Andrew Morgan - Vessel

It was a warm day, the warmest yet, and the sun beamed down from high in the sky as Sally trudged along to the great domed building at the far end of the centre. Close up, it was bigger than she expected, and its sheer scale took the warmth straight from her body as she was sucked into its encompassing shadow. Her instructor’s gym kit had been exchanged for a long, white lab coat. He was joined by two others as she met him in the foyer.

‘Follow me please,’ he said, and they walked in silence up two flights of stairs into what looked like a small air traffic control room, its desk space dominated by dials and lights and switches that were original from the Cold War era. More frightening was the view outside the letterbox window above the desk: a room, as high as the top of the dome itself and almost as wide. Mounted on a central axle and spanning the radius of the room was a thick blue tube that ended in a sphere. It looked big enough to hold a person. Sally could feel her legs going weak as primal terror rushed into her and a screaming voice bellowed Run away! Run away! But all she could do was stand rigid, feeling the blood run from her head to her accelerating heart.

‘Don’t worry,’ said one of the lab-coated people, a smart, square-jawed woman. ‘You are fine. We watch; we keep safe.’

She squeezed Sally’s arm, and Sally did her best to smile back without vomiting. They led her to a door at the end of the desk, and she followed, semi-dazed and unresisting. Although fear was consuming her every step, a small amount of pride and stubbornness — the same stubbornness she had exhibited since she was a child — carried her forwards, determined not to let her fail.

Behind the door, a skinny gantry cantilevered out to the sphere, which hung open and waiting, ready to devour its human prey. She stepped into the cramped sphere and sat in the deep, curved seat. It hugged and pinched her body from head to toe, although it was quite comfortable once she was in. The lady buckled her up, pulling the nest of harnesses tight across her body, pinning her torso flat against the seat with not a millimetre of give.

‘Hold this,’ she said, taking Sally’s hand and placing it on what felt like an upright tube. ‘You press button.’

Sally, feeling for a button, found it and pressed it.

‘For if you fall asleep,’ the lady said, not being as reassuring as she seemed to think she was. ‘Oh, and keep mouth tight closed.’

She left, closing the sphere after her, leaving Sally in near-darkness. Only a small, dim light glowed above her, casting a dribble of yellow on the cramped space. The seat didn’t seem quite as comfortable any more, and the tight harness restricted her breathing. She could feel a clammy sweat forming on her palms, sliding her grip from the tube and forcing her to squeeze even tighter. A thought came to her as sudden and confusing as her arrival in Russia: was this what being in the womb was like?

‘Please nod your head if you are ready to go,’ a loud voice asked her through a speaker above her head. Her eyes hunted through the gloom for a camera lens, which she found just above her. Without knowing why, she nodded. A muted whirr and a rumble shuddered through the sphere, and she felt it droop as she listened to what sounded like the gantry being retracted. When the sound finished — culminating in a solid clunk — the echo left behind seemed to carry through the vast room for an eternity. Then, another deeper more electrical whirr began, building to an unsettling whine.

‘Beginning acceleration to one G,’ the speaker said, and the whine grew louder, more intense, carrying the sphere forwards with it. The acceleration was gentle, but the disorientation of the darkness made Sally’s head light. The button’s spring felt stronger under her thumb, but she clung onto it, keeping it pinched down. As she span faster and faster, an invisible pressure grew, building with the volume of the whine and flattening her into the seat. It was like she was turning into a corner that became tighter and faster with each passing moment. It was uncomfortable, but not unbearable.

‘One G,’ the speaker informed her.

It struck her then that she did not know when the test would end. Would it stop at a certain number, or would it keep going until she gave in? She grimaced under the weight of her own body as it increased with each revolution of the circular room.

‘Two G.’

Her breathing became short and fast, partly because she could feel the clutch of panic constricting her throat, and partly because her lungs struggled to inflate against twice the force of gravity. It surprised her that, although she was not entirely calm, she felt better than she thought she would.

‘Three G.’

The light in the cabin seemed to be dimming, but at the same time her eyes felt strange — as though she was falling asleep without being tired. She blinked to try and regain her vision, which worked for a few seconds before it sank back into a dull, misty version of what was in front of her. The weight on her body was worrying; a sickening thought that this was like being buried alive slipped into her head, the crushing weight rising and rising with each spadeful of dirt added to the growing mound. She could feel her soft tissue, both inside and out, trying to find the path of least resistance around her inflexible skeleton. Her face was heavy and numb, doped up with the anaesthesia of the relentless sphere.

‘Four G.’

This must be it, she thought, surely this must be it?

Her vision had almost faded to nothing. She was at the mercy of the overwhelming forces that ground her into the seat — all except for her hand, which gripped so hard to the button that her fingers stung. Her eyes watered as the crushing power became unbearable, but even her tears couldn’t fight the god-like control of the sphere over her body as it thundered round and round.

‘Five G.’

A small moan escaped her lips, but the scream of the motor as it slung her into the ever-tightening corner sucked it away, a tiny drop in the sea of rushing wind and roaring electricity. Where she was calm before, almost enjoying the multi-million dollar merry-go round at the expense of the Russian government, she now felt a horrible shroud of mortality smothering her tight and still, suffocating the life from her, straining her blood away from the organs that needed it most. True, real and terrifying death hung over her eyes, blinding her from the only connection she had to the real world: the dim yellow light above her head. Backwards she fell, falling deeper into a bottomless pit that had no rushing wind to whistle through her hair, the yellow light growing smaller and smaller until it was a tiny pinprick that twinkled for the last time.

A hiss of hydraulics and a pool of stinging whiteness cascaded into Sally’s body as consciousness hit her with a sudden jolt. She blinked, clarity washing away the dirty smear that streaked her vision.

‘How are you feeling?’ the lady in the lab coat asked as she stepped into the sphere to help her. ‘You did very good.’

Sally tried to get up, but the harness pushed back hard. She exhaled, exhaustion pummelling every muscle in her body, and let the lady unbuckle her.

Floodlights clicked on one by one as the purple night took over from the last dying rays of the desert sun, and an exhausted Director congratulated himself on a job well done. His team had excelled themselves in the conversion of the Progress resupply craft and had completed the task one day ahead of schedule; all there was to do now was complete the residual checks and begin launch preparations. Progress M Eighteen M, modified for a human payload, was go.