CALYPSO

Content Warning: Brief scenes of violence

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"Alright Ahsha, make sure not to tear the hinges off that old bird when you dock."

"Yes, Commander. Proceeding with Docking Ordinance. Time to connection: 3 minutes, 43 seconds."

Otto Tarrat snuck open the polarized visor of the eastern window, letting light and heat bathe the cramped interior of the L.V.D.C Ahsha. The vivid, logic-defying light bent and distorted, warping and radiating outward - but never inward. The core of the light was infinitely, impossibly black. He’d never seen anything like it. 

And then he saw the second one. Like a reflection, the two cosmic entities danced in the abyss of space.

Otto fished in his pocket for a marker. His fingers caught on something thin and smooth and he tugged a playing card out from his pocket. ‘LET HIM WIN’ had been scrawled on it with black marker. Where had he gotten that?

Otto pushed the card back into his pocket and retrieved the marker. He crossed an X onto the glass of the window, marking the spot where he would cross the threshold of the event horizon. 

How fascinating science was. How imbalanced it was. They could send him in a ship across the far-reaches of space but, they couldn’t untangle the tumor that wound its way around his brain stem. 

Far off against the bright horizon, a small silhouette drifted across the golden striations, it was roughly the size of Otto’s L.V.D.C. - perhaps an asteroid or some other debris.

Something beeped on the other side of the cabin, an alert on the spatial cartography relay. Otto's eyes flitted across the words, brow scrunching as he made it to the end.

“Ahsha, do we have a diagnostic report for all spatial telemetry logs?”

“Running diagnostics for spatial telemetries. What seems to be the issue, Commander?”

Otto tapped on the screen with a long fingernail. An oblong green oval flickered back from the craft’s recorded path log - thousands of green strands with minimal variance.

“Seems like we’re recording a large number of pathing errors. Care to confirm?”

“Logs show no sign of error outside of a small gravitational anomaly 1.0758e-6 astronomical units behind us.”

Otto frowned at his instruments. Being this close to a supermassive black hole - sorry, two supermassive black holes — was bound to jank up his measurements. At least, that’s what he told himself. As long as it wasn’t his own mind playing tricks.

With a flick of a thick terminal switch, Otto flipped the relay off and then started it back up again. The terminal flickered and then resumed its telemetry, this time showing only their current path. Otto burbled a quick grunt of satisfaction. Off and on always did the trick.

A loud hissing sound permeated the cabin, followed by a series of loud clunks. 

“Docking Ordinance complete. Welcome to the E.H.O.S. Calypso, Commander. Enjoy your reprieve. We depart for the Event Horizon in 14 hours.”

“There’ll be hell to pay if we’re late, you think?”

“You know I’m not good with jokes, Commander. 14 hours.”

“14 hours.” Otto sighed, hitting the large panel on the side of the octagonal hatch that connected the Ahsha and the Calypso.

One short burst of decompression later, the artificial gravity kicked in and the hatch swung open into the Event Horizon Orbital Station. Otto would sleep, eat his last meal, and then shoot himself into Paradoxus B, the larger of the two supermassive black holes.

The sound of riffling cards echoing from the central mess deck sent cold shivers down Otto’s spine. The Calypso was an unmanned station, the last checkpoint in a ten-thousand lightyear string of one-way missions of which Otto was the first. Each station was remotely positioned after hundreds of years of planning and preparation, stocked with automated food generation and supplies, but not stocked with people.

An old man, skin freckled and ripened with time shuffled a weary, scarred deck of cards. 

“Well, I’ll be damned. Right on time,” he announced, eyes sparkling. He dealt two cards to the empty seat across from him. 

Otto looked this way and that. The station was clean but lived in. Packets of dehydrated meals lay in neat piles, organized in some sort of eating order.

“Help yourself to whatever you want,” the old man said, peeking at his own cards and giving a singular breathy chuckle. “Though apparently we ran out of Tikka Masala quite a bit ago.”

“That’s a shame,” Otto replied uneasily. Those were his favorite. He flipped through the reflective packets for a beat before setting them all to the side. “I’m sorry - who are you?”

The old man just tapped at the face-down cards across from him. “I’ve been waiting a long time, come sit.”

Otto’s mouth hung open and he had half a mind to run back to Ahsha and order a psychosis exam. Though, if it said he was crazy then what difference would it make? He’d still see the old man. He’d still have the tumor in his head.

The seat across from the old man was cold. He peeked at his cards again. Otto flickered a glance to the two bright-red playing cards on the table in front of him. His heart pulsed in his chest.

“Well?” the old man raised a bushy brow. “What are you going to do?”

Otto bent his cards upward. A jack of hearts and a ten of clubs. “I’ll hold tight.”

The old man clicked his tongue. “You sure?”

“We take the hand we’re dealt, don’t you think?” 

