Screams in Space

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But the sounds they make didn’t interest her the way the look on their faces did. Their mouths would inevitably open, sometimes in a small puff and other times with a large gasp. Their eyes would widen, bulge, in shock...or maybe fright?

Fear?

Awe?

Bliss?

What had they woken from?

What dream did their eyes rip them from to fly open in fear as their body plummeted unexpectedly. Maybe it’s waking so suddenly you don’t recognize the metal coffin you’re in or remember why you were asleep. Asleep so long you aren't sure if it’s real or still a dream. If you’re really falling to your death on a new planet or still dreaming of your arrival. Some of them actually looked more alert than others.

But they all showed terror...or maybe it was anger...surprise?

Did they see her?

Did they know?

She couldn't quite put her finger on it, she never was very good at empathy. Her mother always scolded her about it. Even as a child, when Greer stole from the other children or hit them because they had glanced her way and she was bored; she hadn't cared when her mother gently took her hand and lead the slanting climb up the winding passageways, higher and higher, to their living quarters near the top where her father would stand and wait with a stern look across his captain’s uniform, his hands held stiffly behind his back. Then, he would bend down to one knee and take her small hands in his own, his deep voice would soothe the dark pit in her stomach and would loosen the tight knot of snakes. Her mother would dip beside them and her soft lyrics would harmonize with her father to calm her insides and send her to sleep.

Their eyes showed the hesitation and despair behind the smiles. The terror. When they looked at her and saw the future, did they think it was survival or destruction they took their people toward? Did they think she could be left with such a burden or did they make a terrible mistake when they created her?

She wasn’t sure.

But they were wrong.

Always, so wrong about her.

She was stronger simply because she lacked the compassion they held.

How could they leave the future of the colony in her hands?

When so many lives depended on it?

They had no choice, in the end. They had to leave it to her because there was no one else. The trip was calculated to take hundreds, if not thousands of years or more, how long was a light year anyway? Greer didn't know. Cryo-sleep was the only way they would make it to the end - or hopefully, the beginning - and she was the only person who would not sleep.

Would not age.

Would no longer gracefully become an octogenarian, her favorite word. She would no longer see her body grow or shrink or change form in any way. She would stay young and lean and trim. The perfect age of 28 so her metabolism was great and she was in her prime of health. They had planned it this way for the last twenty-eight years when they saw that the ozone layer was almost gone and it would soon be impossible to sustain life. The sun would burn the last of the crops and dry what was left of the rivers and lakes. The temperatures had risen too extreme - the nights no longer provided relief from the heat. There was little hope left for humanity if they didn’t escape.

And they needed someone who would be able to watch over them while they slept; to make sure they arrived safely at their destination. A.I. was still years away, programming of that type was close but at least another twenty years - and they only had half that time; less when it came down to it - only ten in the end. They had focused on completing the ship, had rushed the last month, and scrapped half the safety tests. They had days left when they finally launched, still unsure if it would make it past Earth’s remaining ozone - if the shields would hold past the burning rays of the sun or if the engines would be enough to push that size of a vessel to their destination. They had tried to accommodate as many as they could - in as many vessels as they could - in the end, they didn’t know how many had made it as communication was lost almost instantaneously amongst the ships.

And so, to make it all work they had to alter her genetics in the womb. They took apart her code and added others to it that would be most effective for their purpose. She was smart, a genius - more intelligent than her parents and able to learn and adapt at a faster level. She could survive temperatures of up to 300 degrees and could go 6 months to a year between meals and several weeks without water. She could withstand various terrains including the vacuum of space without suffocating and her record was seventeen hours underwater. She spent her youth in various martial arts, weaponry, and chemical warfare training. Her tutors were the smartest men and women in their fields, her playground was a military training course and her babysitters were graduate students (only the best in their field of study). She went through physical fitness tests weekly and was tested quarterly in all her skills.

