Pilot, Part One

There is a day when everything will end; when the last flakes of matter will drift away into unending darkness and be lost forever; when ties stronger even than time or distance will snap and hurtle away into a lonely silence, and the very thought of silence will become arbitrary without a frame of reference, because nobody will have heard anything in an infinity after time came to its syncopated end but even that won’t matter, there won’t be anybody left to wonder why time stopped and why a nameless blankness took its place. But that is a long time away; an infinite time away. (infinity is the only concept that holds its meaning in meaninglessness, because it’s half meaningless to begin with). And somewhere in between now and the end times, there will be a war that tears our galaxy in two; there will be a human with an excessively long name; there will be a long silence that decides to become a beginning. 

This Is A Book About People Who Want To Be Astronauts 

There was a long silence. The forest trembled, something large was falling. The atmosphere crashed, something very large was falling. A shape appeared near the crest of the sky, like an office building, but far bulkier and only slightly less square. Fire and soot spewed from the shape as it fell. Clouds of dust rose from the trees, frightened birds cried loudly; a jet of fire leapt across the trees and they burned to ash in a startled series of moments. 

The ship came down beside a lake. The landing legs fell and planted themselves into the pulverized ground. Dust and mist drifted across the hatchway, painting the door with mud. The airlock slid open. Two men in pale-green EVA suits stepped down from the ladder that had dropped from the belly of the ship. One of them glanced up at the ship. He said something to his partner. They began to walk. 

The airlock slid open again. Another man in an EVA suit dropped from the hatchway. He waved to the others. They turned back and shouted, though no noise came through their thick helmets, back at the ship. The third man nodded, and climbed back inside the ship. An implied cow wandered across the field, eating theoretical grass. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker banged a fist against the side of her helmet and the cow disappeared with a hiss of methane and discarded notions. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker closed the airlock and pulled her helmet off. Inside the ship, a pair of slightly braised astronauts were trying to play cards with fingers that looked like breakfast sausage, which on the ship looked very similar, frighteningly similar, to congealed rocket fuel. Conrad Munroe and Emily Hamilton, the ship’s engineers. Conrad’s hands were bandaged and it was only through gaps in the wad of gauze that Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker could see how much like breakfast sausages they were. When they weren’t bandaged, Conrad was very good with his hands, which is why Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker thought it was such a pity that they were. What wasn’t a pity was that Emily Hamilton’s face was bandaged, it was heavily nondescript, like a cinderblock or a lump of oatmeal, though (at least somewhat) more shapely. Even so, trying to look at Emily was difficult, her features were so nebulous that she looked very similar to everyone else. For some reason, however, this did not mean that everyone looked like Emily. They were all far more distinct looking.

The engineers looked up from their card game. Conrad nodded to Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker, Emily tried to say something but all that came out was a mumble that sounded vaguely like Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s name (which was far more complicated than she would have liked, and a constant sore spot for her. The crew used it whenever they could.) and then another sound at the end. The second sound is not unlike what happens when someone attaches a garden hose to the wrong end of a whale and tries to turn it on. The result of course is something considerably like a blubbery whale wail, but altogether different entirely (whales rarely wail in absolute anguish. Typically, their anguish is partial. It could be (and unfortunately has been) said that whales are partial to anguish). In simpler terms, Emily was laughing at herself for being foolish enough to try and say Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker with burned lips and a face swaddled in bandages, while Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker was glaring at her because she suspected that Emily had been trying to say her name with burned lips and a face swaddled in bandages.

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker saw Conrad slip a card out from the bandages around his hand and into his hand of cards. He was very good with hands, especially in poker. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker sat down at an empty chair. Emily was still laughing, though she sounded as though she was at the other end of a garden hose. 

“Deal you in?” Conrad said. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker turned out the left pocket of her suit. “I’m broke, and I’m broke until I get home.” She added, looking very pointedly at Conrad, who had been about to ask when she would get paid. 

Emily Hamilton said something that might have been: “You wouldn’t be broke if your ex hadn’t taken everything.”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker never brought up her marriage. The crew brought it up with carefully inverted frequency.

As it was, Emily Hamilton might have said, “There’s wooden bees to smoke if you can. Don’t frighten everyone.” Though Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker thought that was less likely than if it had been her who had said:

“I wouldn’t be broke if my ex hadn’t taken everything.”

