The door stuck for a moment before sliding open with a mechanical whine. A soft beep followed as it validated August’s biometric data and allowed him into mission control.
The observation window curved around the circumference of the control room, giving him an unbroken panorama of the massive red giant — its decaying, bloated surface bleeding solar flares into the void of space, where they were slowly consumed by the magnetoplasma structure latched on to it. At some point, somebody affectionately named it the jellyfish. The name stuck.
He stretched and tried to stifle a yawn, which only made him yawn again.
Just another day at the office.
He slumped into his station chair and pushed a mess of empty MRE packages aside. He’d been meaning to clean up, but maybe there was no point anymore. The once pristine equipment on the Erebus Relay Station was now in various states of disrepair, held together by sheer willpower and spit over the past 613 sols, thanks to August’s efforts.
Once, the sprawling temporary habitat was packed full of scientists, engineers, and technicians, all part of a cutting edge international initiative aligned with one goal: discovery. That was before the funding cuts. Before the corporate buyout.
Now, it was only him. He logged into his workstation. The on-site AI, Genie, chirped, “Good morning, Stellar Phenomena Analyst August Cauchy! You have now clocked in for shift 1552. Have a stellar day!”
He checked his personal transmission log. There was a pickup confirmation from Captain Walsh. The guy had a sunny disposition that was infectious, he was looking forward to his ride home. There was also a message from his wife. She ended it with only three hearts this time.
“Each Erebus sol is 25.5 Earth hours. So 1552 sols is just about 1649 Earth days. That’s how long I’ve been away from Lara and the kids. Four and a half years. Add to that the transmission delays, and it’s no wonder she’s been so distant lately.”
He didn’t want to say that he was worried his wife might be cheating on him, even when there was nobody around. Saying it out loud made it feel like something worth considering, and deep down, he didn’t believe it. Not really. But still, it had been so long.
Maybe talking to a magnetoplasma phenomenon is a sign that cabin fever had finally settled in. He squinted through the harsh light – even though the glass was specially designed to be safe, it was still all encompassing and blinding.
It’d be nice to go back home. Mel was just about to graduate highschool. He could help her with her university applications. And twelve year old Benji was his favourite person, after Lara, of course. In her last transmission, she told him that McDonald’s had a new spicy sauce. He couldn’t wait to eat an artery clogging burger again.
He watched as TSR-9 Tiamat spat out an unusually large phlegm of superheated plasma into the void of space. On Earth, solar flares were fleeting bursts that could only be tracked with specialized instruments. But the red giant had swelled so large as it entered its dying throes that it dominated the skyline. Soon, it wouldn’t be safe to remain on the planet anymore, anti-radiation shelter or no.
Did a tendril of plasma — he knew he was anthropomorphizing, but there really was no better word for them — just reach for the solar flare? No, that couldn’t be. The jellyfish had never behaved that way before. The AI would have picked up on it right away, and every sensor would have been screaming at him. He must have imagined it.
Just in case, he ran through all the usual suspects. Plasma density and temperature, check. Magnetic field fluctuations, normal. Solar flare trajectories were unusually flamboyant, but nothing he hadn’t seen before. LIDAR scans of the jellyfish tendrils, normal. Radiation levels both inside and out were stable.
Maybe the flare damaged the sensors? He knew he had seen something. He wasn’t sure what, but surely an anomaly visible to the naked eye should have shown up in the logs.
Thirty minutes later, he was suited up, rummaging through his toolkit. He entered the airlock and hit the big red button.
“This is not a scheduled mission, August Cauchy,” chirped Genie. “Are you sure you want to continue?”
“Yeah, it’s probably nothing,” he mumbled. “I just gotta check. I saw…it isn’t supposed to do that…”
“Unclear. Please repeat the message. Do you want to continue?” Genie said brightly.
August sighed. “Code ERA-CH-89. Override. Just open the damn door.”
A series of clicks and groans sounded, and the air rushed out as it depressurized in the lack of the Erubian atmosphere. He stepped out into nothingness.
