Exigency Read online

  The sound of the dragonfly gradually dissipated to nothing. Now there was only the heater’s soft, infinite exhale.

  John glanced up at her through his eyebrows. “We should probably talk now.”

  Yes, we should, she thought.

  She unwrapped and shook out the survival blanket, allowing its tiny pores to sponge in air and expand. Piling it into a little circle in front of the heater, she sat down on it and folded her legs under each other. John bent his legs in front of him and rested his arms on his knees. His giant shadow stretched out and painted black the cavern behind him.

  Minnie began before he could start. “Why aren’t we in the Backup Habitat right now, sitting in the mission room doing a postmortem?”

  John appeared stunned. He rubbed his right temple as he stammered “Well … I wasn’t going to—”

  “Who ordered full evac?”

  “Well, I did, but—”

  “And who determined the station damage was irreparable?”

  “Minerva …”

  She pointed her finger at him. “There was no time, right? You had to make split-second decisions? Lives were on the line? Am I right?”

  He glared at her, blinking rapidly and squeezing his eyelids shut as he pressed his fingers in circles at his temple. “Please stop talking for a second. You weren’t there; you don’t know what happened …”

  “Send it to me! You have a vid of the whole thing. It would have started recording the second the alarm sounded and kept the prior buffered thirty minutes for context.”

  “No, wireless went down on impact. It never got the signal to record.”

  Minnie snorted. “Convenient.”

  “Not really. Now listen to me a minute. I did start recording when I ordered evac …” Minnie was about to speak, but he held up a hand. “Yes, I ordered evac, but only after consulting with Aether. She agreed we didn’t have time to get everyone through the tube to the BH, undock, and reach anything close to a safe distance before the blast. Yes, maybe you or Zisa or Ang could have repaired cooling, but who knows how long it would’ve taken? Zisa was panicked and you were in quarters on the other side of the station. You didn’t make it to the EV until a minute before the station blew!”

  Minnie was clenching her teeth. She didn’t want to hear anything more. He was right on every count, and she needed for him to be wrong. She needed to purge and to see his face betray his regrets.

  “Why didn’t anyone come get me? Why was I the only one in quarters?”

  “Everyone else was already up. Tom was in hygiene when the pod struck, but other than you and him, we were all in Wheel A or below. Another reason why the BH wasn’t an option … and Aether wanted to go get you, but she would have held up her EV, and Qin along with it. I promised her that I would wait for you. In fact, just before you showed up, I’d unstrapped and was on my way out to get you.”

  Minnie didn’t buy it. “Really. To save me. The person that stole Aether away from you? Leaving you alone for the rest of your life?”

  John closed his eyelids. He dug his knuckles in, rubbing near his fone.

  That was too harsh…

  But she wanted to hurt him. She wanted him to feel pain. Why should he get to sit there in a protective shell of rationalization and logic? A robot like him needed something long and pointed to pierce through the metallic exterior to the heart.

  They sat in silence for a moment, John’s head hung between his knees. Minnie wondered if he was crying. She couldn’t tell anymore if she felt good or bad about the prospect of John Li tears. But she wouldn’t be apologizing either way.

  John startled her with a sudden short laugh—a choked sort of outburst. It echoed through the cavern.

  Weakly, he said, “I wanted to talk about food.” He chuckled quietly to himself.

  “I’m sorry,” Minnie whispered. The words escaped despite her resistance.

  “No … no you’re not. You have a lot of anger and frustration built up against me. It’s only natural it come out now.”

  Minnie dropped her eyes to the powdery floor, the oddly unmoving shadow of the heater. As her forehead warmed, her mind had expected the random flicker of fire.

