The Cradle

We assumed we were in the box.

It was only natural, after all. It’s what anyone would have thought. We had been away for almost six years. A little silver glint in space; not even enough to catch the eye. The CAS system kept us asleep most of it, of course. If we’re talking waking hours, we had been away from Earth maybe eight months.

Space is full of radiation. There’s a reason so many old astronauts have cancer - it comes from everywhere. Our ship had a ridiculously simple monitor, a light really, that was meant to alert us when radiation levels were about to get too high. The trouble was, when we were under, something went wrong. No way of knowing what, but this little green light was on the fritz. We looked at it and no one could figure the thing out - our chief engineer, after some tinkering, told us that the thing was garbage. That there was a 50/50 chance it was accurately indicating high levels of radiation. When you’re in a little metal tube, surrounded on all sides by death, those odds really don’t sound so bad.

Still, it was enough to get to you. It turns out an even chance was the worst thing we could have heard. I would gladly have taken 90/10, or even 99/1 odds. The certainty of death would have been infinitely more comforting.

After a few days, someone brought up we were exactly like the cat in the box. I’m sure everyone is aware, but if you’re not, I can give my two cents. Schrödinger’s cat is a kind of tawdry metaphor that was never really meant to be taken seriously, but the basic premise is as follows; a cat is placed in a box with a Geiger counter containing a trace amount of some radioactive substance. In the space of an hour, it’s equally possible that the substance remains unchanged as it is the substance decays. If the substance decays, a flask of poisonous shatters and kills the cat. In the hour before the box is opened, the contents of the box are a superposition, wherein the cat is both alive and dead. Upon observing the contents of the box, the superposition “chooses” an outcome. It was a metaphor that, to my foggy recollection, was meant to mock the idea of a contradictory harmonious state. However, it caught the public imagination and became accepted into the vast sea of pop-science.

What is interesting, however, is the notion that an action in the present, ie opening the box, can in fact change an event in the past, in this case whether the cat has been alive or dead the last hour.

We were currently the cat in the box; there was a 50/50 chance that we had been poisoned. The monitors on Earth would know for certain whether we were or not, but we were not due to communicate with them for another six months. It was funny, in a way. We joked about being zombies. That we were just waiting for the boys back open to crack open the lid.

After a month, it stopped being funny. I became unsure whether I was feeling the effects of radiation poisoning. Maybe it was a placebo, maybe it was all in my head, but I swear I could feel it. I could feel this looming dread, this decay deep in my bones. Examining the path the ship had taken, one of my peers figured out exactly where the radiation source must have been, if it indeed existed at all. After two months of uncertainty, we decided to open the box ourselves.

It was not our decision to make.

We put ourselves to sleep and turned the ship around. We had a six month timer; that would put us in range of Earth.

In that sleep, you are meant to dream. I had nothing. When I think back to my time under, I recall nothing. Only the darkness and a strange anxiety.

We awoke, looked out the window, and realised we were wrong. We were wrong all along.

We were never in the box.

A neutron star is the result of a collapsed star. While relatively tiny in size, their density is incredible. A neutron star with a radius of only 7 miles can have a mass of over twice our sun. They also give out enormous amounts of radiation. A tiny, blinding usher. A calamitous angel. The scroll, rolling up the night sky.

Swallowing whole the world entire.

Uncertainty was the curse. There was an even chance that there was no radiation source. There was an even chance the monitor was faulty. There was an even chance we were all fine.

But we had to know, and in our knowing, we became fate. We were the observers. We forced the choice. We changed the past and smashed the vial.

It wasn’t us in the box, it was the world. But we needed to look. We needed to.

Callisto

Sleek, silver. No shadow. Silver.

You acquaint yourself with what you’re looking at. The fog around the corners of your eyes dissolves. Slowly, the ceiling above you begins to materialise. “I am alive,” you think, “but too soon.”

This was wrong. Surely, this is wrong. You had heard that time doesn’t seem to pass when you’re under, but this seems distinctly different. Something was looming over you - the sleek silver ceiling that bore no shadow seemed like a distant, yet familiar threat. That was it - there should be a shadow there! If you in orbit of Callisto by now there would be a shadow. You turn your head -

No. You can’t. Something is wrong. You can’t move - you can’t even feel. Not like a numbness, no, like an absence. Your eyes dart down - the position of your body makes hardly anything visible. You just want to check - is it still there? Are you all still even there? Then you remember;

The Cells Alive.

