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After Illume

By Emily Skrutskie

When the ice hits Illume, she screams as only a space station can, with twists of metal

and hisses of escaping air.

The ice chunk is grapefruit-sized, seemingly innocent, but it hits in just the right spot,

ripping the nexus apart and sending Module Three tumbling out into the black while the others

scatter in opposite directions.

The radar didn't see it coming, didn't give it a single blip. There was nothing I could have

done, and there's certainly nothing I can do now.

For the first time in three months, I feel gravity, but it's not the pleasant sort. My module

has turned into a pinwheel, and it's crushing me against the wall. The screams of the stabilizing

thrusters rattle through the walls as they bring the module out of its spin and toss me back into

the loving cradle of zero-G.

The main power died with Illume, leaving my pod running on auxiliary—just enough to

keep the air filtering for now, but not enough for lights. The radio was in the nexus.

I suppose I'm lucky that the emergency seals did the trick and I didn't get spaced in the

impact. As the shock wears off, I begin to realize that a quick death might have been the better

option.

Without radio contact, I can't let mission control know that I survived. They've only got

the time and resources for one rescue mission. And I can't tell them that there's a module worth

fetching out here.

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Now I'm sitting here, slowly breathing myself to death.

I've got food and water to last four weeks, but air for only a quarter of that time. A rescue

ship can get to the Oort Cloud in three days, but as previously stated, that's not happening when

they've got no indication of where I'm located.

For the first time in three months, I'm wishing that I wasn't alone. Most of the other girls

at the Beaumond Flight Academy schmoozed their way into cushy internships on near-Earth

stations for the summer. I had the right psychological profile to get myself placed so deep in the

black that the sun's just another bright star in the night. High capacity for solitude—exactly what

every space agency looks for in a station-sitter.

The plan was simple enough: fly out on the shuttle sent to bring in the old crew, keep

Illume functioning until the new crew rotated in, and then shuttle back home. Not the best

resumé item, but the money they offer in return would be more than enough to pay tuition at a

top university. Thanks to that bitchy ball of ice, I can kiss dreams of a proper astronaut's

education goodbye.

My mental resolve is strong. I can weather three months of lonesomeness, and stay calm

when the module tosses me like salt in a shaker. I can face my own slow death without tears.

Maybe this isn't so bad—maybe I'll die calmly, like one of those Buddhist monks who sit cross-

legged on mountaintops, detached and peaceful.

That's when the darkness starts talking.

"It's going to be okay," she says in a soft, lilting voice. "You're going to be all right."

For a second, I fool myself into thinking that a radio is working, but the tone's wrong—it

lacks the crackling quality of all of the Earth transmissions. Then I start to panic.
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No. No, no, no. I'm not hearing voices. I'm psychologically stable. I'm doing my job, and

I'm not hearing voices, and this can't be--

"I can hear that, you know," the voice says. "But it's okay. That's a natural reaction."

I clamp my hands over my ears, trying to slow my breathing and just focus, as if I can

think the voice away.

"Inez, please."

A chill floods my body the moment she says my name. "Who are you?" I finally dare to

ask, uncurling from the ball I've formed.

"I am the final comfort."

I shake my head. "No, seriously. Who are you?"

She pauses for a second, and I swear the air around me starts to flutter a bit. "My name is

Samara. I am tasked with soothing the dying explorer."

So I'm dying. I guess that could excuse the whole "hearing voices" thing. Somehow, the

news that I'm not long for this world is comforting. Curiosity strikes me, and I decide there's no

harm in asking. "Tasked by whom?"

"The... the other side." Samara sounds either hesitant or unsure—I can't differentiate.

"Right, and I'm just supposed to"

"Look, Inez—"

"Specialist Ortega, if you please." I don't want this thing acting like she's chummy with

me.

"Inez," she says firmly. "This is a really different setup compared to what I'm used to, so

you must excuse any strangeness in the experience. You're deep in the black. I can't manifest

with anything you've got out here."

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"Manifest?"

"For the sailors, I would use the sea itself to craft myself into the shape of a woman and

sing them to sleep. Recently, it's been the fires of reentry—I can usually get a good form out of

the dance of flames as a spaceship goes down. But out here—"

"Hold up. You're telling me you're a goddamn mermaid?"

"Sometimes," Samara says. "Other times a selkie, or a siren, or a forest sprite. When it's

deaths in the sky, I'll take the form of an angel in the clouds. Usually there are lots of options, but

as I mentioned before-"

"Yeah, yeah. The black."

There's a long, pregnant pause.

"So I'm dying?" I finally ask, a little more quietly.

"Yes. I'm sorry. Would you like to talk about it?"

I snort. "What, you're my end-of-life counselor now?"