  John went on, “You know, before Aether … before the two of you … you were the single highest source of complaints against me in the inbox and in group. Afterwards, well … you hardly ever say a word in group anymore. I guessed you felt bad, or believed that you’d won in some way.” He peered up at her with his bio eye, still squeezing the other shut and rubbing around his fone. “Plus, you got her. In-house therapy, right? I tried to tell you so many times, I’ve never harbored adversarial feelings about you. Even after Aether … That was all on me. My failures. My shortcomings. She stuck with me far longer than she should have. It hurt like hell, but I was happy that she found you. Surprised a bit, yes, that it was you…”

  “And not Qin or Pablo or Tom?”

  “I suppose. Though probably not why you’d guess. In reality, my relationship with her has been great since then. It was what we needed. To be the friends we were before one of us decided it should be something more.”

  Minnie pulled the blanket up over her exposed shoulders. “So you’re saying you never miss her? The rest of her?”

  “I’m … No, I’m not saying that. Of course there’s a … closeness, when it’s all out there. We don’t talk about certain things anymore—probably for fear of triggering the other.”

  “Of course not.” Minnie observed a tenderness in him for the first time. Each of his words required herculean effort, but he was opening up nonetheless. She went on, “Aether is very maternal. I can imagine how that was a comfort sometimes. And something that wouldn’t be appropriate now.”

  John glanced up at her and looked back down just as fast. He nodded and sighed.

  Minnie swallowed. “I see it now. And not as a weapon—honestly. I see how lonely it must be for you. I’m sorry if I ever made it harder on you.” A thought suddenly popped in Minnie’s head and she was helpless to hold it back. “You’ve got vids of her though, don’t you? Gross stuff.”

  John appeared stunned. “Vids … What? I wouldn’t—”

  “Nevermind. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

  The cave was quiet for a time, only the sounds of drips and drip echoes, their breathing, the heater’s low drone. Even with his head down, Minnie could see John wincing. He’d been nursing an apparent headache on his fone side.

  Minnie broke the silence. “What’s wrong with your head?”

  “Huh?” He looked up at her. She pointed at the fingers pressed into his temple, rubbing in circles. “Oh, right. Something wrong with my fone or housing. Not from evac, though. Been going on for a few weeks.”

  “Does it go away if you shut down?” John nodded. Minnie flipped a palm upward. “So shut down.”

  “Upgrade was on that supply pod. Two gens.”

  “Bummer.” She peered around the cave, the silence growing louder with each second. “So … you wanted to talk about food?”

  John nodded again, sucked in a deep breath, all too ready to think and talk about something else. He pulled his backpack to him. “We need to start day one meds. The EV water has sups, but I believe we still take the day one tab with three-fifty mils from our suits.”

  “Two hundred mils is the minimum,” Minnie corrected. “We might want to ration until we check that sinkhole water.”

  “That’s fine for now, sure. Tomorrow we’ll dive into those bars.”

  “They’re chalk flavored, if I recall correctly.”

  “Their creators were focused on concentrating calories and nutrients, not taste.”

  “Cripes, John, it was a joke.”

  “I know, and I appreciate the attempt at levity, but perhaps now isn’t the best time. We’ve got people up there, you know.”

  Done. Oh, sweet mother of pearl. So done.

  He studied her face. “We on the same page?”

  She concealed her mu
rderous ire with a deadpan he could never read. “Absolutely.”

  “Good. Now, ingestion is going to be uncomfortable, regardless of flavor. Though I don’t think we’ll be able to taste for a couple weeks.” He ran a finger down his smooth, glossy tongue. Their taste buds had seemed to disappear after the first few weeks without solids. “We’ll have to be careful when we run out of calorie bars. Rely more on scents as far as spoiling and such goes. Obviously, we have multisensors for chemical content.”

  “Right.”

  “And there’s one other thing.” John gave her a look. The I hate to bring it up look. She knew instantly what he was going to say. “Your meds.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll be fine.”

  She’d been regulated for so long that it hadn’t even occurred to her since evac. Her last HSPD breakdown had taken place at age 15, and it’d been brutal. Tearing through the city, folks couldn’t even catch up with her long enough to sedate her.

