Nova (4 page)

Space. I am hanging in the middle of space.

It surrounds me in every direction, blackness punctuated only by a million points of lights with nothing to stand between me and it.

I instinctively grasp for the ladder, heart thudding in panic before I realize there must be walls around me or I would have already been frozen by the vacuum of space. Letting go of the ropes, I move forward until my hands encounter glass, curved and round and impossibly clear. Even the floor is glass, or at least a substance remarkably like glass, for I can see the stars beneath my feet. It is the ultimate observation deck, this little room no more than five feet in diameter. A window into the heavens themselves.

I stare out into the abyss, and I instinctively know this view is Lia’s. That if she were standing here right now, her memories in my head and her past in my heart, my soul would be bursting with wonder and joy and awe and amazement.

It would, except Lia is no longer here. I am, and I feel nothing. Nothing at all.

*00:30:00*

I sit on my cot and watch the minutes count down toward the end.

*00:29:59*

*00:29:58*

*00:29:57*

Not quite a half hour left, and I can’t think of a single thing I want to say, a single thing I want to do.

*00:25:34*

*00:25:33*

*00:25:32*

If I have a specific target, I do not know it. If there’s somewhere else I’m supposed to be, I am not there.

*00:21:12*

*00:21:11*

*00:21:10*

In all likelihood, it doesn’t matter where I am when I go Nova. The chemicals in my arms, when properly mixed, have more than enough power to take down the hub, and the rings with it.

*00:18:56*

*00:18:55*

*00:18:54*

This cargo bay is as good a place to go as any, and perhaps better than most, with the darkness breathing softly around me, its thick arms enfolding me in its tender shroud. It’s as close to a grave as I will have.

It is enough.

*00:15:03*

*00:15:02*

*00:15:01*

At the fifteen minute mark, it begins.

My mind suddenly goes lax, as though my brain has been wrapped taut around a spool and only now is loosed. I let it reel out within my head, expanding, stretching, lengthening. The sensation is curiously pleasurable, and I let myself sink into the moment. If anything, the spool only seems to unwind faster with my acquiescence.

*00:12:52*

I feel a shivering sensation in my left eye and then a gleam of light—so impossibly bright!—pops into my vision. For a second it is alone, one tiny speck dancing across my vision. Then a second one sparks, gold and twisting, across the corner of my eye, and then another, and another. Gold spots are flickering across my right eye now, and the cot across from me begins to blur, skewing and sliding within the metallic froth.
So beautiful, so brilliant!
Like holding a star before your eyes and looking into it until your retinas burst.

*00:10:03*

My heart is racing now. It pulses within my chest, squeezing like a fist pumping rhythmically open and closed, open and closed. I struggle to breathe, my lungs heaving with the effort, but it is a good struggle, like the sprint at the end of a long race, when your mind is fixed only on covering those last few hundred meters and making it to the finish. I can barely see, barely think, barely breathe, and yet I feel like I could fly.

*00:06:53*

I look down at my forearms, not that I can see much of anything anymore. Just like they said, heat begins to warm the inside of my skin. It is happening; my sacs are opening, the chemicals are releasing! My destiny is here, my fate come to—

A sharp pain clubs my head so hard I almost fall off the cot.

I gasp and grab my temple, twisting my head and searching wildly for the source of the blow.

A second strike lashes me behind the eyes, and it’s only now that I realize the pain came from the inside, not the outside. My arms are hot now; more than hot, they are burning with the heat of an open flame licking across my skin. I cry out, pain forcing me from my silence.

This isn’t right! It’s not supposed to feel like this!

The sparkles in my left eye suddenly go out, the silver stars turned to dark embers roiling about in the black field of my vision. Fear courses through me, pulsing erratically out of sync with my pounding heart.

Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

Fire rages across my arms, the pain so great only my clenched teeth are keeping me from screaming. I tear at my sleeves.

Water!

I roll off my bed, stumbling blindly toward the hygiene units, my only thought to find relief for the searing heat under my skin. My feet hit half a dozen cots on my way, tripping me up and nearly spilling me onto more than one sleeper. A chorus of annoyed murmurings mark my passage, but I ignore them, concentrating only on my destination. I reach the first unit and wrench open the door.

*00:03:22*

I fumble for the taps, but my hands don’t seem to want to work anymore. Little growls issue from my mouth, rising in pitch and volume with each passing second. Even in my agony I can’t help remembering—
I must not be heard.

