Shockwave

Rising from the depths of sleep feels like swimming in syrup. Part of her doesn’t want to, knows that nothing good is waiting. Can’t be helped, though. Iron hooks drag her mind up, out of the psychedelic subconscious, into colourless reality. She finds herself back in her body, and it’s…it’s cold. Her heartbeat picks up, her breathing quickens. What is…is she lying on the floor? Floor of where? Cold and hard. Metal. Without even realising that she’s doing this, she groans, blinks, opens her eyes with great effort, and…

…and nothing.

It’s dark – not like it used to be in those old movies, where people run through the forest in the dead of night and don’t crash face-first into a tree. No, this here? Darkness. The real thing. Like drowning in ink.

She can’t see her hands as she sits up and holds them right in front of her eyes. Her body is sore. Too much exercise? A cold? Probably from falling down. Her mouth is dry and cottony. Her heart drums. Sweat breaks out on her forehead and nose. Her hands are clammy. No, no, no. She’s not going to panic. It never helps. After taking a few tremulous breaths, she examines her head, her face, throat, neck, all of it down to her toes. Nothing is broken. There’s no sudden pain flaring up. Good, good. Not hurt.

Where is she?

The blank her brain is drawing is weirder than the circumstances themselves.

Repeating the mantra over and over – don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic – she feels around, finds a wall, laboriously rises to her feet. Dang, her legs are almost too rubbery for government work. What the hell happened here?

Breathing in a lungful of the cool, disinfectant-scented air, she puts one foot before the other, advances with great care. Is this a corridor? Why aren’t there any windows? Where’s the door? Where-

Something comes to mind, the memory of light – warm, yellow, flickering. A candle, keeping the darkness at bay inside its tiny radius. There’s a voice, too…no, more akin to a whisper. “You decide,” it tells her. “The choice is yours.”

What choice? Who’s saying this? This is so maddening! She feels like punching the wall, breaking something, screaming into the void, tearing-

The ground and the walls tremble, accompanied by a deep rumbling sound.

She nearly loses her footing but manages to stay up.

Another tremble. Another rumble.

Knowledge rushes back – not by choice, but because reality can’t be escaped for long. This is a ship, a black bullet cutting through the void on its journey to a new world – their world. Those creatures. The world they possess but humanity must have.

“We must,” says a voice in her mind.

This one she recognises.

It’s the Supreme One, making a speech about manifest destiny or some such. “That world is beautiful and full of promise. Those creatures are undeserving. We must ensure peace and prosperity for everyone.”

Dear God.

By the skin of her teeth, she manages not to break into a run. She’s been on this vessel for months, ignoring the nagging doubts, doing her job with gritted teeth and dogged determination. Tremble. Rumble. This time, it’s stronger. With a cry, she goes down, manages to shield her face with her arms. As her body connects with the floor, the pain of it pushes all air from her lungs. This isn’t the time to falter, though. Before the attack began, she was doing something, going somewhere.

Where, though? Forward? Backward?

Her mother used to say that even if one turns back, one is still going forward. That’s one way to look at life.

Where is everyone else? Battle stations? Dead? Locked in their quarters? Stuck in the darkness? Have all the other ships in the convoy suffered the same fate?

Something tells her that’s not the case. It’s that low voice again. The whisper.

As she tries to find the next hatch – and oh, how humbling it is for the mighty human to be helpless like this – she thinks of that candle again. It’s barely more than a stub, red, its flame flickering high. The rest of this mental space is dark – no surprises there. She-

Ah, there it is! She doesn’t need light to turn the hatch’s manual release. Takes all her strength to do it, and once the tell-tale hydraulic hiss hits her ears, she’s covered in sweat. Has this thing not been used ever since the ship’s systems were tested back on Earth? No light on the other side, either, or people, but there are sparks flying through the blackness – bright enough to make her squint. Must be a fried control panel. There’ll be a maintenance locker next to it, a flashlight inside. With all the care in the universe, she dodges the rain of sparks and finds the locker. Yup, flashlight. Great. Works, too. The radiance is so overwhelming, it sears into her eyes.

It was almost better before, with nothing but the image of that candle in her thoughts.

You decide. The choice is yours.

She shakes her head, blinks a few times, draws a shaky breath, and heads forward. There should be a map at the end of the corridor. Were they hit by an EMP? No. No, the artificial gravity would have been knocked out by that. They are still under attack, so it can’t have happened long ago. The air’s cold, though, colder than it should be. Has life support been disabled?