  During her lowest lows after an episode, Minnie’s father always tried to console her by offering that “with a brain as bright and active as yours, this is the unfortunate trade-off.” Now recalling the quote, John’s voice took the place of her father’s, ruining the tiny bit of solace those words had always provided. John wouldn’t have a damned clue what to do with her if she had an all-out episode in this place. “Mmm, gosh, Minerva, perhaps now isn’t the best time for a mental breakdown. Couldja be a champ and reschedule this one for a later date?”

  With her track record and luck, she’d dive suitless into that tunnel, scale the rope, and set out to be the first human to climb that mountain across the valley.

  If only episodes were limited to the physical. Visual hallucinations, voices, paranoia, along with a potent surge of catecholamines from her adrenal glands to fuel it all. Her case was among the most acute: without sedation, she could keep going until she passed out or dropped dead. And it wasn’t as simple as adrenal regulation. When triggered, floodgates opened in nearly every gland, closing only after complete depletion, when there was nothing left to release.

  “I’ll be fine,” she repeated.

  “Minnie, hyperschizoid perso—”

  “I know what I’ve got, John.”

  “It won’t be what you remember. Just hear me out for a second. The metabed on the way here and your meds have concealed an intensifying disorder. You know how they’ve got our v-clones in the system? Well before launch, the docs and psychs and I slid each one of us ahead twenty years, forty, a hundred, and we went back and adjusted for post-metabed, various meds, weight gain, environmental changes, exigency measures, etset. So I—and all the docs at the Center—know exactly where you’re at right now. Metabolically, you’re twenty-eight, well past HSPD’s peak. We need to figure out some alternative meds for you.”

  Minnie rubbed her knuckles together and avoided his gaze. He was right, but she still hated when he was right. And more, she hated that she had a weakness—something more to worry about.

  Childhood episodes dwelled in her memory with strange clarity alongside other key milestones. Her first crush. The episode that ended on the school roof. Her first thesis. Flying a homemade skimmer over her neighborhood and getting caught. The attack during a road trip during which she tried to throw herself from the vehicle at 300 km/h. Ah, memories.

  Her regular hallucinations had been harmless enough. A neighbor kid named Otto and his dad that were, retrospectively, far too captivated by her ideas, and always seemed to show up whenever she’d conceived new concepts. Otto and his dad, of course, turned out to be imaginary.

  Some illusions were quite enjoyable. Commercial transports from the nearby airport would often change course at Minnie’s will, flying in circles or performing impossible stunts. Occasionally, the transports would control Minnie and she’d have to run where they commanded. While still little, this had proven fun. Experts always said that imagination-heavy playtime was a critical component for cognitive development. Perhaps the crazy had made her smart.

  The real danger revealed itself when the Hyper in HSPD made its presence known. Minnie only vaguely remembered the imagery—melting walls and sinking floors, hard surfaces turning to slowly enveloping tar or molasses, the slinking, malevolent entities of extreme hallucinogenic drug overdoses—but she clearly recalled the emotions. Crippling fear and panic. Her worst and last attack had introduced her to “chasers,” as the psychiatrists called them. Some see insects, others see zombies or some variant of crazed human attackers. Oddly enough, Minnie’s chasers turned out to be cats. She wasn’t normally afraid of cats, but this was what her capricious brain had decided to conjure. Thousands of yowling cats pursuing, their glowing yellow eyes intent on catching her and licking the flesh from her body until she was only bones.

  Her father had at first looked to homeopathic remedies: hyoscyamine, ergot, belladonna, and such. Minnie could function okay on them, but they’d cast a color-dulling overlay on the world, and killed some of the lucidity that made her brilliant. After rejecting countless novel surgery proposals, father and daughter agreed she’d take whatever meds the doctors deemed appropriate.

  Minnie’s rubbing knuckles were growing sore as she became aware of John’s waiting face.

