Step 1
Station Log – Day 1
Status: All systems normal, no anomalies observed
Reporting Officer: Alex Stark, Station Maintenance
If you’re at mission control, and you’re receiving this, the shuttle has reached the station. However, I am alone here and I need help. I was the only one of the 8 astronauts to survive the transit and reawakening process. The shuttle that carried us is now inoperable. The engines are burnt out and the cryo units are spent.
This message will reach Earth in 100 days. I expect it will take some time to get another launch out in the current state of things, even given the importance of this mission. I await your response. Until then, I will do my best to stay alive and carry out the mission. End log.
Station Log – Day 3
The following transmission is on all frequencies:
In honor of Commander Edward Rogers, Doctor Maria Ramos, Doctor Felix Bordereaux, Keala Iona, Nari Lee, Antoni Romanov, and Kira Foster. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten. May you find your eternal peace among the stars.
End log.
Station Log – Day 20
Status: All systems normal, no anomalies observed Reporting Officer: Alex Stark
I know by the time this message reaches Earth, you will have already sent a response to my last message, but I just need to talk to someone. Even if they can’t respond. I know how damaging long-term isolation can be, but hopefully this will help me endure it until help arrives.
It’s been pretty busy, setting things up in this station, especially without any help. I dislocated my shoulder trying to repair the temperature control, and I had to pop it back in. That sucked. I really should have known better than to try and stick my arm through that way. I could reach, but I didn’t think about what I’d have to do to get my arm out again.
I’ve started up some plants in the hydroponics lab, and those are growing nicely. Some potatoes, lots of lettuce and some other greens. I’ll do the rest of the plants soon. I’ll probably send you some more updates soon, too. A lot of the startup chores and early maintenance are done, so I’m having more and more free time. There are some books and movies the others and I brought, and music that I’m enjoying, and I’ve been working out a lot, but things are pretty monotonous. I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely, Alex
End log.
Station Log – Day 69
Status: All systems normal, no anomalies observed Reporting Officer: Alex Stark
Haha funny number. With that out of the way, I hope you’re doing well. I’m doing okay, but I’ve run out of movies. There’s not a lot to fill the hours with; the station is running quite smoothly on its own, so there’s hardly anything for me to fix, and there’s only so much room in the hydroponics lab. If you’ve been reading my transmissions, you’ll know I’ve gotten good results from most, but not all of my plants. But even though I’ve had some training, I’m neither a farmer nor a botanist, and rice is a pain in the ass to grow.
I’ve constantly been checking for anything the scanners and telescopes may show. I mean, I have to, right? That’s why we’re here. Why I’m here. I know you’re getting all the telemetry, but still, it’s good to feel useful. If we find the source of these signals, maybe I can be. I’ll work at it as much as I can.
Sincerely, Alex
End log.
Steps 2 & 3
“Atlas”
By Skyler Garcia
Ow… I open my eyes, then close them. My head, my entire body hurts so much. My alarm is beeping, and it is not helping. It’ll stop eventually, but it’s annoying and painful right now. I try to open my eyes again, but the sudden vertigo nearly makes me throw up. Inhale deeply, and try again to open my eyes. It is almost completely dark, except for the monitor glowing brightly a few feet below me. It stings my eyes, so I look away. There has to be water around here somewhere. I carefully look around trying not to move too abruptly and disrupt my gentle floating. There are several pouches, and a lot of other junk floating around me. Most of the pouches are empty, but a pair of them float by within reach. I grab them both, and take a sip from the one that seems partly empty. I choke on the bitter taste of homemade vodka, and toss the pouch away. That’s the last thing I need now. I squint, trying to focus on what’s printed on the remaining pouch. I’m pretty sure it says ‘WATER’, but my vision is blurry. I try it, and I’m right. Slowly, I drink it. It helps, but I’m going to need something else.
After I get some ibuprofen, and some more water, my head starts to clear up a little bit. I start to look for something to eat. I don’t feel up to it now, but I know I’ll be hungry later. As I grab a partly empty packet of nutrition bar, I hear a voice behind me.
