On fiction: Rendezvous with NECA pt. 4
-"This is all your fault."-
"Gubarev ... shut up," she says, her voice muffled by the gas mask. Alone, in full hazmat suit, peering over a table where pieces that were once Hendrix slosh in crystalizing intestinal sludge, she doesn't need anyone else's mental excreta. Even if the suspicion there may be some truth to his words eats away at her nerves.
Indeed, how did this happen? The sample she took from NECA sits safely inside a freezer. The med/bio lab, now under Dezaki's watch, shows no sign of damage. Ballard, in the physics lab where the two alien boxes are stored, also reported nothing suspicious yet. It's only here, in the communications room, that ... something ... took root.
Next to Hendrix, what's left of the ship's radiotransmitter- their link to Earth- lies broken, myriad transparent spikes having torn it apart. A hole and ripped wires in the wall where the transmitter used to be, a clue of the desperate measures to contain the spread. Her doing the autopsy- not Dezaki- is another. It's a measure she recommended. After all, she found the body. No need to risk anyone else's life until they find how the replicating crystal transmits itself. As for her own life, it was already in danger once she discovered Hendrix.
-"How are we doing, Doctor Evans?"- The captain's voice, his calm as reassuring as always.
"No new crystallization-" she takes a breath "- apart from the one already present."
-"And you?"-
A jumble of vitrified body parts put close together to more or less resemble their usual connections. From inside a fragment of head, an eye peers at nothing in particular. Another piece placed beside it- the maxilla- lends the ad-hoc autopsy table the look of a Picasso painting. Only even more morbid.
"A bit shaken, sir. Is there any way to ... give Hendrix last rites? Send the body away?"
-"We're working on it. But how do you feel?"-
"No symptoms to report."
Autopsy and quarantine rolled into one. She recommended it; she doesn't have to like it. She'd done dissections before. You get used to corpses- animal, human- when your job is seeing how the living were alive. But this is no dissection. This is not a body preserved, safe, dead. Something inside and all around it is very much ... resembling life, and her task is to kill it. So far it mocked her attempts.
"Acid-oxidizer mixture has no noticeable effect on sample," she says after examining a couple of petri dishes, their contents now little hedgehogs of glass needles.
-"Then how am I supposed to wash your suits?"- Gubarev and his annoyance, again.
"It doesn't stick to them."
-"So how did it get in?"-
"I don't know, ok?" She looks at another pair of petri dishes. Same culture medium as the others, but for now untouched. "I can tell you it doesn't seem to spread through air."
-"I'd like to look at the transmitter."- Ballard.
-"No one leaves their assigned quarter of the ship yet. Doctor Evans, from your observations, what is susceptible to crystal infection?"-
"So far, only the bacterial culture medium, the transmitter ... and human bodies appear vulnerable."
-"What kind of pathogen is that, the transmitter is nothing l-"-
-"That's why I'd like to see the transmitter for myself."-
-"No one's moving anywhere for a few more hours. I do apologize, doctor Evans, we will get the body out as soon as possible."-
Poor Hendrix would have gotten a chuckle out of this. Six people on the ship, each locked in different sections, each in hazmat gear with their own air supply. The ship's has stopped by order of the captain. The ship became just what Hendrix suspected it to be, a loose assemblage waiting to see who will fail first. And now, waiting to see what more will need to be cut off to stem contagion.
For her part, she watches petri dishes, takes photos of the corpse parts and microscope slides with tissue samples to document the damage, picks at the transmitter remains, turns around to see if the rest of the room hasn't changed under the influence of the invader. Anything to keep her mind occupied. Her routine should include checking her own face once every half hour. She skipped the first self check, and then kept skipping. Preferring to forget she needed to do that too.
It's only after four hours that she remembers- that she dares- to look in a mirror. A pair of sunken, bloodshot eyes gaze back at her. She stumbles back as her heart skips a beat. Shaking, she returns to the mirror; pale faced, haggard, she has seen better days. But that which afflicts her now is mere exhaustion. Her ashen skin is still skin. The transparent beads on it are sweat, not alien glass.
It's a couple hours more before the captain orders the quarantine on the ship suspended, and though she'd rather lie down and sleep forever, she goes along as the other crewmen carry Hendrix, now wrapped in a plastic sheet, to the airlock. From the inside of the ship, she watches Chahal and Yen place the body against the engine exhaust. The captain says a few words which she's too tired to follow when he returns. Some kind of good bye.
A short thunk. A lithium pellet explodes outwards, crashing against the shrouded body, pushing it away. The thing that killed him is gone. He's gone, and may he rest in peace.
