Chapter 3 - Death
Nowthat the preparations were accelerating Marcus hardly had a fullnight’s sleep anymore, instead he had fallen into the habit ofsleeping roughly four to five hours during the night time hours andthen napping during the day as and when her were able. There was somuch that seemed to need his instant attention and only he seemed tobe able to sort certain problems out, even though he had many welltrained and experienced staff who could just as equally deal withthese. From food and water supply inventories for the Pilgrim’sHope and the other explorer class shipsto which part of Terra Alpha or Beta could be stripped and packedaway as useful materiel for their new home. To be fair to them, theother five explorer class ship commanders did take on their fairshare of the workload and decisions, but as the current C/O for thetwo main Martian facilities a lot of these decisions andresponsibilities fell squarely on his shoulders. Notwithstanding thestrain that this put on him mentally and physically, Marcus ratherenjoyed being so busy and involved. Once his ship had launched hecould slow down a bit and delegate more, but right now he felt moreconfident being in the thick of things and besides they were only acouple of weeks away from the first proper test of the Pilgrim’sHope and assuming that went accordingto expectations (and hopes) they would then move even quicker inorder to get it launched as soon as was practical.
Duringone of the increasingly rare moments of relative peace that Marcusdecided to take a nap on the cot in his office that had become anecessity a few months earlier. As he sat on the edge of the cot aminor detail or random thought ran through his mind, one of thoseniggling little irritations that often occur to one ran the brain hasnot had a chance to process all of the raw data and information thatit has absorbed during, and telling himself that it was one of thosethings that could wait until later he lay back on the cot. Marcusforced this, and all other thoughts, out of his mind and fell almostinstantly into a calm and restful asleep.
Notlong after closing his eyes Marcus woke up with a jolt, and asconsciousness swam over him, assumed that he had slept more than thehour or so that he normally allowed himself during these daytimenaps. An hour of complete and utter peace with nothing whatsoever tobother him, during which he could rest his mind and process theevents that had occurred so far that day. As he looked over at theclock on the wall he saw that it had been only a few moments since helay down and started to lie back down in order to get the rest heneeded and had promised himself. Then he sat up again and wonderedwhy he had woken so suddenly after such a short space of time. Hethen turned almost 90° and swung his legs of the side of the cot.
That’sodd he thought, out of the corner of his eye saw his legs stilling inthe lying position on the cot as he hadn’tmoved a muscle. He then got up and turned around so that he was ableto look down at the cot and saw a man of his general age and build. It took a few minutes for Marcus a few minutes to recognize the alltoo familiar man lying in his place on the cot and when he didrealize that he was standing there looking at himself panic startedto overcome him.
MyGod, he thought, I’m dead. The instantreaction was that which anyone of in the same situation as Marcuswould first assume and he was not sure what shocked him more. Thefact that he was dead or that he had died in his sleep at such ayoung age. None of his previous medical examinations had showed anysign of the onset of any terminal diseases and in fact he alsoconsidered himself to have been in excellent health. The next thoughtthat occurred to him was that someone had poisoned him, as there wereno obvious signs of physical harm or wounds of any kind, or ratherthis came just after the thought that he had died of some suddenfatal illness that had presented to earlier symptoms. All three ofthese came right before the panic started to rise up from the pit ofhis stomach and threatened to choke the breath out of him.
“Assuminga ghost can choke to death” he commentedaloud or at least that’s what it seemedlike to him. “Great, dead and now I’mtalking to myself” he admonished himself. Then he looked at his almost lifeless body again and realized thathe, or rather it, was breathing. The chest was, and had been all thetime, rising and falling as though still inhaling and exhaling as pernormal. This discovery brought about first relief that he was stillalive, then panic and finally blind panic. It seemed as though hewere now the spirit of a living man that had been separated from thephysical body he had grown rather fond of over the years. What thismeant he had no real clue, but it suddenly occurred to Marcus thatperhaps he were in some kind of coma, perhaps slipping away into thefinality of death as he stood there pondering his fate.
“Help!!! Help!! Someone??” he then screamed atwhat he hoped was the top of lungs and he could not tell if anyonehad or were able to hear him. Then he turned back toward theintercom and started to move as if to press the button so that hecould call for help. But would he be able to operate it or even makeanyone understand the dire straits of his current predicament? Marcushalf remembered stories of ghosts, poltergeist and other spiritsmaking contact with the living or manipulating objects in thephysical world, but had never really believed such tales. Until nowof course as he dearly hoped he could summon help, if his physicalself were on the brink of death. Did that mean then that his soulwere now on the cross roads between one world and the next?
