the world is yours

andrew najberg

My breath clouds over the mic in the comms console. Environmental can no longer maintain a high enough temperature to prevent condensation. The panel is engineered to be hermetically sealed, but as the exterior shielding systems waver, the composite metals and plastics expand and contract minutely. 
          Every time I lean an elbow on the edge, it burdens the seals. Every press of a key is a concussive impact. A fraction of a Newton of force is still force. A steady drip can cut stone, so enough taps can break polymers. No doubt there are already splits in the seams that I can’t see through which molecules of moisture might seep. 
          I press my palm to the authorization plate, suck in a breath, and say: “Estimate of relief ETA.”
          Then, I breathe out and wait for the transmission delay. Without thinking, I lean my elbow on the edge. Groan. My whole life has been a delay. This whole station was meant to be a stepping-stone, except no one ever put the next rock in the water. I sit back in the creaking chair and lock my fingers behind my head.
          One entire wall holds a black display. It is supposed to show a panoramic view outside the station as if it were a window. The majestic rings of Clarion IV should glisten in the system star’s light. The endless blue dust dunes of the planet below should remind me of a sea of staggering depth, the shadowed valleys deeper than any ocean trench an Earther would know. 
          Instead, the screen is dead. It’s been dead since before I was born. When I was little, I used to dream that one day I might walk on Clarion and look up at where I thought the station might be. Maybe my kids would learn about “the founders” in school, that first crew who docked at the robotically constructed habitation platform knowing they’d never return to established humanity.
          The receiver crackles. The transmission delay is artificial, meant to sound like I’m speaking through the relay, but Dad told me I’m really speaking to the station AI. To be fair, the station AI thinks I’m Dad because it keys in on specific bars in my genetic signature that it reads from my palm, so, in my book, we’re even-Steven.
          The voice the comm system produces is a bit husky but androgenous. 
          “Accurate estimate cannot be provided at this time.”
          “Give me an inaccurate estimate.”
          Delay again. If the delay were real, we’d wait six minutes between transmissions. I’ve challenged the computer about its identity before, but it refuses to admit it’s not Axionic Systems Central. I think it believes I find the façade comforting. It monitors my biofeedback, so maybe there’s some tangible effect on my heart rate or blood pressure.  Sometimes I let myself pretend I’m speaking to a human.
          I suppose it’s less stressful than tackling the elephant in the room: that the best explanation supplies stopped coming is that there is no one left to send them.  Of course, elephants were long extinct before my dad was born, but things were getting pretty hairy in the ol’ ancestral homeland in the last definitively human transmissions the station received. 
          Regardless, at this point, I’ve spoken to Lt. Guerrero, Supervisor Oskall, and Warrant Officer Bellatzi in the recent past, but I usually don’t ask. I don’t know where or why it comes up with the names or the histories it provides. Why Guerrero asked me if the station still had coffee, because they couldn’t live without coffee, or why Warrant Officer Bellatzi told me about their son Rjeko’s obsession with soccer. 
          Comms crackles again. The husky voice comes back, and it strikes me as I listen that it might be the same voice from Bellatzi. 
          “Twelve to fourteen days with the information I currently have at my disposal.”
          I nod. The voice has convincing inflection. I can almost detect sadness under the steadfast tone meant to assure me that everything was going to be okay. 
          Almost. 
          I switch the comm system over to the internal relays even though I’m still just going to be talking to the station AI. The difference is that when the switch is thrown the AI will openly acknowledge that I’m talking to it if I ask.
          “How long before station habitability drops below survivable levels?”
          The AI uses its default voice, a smooth cadence that sounds like it thinks what I’m saying has a little value but that there are more important things to think about.
          “Accurate estimate cannot be provided at this time.”
          I roll my eyes. I wonder if there is some way in which the AI is able to derive a form of pleasure from putting me through this ritual.
          “Give me an inaccurate estimate.”
          The system pauses. Inside one of the panels, a drive chirps. The minute acceleration of a fan. Something hisses.
          “No estimates can be provided. The results are too contingent on variables of station compartmentalization, systems reappropriation, and inhabitant survival durations.”