“Gooood morning!”
“Hrrng.”
“So, what are we doing today?”
I turn to him. “Percy, I cannot deal with you right now.”
“So grumpy. It’s not my fault you drank too much.” He crosses his arms.
“Whatever,” I growl, resisting the urge to smack him.
He drifted down to the computer. “Hey, what’s this? Station logs?”
“Leave that alone!”
“Station log, day one. Status: All systems normal, no anomalies observed. Reporting Officer: Alex Stark, Station Maintenance. If you’re at mission control, and you’re receiving this, the shuttle has reached the station. However, I am alone here and I need help. I was the only one of the 8 astronauts to survive the transit and reawakening process. The shuttle that carried us is now inoperable. The engines are burnt out and the cryo units are pretty much spent. This message will reach Earth in 100 days. I expect it will take some time to get another launch out in the current state of things, even given the importance of this mission. I await your response. Until then, I will do my best to stay alive and carry out the mission. End log.”
After he finishes reading it, he looks up at me. “Doing some reminiscing, I take it?”
“Hm.”
He keeps reading through the logs. He doesn’t say anything, but I know what the next one says.
“In honor of Commander Edward Rogers, Doctor Maria Ramos, Doctor Felix Bordereaux, Keala Iona, Nari Lee, Antoni Romanov, and Kira Foster. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten. May you find your eternal peace among the stars.”
I ignore him and head the command center a room over, to check the readings.
“It’s been almost two years now, hasn’t it?” He came in after me, apparently done poking around.
“Since you got here. For me, it’ll be three this week.”
“How time flies, huh?”
“No, it doesn’t. Now shut up, I’m working.”
I start looking through the telemetry from the various scanners, as well as the image feed from the telescopes. There’s not much to see; I’d been keeping my eye on some ice chunks that I thought were dangerously close, but they seem to be continuing on their own trajectories, away from the station. I turn my attention to the other readouts, first checking on the data of the distant sun. Nothing new there, still doing its weird storm things.
“Still got those mystery signals?”
“I’m getting there. Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“No. Are they still there?”
“Obviously, they’re still there. Just like they have been every day since I’ve gotten here, and for however many years before that.”
“Forty. Forty years.”
“Percy–”
“Like, thirty six years to get here at maximum speed, and the four before that for–”
“Stop! Just, go take care of the plants or something.”
“Hey, I–”
“Please.”
“Ugh, fine.”
I turn back to the computers. After I finish looking through the data, I send it over to the communications console in the other room. With that done, I run a quick diagnostic and everything comes back fine, as expected. I’ll make my analysis of the data and send everything out with the logs tonight.
After I finish everything in the control room, I head down to the labs, to check on the plants myself. Because if there’s anything I can rely on Percy for, it’s that he won’t do what I asked him to. I lost almost half my plants that way, including my rice. Which sucks, because it was a pain in the ass to grow, especially if, like me, you don’t know that much about plants. That was Kira’s specialty, but she’s not here now, so I have to figure things out.
It’s not all Percy’s fault, though. The power’s been a little inconsistent since the incident last year, which we call “the ice storm”. It damaged a lot of different areas, and even now, I keep finding little spots that need patching or welding or replacement. It’s been havoc on the temperature, lights, and ventilation systems. Not ideal in a sealed compartment in deep space, but fortunately within my area of expertise. But it still did a number on the plants.
The lights flicker as I open the hatch to the lab. It’s exactly as I left it, not a huge surprise. I checked the environmental readings, all good. And the plants look fine, too. After I water them and set the light cycle, I go to work on analyzing the telemetry from yesterday. I don’t bother looking for Percy. He’ll turn up eventually, and I know I won’t find him if I try to. But he doesn’t show up for the rest of the day, and I end up passing out in front of the communications panel after taking a couple of sedatives.
When my alarm drags me out of sleep the next morning, Percy is still nowhere to be seen, but I expect he’ll show up later today. Still no communication from Earth, but it’s still there, of course. But not everything is.
“What? Shit! No no no no no! NO!”
“What’s wrong?” Suddenly, Percy is beside me.