In desperation, I turn my face and sink my teeth into my shoulder, letting the cloth of my jumpsuit muffle the sounds. If it hurts, I do not notice.

A gray fluid, filthy and heavy, begins pooling over my right cornea like a spilled slick of oil—
white, where is my promised white?
—and I feel my legs give out, dumping me to the floor in a tangle of useless limbs. And that’s when I finally realize the truth.

I’m a
dud.

The last thing I know before everything falls silent is a voice, singsong and high, echoing in my mind.

“Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye.”

Then everything goes black.

4
*My name is Lia Johansen,
and sky roisters seven larynx beta nine 0001001110000 01110001 0111111100111001*

*Error: Sequence Code 248903489*

*Re-sequencing initiated*

*My name is Lia Johansen, and I was umbrella avalanching mirrored park lambda eighteen 01110000001011111 10001 1100 11000000111*

*Error: Sequence Code 248903489*

*Re-sequencing initiated*

*My name is Lia Johansen, and I steady steady making over upon above camp 00000001 11101100 11000000101010*

*Error: Sequence Code 248903489*

*Re-sequencing initiated*

*My name is Lia ssfft gibbets size quark 00000000110011 111111110001 010001000 11*

*Error: Sequence Code 248903489*

*Re-sequencing initiated*

*My name is &*###*&^^^^^ 000111011111 1101 11100000001 1000000100000 00001111*

*Error: Sequence Code 248903489*

*Re-sequencing initiated*

*Error: failure to re-sequence*

*Re-sequencing initiated*

*Error: failure to re-sequence*

*Initiating Emergency Shut-down*

*Shut-down initiated*

*Shutting down . . .*

*Shutting down . . .*

*Shutting down . . .

*****

5
MY EYES ARE ALREADY OPEN
when I wake.

One moment I am gone and the next I am here, staring out at a matte gray fog. Not white, not black; just flat, opaque gray. My pupils instinctively try to adjust, but I can see nothing beyond the veil.

It does not matter.

The backs of my eyeballs begin to sting, and I reflexively blink. Fluid gushes down my cheeks, and with its exodus my sight returns in a shock of sensation.

I am sprawled on the floor of the hygiene unit, my shoulder cramped uncomfortably against the toilet, my left leg asleep where it twists awkwardly beneath my right. My body aches and my head pounds, and pain, true pain, radiates from my forearms. I muster up the energy to turn one arm over. It looks normal. So does the other when I examine it. I feel faintly surprised at the observation. The pain was so bad—is still so bad—I expected to find twin burns on both forearms. Something, at least, to mark the agony.

My sacs did not release like they were supposed to, the activated chemicals burning my arms when they found no outlet into my bloodstream. No wonder the pain was so great, with such a defect in my manufacture.

Defective. That is what I am. Flawed. Imperfect. Broken, like a piece of garbage tossed carelessly on the floor until someone gets around to throwing it away. I look in my head for my clock, not even sure if I will find it.

*00:02:33*

I watch the time, counting the seconds silently in my head. One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three, one thousand and four . . .

*00:02:33*

My lips keep mouthing the counts, but the numbers don’t turn. I am stuck. Frozen in time, just two and a half minutes away from nirvana. In my short time on the station as myself, it never once occurred to me that I might be a—

No! I will not say it, I will not even think it—

Dud.

The word doesn’t bring the expected pain, only emptiness. A whispered resignation that can’t be denied. My identity, my purpose, my existence—they are all one and the same.

Nothing.

I wonder why I even woke again at all.

For a long time, I just lay there, staring at the wall, my eyes caught in some strange trance my mind seems unable to break. Eventually I become aware of voices just outside the door.

“. . . busy morning and there are a lot of units. Maybe someone slipped in while you weren’t looking.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve been in line for forty-five minutes and
no one
has gone in or out of this unit.”

A sigh. Then a soft knock sounds on the door. “Hello? Is anyone in there?”

I have no choice now. I can either come out or they can come in.

“I—I’ll be out in a minute,” I manage to call after a couple false attempts. My voice sounds rough, my throat raspy after a night exposed to the dry station air, but it’s serviceable enough.

“There, you see?” I hear the male voice tell the other. The female’s response is muttered, too low for me to hear, but their footsteps do retreat.

Standing is difficult, but doable. I limp the couple steps to the sink, stretching my leg to try and rid the pins and needles, and gaze into the mirror. It’s a good thing I didn’t open the unit door. I am enough of a shock to myself; a casual bystander would find me appalling.

