2.5 - Company Men

     The Asbolus, a spacecraft manned by four brave souls, floated in the belly of space above one of Jupiter’s unnamed moons. It was in its fifth year alone, hovering over the moon that the crew had dubbed Little Brother. It was the first of two moons that they were commissioned to scan, then they were set to be relieved by a second crew for the next three moons. If the scan came up positive for worthwhile materials to be mined, they would mark it and a battery of drones would be dispatched to the nameless rock. Although it didn’t have much flying to do, the ship was piloted by a woman named Iscah, who was everything a traditional pilot was not. She was not only tremendously talented but kind and gentle and frequently gave herself away to laughing fits. Her co-pilot, a man named Abishai, was as quiet as he was dexterous behind the controls, and he could go days without speaking if he tried. The pilots were supported by the two mechanics of the Asbolus, Jael, and Enos. Jael was boisterous and gruff, while Enos considered himself the thinking man’s mechanic. Together, they could seamlessly fix any manner of problems with the ship, while working in wildly different ways. The Asbolus was small, in fact, it bordered on too small. Essley & Moorings, the company responsible for the expedition, was under heavy scrutiny for its bending of interplanetary regulations with The Asbolus. Each employee on the ship was given intense medical field training so as to avoid needing a ship large enough to accommodate for a doctor and a medical bay. Each of them was listed as their primary role, in addition to medic on the official document submitted to the regulations committee. The ship itself was built to be a meter wider and a meter longer than the strictest regulations, and a majority of The Asbolus’ equipment was salvaged from past ships that were never used for interplanetary travel, and therefore never needed to be registered with the committee, which would disqualify their use again. It was a scraped together vehicle in the deepest part of explored space any human had dared to go. 

“How’s Little Brother this morning?” Jael said through a yawn as she slumped down in the copilot seat next to Iscah. 

“He's beautiful as always,” Iscah replied. “He's been smiling at me all morning.”

The planet had a trio of ridges along one side that, when his rotation was just right, looked like a smiling face. 

“You know, you shouldn’t get too attached,” Jael said. “Three-fourths of Little Brother is replete with E&M’s favorite goodies. He'll be mined to oblivion once we mark him and move on.” 

“Oh, can’t you just let me enjoy our time together without reminding me of that?” Iscah said, swiveling her chair around to face Jael and gently kicking her shin. Jael smirked and laughed to herself as she let the momentum from Iscah’s kick swivel her chair around in turn. 

Abishai dropped his legs off the side of his bed and rubbed his face with both hands. He could hear Jael and Iscah speaking in the flight deck on the other side of the wall in front of him, and Enos tinkering with something in the engine room behind the wall at his back. For a moment, all was as it should be. Then Abishai felt something. A presence in the room. His blood went cold, and he slowly pulled his hands down from his face and opened his eyes. Standing completely still in the corner of the living quarters, he saw himself. It wasn’t him of course, he was him. But it was identical to him in every way. 

“He...hello?” he almost whispered. The figure didn’t move. He cleared his throat and said it again, a little louder. The figure remained perfectly still, except for its dark brown eyes. It blinked and moved its eyes. Each time Abishai spoke, it would look directly at him, then look away. Abishai began to hit his own leg, in an attempt to wake himself up. 

“You’re dreaming, it’s a dream,” he said. Still there he sat, staring at himself in the corner. “Okay, not a dream. You’re hallucinating. It’s some sort of mental distortion that will go away in time.” 

Just as before, each time he spoke the entity would look at him, then look away. Without taking his eyes off the figure, Abishai leaned back on his bunk and hit the wall between him and the engine room twice, hard. The tinkering noise on the other side ceased, and he heard the door of the engine room slide open and shut, then footsteps echoing up the hall towards him. The door to the living quarters slid open and Enos stood in the doorway. 

“Everything okay in…” he froze mid-sentence. “Abishai, what...what is that?” 

“You can see it too?” Abishai said, simultaneously overcome with both relief and fear.

“I don’t understand,” Enos said. The entity’s gaze flickered to him, then moved away. “It’s you.” 

There was a moment of silence between the three of them, then Enos called out. 

“Iscah! Jael! You might want to come in here for a moment.” At the loud noise, Abishai thought he saw the figure flinch, but he couldn’t be sure. Enos carefully stepped further into the room next to Abishai, who was still frozen on the edge of his bunk. 

“What is it?” Jael said as she marched through the door, not seeing the entity until she was halfway through the room. “What is this, some sort of prank?” she said. Abishai thought he saw another flinch. 

Iscah stood silent in the doorway, unmoving, eyes wide as if she were impersonating the entity. Still, it didn’t move or speak. Only blinking and looking. The only way in which it didn’t match Abishai was its clothing. It wore a long, paper thin brown robe that left very little to the imagination. 

“It isn’t a prank,” Abishai said. “I woke up and it was there.”

