The Flying Space Submarine
A free short story
I hate my fucking life. If you can call this living.
Why?
Where do I start?
I haven't been able to stand up, sit comfortably, walk around, or even lie down and get decent sleep for about six thousand hours. That’s two hundred and fifty days, or over eight months, in Earth terms. Days and months don’t mean anything out here, where there’s no sun and no moon, so we just count everything in hours. Of course, relativity screws that up too, but let’s not get technical. It’s a hell of a long time to be mostly immobile, that’s all you need to know.
And I have to listen to my wife screwing one of my oldest friends on a regular basis. I don't blame her. She has needs, she's a healthy, horny woman, and I haven't exactly been around, so, what can you expect? To be fair, he tries to be discreet and keep it quiet. She doesn’t. Never could. She’s noisy. Drives me crazy. But hey, she’s probably going to die because of me, so I’m not really in a position to tell her to stop. Leo used to apologize every time things got a little loud, but it was making us both feel awkward, so he doesn’t do that any more. I just try to ignore it and not think about what’s happening ten feet away.
But that’s not the worst of it. The worst thing in my shitty life, the absolute worst? It’s something you’d probably never think of. There’s no toilet in here. Not even room for a bucket. So they give me a pile of plastic baggies along with my ration packs, and somehow, I have to piss and shit into a baggie without making a mess, then wipe myself up with a wet rag. So far, so good, that’s no different to what they taught us in survival school. But then I have to push the baggie back under the door and they have to dispose of it for me. It’s humiliating, having to call out and tell them to come fetch my waste bag.
And since the chances of things getting better are precisely zero, I’m not exactly thrilled by the future. At some point, the food will run out, and that’ll be it for all three of us. Unless I die first, then they can get home safely.
I’m not explaining this very well, am I? Okay, let me back up a bit.
I live in a Mark 3 MEPREV - Multi Environment Piloted Reconnaissance and Exploration Vehicle. Basically, it’s a little one-person atmospheric craft the size of a sports car that we use to check out planets for mineral resources, aliens, or potential holiday resorts. (That last one’s a joke, by the way. Space vacations are a stupid idea.) The MEPREV is a super tough and super versatile vehicle: it can last in space for several hundred hours, it’ll fly in just about any atmosphere, it can travel over rough terrain, and it can even go underwater, down to about 450 psi, which is usually good enough for maybe 1000 feet on an Earth-like planet. We call it the Flying Space Submarine.
Flying the sub is my job. Leo’s the captain, navigator, and owner of the Molly H. He decides where we go and he gets us there. Ellie’s the engineer, and a damn good one. We’ve all known each other since school days. Me and Ellie, we did our time in the Navy. Leo pulled some kind of exemption on account of his ears or something, and got himself assigned to a civilian exploration team. They struck it lucky, and Leo’s share of the take was enough to put down a deposit on his own ship. So as soon as we got out of the Navy, the three of us teamed up and headed out to the stars.
Space exploration, whatever you may have seen in the vidstreams, is boring. Pick a star, jump, check out the planets, see if any of them look interesting, then go down there in the sub and take readings. Repeat until you run low on food, air, or fuel, then jump home. If you’ve been lucky, you can sell the locations of the mineral deposits to one of the big mining corporations. A good strike can get you several million creds. A really good one will get you a billion. Most trips, though, you come home with nothing, so you refuel, resupply, and go right back out again.
We’d been out for about nine thousand hours - more or less a year - when we hit a biggie. Not enough to retire on, but enough to pay off the balance on the Molly, clear all our debts, give her a complete refit, and have enough left over to finance twenty or thirty more trips. So we decided to cut the trip short, head home and cash in. While Ellie prepped the jump drive and Leo double-checked the coordinates, I started clearing everything out of the sub. Should’ve been straightforward, nothing we hadn’t done a hundred times before… if it hadn’t been for the micrometeorite. Less than a quarter inch of space debris, traveling at some insane speed, and it hit us like a bullet. Punched right through the hull. Of course, the autosealants took care of the holes, so that wasn’t a problem.
The problem was that on its way through, it managed to obliterate both the main and the backup actuators for the outer airlock. Hit us at the perfect angle to get both of them. The Molly’s four-foot thick outer door was stuck open, just five inches from the floor. Wouldn’t open, wouldn’t close. We tried everything, but there was nothing we could do. We don’t have the tools to open up the panel, and even if we could get in there, we don’t carry spares. Why would we? Those actuators never fail, and even if one did fail, that’s why we have a backup system. Losing both was practically impossible. So that left me stuck in the sub, with no way to get back into the Molly.
