Kate Day - In the Quick

It’s your locker. She looked at Simon; he was pushing apples from Rachel’s locker into one of the refrigerator bins. You can bring what you want.

Everything has a different weight and shape in space. Objects don’t behave the way you expect them to: an enormous container of supplies that appears impossible to haul is in fact easy, but a small sack of hardware is unwieldy, potentially dangerous. Things move in unpredictable ways, change shape, even disappear. Food floats away or disintegrates before you can eat it; tools you gripped tightly in your hand just seconds ago seem to vanish into thin air.

My body itself was different on the Sundew, the contours of my face almost unrecognizable in the mirror. My cheeks were wider, my eyes rounder. My shoulders took up more room than they did on Earth, my legs less. I didn’t move the same. Like everyone else on the station I developed my own unique way of getting from module to module, half swim, half climb. I didn’t even sound the same. When someone asked me a question and I answered, my voice—lower and raspier than on Earth—seemed to belong to someone else.

It wasn’t just tangible things that were different, things I could point to and say, That’s not the same as on Earth. Time and physical space were different. The span of a minute, an hour, a day. The directions, up and down, left and right. The perceived dimensions of something as large as a module or as small as a bolt. My senses were different. Sight, smell, taste, touch, sound. They could distort and change shape; they could be one thing at one moment and quite another thing the next.

I had to reorient myself to my surroundings constantly, be alert at all times. Even when I was tired, hungry, or hurting. Even when I slept.

I learned to distrust my sense of sight, to discount my sense of taste and smell (they were so dulled by the effects of zero gravity on my sinuses they were nearly useless). I relied more on my fingers, on my ears; instead of turning on lights when I needed to go to the toilet in the night I just felt my way there, listening instead of looking for anything amiss as I moved through silent and shadowy modules and locks.

I started to listen to the equipment and systems I was charged with maintaining and fixing. I got the idea from Simon who I found in Storage and Systems one morning, his ear pressed against the oxygenator. He was wearing a jumpsuit unbuttoned to his waist, a clean white T-shirt underneath. Rachel had just used the clippers on his hair and his scalp was pink.

I asked him what he was doing and he frowned and held up a hand. Hold on—

When he was done I pressed him to explain.

Every system has two sounds, he said. One when it’s working properly, one when it’s not. If you get to know them, you can stop a problem before it happens.

How do you know which is good and which is bad?

He drummed his thumb on the side of the oxygenator. Listen every day and you’ll learn.

At first I didn’t hear anything but a hum. Then I drew my limbs into my body and pressed my ear closer, the metal of the panel cold against my ear, and was able to differentiate three different noises: a dragging hum, a whoosh of air, and—every few seconds—a faint tick, tick.

I started listening to the electronics assembly, the heat rejection radiator, the space-to-ground antenna system. The water reclaimer and the thermal control system. At any odd moment, when I didn’t have anything else to do, I pressed my ear to things—panels, vents, equipment. I floated from one machine to the next.

It got to the point where my dreams weren’t about people anymore, or places, or things. They didn’t have pictures in them at all—only the sounds of the station. Hums and drips and scrapes; gentle scuffles and creaking rasps; jangling squeaks. Long stints of vibrating static. Rhythmic stretches of thumps.

One morning I woke with a full bladder and the swishing pops of the galley water pump in my ears. I wiggled out of my sleeping bag and swam to the toilet. It hadn’t been cleaned in a while and it smelled bad. I sat down gingerly, pressed the suction button, and felt the toilet pull hard on my bottom. My body tightened. I took a breath and relaxed my thighs, bladder, stomach. Finally I was able to go, and the urine was whisked out of my body in an instant.

A red light warned me the waste tanks were full and I groaned. The urine processing unit had broken three days ago and there hadn’t been time to fix it. I’d have to manually empty the tank before I could go back to bed. I got the tools I needed from Storage and Systems and powered everything down. Then I hovered over the unit to detach the electrical connectors, tape them temporarily to the wall with duct tape, and remove the tank, all while trying to avoid breathing through my nose. I started the pump and figured since I’d already taken the unit apart I might as well try to fix it.

I began to undo all the bolts on the broken part—a big metal drum that distilled water from urine through evaporation—and Amelia’s voice came from behind me. You’re up early. She floated into the module. She was eating a shriveled apple.

I hope you don’t have to go, I said.

I can wait.

How long have you been up?

Awhile. I had to check the gyroscopes.

I looked at her. She was pale and thinner than she’d been when I first arrived; the skin under her eyes was dark purple in the dim light.

I don’t need a lot of sleep, she said, as if she could read my mind.

She finished the apple, pulled her body closer, and grabbed the wrench I’d velcroed to my jumpsuit.

Did Simon show you how to do this?

No.

You didn’t learn how to do it at Peter Reed—

I figured it out just now.

I didn’t learn a whole lot that was useful there either, she said.

Together we disconnected and capped all the fluid lines, including the one that filtered into the brine reservoir, pulled out the broken assembly unit, and began installing the new one. It was hot in the small compartment with the two of us wedged inside and I started to sweat, but we worked efficiently and fast.

I learned a lot from your sister, I said.

Carla? You weren’t in the same group.

We were my first year. Our beds were next to each other.

We reconnected the fluid lines, careful not to mix up gray water and brine.

I haven’t seen her in a long time, I said. How is she?

She works at one of the private labs. She’s got a boyfriend, or she did the last time we talked.

You must be glad to see her in between rotations.

There was an empty pause. The vent overhead whirred.

I’m better with machines than people, she said.

The metal wrench was cold against my palm. Me too.

She stretched her body in the air. You’re like your uncle. She looked at my face and seemed to appraise it. My nose, my chin. A lot like him.

I felt warmth and a sense of solidness despite my floating limbs.

He understood me, Amelia said. Maybe better than anyone.

I nodded.

She folded her body in the air. Everything went to shit when he died. She shut the urine processor’s cabinet, bolted it closed, and powered it up. You go first, she said.

I wiped my forehead with my sleeve and pressed my ear to the tank. One second—

But she was already pressing the button to vent the brine reservoir. I heard a rush of air, then seven high pops, and something about it tugged at my memory. I knew it. I knew that sound—

I hit the vent button over and over. Every time: a rush of air and seven pops.

Why are you doing that? Amelia asked. The processor’s good to go—

I just— I put my tools away quickly. I need to check something. I left her and pulled myself into the next module. I bumped into things; I caught my elbow on an open panel, knocked my head as I swung my body through the airlock between the SM and the galley.