to know.”

         “Based on my rudimentary observations and math, the Ramanujan has been adrift for around seven hundred-and-fifty-thousand years.”

         Holly stopped pacing.

         “Give or take a hundred-thousand,” Asherah continued, “The simulations I’m working on are built on old telemetry data and current observations, so they’ll be much more accurate.”

         The captain shut her eyes tight, trying to hide that she was trying to control her breathing. With militaristic stiffness, she meandered back to the exam table and met Asherah face-to-face. Despite her slow breaths, Asherah noticed how fast the captain’s heart was beating; each pulse rattled her torso enough to be seen with the naked eye.

         “I guess we have a place to start. Great work, Asherah,” Holly said. She moved to leave the med bay.

         “Is there anything else you need from me?” Asherah asked.

         “No, I’m fine. I’ll be in my quarters.”

         “Of course, Captain. Should I wake the—"

         “Let’s hold off on that for now, all right? That’s enough.”

         “But what about our—”

         “I said, 'That’s enough,' Pilot!” Holly shouted, “When I want to hear from you, I’ll make myself loud and clear! Understood?!” 

         “Y-Yes, Captain!”

         Holly marched out of the med bay, leaving Asherah dumbfounded in her tempestuous wake. She stared at the med bay door long after it had closed. Her holographic form dissipated as she retreated back into the comforts of the ship’s systems. Through sensors and cameras, she watched the captain storm into her quarters with enough force to move mountains. The captain engaged the lock on her door– not that Asherah could enter as a hologram or peep through a camera without permission. No visualization was required to know what was happening within. Holly Baransky laid her state of mind bare in a frenzy of unintelligible grumbling, surprised cries, and anguished wails as everything she held dear crumbled to dust between her fingers. 

 

         Holly stared into space from the relative comfort of the captain’s chair in the command deck, all while swaddled in a navy blue bathrobe. The superheated gas of nearby supernova seemed to arc across the deck’s window like an unstoppable wave of confetti. The bright yellow, red, and blue light this spectacular display emitted was the only significant source of light in the room. Holly swirled a half-full glass of wine mindlessly in her grasp. All the food and fragile materials that had fallen apart over hundreds of millennia had to be replicated or reconstituted, and cheap chuck in a stem glass was no exception. 

         The captain wondered what Asherah was up to at that moment. She knew Pilots were technically ‘always around,’ but they could distance themselves whenever they wanted. ‘What the hell do Pilots do in their spare time?,’ she thought, ‘They seem to have a lot of it!’ Of course, she wouldn’t know unless she asked. Asherah had given her the space she demanded so loudly several days ago, but as Holly wound down from her destructive existential crisis, the familiar pangs of loneliness crept back into her mind.

         “Asherah? Are you there?” Holly called out. She smiled when she heard the Pilot’s feathery voice reply, echoing through the empty room via the ship’s internal comm.

         “I’m here, Captain,” Asherah said, “Is there anything you need?”

         “Care to join me for a while? I could really use the company.”

         Asherah’s holographic body materialized out of thin air, stepping into existence like a specter might walk through a wall. She appeared on the periphery of Holly’s vision, shuffling into view with noiseless steps.

         “Are you… feeling okay, Captain?”

         “Yes, I’m fine. Just… hold off on calling me ‘Captain’ for now, okay?”

         Asherah blinked rapidly in visible disbelief. She looked around the floor in front of her, unsure of what to say or do next.

         “Are you sure?”

         “Of course. You can call me ‘Holly’ if you want. Come over here.” Holly beckoned Asherah to her side with an enthusiastic sweep of her arm. Asherah followed the order with caution.

         “Okay… Holly.” The hologram walked to her side. 

         “Look at that supernova. Isn’t that spectacular?”

         Asherah nodded. “Mhm. It’s a Type II. It’s a miracle the star didn’t collapse sooner.”

         “How do you mean?”

         “Well, if it exploded any sooner than fifty-thousand years ago, that wave of colorful, superheated gas would have vaporized us into nothing.”

         Holly took a long sip of wine. “Okay.”

         The two sat in silence for a few long moments. Asherah put a holographic hand on Holly’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re doing okay? This doesn’t feel right.”