Whatever Emily did say, and Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker didn’t, Conrad responded to Emily’s garden-hose-and-wrong-end-of-whale noise with a chuckle before turning to Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker and dealing her in anyway. 

“One hand.” Conrad said. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker folded with a pair of twos and a seven as a high card, without knowing that Conrad had pulled the wrong card from his sleeve and Emily had discarded a pair of aces in order to build a straight, which she didn’t manage to do. Fortunately the jack that she drew instead of the nine that she wanted beat out Conrad’s high card, a six, but not the straight he didn’t notice until Emily had scooped up the pile of cash tossed in the center of the table. Conrad didn’t point out the straight and claim his winnings; it was worth easily the amount he had lost to stay out of the day long argument with Emily over the rules of poker that would result from such an action. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker laughed to herself and watched Emily stuff the money (with far more vainglory than Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker thought the hand, or even the sum, deserved) into her pockets before standing and saying, “You should wear turbans,” to Conrad and Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker and leaving the room. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker thought she might have meant “I’m going to turn in,” But you could never tell with Emily, no matter how much like everybody else she might look. 

Conrad spun a lump of bandaged sausage around his temple. “That one’s nuts.”

“You’re one to talk. I’ll remind you of who got you two looking like something out of a ration tray.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker replied. 

“And I’ll remind you that you were married because reminding you that you were married seems like a good retort.”

“Give it a rest ham-face.”

“Me? No, Emily has the ham-face right now.”

“Whatever.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker told him. “You should wear a turban.” She stood up from the table and went down the hall to try and remember what her door looked like when there was gravity. Eventually she found it, it had a sign on it. The sign said: Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker, Mission-

What she was aboard the ship, the girl called Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker would never know, her name was so long that there wasn’t enough room on the door for whatever her title was, and nobody had bothered telling her before they’d been thrown off the planet by an enormous rocket and told to discover something but please in the name of god don’t name it after yourself because nobody would be able to remember the name or else nobody would use the name because it’s so unforgivably long and then they’d abbreviate it and as everybody knows abbreviations belittle things and the things that are worth discovering shouldn’t be belittled so don’t call it anything that has anything to do with your name because that would be ridiculous and we don’t care if you were the one who found it. The problem was that Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker kind of agreed with that reasoning, even if she was angry that nobody at the launch center ever called her by her name and it was probably because nobody at the launch complex could pronounce (or even remember) her name because it was so ridiculously unwieldy. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker closed her eyes and told her brain to shut up. It resisted stubbornly for a few minutes, until Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s legs told it a joke about not being able to stand when you were tired that wasn’t really a joke but--

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker fell asleep in the middle of a thought that might have finished like this: -her legs had never been very good at convincing her brain that something (especially a joke, which her legs didn’t make often) was highly sarcastic and it ought to take a hike and go kill itself so that they could just go to sleep, but didn’t because she was asleep. 

For some reason Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker thought in the third person, and didn’t find it strange in any way whatsoever. Some of that was because she was asleep, but it was mostly because she hadn’t noticed before. If her brain hadn’t gone into remission she would have suspected that, had she realized, she might have suspected that something was wrong. As it was, she had far more to worry about.

Naming a new planet for one. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker woke the next morning and realized close to immediately that it wasn’t morning at all, but sometime late in the afternoon. She swore, got dressed, and went out into the main compartment of  the ship where the rest of the crew were eating actual, genuine, not-a-trick-I-promise, cooked food. When Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker got closer to the table she saw that it was pasta in thick, scarlet sauce,  and realized that she couldn’t remember the last time that she had seen, let alone eaten, food that hadn’t been irradiated, freeze-dried, or vacuum-packed at some point in their lifetime. She might have wondered where the crew had got the food, but honestly it looked too good to bother. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker fetched a tray from the rack beside the ship’s kitchen and heaped it with food. She sat down and began to eat voraciously.

Kareem Rosalowski, the gunner; possibly the closest person Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker had to a friend,  looked up from his tray when Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker sat down. 

“Hungry?” he asked.

“You have no idea.” 

“It’s good isn’t it?” Conrad said. “Emily made it.”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker almost choked. “Our Emily?”

Emily made an insulted sound through her bandages.

