Chapter 23
There was no sound the first time Luna opened her eyes. At least none that she remembered. But then she was only aware of her “being” for a few seconds, and then fell back into unconsciousness.
The next time she opened her eyes, she was able to stay alert. She listened more intently, and thought she heard shallow waves washing up on a quiet beach. “That’s the sound of my breathing,” she realized.
Things still appeared blurry. Well, not necessarily blurry, but distorted, like looking at an evening sky from underwater. She could see dim light above. “Am I drowning?” Luna wondered lazily, and reached up to stick her hand towards the sky.
Her hand bumped into something hard, not like the feeling she was expecting of breaking the surface of water and encountering air. Her hand quickly recoiled.
And then more sounds.
More senses becoming aware.
And more consciousness rushing in.
Luna could feel a small breeze of cool air, and her body started to shiver.
She could see the distortion give way to clear vision, but still nothing that made sense.
She could hear people crying, moaning, mumbling and, uh, was that vomiting?
And the sound beyond and behind all that was – – – a hum? a fan? a motor?
These extra sensations made Luna a bit anxious. Her thoughts were starting to clear up, as if she had come out of an extra-deep sleep. She realized she wasn’t under water. She wasn’t dead. She was pretty sure she wasn’t dreaming. And then she remembered she had last been on an alien spacecraft taking her to a new planet.
Luna’s eyes opened wide. “Are we there?” she asked herself.
She reached up again, and didn’t encounter any resistance.
She felt to the sides and realized she was in the trough-bed she had laid in before they departed. She didn’t remember the trough closing up on her, but wasn’t exactly clear how things progressed once she laid down – yesterday? two days ago?
The trough-bed was now quivering beneath her. Then it changed, and it seemed as if her body was being pulled over tiny rollers, although Luna could see she was going nowhere. Finally, tiny prods began, as if small fingers were pushing against selected muscle and tendon pressure points. Whatever it was, Luna had to admit it felt good.
After the ‘mini-massage’ completed, the trough-bed itself started moving. At first it started tipping at her hips, lowering her feet and raising her head. After a bit, the portion under her back continued moving, and she was partially sitting up.
By this point, Luna was nearly fully conscious of her surroundings. A few people were slowly walking about. Some were on the ground next to their … chair? Some were sitting like her. But most of the trough-beds were still flat, with the lids closed. “Why do they all look like coffins?” Luna thought to herself.
Her arms, legs and even her head felt extraordinarily heavy. But eventually she decided she needed to get out of the chair, and tried pushing herself forward. The chair aided her movement, pushing the back further up, and bending at the knee to be more of a natural chair-sitting position. She pushed further, felt like she was going to topple over, and fell back into the chair.
Luna took a deep breath. “Gotta be careful,” she said out loud. Her voice was extremely rough and her throat hurt. She guessed it had been some time since she had talked.
She looked around again, and saw what looked like food and drink next to a few other trough-bed-chair. Looking around her own chair, she saw a table with the same items on it.
“Now that looks like a good incentive,” she said hoarsely. This time, she leaned forward slightly, and put one leg over the side of the chair. A little more balance. Then she reached her other leg to find the floor. “Touchdown!” she thought when the hard surface was encountered.
Finally, she pushed herself to a standing position, wobbled for a moment, and then stood straight.
“Very impressive!,” said a voice to her left.
Luna swayed at being startled, and had to grab onto the chair to stay upright. She glared towards where the voice came from.
“I’m sorry!,” the voice said, and stepped a bit closer. It was a young man, likely in his early 30s. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that when I tried that move, I landed flat on my face.”
Luna looked at him with surprise. “How long have you been awake?,” she asked with a gravelly voice.
“Probably an hour or so,” said the friendly stranger. “I’ve only been up and about for about half that time, and since I started paying attention to others, you’ve definitely made the smoothest transition to standing.”
“I’m being rude just standing here making it seem like I’m stalking the whole floor. Again, my apologies. I’m Dan Randolph,” said the man and he took some additional steps forward with his hand extended in greeting.
Luna reached out her own hand, noticed that he wasn’t wearing any clothes, became aware of her own nakedness, and then just kind of stood there, looking at the floor but not pulling her hand back. She finally realized what she was doing, finished extending her arm to shake her new acquaintance’s hand, and then leaned back on the chair, pointing her body away slightly.
“I’ll agree it’s definitely disconcerting waking up like that,” Dan continued. “Give it a few more minutes and you should feel mostly normal again. The food and especially the water really helped me.”
