All the Way Up
written by mela johnson
illustrated by micah greyeyes
composed by mars adams
RADIO TRANSMISSION – 3D 2M Year 3116, 19:27:53 Kethra-JMTMayday, mayday, mayday. This is Captain Mara Anders of the LWV Ebisu. My position is PB Kethra, galactic longitude 167 point – [unintelligible]. – vessel collided with asteroid, causing a rupture in the hull. I have eight crew on board, including myself.
[A shaky breath. In the background, a metallic clang, and a barely-audible rush of air.] Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Captain Mara Anders of the LWV Ebisu. My position is PB– [unintelligible]. – eight crew aboard, including – [unintelligible].
Mayday,
mayday,
mayday…
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF AUTOMATIC RECORDING – 6D 2M Year 3116, 14:54:02 Kethra-JMTVOICES DETECTED: A. CHEN, E. ALPIZARALPIZAR: Okay. There should be one more box.
CHEN: Mmm… [movement; a rustle of cloth, cardboard scraping against cardboard] Oh, yep, there it is. Let’s see… [crinkling] God. Edie, look– [more crinkling]. The beef stroganoff. Everybody’s favorite.
ALPIZAR: [quick exhale of laughter] Christ. Of course that would be the thing to survive.
CHEN: How’s that for a last meal?
ALPIZAR: I think it would have to be edible to count as such. What does that bring us up to?
CHEN: [crinkling] There’s three of them, so, uh… twenty-five days.
ALPIZAR: That’s enough.
CHEN: More than enough. Rescue deployment standard is two days, right? We’re four days’ travel from the nearest jump gate, so round that up and add another week in case they’re slow and that’s still only two weeks. We’re going to be fine.
ALPIZAR: We’re going to be fine. [crinkling] How’s the radio looking?
CHEN: Better. The damage isn’t as extensive as I thought. But calibrating is always a bitch. Comms was never my strong suit. I almost flunked basic radio training back in school.
ALPIZAR: [short laugh] Some head engineer you are.
CHEN: Oh, lay off. You know how McKenna was about people touching her precious comms. Her system is the only thing on this entire ship I’ve never had to take a socket wrench to. But I’m figuring it out. We should be up and running by the end of the day, and then I can set a distress signal to broadcast on a loop. After that it’s just a waiting game.
ALPIZAR: God, I can’t wait to get out of this fucking place. Any word on getting the scanning systems back online?
CHEN: That seems like it’s going to be a no-go, unfortunately. The dosimeter array took a beating when we got hit, and I don’t have much in the way of spare parts to fix it with.
ALPIZAR: Mm. Not ideal.
CHEN: I mean, I can throw together something quick and dirty if we really have to.
ALPIZAR: I think that would be for the best, just so we know if we have to throw our shields up. Hopefully we won’t be out here long enough for it to matter.
CHEN: What are the chances the tzitzi is still in the area?
ALPIZAR: High. It’ll be moving towards the accretion disk to feed, so we should be fine, since rescue deployment will be here by the time the hole has pulled us close enough that we’re in danger of being near the tzitzi. But still. I’d feel much safer if we could get something back online, even if it’s just basic scanning.
CHEN: I make no promises. But I’ll try.
DISTRESS SIGNAL RECEIVED FROM LWV EBISU, RECEIVED 8D 2M Year 3116, 09:46:27 Kethra-JMTMAYDAY. LWV EBISU REQUESTING EMERGENCY AID. G COORD. (167.25°, -28.57°) DEC +05° 43’ 21". 6 CREW DEAD, 2 ALIVE. HULL RUPTURE INDUCED BY ASTEROID COLLISION. PROPULSION SYSTEM NONFUNCTIONAL, SHIP QUADRANT 1 SEALED OFF DUE TO DAMAGE. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE RESCUE DEPLOYMENT.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF AUTOMATIC RECORDING – 8D 2M Year 3116, 19:13:37 Kethra-JMTVOICES DETECTED: A. CHEN, E. ALPIZARCHEN: It feels weird to be in here.
