Light Pollution

It’s been forty years since my last shipmate died. I know, because I keep track by etching a line into the metal wall. Or, rather, I estimate, because the days tend to blur together. It’s always dark outside, unless the ship passes by a star. For a couple of hours, I soak up the precious rays. When no star is in sight, I have D-vitamin supplements. They will eventually run out, but they don’t disappear that quickly now that only one of us is left.

I was born on this ship. The first of us who had never known Earth. Once upon a time, we were over fifty people here. Engineers, cooks, navigators, gardeners, caretakers, builders. We were pioneers, my father told me, his eyes crinkled with pride. A colony on Mars! He and my mother taught me all I needed to know of the planet I would never see. Of the wars, the famines, the droughts. We were humankind’s last hope. When we made contact on Mars, we would report back to the space center and a mass exodus would follow. While we waited, we would build a new city. Start a new life.

I have a semi-daily routine. I sleep in different rooms, different beds, so I won’t go insane with the sameness of it all. All clocks on board stopped ticking years ago, so I can’t say I know when I go to bed and when I get up. The batteries have died, but I don’t know how to change them. I have my breakfast, a freeze-dried packet of nutrients. It’ll last me the rest of the day. Then I’ll count them, calculate how many years I have left until I’ll starve. We had a garden on board, to purify the air and to cultivate some greens, but I accidentally killed the plants. It’s not my fault, no one taught me these things before they all died. 

I shuffle around the different rooms. They’re more like small apartments, rather than just bedrooms. A lot of families went on Gaia’s maiden voyage. My parents were only children themselves when the journey began. I have gone through every inch of these rooms over the years, every piece of paper, every scrap. Combined, all these families owned and brought enough books to fill a library, but forty years is a long time. And you read fast, when you have nothing else to do. At least now I know all there is to know about eels.

Nowadays, the air smells of nothing. It was worse back when everyone was dying. I was twelve, old enough to survive but too young to live. No one knew why the plague didn’t affect me. Some astronauts - that means “star sailor”, mom told me - returned to the ship after a recon mission. It was routine, no more noteworthy than coming home from your regular nine to five job (or so I was told). But only hours after, the spores began to sprout. We found them first in one of the astronauts’ helmets, and he was the first to go. The spores thickened in his throat, plugged his nose. He died, not even able to gasp for air. And after that, it kept spreading. Within the week, everyone had succumbed. Except for me. 

It took months for the bodies to decompose. I still shudder when I think of the stench. The spores encased their corpses, fed on them, and once it all was consumed they died. To this day, I don’t know why I was spared. Perhaps being born on the ship did something to me, physically. Maybe I am a new species. I gathered all the bones, some still slick with blood, and threw them into one of the many rooms of the ship. It is the only room I never sleep in. There was nothing else for me to do. I couldn’t very well dispose of them. After that, I did all I could to find help. I went to the captain’s room, looking for any kind of instructions. Thankfully, the ship travelled on auto-pilot, so at least I never had to navigate by myself. I did find a communication line to the center back on earth, but no one ever answered me. I tried contacting them several times, over several years. The last time, I did hear something. Someone breathing. And then the line disconnected. 

A few days ago, there was a power outage and I was certain I would die. The oxygen generator will only function on battery power for so long. There are no natural light sources here, so when the power died I couldn’t see an inch in front of my face. So I remained seated on the bed and waited. For light, or for death. But after only a few minutes the lamps flickered on, and I heard the familiar humming of the generator. But some things were not the same. Lately, after the outage, I have noticed things moving around when I’m not looking. I leave a book in room 678, and I find it in 321. The nutrient packets disappear faster than I go through them. And there are etchings above each door. An X. There’s a new one every night, I spend my days running through the corridors until I find the latest addition. It is never above the door of the room I’ve spent the night in, but for some reason I cannot bring myself to sleep in a room already marked. Sooner or later, I will run out of blank rooms and only the grave room will remain. I don’t know what frightens me most, the idea of spending a night with all those bones, or being caught by whatever is pursuing me. One time, drunk on bravery, I tried calling out for it. My voice was thin and cracked after years of silence, but still I shouted with all my might. “Who’s there?”

 No one answered.

I was born on this ship. I shall probably die here.