In Full Suspension

“How long has the subject been in stasis?”

“Ever since we retrieved her from the crash site, sir.”

“Vitals?”

“Normal, to an astonishing degree. There’s not even a scratch on her.”

“Miracles. I never believed them, but here I see one in the flesh.”

"Should we remove her from the tank?”

“Not quite yet. We’ll monitor her for any further changes over the next 48 hours.”

*

Asha blinks, and she finds herself staring through a pool of water. Only when she realizes a tube is running from the inside of her mouth—she can feel it there, the alien object in her throat—does she start to flail. Her limbs know no lines or reason to their frenzy as she claws at her neck.

“Rest easy, little bird,” a calm voice says, and she finds herself drawn into an electric blue gaze. There, just beyond her own enclosure of liquid, does she see a boy floating in a tank of his own. But he is not all motion like she is. He almost looks...serene. Content.

The difference does not make Asha any less fearful of her own circumstances. If anything, a new wave of panic washes over her. Her heart feels like a galloping beast in her chest.

“It’s no use,” the voice says—and this time she realizes that she does not see the boy’s lips move around his tube. It is insane that she believes she can hear him when there is no source of sound. Not only will she die in a tank so far from home, but she will be out of her mind while she waits for the end to come.

The boy’s eyes narrow an almost-indiscernible fraction. “You can’t speak yet, can you? Or perhaps you don’t know how?”

The bubbling thoughts climb in Asha’s mind until something bursts from her: “I don’t understand! Where am I? What’s happening to me?”

The last memory she had was of boarding the space liner Nebula’s Promise right before it lifted off for its first journey among the stars. It was supposed to be the perfect getaway from earth’s mounting problems with its dome cities that were the only places to breathe in a world turned into a drought-ravaged desert.

Her grandfather, Noah Fellows, had seen his boyhood home of the last rainforest on earth descend into a wilted landscape. From there, it had been his life’s mission to ensure humanity could have one last breath before potential mass extinction.

Thus, the Nebula Project was born: three space liners set to embark in the great universe’s expanse. Nebula’s Promise, then Nebula’s Chosen, and finally Nebula’s Hope. Asha had grown up in a home spilling over with blueprints and mock models until she was old enough to accompany her grandfather on his inspections at the building sites.

Each ship could hold three thousand passengers. Each ship promised new hope for the chosen few. Each ship was a last effort to see the human race’s survival in its final hour.

But now she is suspended in a tank like some kind of experiment. It is too dark to see beyond the other glowing tank in the room. If there are any observers, they did not make themselves known.

The boy, whose hair is a shock of white for so young a face, just stares at her with those alarming eyes that don’t seem human at all. “You had a psy-link implanted in your head after you were recovered from the wreckage. Do you remember the crash?”

Crash. Her mind grasps onto the word even though its very presence terrifies her. If she is here, in an unknown place, then the Nebula’s Promise…

The tube smothers the sob that tries to rise out of her mouth.

The last image she sees before she blacks out is her grandfather’s smile, warm on his face, before the explosions began.

*

When next Asha awakens, she is no longer in the tank but in a sterile room devoid of all color. Even her clothes are white, as if she is meant to disappear into the environment at a moment’s notice. She lifts up an arm to see scars running up and down, from wrist to elbow. There’s a thin strand of pain, more like discomfort, and she hates to think of what state she was in to cause such injuries. But at least she’s healing from the ordeal. That’s a silver thread to hold onto.

“Asha Fellows,” a robotic voice says, and she watches as a white-and-black bot unlatches itself from a nearby wall, “welcome aboard the Astonishment, the queen ship of Alessa Fading Moon, your savior and benefactress.”

Asha’s mouth parts, but she finds her throat is still sore from the lingering ache of the tube that had kept her tied to life. It’s coming back to her in starbursts: the far-off sounds of metal blowing apart, the emergency hazard uniform her grandfather gave her right before he ran out of the captain’s lodgings onboard, the keening edge of noise she only later realized was coming from her own body. When she had seen stars rip into her view from a gash in the siding, she thought that sight would be the last she would ever glimpse.