“Yes.” Kareem said. “Our Emily.”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker decided not to say anything else that day. In the meanwhile she watched Reyes Fahlmann shovel down food. Reyes was a thin, wiry man, and he flew the ship, well, Kareem flew, Reyes calculated. In addition to a hugely disproportionate appetite, he had an intense love of numbers. Any numbers really. 

Reyes leaned back from the table. “Where the hell did Emily find food?”

“I’ve been saving it/ Just savor it/ large metal apples.” Emily explained through a mouthful of pasta and gauze. 

“Right.” Reyes said, and pretended he knew what she had just said. (perhaps he did know, Reyes often knew things the others didn’t.)

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker undecided not to say anything else that day. “But three years?”

“Of course not.” Said Conrad. He pushed his tray away from he edge of the table and sat back in his chair. “Not for the pasta anyway.”

Emily unwrapped the lower part of her bandages. “There’s a stasis field in between a pair of the flux couplers in the torsion driver. I made the pasta just before we left, it was still hot when I got it out. Special occasion, you know.”

“What were you doing in the torsion driver?” Somebody said.

“Readjusting the mass isolation values. Some idiot put the avionics package near the center of the driver. The entire layout is ridiculous, it’s almost like they didn’t want anyone to tune it.”

There was an awkward silence. Reyes started eating again.

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker heard Emily whisper “What did I say?” to Conrad before rewrapping her bandages. Conrad didn’t respond, just nodded. 

Kareem spoke next, but only after several minutes of quiet. “Cypris, Conrad, you haven’t been planetside yet have you?”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker shook her head. Conrad shrugged. “Just trees and grass.” He said. “Big deal.”

“I’ll go.” Emily mumbled, then possibly, “Seals bad, calibration.” Which wouldn’t have been terribly odd. 

“Go with them.” Reyes told Kareem, “I can watch the ship.”

Conrad looked confused. “Why? I’m staying on the ship.”

“That’s why I’m watching it.”

“Ha ha.”

“Shut up you two.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said. “Nobody cares why you’re on the ship, so long as you stay awake while you are.”

“We shouldn’t go out of sight yet anyway, not until we know more,” Kareem said, “So we shouldn’t be long.”

“Can we wait until tomorrow?” Emily said. She had unwrapped her bandages a little ways again. 

“Tomorrow? Why?”

“Something I’m working on.”

Kareem made a gesture. It looked as though it was supposed to be ingratiating, even though it clearly wasn’t. “Sure.”

Inwardly, Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker swore heavily. The last time Emily had worked on anything three people had ended up bald and a forth had found themselves able to speak french, not martian like Emily had wanted.

“I’ve got repairs to do.” Conrad and Emily said close to simultaneously and left the compartment. The engine room ladder jangled a moment later. 

“Math.” Reyes said, he had already produced a sheet of papers and a pen. 

Kareem stared at the airlock. “I’m going on EVA, there’s some data I need to collect.”

“Gravity minus torque…” Muttered Reyes, “Then the delta V… Right…”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker walked to the back of the ship to make an entry in the log book. She sat down and stared at the computer until it turned on. The screen flashed blue for a moment, then letters came up in the center: “Run”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker paused, the computer had never done anything like this before. While she paused, a simulated cow wandered across the top of the monitor. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker typed back: “Why?”

Again the computer flashed “Run”

“Tell me why”

“Run.” The period placed uncharacteristically at the end of the message was strangely compelling.

“Not until"--

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker couldn’t finish, the computer cut her off, something else it wasn’t supposed to do.

“Run Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker!” It said.

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker became cold. Her fingers, poised above the keys, trembled ever so slightly. The computer began to flash urgently: run, run, run, run, run. Then something sparked and the monitor went grey. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker threw herself upward; she didn’t know what was about to happen, but she had the feeling that it was horrible and had a very, very good chance of killing her. 

Conrad looked up from the carburetor disassembled across the table, Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker caught his eyes once, then slammed into the airlock. The door flew open and she fell through a moment later. 

Another moment after that, there was a boom and the sound of shattering glass and wrenching metal.

The airlock chamber was tossed forward and downward, Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker was thrown into the wall with a bang. Dirt scattered everywhere and the sound of thunder and perhaps a child crying rung in Cypris’s ears. The chamber spun round and round and tumbled down a hill until it hit the lake. A plume of water was thrown into the air where it mixed with a cloud of ash and soot. 

There was a lonely silence. 

