The Shades

Alone aboard a space station. But is he?

THE

SHADES

Dol Edgman rolled his sleeves up and began typing again. Several sentences jostled into the holotank, the text trying to be a version of a report needed to certify findings of an arduous experiment. He sighed and a cloud of breath floated forward and up from the undulating images he tried to focus on.


The light from the display created cold shadowy spires, worming their shapes behind those strewn objects in the lab. The lab had long since lost its ordered, tidy - facade. Edgman ran a hand over his face, knocking his spectacles skewed for several seconds before correcting them back onto his nose.


In his chair, Edgman leaned backward, sighed heavily, letting his wrists slump in the armrests flanking him. He sighed again, willing the words he needed to flow. Stress and exhaustion lined his still youthful features. Veins strained at the extremities of his eyeballs. A strangely lilac glow effused from them in the holotank light. Muting the green of his eyes.


The lab began to take on the likeness of a dimly lit cave, walls of corroded metal, buckled or broken equipment piled up in corners. What was usable, sat collecting rust while simultaneously offering nothing more than depression for decoration. Some of it whirred, ticked or occasionally beeped with functionality. Ozone and the stinging scent of metallic corrosion pickled the dead air.


What can I possibly say that describes this phase of testing, how it relates to material stressors, energy dispositions, and target region disruptions? He thought to himself.


Although alone, Edgman wished he had someone else to confide in. For days he had documented the testing of a somewhat stable geometric opening in space-time. Hoping to affirm that it linked their point in reality - to another in the same reality. If the co-ordinates calculated across these entrances, then material transmission could be solved.


A working example existed in the lab. And it was reverse engineered from an ancient specimen found by a salvage team on Old Earth. That specimen - Edgman found would be useful to have around now...


Since it was last utilised to send an expedition to a place called: Wilding Six, it closed immediately behind the travellers. It refused to ever open again. Connecting it to an energy source, new or old - yielded nothing. No-one has been able to open the portal for eight centuries. It's as though the portal simply will not accept any attempt to operate it.


Edgman knew it was futile to believe it would help his documentation, even if he had access to the old portal. He yawned then stretched before concluding his findings in a short series of shorthand paragraphs before sending the report to a slate-encoder.


He got up, pulled his coat off its wall hook, before slapping the power button for the holotank. Rummaging a thick knot of brown hair on the top of his head, the technician tapped the edge of his glasses for a readout of the download progress. In front of him, as he walked through the lab to a printing office he tracked a holographic progress bar. He sighed with satisfaction as he swept the door to the office open just as the download read a hundred percent.


Edgman's sated delight was interrupted suddenly by a complete shutdown of power, he stood in the dark, everything everywhere had gone offline. The machines and equipment that were running ceased all at once, and all of the pale lighting had gone out.
"Shit." He spat.
He tapped the edge of his spectacle frame and a tiny photon emitter poured a wide cone of off-white lumens into the space before him.
He spied a data-slate lying on the bench beside the idle encoder. He picked it up. Then dropped it. Frustrated with its now useless purpose.


He spun around wanting to know if anything worked. Nothing did. It was all he could do to wish for power to return.


It's always inconvenient. He thought.


But it's never been THIS inconvenient!


He let go a long breath of defeat. Sliding his coat on and marching to the lab exit, the man headed for parts of the station administered by engineers and electricians he hoped had a plan to rectify the problem.


While navigating hallways and tunnels, he came to a viewport. Stopping for a moment, Edgman regarded the exterior of the station. An infinite black sheet peppered with tiny frozen flecks seemed to him like a magnitudinal depth he could reach out to, maybe even float - or dive into. The stars in the night. Always the grandeur upon which Man has gazed, and wondered at its profoundness. They offered light, warmth, even comfort when ideal conditions were met.


Edgman came to his senses, the only light on the station was being provided by the stars he stared at in wonderment. He cursed then began to make good a jog towards the elevator at the end of the hall. Blowing a kiss to the starlit foreverness, while a colossal - grey/green orb sauntered into view. Ganymede.


He reached the elevator. He slapped his forehead with exasperation.
"How in fuck is this elevator going to work? There's no power idiot!"
The technician stood idle for moments while he considered options and how to proceed. He'd have to run all the way back to the ladder, past the lab, past perhaps many viewports showing their own perspective of the limitless. He then felt a shift in his organs, as if they were made slightly lighter - almost floating upward inside him.


He felt sick, dizzy with the change in gravity. It wasn't enough to lift him off the deck of the station. Not yet. But it made him physically uncomfortable, and worse - advised him of the fact that the station's centrifuge - normally generating stable gravity - must also have lost power. It had to slowly be losing momentum, and thus - a slow loss in gravity.


The deck looked neglected. The bulkheads were scuffed, and hatches aged. The only saving grace was someone had kept up with some sanitary duties. Edgman quietly thanked them for not allowing a build up of trash and refuse in the hallways. A zero gravity float through a cloud of detritus didn't enthuse Edgman.


