You Should Know This

"Sheila, can you hear me?"

My eyes flew open. I was...in a blue flight suit, strapped to a chair facing a bunch of instrument panels in a cramped compartment, two similarly clad people staring at me with expressions of concern. I was...in the small cockpit of...a strange airplane?...And weightless.

"Sheila, what's wrong?"

I stared. The one on my left had bushy brown hair, a name patch reading M. McAuliffe The one on the right, K. Kihoon, a man with tan skin, black hair and narrow eyes. "Where am I?"

The two exchanged horrified looks.

"Sheila, you're on the space shuttle. We just crossed the earth's atmosphere. Are you feeling okay?"

"I think I saw her hit her head," Kihoon said.

The color drained from McAuliffe's face. "Oh God."

A Japanese woman at a nearby console looked my way, also appearing to be concerned, but when our eyes met, she acted like her screen was really interesting all of a sudden.

Kihoon crossed his arms. "We haven't left earth's orbit. Should we...tell Mission Control to scrap the mission?"

McAuliffe gave me a questioning look, but ended up asking Kihoon the question. "This may be our only human manned mission to Mars."

"We all want to go to Mars, but do you want to put your life in the hands of someone suffering from amnesia? We're going to have to spend over a year together like this."

"I wish this happened at the launch pad. At least then we wouldn't have to think about the wasted fuel and equipment."

Kihoon looked indifferent. "It could be worse. We hitched a ride on a jet, at least. We're not talking about a pair of million pound booster rockets..."

Marlena blew a raspberry. "You know what? Maybe we're overreacting. Maybe she doesn't even have amnesia." She locked eyes with me. "Sheila, what do you remember?"

I furrowed my brow, thinking hard.

I saw...Kihoon getting on the communication system, telling NASA our plans to abort. We...got directions for a re-entry window, but something went wrong. The whole cockpit shook. Pieces broke off, and there was a fire.

So much fire.

I could feel my flesh melting away as the bulkheads blew away.

"Don't scrap the mission!" I blurted. "I'm fine!"

"Thank god!" Marlena sighed, but Kihoon didn't look so reassured. "You're certain."

I swallowed and gave him a nod.

The man held up a peace sign. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Two." He rubbed his broad, flat forehead like he had a headache coming on. "Do you...believe you are well enough to continue the mission?"

I gulped. "Yes."

May God help me, I thought.

"What is your designation for this mission?"

"My," I stammered. "What do you mean?"

"Your job title."

I got another flash of memory. I tell the man I don't know, the mission ends, we all die in a fireball. I had to answer differently.

I glanced at my badge. "I'm...the engineer."

Both astronauts looked visibly relieved, though I still detected hints of worried uncertainty.

"Is it okay if I lay down..." Then, upon realizing that up and down had no meaning, "...rest for awhile?"

No disagreement there. Both thought rest would do me a world of good.

Just pretense. Mostly. I unstrapped, began an exploration of the craft, hoping to recover some memory, some hint about who I was, where I came from.

Nothing familiar. For a vehicle designed to travel all the way to Mars from earth, I expected it to be larger, more spacious. Instead I found it cramped, and not even stocked properly for travel of that length of time. But how would I ask anyone without them turning the ship around and burning us all to a crisp?

The experience of weightlessness, having to push myself along through the air, the slight press from the shuttle's motion through space, just another strange thing that didn't jar any memory. I found an airlock, a dining area, a toilet that flushed by means of a vacuum, a couple rooms containing scientific equipment...

"Looking for crew quarters?" I turned and saw a plump (as much as the space program allowed anyway) African American woman with a Bob haircut, name reading R. White.

"Y-yes," I said. "I know this place isn't that big, I...I've got a slight motion sickness problem."

Ms. White seemed to find amusement in this, like she were surprised to find out I had any weakness. She led me to a small room, which I rightfully should have found on my own, with sleeping bags and storage pockets strapped to the walls. I knew I had to think carefully or she might report me to Mission Control as well.

My immediate thought was to forgo all questioning and grab a laptop, looking up everything there, but then I realized she'd still be alarmed by me grabbing the the wrong one, especially if it happened to be hers. I didn't even know which bedroll to climb into.

I placed a tentative hand on a random one. "So...you...think this thing will survive the trip to Mars?"

It seemed I'd asked a fair question. "It should. There's always a degree of failure expected in missions like this, but we've planned for every eventuality. The laser propulsion will definitely get us there a lot sooner than it would have taken in the old days."

I frowned. Laser propulsion wasn't the same as faster than light travel. "What about food and air?" Then, to make sure I didn't look ignorant, I added, "Do you think it will be enough?"

Ms. White looked thoughtful. "It should be. We don't have cryogenics like in the movies, but we'll be on a regimen of sleeping pills off and on for most the flight. Plus, once we dock with Stargate, we'll have enough food, air and water for the rest of the trip, especially once we thaw out the frozen algae slurry."

Stargate? Wasn't that a movie? It sounded crazy. But what if...And how would we live on sleeping pills like that without it causing a disaster? How would I ask about any of this without sounding brain damaged? No memories seemed to come to me about this moment, or the Stargate itself. 