Luna looked over at the table with the food and drink. Next to it she noticed a lower table with something on it. Stepping over, she saw it was a matching set of the light tan-colored pants and top that she had been given to wear upon their departure from Earth. Luna reached for the clothes and put them on.
“Ah, ok, well I guess everyone has their priorities,” Dan said. “But I still recommend the drink and food.
Luna looked at the other table and nodded her head. She took a small bite of the food, gagged a bit at the dry, tasteless texture, and reached for the bottle of liquid. It was clear colored and, after a sniff and quick taste on the tongue, determined to be water. Luna took a sip and then quickly finished off most of the bottle. It definitely helped reduce the soreness in her throat.
“Taste good?,” Dan asked.
“Yes,” Luna answered with a less hoarse voice. “Very good. I’m not sure how long it’s been since I’ve had anything to drink, but that certainly tastes like the best water I’ve had in a very long time.”
Luna decided to lead the conversation for a bit.
“So how long do you think we’ve been asleep?” she asked.
“No idea,” Dan answered. “I can tell I’ve lost a little weight, but I’m thinking that’s normal for a liquid diet.”
“So you know what you were being fed?” Luna questioned.
“Well, no. But I’m guessing it had to be liquid, since I’m not sure how we could have chewed or swallowed anything solid,” Dan reasoned.
“Yeah, that makes the most sense to me as well,” Luna agreed. “And my sore throat makes me think there was a tube going down it. Although I did wonder if perhaps they had some sort of nutrient osmosis technique. I mean, I feel pretty clean, so I’m not sure how they would have handled waste cleanup.”
She paused, realizing how odd that sounded, then giggled.
Dan smiled as well. “So you’ve been thinking about things like that as well?”
“Uh, yeah, if I’m being honest,” Luna admitted. “I mean, it’s like we’re the scientist and the lab rat combined. I took it on faith that I’d wake up from this, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about how it would play out in reality.”
“No clock, no calendar, no way to tell how much time has passed,” Dan shook his head. “Maybe they just knocked us out so we wouldn’t craze out when they did their hyper space warp jump, and it’s just been a few hours.”
Luna thought about it for a moment and then looked at her hands. “No, definitely longer than a few hours. Look at your fingernails,” she told her new friend.
Dan looked down at his own hands. “Holy shit!,” he exclaimed. “I’ve never had nails that long!”
“Well, I tried growing mine out a few times”, Luna said. “The longest I made it was about two months, and this seems about how much I remember them growing out.”
“Two months is only eight weeks. That’s less than half the seventeen weeks they said we’d be travelling,” Dan said doubtfully.
“Do you think they really let our metabolism continue at a normal rate?” Luna retorted. “I mean think of the amount of food – liquid or solid – they’d have to pack on board to feed one-thousand people for four months. Besides, we know how to put people in hiber-sleep so they only age at one-fourth the normal rate, so you don’t think the aliens can at least match that?”
“That’s one person under constant monitoring by dozens of machines and people in a controlled environment,” Dan responded. “There are, as you said, one thousand people here. I don’t see a bunch of machines that were monitoring us, just a fancy massage bed.”
“Jeez, Dan, why did you want to get on this ship if you’re so concerned whether we’re going to make it or not?,” Luna said exasperatedly. “I mean, did you think the aliens decided on a whim to head West, pick up a bunch of galactic hitchhikers and then freak out when they run out of Cheezums halfway through the trip?”
Dan was getting worked up himself, “No, but, come on! You can’t tell me you thought it was all going to be perfect.”
“No, not perfect,” Luna said, calming down a bit. “But I thought through this pretty thoroughly. I put a lot of people through a lot of… a lot of pain,” Luna swallowed hard, thinking of her family, her parents, and, more recently, of Jim’s reaction when he tried talking her out of leaving. “I knew that the chances of me getting to a new planet would be pretty high, based on the level of effort the aliens had to expend to pull everything together like they had. If they wanted us dead, they’d put that effort into killing us from the start, as it would be much simpler and less costly. If they were trying an experiment, they would start with just a few ships they’d build. But nine ships each sending a thousand people across the galaxy every week is too much for just a test. So, yes, I felt pretty good about them getting me to where they said they were taking me. And, from there, it would be up to me.”
At that point, their conversation was interrupted by another voice.
“Luna!” a woman cried out. “Luna, are you out there! I need your help!”
Luna and Dan both looked around, but it wasn’t clear where the voice was coming from.
“Hello?,” Luna called out.
“Oh my gosh! Luna, please!” the woman cried out again.
This time the voice had a source.
“Amy?”, Luna asked.