Before long he had arrived at the ladder and began to descend it to the deck below. He passed a large sprayed-on '3', then another mark of '2' on the walls of the ladder denoting which deck was where in the ladder. Edgman stopped and leaned on the large spray-painted '2'. He vomited on it.


The nausea made his eyes cloud over. His balance began to come into question. He hated that the wet splatter of mixed browns and greens seemed to ooze upward toward the ceiling of the ladder, rather than the deck in his spectacles' light. He wretched at the smell, before collecting himself and surging awkwardly down the ladder to the hatch which led onto deck 2.


The lab tech shouldered the hatch open, hunching over, removing his glasses, he coughed for several minutes to ensure he could cope with the shifting gravity. As his eyes stopped watering with the nausea, he was glad he'd not encountered anyone yet. He felt disgusted with himself leaving such a mess in the dark however.


"This needs fixing. NOW."


He fished in his coat for a bag of breath mints.
Reapplying the glasses to follow his leading light source through the darkened walkways, Edgman was struck by how strange it was he hadn't - in fact - seen anyone...


He tapped his glasses for a readout of the time. An image read: "12:18pm". He surmised that with all the work being done at this time of day, a power outage would surely stir up anyone directly relying on power to perform tasks. It should be busy.


He didn't know everyone aboard the station. He didn't know most of the lab techs and leading researchers. Acutely puzzled to have not come across anyone since the outage. Edgman recalled the last person he spoke to was the day prior. And she was a native of Deck 3 - he'd just come from there. Nobody.


He approached a sign above a hatch which read: "GANTRY." The hatch was powerless, so Edgman had to pull a side panel off the foot of the hatch frame, finding the jack-handle to crank the hatch up. He laboured to open the hatch, grunting all the while.


In the room beyond the hatch, Edgman was greeted with a large space that at least had emergency lighting flowing through its old conduits. The room had a high ceiling, the extensive layout of gradually receding alcoves rose upward to a central machine at the top. The Gantry. Essentially an energised tethering apparatus used for lifting and placing cargo containers. The energy tethers were dark of course. No power.


Something caught Edgman's attention in the dirty glow of emergency light. Opposite where he stood, the hatchway to the distribution module was wide open. It was actually being held open with a power-frame lodged under the hatch and anchored to the deck.


Someone had kept the hatch open to the distrib-module before the power went out. Edgman wanted to speculate why, but decided he would rather get to engineering, located on Deck 1, down another ladder, beyond the distrib-module.


Edgman hesitated. He wasn't entirely convinced of the innocence appearing before him. But he needed to press on. As he approached the propped-open hatch, he called out:


"Hello?"


No response. He stooped under the power frame panning his glasses' light searchingly. It was wholly black without light. The distribution module was a complete disaster. Mess everywhere, containers of uneaten rations and bottles of water were thrown all over the module. Supplies, oxygen charges, liquid vessels, the occasional rummaged box or bag lay cascaded from end to end. Medical cargo also seemed pitched against desks or benches. As if someone had hurriedly packed - then unpacked several cargo lockers.


As he scanned the blackened room, Edgman was startled by movement he heard, but didn't quite see in the darkness. He turned in the direction of the noise. There were only shadows, and yet more mess...


Edgman whirled around in fright as he felt something brush his back. There was nothing there.


"Who's there?!" He stammered.


He cast about the room, trying to see what was moving or what had touched him. In his panicked search, he tapped his glasses to increase the light intensity. He fumbled on some litter as his breathing heightened in frequency. His heart-rate soared.


"Hello?!"

He heard something else off to his left. A scratching, or scraping. Then he caught it in his light. A box of unopened rations was sliding along the deck of its own volition. He winced in shock, then felt the cold deliverance of fear arcing up his spine.


Either what he was seeing was the work of things unknowable to human experience, or the centrifuge was now slowing down so much that gravitational anomalies were frequenting the station. Edgman giggled with relief finally.
A perfectly normal abnormality.


Edgman collected himself for a few seconds, then picked up a canister of pills from the deck. The label read:

[Troxodine - Anti-Nausea Medication - 1 dose per hour.]

"Hey! TROX! Yes!" Edgman exclaimed. He broke the seal, while gathering up a full bottle of water to dose himself.


He crept onward in the dark to another hatchway. He identified it as the entry to the Deck 2 - 1 ladder. But again, it was open, not propped up like the distribution module hatch, just open...


It wasn't lit by anything. Edgman put this down to the station's age. A good portion of its systems wouldn't have been maintained in the centuries it was unoccupied for. So those few conveniences or redundancies will by now have decayed into non-functionality. The original atmosphere generators - though ancient - had been continuously upgraded or improved upon. None of the life support was tethered to the station's reactor.


