Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 (8 page)

Did you think you were going to die?

Notice you didn’t use the word ‘afraid.’

I know that you weren’t. At least, you think you weren’t.

Saying I think I’ve never felt fear is like saying I think I have ten fingers. I don’t think. I know.

Smoke?

If they’re pure, sure. None of that untine crap. I like my addictions.

So tell me more about never having been afraid.

Must have been maybe five or six when I first realized I was different. Before that, you know, you’re a boy, climbing, jumping. Maybe my parents were scared for me, but I was fearless.

Anyway, I used to share a room with my older brother when we were kids. He was only a year older than me. One night, he wakes up screaming. Our mom comes rushing in, scoops him up, holds him, rocks him, sings a lullaby:

Night falls

A soft blanket

The moon

A kiss on the cheek

Child, it’s time to close your eyes

Child, it’s time to sleep

You have a nice singing voice.

Thanks. Parents made me take lessons. Even then, I was into the military stuff. Thought it might soften me. Anyway, my mother, she’s singing that song. We had a nightlight, and I can see my brother, shaking and sweating. Hear him sobbing softly. Next day, I ask my mother what happened. She said, ‘Oh nothing, just a nightmare.’ That’s when I asked her what a nightmare was. That’s when I first knew I was different somehow.

You had never had a nightmare?

Oh, I dreamt of monsters and being chased or being lost and alone. I guess you’d call those nightmares. But I was never scared, even while I was dreaming. Even before I woke up and realized none of it was real. Later, I read this fairy tale about this guy who wanted to be able to shudder with fear, but he wasn’t afraid of anything, no matter what. He eventually marries a queen, and, one night, tired of his complaining, she dumps a barrel of water on him filled with little, squirming fish while he’s sleeping. He wakes up, shuddering. A joke, get it? I figure I’m like him. Except nothing’s funny about it.

#

I met someone yesterday.

Tell me about it.

You don’t seem surprised.

Nothing surprises me about you anymore.

I’m lying in my bed. It’s lights out, but I can’t fall asleep. No reason. Nothing in my head. Just not tired. Then the voice, you know the one, that tells you it’s time to wake up, time to eat, that I’ve got an appointment with you. The one that comes through a speaker hidden in the wall somewhere, it starts talking. Only it’s not the older woman’s voice with the perfect diction, it’s the voice of someone who sounds like she’s not a girl exactly, but not mature yet, either. And she’s talking right to me.

She’s a patient, she says. Has been since she was a little girl, since she wouldn’t stop cutting herself and refused to eat. I ask her if she’s been here so long, why isn’t she better yet? She is better, she tells me. Just not good enough. Anyway, she says, where would she go, what would she do? Family stopped visiting years ago. This is the only home she knows.

They let her work in the office. They trust her that much. At night, the watcher likes to nap. Leaves her to monitor the eyes. That’s why she has access.

And of all the patients, she talks to you?

I know what you’re thinking. She’s some figment of my imagination. Hell, you might even think I’m making the stuff about being scared. But it’s real. She’s real. Said she can see me. Like I didn’t know there were eyes in my room. She says that she liked how I looked. Most guys here, they’re old, or they don’t care about their appearance. Me, I look like I take care of myself. I tell her I exercise in my room. Pushups, sit ups, running in place. She says she knows. I wonder what else she’s seen.

Sounds like she has a crush on you.

Yeah, probably. Don’t know if she’s ever been with a man. Don’t know what she looks like. Imagine she’s a waif of a thing, gaunt. Too young. Not my type. Some of my murder, we’d go on leave, and first place they’d head to was a comfort house. Find the youngest one in the bunch. Not me. Nice to get the attention though, remind me that I’m still alive.

#

No, I didn’t want to die.

But you were standing in the airlock, your hand on the button, ready to open it up into space.

I told you, I’ve never been scared. I thought facing my own mortality might scare me.

But in the military, you did that all the time.