Her heartbeat picks up the pace. Acid sloshes in her stomach. As she finds the map and traces her fingers along its surface, she notices that her hands are shaking. There’s a sour taste in her mouth.

Even if you turn back, you’re still going forward.

Dear Lord, what wouldn’t she give to be back on Earth, with her mother. She can see her sunny smile, smell her lavender perfume. Mum always hangs the laundry outside to dry in the sun. The clothes smell better than way, apparently. Sun-drenched, Mum calls this.

The tip of her nose tickles. Her vision grows blurry. She sniffles but resists the urge to sink down to the floor and give in. No. This is her choice as well.

That whisper, though. The candle. The light.

She knows she must decide whether to go forward or to collapse. The latter has its appeal. Maybe the memories won’t come back. Maybe she can just fall asleep, escape, pretend. Too easy, though. Mustn’t allow herself the path of least resistance. Why, though? It’s forever been her modus operandi.

Her choice. Her decision. Her choice. Her decision. Like a heartbeat. Like a living pulse.

Does anyone still have that?

Yet again, the ship shakes. The rumbling sound is joined by an unhealthy-sounding creak.

Why isn’t she surprised? Her heart is racing, her innards in knots, her skin covered in cold sweat. Surprise, though? No. Why should she be?

Humans have started this.

They are only reacting.

The whole deal never sat well with her, and yet, here she is. All this time, she tried to convince herself that she never had a choice, that she’s not responsible, that she’s a nobody who could never change anything. As she climbs the maintenance shaft ladder, flashlight between her teeth, she braces herself as the ship rocks and groans.

None of them should be here. It’s wrong. It’s always been wrong. Oh, but isn’t it hard, to go somewhere else when they’ve been stuck in this loop for so long?

The thin light beam bounces off the metal walls. It’s barely enough for her to see the hatch at the bridge level. As she opens it, she nearly drops the flashlight. Bile shoots down her throat. She yelps with the flashlight in her mouth as one of her fingernails breaks. Warm stickiness runs down the back of her hand. Better not to look at it.

Isn’t that her modus operandi, too?

Her decision. Her choice.

On this deck, the damage is worse. More panels are giving off sparks. Parts of the ceiling have buckled, bits and shards are on the floor. There’s a lump right in…oh. Oh no. It’s a person. She kneels down. It’s one of the officers. No pulse. God. She scrambles back up, lights ahead. The beam flickers because she can’t keep her hands steady. Her heart is thundering. At this point, she’s panting. Her steps are clumsy because her legs feel like lead.

Why can’t the power come back on? She’d even make do with that ghastly red emergency light. There’s only the feeble beam of her flashlight and the occasional sparks shower. Shadows and black ink pools gather, growing in the rhythm of the shocks rocking this fragile metal can. What is it that’s so threatening about darkness? So…unsettling?

It’s the inherent absence of light.

How can anyone take those fabled steps forward if they can’t see?

How to make any choice, to feel dominant and in control, to feel civilised? Losing light makes the house of cards come tumbling down. The illusion is lost. This is it, humanity reduced to its bare bones.

The shocks are coming closer. The metal around her is groaning.

Her vision grows blurry again. She sniffles, almost starts sobbing. Her throat burns from the suppression effort.

Is this darkness her choice, too?

Turning back doesn’t mean going backward. Maybe it’s a question of perspective.

Before her mind’s eye, the candle burns, and she is safe within its little island of sanity.

You decide. The choice is yours.

Does it matter that she doesn’t know whose voice it is? Instead of losing herself in pointless ruminations, she closes her eyes, from the darkness beyond to the images within, away from the rumblings and shrieking and toward the deep, steady pounding of her heart. When she opens her eyes, she is no longer battling tears, darkness, anything. Sure-footed despite the shockwaves thrashing her spacecraft, she steps onto the bridge.

There is commotion despite the fact that without power, nothing can be done to fight the attack.

Nobody notices her, the little peon, the follower, the nobody. They are hanging onto their seats, marching from A to B as if there were any point in clinging to this failed concept, this plan everyone’s been living by as if it couldn’t be ripped from them like a rug being pulled from underneath their feet.

They are stuck, incapable of comprehending, staring with disbelief at the unravelling fabric of their reality.

Even turning back means going forward. That, too, is a choice.

She stands there, hands by her sides, a smile on her face, and watches the growing light of the projectile racing toward them.

It’s time to let go.