Marcusdidn’t have time to contemplate what this meant or how it fittedinto his own ideology or theology, when he saw something standingjust in front of the door to his office. Standings wasn’t exactlythe correct term as it didn’t have any legs nor did it have anyarms or any other appendages that Marcus would have associated with aliving being. It didn’t really seem to float either that seemed toMarcus to imply some sort of defiance of gravity, it was just there. Its appearance wasn’t what Marcus would have associated with anyparticular living being either as it looked like it was just light. Not light emanating from anything or reflecting of anything, justlight of that a fairly nonspecific shape, but was undoubtedly there. For a moment Marcus thought that perhaps this was the light thatpeople had so often reported seeing in near death experiences.
Marcusthen came to the only conclusion that made any sense based in theevidence, he was dead and this was the moment that he passed overfrom this world to the next. Funny, Marcus thought to himself ratherthan saying it allowed like when had ’called’for help a moment a go, I had always imagined that there would besome hideous creature in a robe carry a scythe.
“Fantasy”the entity said or rather that’s whatMarcus felt from it, “Mythology”. Again the entity didn’t say the word in any way similar to howliving people talk it was more an impression of a feeling that Marcusgot come it. “Come”the entity sent again as it morphed into a roughly humanoid shapethat Marcus thought was more for his benefit and comfort thananything else. The entity, again Marcus had no other way ofdescribing it and only got a vaguely familiar sense of the thing thathad just moved through the wall.
Regardlessof whether this turned out to be some kind of death or near deathexperience or even just some kind of dream Marcus decided that heshould make the most of it while he could and followed the entitythrough the wall and into the corridor outside. Walking, not reallyan accurate description of either of their movements through the wallor along the corridor on the other side it as neither of them seemedto need legs to propel them forward, through the wall seemedperfectly natural if unsettling to Marcus.
“Whoare you?” Marcus asked of the entity inwhat seemed to him to be a mixture of thought and actual speech,probably more of the former Marcus decided later. Of all thequestions this was the first one that he was able to articulate. There was silence, perhaps more the lack of any thought communicationas silence implied to Marcus that the entity would speak aloud justlike living people would, from the entity as it lead Marcus throughfamiliar corridors and rooms; past familiar people doing familiaractivities. “What are you?”Marcus asked after allowing a polite few minutes as he didn’t wantto badger or scare of this entity that seemed to be composed only ofpure light. Or maybe it was some kind of energy under consciouscontrol, either way Marcus felt he was way out of his depth and thepanic began to fill his stomach again. Again Marcus felt that thiswas more metaphor that actual nausea as he wasn’t sure if at themoment he even had a stomach.
“Calm”,sent to entity as Marcus pushed down the sense panic rising in him. “Different from you”and that was all Marcus felt he would get as this thing seemed tocommunicate in a mixture of images, thoughts and feelings as with thethought of the words he also felt from the entity a feeling of thathe should not pursue the issue any further, despite the desire toknow more.
LaterMarcus would also assign to the messages the entity sent a kind ofparental impatient as if it was talking down a child from the moreexperienced view of a concerned parent. Marcus would never quiteknow whether this was what the entity had sent or whether he had justassociated it to it like some old cliché of alleged alien encountersthat had been reported centuries before and had somehow survived theages along with the few other remaining records they had uncovered.Regardless of the truth Marcus respected its request or demand anddid not enquire further, trusting that it would work out for the bestand that if the entity wanted to convey what or who it was it would.
Itseemed to Marcus that the entity was taking Marcus on some kind oftour of the his own facility, as they had apparently covered theentire Alpha Beta site and the entity finally stopped near one of theof the launch pads where shuttle was coming into land and one waitingto take off. As the entity stopped, Marcus got what he considered tobe the strangest of all communications form it. “Up”it sent and almost instantly seemed to vanish. Marcus for a momentrather peeved at being left alone with only a cryptic thought forcompany, and then repeated the word and feeling it himself. Secondslater he was standing, for want of a better term, next to the entityon a catwalk facing the front of the almost completed Pilgrim’sHope
“How?” Almost beforeMarcus was able to say the word the entity sent to him what he couldonly describe as “Different”,which seemed to be a thought and feeling. How it could be both atthe same time he did not know but had no time to ponder this or tofully form his next question which would have been something like“Why did you bring us here?”or some variant on the same theme. With what looked like an arm theentity waved at or pointed to, it was hard for Marcus to tell withthe entities light/energy humanoid form.
“Thefuture”. Now that Marcus felt wasclear and unmistakable, the thought/feeling he got from the entity,and he all he could do was to send back something that approximated“yes”.