The Cells Alive System was revolutionary. Loosely based on a process used in a Japanese Fridge of all things, the process involved freezing living tissue without the risk of damage or liquid crystallisation. For longhaul journeys like this, it was a Godsend.

By why were you awake? Why had your brain awoken without the rest of you? You wondered if something similar had happened to the rest of the crew - if you could just turn your head, you could check on them. A hot wave passes over you - or more accurately, your brain. Your mind. That’s the part of you you can feel. What was happening?

Sleek, shadowless ceiling. Just look at something else.

Memory ekes back in, slowly. You remember now - something had gone wrong. The ship lost power. You had no idea why - you were in a pod, for God’s sake. Either way, the hum of the ship was gone.

Well, “hum” is an embellishment. You have no sense of hearing presently, but when the ship is moving, you can feel the vibrations in your skull. If you can move your eyes, it’s a safe bet you’d be able to feel the ship’s engine, rocking them ever so slightly.

Or maybe your ears did work. Maybe there was just nothing to hear.

The ship was at a standstill - yet here you were. You remember, in your earlier days, before the mission, asking about the safety of the pods. In the dim blue light of a distant memory, nestled deep in the canopy of your faraway world, you remember, and are overcome with horror.

Early in the morning, the engineer reassures you. The pods run on a separate power source. They’ll keep you frozen, and keep you fed, even if the main ships power dies. Your body needs so little food in this state, and the machine will even exercise your muscles a little while you sleep.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why are you awake? How long will you be awake? Does Earth know you are?

It is frustrating that the overwhelming panic that grips you has no outlet - no sweat, no swearing, no screaming - nothing. Even your eye control is limited - you can’t even blink. The pod is keeping your eye moist. Were the settings jumbled? Why was your brain awake? Why were your eyes?

“Send me to sleep,” you pray. “Send me to sleep, send me to sleep until we’re rescued, please.” Like a child, you wish you could tighten your eyes, to amplify the strength of the wish.

Then another terrifying thought overcomes you; what if they aren’t coming for you? What if, back home, all they see is that the power is out? What if they assume you dead? What if they never come? How long will you be this way?

Silver, sleek, featureless. This image would burn into your eyes until, even if you escaped, it would have long since shrivelled up your retinas. Please, you ask, give me a shadow. Give me a detail to latch on to - give me something.

“The CAS system will keep you going,” I remembered, “pretty much indefinitely.”

Send me to sleep and kill me. Please. Send me to sleep and kill me. Cut the feeding tube off. Let your muscles atrophy. Please. God. Please.

Deja Vu. You remember thinking this before. What time was this? Has this happened before to me? How long have I… You remember… Yes, this did happen before, you woke up. But something was different.

Christ, God, no. The ceiling, you remember now. It wasn’t featureless. There was a mural on it. Where was it? Where had it gone? It was a schematic of the ship, where had it gone?! Was this the same ship? had you been taken, somehow? Was I home?! Wait, no, have I -

had you just been here long enough for your eyesight to fade?

How long have you been here?

No, I can’t have… This is all… Ah yes. Now you remember. Silver. Sleek. Featureless. You hadn’t woken up just now. It was… something else. A moment of clarity… You think. Alzheimer’s? Dementia? Not a physical thing, though. It was time, gnawing at me… Something… Else.

They say that time passes quicker the older you are. I wonder how long I have been here… Time doesn’t seem to be passing quicker, though maybe i would only notice if I had a point of reference… Something besides this ceiling… Maybe if I tried to have a conversation, everything would be moving too fast for me to follow. How long does it take a human brain to rot from the inside out, on its own accord?

I wonder if they mourned me, on the news… I wonder what a human face looks like. What do shapes look like?

The moments of clarity are the worst. I want it to take me over completely. I wonder how scared I was, the first time. The first time I realised this was everything… I wonder how different I really have it from people back home. This is ageing, this is just… Time… That’s all it is. The time we’re all afflicted by… condensed… into a…

How old are you? I remember now… Laying here… you remember the schematic fading… You could even notice it happening. Almost in real time, I saw it fade. Let me close my eyes.

Callisto, you think, must be beautiful. A beautiful silver. Sleek. Featureless.