          Perhaps it fears I will fall into despair. After all, I’m in the unique position of potentially witnessing the extinction of what I know of my species. Despite the AI’s insistence that channels are still connecting, there comes a point where you need the material confirmation that comes from the arrival of a supply shipment or a launch detection. I’ve never experienced either of those confirmations, so Dad’s word is about all I’ve got, and he’s dead. For all I know, there might not even be such a thing as humans outside the station, and there are precious few of us left anyways. A catastrophic system failure would mean the end, and no matter what measures we take, that failure creeps closer daily. 
          It is only a matter of time before an incident occurs during which there is nothing I can do to save myself. To save my son. 
          Perhaps the AI is right. Perhaps the only protection that can be offered is from ourselves. 
          Then, a much higher voice bursts through the intra-station radio clipped to my belt, a voice I know inside and out to be entirely real.
          “Mom?”
          “Be right down,” I say.
          “The answer didn’t change?”
          “The answer didn’t change.”
 

Exiting the command deck, I pass Turgeroff and his wife on one of their endless jaunts up and down the station corridors. The capillaries in both their cheeks are far too pronounced, purple webs like sprawling circuits. Blotches run up and down their necks too – no doubt their torsos match. They stopped using the medical scanner a couple months ago because they know I have access to the logs, don’t want me to track the progression. Only a matter of time before they throw a clot, so they never go anywhere without each other anymore.
          “Ah. Danielle. Still playing pretend?” Turgeroff asks, but he doesn’t meet my eyes. Doesn’t break his stride. His wife’s fists close, and she bites her lip to stop a scowl.
          “Hey,” I call after them.
          They pause. Turgeroff looks back over his shoulder. His wife looks at the ceiling, first to the left and then to the right.
          “We could hear your music all the way in Hab B,” I say. “The bass can break seals. Open gaps.”
          “Oh, so we should die in silence?” Turgeroff says.
          His wife raises her middle finger over her head and walks on. Turgeroff joins step.
          “How about just living a little more quiet?” I say, but they’re already turning the corner. I don’t know why they resent the time I spend in Comms. Resent me trying to find ways to extend our lives. They’ve accused me of wasting power, but while it certainly does use more than a simple stereo, the AI doesn’t bother to power up the external arrays when pretending to be ‘home.’ So, using comms is really the same power usage as running the AI – which is always running whether we use it or not. If anything, the life support systems maintaining half the utility of half the corridors they walk through – routes that are otherwise unnecessary - place more strain on the system, but if I tell them that, they remind me that walking is fundamentally human while talking to computers is not.
          I just say we all have our own walls to beat our heads against. To each their own.

Mess has tables enough to seat sixty. The Valentines sit in their little cluster of four in a way that suggests there should be a fifth in how they all look away from the same seat with every movement they make. Their daughter sometimes glances in our direction, but otherwise I wonder if any of them are really seeing anything at all. Ms. Brickman sits alone with her head in her hands. She still wishes they were covered in dirt from burying her son. Wishes, of course, that he’d never died at all—but as I heard her once ask her husband, “Where is the planet we were promised?” Had we been given that—he might have lived, and even if not—he’d have been given a proper burial.  I could tell her it’s impressive the station has lasted as long as it has, but somehow I don’t think that’s what she wants to hear.
          She wouldn’t have been forced to feed his matter into the nutrient recycling system and know that somewhere down the line her food, the food of the rest of her children, would contain bits and pieces of him. Sure, life is supposed to reflect continuity, a circularity, but not like that. A line from the past into the future, the way a tree grows up and branches out. 
          All we have is dwindling. There is a nursery with twelve cribs that has never been full and hasn’t been occupied in two years.
          We interred that last occupant into the recyclers last Christmas. Now, the Valentines look away from an empty chair.
          There is a kind of quiet that grows like a chemical reaction. It lives in every corner of the station. Waits until motion stops and then steps into the light.
          Thus, if I move, the bolts of my seat cry. Everything echoes. My jaw pops and so does my ankle when it flexes. Mikael and I sit across from each other. We each drag spoons through bowls of what is supposed to be protein oats flavored with synthetic fruit sugars. Everything tastes a bit like tin and copper, but Mikael doesn’t really know that. He eats his much faster than I do.
          “Can the synthesizer make us fish?” he asks.
          “No,” I say. “Even when I was little, it couldn’t manage that. Why?”
          Mikael shrugs. He doesn’t know it, but he shrugs just like his father.
          “Earth folk I read about ate fish.”
          Mikael has his father’s brown eyes too, but hopefully not his heart defect. He also has my really shitty and brittle hair. I find it everywhere. Amazing that it’s not shorted a central system.