The voice responded. “Yes! I’m not doing well at all, Luna.”
Luna walked over to where the voice seemed to be coming from. About two rows over, she saw a woman sitting in her trough-chair, eyes closed, shaking her head side to side. It was a person she had met in the two days leading up to the departure, when all of the would-be colonists were cordoned off together inside the perimeter fence surrounding the alien craft.
“Amy, what are you feeling?” Luna asked while approaching the woman.
“I can’t lift anything. I’m disoriented. I’m not sure I can even breathe,” the woman replied.
“Of course you can breathe, Amy. You’re talking, and that takes breath,” Luna said matter-of-factly.
Amy smiled slightly, but didn’t open her eyes.
Luna looked at Amy’s space. Same two tables. Same food and drink. Same clothes.
Luna took the water and held it to Amy’s lips. “Here, drink this,” she said.
Amy opened her mouth, Luna put the glass up to it, and Amy took a few sips. After a pause, she then reached up with both hands, took the glass, and gulped down the rest of the water, with small streams running down her chin.
Finally, after a deep inhale and exhale, Amy opened her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, looking at Luna. “What was in that?”
“In what…, the water?” Luna asked. “It’s water as far as I can tell.”
“I’m not so sure,” Dan interjected. “Yes, it has no taste or smell, it’s clear and has the consistency of water, but I’ll admit it seems to have a special something about it. I didn’t tell you before, but it certainly cleared my head once I took a drink.”
Luna gave him an uncertain look. Then turned back to Amy when she saw her trying to get out of the chair.
“Hang on there, Amy,” Luna said, reaching out to the woman. “You just said you couldn’t lift anything up, and now you’re trying to stand?”
“Yes, because now I can move. See?” Amy said as she swung her arms around. “Where’d you find that water? I want more to drink.”
“It was just sitting there for each of us, so I think that’s all we get,” Luna said.
Amy looked around and walked to the table at the foot of the trough-bed next to hers. She picked up the bottle.
“Wait a minute,” Luna said emphatically, “You just can’t drink someone else’s water! What will they have when they wake up?”
“That’s their problem, kiddo.” Amy replied. “The early bird gets the worm. The early riser gets the drink.”
“We’ve got to work together to support one another, Amy, since who knows when that bottle can be refilled?” Luna said, approaching the other woman.
“I’ve got a guess when that might be,” Dan said, and pointed to Luna’s platform.
One of the robots had stopped at the table and was refilling Luna’s bottle. Then it moved to the next table, looked at the full bottle, and moved onto the next table after that.
Amy gave a snarky look at Luna, and finished the water she was drinking. “That’s good. Now, let’s go follow that robot so we can find the source of our heavenly dew.”
Luna looked at her and shook her head. “I can’t believe it,” she said to herself. Then, turning to Dan, “I thought she was someone I could trust! She reached out to me in those few days before we left and seemed so genuine to make a connection.”
“It is about connections,” Dan agreed. “We need to stay connected to people that will help us survive. And I think she might be onto something with that robot. Are you coming?”
“What?” Luna said, looking even more confused. “No, it obviously saw I used up the water and will bring some more when needed.”
“OK, suit yourself. We’ll see you later,” Dan waved and jogged off after Amy and the robot.
Luna shook her head and went back to her platform. She had visions of this supportive, fully integrated community, but that obviously wasn’t going to be the case.
A thud interrupted her thoughts and she turned to the platform next to her to see a hand pulling back from the glass covering that person’s trough-bed, and the lid of the bed retracting.
Luna watched the process with fascination. “It’s like a butterfly leaving its cocoon.” she thought. “Except the cocoon is helping the butterfly leave the nest.” as she watched the bed start to tip up and take chair form.
Like Luna, Amy and Dan, based on his own admission, the woman in this trough-bed looked bewildered and disoriented. She turned to survey her surroundings and looked straight at Luna. Luna didn’t look away but instead walked straight up to her and offered her a drink from the bottle at the end of the woman’s bed.
“Thank you,” the woman said after taking a drink. “What is your name?”
“Luna.”
“Thank you, Luna. I’m Leday,” the woman continued. “Are you waking people up? Are we there yet?”
“I just woke up myself a bit ago, so I don’t know where we’re at.” Luna answered. “I’m not waking people up. I just saw your bed start to move, and thought you might like some help instead of just having someone stare at you.”
“That’s kind of you,” Leday responded, and then looked down and Luna’s body. “Where did you find those clothes? I’d like to get something on, since I’m not very comfortable like this.”
Luna went to the low table, grabbed the blouse and pants, and handed them to the woman.