But here’s the kicker. Although the sub’s versatile, it’s not jump-shielded. If they jump the Molly with me in the sub, I’ll die. On the other hand, if they don’t jump, we’ll all die. Their only option is to detach the sub and leave me out here, then jump home with an open outer airlock door and hope the hull doesn’t collapse. I know what I’d do in their position, but Ellie and Leo, bless them, decided they’re not going to kill me so they can survive. And it’s not like we can send a distress call out: we’ll all have died of old age long before anyone receives it. So instead, we pointed the Molly towards Earth, and set out the slow way, gradually ramping up to 0.9c, as close to lightspeed as she’ll take us. We try not to think about the fact that even at six hundred million miles an hour, it’ll take us a couple of centuries to get home, give or take.
So I just huddle in here, lonely, bored, uncomfortable, and feeling guilty. Ellie and I can just about manage to touch our fingertips under the door if we reach out as far as possible when she pushes my food through or collects my baggie, but that’s all the human contact I have now. We used to talk all the time, trying to keep ourselves cheerful and optimistic. We’d talk about what we were going to do when we got home. We’d talk about saying screw it, sell the Molly, and go live in a little house by the sea, raise llamas or something, and maybe have some kids. But as time went on, and we came to accept we’d never get home, we ran out of things to say to each other. Even the simplest pleasantries became unspoken accusations.
When she says, “How are you doing, Jack?” I’m hearing, “Dammit, Jack, are you still alive? Can’t you hurry up and die so we can get home?”
And I’m sure my half-hearted “Doing okay, Ellie,” sounds to her like “Screw you, bitch, I’m taking you both down with me.”
Anyway, my food’s here. I’ll get back to this later.
Hi. Me again. Jack. Sorry, it's been a while. But I guess you wouldn't know that because I didn't put a date on anything. Maybe I should start these entries off with Captain's log, star date whatever. Except obviously it would have to be Pilot’s log, and I have no idea what the star date is anyway. I'm not even sure there is such a thing as absolute time in a relativistic universe. Ellie would know. I just fly the sub.
But anyway, I'm back. Things got a little weird after recording that last entry, I got really bummed out. All I could think about was how Ellie and Leo would be so much better off if I was gone. I spent several hundred hours figuring out how to kill myself. Did you know it's impossible to commit suicide by holding your breath? You just can't do it. You can make yourself black out if you’re really determined, but then some kind of automatic survival mechanism kicks in and you start breathing again. When you come around you have one hell of a headache. I don't recommend it.
I tried telling Ellie I was really sick and needed painkillers. I figured that over the course of a few hundred hours I could accumulate enough to give myself an overdose, but she figured out what I was thinking and said no. She's always known me well enough to tell when I'm bullshitting.
Obviously there are enough sharp objects in the toolkit for me to slice my wrists or cut my throat or something, but I decided against that. I really didn't want Ellie and Leo having to clean up all the blood from the sub. That would have been thoughtless. Actually, that's not the real reason. I'm just too much of a coward to do that to myself.
What I eventually decided on was just to detach the sub and drift away. I figured I'd do it while they were sleeping, then they’d just wake up and find me gone. It’d be a bit rough on them for a while, but then they'd soon realize they were free to go home and start a life together. Great idea, with just one flaw. I forgot that you can't detach the sub without somebody on the Molly releasing the clamps. Pretty dumb mistake for a pilot, huh? So as soon as I started the detachment procedure, it set off all sorts of alarms and that was that. They just shut everything down remotely and put all the sub’s control systems under onboard command.
As I sat there fuming helplessly, I could hear them bickering about who was going to talk to me. Ellie kept saying it was her responsibility, she was my wife, and I needed to know that she would love me forever and would never let me go. Leo, on the other hand, was of the opinion that what I needed was some man-to-man straight talking, and that would get my head together. Bullshit. What I needed was a bottle of rum and a big pile of sleeping pills. I told them both to fuck off and leave me alone.
After that, I tried smashing the cockpit glass with a hammer. It didn't work, obviously. That stuff is stronger than steel. Eventually they realized I was serious. Ellie pleaded with me to stop, but I laid it all out for her as matter of factly as I could.
I'm going to die in this sub, I said. There's no way I can get out of it, and there's no way of getting home. It's just a question of whether I die now and let you guys live, or hang on as long as I can and kill us all. And frankly, I don't want to die slowly, losing my mind, and knowing what I'm doing to you. I'd rather just get it over with.
Ellie sobbed, of course, and told me not to give up hope. Leo just kept saying to give him more time, he'd think of something, he'd find a way to get us all home safe. Oddly, the more they begged me to hang on, the calmer I got about dying. In the end, we all agreed to take a breather and think about it. I promised I wouldn't try to kill myself, and they promised to stop having sex. I'm not entirely sure I believe them. I suspect they’re just going to carry on doing it, but quietly. I don't care, as long as I don't have to hear it.
In the end, Leo came up with a solution. Not a great one, but at least it gives us all a tiny chance to come out of this alive. It’s going to take some pretty slick navigation and some fancy engineering, and there’s absolutely no guarantee it’ll work, but it’s worth a try.