The airlock chamber bobbed near the edge of the lake and Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker settled at the bottom. A shower of mud and stone came down over the chamber rattling against the metal and glass of the outer door. 

There was silence for a long time. For a long time, Cypris didn’t dare breathe. The airlock shook in the lake, the water around it stirred up into a muddy fervor by the shockwave. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker tried to get to her feet several times. She fell down several times as a result. She lay very still against the spheroid wall of the airlock chamber and tried to reach the EVA suit dangling above her. Several times, her fingers closed around the air, but eventually she took hold of it and managed to pull it down from the hook. She put the suit on quickly, then gritted her teeth, reached up, and wrenched the airlock door open. 

The airlock chamber fell away and sank into the mud at the bottom of the lake where it remained for a very long time. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker shot upward and burst from the surface. Milky water ran across her visor, when it cleared, she looked up and dragged herself up onto the bank of silky green algae. She spit bile over the inside of her visor, in a painful half-laugh, half-cough. She felt like she might turn inside out at any moment. Then she saw the ship and her stomach turned itself on end.

It was gone, just a cloud of charcoal; a plume of dust and drifting ash came down over the lake and clung to the sleeves of Cypris’s suit. She stood and looked around. Trees, grass, the lake. A cow, ambling into oblivion. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker almost wondered where the hell the cows were coming from; she nearly thought to ask herself if everything was alright.

“Cypris!” Someone shouted. “Cypris!” Kareem was standing near the smudge that used to be their ship; used to be Emily and Conrad and Reyes. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker struggled up the banks of the lake, her boots sliding in the algae and grey mud that would have smelled like damp concrete if her helmet hadn’t been filtered.

“Cypris?” Kareem shouted again, “Where are you?”

“Here!” she shouted, falling to the ground with a sucking slap of mud. 

“Cypris!”

“Here! I’m here!”

“Cypris, where are you?”

“Right here!” She struggled to her feet. 

“Cypris!” 

“Here!”

Silence.

“I’m here!” Cypris fell to her knees beside the ash pile and retched again. 

Silence, then a sound like a mountain sneezing. The ground melted, the sky seemed to split, and Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker was pulled backwards and down into the lake. The water boiled and turned to steam.

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker fell into the sea. 

“Goddammit. You can’t do anything right can you?”

“It was just pasta!” Emily said. 

“It caused a collapse in the reactor, there’s nothing ‘just’ about it. If you can’t stop mucking around with the ship, you can’t stay a part of the crew.”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker opened her eyes, she was lying underneath a ceiling painted in a wholly unthreatening color. Someone stopped next to the bed and offered a hand. She took it and Conrad pulled her upright. Emily was standing past an empty doorway wearing a stubborn expression. A man named Jonathan Griggs was standing across from her wearing a suit that had been ironed perhaps too many times. 

“If you weren’t the best engineer to come through here, I wouldn’t hesitate; you’re a danger to yourself, and a danger to the crew.” Griggs smiled in a way he thought looked placatory, but Emily thought looked like he had a stick driven up--

“Look who’s awake!” Conrad said, before Emily could respond. 

Emily turned quickly. “Cypris, Hi. Sorry.”

“There are worse mistakes.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said, then regretted it; the words had sounded much more comforting in her head. 

“Yeah, right.” Emily said. She glanced down the hallway then went the opposite direction from Jonathan. A door slammed.

“Hey, it wasn’t our worst simulator run.”

“How did the dolphin get into the cargo bay that time?”

Conrad shrugged. “Stasis field?”

“Are you hungry? I’m really hungry.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said. 

“No, but go ahead. I’ll wait ‘till they put out dessert.”

“Okay.”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker went down three flights of stairs and through two sets of single-light double doors (the ones with metal plates where you’re supposed to push) and into the cafeteria. A few technicians were bent over plates of something that smelled like liquid rubber, but the room was empty otherwise. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker got a plate and heaped it with three kinds of slop. One was green but otherwise nondescript, the second was more like glue than glue was, the last was the rubbery something, which turned out to be the dessert, some kind of pudding with a french name that Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker was sure wasn’t supposed to leave soot on the fork. It didn’t take long to realize the pudding (or whatever it was meant to resemble) was easily the most appetizing thing on Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s plate. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker sat down at an empty table beside the window. It was dark outside, the moon was rising over the city, it might have been full that evening. The stars were lost in the forest of window-lights and the bulk of the jagged skyline. While Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker was looking at the city, someone sat down across the table from her. 