-:-:-
One extra chair, one extra meal come breakfast time at the canteen, a reminder of NECA's danger. The remaining six astronauts greet each other with silent nods.
It is again Gubarev that breaks the gloom. "I'll tell you what's happening. It's a colonizer ship that got infected. Lucky for us, the little green men are all dead. Unlucky for us, their machines still work."
Ballard looks at his watch. "That is a conclusion we do not have the evidence to corroborate."
"Phht. You probably want to get back in there right now."
"We will have to. After all, what if you're right? Excuse me for a moment," the physicist says as he walks out of the canteen.
"Well, captain, what if I'm right?"
"When can we expect communications with Earth to resume?"
"That depends on what I can salvage from our radio. And that-" he turns to her, "- depends on how safe it is to handle."
"It's safe," she mutters.
"Do you know that for sure?"
She glares at him. "I'm still here."
He breaks eye contact. "I'd rather not tempt fate the way you do."
"And I'm the one called superstitious."
"You two, stop." No rise in the captain's tone; it's as if he doesn't order, but issues statements of fact instead.
"We need the link back to Earth," he continues. "By now they must have seen NECA's surface warmed up. I hate to think what they're suspecting because of our silence. Doctors, in half an hour we'll meet to discuss a new decontamination protocol."
Thirty minutes to prepare for the activities of the day. She returns to the ship section assigned to her- the comm room, now a makeshift laboratory.
Two petri dishes with crystal forests inside them: one a regular bacterial culture medium, the other mixed with acids and oxidizers. Not much new growth since she had last checked them. Another pair of dishes, bacterial cultures pristine- or almost, as tiny moldy spots reveal they caught something from the air. But something earthly, the kind of life she knew at home. Not crystalline. The crystal doesn't spread by air.
Gubarev said it killed the NECAns. She's not so sure of that. A pathogen that doesn't spread by air should not be too difficult to manage. Besides, the self-replicating crystals proved unable to convert the plastic of the tablecloth, or the glass of the petri dishes into more of themselves. But then, why are the glass parts in the radio transmitter all turned into shimmering flakes? What kind of alchemy allows the crystal to grow on flesh, and glass, and metal alike?
She has no idea how to kill it. For now, all she can recommend to the captain are measures of containment. The eaten through transmitter parts taunt her, glaring exception to an otherwise reassuring rule. There is another law that they obey and she wonders whether her containment methods would work after all.
"Gubarev ... shut up," she says, her voice muffled by the gas mask. Alone, in full hazmat suit, peering over a table where pieces that were once Hendrix slosh in crystalizing intestinal sludge, she doesn't need anyone else's mental excreta. Even if the suspicion there may be some truth to his words eats away at her nerves.
Indeed, how did this happen? The sample she took from NECA sits safely inside a freezer. The med/bio lab, now under Dezaki's watch, shows no sign of damage. Ballard, in the physics lab where the two alien boxes are stored, also reported nothing suspicious yet. It's only here, in the communications room, that ... something ... took root.
Next to Hendrix, what's left of the ship's radiotransmitter- their link to Earth- lies broken, myriad transparent spikes having torn it apart. A hole and ripped wires in the wall where the transmitter used to be, a clue of the desperate measures to contain the spread. Her doing the autopsy- not Dezaki- is another. It's a measure she recommended. After all, she found the body. No need to risk anyone else's life until they find how the replicating crystal transmits itself. As for her own life, it was already in danger once she discovered Hendrix.
-"How are we doing, Doctor Evans?"- The captain's voice, his calm as reassuring as always.
"No new crystallization-" she takes a breath "- apart from the one already present."
-"And you?"-
A jumble of vitrified body parts put close together to more or less resemble their usual connections. From inside a fragment of head, an eye peers at nothing in particular. Another piece placed beside it- the maxilla- lends the ad-hoc autopsy table the look of a Picasso painting. Only even more morbid.
"A bit shaken, sir. Is there any way to ... give Hendrix last rites? Send the body away?"
-"We're working on it. But how do you feel?"-
"No symptoms to report."
Autopsy and quarantine rolled into one. She recommended it; she doesn't have to like it. She'd done dissections before. You get used to corpses- animal, human- when your job is seeing how the living were alive. But this is no dissection. This is not a body preserved, safe, dead. Something inside and all around it is very much ... resembling life, and her task is to kill it. So far it mocked her attempts.
"Acid-oxidizer mixture has no noticeable effect on sample," she says after examining a couple of petri dishes, their contents now little hedgehogs of glass needles.
-"Then how am I supposed to wash your suits?"- Gubarev and his annoyance, again.
"It doesn't stick to them."