"Do you think...sometime...that we'll be able to cross...a vast distance of space by using a black hole?" I hoped my line of questioning would be vague enough to cover both the potentially real and imaginary at the same time.

Ms. White (I couldn't think of a way to gracefully ask for her first name) smirked at the suggestion. "It sure would be nice, wouldn't it. We wouldn't nearly need half those supplies. But you know a black hole would actually crush everything to atoms, so unfortunately we're in this for the long haul."

"It's just a name," I muttered to myself. At least I knew something about how this would work. "I'm...still worried about the pills. What if we become addicted? What if there's an emergency and we're all stone asleep? "

"Relax, girl. These aren't the over the counters my mama used to take. Someone developed a special prescription just for the voyage, remember?"

"Yeah...I guess I just...find the idea a little sketchy, that's all." I examined the bed, trying to ascertain which one was mine, but, even with the belongings in the netted bags like a train car, I couldn't figure it out. "You... Want to trade beds?"

She looked at me like I were crazy. I mean, they were pretty much identical. "Anything ...wrong with the one you got?"

I contemplated telling a lie about having an unwanted arachnid cosmonaut in the bedroll, but I thought that might also tip my hand too much. "Never mind."

The woman strapped herself to a chair. "You all right? You look a little pale."

"I...think I'm recovering from the motion sickness."

"We got some medicine in the first aid kit for that."

"That's...okay." I fingered a sleeping bag, trying to gauge which one would bother her the most if I touched it. It didn't work. "We should put our names on our beds."

R. gave me a look like I said stuff like this a lot. "You can if you want, but we all picked our beds before liftoff. We're not in kindergarten (even though Kihoon might make you think otherwise). You can tell whose bed it is by what we've got in our cargo nets. Yee has the Snoopy stuff and the photo of the Shiba Inu, I've got pictures of my kids..." She sighed a little. "And Kihoon had that plush toy that looks like the facehugger thing from Aliens."

I counted the bedrolls. "Five people seems a little light for a mission to colonize Mars."

R. snickered. "Five people are plenty. Once we get the terraformer running, we can all start farming and making babies right away!"

I stared at her in disbelief. "I only saw one man onboard."

R. burst out laughing. It seemed she had played a joke at my expense. "Oh God! Nobody told me you were this hilarious! The look on your face - it was like you believed me!"

I forced a chuckle, which made her laugh more. 

I thought about trying a joke about the terraformer to see if we actually had one, but decided the other issue concerned me more. "Kihoon is so cute, though!"

R. shuddered at my 'joke.' "Ugh! Seriously?" My phony mirth, I guess, hadn't been convincing enough. "Look, uh, if you wanna hook up back on earth, that's your business, but I'd, uh, put it in cold storage for right now. Keep it professional, girl!" She cast a suspicious glance at the hatchway, dropping her voice to a whisper. "Honestly, though, I think you can do much better. I've heard rumors- the man is a weirdo!"

By process of elimination, I found my bed, adjusted the straps on the sleeping bag.

"Tired already? The mission just started."

I sighed. "I.. Stayed up kinda late last night."

R. nodded. "Pre-flight jitters. Guess I don't blame you, considering what happened last mission."

My eyes widened. What happened last mission? Was I...no, I wouldn't have lived through the carnage I saw in that...vision. At any rate, I knew I couldn't get away with asking questions about it, and it wasn't as important as, say, remembering to be an engineer.

...I couldn't sleep. I kept staring at the wall.

And then I got another memory flash. 

A fire. Not in the cockpit this time. 

Somehow a microwave had burst into flame, the compartments filling with black smoke, oxygen scrubbers fighting to control the fumes. Alarms sounded, huge amounts of precious air going to waste. We tried to close off the room, but something short circuited and we had a blackout.

I hurriedly crawled out of the sleeping bag. At least I'd familiarized myself with the place enough to know where the dining area was.

I examined the microwave, searching all around for tools, and the manual I'd seen burning to ash and melted plastic in my vision. The manual I did find clipped to the wall, but...

Kihoon leaned through the hatchway. "Hungry already?"

I scowled. "I...just...wanted to check this out and make sure it's functioning properly."

"There are all beef hot dogs in the freezer."

"I...thought I saw something flickering. I...don't think microwaving anything will show me the problem."

He looked skeptical. "They should have checked all of that ten times on the ground." Still, he brought me a tool kit. 

I opened the panels on and around the device, but didn't know what the hell any of the stuff was underneath. I kept staring at the book and the wires.

"You sure it's blinking? It looks okay to me."

"Yeah, yeah." I could tell he was having doubts about me. I guess I took too long or something, and he was going to continue literally hovering over my shoulder until I said something.  "Hey, could you do me a favor and check the terraformer? I heard it making a strange chirping noise."

The man turned like he intended to do just that, but then chortled. "She makes jokes!"

It seemed the comment disarmed him, for next I heard him say, "I guess I'll leave you to it, then."

Lucky for me, the manual had pictures. 