          “Doubt there’s still fish on Earth.”
          “Because they ate them?”
          “Because they ate them.”
          I swirl my spoon around in my bowl. The porridge is thick enough that its path leaves a weak spiral. I tap the spoon on the edge of the bowl: tok tok tok. Then I set the utensil down and wipe my lips with the back of my hand.
          “We’ve got maintenance,” I say.
          Mikael rolls his eyes.

C-Duct spans from the central axis to engineering and allows the automated maintenance drones to transit parts up to bridge, rec and hab. I’m waiting at the axis hatch while Mikael crams himself down towards the first junction, tagging joint fissures. The drones normally detect these things themselves, but their scanning equipment has been steadily failing. Eventually, their patch torches will fail too, and we’ll be dragging around old school acetylene tanks from emergency back-up hoping not to asphyxiate ourselves. Blowing ourselves up would be on the table too. I hate sending Mikael, but he’s one of the only people left on the station small enough to fit in this duct.
          “Maybe we should focus on getting the Scout launch-worthy again,” Mikael says.
          “We’ve been over this before,” I say. “We’d have to cannibalize one of the orbital stabilizers.”
          “But we’d be able to scan the moons, find that fuel deposit they were after.”
          “That was a long time ago. There must have been a reason they didn’t mark the coordinates.”
          “That or the files corrupted like everything else in this place.”
          “And they didn’t go back for it? Meanwhile, without the stabilizer, we’d lose orbit.”
          “Not with microburns of the main engines.” 
          “We’d use the last of the viable fuel.”
          “And we’d bring back more.”
          “And continue to burn it without the stabilizer.”
          “We’d be trying something.” 
          We’ve had this discussion before in a dozen iterations. Twelve’s the age where you see a problem and that means you act. Dad would have told me Mikael sounds so smart—but to me he sounds like someone who’s never known anything but the station. I want to keep him focused on problems we can fix.  It’s not like anyone taught him to fly the scout.  No one taught me either. I supposed there was a point where someone older than I decided for the last time that none of us would be going anywhere.
          I’m leaning over to peer at his shuffling and scooting back when my commlink buzzes on my collar. At that same instant, red flashes off the metal shaft around him. Behind me, the emergency lights strobe, stabilize, then settle into a steady pulse. My heart clenches and my spine goes cold. 
The commlink buzzes again. I thumb the speaker button.
          “Exterior lock 3 on C Deck purge cycle initiated,” the station mainframe’s default voice says.
          “Shut it down,” I say.
          “Command override has been input.”
          I curse, knowing there’s little I can do. When our population dropped below one hundred, two old guard officers named Halperson and Ping had broken into the old administration office and given everyone the command codes they found written on a note taped to the station’s pre-deployment inspection certificate. At the time, they said the station was now the freest place in the universe because we all had total autonomy. Some people celebrated for a while. Then, we silently tried not to shit ourselves as we began to wonder what could happen if one of us snapped. Thankfully, no one had used the codes to tank a major system.
          Many had used it to jettison themselves out of an airlock, however. Several had been my friends.
          Several had been Mikael’s.
          Mikael’s shoulders are already shaking, and his breath accelerates in his confinement. The first sob breaks from his lips.    
          “Open a channel to the lock,” I tell the mainframe.
          Static comes from my comm. 
          “Who’s in the lock?” I asked. 
          “Mom, g-go,” Mikael says, his voice hitching. 
          Static from the comm. I don’t know if the mainframe is not responding or if it opened a channel and whoever is in there is not responding. It often amazes me how everyone’s voice sounds the same when silent.
          “I’ll b-be okay here,” Mikael says through another sob. The last thing he needs is another day knowing he has one less friend. Technically, I know I should stay, that I shouldn’t leave my son in the duct without a spotter, but at least I know where he is in case he gets stuck. As long as he doesn’t panic, he’ll be fine even if he gets jammed in good. If he panics, well, that’s how our last actual engineer broke his neck.

          I reach the airlock at a full run, my lungs heaving. It wasn’t a far sprint, but there’s not much need to sprint in such a small place that’s dying at such a slow pace.  My mouth tastes like metal like it does whenever I breathe too deep. I slap my hand on the plastic porthole and throw my eye up against it immediately after. 