This wasn’t even close to one of his first outings, and it helped that the gravity of Erebus made it feel very Earth-like in that way. But there was something about walking out into a ravaged, endless landscape with nothing but blackness above you, and a giant being devoured by a cosmic carnivore in front of you. It made him feel small, but “small” wasn’t a word big enough to describe the feeling. It made his chest tighten with terror and his lizard brain freeze.
“Genie, put on some Daft Punk for me, will you?” he said, and turned his back on it all.
Get Lucky started playing in his ear as he turned toward the scattered equipment stations in the main habitat zone. Where to begin?
The magnetometers and radiation detectors got his attention first. The display flickered weakly, and was covered in dust, but the readings were correct. He knelt by the LIDAR arrays next, and tried to gently brush off as much grit as he could off the delicate lenses. Then he stopped himself. He was leaving in three days, and the station was to be shut down forever. What was the point? Still, since he was out here already, he checked on the power supply units. There was a steady, encouraging hum.
He glanced across the desolate planet’s surface, barely visible in the wan light. Erebus had excited researchers at first because, before the jellyfish phenomenon, it had been located in the goldilocks zone – the perfect area around its sun’s orbit for life to flourish. The geological makeup was also the most Earthlike they had ever found. It even had a moon, once, before Tiamat had pulled it out of its orbit and swallowed it whole.
They had found evidence of water, too – oceans and rivers and lakes. Even now, he could see massive canyons gouged into the crust like dried up veins that were surely cut into the landscape by rushing water.
He wrestled with the spectrometer’s protective cover for a moment, his fingers clumsy and fumbling in the suit. After a brief tug and a few choice curses, the panel popped open. The sensors gleamed faintly, undamaged, and all systems nominal.
Still, the hair on the back of his neck rose. It was that inexplicable feeling learned by prey long ago when it knew it was being stalked.
The song ended. He gulped, and the sound sounded loud in the confines of his helmet. He tripped over his own feet and managed to catch himself on the outer airlock door, and his gloved hand slammed the access panel. There was a brief delay, too brief to be meaningful when everything on the station was holding on for dear life, but enough to make his heartrate spike. Finally, the outer door slid open with a reluctant hiss and he stepped inside. The airlock sealed with a thud, and pressurization began.
“Welcome back, August!” Genie said, and the light on the panel turned green as the inner door slid open.
That night, he dreamed of being inside something vast and thinking, like he was a single bee in a massive hive that spanned the stars. There was a slow, aching awareness of time and entropy, of infinity stretching in every direction. Until suddenly, there was light and heat and warmth, and minds. Curiosity. Recognition. He dreamt of insects crawling over his skin, biting, burning. He dreamed of…hunger.
He woke up in a cold sweat.
He rushed to his workstation and logged in, his hands shaking. There were no new messages, but that’s not what he was concerned with today.
He tried to ignore the window.
All logs were…normal? He double checked every file, and then dug through the banked data. There had to be something, anything. Some blip, some spike, some anomaly. He finally glanced up through the window, and almost cried out.
No, that didn’t make any sense. He was a scientist, not some scared teenager watching a cheesy B-rated sci-fi flick. He forced himself to look again.
The bell was still securely latched onto the red giant, but he could have sworn the tendrils were positioned abnormally. As if they were reaching toward Erebus.
The colours were mesmerizing today, stranger than he had ever seen before. It was always beautiful, but today, it pulsed vibrantly, like a breathing thing. It reminded him of the aurora borealis back home. How badly he wanted to go back home, to hug his wife, to put his feet up and grumble about the rain.
To not be alone under an alien sky, staring into the eye of something that might be staring back.
He opened the comms software for a moment, and then hesitated. What was there to say? There’s an anomaly, hurry up? It sounded ridiculous, paranoid, a poor conclusion to his half decade of service. They were going to arrive in a couple of days to pick him up, anyway.
Instead, he clicked on Lara’s name and plastered on a bright smile that she would see right through in an instant. There was a bead of sweat on his forehead that he ignored.