ALPIZAR: Yeah.
CHEN: He was just here. It’s all his stuff. It feels wrong.
[a door opens]
CHEN: God, it’s like nobody even slept in here. I’ve never seen sheets this smooth. [cloth rustling gently] Corners turned down all perfect.
ALPIZAR: He was military. Did a few tours with the Earth Federation before he ended up here.
CHEN: You Earth people and your war games.
ALPIZAR: Isn’t mechanical engineering one of the disciplines that comes with a two-year conscription on Nirixia? If you study it at the university level, I mean.
CHEN: In a lot of countries, yeah. But not where I’m from. And my family moved off-planet before I even started my high levels, so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Oh, here. [thump] This looks promising. I should be able to use whatever’s on the motherboard.
ALPIZAR: We should probably take these off first, right?
CHEN: Oh, shit. Yeah, I- yeah. Is that his family?
ALPIZAR: [sound of peeling tape] Husband and kids.
CHEN: Where can we put them? I don’t know where the key to his drawer is.
ALPIZAR: Maybe you can tuck them under the monitor?
CHEN: Yeah. Here, let me- [a rustling of paper] There.
[an extended moment of silence]
ALPIZAR: I have no idea what a capacitor looks like, so just hand me a screwdriver and tell me which side to pry open. I’ll leave the rest to you.
CHEN: Maybe this one? [metallic clunk] If you can get this panel off, I’ll have room to dig around a little.
ALPIZAR: Sure.
[plastic creaking; the sound of unscrewing]
CHEN: You and Yuniel knew each other before this job, right? He mentioned that you’d been on a crew together before.
ALPIZAR: This was our sixth.
CHEN: Oh. Shit.
ALPIZAR: Yeah.
CHEN: You were close, then?
ALPIZAR: [plastic creaking] I don’t know if I would say close. I mean, I never told the guy my life story or anything. But we hung out. Got drinks together sometimes when we were planetside in between voyages. I met his husband once. [cracking] There we go.
CHEN: Oh, perfect. Here, let me see- [clinking; plastic scraping against plastic] Bingo. I can take the capacitor off of this and then we should be set. Would you mind running down to the galley and grabbing like a foot of the spare vac tubing?
ALPIZAR: Not at all.
BROADCAST FROM ORION CORPORATION, MISSION CONTROL DELTA, BY INCO H. WOODWARD, IN CONJUNCTION WITH HEAD OF ASSET PROTECTION G. MUELLER – RECEIVED 9D 2M Year 3116, 06:18:21 Kethra-JMT BY LWV EBISUEMERGENCY TRANSMISSION RECEIVED. CONFIRM WHETHER ESCAPE POD DEPLOYMENT IS POSSIBLE.
BROADCAST FROM LWV EBISU – RECEIVED 9D 2M Year 3116, 08:11:17 Kethra-JMT BY ORION CORPORATION, MISSION CONTROL DELTAESCAPE POD DEPLOYMENT NOT POSSIBLE. PODS NONFUNCTIONAL AFTER SUSTAINED DAMAGE FROM ASTEROID STRIKE. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY RESCUE DEPLOYMENT.
BROADCAST FROM ORION CORPORATION, MISSION CONTROL DELTA, BY INCO H. WOODWARD, IN CONJUNCTION WITH HEAD OF ASSET PROTECTION G. MUELLER – RECEIVED 9D 2M Year 3116, 10:41:31 Kethra-JMT BY LWV EBISUPLEASE VERIFY WHETHER CREW WAS ABLE TO PROCESS TZITZIMITL INTO BATTERY.
BROADCAST FROM LWV EBISU – RECEIVED 9D 2M Year 3116, 13:07:53 Kethra-JMT BY ORION CORPORATION, MISSION CONTROL DELTAUNABLE TO PROCESS TZITZIMIMTL. ASTEROID STRIKE OCCURRED PRIOR TO HARPOONING. PROPULSION SYSTEM NONFUNCTIONAL, HARPOON SYSTEM HEAVILY DAMAGED. ALL POWER DIVERTED TO COMMS AND LIFE SUPPORT. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY RESCUE DEPLOYMENT.