          Ms. Brickman stands there fully naked. Her wrinkled back sags under her armpits and shoulder blades. She’s lost a lot of weight, I realize, and there’s lots of extra skin. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s been years since her son choked on a protein cube he’d snuck back to quarters, but emotionally, I think for her it’s always been the day after. What does time mean anyway if you’re not part of any larger system?
          I smack the porthole again, but there’s no way they can hear me inside. It’s three inches thick and would block the sound of a gunshot. Instead, I open the comm channel again.
          “Linda,” I say. “You can still shut down the cycle.”
          “The cycle in here is better than the cycle in there.”
          “There’s nothing out there for you,” I say.
          Ms. Brickman shrugs.
          “There’s nothing in there either,” she says. “There’s no future.”
          “There’s children,” I say. “They are future.”
          “Not mine,” she says with a second shrug, this one deeper, heavier, like something dragged her arms down at the end. She turns, traces a finger down the almost invisible line the forms the outer hatch. “You know I only left the room for three minutes and twenty-eight seconds? I checked time stamps on the security log. If I’d come back thirty seconds earlier or realized what was happening thirty seconds faster, he might still be here.”
          “I’m sorry, Linda,” I say. “We’ve all lost so much.”
          “I spent his last seconds slapping his cheeks and shaking his shoulders instead of unblocking his airway,” Ms. Brickman says. “How could I not have known right away? Why didn’t I know how to save him?”
A small, square red bulb, hardly two centimeters on each edge, lights. The hatch parts in a blur. Ms. Brickman is gone.
          Like a wound, the hatch closes slower than it opened.
          I slump against the bulkhead and slide down to the grating floor. I pull my knees to my chest and press my palms to my eyes. She won’t even be recycled, I think. What a waste. 
          My commlink buzzes on my collar. I know this won’t be good.
          I thumb the comm speaker on.
          “What now?” I ask.
          “Launch initiated in Bay Two,” the mainframe tells me.
          “Say again?”
          “Scout 3’s primary systems have been activated and the launch bay doors have been opened. Launch will commence in ten seconds.”
          I want to fall over. I try to suck a deep breath but my lungs spasm. Blood rushes to my head. Given the conversation I had with Mikael, this could only mean one thing.
          “You couldn’t have told me sooner?”
          “Command override has been input,” the mainframe says.
          My temples pulse. I can’t seem to get enough air. 
          “But you are telling me now?”
          “Command override has been revoked.”
          “Shut down the launch then.”
          “Not that command override.”
          “I’m his fucking mother.”
          “The code is the CO’s code.”
          I kick the bulkhead hard enough that the pain that erupts from my toes promises that it will haunt me even more later. My head pivots side to side. A path through Engineering. A sealed bulkhead that used to go to the old Rec B module. Back the way I came. There is no possibility I can reach Bay Two before launch, so I suck a deep breath and lurch towards the comm center. Even if he launches, I can still talk him through turning him back fast enough that we’ll be able to unload enough viable fuel that we won’t be immediately compromised.

My breath condenses over the mic. It’s dropped a couple degrees. The heating system hums around me. Something deep in the station hums with the strain to get enough power. The station wheezing. I press my palm to the genetic scanner. Key in the sequence to authorize the sending and acceptance of informational packets.
          “Mikael,” I say into the mic.
          Static crackles. Something in the control panel buzzes softly. I hear something beneath; a soft tapping in the interference. I adjust the frequency dial manually. The static whines and then gives way to a clean channel.
          “Mikael, talk to me.”
          A slight inhale. A rattle.
          “I’m not turning back, Mom.”
          “We’ll still have enough fuel for the stabilizers if you do,” I say.
          As if on cue, a series of red indicators light up on the panel.  A couple more turn orange and others flash yellow.
          “Critical fuel shortage in stabilizer 123.3, 23.6, 24.7,” the mainframe tells me. 
          I close my eyes and try to clear my head.  That’s the coordinates for the orbital maintenance assembly just below bay two.  Makes sense. He must have run a line from the bay down some time when I was in the comm room waiting for transmissions.  Maybe many times.  Part of me admires how clever he is at his age. The rest of me hates that I’ve spent so much time in here that he had the time and freedom to learn how to do that.           “Please,” I say. “You know what happens if we don’t have fuel.”
          “I can’t just stay and watch everyone die, Mom.”
