John Moralee - Future Imperfect - A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

Mazina stood up. “I’ve lost my appetite too. I will see you in the morning, Uncle. My therapist will be accompanying me.”

She caught up with Kai outside the café. “Kai, forget what my uncle said.”

“Why does your uncle hate me?”

“He doesn’t hate you. He’s just overprotective.”

“He thinks I’m not good enough for you. Is he right?”

“No!”

“I’m just an engineer. I don’t risk my life out on the shell.”

“The ship needs you as much as anyone. Don’t let my uncle make you feel bad.”

“I wanted to punch him.”

“I wanted to punch him, too.”

The next day Dr Collins monitored Mazina during her sim session, which started with a simple mission to build her confidence. In her gecko suit, Mazina made her way across the ship’s shell to deal with a stress fracture repair. Everything seemed fine for the first ten minutes of the mission – but then Mazina had to perform a long jump from one module to another, crossing a 120-metre gap that left her floating in space for over a minute. It was a task that caused Mazina to think of her parents spinning away into deep space. Her blood pressure spiked and her heart pounded out of control. She felt like her head was going to explode. Even though she knew the mission wasn’t real, she could not stop herself hyperventilating.

FAIL FAIL FAIL flashed up as the sim ended with her bursting into tears.

“I don’t understand it! That was an easy mission! I’m getting worse!”

Dr Collins was outside the gym, looking through a window. “Okay, Mazina. That’s enough for today. I’ve collected your memories for review. Take the rest of the day off.”

“What?” her uncle said. “Doesn’t she need more practice?”

“Not for today,” Dr Collins said. “That’s on doctor’s orders.”

Dr Collins contacted her a few hours later. They met in her office. “Mazina, I’ve analysed your panic reaction in the sim mission and I have to tell you that I can’t see any reason for it.”

“I don’t understand. Are you saying you can’t help me?”

“No – but I can’t find a root cause in your memory. What made you think of your parents during the mission?”

“I don’t know. They just popped into my head. I was doing okay until I imagined them dying.”

“Okay – I have one idea that might help. Milton has neural recordings of your parents’ final mission from their POVs. You never saw the recordings as a child because it would have done you psychological harm – but I think it might help you now to know exactly what happened to them. It might be upsetting to watch – but it might also give you closure. I can’t guarantee it will help, though. It’s entirely your decision. Should Milton give you access to those recordings?”

Mazina didn’t want to watch her parents die – but she could see no other option. “Okay. I’ll watch the recordings.”

“I think you might want to lie down on the couch for this. Milton can send you the file when you are ready. I’ll be here monitoring.”

Mazina made herself comfortable. She closed her eyes and sent a command to Milton, giving her access to the neural recordings of her parents. Both recording ended at the same time – 45.2 minutes into the mission.

Mazina played her mother’s recording first. Immediately, Mazina was no longer on Dr Collins’ couch. She was viewing her mother’s final memories like a sim where she was a passive observer. She was looking through Olga’s eyes in an airlock, wearing a black gecko suit. Her mother was sealing her helmet and checking her system vitals. Other members of her mother’s squad were present, also making final preparations for going outside. Mazina saw her father, Vladimir, and uncle. The current leader of the gecko squad, Riko, had been a rookie back then. Riko was taking instructions from Olga. Once the airlock’s door opened, Olga looked out at the blackness of the space between the stars.

“Let’s go!” she ordered, then climbed out onto the shell, fixing her boots firmly onto the ground. The whole squad set off behind her, heading for an impact crater created by some piece of deep space debris that had done some serious damage to a tokamak engine. Encountering anything big enough to harm the ship was an extremely rare event – but luck had failed that day. The tokamak fusion drive was streaming super-heated plasma out of a thruster normally used to make minor course corrections, spreading damage beyond the initial impact zone. Milton was reporting multiple breaches through the shell into the ship, where the crew and drones were fighting fires.

Olga’s squad started work sealing the breaches and cutting the power to the tokamak engine – but the engine was not responding. Instead it was increasing its output exponentially – sending arcs of plasma over the ship’s surface, burning through the hull plates, frying electronics. The drive had to be deactivated at the source if a catastrophic explosion was to be avoided.

“Riko and Banks, seal the leaks in section alpha. Sergei, cool the shell with liquid nitrogen. Vladimir, come with me. We need to get close to the fusion port. We’ll need to do an emergency shutdown.”

That order was the last one her mother had made. Mazina watched her mother and father charged through a gale of whipping plasma until they reached the port, where they carried out a manual redirection of the plasma flow, effectively shutting down the drive. They managed it successfully – but shutting down the drive caused a sudden and rapid change in the plasma stream’s direction. The final throes of the plasma jet struck them both and vaporised them in an instant. They died too quickly to have even known what had happened.

Mazina came out of the sim breathless. Dr Collins offered her a glass of water. She drank it with shaking hands. “I never knew they were killed by a plasma blast. I always thought they floated off into space. I thought they died slowly – out there in deep space.”

“What made you think that?”

Mazina frowned. “I don’t know. I think someone must have said that – but I can’t remember who. My uncle was there. He saw it. Why didn’t he tell me how they died?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him that.”

Her uncle was at his home looking after his new baby when Mazina visited him. “Dr Collins showed me what happened to my parents. They died in a plasma blast. Why did you not tell me that?”

“It was a horrible way to die,” he said. “Why would I want you to know?”

“Because it makes a difference. They didn’t suffer. It was all over too fast for that. You should have told me.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I had to make a decision. I thought it was best if you didn’t know. You were a child. I could not tell you they were burned to death.”

“After I saw what happened, I had another look at those sim mission you made me do. I found something hidden in the code. Subliminal images of my parents that you inserted into the sim so I would think of them dying at a crucial moment. You sabotaged every sim mission so I’d fail. Why did you do that? Why?”

“Olga and Vlad died right in front of me. I never wanted you to follow them into the gecko squad – endangering your life out on the shell – but I knew you’d not listen to me if I discouraged you. You are too headstrong for that. You are like your mother – always heading straight into danger. I wanted to put you off joining the gecko squad so you’d be safe. Altering the sim to make you fail each time seemed the only way. My plan might have worked if you had not listened to your boyfriend. I don’t want you to risk your life. I love you too much to lose another member of my family.”