Eventhough the entity was humanoid in shape, its overall appearance waspretty androgynous and as such Marcus was not able to tell rather itwas meant to be male or female, but he did get an impression thatapproximated femininity. Marcus had no real idea whether this camefrom some presumption his or whether the entity was a female of itsspecies, or even if this particular type of organism had separategenders. Before Marcus could even begin to take any of what washappening, or his own thoughts, in the entity indicated that therewas something else it wanted to show Marcus. And in an instant notmuch longer than the one that it took him to travel from Terra Betato the space dock, Marcus found himself staring directly at the sun. He wasn’t looking at it through any sort of window or atmosphere,but was looking directly at the sun far closer than any living thingshould be expected to get without be instantly vaporized.
LaterMarcus couldn’t decide whether it was the lack of heat or anythingelse that one might assume you would feel this close to a star,coming from the sun that he noticed first or whether it was the factthat he wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t gasping for air orsuffocating as he would have naturally assumed, he was just notbreathing. Nor did Marcus feel the need to do so, and was existinghere where he should not been without feeling any kind of illeffects.
“Thepast”, the entity then sent toMarcus, indicating the glowing yellow ball ahead, before he couldform any kind of conscious or rational thought on how or why theywere able survive in space less than a few miles from the sun withoutany kind of environmental suit or protection from should have beenextreme intense heat. “Mistake. Eradicate, erase” was thenext sense/thought feeling Marcus got from the entity, which sent ashiver down his back. Of course at the time he didn’t have a backfor a shiver to go down nor for the hairs on it to stand up as onewould also normally feel at such times, but this didn’t seem tobother Marcus at the time as he got a distinct impression that heknew just what the entity was trying to tell him.
Marcusthen turned to the entity and said the one thing that was on his mindregardless of the whether or not the entity would ‘warn’him against further inquiry. “We are themistake? I...I mean human beings that is?”he asked almost afraid that he would have this confirmed. “Thesun is being used to eradicate us? By someone trying to correct theirmistake?” He continue, and the coldnessfelt in the words as they frozen on his spirit lips child him to thebone, even more as the realization of what this meant.
“Yes”the entity confirmed and the thoughtchilled his entire being to the very core.
“Bywhom?” As the words formed in his mind,and before he could utter them, Marcus was no longer a stone’sthrow from the sun, but was sat bolt upright in his office back onMars. For several minutes he just sat there staring blankly ahead atnothing in particular and physically shivered as the memory of whathad just occurred numbed his mind of conscious or unconsciousthought. For those few moments he just there robbed of almost of hisautonomic and voluntary bodily functions and just held himselfshivering with on the absolute cold of what he had just been told orrather made aware of.
WhenMarcus felt life return his body and he was again fully conscious ofsurroundings and able to control his again the first thing he did wasto look at the clock on the wall. According to his reckoning thewhole incident had taken little more seven and a half minutes fromthe time he had laid down to take a nap. It had felt at the timelike infinitely more time had elapsed, but he didn’t feel able toargue with what his sense where now telling him. Before he didanything else tried to analyze what had just happened.
Thefirst thing that he concluded, as most people would when faced withsuch an experience, was that it was a dream. An extremely vivid andreal dream, but nonetheless a dream. Where somehow his own fear orignorance of the science behind such and uneatable thing as the sundying had conjured up some bizarre and improvable cause for what washappening. This didn’t feel right to him as during the wholeexperience he felt that he was fully conscious of his surroundingsand felt little difference between this state of being and beingfully awake. Then again this could not have been the case as theyhad walked through solid walls, travelling vast distances in a blinkof an eye and had been in space less than ten miles away from thesun, without the need for space suits nor any kind of protection fromthe heat and radiation that must have still been coming the sun.
Thisdidn’t exactly fit within the normal parameters of a near death outof body experience either, but did leave a whole lifetime worth ofunanswered questions. The most intriguing of which were who or whatexactly the entity was, who or what was behind (if anyone of course)the death of the star the locals called Sol; and why would thisentity choose now to reveal next to useless information? Severalpossibilities flew around Marcus’ mind atthat moment, but none of which he could fully articulate to himself;let alone anyone else.
Asan intercom buzzer sounded on his desk, Marcus remembered somethingthat he had meant to do and had not time to do. Like so many othersbefore him it had only manifested itself as an itch he could neitherreach nor scratch, but there it was anyway, a relatively small taskthat he had laid aside and forgotten. That was namely Sarah and whatto do with her, there was no choice, and he decided there and thenthat they had to take her with them. No matter what the tradeoffwould be Marcus suddenly had the sharp focus that comes withcertainty that the woman would be key to their endeavors and wouldhave to be on the Pilgrim’sHope when they launched. He had wasn’tentirely sure where this came from and it could still backfire onhim, but this stranger in their midst was going with them and wouldplay some key role along the way.