And on the eighteenth year of their voyage, Greer was given the final pill that would suspend her age. It would stop her genes from aging and put her in a stage of stasis. She had trained for this her entire life, been raised to do it. She understood the importance of her mission, of the task ahead of her. She knew that the future of humankind depended on her ability to keep the ship headed toward its destination in a timely manner. She knew what it meant to everyone and yet, she still hated them for it.

The brilliance of her parent's plan had a flaw that they never bothered to test, one that altered the reality of the thousand-year voyage - the one where she was supposed to hibernate unless an emergency arose. In their hurry to save themselves and enter their cryo-sleep (so they didn’t waste their youth in a spaceship - with her - but could instead spend it rebuilding civilization on a new planet) they failed to test and hone her actual ability to hibernate. They said she was supposed to shut down her system, like a bear, and re-awaken every six months to run maintenance for them and release an O-Engine, a small burst of force that would keep the ship moving toward their destination-without which they might not have enough speed to make it before the supplies ran out. She couldn't believe they had left her to figure out their survival and they just expected to wake up from cryo-sleep and wake up to a new city on a new planet.

Without her.

Without the sacrifice, she had to make these thousand years alone.

Because she had been alone.

Alone for o n e t h o u s a n d y e a r s by herself.

When her hibernation “ability” failed.

Ability was such a croak name for it. She had tried and failed repeatedly to make it work. To sit quietly and shut down her brain, shut down her body into a state of hibernation-like stasis, just as they had described. To calm her blood and beating heart and still the voices in her head that screamed at them for leaving her alone. For not thinking of her and her needs while they slept. For not realizing that she, too, might want to sleep through the horrors of the endless, vastness of space. Of nothing but darkness and endless stars - stars that sometimes became real planets and asteroids and meteors and supernovas - all of which she passed, silently on her own. With no one to exchange an exclamation with. Nobody to talk to about the endless wonder, the expanse of beauty, the never-ending rising and setting of space as they moved throughout the nothingness.

Nobody.

Nobody but the voices in her head.

They hadn’t even left her music.

Or television.

Or movies.

Bastards.

There were screens of course. Endless screens in the command room of the ship showed pictures after pictures of their destination. Of the route they were taking and where they were in proximity. A small blinking picture of their ship moving one little blinking square at a time in a line of endless blinking squares. The screens showed how many cryo-pods were on board and the vitals of each person. She could scan the small micro-expressions on their faces as they slept through the cameras that watched them in their caskets.

Luxurious caskets with soft, cushioned layers of down and silk pillows where her parents lay their heads - only the best for the Captain of the U.S. Ark. They had, of course, others on board; the most important people in the country, along with thousands of the richest families and even more private personnel and military to protect them - all with pods as equally decadent - customizable for an extra cost!

No amount of money was spared for a trip they wouldn’t remember.

But Greer would remember.

She would remember each of their faces.

And she hated each one.

She had visited them hundreds of times over the last thousand some odd years - sometimes she watched them on the screens, clicking through each person as she read their endless profiles, and other times she walked the levels upon levels of halls upon halls where they stood in rows upon rows of sleeping faces upon endless sleeping faces. She read each chart and memorized each name and face. She memorized their age, height, and weight. The freckles on their skin and uneven lumps beneath their body-tight space suit. She memorized their family members and occupations, their schooling and health, and whether or not they wanted a two-bedroom or three-bedroom dormitory assigned to them once they reached Planet Keplar 87a.

She knew their dreams and aspirations, their fears and their bad habits, their personalities and worst traits, their likes and dislikes. She read the endless paperwork and detailed journals every passenger had kept for the eighteen years they'd flown on the ship before they'd entered cryo-sleep. She knew the color of their eyes and hair and how healthy their teeth were. She could see the bones of their rib cages and the texture of their kidneys or the lining of their livers and mostly she could watch the beating of their hearts. How she longed to squeeze those beating hearts.

Squeeze until she watched the beating on the screen s l o w and then stop.

.

.

She hated them.

Hated each and every one of them and each and every one of their beating hearts.