"That is my role, if you'd like to call it that."

I roll over, kicking towards the other end of the module. I've strung up a little nest for

myself there: a sleeping bag, tied to the module walls. "How close to dying am I?"

Samara hesitates before saying, "I'm not sure. Usually they pass within minutes of my

appearance. I am summoned by their distress and certainty. I can't leave until they've moved on.

But with you, I think I may have come a little early."

"Oh." I burrow into the sleeping bag, tightening the straps. "So you're still going to be

here when I wake up?"

"Yes. I will watch you while you slumber."

"That's creepy, dude," I mutter, letting my eyes slide shut.

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Samara's still there in the morning—I guess she doesn't lie.

"You're still alive," she says the instant she notices that I'm conscious. The weird thing is

she sounds happy about it. You'd think she'd want me to just bite it already, but apparently that's

not the case.

"Coffee," I grumble in return. According to some douchebag psychologist named

Maslow, I'm not supposed to need coffee more than human companionship, but the bastard's

wrong. I'm fine on my own, and I'm pretty sure my blood's composed of at least three parts

JavaJolt.

Except I'm not on my own, as Samara makes perfectly clear. While I wait for my drink to

brew, she tries to spark conversation with little things like "How are you feeling?" and "Do you

want to talk about anything?" and "Are you content with the life you've lived?"

Finally I snap. "Would you please shut up?" Kicking against the ship's wall, I propel

myself to the end of the module. "I'm not that interesting, really. Just... leave me alone."

Several minutes pass before she speaks again. "I'm sorry, Inez. It's very different for me,

too. Usually it happens so fast. I've never gotten a chance to get to know a person before."

"Yeah, well, let me tell you, your people skills need work."

"You weren't too great at your job either," Samara shoots back. The darkness around me

curls, just a bit, and for a second I'm worried that she's figured out her manifestation problems.

"You had one role, Inez—protect the station—and you couldn't even do that. And now I'm stuck

with you until you die. You're not too great at that, either. At least let me help you."

"I was at peace before you showed up."

"Then help me. You don't have much else to do."

A snappy reply catches in my throat. "Okay. Okay, Samara. Let's chat, you and me."
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The darkness flutters.

It takes a while for me to realize how much I missed real conversation. Samara's terrible

with getting a dialogue going, but she's a hell of a listener, always prompting in the right spots.

I start with the general shape of my life, from growing up in a small town just outside

Pasadena to enrolling at Beaumond to getting my internship and flying out here. But that doesn't

take long, and soon I start telling her stories. I tell her about punching the kid down the street

when he insulted Neil Armstrong in second grade, about stealing shuttlecraft for late night

joyrides in flight school, about the frog I'd smuggled aboard the Grissom Research Station on my

first trip to Mars. It's kind of strange to just be allowed to tell someone everything about myself.

Samara's a sponge. No, even better, she's a vacuum. She's almost greedy for the

information. It's kind of cute, actually, in a purely intellectual sense.

It takes most of my second day of dying to tell her everything she wants to know about

Inez Ortega. On the third, I decide to turn the tables in the middle of breakfast. "Tell me about

you," I say through a mouthful of reconstituted scrambled eggs.

Samara hesitates, and I worry that I've crossed a line. "I... I don't know what to call

myself. A spirit?"

I shrug. "Sounds about right."

"I see death and alleviate it. Specifically explorers. People who die on a frontier. I guess

you've heard of the Soyuz 11? When they were decompressing, I was talking to them from the

dance of gas escaping their spaceship. I was an angel crafted of the clouds, flying alongside the

plane as Amelia Earhart went down.

"I talk to them, and I help them come to terms with their deaths. It's my job to be there for

anyone who gives their life while advancing the reaches of mankind."
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"Ever get trouble from any of them?"

"More trouble than you've given me?" she shoots back with a giggle. "There've been

plenty of sailors far more interested in my body than what I had to say."

"You'd think the fishy bits would be at least a little off-putting," I reply, taking a swig

from a baggie of protein shake, and Samara laughs outright. "Hey, I've got an idea." I give the

bag a squeeze, allowing a fist-sized bubble of liquid to escape. It floats across the module and

settles into a neat sphere. "Can you manifest in something like that?"

For a moment, the protein shake is motionless in the air. It shimmers in the tiny blips of

light from the active instrumentation. Suddenly the surface ripples, the liquid molding into a

flurry of forms. It expands, contracts, twists into cords.

For a second I think I recognize a bit of muscle trying to weave itself together. The fluid

coils into the shape of a tiny mermaid, and I reach out tentatively. Samara reaches back, winding

her tail around my fingertip. The liquid trembles. Then it collapses back into the sphere again.