BROADCAST FROM ORION CORPORATION, MISSION CONTROL DELTA, BY INCO H. WOODWARD, IN CONJUNCTION WITH HEAD OF ASSET PROTECTION G. MUELLER – RECEIVED 10D 2M Year 3116, 09:10:31 Kethra-JMT BY LWV EBISUAS PER ASSET PROTECTION POLICY, SUB-50% CREW RETENTION WITH NO BATTERY ROI DOES NOT JUSTIFY COST OF RETRIEVAL DEPLOYMENT.
TRANSMISSION DARK FROM THIS POINT ONWARD. WE ARE SORRY, LWV EBISU.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF AUTOMATIC RECORDING – 10D 2M Year 3116, 19:13:37 Kethra-JMTVOICES DETECTED: A. CHEN, E. ALPIZAR<SPEAKER IDENTITY UNVERIFIED>: [sobbing]
CHEN: [a crash; a striking of metal] Those fuckers. Those fuckers. After everything we did for them–
ALPIZAR: [inaudible]
CHEN: “We’re sorry.” Christ, I–
ALPIZAR: Ava. Ava.
CHEN: [cloth rustling] Jesus.
<SPEAKER IDENTITY UNVERIFIED>: [a quiet cry]
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF AUTOMATIC RECORDING – 13D 2M Year 3116, 3:04:19 Kethra-JMTVOICES DETECTED: A. CHEN, E. ALPIZARCHEN: Edie. Edie. Get up.
ALPIZAR: [unintelligible]
CHEN: Edie. It’s out there.
ALPIZAR: What–
CHEN: The tzitzi. I can see it from the viewing deck. The light from the accretion disk is bending around it. I thought I was dreaming at first.
ALPIZAR: [movement, a rustling of cloth] Show me.
[a minute or so of hands on railings, of feet pushing off walls]
ALPIZAR: …God.
CHEN: Yeah.
ALPIZAR: You know, this is only the second one I’ve seen like this. I’m usually shut up in the control room with the Captain, watching five different scanners at once when the harpooning happens.
CHEN: They’re big fuckers, aren’t they. Watching them eat, it’s like… it’s like watching some primordial god drink a star. It’s like the end of a world.
ALPIZAR: Wait, wait, I think it’s about to-
[a warping of sound; static, flexing and folding]
CHEN: Shit-
ALPIZAR: [short, breathless laugh] God.
CHEN: How do they do that?
ALPIZAR: Chemotaxis. They’re following a chemical stimulus on the orders of a signal cascade. More like bacteria than anything else, in that respect.
CHEN: Just one big amoeba-whale.
ALPIZAR: The universe repeats itself, and all that. That’s kind of why I do this. It’s one of the things I love about biology, I mean.
CHEN: Huh. How do you mean?
ALPIZAR: Life is so similar to itself. The systems that govern the largest life-forms in the universe are the same systems that govern the smallest. The same fractal geometry is laid out in your circulatory system as in the phloem of a redwood tree, or a bacterial colony growing in a petri dish. When you look at it a certain way, it’s bacteria all the way up.
CHEN: Or whales all the way down.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF AUTOMATIC RECORDING – 19D 2M Year 3116, 18:57:29 Kethra-JMTVOICES DETECTED: A. CHEN, E. ALPIZARCHEN: What are you thinking about?
ALPIZAR: I don’t like the way the hole looks out there. The accretion disk and then just flat nothing. It gives me the creeps.
CHEN: I don’t think anything can give me the creeps anymore. I’m not afraid of it.
ALPIZAR: I am. I’m afraid of falling in.
CHEN: We aren’t going to fall in. Not while we’re alive to see it, anyway. We’ll be dead hundreds of miles before we hit the singularity.