          A shudder runs through the whole station.  A whole bank of lights ignites at once, then flickers, then vanishes. Was that a system error? Somewhere outside comms, a couple bulkheads thunk closed.  
          “Help will come,” I say.
          “We are all that is left.”
          I hear a throat clear in the background.  My back stiffens. I feel my face flush with anger.  Has someone talked him into this? Of course someone must have helped him.  I fiddle with the controls, telling the screen to turn on.  To let me see my son’s ship. The response is black void, like empty space. Nothing I do will make the screens work.
          “Who’s there with you?” I say.
          A whisper I can’t make out.  He wanted me to hear.  He could have muted the mic.
          “It’s Indira, Mom.”
          “Indira Valentine?”
          How much time have I spent in this room, waiting for transmissions? Talking to imaginary Earthers? Part of me is glad he’s not in that ship alone. Part of me hopes that maybe, as young as they are, they think they’re in love. I can’t object to my boy feeling something positive. Something powerful. For a moment, I picture them surviving on one of the moons somehow. Repopulating the species like some Biblical reset. It’s the closest to hope for continuity I’ve felt in some time.
          Nonetheless, I say, “You’re only twelve.  You need to come back here.”
          “If this works, then everyone lives,” he says.
          I don’t need to tell him yet again what happens if it doesn’t. Instead, I tell him, “If you find a deposit, you won’t know how to extract it. You’ll never get back here. You don’t even know how to fly the ship.”
          “I’ve been reading the manuals. I can do it. I can save us.”
          More lights ignite on the panel. I try to read them, but there’s condensation all over and the letters blur because I can’t force myself to focus on any of the tiny labels long enough to read them. My breathing comes a little too fast, so I draw in through my nose. The air tastes more metallic than ever. Clench my fists, press my knuckles to the console and lean against my arms. Everything around me seems so still.
          A deep boom resonates through the station’s whole frame.
          It’s chaos on the board. Lights flash on and off all over the place.  What are they trying to tell me? What can I tell Mikael that will make him come back?
          I draw another breath, but it does no good. Even with my lungs full, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten a real breath at all. 
          I switch the mic to the system.
          “What is happening?” I say.
          “All systems are normal,” the computer says.
          “Impossible,” I say. “The whole board is lit.”
          “It must be a display error,” the computer says.
          “Bullshit,” I snap.
          Even as I do so, my gut sinks. This is Lt. Guerrero. Warrant Officer Bellatzi. 
          “Command Override,” I say. “Clarion, Oxcat, 332-56C.”
          The system crackles. There is a soft ticking sound.
          “Are you sure?”
          It doesn’t matter if I am or not.  I’ve already overridden it.
          “What is happening?” I say.
          “An impact in Bay Two preceded an explosion that compromised hull plate 34R-94. A cascade event is underway. Life support is no longer functioning. The station is on full emergency lockdown.”
          “I see.”
          The tears well up, but they might as well be on someone else’s eyelids.  Something in me recedes. I stumble over to the comm chair and slump down into it.
          The system crackles again, and the comm speakers kick back live.
          “Mom? Are you there? I think I lost you for a minute.”
          Another deep breath that does me no good.  Hello Lt. Guerrero. Hello Bellatzi.  It helps convince me that I know his voice so well. That I’d never think I could mistake it.
          “I’m here,” I say.  I tap my fingers on the console.  No doubt I’m weakening the seals.  No doubt something inside the panel will one day give. “How long have you been talking to Indira?”
          “About six months,” he says.
          “Do you love her?”
          “Very much. We can talk to each other for hours. It’s the first time I’ve believed that something new can happen on this station.”
          “That’s good,” I say. “I’m so happy.”
 

Andrew Najberg is the author of the best-selling (#1 US Horror Amazon) novels The Mobius Door (Wicked House Publishing, 2023), and Gollitok (Wicked House Publishing, 2023), as well as The Neverborn Thief (Olive-Ridley Press, 2024) and the forthcoming collections of short fiction In Those Fading Stars (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2024) and Extinction Dream (Wicked House Publishing, 2025). His short fiction has appeared in Fusion Fragment, Khoreo, Translunar Travelers Lounge, Utopia Science Fiction, Prose Online, Psychopomp Review, Solar Press Horror Anthology, and is forthcoming in Make Your Presence Known Anthology and Gods and Globes III Anthology. Currently, he teaches for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.