There's a star system about 1500 hours away, Phi Upsilon 666 or some other random collection of ancient letters and numbers. It has planets and moons. We don't know much about them, but it looks like one of them might be in a habitable zone. It may or may not have a breathable atmosphere, we have no idea about the gravity, and for all we know it could be a radiation wasteland, but at least the temperature is likely to be within acceptable limits.
So here's the plan. Leo's going to head for Upsilon whatever. When we get close, Ellie is going to hit the brakes. She's calculated there's just enough fuel to slow us down and then jump the Molly home. Then I'm going to take the sub down to the planet and wait for them to come back to me. Say, 300 hours to jump, another 300 to sell the data, refit and refuel, and 300 more to get back to Jack's Refuge. Call it 1,000 to be on the safe side. All I have to do is hang tight.
Of course, there are a million things that could go wrong. I have no idea what I'll be flying into. There’s absolutely no guarantee I’ll survive the landing, if there even is land, let alone the next thousand hours. When they come back, if they come back, there's no guarantee they'll be able to locate me even if I am alive. Trying to find one little sub on a whole planet is next to impossible. If I'm underwater or in a cave or the weather's bad, I'll effectively be invisible. They could search for a thousand hours and never find me.
But we only get one chance. After burning most of our fuel to slow us down, there's not enough left to fire up the conventional drive: the only thing they can do is jump. So even if Jack's Refuge turns out to be an utter hell hole, I'll be leaving the Molly no matter what. And since Upsilon whatever is the only star in range, it's not like we have any other options. One star, one planet, one chance to stick the landing, then hope they can make it home and back again before it’s too late.
So that's what we agreed. Pretty long odds, but that’s better than zero, so I'll take them. And at least Ellie and Leo can tell themselves they're doing their best for me.
Of course, none of us mentioned the one fatal flaw in this plan. The sub can provide life support for a few hundred hours. There's no way it can last a thousand hours. If Jack's Refuge isn't habitable, I'm a dead man. But I’m already a dead man, and at least I have a glimmer of hope now.
We’re getting close. The Molly is getting slower and slower now. I can barely move in here, with all the supplies they're leaving for me: food, medicine, clothing, tools, spares, anything I might possibly need.
Ellie and I talk often, probably more than we ever did in our lives. Sometimes we both lie on the floor for hours, our arms stretched under the door, our fingertips touching, taking comfort from the physical presence of the other. Sometimes we cry, but not so often now.
I don't think about dying anymore. I have to make myself believe that I will make it, that they will come back for me, that I'm not going to end my life on a barren, hostile world that nobody has ever heard of.
This may be my last entry. I've got a lot of things I need to take care of before I leave. So I won't have time for another one until I reach Jack's Refuge. If you don't hear from me again, I didn't make it.
I love you, Ellie, and I will until my dying breath.
I landed four days ago. Actual days. The sun comes up, the sun goes down, it gets dark, and it gets light again. It's been a while since I've seen sunrise or sunset. It's beautiful. I didn't realize how much I've missed it.
Jack's Refuge is the kind of place that makes you believe that God not only exists, but is smiling on you. The air’s a little thin, like you're on top of a mountain, but it's breathable as long as you don't overexert yourself. Gravity is a little less than Earth normal which is pleasant. And the whole place, or at least the little bit of it that I've explored, looks kind of like a Caribbean island, though not quite as hot. There's this weird multi-colored vegetation everywhere, with what looks like fruits and berries growing on it. I don't know if any of it's edible, but I guess I'll have to find out sometime. I’ve already tried building a fire out of branches, and it works well. There’s something deeply satisfying about staring into the flames in the darkness, almost like it’s awakening some sort of ancient ancestral memory of being a caveman or a primitive hunter gatherer.
I haven't seen any living creatures yet. There's no sign of birds or animals on the island. At some point I'll take the sub out and see if there's anything in the sea. But right now, I'm enjoying spending my time lazing on the beach, not doing anything except realizing that I am alive.
Whether I'll still be alive when Ellie and Leo come back for me, who knows? Who knows if they will come back? I know they swore they wouldn’t abandon me, but when it comes down to it, will they really spend all that time and money looking for me, knowing they’re probably going to find a corpse, if they find me at all? It’s asking a lot of them.
But honestly, at this point, I don't much care. I can walk around. I can sit down with my back against one of those sort of tree things. I can lie down and stretch out. I can probably even go for a swim if I want. I'm not stuck in that damn coffin anymore. And best of all, I don't have to shit in a baggie.
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I didn't intend to read it all just now but got sucked into it. Really enjoyed it & great ending 😃
Having a bunch of things to do this morning, I thought I'd glance at the first few lines and come back and read the story later. So much for that plan. A few lines was all it took, and then you had me hooked.