ALPIZAR: I know that. I just… I don’t know. I keep having these dreams. Bottomless whirlpools, sinkholes in glaciers. I’m back on Earth, hiking the Cascades with my parents, and the ground just opens up underneath me.
CHEN: I mean, the Cascades wouldn’t be a bad place to go, I don’t think. I’ve seen your pictures of them. All snow caps and wide-open skies.
ALPIZAR: Where do you want to be when all of this ends?
CHEN: Shit, I don’t know. In my bed, I guess? I want to be comfortable.
ALPIZAR: In bed sounds nice. Would you want to be asleep for it, then?
CHEN: Doubt I’ll be able to sleep. It feels too much like we’re about to go on a field trip, you know? Or maybe that’s not it. But this excited expectation verging on panic. Like someone’s about to have a baby.
ALPIZAR: Like the night before open heart surgery.
CHEN: Yeah. I don’t think I could sleep right before. But even if I can’t, in bed sounds like the way to go. Wrapped in my duvet with the last of my Kardish chocolates melting on my tongue. Where do you want to be?
ALPIZAR: I’ve thought about it some –
CHEN: I can tell.
ALPIZAR: – and I think I’d like to be on the viewing deck, facing Earth.
CHEN: Oh. That’s poetic. Is it too late to change my answer?
ALPIZAR: You know, I thought about it for a while, like for an entire day or two, before I realized that I don’t know what direction Earth is in. Like, I don’t know where I would have to stand to face it.
CHEN: Sameer would know, if he was here. With the Mecca compass widget thing he had in his visor display.
ALPIZAR: It’s killing me, that I don’t know where it is. That I can’t know.
CHEN: Mm.
ALPIZAR: We could figure out where Nirixia is, I think, if you wanted. If we went out onto the viewing deck and did a little math. I know what you said about your bed, but…
CHEN: Eh. I’m not as attached to home as you are, I think. Or I am, but not so much to the physical place.
ALPIZAR: What are you attached to, if not the place?
CHEN: The people. I moved around a lot as a kid, never lived anywhere longer than a couple years, and we moved off-planet when I was thirteen. Home was always wherever my family was. And right now the people who are important to me are scattered all across the galaxy. So I don’t think I need to see it, you know? It was never about Nirixia.
ALPIZAR: That’s kind of lovely.
CHEN: And besides, it’s cold on the viewing deck. No bed to keep you warm.
ALPIZAR: Hah. True. The only downside.
CHEN: You could drag your duvet down there.
ALPIZAR: Yeah. Yeah, I guess I could.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT OF AUTOMATIC RECORDING – 21D 2M Year 3116, 10:17:15 Kethra-JMTVOICES DETECTED: A. CHEN, E. ALPIZARALPIZAR: Ava. I was digging around in Quadrant Two storage for extra blankets, and look at what I found.
CHEN: Holy shit!
ALPIZAR: And this is not just any cake. This is the “BakeGro deluxe Funfetti buttercream cake, perfect for short- or long-term space voyages, guaranteed to send your tastebuds over the moon.”
CHEN: God, I haven’t had Funfetti since I was a kid.
ALPIZAR: It’s still sealed and dehydrated and everything. I think it’s the one Yuni picked up last time we were at port, for the Captain’s birthday.
CHEN: A toast to the Captain. Belated but more than deserved.
ALPIZAR: When is your birthday, again? I know I knew it once, but…
CHEN: Nure-yen. In Earth Standard, I think it’d be in July. But we only have the ten months, so I don’t know if it maps perfectly.
ALPIZAR: Closer than mine. I guess we’re celebrating yours, then.
CHEN: It could be both of our birthdays. Not like July means much out here.
ALPIZAR: [short laugh] Fair enough.
[a general shuffling about; the movement of water, the stirring of paste]
[a song, sung in unison]
CHEN: I wish we could have candles. Or, like, that gel frosting, the kind you can write with.
ALPIZAR: Whenever I had a birthday cake growing up, my parents would make me smear my name in the frosting for good luck. I always wanted cakes with little rocket ships on them, and candles shaped like stars. I think every birthday party I had between the ages of five and fifteen was outer space-themed.