“Hey, love! Two sols to go, can you believe it? I can’t wait to see you and the kids. Did Mel end up going on a second date with that boy? Also, can you do me a favour and book a reservation at Sam’s Grill for next week? I’m dying for a greasy burger. I can’t wait to see you. I said that already, I know. But I am. I’ll see you soon. Love you.”
He hit send before he could ramble on any further, and then sent a few hearts along with the message for good measure. It made him feel slightly better, but didn’t entirely get rid of his sense of unease.
He didn’t take off his suit, even though it was uncomfortably stuffy. It made him feel safe, cocooned. To occupy time, he checked the different habitat hubs individually for potential radiation leaks. He even cleaned up the mess of MRE packages, and then sorted and labelled the latest batch of collected mineral samples. It was all pointless, of course, since he would be leaving in a couple of days, but it helped to pass the time, and it helped to keep moving. It helped him pretend nothing was wrong.
When the sun went down, he breathed a bit easier, but still kept his suit on as he slept.
He woke up to an alarm blaring.
“Wh-what the hell is going on?” he said, his heart in his throat. “Genie?”
“There has been an airlock breach.”
“What?” he yelled. He scrambled out of bed, thanking the lord for his paranoia in keeping his suit on, and then followed the red strips of light, scanning the corridors for potential damage. He turned a corner and came up short.
The outer and inner airlock doors were wide open, something that should never have been possible. He stumbled forward, keeping his gaze on the floor and yanked the outer door shut. Immediately, the alarms stopped, and pressurization began. He stepped back into the habitat and closed the inner airlock behind him.
“Genie, why were both airlock doors open?” he said quietly.
“You opened them, August,” she replied cheerfully.
“What? I did not.” He tapped a few commands into the panel, and stared.
Manual override, August Cauchy, Sol 1553.
No, that wasn’t possible. He removed his visor and focused on taking deep breaths. Fresh oxygen was being pumped into the habitat, but there was a lingering, smell in the air. Something burnt and salty that vaguely reminded him of roasted seaweed.
He makes his way back to mission control and checks his inbox again. No new messages. He looks up.
The jellyfish is looming over Erebus station, impossibly large. So vast that it seemed to overpower every other source of light in the sky. Its plasma tentacles no longer drift aimlessly through space, they moved intentionally, as if trying to reach through the window, filled with veins that glowed with impossible colours. The whole thing throbbed like a single vast organ - beating, pulsating, alive.
He stood frozen. It was beautiful, but he knew to be afraid. A burning feeling began in his chest, subtle at first, like the beginnings of a panic attack. But then it spread. To his fingers, his toes, crawling up his neck like a fever with a purpose. His blood was on fire. And his heart - oh God, his heart - was pumping sync with the pulsating glow.
His eyes roll back into his skull.
“Ayo, your last day and we catch you sleeping in? For shame, man.” Captain Walsh yanks his bedsheet off him. Behind him, Carla gave him a nod as she lugged a crate of soil samples along.
He was dressed in his comfortable clothes, no spacesuit in sight.
“Huh?” August says, blinking stupidly.
Walsh peers at him, concerned. “You okay, man?”
August smiles. “Just shocked to see your ugly mug first thing in the morning.”
Walsh laughs and offered him his hand. August took it and stumbled to his feet, swaying slightly. Walsh winced. “You sure you’re good? You’re burning up.”
August doesn’t respond and instead walks over to mission control. Carla is back for another box, and Smitty is running shutdown sequences. He gives August a little wave when he spots him. Erebus - 9 is officially going to be closed. He peers through the window one last time. The jellyfish is back to normal, tentacles possessively floating around the red giant once again.
He was burning up, but it was a good kind of heat. Even though his pulse was frantic, erratic, too fast. Too weird. Somehow, he knows the jellyfish outside was pulsating in time with his heartbeat.
He smiled again. “Yeah, I’m good, Walsh. Just happy to be going back home. I’m…hungry.”
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