Chapter 37

I was hurt but not injured. I rolled my shoulders and stretched out my arms as I climbed to my feet.

“Hello! Xiomara! Girls!” I shouted up but I knew there had been at least two floors below me when my grip had slipped. The air cut apart noise long before it could reach them. “Shit.”

I felt around and assured myself that I was still in the little outcropping off the path. I was and I wasn’t. I was in the half octagon that was the indent but the hallway ran into it as a dead end, not parallel like it had been along the boxes.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I slowly lost the emphasis but I kept talking. I was blind. I was alone. I was shaking. I couldn’t find a hand hold. I was jumping. Once, my fingertips felt the edge of an indent. If I could reach that, I could climb out! I took two steps back and ran to jump and kick up the wall and hopefully pull myself up. I heard her as I lifted my foot, stubbed my toe into the wall, and cursed in pain.

“I’m going to die!” I crumpled as her butt landed straight on my shoulder and I was laid flat on the ground. “You’re alive! I’m alive!”

Renee crunched her heel on my sternum as she pulled herself to her feet. She muttered a sorry, knelt at my side and rubbed my chest. She had to keep her hands on me. I needed it. I smiled and dragged her hand to my face so she could be certain I was OK.

“If I can’t get word to them quickly, they’re going to go to the box and get everyone.” Renee told me. I was hugging her and blaming our shaking entirely on her. We calmed down and breathed.

“The handholds aren’t here. I’m going to lift you up, so you can reach the indents, and you’re going to climb and get the girls.” I told her.

“And you’re going to come up behind me?” She demanded.

“I’m not certain I can reach it by myself.” If I timed the jump maybe. I couldn’t see the wall for when to leap. My toes, I hoped, weren’t broken but they were screaming in pain. I surprised myself at how I pushed the pain off to the side.

“I can’t go alone.” She shook her head.

“Are you going to lift me and wait down here by yourself?” I shook my head in her hand.

“I can try.” I could feel her face tighten in determination.

“I’m not leaving you down here alone.” I grabbed her chin and felt her nod and grin. “Go up, tell Xiomara to open our box and make a rope out of shirts. Sleeve to sleeve, I won’t wander too far.”

“You won’t wander anywhere.” She hissed at me. I took her hand and dragged it along the wall I was just about to push her up.

“There’s only one way to go and--”

“Then I’ll go with you and--”

“And they’ll be scared to death up there not knowing what happened to me or to you.” I pulled her to me, walked her to the wall, flipped her to face the wall, squatted down, and grabbed her ankle. She stepped onto my other hand. “Do you know how far you’ll have to climb?”

“No.” She said worried. “I think we’re under the boxes now. So maybe three stories?” She suggested. “How big’s a story?”

“It’s about twelve to fifteen feet.” In here at least. “You remember climbing down one floor right? Four dents. Scream your lungs out until they answer you.”

“You scream yours out so I can tell them how close we’ll need to get to get you.” She told me what I was going to do and there was no way I could turn her down.

“I will.” Kinda. “Ready to go?”

She took a deep breath. “I hate aliens and I love Dean!” She screamed. “I hate popular kids and I love Connie. I hate stupid questions and I love Pat. I hate bitches--” She started her mantra as I stood up and vaulted her until she caught the dent. I set her foot on my shoulder and pushed up the other.

“--and I love cheerleading! You’re supposed to be screaming!” She stomped my collar bone. I grinned.

“I can show you the world ... Shining, shimmering, splendid. Tell me princess now when did you last let your heart decide...” It was the only song I knew where she would have a part to sing back at me. She jumped in to sing Aladdin’s part with me, but she had the courage to pull her foot up from my shoulder. I smiled as I sang, but her voice was scratched up by “Magic carpet ride.” And I couldn’t hear her sing back “a new fantastic point of view.”

I was alone. In the dark. I had myself. The rush of blood in my veins and the beating of my heart seemed too loud. I rubbed my sore toes on the floor. I think my shoulder hurt more than my toes now. The floor was the same plastic-like panels as the box, as the dark hallways, as the plaza under the water towers.

I left my shirt on the floor, so they would know they were in the right hallway when they came down for me. I should just sit and wait. I couldn’t just sit and wait. I put my fingers to the wall and started walking. I didn’t think Aladdin’s love song was appropriate right now. I was more than a little embarrassed to be singing Let It Go, but no one would hear me.

I made sure to belt out every disharmonious unpracticed note. I walked hand on the wall, unable to reach the other side. I walked through the first chorus. I saw the green light. It seeped into the nothingness around the edge of a door. I ran forward to reach it. I slapped my hands up and down it looking for a knob. Everything was a knob with these aliens.