“The signal! It’s gone!!”
“Well, that’s good, right? If that’s what’s causing the sun to be weird, then–”
“We don’t know that! And now we have no way to find out!”
“Come on, it’s not like studying them was getting you anywhere. Just wait until we can see what happens when the last of the signals should stop reaching the sun, see what happens.”
I don’t say anything. I know he’s right, but it drives me crazy. There’s nothing I’m going to be able to do until then. Just stay alive.
Two hundred days is a long time, but after so long with nothing to go on, I can manage the wait.
And so I do. Every day, I wake up, take care of my plants, make vodka, keep looking at the sensor data, and sometimes I make repairs. Then I drink, or take pills until I sleep. Or I don’t do that, and just lie awake, looking out into the vast, empty space. I talk to Percy a lot, too. When he’s not being annoying, he can be a good listener.
Finally, the day comes. I awaken to Percy hovering directly in front of my face.
“Alex, wake up! Wake up! Today’s the day!!”
I shake my head to clear it. “Alright, hang on. Give me a second.” I rub my eyes and take a sip of water. Then I push off to check the sensors.
I spend the next several hours watching the readings from the sun arrive. Percy keeps asking me what I see, and no matter how many times I tell him nothing has changed yet, he keeps asking. Eventually, I do see something. It’s just for a moment, but there is a dip in the flare activity.
The changes continue over the next several days, and by the end of the week the sun is back to the way it was, stable with only a minimal level of flaring.
“So, what now?” asked Percy, as he floats above me. I’m harvesting the latest bunch of potatoes in the lab, and he’s decided to join me, although he hasn’t done a single thing.
“What do you mean?” I open up the lid of the bin, shove a potato in, and close the lid quickly before the others can float out.
“What do we do now? The sun is back to normal, so what do we do? That was the reason you were sent here, right?”
“I’m waiting to see if any of my messages get through to Earth, now that there’s less flare activity. They should have gotten through before, anyway, but maybe their messages back weren’t getting through to us before.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“It’s just… Wouldn’t they have at least tried to figure out how to get something through?”
“Well, solar storms like those disrupt a lot of things on Earth. They probably had a lot of other things to worry about.”
“But you were calling for help! If they cared at all, they wouldn’t have just ignored you!”
“We don’t know that they did!”
“Whatever,” he turns away. “Just don’t expect too much.”
“Ugh.” I can’t believe him sometimes. As I finish my work, I try not to think about what he said too much. But it does bother me.
The distance, the time between here and Earth, it’s so much. I’m farther away from there than any other human being has ever been. There’s no one, and nothing out here. Just me. Alone.
Well, not totally alone, I guess. I have Percy, and my plants. I just wish that I could see Earth again. Maybe I will, someday. I just have to hold out until then. I could try to get the shuttle to work again. At least, it would be better than doing nothing.
So I keep on working. Maintaining the station, the plants, rebuilding the shuttle, and listening for transmissions all the while. But I don’t hear anything. I worry sometimes, but mostly I’m glad that I’ll be able to go home.
After a few months of working, I’ve gotten the shuttle into reasonably good shape, although some critical components are still missing. I know I can get most of them, or at least patch them together, but it will take critical components of the station, and I’m not about to remove those until I know I’m about to leave. But I’m getting close.
Percy doesn’t seem as motivated about all this as I am, though. While I’m working on the wiring one day, I tell him, “You know, once I finish drying the food I’ve grown so far, and get the rest of the parts into place, we’ll be able to go home!”
“Do you really think you’ll make it? Or that you’ll even find anything if you get back?”
“How could you say that?”
“I’m just saying, it took you a long-ass time to get here, and it’s been a few years even since then. What if you get back there and there’s nothing left? It’s not like you were sent out here just for fun. Earth was in trouble, so what if everything finally fell apart? That would explain the silence, and really, it’s the most likely reason if you think about it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yes I do, and you know it, too! You just don’t want to admit that what you’re doing is pointless, and that it has been this whole time!”