Jael approached the figure and poked its shoulder. As she did, Iscah let out a quiet gasp before covering her mouth. Enos quickly moved forward to stand behind Jael. The entity shifted slightly from the poke but didn’t move. 

“It feels human. It feels like flesh.” Jael said, leaning in close to examine its face. “Looks real too.” 

“Is it possible that we are all having some sort of mass hallucination?” Enos said. 

“Mass hysteria is one thing, but there has never been a documented case of mass hallucinations,” Iscah spoke up, her voice wavering slightly. “If we were sharing psychedelics or in an otherwise weakened or malleable mental state, we could be influenced to see similar things, but even then, it wouldn’t be like this.”

“It hasn’t moved since I woke up,” Abishai said. “What...what do we do with it?” 

Before anyone could answer, the entity’s jaw dropped, and a loud noise erupted from its mouth, like the vacuum sealing of the Asbolus’ airlock. Enos and Jael leapt backward, away from it, and Abishai grabbed a small lockbox from next to his bunk as a weapon. The figure remained still, eyes staring forward, mouth agape, filling the living quarters with the bellowing sound of air being sucked in. 

“Somebody do something!” Jael shouted over the din. The noise was slowing increasing in volume. Enos was paralyzed, crouched next to the bunks. Abishai, panicked and shaking, threw the lockbox at the entity, just narrowly missing its head. It clattered against the wall and broke open, scattering tools across the metal floor, adding to the noise. The sound grew louder. Iscah ran towards the entity. 

“Iscah no!” Abishai called out. 

She stood directly in front of it and pushed its mouth closed. The entity went quiet and remained completely still.   

“We need to get rid of it…” Enos said. “We should launch it into space.” 

“We can’t do that,” Jael said. “We don’t even know what it is, we can’t just kill it.” 

Iscah removed her hands from the face of the thing and took a few steps back. 

“I agree with Jael,” she said. “We can tie it up and put it in storage for now. That will at least give us time to send word to E&M.”

“We’ll need to secure its mouth closed too. I don’t want it to start screaming again.” Enos said. Jael and Iscah nodded in agreement. 

“Abishai, you alright bud?” Jael asked. He was frozen and looked like he was about to be sick. 

“I’m fine.” He muttered. “I’ll get something to tie it up.” 

Iscah slid the storage door closed behind them, and the four of them stood in silence. 

“Well...all we can do now is wait for a response from E&M,” Enos said. Twenty-three hours passed in an uncomfortable haze, no one speaking more than they needed to. Iscah, Enos, and Jael managed to rest for a few hours during that time, but sleep evaded Abishai. He paced throughout the Asbolus, biting at his nails and frantically checking corners. After an hour or so of pacing, he built up the courage to check the storage room. He stood in front of the door for minutes, and then, after making sure Iscah and Enos were in the living quarters and Jael was in the flight deck, slowly slid the door open and tapped the light on. Every five feet were metal shelves secured at the floor and the ceiling of the room, each one covered in parts, spare clothing, rations, and everything else they would need. The other him stood restrained against the wall opposite of him, mouth taped, eyes still wide open and darting back and forth. The real Abishai stepped into the room and slid the door closed behind him. He approached the entity, tiptoeing like a child sneaking into the kitchen. He placed a hand on its cheek, and carefully removed the tape from its mouth. 

“Can you understand me?” he asked.

The entity opened its mouth, but the cacophony of noise was replaced with a slow whimper. It’s chest expanded, and its head tilted back slightly. 

“Yes.” it said. 

Jael was bent over the navigation console in the flight deck, with only the dim edge lighting of the room illuminating her. There was still no word from E&M, but she had found a more pressing problem. Concerned about the possibility of being stuck in uninhabited space with a living being she couldn’t identify, she had spent the last hour charting an emergency escape plan. The Asbolus didn’t have the capacity for long term deep space travel, so it relied on slingshot stations. They were hubs put in place by the interplanetary committee to facilitate light speed travel, each hub having dozens of slingshot stations that were available to be purchased by enterprising companies. E&M had purchased enough stations to get the Asbolus from earth to Jupiter, which was most likely the reason the ship and crew itself suffered from under funding. For the slingshot stations to be fully operational, and jettison the ship where it needed to go and not accidentally launch it into the side of an asteroid somewhere, it needed a full week of preparation. Jael had hoped to start this process, but the first hub they would need to hit, The Caldera, was unresponsive. More specifically, the E&M station was unresponsive. She opened a commlink with the hub itself, to which they responded with a canned message about how communication errors were the fault of either the Asbolus or the E&M station, and it was at that point, no longer their responsibility. They recommended Jael reach out to her superiors, and then promptly ended the commlink. Jael’s heart rate quickened slightly, as she sat alone in the soft blue light, the walls seeming closer than they had before. Fear was not something she was accustomed to, but she felt it creep into her bones. The quiet of the Asbolus was shattered by a loud gasping noise, emanating from the storage room. And then another. And another. A cacophony, like the ship itself was having its insides sucked out of it. Every muscle in Jael’s body tightened, and she ran towards the noise, trying to call out for the others over the sound. She slid the storage room door open and saw Abishai on his knees in the center of the room, hands clamped over his ears. Iscah and Enos rounded the corner right behind her, and Iscah immediately ran into the room and knelt down next to Abishai. Enos moved towards the entity to silence it, only to realize that its mouth was closed. He began to frantically spin around the room, looking for a source. He said something, looking at Jael, but she couldn’t hear him over the noise. She moved into the room behind him. Scattered throughout the storage room, were three more entities, one matching Iscah, one matching Jael, and one matching Enos. All standing completely still, mouths open, eyes twitching. She hit Enos’ shoulder and pointed towards the side of the room where his copy was, then moved towards the copies of herself and Iscah. Each entity showed no sign of resistance as she pushed their jaws closed, silencing them. Enos did the same, and the storage room went quiet, save the sound of Abishai's panicked heavy breathing. 