“And if there’s a chance at something better?”

“Then there’s a chance of something worse,” Otto said, finger tracing circles on the back of his top card.

“I suppose it makes sense you’d think that way,” the old man sighed, “You always assumed the worst.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What were the odds? It’s been so long I’ve forgotten.” The old man tapped at the side of his head.

Otto frowned. “I’m sorry, have we met before?”

The old man gave a wry laugh and looked out one of the portholes toward the Paradoxus twins. “I have absolutely no idea how to answer that question.”

Otto watched the old man flip his cards, an ace of hearts and an eight of spades. 

“Lucky you,” the old man said, eyes flicking from Otto’s face to the hallway back to the L.V.D.C. Ahsha.

“Do I get something for winning?” Otto asked.

“Well I don’t have much in the way of prizes,” the old man said, edging off the chair and to his feet.

“I just want the truth. Who are you?”

The old man took a deep, hopeful breath. “Bob Samas.”

The deep unsettling feeling of remembering something you had long forgotten pooled in Otto’s stomach. He knew that name from somewhere. From the astronaut support group. From the announcement. From the launch. From the logs. He was supposed to have a co-pilot on the Ahsha, one that—like Otto—was okay with a one-way trip.

“I know this seems like a lot, Otto,” Bob muttered, holding a wrinkled hand out. “It always does, but you need to trust me. There’s videos you can watch.”

“This is a hallucination.” Otto said, turning from the chair and stepping away.

“It’s not, bud. It’s real,” Bob worked his way forward. “We have a deal, you and I. We take turns on the Ahsha.”

Otto spat with laughter. “Oh yeah? We take turns firing ourselves into oblivion, do we?”

“I should be dead, Otto. Look at me.” Bob shuffled his way around the table. “My cancer should’ve ravaged my lungs, my heart, my brain, by now. But here I am. When it's my turn to come back, you’re here. We play cards and we tell each other the story and we switch.”

“You’re crazy—I’m crazy.” Otto backed down toward the departure bay. “I need to go before I can’t think straight. I need to make sure the data gets sent.”

“No!” Bob shouted, hurrying to grab onto Otto’s suit. “You can’t! We take turns! It’s the only way it works!”

“Get off me!” Otto shoved the old man back into the mess table, scattering cards across the floor.

“Our odds aren’t the same here! Something about this place helps! We can wait it out! Find a way back!” Bob pleaded and flung himself back onto Otto, “Just let me go!” 

“I’m not staying here to die!”

“See? See! That’s it! We don’t want to die after all, Otto! We did this because there was no other option. This is the other option! But it’s my turn! You wait here and I’ll come back this time!”

The two scrambled toward the hatch to the L.V.D.C, writhing and grappling, and shouting.

“You sound insane! I’m going to finish my mission,” Otto yelled, prying at Bob’s fingers. “I’m not staying here to die a miserable death. I’m not going to let an aneurysm kill me! I’m going to steer that ship into the black hole and do what I came here to do. Die an astronaut.”

Bob struggled with something in his pocket, flailing as Otto stomped his way toward the hatch door.

Just as he made it to the precipice a hot flash of pain roared from Otto’s leg. He crashed to the floor, bright blood seeping from where a screwdriver had been stabbed into his calf. 

Otto howled as Bob crawled through the octagonal hatch. A blast of air rattled through the Calypso as the hatch to the Ashsa sealed shut. Bloodied hands smeared against the hatch window as Otto threw himself at the door.

“I’m sorry, Otto,” Bob yelled, his voice muffled and distant. “When I’m back you’ll understand. Please make me believe. You were always more persuasive than I am.”

Otto screamed with rage and fear, spit and blood mixing on the window. He beat at the hatch, tried to break the window with the screwdriver.

“I’m sorry. But this is for both of us. We’ll make it out of here. Watch the logs.” 

Otto couldn’t hear him now. He could just see the motion of his lips as the L.V.D.C. Ahsha’s controls were overridden. It drifted off into the blackness of space - and then descended toward the event horizon of Paradoxus B.

The years were not kind to Otto.

The isolation was enough to drive himself mad, if his tumor wasn’t doing that already. He had found logs on the archive terminal. Videos—or hallucinations—of himself. He had said he was scared to die. He had abandoned Bob - left him to drift into Paradoxus himself.

Otto watched himself grow old over those logs and in the mirrors of the station. He had watched himself ramble about a loop in time and space. A cycle that could keep them alive. A trade that made them immortal. All you had to do was convince the other. 

Otto knew the tumor had taken him. His mind if not his body. Nothing was real. He would drift and drift until he was nothing but an empty shell. 

He sat, skin withered and spotted, at the metal table in the mess. The screwdriver that had scarred his leg tumbled about his fingers. He lifted the tip to his temple with a shaky hand. 

And then the airlock clunked and hissed open.