“Thank you,” Leday said again, and pulled the blouse over her head. After pulling on the pants, Leday stood up on shaking legs. She noticed the table with the food, and grabbed the square on it and started nibbling. “Is this any good?” she asked.
“I don’t know, really.” Luna answered. “I didn’t eat much.”
“Well, as you can probably guess by looking at me, I enjoy my food,” Leday said, “so as long as it fills me up, the taste doesn’t really matter too much to me.”
More people were now milling about, and the majority of trough-beds had opened.
“So what is waking us all up?” Leday continued her questions.
A new sound interrupted before Luna could reply. Almost like someone striking three different tubes on a pipe organ, each one two octaves from the one sounding before it.
Then a voice spoke. The same voice that had intoned instructions to the colonists prior to the transport ship leaving Earth’s orbit. “Information in one hour – audio and visual. Approaching new planet.”
“I’m glad The Voice is as clear at the end of the trip as it was at the beginning,” Leday said sarcastically, and then chuckled at her own joke.
Luna smiled and said, “Well, it didn’t have much to share, did it? ‘Lay on the bed’ is all I recall. I’m still amazed there was so much confusion with only one real piece of furniture around us.”
They heard a ‘smack’ and turned around to see a man on his hands and knees, next to the bed he had either fallen out of before it completed its transformation into a chair.
“Oh, great!,” Luna exclaimed.
“What,” Leday asked.
“It’s just that another person who woke up right before you drank the water from her bottle as well as the bottle on that guy’s table. And the robots haven’t refilled it yet.,” Luna explained.
“So what do you think happens next for him,” Leday said with concern.
Luna looked around and nodded. “The robots did refill my bottle, so I guess he can have that.”
“Seems like we’ve got a mission to do for our neighbors, eh?” Leday said with enthusiasm. “Nothing like a friendly face to help them wake up!”
“Sure, why not? It’s a good way to make some connections,” Luna said with a sly smile as she turned and walked back to her platform.
A few other people joined Luna and Leday in their self-proclaimed Aloha Committee, walking around helping people get oriented as they woke up. They had to step in once when a man was getting too loose with his hands, claiming he was helping hold a woman upright. The woman made it quite clear with the slap across his face that his hands didn’t need to go where he put them in order for her to gain her balance.
People were searching out those they had met before the departure.
One woman was starting to lose her composure, waiting for the trough-bed next to hers to open. She began beating on the glass, but the man didn’t budge.
And one time more, The Voice sounded, “Information in thirty minutes – audio and visual. Approaching new planet.”
Leday made the comment after helping a few more people waking up, “It’s like cooking popcorn. At one point, these beds were opening up pretty quickly, one after the other. But the closer we get to ‘Information’ time, the more time there is between the remaining beds opening up.”
“I was thinking of coffins, and you think of popcorn,” Luna said to Leday. “I guess I should hang out with you to get a more optimistic outlook on life.”
“I told you it’s all about the food for me,” Leday said in reply as she was steadying another riser, helping him drink the water from his bottle.
After those thirty minutes had passed, with no more notifications, large images were displayed on three sections of the wall around the floor they were on. It was pictures of flora and fauna. All had an image of a human next to the plant or animal. On some, the image was the human was standing up, eyes open. On others, the image of the human was lying on the ground, eyes closed.
“Do you recognize any of those animals?” Luna asked Lenay.
“No,” Lenay replied, “but I’m no botanist.”
“So, I’m guessing the aliens are trying to tell us what we can eat and what we can’t,” Luna said.
And, after a few hours, that was the general consensus of everyone else they talked to as well.
With only a few hundred people on this floor, it was inevitable to bump into people multiple times during this waking and waiting period.
“Hello, Dan,” Luna said, as she saw him approach deep in conversation with another man.
“Hey! Hello again, Luna,” Dan replied.
“Did you find the source of the Nile?” Luna asked.
“Hmm,” Dan said with a confused look.
“Did you find where the robot gets the water?” she explained.
“Oh, that!” he said, with his eyebrows straightening out. “No, I chased after, um…”
“Amy?” Luna filled in the pause
“Yes, Amy,” he nodded. “I chased after her, and we followed the robot to the wall. It just stood there, not turning around but not moving forward. I got tired of waiting after a couple of minutes, and started walking away. When I did, Amy turned around to talk to me, and by the time we both looked back, the robot disappeared behind a secret door that opened in the wall, which closed before either of us were able to run in behind the robot. So there is more to this ship than what we’re seeing.”
“I think we all realized that,” Luna said with an unimpressed tone.