  “There’s an option,” she said. “In Threck Country for sure, but I don’t know about here. It’s a hallucinogenic fungusflower some farmer Threck consume for entertainment. They call it alditz. The effects come from a pure, separate fungus that accumulates on the stigma. Similar chemical makeup to some of my meds. It’s widely available … if we could get there. Not that we needed another reason.”

  “You know all that off the top of your head?”

  “One of my first tasks when Angela’s probes began populating her botany database. Like I said, I know what I’ve got. We just weren’t supposed to land over here, were we?”

  “Good thinking. Probably would’ve been nice to share that information with your mission commander. You had your last dose about six hours ago, correct?”

  “Something like that.”

  “With zero sedation, your profile says that you could go a week or more without symptoms. Do you agree with that assessment?”

  Minnie wrapped the blanket around her tighter. She didn’t like beginning a countdown clock. “I guess. And if you’re thinking about sedating me—”

  “I’m not. Just trying to plan for everything, Minnie.”

  “Good. Because I’d be useless. And you know I don’t like when you call me that.”

  “Sorry. In the systems, your M’s … It’s hard when everyone else—” John stopped, apparently recalling he wasn’t a member of everyone else. He let out a deep breath, nodding. “Right. Sorry, Minerva.”

  Her irritation with him had reached its traditional peak, but she’d lost the energy to argue. Besides, if she didn’t guide them to a new subject, she may just have to kill him. “I didn’t mean for that to come out bitchy. It’s just that it catches me off-guard every time. Nothing against you personally. I actually don’t like it from most people.” It was a lie. He had no place using an endearment. “Moving on, do you have any ideas on how we get to the other side of the planet?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  Minnie sat up straight. “Good, because I do.”

  1.5

  If the Backup Habitat survived the station’s destruction, Minnie could use it to communicate with any other survivors on the planet or still in orbit. She had some thoughts about the supply pods as well, but didn’t know enough about their subsystems, only the fact that they’d all been repurposed as Epsy’s GPS satellites. With the right gear, she could connect to the pod network, but then what? The right gear. What were the chances there? How had the EV faired? Once the tasty flesh filling departed, had the Hynkas’ interest remain? Had at least one skimmer survived the abuse? When would Minnie’s stomach begin aching? What productive task or research could she do on her fone?

  She couldn’t sl
eep.

  Sharing the cramped tent with John had kept her warm, but her mind raced, refusing to settle. John didn’t exactly snore, but his breathing had grown progressively louder and more strained sounding, as if he were lifting a heavy object with each exhale. How could Aether stand sleeping with him for all those years? And then Aether was all she could think about.

  It was unlikely that Aether was dead. Objectively, this much was certain, and true as well for the rest of the station team. Even those flung directly away from orbit were not in immediate danger. An EV could sustain two people for at least a week. Water supply was probably the biggest limiting factor. If properly rationed, a pair could stretch an EV’s water tank over 8-10 days. They’d all have their SSK supply of calorie bars after reinitiation, but food would outlast water. So dehydration, Minnie determined, was how anyone stuck on an EV would die. That is, if they didn’t take other measures first, such as shutting down environmental.

  This was how she preferred to think of Aether going: by choice. Not the slow, agonizing churn of dehydration. No, no going, period. No goddamn going for Aether.

  Eventually, Minnie moved on to a thorough dissection of EV design and evac procedures.

  Why had the pod systems been programmed based upon optimal station orientation and coordinates in the first place? Pods should be designed to assume worst-case scenario: station chaos. In what fantasy world did evacs take place under optimal conditions?

  EVs should have full propulsion and guidance systems programmed with specific coordinates based upon layers of redundant sources: GPS, magnetic field, land feature recognition, and above all, direct, on-the-spot user input. She knew why they didn’t. They were built and coded 35 years ago based directly upon the even-older pods used in local system research. They’d never once received an upgrade and no one on the station ever gave them half a damned thought—Minnie included. And if anyone had, obviously, pod enhancement would forever remained buried beneath an ever-growing mountain of higher priorities.