-"So how did it get in?"-
"I don't know, ok?" She looks at another pair of petri dishes. Same culture medium as the others, but for now untouched. "I can tell you it doesn't seem to spread through air."
-"I'd like to look at the transmitter."- Ballard.
-"No one leaves their assigned quarter of the ship yet. Doctor Evans, from your observations, what is susceptible to crystal infection?"-
"So far, only the bacterial culture medium, the transmitter ... and human bodies appear vulnerable."
-"What kind of pathogen is that, the transmitter is nothing l-"-
-"That's why I'd like to see the transmitter for myself."-
-"No one's moving anywhere for a few more hours. I do apologize, doctor Evans, we will get the body out as soon as possible."-
Poor Hendrix would have gotten a chuckle out of this. Six people on the ship, each locked in different sections, each in hazmat gear with their own air supply. The ship's has stopped by order of the captain. The ship became just what Hendrix suspected it to be, a loose assemblage waiting to see who will fail first. And now, waiting to see what more will need to be cut off to stem contagion.
For her part, she watches petri dishes, takes photos of the corpse parts and microscope slides with tissue samples to document the damage, picks at the transmitter remains, turns around to see if the rest of the room hasn't changed under the influence of the invader. Anything to keep her mind occupied. Her routine should include checking her own face once every half hour. She skipped the first self check, and then kept skipping. Preferring to forget she needed to do that too.
It's only after four hours that she remembers- that she dares- to look in a mirror. A pair of sunken, bloodshot eyes gaze back at her. She stumbles back as her heart skips a beat. Shaking, she returns to the mirror; pale faced, haggard, she has seen better days. But that which afflicts her now is mere exhaustion. Her ashen skin is still skin. The transparent beads on it are sweat, not alien glass.
It's a couple hours more before the captain orders the quarantine on the ship suspended, and though she'd rather lie down and sleep forever, she goes along as the other crewmen carry Hendrix, now wrapped in a plastic sheet, to the airlock. From the inside of the ship, she watches Chahal and Yen place the body against the engine exhaust. The captain says a few words which she's too tired to follow when he returns. Some kind of good bye.
A short thunk. A lithium pellet explodes outwards, crashing against the shrouded body, pushing it away. The thing that killed him is gone. He's gone, and may he rest in peace.
-:-:-
One extra chair, one extra meal come breakfast time at the canteen, a reminder of NECA's danger. The remaining six astronauts greet each other with silent nods.
It is again Gubarev that breaks the gloom. "I'll tell you what's happening. It's a colonizer ship that got infected. Lucky for us, the little green men are all dead. Unlucky for us, their machines still work."
Ballard looks at his watch. "That is a conclusion we do not have the evidence to corroborate."
"Phht. You probably want to get back in there right now."
"We will have to. After all, what if you're right? Excuse me for a moment," the physicist says as he walks out of the canteen.
"Well, captain, what if I'm right?"
"When can we expect communications with Earth to resume?"
"That depends on what I can salvage from our radio. And that-" he turns to her, "- depends on how safe it is to handle."
"It's safe," she mutters.
"Do you know that for sure?"
She glares at him. "I'm still here."
He breaks eye contact. "I'd rather not tempt fate the way you do."
"And I'm the one called superstitious."
"You two, stop." No rise in the captain's tone; it's as if he doesn't order, but issues statements of fact instead.
"We need the link back to Earth," he continues. "By now they must have seen NECA's surface warmed up. I hate to think what they're suspecting because of our silence. Doctors, in half an hour we'll meet to discuss a new decontamination protocol."
Thirty minutes to prepare for the activities of the day. She returns to the ship section assigned to her- the comm room, now a makeshift laboratory.
Two petri dishes with crystal forests inside them: one a regular bacterial culture medium, the other mixed with acids and oxidizers. Not much new growth since she had last checked them. Another pair of dishes, bacterial cultures pristine- or almost, as tiny moldy spots reveal they caught something from the air. But something earthly, the kind of life she knew at home. Not crystalline. The crystal doesn't spread by air.
Gubarev said it killed the NECAns. She's not so sure of that. A pathogen that doesn't spread by air should not be too difficult to manage. Besides, the self-replicating crystals proved unable to convert the plastic of the tablecloth, or the glass of the petri dishes into more of themselves. But then, why are the glass parts in the radio transmitter all turned into shimmering flakes? What kind of alchemy allows the crystal to grow on flesh, and glass, and metal alike?
She has no idea how to kill it. For now, all she can recommend to the captain are measures of containment. The eaten through transmitter parts taunt her, glaring exception to an otherwise reassuring rule. There is another law that they obey and she wonders whether her containment methods would work after all.
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