She hated their stupid faces behind their stupid screens.

And so, she came to not miss the noise.

Not miss the voices.

She welcomed the silence and adapted to it. She made up her silent language and stopped using her voice at all. There were only so many times she could scream at the top of her lungs before she found herself doing more damage than good. Let the others suffer for what had happened to her in their absence. Let them learn to communicate with her when the time came. Let them attempt to understand their new planet without her help when she eventually woke them up.

She would have learned everything there was to know about the planet by then. That was part of her punishment - the incredible gift of knowledge and immortality. She would walk the planet and gauge the ability for life. She would set up base and build their houses - because she had endless energy and little need for rest. She would design each house to the specification of the rich ass owners and have them ready upon the wakening of the specimen. Greer would do all of these things because it is what she was born to do. It was the reason they altered her DNA, the reason they took such a daring risk at the end of it all. They risked their careers and lives as well as those around the planet to bring her into existence. To make sure she was the perfect creature to save them, to protect them all and their species' existence. But they didn't understand the cost.

And someone had to pay.

So seeing them scream didn’t bother her at all. It pleased her with each button she pushed. Each cryo-pod she sent hurtling down toward the planet they had finally arrived on. Let them wake in fear, a cold sweat on their neck, their hair damp and clinging to their back as they cried for their parents, for the people who were supposed to love them above all else and protect them - but instead had turned them into a creature and left them alone for thousands of years and now they were hurtling toward a new planet 300 light-years away from the one they knew and the ship they had traveled on was on fire and there was very little chance of survival.

Let them feel the fear she still felt every morning when she woke up on their stupid ship.

Alone.

In a bed that had been built for her parents who had all but abandoned her these thousand years. Let them know what real fear was like. She watched on the screen as the rows and rows of pods dropped from the ship - falling toward the planet below - Planet Kepler 87a. A new name hadn't been decided yet, but the planet showed to be three times the size of Earth, orbiting its own star every 180 days.

She hadn't even left the ship to see if it was a viable place to live. There hadn't been time before the somewhat timely explosion. Perhaps it had been a bit dramatic to blow up the ship but she had grown angry at the thought of finally seeing the planet. She had been watching the ship slowly approach for days now. She had seen it start as a speck in the distance and sat stunned by its beauty as it grew larger the closer they got. The planet would be viable, she could feel it in her heart, as she saw the green, so much green, and scattered blue. Small seas and only one large ocean had been scanned on the surface. They would need to land somewhere near water to survive. She hadn't thought to position the ship so that the passengers fell close to the water. She had simply acted on instinct -- or madness -- whichever had taken over first. One can never quite tell these days which one it was.

Sometimes she thought herself a genius and other days she wasn't even sure if she existed or was just a figment of the computer's imagination.

Maybe the computer had created Greer and placed her in its image?

Maybe she didn't exist after all?

Maybe that was why she had always felt left out, unequal to her peers because she was beneath them. There to do their dirty work - to make sure they sustained life throughout their thousand-year voyage. To clean out their shit tanks when their bodies expended themselves and refill their food packets. She was the freak of a human who would be building their houses in a matter of weeks without the need to rest or eat or sleep simply because her body had been altered to withstand such things. She could walk out onto the side of the ship and make repairs without an oxygen tank. Perhaps that was why she had planted the bomb out there - out in the void of space where no one could blame her. Surely she hadn't gathered the materials from the supplies in the underbelly of the ship. It wasn't probable, then, that she would open the airlock and step out into the body of the spaceship - finding the engine tanks so she could strategically place her creation there - a place that would naturally have an unexpected explosion. No one would ever suspect that it was Greer who had timed it to explode just as they entered the outer rim of the planet's atmosphere - just barely viable for human life.

She watched them fall like shooting stars fell to their deaths. Some would survive - most would survive - and she would be forced to reconcile her choices with her parents. Her parents - she wondered if they had dropped yet. She had hoped to wake them before and watch their eyes when they realized what she had done. When they understood that she had gone against their orders - against their programming they so cleverly thought they'd hidden in a chip inside of her brain - when they knew that they were the cause of their undoing.