Thick globules of fluid are crusted in the folds around my eyes, the gray gunk echoing the gray of my eyes and congealing in my lashes. Streaks down my cheeks show where the liquid, whatever it was, ran down my face, and when I look down, I see more stains on my jumpsuit and collarbone. It is in dull contrast to the sharper reddish-brown blood coating my lip and chin, and dribbled over the corners of my mouth. I tentatively shift my mouth around and feel clotted remnants inside as well. I must have bitten my tongue sometime last night without even realizing it.

Turning on the taps, I cup my hands under the water and rinse out my mouth, spitting half-dried chunks of red out with each mouthful. I turn my attention to the rest of my face after that, unzipping the top half of my jumpsuit and using the tail of my undershirt to rub at the various stains. Despite some vigorous scrubbing, though, the gray stains around my eyes are still there, faint smudges that make me look dull and exhausted. Even the whites of my eyes have a grayish cast to them. I look haggard by the time I’m finished, with dark circles under my eyes and skin that looks much too pale, but I am decent at least. Not out of place for a traumatized refugee who spent two years in an internment camp.

Or a genetically engineered human bomb who spent the night malfunctioning on the floor of a hygiene unit.

As I smooth my shirt back into place, I notice a nasty bite mark in my shoulder, in the fleshy part just above the armpit. A corresponding tooth hole peeks through the fabric of my jumpsuit. I blink at it. Did I do that? I must have. I don’t remember that, though. I wonder what else I did last night that I don’t recall.

The showers are located in the other block of hygiene units, but I use the toilet and clean the rest of myself up as best as I can using only the soap and water from the taps. My clothes look presentable enough once I put them in order. Everyone’s clothes are so dirty and worn by this point that a few gray stains, a couple drops of blood, and a tooth hole blend right in. My hair, too, looks okay once I pull out my ponytail and tuck the bloody ends into a messy bun.

My ablutions finished as much as they can be, I reluctantly turn toward the door. My fingers hover over the latch. It’s locked: another thing I don’t remember doing, though it’s lucky I did or I would have been found passed out on the floor and hauled to the infirmary—and then to security. There’s no way I could pass a medical examination without being discovered for what I am.

For some reason, I expect everyone to be staring at me when I emerge from the unit, as though they will see me and immediately realize what I’ve been through, but I garner surprisingly little interest. Even the complaining female from earlier doesn’t seem to be around, probably already having snagged another unit.

The cots near mine are mercifully empty, their occupants already up and about. I sink down onto my bed and stare dully at the wall. What does a genetically engineered human bomb do once she discovers she’s a dud? Will someone come looking for me when they realize the station didn’t blow? Or will they simply wash their hands of me, write me off as dead or as good as?

I search my mind, trying to recall what they told me to do if anything went wrong. I find nothing. No troubleshooting techniques, no contingency plans, no instructions on how to reach them. I cannot even remember who “they” are. No names, no faces, no voices. Fear courses through me, and I struggle to recall one—just
one!
—memory from before I boarded the transport here.

I can’t think of a single thing.

Impossible! I didn’t spring to life on the ship; I must have come from somewhere. The internment camp? No, that’s Lia’s past, not mine. The few memories I bore of that place were all hers, and now that she’s gone from my head I don’t even have those. Even my name—Lia. I do not ever remember having another, and yet how could I have passed sixteen years without one? It’s as though my past has been completely wiped from my memory. But how?
Why?
Is this a symptom of my malfunction, or have I never known the answers? I’d like to believe it’s the former, but in my gut I can’t help fearing it’s the latter. That they sent me in here with nothing but a mission and a head full of some dead girl’s memories, and now that both have failed me, I really am nothing.

I really am no one.

I laugh. Why should I be someone? I was meant to die seven hours ago—dead girls don’t need names. Dead girls don’t need pasts. Every minute I live now is a minute I was never meant to exist. So many minutes. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with them.
Supposed
to do! I was
supposed
to go Nova! And now that I haven’t, there’s nothing I’m meant to do. Nothing at all.

So nothing is what I do.

Lying down on my cot, I curl up in a ball and pull my blanket up over my head. I stare into the darkness—not resting, not sleeping, just . . . lying.

Before I close my eyes, I check my clock one last time.

*00:02:33*

Still unmoving.

I do not get up again for a long time.