I was working.

And did you? Think about death, I mean. While you were in the air lock.

Course. Can’t help it. I tried to imagine myself being blown into the vacuum, floating for a couple of minutes, unable to breath, then exploding. Then nothing.

And that didn’t frighten you?

You can’t be scared of nothing. Long ago stopped believing in heaven. All a fantasy. Wishful thinking.

By those who are afraid?

I guess.

Want some coffee?

Sure.

Tastes lousy, but it’s all they have in here. So, you thought about it? Hitting the button, I mean.

Who wouldn’t, especially if you’re like me?

You’ve never told me what’s so bad about not being scared. Most people spend their life being scared. They wouldn’t mind being free of fear.

How would you like it if you could never be happy, or sad, or angry, or in love? Good or bad, they’re all emotions. Part of being human. I feel like, without fear, I’m missing something important.

But you didn’t open the airlock.

No, a couple of tars grabbed me before I could.

So you would have? You did want to die.

Yeah, suppose so.

#

Cecilia, that’s her name. Talk to her every night, after the lights are out. We speak real quiet. I can almost feel her breath. It’s like she’s in the room, not a disembodied voice.

What do you talk about?

Last night, I told her why I’m here. I’ve told some others on the outside about it, kills in my murder, a couple of girls I’d been with. None of them believed me. Or if they did, they thought I belonged in here. Cecilia was different though. Curious. Had lots of questions.

Then she told me about her mother. Scared of everything. Worried constantly. Wouldn’t let her go out and play by herself when she was a little girl. Had her chipped so that she would know where she was every minute of the day. Picked her up from school, even when she was old enough to walk by herself. Made Cecilia frightened, too. She couldn’t talk to strangers, froze in a crowd. Asked her if she thought her mom caused her problems. She was quiet for a long time after that.

You like, her, don’t you?

I feel bad for her. Being in here.

You’re in here.

Yes, but I can leave whenever I want.

Not without my say so.

Try me.

Then why don’t you go?

I’m still hoping you can help me.

#

You don’t believe that I can’t feel fear.

I believe you believe it.

Cecelia believes me. She’s the only one who’s ever believed me. She’s been here so long, she knows crazy when she sees it. She could be something if she ever got out of this place. Could be a coat, if she wanted. Smart, has these insights, this way of getting me to talk. Know what she told me? She said I’m as healthy as anyone else. I just have this illness. Like a diabetic not producing insulin, I don’t produce fear.

We cured diabetes years ago.

I don’t think she knows that. Have you come up for a cure for me, with all that blood you took?

I wouldn’t be here if we had. Tell me more about Cecelia. You’re fond of her?

Sure.

You’re in love with her.

Never been in love. Loved, yeah. But not in love. Have to think about that.

#

You really should let me go. The guards will be here any moment.

They won’t. I know you had the eyes turned off. To keep what we talk about secret. ‘Sides, all I have to do is give my wrist a twist, and I’ll break your neck.

If you can kill me so easily, why don’t you let me go? You can always reach out and snap my neck later if you want.

No matter. I wasn’t going to kill you anyway. Had enough killing in my life. Just wanted to let you know I could.

Why?

Cecilia had a meltdown last night. She was crying, saying she was losing it, she couldn’t do this anymore. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew she needed help, so I went to her.

You escaped your room?

I told you, I can leave whenever I want. You forget where I’ve been, how I’ve been trained. So I head down the corridors, twisting this way and that. Turns out, Cecelia still has that chip her mom planted in her, and I still have my tracking hardware. Can’t take that out of you without turning your brain to mush. All the while, I hear Cecilia cry. I don’t understand though, because my room is far away. I think maybe she started filtering it through the buzzers in the hallways, luring me. Like a siren.

Still, you went. Out of love.

The locks to the offices are biometric. Old style, easy enough to clear. I get to the room where Cecilia is. She’s there in the corner. A lot like I imagined her. A lot like she described herself one night when I asked. She couldn’t lie. Maybe that’s why she was having so much trouble now.