“Cranford-Tracker?” That was strange, nobody used just Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s last name. She was just Cypris to everyone, and Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker to everyone else. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker turned to the girl. She was primarily orange, and slight enough of build to make Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker jealous (Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker only really wanted three things: to have a shorter name; preferably one with as few vowels as possible, to weigh less than she did; which was only just enough to make her insecure, and to have a relative understanding of French). Her hair was cut like a man’s, but there was no doubt as to her gender; her face was narrow, and her jawline was delicate, almost fragile. The jacket she draped across the back of the chair was bright orange, the color of nacho cheese or irradiated yeast perhaps. The girl (she might have only been thirteen) looked like a porcelain puppet; she was pale and moved jerkily, like strings were tying her to the ceiling. 

“Yes.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said, not entirely sure what the puppet could want; she had never seen her before, even in passing. 

The puppet laid a badge on the table between their two trays. It was branded with a red circle that had the outline of a class twelve disposable firearm in the center. “I’m with customs.” She said. 

“Quaint.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said, though she didn’t know why. For some reason, security seemed quaint; it was ineffectual, she thought; they were never armed, they were rarely trained.

“We need permission to search your room.”

“No you don’t.”

“You’re right, we don’t, but it’s easier for both of us if you give consent.”

“Given.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said, thoroughly bored. 

“And Jonathan wanted to see you.”

Oh, so I’m ‘Cranford-Tracker’, but he’s ‘Jonathan’, Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker thought, perhaps a little uncharitably. She wanted to say, screw Griggs, but instead: “Tell him I’ll be there in a while.”

The puppet stood, said, “He won’t like that.” And walked away before Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker could respond. 

Jonathan Griggs’ office was, to Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s mind, possibly the least interesting place on earth. The floor, like every other floor in the complex was done up in a color Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker was sure had to be called mediocrity. The walls had been painted white; entirely too white, Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker thought. There was a desk at the center of the room and a small folding chair behind that. Jonathan was sitting on the chair with an expression somewhere between pain and expectant surprise. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker wavered at the edge of indecision. She had just begun to make a choice between running from the room and punching Griggs in the face, then running from the room, when Griggs spoke:

“You need to control your crew.”

“My crew? You picked them.”

“You’re the captain.” Griggs said. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker couldn’t tell if he was exasperated, she was too taken aback by the statement to even acknowledge the tone. In reality, Griggs was not exasperated, or anything else for that matter; Jonathan Griggs, or CFA3B429-E1 as he was known by his friends, (if he had any friends, which he didn’t) was a drone, and drones didn’t have personalities, or friends, or emotions. Why Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker hadn’t noticed this fact is inconsequential, though the consequences of her lapse in awareness would be dire. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker remained taken aback for several minutes. Jonathan Griggs remained still as a potted plant for a similar amount of time; his internal power supply had run out very suddenly. Cypris decided; she hit Griggs in the mouth, and ran from the room. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker ran out from the door much too quickly to see the approaching wall of orange, let alone stop for it. She crashed headlong into the customs puppet, they slammed into the floor with the sound of an exploding mattress. A pair of hands caught Cypris around the wrists, another pair of hands grabbed her shoulders, and a pair of orange-coated customs officers hauled her, with the delicacy of bulldozers, to her feet. 

“Don’t struggle.” One of the officers grunted, or perhaps snorted, it was difficult to tell through the heavy visor he was wearing.

“Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker? What are you doing here?” Another two customs officers dragged Conrad around the corner. He was grinning. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker looked at him and tired to shrug, “I honestly don’t know.” 

The customs officer wrenched her shoulders back. “Make this easier for both of us and stay still.”

“Are they always like this?” Conrad said. 

“Big and dumb?” The customs puppet said, picking herself off the ground. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker felt a pang of vindictive joy (she wasn’t sure why) when she saw that the puppet’s nails were polished. “That’s what we pay them for.”

“Not enough.” Said one of the officers. 

“Cut it out.” The puppet told him. “You can let them go now.”

The officers released Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker, she hit the floor face first; the officers holding Conrad paused. A thought or two ran through their heads. 

“Boss, he was hiding a division three explosive device behind the bed panels.”

Conrad laughed, “That’s what this is about?” He looked at the puppet. “It’s a still, not a bomb.”

“A still?” One of the guards said. “Sir?”