CHEN: Hah. Whenever we had ours, they’d be split down the middle. My half always had little flowers on it.
ALPIZAR: “We”?
CHEN: I’m a twin.
ALPIZAR: Oh!
CHEN: Yeah. Her name is Clara.
ALPIZAR: I didn’t know.
CHEN: Yeah. We aren’t super close anymore, but also, I mean, twins are always going to be close on some level, right? She’s four minutes older. Never lets me forget it.
ALPIZAR: I always wanted siblings.
CHEN: [laugh] Not always all it’s cracked up to be. They’re annoying. Loud. They steal your stuff.
ALPIZAR: That’s what everyone keeps telling me. My classmates would complain about having to share rooms with their siblings, but I thought it sounded kind of nice, always having the option of another person. Staying up late telling secrets. Falling asleep in the same room as someone else, listening to them move around.
CHEN: You must have been such a sleepover person.
ALPIZAR: I’ve actually never had one.
CHEN: What? Never?
ALPIZAR: Nope. Chronically overprotective parents.
CHEN: Sleepovers were, like, everything to me as a kid. Me and Clara hosted a bunch.
ALPIZAR: I begged and begged to have one for my tenth birthday. My parents wouldn’t hear a word of it.
CHEN: Go get your duvet.
ALPIZAR: What?
CHEN: Get your duvet and bring it up to the viewing deck. We’re having a sleepover.
ALPIZAR: Right now?
CHEN: Right now. Forever, actually.
ALPIZAR: You don’t have to do that.
CHEN: I want to.
ALPIZAR: I know what you said earlier, about wanting to be comfortable in bed with your chocolate.
CHEN: I’ve changed my mind.
ALPIZAR: Just, I don’t want you to feel like you have to give up the way you wanted it to go-
CHEN: This is something I can do for you, Edie. I can’t fix the ship or convince Orion to send a last-minute rescue team. I can’t stop whatever is about to happen to us. But you’ve never had a sleepover in your life. I can do something about that.
[a few minutes of doors opening, of hands and feet pushing off walls]
[cloth rustling]
CHEN: Here. We’ll make a little nest so we aren’t just sitting on the ground.
[cloth rustling]
CHEN: Shove over.
ALPIZAR: [short laugh] Here-
CHEN: Thank you.
ALPIZAR: Thank you.
[a minute or so of silence]
CHEN: Think we’ll see our tzitzi friend again before it all goes down?
ALPIZAR: Probably not. They skim the accretion disk to feed, but they don’t stick around. They can’t withstand the gravity of the black hole for very long.
CHEN: Shame. From up close like this, all the light bending must be a sight to see.
ALPIZAR: God, every time I look out this window, it amazes me how close we are. I didn’t know that the stars would look this warped.
CHEN: Uh huh.
ALPIZAR: It feels like I could lean over and just-
CHEN: Can we talk about something else? Like anything else.
ALPIZAR: Oh, shit, yeah. Sorry. Sometimes I just-
CHEN: It’s cool. Just, I don’t- I can’t think. The only way I can stay calm is if I don’t think. And I want everything to be calm.
ALPIZAR: Of course.
CHEN: Tell me about the tzitzi.
ALPIZAR: What about them?
CHEN: Why tzitzi? Out of everything you could have done with a degree in biology, why this?
ALPIZAR: I’ve been into them since I was little. My dad is an electrical engineer, and he used to work at one of the power plants that process them. Ever since I was old enough to read on my own, he bought me books about them.
I thought at first that I was interested in the tzitzi as a power source, the way my dad is. But that’s actually the only part of the process that I’m not really interested in. The way they live fascinates me. I was always thinking about how the tzitzi were all around me, how some imperceptible part of them was swimming through the wires in the walls. It was comforting to think that I was surrounded by things so much bigger than me. I was kind of lonely when I was young. My world always felt so small.
CHEN: How does it feel now?
ALPIZAR: Even smaller.