We managed to keep the stench of the decaying bodies contained for three days. Or so our best estimate was. The days, I mean. You could keep track of seconds, or minutes, or even hours. But days, weeks and months were different. You’d stare at the digital calendar and know the whole amount of time passed. How could you not? Yet some filter, some great fog, would parse the knowledge before it reached the consciousness and you felt as though extrapolating the time further than hours was… elusive.

I blame nature, frankly. Owls, wolves, cats, even a plethora of insects; do you know what they have in common? Night vision. And yet when my ancestors slept within the dark nights of the African Plain no concept of fire even entered into our collective ignorance. What did nature give us to identify predators? Pattern Recognition. The sight for shapely shadows of killers in the night. Like constellations, in that evolutionary moment and henceforth, we relied on non-existent forms of pattern to mark our meaning. Sunrise and sunset. Store open and bar close. Clock in and clock out. Unfortunately none of these things were within conception's reach on the Starship Conroy.

The ship had sailed beyond the reach of the solar system and was on its five thousand one hundred and tenth hour. It was crewed by only two souls for seventy two hours and change. Everyone else was dead. Thus the wafting rot that graced my nose in the “and change” portion of the seventy two hours. The Engineer, Helen Sephan, I had not seen in at least twelve hours.

“Waste of oxygen,” was the last thing she said to me before running away.

This was in an assumed protest to my idea of ejecting the cadavers from the air lock. I knew, as I watched her flee, that I would see her again. A starship was big, but not infinite. My assumption was made correct as I felt the sharp steel of her wrench poke at the back of my neck; the handle filed to a point.

“The smell. It could make us sick,” she said.

“That’s what I tried to tell you,” I responded.

“But the airlock would-”.

“Be a waste of oxygen,” I cut in.

Her breathing was rapid and then altogether too extended between words. Hypoxia. I felt it as well although I was lucky, or aware, enough to stay where the oxygen vents still pumped. She pressed the honed tip of the wrench harder into my nape.

“We need to fix the Injector Body. People rely on us. Get up,” she beckoned me.

I sat still in my spot at the main computer terminal. “Do you remember anything, Helen?”.

“It would be helpful if you… helped,” Helen spoke, a dizziness in her words. “But I don’t need you. If you don’t come with me… waste of oxygen…”.

“You won’t do it,” I said.

Almost certain, but not entirely, of my estimation a small part of me waited for the cold stab of her weapon. It did not come. She dug deeper into my flesh, faltered, and dropped the wrench. The heat regulators were destroyed with everything else and the minute amounts of oxygen blew very frigid. It made the small trail of hot blood from the nick she gave me all the more obvious in its presence. A hard thud on the steel ground notified me of her collapse to her knees.

Turning around I saw not a woman, not an Engineer, not even a human but rather a husk. Her skin blued around the neck and hands and her eyes were bloodshot with any assortment of diagnoses. A part of me became what the corpses, when still animate, might have become. Or always were. I thought of killing her. Perhaps out of mercy or perhaps out of just finishing the deed time sought to extend. But I didn’t. I was the same as her.

Banishing the thought immediately I reached out my hand to her which she accepted and stood to her feet. She was getting better, more air to breathe than where she was hiding. But better does not mean sound.

“I- I- I’m so-” she started.

“It’s okay,” I interrupted.

“We need to check… the Injector Body,” she spoke, fighting through her delusion.

I felt pity for her and wondered if she felt the same for me. Wondered if I was the one going mad and she on the level. Madness seemed like going where she requested. I accepted anyway.

Sparks from a frayed wall wire sprinkled with muted smolders onto the metal paneled floors as Helen and I made our way further “south” into the Conroy. Trying to pass the time before the inevitable I counted the original crew in my head. Six in total. Captain Longstreth, Officer Haden, Helmsman Goya, Commswoman Montoya.

Haden died in the explosion. Montoya expired from battle wounds in the med-bay. The Captain and Goya were MIA until about ten minutes into Helen’s mission. Too busy with her to watch my footing I felt a hard thump on my boots before almost tripping on to the bodies. When I regained balance I saw Helen already gazing down at them. Analysis revealed to me the entry points of makeshift shanks and bruises around the larynx. It was where it all ended.

We, Helen and I, had watched Longstreth batter Montoya in the main chamber of the ship until the Commswoman’s speech was nothing but shattered teeth. I tried the best I could to save her after Goya chased the Captain off. I made an educated inference of the two’s fate, but the sight of this final resting place confirmed my thoughts.

“We can still do this. You and me,” Helen shuttered, kneeling down to her crewmates and giving them a final touch.

“Of course Helen… Of course we can…” I said back.

Before we headed off again another ping of evil intent rang within me. Maybe it was better that they were dead. Perhaps Montoya, no matter how brutal a way to exit, was favored by fate. Haden’s quick death was tearing but it was also just that. Quick. Was life so precious as to ignore an excuse from suffering? I supposed that would be answered as Helen whispered a prayer and continued forward.

Our progress was halted, as I and the fact we were not victims of the vacuum of space predicted, by a mountainous sealed door across the walkway to the Injector Body of the engine. 

“What?” Helen muttered.

“Your color is looking better, Helen. Try to remember,” I begged of her, hoping the sight of the door would revamp her scattered memory.

Her gaze told me it did. The entire engine was taken in the explosion. Seven hundred and thirty hours ago. Her eyes widened and then shrunk, her face twitched with a flood of comprehension, her breath went still. An understanding of every cruelty of the universe and every reality of her fate. My fate. We were not leaving. At that moment she slumped into me, no tears could signify her despair. I was never good at talking. That was the first time I felt as though it was a benefit.

Ordering the computer to shut down all non essential functions and seal us within the main chamber, I watched Helen come back to reality and yet grow more distant. The final door clicked and sealed us into place. For all humanity’s achievement its panels and computers and diodes would decorate our tomb. There was nothing else to do but wait. Five hundred and twenty eight hours of oxygen. Five hundred and twenty eight hours of sedentary existence. To extrapolate if further would be elusive. I took a seat next to Helen.

“Y-you don’t think we’ll do the same thing as them? Do you?” she asked, scared.

“No. Not likely,” I tried to comfort her.

“How do you know? How did you know I wouldn’t kill you before?” the Engineer inquired.

“We’re vermin. We survive until the end,”.

“Fuck you,”.

I chuckled. “It may be an over judgment. But it still holds similarity,”.

“What about them?”.

“Them?”.

“Earth. The Ordo event. Without us they’ll all die…” Helen sulked.

“Yeah. They will,”.

“That doesn’t bother you?”.

“It does. But it’s also… pattern. The unlucky, well, whatever they are will die first. Then the brutal will take care of each other. Then the vermin. The markers of finality. Then: nothing,”.

She sat with this awhile in silence, then an almost macabre smile spread across her face as she slightly turned towards me.

“We’re not alone,” she said.

“Huh?” I was bemused.

“Then we’re not alone. Maybe two folks back home are doing the same,”.

“Maybe. Maybe,”.

It wasn’t that others were suffering that made her and I content with fate. It was that we weren’t alone in sharing it. It was that so long as the sun didn’t rise or set for them it didn’t for us. It was the march of time with company that turned the elusive into the unnecessary. And as the Earth spun round the sun, as the Conroy floated through the void, and as the finite borders of space expanded infinitely the one comforting thought was this: 

Who could tell the difference?