Thenthe intercom buzzed again and Marcus knew he had to answer it, andthere would be time later to think about this latest mystery.
“Andthat’s all that you remember?”Dr Dixon asked after he had given Marcus a thorough physicalexamination and had listened patiently to the story his friend had totell.
“Yes,it was a being of light that had no specific features.”Marcus said for the tenth time in the last hour. “Itdid have a vaguely human shape, but nothing that would haveidentified it as specific person” He hadalso repeated this almost as many times.
DrDixon looked at the Commander thoughtfully. He had found no signs ofphysical illness; no viral or bacterial infection and there had beenno indication of brain damage on the cursory scans he had run. Thisdidn’t necessary preclude various forms of mental illness nor theuse of stimulants or other addictive drugs such as narcotics or evenalcohol abuse, but again his tests had shown no signs of any kind ofdrug in Marcus’ system and he didn’tthink mental illness was likely as there had been no previoussymptoms. There were numerous psychological conditions that couldpresent without warning or be induced but stress, and Marcus had beenunder more of this than usual in recent months. But again Marcus hadappeared to cope very well with the added strains of the last coupleof months and, aside from not sleeping enough, had not complained ofany other symptoms. As far as Dr Dixon was aware there was nohistory of mental illness in the Commanders family.
Onething that did spring to mind was the arrival of this woman, whoclaimed to be Sarah McKenzie, and who had also had been having vividdreams. On the other had he couldn’t see that there was anyimmediate connection between the two and Sarah had reported that shehad no recollection of her dreams. If they were connected, Dr Dixoncouldn’t see how either other than some kind of telepathy or otherkind of connection between the two individuals, and there was noevidence of this at this time. Dr Dixon felt reasonably sure thatthis could be put down to stress and that with proper sleep andrelaxation Commander de Benedict would probably not experienceanything like again, and he told the Commander so in no uncertainterms.
“I’msure your right, but I wanted to be sure that there wasn’tsomething else involved” Marcus said,wondering whether he was trying to convince the Dr or himself.
“No,nothing I can detect without running more comprehensive tests and ifyou have any other dreams like that one, please let me know”Dr Dixon said trying to trot too standard a reply that he might havegiven to some hypochondriac or overly worried parent.
“Bythe way, how’d the meeting go? “Dr Dixon asked as Marcus got up off the exam table and began to headfor the door. He paused and turned back to face the Dr recalling themeeting he had come from, before seeing the Dr, with the otherexplorer ship commanders and the top administrators who formed a sortof oversight committee that was meant to ensure the smooth running ofthe project, even though Marcus had most of the day to day control ofthings. He had told them in no uncertain terms that he was takingSarah with them on the Pilgrim’sHope and would not be persuadedotherwise even if did mean reorganizing a few things in order to makeroom for her. Far too many people would be left behind in any case,and he wasn’t going to leave her.
“Theydidn’t like it, but I couldn’t just leave her here. Not after...“Marcus didn’t finish the sentence asit would have meant articulating a half formed thought that he didn’treally understand himself. “Not afterall she must have gone through to get here in the”he almost immediately corrected and finished the sentence he hadstarted earlier. “Do you think she’sready for what’s happening?”Marcus asked as an afterthought to deflect any queries about his own.
“She’sstill a little uneasy, and could use more recovery time. But I don’tsee any side effects of her experiences as yet and her main problemat the moment seems to be her amnesia. Otherwise Sarah McKenzie isin almost perfect health considering” TheDr said truthfully as he had yet been able to find anything wrongwith the woman.
“Youdon’t think she could some kind ofsaboteur or something?” Marcus not reallyconvinced that there could be anything like this Sarah was hiding.
“Notas far as I can, and that’s not reallyfor me to say. According to every test I have run, she’snot carrying any kind of infectious disease nor kind hidden weapons,biological or otherwise, about her person.”The Dr replied.
Marcusthen left the Dr Dixon’s office in orderto set in motion the plans he had formed in order to accommodate thisrelatively unexpected guest. One of the storage lockers just belowthe main crew quarters was big enough to act as Sarah’squarters for the journey and most of what was in the locker could bestored elsewhere with a little reorganization. The other problemwould be that most of the crew, in fact all the rest of the crew, hadfunctions or tasks to form that contributed to running of a star shipin flight. But in Sarah they would effectively be taking on apassenger, who might get in the way and be more of a hindrance than ahelp. On the other hand they were taking a massive gamble in goinganyway and if Sarah could make a difference somewhere along the waythat would contribute to the overall success of the mission then itwould be worth it. There were still a couple of months before theylaunched.