Deeper Into the Void (10 page)

Cardiff starts walking the other direction, to the mess hall. Mendez, Long and Lawrence each follow her; none of them have eaten anything since breakfast.

As the sun disappears behind the distant horizon to the west, Ghent sits quietly in his room, on his cot. His legs crossed and his arms quietly folded as he stares intently at his closed door; the latch is locked.

Chapter 9

Year 15, Day 39

G
hent sits on the floor with his back to his door as the morning light breaks through his window. Dust laden air glows in the presence of the fresh light. His legs lie limply upon the cold painted floor. A sleepless night has rendered his eyes swollen and heavy. His hair, ragged and shabby, is filled with dust. Beads of sweat cover his face, and dampen his hair and jumpsuit.

Small beads of glass cover the floor and fill the sink basin; the medicine cabinet door is bare without the mirrored glass that once adorned it. Ghent leans his head back against the closed door and closes his eyes. The exhaustive night has taken a definite toll on him.

His eyes flash open and his hand rushes to the door handle to brace it after a loud knocking on his metal door.

The sound of cloth moving along the metal surface on the inside of the door answers one of her questions. The sound of fidgeting precedes the door opening a crack.

She pushes on the door to widen the view into the room from the hallway. A firmly planted door ignores the force of her body as it pushes into the door again.

The sound of her footsteps as they fade down the hallway and out of the door, allows Ghent to relax, even if it is only just a tiny bit. His body complains as he pulls himself off of the floor. The sound of the mirrored glass crushing beneath his heavy boots, which he had not taken off during the night, causes him to pause a moment in consideration of the night’s events.

He reaches for the handle on the door; the sound of thousands of glass beads rolling draws his focus away from leaving the room. His head turns to the left to watch the spectacle; As if orchestrated by some unseen force, the glass upon the floor begins to congregate along the wall underneath where the mirror had been last night. As the final few pieces roll along the floor and come to rest in the pile, another migration of glass is set in motion; the glass beads begin to slide up the wall next to the sink. Ghent’s eyes squint, in the hope that a truer focus would reveal the whole impossible act to be a figment of his imagination.

He quickly grasps the lever handle on the door again and turns it to release the door. He turns and walks out of the door without paying any further attention to that which must be impossible. As the door shuts behind him, he draws in a deep breath to purge his distressed mind. The clear glass window in front of him permits him to see that Long and Lawrence are walking toward the laboratory down at bottom of the plaza.

He steps across the narrow hallway and places his hand on the window. The morning light fills the dome with color. A short smile crosses his face as the morning light buoys his mood greatly. A smile presses through the discontentment on his face, and breaks through to the surface. A warm rush of air surrounds Ghent, his eyes look to the side without the slightest movement from the rest of his body. The glass on the pane next to him begins to fog up. Not a single muscle twitches as words begin to appear on the foggy glass. The words appear as if drawn by some invisible finger on the glass. Ghent draws in a deep breath and closes his eyes tightly.

Long and Lawrence hurry through the opened door of the laboratory. With a single sample bag over his shoulder, Long places the samples on the long white bench. The bench, which is mounted on the wall of the laboratory, is smooth and clean. Lawrence grabs a pair of gloves out of the supply cabinet above the desk. Long places two metal swivel stools over in front of the spectrometer and microscope at the workbench.

The vials are carefully cataloged and laid out in an organized fashion on the table. Lawrence hands a pair of white vinyl gloves to Long, and then he stretches the vinyl over his own hands as well.

The slide is carefully placed under the light of the microscope. Long bends over the microscope to examine the odd substance under magnification.

Vial after vial is opened and tested, results are accurately logged. Long uses the glass control module at the front of the table to transcribe his report as he dictates it. He includes all of the information and photos for the report, all of which will be transmitted back to Earth. While preparing the report, the two continue their conversation from the prior day.

Chapter 10

P
anels of glass burst into illumination as the main control room computer starts up to greet Doctor Mendez as she enters the control center. An array of perfectly clear panels is laid out from left to right as a countertop might be. Each glass panel has a different purpose. Some display information about the environment inside the dome, others track communications and journal logs. There is one panel that displays only information relayed from the satellite orbiting overhead. Mendez is mostly interested in what has been entered via journal entries from the prior expedition. She has spent most of the past couple days reviewing footage and listening to audio.

On the whole, she finds the information quite boring, reports of minerals and the progress that the plant life in the dome had made. None of that has been very interesting to her, but she watches intently for “odd” behavior. Aside from a few odd entries, nothing noteworthy has happened.

Mendez sits down in the oversized swivel chair in front of the same panel where she has been sitting, it seems since they arrived. Cardiff joins her, turning the seat next to hers, and swiveling it back to face forward after seating herself. Mendez begins to retrieve the master listing of the recordings. Within a second, the panel fills with illuminated projections of these requested files.

The larger pane of glass behind the smaller control panels illuminates with what has become a familiar image to Mendez, crew-member Hansen. She presses her finger on the projection to start the playback. A single brief alarm sounds, followed shortly by a system notification, “Authorized access only”.

The still frame is still displayed on the main screen, awaiting the authorization. Appearing larger than life, the small imperfections on his face appear larger; his facial scars from shaving are quite obvious. His facial hair appears to not have been trimmed or shaved in several days.