“Fine him and release him.” The puppet said.

The officers let go. 

Conrad and Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker walked back to the cafeteria in silence. Their shoes squeaked on the wet tile. The ‘slippery when wet’ sign sitting inside the doorway wheezed and slouched to one side. An alarm rang and there was a rush of footsteps and  orange jackets. A group of customs officers, big as rocks and dumb as rocks, ran by with a sound like a herd of rocks rushing to a black-friday sale. 

“Why would customs be here?” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker asked. 

“I’ll tell you.” Conrad said conspiratorially, “but only if you tell me what you have to do with them.”

“I met the puppet earlier. Then I ran into them. That’s it, aside from socking Griggs in the mouth." 

Conrad was wearing an expression of fervent disbelief when he ran into a wall. When he caught up to Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker the expression was trapped behind his eyes. 

“Griggs? In the mouth?”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker just nodded and used her shoulder to shove through the cafeteria door with an angry shove. The door’s hinges complained violently. “This is abuse! Somebody help me!” they said. 

“What did that door ever do to you?” Kareem called from across the room. Desert, apparently, had ended; the cafeteria was empty apart from the crew, who were sitting at Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s favorite table with a cake and so many candles that the table looked as though it might be on fire. 

“See, I remembered!” Emily shouted. 

“You remembered!” Conrad yelled back, though they were actually quite close by this point. “That means I owe you money doesn’t it?”

“I didn’t think you’d remember my birthday.” Conrad said, sitting down.

“I remember your birthday.” Emily said, standing up; angry, though her voice didn’t show it.

“No you don’t.” Conrad said slowly, “This isn’t my birthday.”

An image of Emily hurling the cake at Conrad’s head flashed through Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s mind, but she wasn’t sure why. 

“No. It is not.” Emily said, slowly-er. 

“Oh, right.” Conrad said. He turned very quickly to Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker and said, very quickly, “what did I say?” before facing Emily again. 

“It’s the anniversary of Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s divorce!”

“Seriously?” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said. She sounded more sarcastic than she felt, but a very good deal calmer. Another image whirled through her thoughts; her upturning the table and tearing off Conrad’s fingers one by one; the cake falling, as if through mud, to an immaculate floor; somebody bleeding and on fire, running circles around the table, screaming, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” they might have looked like her ex, but they could have also been Emily or Reyes. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker closed her eyes and took four deep breaths; one for each of the people she was imagining burning and mutilated. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker wasn’t violent in any way, violence gave her a knot in the side of her guts in fact, but her imagination was incredibly vindictive, downright brutal sometimes. Breathing didn’t really help, but she thought it did. 

There was silence. 

“Seriously?” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker said again. It was the only thing she could think of. 

“We thought you were happy being divorced.” Reyes said, clearly, Emily had told him to. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s imagination tore off his head and buried it in the cake. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker just said, “I’m happy to be divorced,” A forced smile got trapped behind her gritted teeth, and she paused, “I don’t like you reminding me I was married in the first place.”

“We weren’t,” Reyes said, confused.

“Yes you were.”

“No we weren’t.”

“Actually, yes, you were.”

“No. We were reminding you that you’re divorced.”

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker had never been able to tell if Reyes had a sense of humor or not. 

The forced smile escaped. “You can’t be divorced without being married.” Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker told him. 

“Well, no. But"--

“Seriously.” Kareem said. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker realized she liked him best out of the rest of the crew because he spoke the least. “You needed cake, we needed an excuse.”

  Conrad bumped Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker’s shoulder. “We had an excuse, but your marriage was too hilarious to avoid bringing up.”

Emily nodded. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker found the impression of being surrounded by either sharks or hyenas (or hyena-shark hybrids). Emily was talking, but Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker wasn’t listening, not really. 

“We could have said that you need cake because you’re turning into a sociopath.”

“Seriously.” Conrad said, having a seriously hard time trying not to smile. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker punched out his teeth, but she might have just imagined it. 

Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker opened her mouth to say something exceedingly scathing, but the door burst open before she could get the words out. As a result the crew heard: “I don’t believe this, you ought to just-“ That was Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker “-Get down on the ground now!” That was the wedge of customs officers pouring through the door. 

The lights went out, there was a scuffle and a rush for the door. A window broke; somebody stepped on the cake. Five aspiring astronauts woke up in a cell.