The chamber opened. The needles retracted. Small streams of blood flowed out of the open wound from the needles. The neck needle, which was the thickest and longest, allowed the most blood to come out. Noah lay on his chamber bed, mask still on; with slow, heavy breaths he rubbed his ring finger, the goggles he wore still were in shut-out mode so he couldn't see, only feel. He slowly lifted himself off the chamber, his body was sore and weak, and the fluid in his body made contact with air a freezing endeavor.
Noah came out of the chamber with his back arched upward and his hand tucked like a dinosaur. Everything was dark and cold, he had no sense of direction; One foot, the other, and again, he tried walking, only to find that his muscles weren't responding as he wished. They were stiff, locked, a dead body trying to move.
The cryo liquid was thick and slippery and when combined with his stiff muscles it made him trip, falling hard on the floor. Noah managed to raise a hand to his face and remove the goggles that blocked his vision, exposing him to the bright red lights that lit the command control. He laid face up on the floor, cold and deaf to the sirens, rubbing his ring finger while trying to make sense of everything.
His ears started to hear again, the alarm was oppressive, and there was no space for one to think. The world was turning, the sound was beating him down and it was as if gravity had decided to turn up to eleven. All the stress forced everything on Noah's stomach out. The vomit strangled him, so weak he was, that he couldn't even move his head sideways, so he was forced to choke.
Two times now, he thought, two times I've choked, and the second will be the last. He thought of Danielle, but all he could think of was the devilish sight of naked blood. Tears streamed from his eyes.
+ Diagnosing Crewmember + A drone flew to Noah, scanning his body
He could feel his heart beating faster and his consciousness slipping.
Crewmember is undergoing cardiac arrest. Defri. . . +
It went pitch black, and Noah's body slowly started to go numb. Suddenly, a shock of energy. Nothing happened. Noah fell deeper and deeper into the darkness. Another shock. And nothing. The deeper Noah went the less he could make sense of what was happening, he couldn't keep a train of thought. It's so cold, he thought, I'm hungry, he thought. The new thought didn't track with the last one, it was only a thought. Unorganized thoughts are but chemical and electrical signals firing in our brains, and could you call those coherent? Just like a car, of what use was internal combustion if it couldn't be harnessed? Of what use were those chemical signals if there wasn't a working brain to use them, find a path for them, to discard some of them? Without the brain, without the human brain, we would be like any other animal, unable to do more than what evolution had allowed us to do, more than what our ancestors were cable of doing.
And yet human existence isn't logical. We don't think of ourselves as a compound of instinct and evolution. Humans are an emotional species, the only species in their galaxy that push themselves to be more than their instinct, to be more than what they are. Wouldn't pushing beyond our instincts, beyond our limits, makes us less human, makes us something else? No. It wouldn't. Just like food, sleep, and sex, we seek meaning, logic, and reason by instinct. No matter how much we try, we are creatures of instinct. We are caged by evolution.
SHOCK. And. Life
Noah turned sideways and coughed the vomit that had drowned him. The feeling of crushing gravity had faded by thensome but now his muscles were tired and tense, with spasms at every move, and an intense clit-clattering in the bones. He felt like glass, something akin to a porcelain doll, those that shattered into a million pieces when dropped. He pushed his body up but there was no will, it was just strength from the shock of death. His body buckled and tumbled as he stood up, and like a baby learning to walk, it took one step after another to make it to the stairs on the left side of command control.
He looked at the balcony he was on top of, he looked at his crew still in their chambers, and he looked at that hellish descent of seventy steps and swallowed. Just starting to get the courage to walk down, he got an idea.
"Dav!" He shouted weakly
A drone came to him and scanned his eyes
+ Hello, Lt. Castille. You woke early, and you are very weak to walk right now +
"I know," Noah exhausted, "that's why I want you to restore the safety mechanisms in the ship" he walked to the balcony bar.
+ Understood. Enabling safety mechanisms +
The ship whirred and the lights in the ship went from red to deep blue, only safety was enabled after all.
"Also, turn the med bay functions on" Noah climbed the bar
+ Understood, enabling medical bay functions +
The deep blue lights turned a little lighter as the ship whirred again.
Noah took a deep breath, and looked up at the sky, hoping the fall wouldn't hurt. He looked down and for the first time, he saw the fall for what it was: deadly. Even with the gravity off on the fall zone, it still scared him, but he couldn't walk down those stairs without falling. Another deep breath, and a look up. He closed his eyes and jumped.
The second slowed down as he fell, when would the gravity go off? Now? No, now. His anxiety took over, he thought of home, of Danielle, of that kid. A long, old memory came to Noah, of him listening to an old song, from 1990 or the 2000s. Even if it was almost a thousand years old at that point, it still resonated with him. " Fallin' " by Alicia Keys. He would have laughed if he wasn't fearing for his life. He remembered his mother, listening to this song with her.
"I'M SORRY!" he muttered to himself
The fall disappeared. Noah opened his eyes and was now in zero gravity.