Eyes of green appear as if to protrude from the glass, sharp and perceptive. After a moment of continued pause, the image begins to move.

Video Log
Year 11, Day 173

Hansen

The weeks of isolation on this world are definitely starting to have an odd effect upon everyone here. You are probably curious about what is happening around here. Well Doctor Mendez, you will see soon enough I think.

–End of Log–

Mendez slowly sinks back into her chair, remaining completely fixated on the freeze-frame image of Hansen at the end of the clip. Cardiff holds her hands in front of her, with her elbows resting on the arm rests in her chair. Her fingers are clasped together in a contemplative fashion, revealing her depth in thought.

With a few quick movements along the glass dashboard, Mendez pulls up the array of 22 cameras hidden within the dome, and outside looking outward. The small thumbnail versions of the video sit displayed on the dashboard panel in front of Mendez, awaiting the press of a finger to enlarge on the large monitor.

Instead of pulling the video for a single camera, Mendez selects them all to view on the large screen above. Cameras numbered 1 through 15 cover the various buildings within the dome, and the other areas as seen from the ceiling of the dome.

Mendez quickly taps the feed from camera 2 and a video of the mess hall pulls up on the main screen.

The oddity of which Cardiff is referring to is the three figures, all seated at the bench in the mess hall. All of them are dressed in the grey mission jumpsuits. Every suit looks like the standard issue with the company logo on it, yet all of the letters on the name patches are mixed up. Jovial conversation seems to be the theme under which the figures are meeting.

Laughter and animated conversation take place for a moment as the two women study the image. Each of the figures is sitting at the table, both hands in front of them. The mug that one is holding drops to the floor and shatters. More surprising than this spectacle to the two women observers is that not a single eye followed the mug in its sure descent to the floor. As if cued, they stop conversing and begin to look up toward the camera that is watching them carefully.

Their gazes seem to be concentrated on those watching them, as if to look at the viewers, themselves, through the camera. The feeling one gets when they lock eyes with someone else, this same feeling pierces them both to the core. An overwhelming desire to remain clandestine combined with a terrible feeling of exposure rushes through every nerve in their bodies, right to their very fingertips.

Confusion and disarray flee before them as panic and terror take the recently vacated places in their hearts. Cardiff manages to utter a single question in the unfolding trepidation.

The feed switches over to a section of the garden. The tomatoes, celery, carrots are all growing larger, and are distinguishable from a distance now. Oddly, in this particular feed there are four more people in jumpsuits working in the garden with tools.

A moment after the feed was switched to show this scene, the people in the feed all stop working. They slowly turn around to look at the camera and stare blankly into it, just as the three in the mess hall had. All of the names printed on the patches are indistinguishable, just like the three before.

Cardiff turns to the shelf behind the opened vault-like door. On the top shelf a single black polymer case sits. She reaches for it with haste; the case slides off of the shelf and is laid on the simple table in the middle of the room. With a touch of her bare finger against the latch, the case trim-work illuminates in blue.

The lid on the case pops open, still requiring Cardiff to open it all the way. Mendez sits in her chair watching her captain with great anticipation. Inside the case, a fitted foam bed cradles a matte black pistol and three shiny magazines.

Cardiff reaches into the case and retrieves the polymer semi-automatic pistol from its resting place. The slide is locked back and the magazine well is empty. She carefully points it at the floor next to the door as she checks the weapon. She reaches for a loaded magazine and carefully slides it into the well. A distinctive click noise sounds out the proper loading. She depresses the slide stop lever, pulling a round into the chamber.

Mendez quickly switches to the feed covering the hallway in the dormitory. Ghent’s door is closed, after a few moments of looking into an empty windowed hallway through the video feed, the door to his room opens slowly. A single bloodied hand reaches through the opened door and comes into the view of the camera, followed shortly by a foot and leg.

The video screen is again subdivided into the 22-paned window that summarizes the feed from of all of them. Mendez’s eyes blaze past one onto the next. Every single feed has at least one or two figures actively engaged in something; that is until they all turn in unison to look through the cameras at them. Mendez can feel the gaze of every single eye that rests upon her through the screen. About twenty seconds pass as Mendez is reconciling her own perceptions with what she knows cannot possibly be.

Camera 10, which monitors the laboratory building, is the next to be blown up onto the main screen above. Mendez covers her mouth in surprise and disgust. Long is bent over looking through the microscope, and Lawrence is standing next to him, bending over as if to be able to see whatever Long is looking at.

Two figures enter the camera view from the bottom of the screen. Cardiff rushes forward out of her chair, and presses the announcement button on the console and yells into the microphone in front of her: “Heads up Lawrence! There are two guys right behind you”. Lawrence is quick to turn around. He is greeted promptly by a strange liquid tossed onto him by the figure on the right.

Lawrence drops to his knees and frantically rubs his eyes, obviously trying to clear his stinging eyes. Long looks up from his microscope to see his confederate’s commotion. The other figure quickly bounds over the table in the center of the room. An oversized plastic bag is produced from the figure’s right pocket and flung over Long’s head as he tries to assist his fallen comrade. A simple tug on the bag and Long writhes in panic as it goes tight around his neck.