Tags

writing short story horror spilled ink sci fi

78 notes View Post

infranaut

8 years ago

Like a breath

Raising her head skyward in frustration, her eyes glide over a choppy, crystalline sea. The only sky the Forager has ever known, as if the air itself ruptures into a tumultuous gray just above the mountains. With her limited understanding of the world, she used to assume the atmosphere a physical thing, that thinned out as it approached the ground. Up there, she figured, the air was like a mighty ocean.

Sighing, she digs her hands back into the muck below. A thick, shapeless assembly of dirt and clay – all that remains of whatever structure once stood here. However old this building was, and whatever import it held, to her it was merely something to be dredged. An unspecific mass incarnadine, to be hopefully panned for gold.

The cracks along the ground were filled with this rubbish; great splinters through the earth at the bottom of unimaginable gorges, into which all the works of civilization came tumbling down into. A single split like this had the potential to contain centuries of progress – countless artifacts and trinkets, buried within the rubble. Their individuality now faded, together they lie as a great amalgamation, and a monument to inevitability. If she were to grab hold of something – some old keepsake or remain – it may well be all the we would ever see of a certain snapshot in time. To the Forager, it meant an exchange and a meal.

Indeed, it is hard to say how many priceless heirlooms and invaluable relics she had herself broken in search of a more easily quantifiable trade.

One false step and she herself could be swallowed by antiquity.

To say the history of the objects she held in her hands had ever crossed her mind would be a half-truth – a lie to flatter the ghosts of whatever world she trudged through. Only the immediate past of a given object – how pristine it appeared – ever factored into her thought process. After all, “worth”, and especially human worth, is an invention. Despite lofty connotations, the scrap she neatly folded and tucked away now carried with it a newer, more objective value than what previous generations might deem it to have.

With an ache of pain, the forager arcs her neck skyward. Long before her time, vainglorious scholars waxed poetic about the idea of the convergence. In the now, the reality, the word had lost it's meaning. She had never known her celestial body as a singular identity – only as a part of the twisted amalgamation. Everything had been drawn inwards, you see. As the universe drew ever closer to its inevitable conclusion, it's satellites and travelers were dragged towards its center. It was like a great homecoming, in a sense. Every atom was called home, to be reunited in their single point of origin. In time, it would all be crushed together – every star and every world. There would be a great unification before the end. Out with creation, and in with destruction. Like no more than a breath, with another perhaps to follow.

But for now, and for another trillion years, this will be the shape of things. A tumorous mass, growing larger by the century, and then shrinking into nothingness.

And all sentience throughout all time would amount to - this final stage of evolution – is rats on a ship. Hungry and cold, rummaging through the trash of their forbears.

With her head held high, the foragers eyes glaze over the continent of another planet. Her peers, also raising their heads, might look at her own. It gave her solace, before she got back to work, imagining that she herself was to others a similar, tumultuous sky.

Tags

writing short story poetry spilled ink spilled thoughts

422 notes View Post

infranaut

6 years ago

So the auction scene in Jurassic World 2 is p good, but how would it flow with some big band jazz and snappier editing? (pls forgive me my memes)

Tags

editing spilled ink jurassic park jurassic World fanedit

49 notes View Post

infranaut

8 years ago

Castles in the Air, Episode Two: Jamais Vu

Castles in the Air is a bi-weekly horror anthology series in the vein of The Twilight Zone. The podcast is created and owned by Will Donelson.

A couple sit together in a diner, passing the time with cheap conversation. A car outside drives by one too many times, and the two sat behind them seem to be repeating themselves. Something is clearly wrong, and despite how much they want to leave, something is keeping them glued in place. As time itself unwinds, loops and rearranges around them, they find themselves questioning their very reasons for being.

Written, directed and edited by Will Donelson

Please Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/castles-in-the-air/id1191981068

Stream on Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/castles-in-the-air/e/48846067?autoplay=true

Stream on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/will-donelson-1/castles-in-the-air-episdode-two-jamais-vu

RSS: http://castlesintheair.libsyn.com/rss

This episode features voicework by Jane Duncan and John Skaggs. This episode features additional voicework by David Milk and Paul Cipparone.

Music used:

"Humility" by Mangokitty, check them out at vickisigh.tumblr.com

Opening theme is "Consumed by Love" by Giles Appleton

Episode art by Will Donelson

If you like what you heard, please subscribe to us on iTunes! I would also appreciate any ratings/reviews on iTunes as it helps boost the shows visibility.

Once again, thank you to everyone for being so supportive and sending so many nice messages and the like. Next episode in two weeks!

Tags

writing horror podcast spilled ink castles in the air

153 notes View Post