“How long have I been asleep?” Asha asks, but the words come out hoarse from her bruised throat.

The bot does not seem to register she had even spoken until, after a moment, it says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. You may communicate with your psy-link if that is easier for you.”

Psy-link. There had been whispers across the Milky Way that such technology existed, but she never thought she would have firsthand experience with it.

“Where is the boy?” she finds herself asking with the ease of a spoken word through thought transmission, and the bot makes a humming sound as its internal gears contemplate the question.

“You were the only survivor, Asha Fellows,” the bot says. “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

A snarl of frustration almost overtakes her, but she keeps it locked behind tight-closed lips. “A boy with white hair told me about the psy-link,” she says.

At first, she thinks the bot will just ignore her, but then it says, “We do not speak of the nameless. They are bodies to keep the Astonishment running, nothing more and nothing else.”

Asha opens her mouth to disagree—what is this nameless nonsense?—until a panel in the room slides open to reveal a woman flanked by two cybnernetically enhanced individuals. All of them are wearing black, a stark contrast to the white of the room.

Asha does not need to ask who the woman is. Alessa Fading Moon is a tall, formidable figure with the tattoo of a blue crescent moon on her left cheek. The only things that would make her stand out from comparison to a human woman are her powder-white skin and the unnatural height she bears.

“The sleeping beauty awakens at last,” Alessa says. “A princess among humans, one might say.”

Asha clenches her hand in the white sheet covering her. “Are you the one who shot the Nebula’s Promise down?”

The words are still less sound and more strain, but she manages to say them all the same.

Anyone else might deny the very mention of ill means, but a spark lights in Alessa’s green eyes. “Accusations already? How human of you. You must realize that even deep space has its territories. Your Promise infringed past its planned trajectory. There are consequences for such foolhardy actions.”

Asha thinks of her grandfather Noah and how hopeful he was that humanity would have one last chance with the flight of the Nebulas…

Before Asha can even rise from the bed to make for her target, the two cybernetic men have her lying face-down, her arms pinned behind her back.

“Now, now,” Alessa says in a chiding tone, “I understand your anger, dear girl, but you should know better than to attack the one standing on the fine line of your life or your death.”

Tears spill out of Asha’s eyes. “They were good people,” she says through the pain in her throat. “My grandfather was a good person. No one deserved to die!”

But Alessa Fading Moon just shakes her head, unperturbed. “You didn’t watch from afar as a fledgling planet died due to the negligence of its population. Out here, in space, there are rules to follow to ensure survival. I just made sure my home planet wouldn’t succumb to colonization and destruction from a mad race like yours. Someday you may understand.”

Then Alessa walks easily out the way she came, and only when there’s no fight left in Asha do the cybernetic men free her from restraint.

*

In dreams, Asha sees the boy with the white hair. Around his neck gleams a gold heart-shaped locket that she has never seen before.

“Keep your head down,” he says. “Don’t become nameless like me.”

“Am I going to die here?”

“Your survival is entirely up to you,” he says. “Stay out of politics. Do the work asked of you. And stay far away from Alessa.”

“You’re not a ghost, are you?”

“No,” he says. “I’m the one who pulled you before you floated off into space. I was the most expendable among the rest of the nameless.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you?”

The boy seems to hesitate. “Don’t try to be a hero,” he says. “You won’t help anyone.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Keep your eyes on your work,” he says, “and survive.”

“Is that all?”

“It’s harder to do than you think.”

And then he fades away, as if he’d never been, his voice blinking out of being.

Asha awakens with tears in her eyes—but she doesn’t know if she’s crying for herself, her grandfather, or the boy.

Or maybe she’s crying over the whole human race that has been left to die.

Except for her.

For the first time, living is more like a burden, a responsibility, an action meant to bring about some force of change.

It’s not an ending for Asha, not yet, for the weight of an entire race’s new dawn rests on what she can hope to accomplish as a lone human being in an alien world.