         Holly breathed a deep sigh and placed her free hand through Asherah’s non-corporeal digits. “I know, I think I’ve finally snapped. You heard what I was doing in my quarters, right? I wasn’t being quiet about tearing the place up.”

         Asherah nodded along. Holly continued.

         “Everything’s gone, Asherah. I had a family on Terra, but that’s a million-odd years in the past and too many light years behind us. Think about it, in the time that we’ve been drifting across open space, civilizations have risen and fallen– the human race has either killed itself off or evolved into something else entirely. The Nexus is long gone, that’s for sure. Where do we go from here? I just… I don’t fucking know anymore.” Holly gazed into the hypnotic pattern of interstellar gas before her, drinking in another long sip of wine.

         “I know what you mean,” Asherah said, “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. It’s a rabbit hole that only brings up more questions than answers. I don’t know what to do either.” She looked out the deck window for a small eternity, her hand still phasing into Holly’s. 

         “You were in the first pod I found.”

         Holly’s attention snapped to Asherah; her expression carrying concern.

         “What?”

         “With that wound in your head, I was surprised to see you all in one piece. I thought if you could pull through deep stasis, anyone could! I hoped everyone else would turn out fine, but… that hope was misplaced. The expedition crew—my stars, I had a responsibility to look after everyone and keep alive, and I failed! How could I face anyone, let alone my superior, with such a monumental loss?”

         “Asherah, please—”

         “I know how you feel, Holly. I get why you haven’t ordered the other four out of cryosleep, because I’ve been there! I understand it with every inch of this fucking ship! Do you know how long I waited to wake someone up? Two weeks! I-I was scared and lonely and I was so fucking angry with myself, I tried to find a way to end everything.”

Holly trembled at the thought. The implications of the core of a ship terminating itself dawned on her quickly.

         “It isn’t possible to do on my end, Nexus made sure of it… but I was digging through the neural link source code when I remembered something about you, Holly.”

         “...and that something was?”

         “You like to make funny voices when no one else is around.”

         A warm blush filled Holly’s cheeks as she snuck another sip of wine.

         “I don’t know why that thought came to me, but when it did, I realized that I liked having you around. The crew always treated me like one of their own, and even if most of them are gone now, I’ll be damned if I ever make you or anyone we have left feel alone while you’re with me. We have no one else but each other, Holly.”

         Holly put down her wine on the arm of her chair with small, decisive force. A rush of blood filled her head as she stood up from the captain’s chair– she grabbed the edge to steady herself. The captain stretched her arm muscles with a relieved groan. 

         “It’s always refreshing to hear things from a different perspective and I’m glad to have you here for it,” Holly said, “We should talk like this more often.”

         “Holly, I-I—” Asherah stammered, but Holly quickly interjected, her confident tone a welcome return.

         “You’re technically second-in-command, right? I should’ve been seeking your insight on this mission anyway. I’m a bit too proud, so I apologize. I don’t think it’s too late to start a rapport now… don’t you think so, Asherah?”

         Asherah’s holographic face blushed a deep shade of blue. She nodded with enthusiasm.

         “Yes, absolutely!” She chirped.

         “Glad to hear it.” Holly dusted her hands on her robe. She snatched her wine glass from the command chair and nodded to Asherah with knowing assurance.

         “I’m going to change into something more practical. In the meantime, prepare our remaining crew to leave stasis. Can you do that for me?”

         “Of course.”

         “I know it takes a couple hours to complete the process. Notify me a few minutes before that happens– I want us both to be there when they wake up. We’re all going to have a lot to talk about.” 

         “Will do.”

         “Thank you, Asherah. I’ll see you in a bit.”

         Asherah watched her walk away, each graceful step taken with determination. Holly stopped just short of the open door, turning back to witness her comrade.

         “Before I forget… Let’s keep everything professional when other people are in the room, alright?”

         She flashed a knowing smile to Asherah, which her hologram repaid in kind. Holly vacated the command deck and Asherah retracted her consciousness back into the central system, scattering her projection aside. 

         A wave of endorphins rushed through her system as she set herself to task. Several commands to Xenia rushed out of her mind in a flash. One by one, disparate areas throughout the ship whirred with life with her touch, working in tandem to prepare the Ramanujan for the few that remained. The captain had left the young Pilot with a lot of work, and Asherah was just getting started.