"I'm sorry," Samara says, her voice thin. "To sustain a detailed form in something so

small—it's not easy. I need forests, atmospheres. Oceans, usually."

But I lower head between my knees. Contact. To touch and have it returned. It hasn't

happened for months. All of a sudden I realize that it's never going to happen again.

I'm going to die.

"Samara."

"I'm still here, Inez." She sounds stronger now, but it's not doing much to help me out.

Everything is collapsing. My mind's crumbling in on itself, and it hurts.

I latch on to one thought. The bastard Maslow was right. I am not a monk on a

mountaintop. I won't face my oblivion serenely. At the basest level, I need my life. I've just
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gotten started living. Shit, I haven't even finished school yet. There's so much energy left for me

to spend, and I can feel it swelling up inside me as I raise my head. I want to live.

"Inez?"

"Samara, I'm sorry. I think you've made a mistake."

"You've been doing so well." Now she sputters, "Please, calm down. Be reasonable."

"This is reasonable! I'm nothing unless I'm fighting to live."

"No, please!"

"There's got to be a way. Something I haven't thought of. Communicating with Earth—

there's still time for a rescue ship. I just need to tell them this module has a survivor. They'll be

here in three days!"

"No. It's false hope. I'm sorry, but you're going to die. I... I wouldn't... be here." But she

sounds doubtful, and that's all I need. I kick over to the cabinets where we stash the scientific

equipment and start rummaging through them, sending tools floating haphazardly across the

module.

I know nothing about radios—I wouldn't be able to build one—but there's got to be

something I can use. My hand falls on a cool metal panel, and the chill of salvation rushes

through my body. It's the laser that the science crew uses to sample the surface of passing

comets. I brush my fingers over its controls, feeling each button, each dial.

"Light, Samara. Fastest way to talk to Earth. Flash this in a non-random way and they'll

know someone's here. It's perf—"

And Samara screams. Her voice rises in a keening note that fills the module, and I

remember the stories about mermaids dragging sailors to their deaths as the floating tools start to

vibrate with the pitch of her voice.

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I fire up the console, using the device's targeting system to swing the laser Earthwards.

Flashing the laser on and off with shaking hands, I settle into a pattern that will convince them

that someone's alive up here.

one, one, one two, one two three, one two three four five.

Samara sobs as she pleads, "Inez, no! Stop it!"

I let the Fibonacci sequence transform into syllables, a chant that I hurl back at her. "I'm -

not - going - to give up - on life, Samara. I'm - not - going - to give up - on life, Samara."

She screams over me, though I refuse to stop. "You've still got four more days to live!

You've still got me! Isn't that enough?" She breaks off, and the darkness shivers with her

frustration. "I thought... You're the first person I've ever gotten to know and you're just leaving?"

Maslow's hierarchy, I think, still firing the laser. My need for life is more crucial than my

need for you. But that doesn't make it hurt any less. I grit my teeth and release the controls.

"Inez..."

By now it's too late. The message is out. It'll take a few hours to reach Earth, but it's

going to get there. They're coming to save me.

Samara knows it. She whimpers now, making the darkness ripple.

"Look, I'm sorry," I start, but my words echo emptily as I realize the impact of what I've

done. Samara's never had someone to talk with for so long, and I've just purposefully deserted

her. I'm sure there have been plenty of handsome sailors that it pained her to let slip by, but she

never knew them.

"I'm sorry," I say again, stronger this time. Samara's whimper fades into silence. "I'm

sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Three syllables. Fourth beat in the sequence I've just shot towards

Earth in a flurry of photons. Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.

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Samara's there the next morning and the morning after that. I feel her presence, though

she hasn't said a word since that last whisper of my name. That night, I lie awake in my

suspended sleeping bag, and she speaks at last.

"They'll be here in the morning." Her voice is flat, expressionless. "When you board, I'll

be released."

"Thank you," I say, hoping she understands how much I mean it. "You did a really good

job, you know?"

She doesn't answer, so I decide it's best to keep talking.

"Look, I'm going to make this up to you—I know exactly how. We would have had one

more day together, before I... y'know, asphyxiated. What if I promise you that day?"

She stirs the air around me.

"I swear—no matter what, I'll always be at the frontier. I'll always be exploring. You

saved me, even though it wasn't your job. I owe you this." I draw in a breath, and say, "I will see

you again."

The darkness seems to brighten, just a bit. "No one's ever..."

"I know," I reply, giving her a weak smile.

"Thank you, Inez."

"No, Samara. Thank you."

The rescue ship docks with Module Three the next morning. As I float towards the glow

pouring in through the hatch, a tear slips from my eye. Samara slides into it, twisting and coiling,

manifesting into a tiny mermaid that presses her palms to my cheek before letting go.

I feel her dissolve as the light envelops me.