“Yes, but now we’ve got proof!,” Dan said emphatically. “So after that, I got some other people to help me look for a way to get to the upper floors. We watched for more robots, tried to hide behind the tables nearest to where they waited by the wall. But none of it panned out.”
“I’m not too concerned with…” Luna started, but was interrupted by the notification tones.
After the tones, the Voice sounded again, ‘Lay on the bed. Arrival in nine minutes.’
The activity level had been steadily picking up the past few hours. Now, after people let the message sink in, the energy ratcheted up a number of notches.
Luna looked at Leday and said, “We’d better get back to our cots.”
They started towards the middle of the floor where they woke up, and Luna looked back. “Coming along, Dan?”
“Why?,” he questioned. “What’s the difference between that one and this one?” And having said that, he hopped up on the nearest trough-bed.
Luna shook her head and continued on. The answer to Dan’s question became apparent as others were doing the same as he. In those places where people came back to find someone already in their bed, arguments broke out. Most of the time, either the original owner moved on, or the squatter gave up their perch, but in a few cases, the argument was progressing to a fight, with shoving and pulling to gain possession of a place to lay down.
“I don’t know why people are fighting,” Leday said, giving voice to Luna’s thoughts as well. “Look how many people aren’t getting back into their cots! Any one of those places is available for use.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why either,” Luna said. “It doesn’t bode well for tougher times to come, if you ask me.”
Most of the colonists had followed the instructions given by The Voice and were laying down when the forces began being felt inside the ship. The bottom of the bed became more like a hammock, and allowed those people lying down to sway with the force. This encouraged a few more people to find a trough-bed and hop up in it, but the forces made it hard to walk or jump in smoothly.
Even then, there were still a few that refused to lie down again, for whatever reason. They were grabbing onto the sides of the trough-bed, or the tables next to them, determined to remain on their feet.
After a few more minutes, the force could really be felt, almost like a high-speed amusement park ride slowing down at the end of a trip.
There was a quick pause, shift, and then another heavy force, which caused nearly all of those standing to be knocked off their feet. One person near Luna landed awkwardly and she could hear a snapping sound, followed by a cry of pain.
“Idiot!” Luna thought to herself. “Probably broke a bone.”
After another few minutes, the shifts and forces evened out and then stopped. Luna was waiting for The Voice to announce their arrival, but it didn’t speak.
She did notice after another minute that the light was increasing in the room. She started raising herself up on her elbows when the trough-bed began its transition into chair form. She also could hear the murmur begin to increase and, looking over to where it was loudest, saw a door opening wider in the former wall, realizing this was the source of the increase in light.
“Leday!” Luna said excitedly. “We’re here! Look, you can see the light from outside!”
Luna didn’t wait for the chair to finish its transformation, but hopped down and started jogging over to the door, which was just three rows from her cot.
The wall formed into a ramp. After a few seconds, some at the entrance started tentatively down the ramp. The first stopped before stepping onto the foreign soil, but some behind them pushed through or jumped off the sides of the ramp.
Upon seeing that no one sank, nor melted, nor disappeared in a puff of smoke when they walked on the new surface, others started leaving the ramp en masse. They were walking around the outside of the alien craft, staring at the sky, the plants, their surroundings, trying to take it all in.
Luna made it to the bottom of the ramp, looked ahead, and saw a clear, smooth-flowing river. She walked straight to it’s edge. After assessing the depth of the river bottom and speed of the current, she walked in, waded up to her thighs, knelt down, closed her eyes and leaned back to completely immerse herself.
She opened her eyes to see a brightening sky shimmering about the surface of the water, reached up and this time felt her hand break the surface and feel the air like she was expecting.
Then she stood up, wiped her face and ran her fingers through her hair to set it back and ring some of the water out of it. She turned back around to the riverbank to see dozens of people that had assembled to watch her. As she returned to the river’s edge, people reached out to pull her onto the bank.
But some of them didn’t let go. They held her arm. Others came up and touched her shoulders, ran their fingers over her back, placed their hands on her chest, face, and stomach. And Luna didn’t flinch. She actually felt a sense of calm come over her and closed her eyes again.
After a few moments the crowd moved back and Luna looked around.
Others were now following her example, walking into the water.
Leday caught up to Luna and asked, “What is everyone doing?”
Without taking her eyes off of her fellow colonists, Luna answered, “Some are giving themselves to the new world, some are washing away the old world, and some are drinking in the life-giving energy found in the water.”
One person had wandered well out into the water, was now lying on his back, and floated downriver. Never to be seen again.