I found nothing. I growled. I cursed. I sang. I pounded the lit panel. I was certain it was door. Was this the bridge of the ship? Was this where the aliens were? I hammered with my fist growing tighter with every pounding. I stopped when I felt the blood pool out from beneath my ring fingernail.

“Fuck you!” I slapped my hands together assumed I left thick red handprints on the door. “You’re lucky I have to meet the girls!”

The impotence of the threat didn’t stop it from feeling good. I dropped my pants, marking the door in case the light behind it went out. I felt a weird kind of powerful to only have on my underwear with the head of my cock sticking out the piss hole. I walked back counting steps. Counting out loud. I didn’t get to say nine of a hundred and ninety nine when the green light behind me amplified and flooded the hallway.

I ran back. The light was dim. It hurt my eyes. Inside the room was another console. Another pair of monitors. I grabbed the box and turned it like I had seen Xiomara do. The four by three buttons were there. I pushed one at random and shielded my face as the screens lit up. That’s when the green lights turned red.

“Fuck.” I blinked away the eye strain and turned to the screen. A golden circle and running white letters scrolled over the red background of the two panels. I frowned. I should’ve paid more attention to Pat and Xiomara working with the other computer. I touched one of the lit up panels and managed to slow the scroll.

“Master distribution. Master collection. Master mitigation. Master environmentation. Master fecundation. Master. Master. Master.” I keyed the code for master mitigation.

“Critical failure. Vent total experiment?”

“No!” I bitched. “No! No! No!”

I strained to see the proper code and keyed it in.

“Reprint? Ark LC-55. Ark OB-82. Ark OE-91. ARK PE-100.” Reprint? Replace us with new clones? I found the no command.

“Mitigation aborted. Distribution failure.”

I stumbled my way back out of master mitigation and into master distribution. I made myself angrier. More panicked. Distribution led to Nutrition. Nutrition led fecundation. Fecundation led to environmentation. Environmentation led to restitution.

“Subject Ark LC-55-03: Ragnar Erikson restituted 438 per mil completion. Abort?” I wanted to say yes. I really did. My stomach turned in knots. I didn’t code out no. Restitution led to connection.

Subject Ark LC-55-10: Zoe Ann Baxter: 886 per mil Return. Ark OB-82-60: Wanda Marie Johnson: 215 Return. Ark OE-91-01: Dean Bartholomew Baxter: 886 per mil Return. I smiled. It took incalculable time to navigate the screen and manipulate the numbers. I turned Zoe’s and mine down to 500 per mil Return.

Subject Ark OE-91-40: Xiomara Gabriela Teresa Sanchez: 6 per mil Return. After me. she was the highest number of my original ten. Connection to Xiomara back home? They were two different people now. Pat landing in sneakers in my bedroom had woken me up at 886. Wanda woke up every night at 215, basically the opposite. Could we have woken her up in the box? If, the girls weren’t broken by the cabin fever of the box, would they be my girls?

My hands were shaking. I hoped I wouldn’t be angry at myself later. I scrolled through other master folders. I revisited environmentation. It wasn’t until I returned to master fecundation did I manage to turn the lights back to green.

“She’s going to love that.” I grinned. I looked over the screens. I frowned. “We’re the only ones on this ship. You’re just a robot.”

The screens scrolled against my fingers. Super mission was bright and focused.

“Great, I offended the robot.” I moaned with a smile as I keyed in the code.

“3 millionths per mil intelligent natural evolutions live long enough to achieve extra-solar flight before autodepopulation. Redistribute viable candidate evolutions paring away self destructive sects.”

I took a deep breath. “And we’re a critical failure because I killed Reggie.”

“Potential success. Restitution not aborted. Reprinting not initiated. Be first success. Ark OE-91-01: Dean Bartholomew Baxter.”

I nodded. I had a tear in my eye when I turned to the door. The human race saved by my cowardice? I shook as the door closed behind me and the green light no longer leaked out the door.

“-ea--Dee--ean!” I turned at the sound of destructed voices. I yelled “Xiomara! Zoe! Hannah!” As I rushed off after the voices. It was dozens of steps before our voices were coming through clear and sensible. The darkness seemed even darker after my moment in the red and green. I screamed “Connie!” in her face right before I ran my forehead into hers.

I staggered back and the resultant slap hit me in the throat.

“You should’ve stayed where we could find you!” Xiomara screamed through tears.

“I scared you all.” I said and wrapped my arms around as many of the girls as I could reach. There were at least six and then a seventh charged the group. “Is anyone waiting up top to help us out?”