“He’s hyperventilating,” Iscah said, pulling him in tighter. “Hey! Abishai, look at me. You’re okay. We’re here, you’re okay.” 

His breathing slowed. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” he began. “I wanted to see if I could communicate with him. I wanted to find out what he is.” 

“Well, you aren’t alone. We each have one now.” Enos said. “We’re out of our depth. Did E&M respond yet Jael?” 

“No.” She said. “The station on Caldera isn’t responding either.” 

Everyone froze, looking at Jael. 

“That means…” Abishai said, trailing off. 

The entity resembling Abishai suddenly shifted its weight, then sprinted for the door. Jael tried to grab it, but it pulled free and disappeared into the hallway. 

“I’m going after it!” she shouted, already halfway out the door. The copy of Abishai darted towards the flight deck, looking scared and unsure of itself, patting the walls as it went. 

“Stop!” she yelled after it. It looked back at her with fearful eyes, before falling over the step down into the flight deck. She almost had it, before it scrambled up to its feet and got behind the controls. 

Enos stood shaken in the storage room. 

“I’m...I’ll go with Jael,” he said. Before he could make a move for the door, the entity that looked like him slammed into his back, knocking him on his hands and knees. It then charged into the hallway, struggling to maintain its footing as it turned to the right, and ran in the opposite direction of the flight deck. 

“It’s going to the engine room!” Enos shouted. He jumped up and ran after it, nearly sliding into the wall as he cleared the corner outside of the storage room. He felt dizzy and sick, and the corridor was spinning as he chased after the brown-robed version of himself. It slammed open the door to the engine room and then stumbled backward, falling to the ground. Enos caught up with it and looked down, then glanced into the engine room. From wall to wall, the room was full of entities, each one matching himself, Iscah, Jael, and Abishai. Slowly, one by one, each of them opened their mouth and the familiar sound echoed out once more. The volume of it, this time, was enough to deafen Enos. All he could hear was a dull ringing sound as he crumbled to the ground next to his doppelganger, losing all sense of balance. 

Iscah cradled Abishai, still, now nearly deafened by the noise from the engine room. 

“I’m here with you. I’m here.” She said, directly into Abishai's ear. He squeezed her arm tight. 

Jael reached the copy of Abishai, sitting in the pilot seat just as the sound burst. She fell over it, paralyzed by the noise. The entity seemed to also be affected this time, as it squirmed and flailed violently, hitting the controls in front of it. The Asbolus itself shifted abruptly, throwing Jael off of the entity and into the side of the copilot’s chair. She felt a rib crack. Abishai's copy continued to spasm in the chair and shifted the acceleration forward at full speed. Jael reached for it, but the ship tumbled ahead, and she was flung along the floor towards the back of the flight deck. She grabbed onto the step and stared out the front window of the Asbolus. The speed and movement of the ship were enough for her to pass out, but as her vision blurred, the only thing she could see was the smiling surface of Little Brother, as they plummeted towards him.

“Good evening sir.” A man in a pale gray suit gave a brief bow. Nathan Essley, leaning back in a red leather chair behind his desk, waved a hand in acknowledgment. 

“It seems there has been a malfunction with the cloning device on The Asbolus.” 

Nathan shifted forward and took the cigar out of his mouth. 

“What do you mean a malfunction?” he said. 

“It appears that the device was activated prematurely before the cleanse of the current staff.” The man straightened his posture slightly. “It also seems that the device commands short-circuited, perhaps during lightspeed, and instead of one rotation, it produced seven.” 

“What are our losses?” Nathan asked. 

“The entirety of the ship.” The man said. “We have all data transmitted up until the crash, however.” 

“Fine,” Nathan said, leaning back once more. “Send the mining drones out first thing tomorrow, and get these issues ironed out for the next mission or your ass is out of a job.” 

The man bowed and turned to leave. 

“Oh, and reactivate the Caldera station slingshot,” Nathan said to the man. 

“Yes, sir. Right away sir.”