It took me forever, and I nearly took the whole thing apart, but I at last figured out that one of the wires looked a tiny bit frayed. Hidden behind another piece of the mechanism, you never would have found it, had you not known where to look. And, by chance, there did happen to be flammable substances right next to it.

I should have been comforted, discovering I wasn't crazy, but knowing that my visions were true, it sent an icy shiver down my back.

"Sheila!" Marlena cried as she entered the compartment. "What's going on here? Kihoon says he saw you taking apart the whole micro-" 

She froze when she saw the mess. "That microwave was checked before liftoff."

I held up the frayed wire. "The A-B converter cable was damaged."

That shut her up. "...Forgive me, he just said you'd been in here a long time. Glad to know you're feeling like yourself again."

"Yeah...good way to kill time, right?"

"It's great that one of us thinks so."

It did kill a lot of time, especially figuring out where to put all the cords and putting it all back together. Not the greatest repair job in the universe, I ended up with a few bolts that didn't belong anywhere, and a panel that didn't fit all the way anymore, but I didn't think any of these mistakes would cause a fire, not according to the manual.

"You done with that yet?" R. asked me. "We're about to dock with Stargate."

I followed her to the cockpit, watching as Yee and Marlena steered us toward a strange object.

I'd compare the thing to a saddle, sort of a letter U with saddlebag like modules on either side, the end facing us terminating with rockets and rocket like attachments.

Kihoon snuck up behind Yee, putting the bendy legs of his plush Alien toy on her shoulder.

The woman, being a severe, no nonsense type of person, didn't smile at all, just batted it away. "Stop."

Marlena got out of her seat. "Here. Make yourself useful, Kihoon. Help us navigate into that thing."

"Yes, ma'am." Kihoon left his toy floating in the air, taking Marlena's place.   

Mature or not, he knew when to stop playing. Our pilots slowly navigated us under the arch (if you viewed the object from that angle), doing a delicate maneuver similar to midair refueling with a set of clamps.

Kihoon swore as he missed a target and the whole shuttle trembled, earthquake like. A little more swearing, and he had us mostly there, but an alarm told us mostly didn't cut it. "Sheila, locking posts 13 through 16 aren't connecting. We need you to go out there and fix whatever is wrong with them."

I paled. "Please tell me you're joking."

His facial expression was dead serious. "You're the engineer."

"I...I'm going to need someone to help me."

"We'll maintain constant radio contact."

"No, I mean..."

"Jeezus," Marlena groaned. "We should have turned back when we had the chance."

Kihoon seemed more optimistic about it. "I think she's just nervous. Maybe it would help to have someone go with her."

It was a good thing she did. I didn't know how to prepare a space suit and all its associated equipment for a space walk. Once I had everything together, she looked as horrified as I felt.

My first space walk...I think. In an instant I went from claustrophobia to agoraphobia. The stars around our tiny shuttle went on forever, and I had the sudden irrational fear of endlessly falling through them. Using tethers and cables, we walked our way to the problematic clamps, taking careful stock of the situation. 

One of the clamps had been broken off from the impact of our shuttle, the other knocked crooked a little. Since hammering in space is a little challenging, we used an automatic device to straighten the crooked one. The broken one, though, I had no idea how to fix.

"Sheila..." my companion prompted impatiently.

"I'm thinking."

"What's there to think about? Just activate the bypass and hook up the cables."

"Oh. Sorry."

And then things got worse. "Marlena," I heard Kihoon say over the radio. "I just got a message from mission control. Our engineer's paperwork has been doctored."

I tensed up, eyes bugging out, rabbit like. Marlena, also appearing I'll at ease, retreated from me.

"What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Her dossier. The whole thing. It's fake."

"Fake." She looked at like this explained so much. And then realization dawned on her: "Kihoon, her helmet radio was on!"

"Shit."

They changed the frequency, but she'd taught me how to change it at the airlock.

"Honestly," the man continued. "I don't know how she got in the program to begin with. Get this: it says that her birth date is twenty years after today's date!" 

Marlena's gaze narrowed. Since it was by now obvious that I'd heard everything, she kept broadcasting at the same channel, turning her helmet to face mine. "When we get done here, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do."

Still, the woman walked me through the whole process of bypass and clamping the ship to Stargate. I discovered the thing had rocket boosters and its own laser propulsion, set up by me on the previous mission. It opened up several more questions I didn't have the answers to.

Something hit the faceplate of my helmet, space debris, softball sized meteoroid or a piece of our ship, I don't know. All I know was I had glass stuck in my eyes, then my air supply blasting out into the void.

I think my suit ruptured too, for the jets of air threw me away from the ship.

I...hit something...My tether broke...I spiraled off into the void, cold seeping into every pore of my body, limbs becoming swollen and immobile, nerves deadening.

Everything went dark.

"Sheila, can you hear me?"

My eyes flew open. I was...in a blue flight suit, strapped to a chair facing a bunch of instrument panels in a cramped compartment, two similarly clad people staring at me with expressions of concern. I was...in the small cockpit of...a strange airplane?...And weightless.