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Transmutation

Chapter One: Expunged

By Isla Kaye ThistlePublished 2 years ago 8 min read
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Transmutation
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But that doesn’t stop people from screaming.

I couldn’t hear Hannah’s scream as she was sucked out into the far reaches of the galaxy, but I could see it. Her eyes were supernovas. Expanding. Exploding. Fear ricocheted off of her in all directions, propelling her backward, into the void.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, it still produces a sound.

I can imagine what Hannah’s scream sounded like, and the pseudo memory of it haunts me every time I stare out the window into the vast expanse of the universe.

I don’t know if she’ll ever stop screaming.

“Tory, you still with me?”

Patrick’s hand on my shoulder draws me out of the black hole of my own memory. I peel my eyes away from the window and stare at him blankly. He frowns. There is a 5 o’clock shadow on his face; the stubble on his chin as persistent as his constant check-ins on all of his crew members within the last 48 hours. His eyes have deep grooves underneath and I know he too has lost sleep due to the ceaseless barrage of despondent thoughts. He holds my gaze as if waiting for me to answer, but I don’t know how to. My body is still present, but my mind is with my daughter.

I am standing just outside the medical room on board the Invenire. There is a new patient sitting in the hospital bed that belonged to Hannah just two days ago. He is one of the crew members on the lower deck; a mechanic. He came in for blurry vision and headaches, two of Hannah’s earliest symptoms. They isolated him immediately.

I stare at him as he sits, his spine curled forward and his head lowered in defeat. I cannot see his face or any glimpse of his skin. He has his back to myself and Patrick, but I know he knows we are here.

“What is his name?” I ask Patrick. The sound of my own voice startles me. It is cracked and broken from strain, but devoid of emotion.

“Kamin. Carter Kamin,” Patrick responds.

“And when is he scheduled to be expunged?”

I can feel Patrick go rigid next to me, bracing himself for impact. “They’re still running tests,” he says.

“Is that necessary or just a formality at this point?” I turn towards Patrick, fueled with liquid rage and ready for blast off. Patrick is no longer looking at me but instead keeps his eyes perfectly trained on the patient. He knows better than to look me in the eyes. He might be ranking captain, but even that means nothing in the face of a protective mother.

“We need to run all the tests we can before he reaches critical condition. We must understand what we are dealing with. It’s a necessary risk,” he says. He must be able to sense the venom boiling up in my throat because he quickly adds, “Hannah was too far along. When Kamin reaches that stage, he will also be expunged.”

“And if we all have it incubating inside us?” I ask.

Patrick’s voice pressurizes under the gravity of the situation, “We all knew the risks when we signed up.”

Of course I knew the risks associated with deep space exploration. I have lived the risks for twenty-seven years. I signed document after document stating that I, Victoria Milan, was of sound mind and acceptable physical health, and understood the hazards that I would be faced with during the duration of my mission each and every time I launched. I hardly hesitated as I scribbled my name on page after page of hazards and wellness concerns. I fully accepted that my life would be in jeopardy and that I might not make it home. But that was always okay. My life belonged to the stars. I knew them. I breathed them. I could never settle down in the colonies. Even when I married Sadie. Even when we adopted Hannah. On those short breaks in between missions, I was restless. I would pace through the outskirts, across the undeveloped expanse of red, and map out constellations in the stars above. I knew I needed to be up there, even if I risked death, in order to truly live.

I didn’t sign a document accepting the same risks for Hannah. She signed her own, despite my protests. If they had asked me to sign for her, she would have been stuck on Mars for all of eternity. It was safer in the colonies. She didn’t need to be a part of the exploration. It was different for her. She was a Martian by birth; part of the first generation of Martins. Hannah had been one of twenty-seven children born in the Polaris Colony shortly after the Establishment. I was born at the Starfire Space Station before the colonies were fully established. I couldn't be grounded to a planet, no matter its gravitational force.

Now, Hannah is weightless; floating farther and farther away from me. Drifting off into the final frontier.

“How long until he reaches critical condition?” I ask. Hannah’s headaches started nine days ago; one day after the exploration on Ceres. Blurry vision was her second symptom. Skin discoloration her third. By day five, the boils had formed. By day seven she was deemed an endangerment to the rest of the crew. As commander of the Invenire, Patrick had made the call.

I used to think it was a poetic death; drifting freely among the stars; going places even in death that no human has ever reached. Exploring the afterlife simultaneously with mind and body.

Now, I think of the science behind it. How long will it take for rigor mortis to set in without oxygen? Will the microbacteria of the gut even survive long enough to initiate the decomposition process, or will they also be purged from existence? And of course, will the infection of RX7 survive on a deceased host? Will it continue to spread across the skin without an atmosphere to sustain it? Is it adapted to life in deep space; an extremophile of the highest degree?

“The fungus is only visible on concentrated regions of his skin. He still has a day or two,” Patrick responds levelly. He has expunged the emotion from his voice just as efficiently as he has expunged my soul from my body. He speaks as if he were dispassionately reciting an instruction manual. I hate him for it. After all of our years working together; mission after mission, he should know my mind in and out, better than anyone. I have spent more time by his side than either of us have spent with our wives. I have confided in him, laughed with him, dreamed with him. But for him to stand here with a leveled expression and a calm voice after everything, it is like standing next to a stranger. I’ve never felt farther from another human being.

“But you don’t know that. You don’t even know how it spreads. You said Hannah and Doctor Thayman were the only ones exposed.”

“I said I hoped they were the only ones exposed. It makes sense. They were the ones who were examining the rock sample collected from Ceres. They were the ones to identify the fungus. But it is possible that after their initial sampling and before the development of their first symptoms they were sick and could have contaminated other crew members.”

Patrick’s voice trails off. He looks at me suddenly, but there is a hardness to his gaze. These are not the eyes of my lifelong friend who has accompanied me on eight previous exploratory voyages. These are the eyes of the monster who demanded my daughter be put to death. Cold and dark, like the surface of a dwarf planet.

“Victoria, are you sure you haven’t been experiencing any symptoms? No headache or dizziness?”

“If you want to kill me too, Patrick, just do it. I wouldn’t dare contaminate your precious ship any longer. There’s nothing left for me here.”

Hannah and Dr. Thayman were both informed of their death sentence. At first, the method was going to be more humane; a sedative given in a high enough dose to ensure a terminal sleep.

As it turns out, the nature of their fatal disease made them much harder to kill. Evolution at its finest. Dr. Thayman woke up right as his body was being projected into the void of space. His awakening and subsequent death were almost simultaneous. Hannah woke up a full thirty seconds before, giving her enough time to process her fate. That’s when she started screaming.

It is one thing to accept death as a future event, even if it is only hours away. It is another thing entirely when death is at your doorstep and you still have a lot of life in you.

I take some comfort that Hannah was still young and naive enough to view death in space through the eyes of a poet: a beautiful immortalization of the body and a never-ending journey through the far reaches of the galaxy. It is a far better image than the one I am left with; my daughter reduced to nothing but a drifting petri dish, harboring samples of unknown origin.

I turn away from Patrick and walk down the hallway toward my private quarters. To my left, a long glass panel reveals the sea of stars. There is nothingness out there; empty space and black holes. There is everything out there in an endless expanse of possibilities. Hannah is out there. I can still hear her screaming.

Sci Fi
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About the Creator

Isla Kaye Thistle

Aspiring Fiction Writer

Avid animal lover.

Voracious Reader.

Outdoor explorer.

Pet Mom

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