I don’t understand
.

Maybe I should kill you. Lying to me still. Even after I know the truth. I took her and held her tight.

You had sex with her?

You know I didn’t. You were watching the whole time. You or someone like you. I found the eyes. No, I held her, rocked her, like a child in my arms. I told her it would be okay, that I understood. It wasn’t her fault. That’s when I realized what was going on. Who you are. Not a coat at all, not the kind you pretend to be, at least. You don’t care about helping me. You just want to use me, and you were using Cecelia to help you. You want to know what makes me tick, why I don’t feel fear. You want to take it, bottle it, feed it to all the other soldiers out there. Make it into a weapon. Imagine, an army without fear, charging into battle without a care for their own skins. Every general’s dream.

It doesn’t matter anymore. We have what we need. We thought it might be in your psyche. That’s why the talks. But it’s in your blood. We can reproduce it in other soldiers, create that dream you seem to dread. Finally bring the war to an end… Why are you laughing?

I had gone to get Cecilia a drink of water. When I came back, she’s got something sharp and bright in her hand. Blood is pooling on the floor. And me, without a kit, without a patch. But I’ve still got skills. I use my shirt to stop the bleeding. I pull the alarm. Others come. She’ll be all right.

So?

Well, when I saw Cecilia there, near unconscious, spilling blood, near death, I got this lump in my throat, an empty feeling in my stomach. My heart almost beat out of my chest. My breathing was quick and shallow. My mind raced with a thousand thoughts of what would happen if she died.

And I began to shudder.

###

Manfred Gabriel's short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including
Tales of the Unanticipated, Abyss & Apex
and
Forbidden Speculations
. He has published non-fiction articles for
History Is Now Magazine
, and his musings on the modern workplace can be found at
www.highschoolwithmoney.wordpress.com
. He writes and resides in Western Wisconsin, where he lives with his wife, three daughters and a sweet black dog who doesn't understand what it means to sleep in on Saturday.

In the Space Between

Jeff Stehman

Stephen spun in darkness, ever backward, boots following helmet. It took him 14 seconds to complete one rotation. He'd checked. Twice. He always performed calculations twice.

The view, limited only by the confines of his helmet, impressed even him. In the vastness between stars, without his ship to offer contaminating light, it was spectacular. He was one of the lucky few to have seen it.

At least, that's what Mark had said before throwing him out the airlock.

Stephen took some solace that, had their positions been reversed, Mark would already be dead. His panic-induced heart rate and respiration would have consumed his oxygen quickly. Many would consider that merciful; no reason to face prolonged existence in the crushing loneliness of the great between, without even matter for company. But not Stephen. He had the stars, and he had his mind. If he needed anything else to pass the time, he wouldn't have hired onto a survey ship. The question was, what problem to turn his attention to?

In truth, Stephen doubted Mark's claim about a lucky few. Considering the rigors of interstellar travel and the number of ships traveling the deep, many others had certainly exited airlocks never to return. The question was, how many of their killers were sadistic enough to suit them up and saturate their blood before jettisoning them? An easy question to postulate, but a difficult one to formulate. How does one quantify the vagaries of the human mind without extensive statistical data? Doubtless the Bureau had such data, but the rank and file were not made aware of it. Even anecdotes of mental breakdown were hushed.

He needed a better question, one not having to do with how his current situation had arisen, but the more relevant issue of what would happen next. Exempli gratia, what was the probability of an interstellar ship dropping out of e-space within, say, a kilometer of his present location? Infinitesimally small, to be sure, but the calculation could at least be structured. And that might be enough.

#

The fourth time Stephen had to reformulate epsilon based on the probability of mechanical failure on frigate-class ships while in e-space, he realized his calculations were slowing. He hit the light on his oxygen gauge. It showed red. Pity. He had hoped to set up the equation before—