She wanted to witness it.

Greer slowly made her way to the Captain's quarters. To the room that she had spent the last 100 light-years living in by herself, by herself and her thoughts and the screens around her. The screens in the hallways that showed the directions to the mess hall, the drawing room, the library, the classrooms, the hydroponics room - screens that showed class schedules for children and homework reminders for parents - screens that showed discounts at the grocer and pick up basketball games in the auditorium - so many screens that stopped playing those movies when everyone went to sleep. To save on batteries - of course. The cryo-pods took up so much electricity and the solar panels on the outside of the ship only charged so much light off of surrounding stars. The ship had to be economical with its power.

Besides, Greer was supposed to be "hibernating".

A shame her parents had never really bothered to explore that trait.

It was probably the lack of sleep that had caused all this trouble. Surely not getting enough sleep played with her head. She could use a few hours to regain her composure. She was already halfway to her bedroom, she might as well lay down for a small nap. The alarms that blared around her felt distant and draining. They hurt her head and made her more sleepy and tired. She fought against the noise of them and slammed her hands against her ears. She needed to sleep. She needed to reach her rooms at once.

The noise stopped as soon as her door shut behind her. She sighed and looked across to where they stood. Both of the cryo-pods - their coffins - their caskets - stood facing each other. And there her parents stood inside, smiling, ever so peaceful in their sleep. Not realizing that everything they had fought for this past hundred-thousand-however many years had flown by in the blink of an eye.

Sigh, their peace - silence - at least.

Her eyes slipped closed and she felt herself begin to be still. She would have stayed that way as well if it weren't for the screaming and banging.

Always with the screaming and banging.

She knew from years and years of trying that they couldn't hear her within the cryo-pods. She had spent several years - three or four really - screaming and banging on those pods and nobody had heard her. Nobody had listened and no one was listening anymore. No one would hear her screams in space as they hurled toward their new glorious planet. The planet they could all live so luxuriously on after breaking her back to build it.

Go, look at them floating toward it!

Look as they race to be the first to land--SPLAT!

SPLAT!

Like poofs of clouds upon the face of the planet.

Poof. Poof. Poof!

She turned at the sound of screaming again and that was when she saw them.

Her parents - screaming at each other in their cryo-pods.

Pounding against the glass that wouldn't shatter - she knew because she had tried - and calling out for their other. For hope, for security, for someone to save them. They were gone just as suddenly as she had seen them. Their pods dropped through the floor into tubes that would send them hurtling to the planet. If they were lucky, their pods would hold through the atmosphere, their parachutes would activate, and they would land safely somewhere on the surface of the planet.

If they were lucky.

Greer had to go after them. She had to follow them.

She had no choice as the ship continued to explode around her.

Suddenly she remembered what she had done. She had to release the supplies. They really would be in trouble if they didn't at least get those. She didn't like the thought of having to hunt for food for everyone while somehow simultaneously building their dream city.

Where were the supply pods located? She felt the ship groan and creak as the doors opened and closed - some from the force of falling debrief and some from the fires that had spread throughout the ship - shielded from the sparks caused by the failing electrical system. The screen showed the number of civilians left on the ship. It fell by the hundreds and distracted her.

It was time for her to leave as well. She would bear the consequences of her actions if her parents and the other civilians found out. But no one would ever suspect it wasn't caused by the new planet's atmosphere. No one would think to question that she hadn't done exactly as they had planned thousands of years ago. Let them think she had been in hibernation this entire time. Let them think she was still sane and put together and in control.

Let them think she adored them and trusted them and believed them when they told her they wanted only the best for her. That everything they did was because they loved her. Because they loved her so much and they wanted to see what great things she could do. And she would do great things because they had made her for just that purpose.

They created her to be great.

They created her to save the world.

Greer was a hero.

They loved her for her sacrifice.

They loved her.

They would; love her.