I feel tears gathering in my eyes. “That’s not true!” It can’t be for nothing. There’s no way. All this time, everything we’ve sacrificed, it’s not meaningless. It can’t be. Seven people gave their lives hoping that they could help save Earth. That has to count for something. Their lives didn’t go to waste.
I can’t see the wires anymore. The tears have taken over my vision. I try to wipe them away, but it doesn’t help much. Some of them float off, sparkling in the lights, but more keep coming to obscure my sight.
Percy spoke quietly. “I know it’s hard for you to be out here alone, but it’s still not okay for you to deny what’s going on. You won’t make it back, and it’s not like there’s anything worth going back to. Not anymore.”
“No! I–” His words cut through me. I don’t know what to say. “I still have to try. I can’t just give up like that! And besides, I’m not alone. I have you.” I manage to choke out.
“No. You don’t.”
“What do you mean?” I look over at him, and realize something. His clothes, his hair, and even his skin have all become grey. “What–?”
“You never had me. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more, but it seems like you’ve made your choice. You’re leaving, and that means I have to go.”
“You can’t! It’s–” I stop, and exhale shakily. “I can’t do this without you.”
He shakes his head gently, and I see that his body has become almost translucent. “Whatever you end up doing,” his voice was barely a whisper now. “I hope you’ll be okay.”
For a long time, I am still. Eventually, I put away my tools, and go to the observatory. I look out the window. I see the stars, and then I start sobbing. I cry for a long time, and eventually lose consciousness.
When I wake up, it’s cold, and my head is pounding. I still feel like crying, but my tears are spent. So I do what I can to finish the shuttle. That’s all I have left now. My only friend is gone. I can’t stay here alone. I have to get out.
—
It’s been a long time since I’ve kept track of the days. I’m on the shuttle now, and I’ve been doing cryosleep in bursts. I can’t be in there all the time, or I risk the unit failing, or something else on the ship breaking without my knowing. But if I’m alone out here for the entire trip, I will run out of supplies. That is, if I don’t go crazy first. Even with the cryo taking up a good chunk of my journey, I’m spending so much time alone.
I hear a shuffling in the corner. “Who’s there?” My voice is rough and barely audible. There is no answer.
I go over to check, but the corner is empty. This has happened a lot. I’ll hear a noise or see a flash of movement, and then it will be gone. I even heard music once. I look out at the stars. They’re all I’ve seen the past few years, but they’re still beautiful. I wish I could remember what they looked like from Earth.
When I awaken the next time, I hear something that I recognize, and I know for sure is real. It’s the sound of an alarm. As soon as I can move properly, I rush over to see what the cause is.
It’s… everything. Or it might as well be. What happened was, some piece of rock or debris was going fast enough to get through the hull, and it damaged the onboard power systems. The backups won’t last, and I can’t go back into cryo. That means, I may reach Earth one day, but I won’t live to see it. What was I thinking? I should have made things easier to reroute, or at least added some more hull plating. I was just trying to get home as soon as I could, and I now I’d never get there.
I won’t make it. I probably never could. Right now, I’m not even sure why I tried. I knew even when he said it, that there wouldn’t be anything left for me on Earth. At best, I’d been forgotten completely. At worst, there’s no one left to forget me. It looks like Percy was right. I miss him. I don’t care that he was never there in the first place. I still wish I could talk to him again.
I keep the power on intermittently, trying to make it last as long as I can, even though I know it’s pointless. There’s not much left, I’ll only be able to use it one more time. I decide to make a final transmission, the only one I’ve made since leaving the station.
“To anyone on Earth or in space who receives this message, this will be the final log of the Atlas mission. My power is gone, and I will be dead by the time you find me. This message may never reach anyone, but it’s important to me that I send it. I’m sorry that I couldn’t help more. I hope that at least something I’ve done matters, and the others’ sacrifices weren’t in vain. Not much I can do now but hope. I guess that’s what I’ll have to keep doing. Sincerely, Alex Stark. Log ends.”
I’m shivering now, and things are growing dark. Frost starts to creep along the walls. Eventually, I can’t even keep my eyes open. At least now I can finally get some proper rest. It’s been a while.