The only problem being the atmosphere was deathly cold. Artificial atmospheres in space tend to devolve to the ambient temperature of the environment they're pressurised in.
For large, exclusively metal space stations orbiting in close proximity to Jupiter's largest moon - the air inside can be arctic where temperature control is lacking. Edgman loved; thermal entropy - as a physics inevitability, because it is a certifiable property to be accounted for in portal travel.
He hated it - because it caused biological entities like himself to persist at its mercy.


By the time Edgman reached Deck 1, his nausea had dissipated, though his body was beginning to, in its entirety - feel lighter. He found the effort of movement diminished. Shivering all the while amidst the cutting ambient frigidity.


The engineering deck was rather different to others he had visited. The walkways and service tunnels were curved, circumnavigating the power plant, reactor, centrifuge, and machine shops. Some which had fallen into disuse over the centuries.


Edgman was struck by the amount of open hatches. He occasionally ducked his head inside a room, often calling out for anyone. No one answered. Most of the rooms or ad hoc modules were dusty, cobwebbed. Decorated with mounting neglect.


"Where the hell is everyone??" He muttered.


As he rounded a bend, he became aware of the centrifuge winding down slowly. The noise resembled a colossal heartbeat as the arm of the centrifuge rode down. Secreted behind a metre of steel and other alloys, the weighted end of the arm passed by with force enough remaining to generate a rhythmic sigh followed by loud protesting metal structures. They each strained under the spindle's continuous swinging of the multi-ton counterweight.


"Not good. Where's the maintenance party?"


Edgman realised he had his ear pressed up against the bulkhead. He pried his head away while searching around for anything indicating a mass exodus. He was saddened to discover nothing.


At the threshold to an airlock, he peeked through the porthole and saw its interior was lit with emergency lighting, and a flare was still burning a discomforting red on the deck. The other lock was closed, and beyond that was a gangway to the reactor controls. Edgman swore. He thumped the glass in frustration. The airlocks cycle to full pressure seal during power failures. Unlike hatches, airlocks cannot be opened
manually from the interior or exterior, without power to equalise pressure.


Edgman began to despair, inside the lock, the spacesuits were mostly gone save for two cradled in their lockers. Someone, maybe many - managed to get into a suit and cross the gangway to the reactor. Edgman hoped, but was then disturbed by the notion.


Enough suits were missing that the reactor crew should have had time to restore - Edgman froze...
Through the porthole in the outer lock, he could clearly see the unmistakable silhouette of a spacesuit drifting by. The polarised view-plate defied a face behind it, and save for it floating upward gently, the figure was otherwise still. Utterly inanimate. The technician began to shiver, his breathing laboured, he cried out.


The person in the suit, even were they alive, wouldn't hear Edgman. From behind the inner lock, he thumped the glass with a disbelieving ferocity. Screaming in vain. He collapsed to the deck. The impact gave him pause, it should have hurt. Hurt his knees in any case. Gravity had waned further toward zero.


Edgman sobbed. The poor soul in the suit must have already been out in space when the power went out, trapping them with what little atmosphere the suit carried. Edgman wished he had never been a lab tech. Accepting the role seemed shallow and selfish now. Ever unwanted - witnessing death. His only gratitude emerged as a silent thank you to helmet polarisation, it kept him from seeing the dead face of the astronaut.


The lab technician knelt clasping his head, it throbbed with grief and despair. He had never experienced an isolation quite like this. His mind raced, was he alone? Was everyone else dead too? Did everyone suit up and exit the station at once? Was it some sort of elaborate prank?!


He wiped errant tears and snorted, gagged and spat mucus at the bulkhead. Again, he watched a globule of it reach upward slightly. It stayed attached to the main mass of green snot, but beginning to resist the weakening force of artificial gravity. He wiped residue from his nose and swore again.


"So now what?" He said to himself.


"The suits are trapped in the lock, the control centre is through that same lock, and if anyone is alive in there, are they working on the problem? What if they aren't? What if it's just me? Can I get over there to help? To do it myself?! How?! What would I even do?!"

He continued his monologue.


"That reactor has been operating for the better part of eight centuries, I know as much about it as I do the code language spoken by Russian Cosmonauts in the 1960's!"


A disheartened Edgman wore an expression denoting failure, surrender, and loss.


Edgman switched off the light. He took off his glasses and sat rubbing his eyes in near total darkness. Having thought vigorously about everything which life had bestowed upon him, the last hour since the station's power loss were the most hopeless he'd ever felt.


"Hello?"


Edgman looked up, saw nothing, too dark, strapped his glasses back in place and tapped the light back on.
"Hello, is someone there?" Came a voice, loaded with what seemed like overly cautious curiosity.


Edgman swallowed, he couldn't believe what he heard, it was a stark contrast to the grief he'd just endured, an actual human voice! Nearby!
"Hello! I'm here, I'm Edgman, I'm at the lock, are you OK? Are you close? Do you need light?"


"Oh..."


Said the voice. Soft. Feminine. Certainly a woman. It sounded like she had just come to a realisation.
"Hello?... Where, wh-where are you? Can I help?"
Edgman enquired.


He panned the light all over the walkway, walls, deck, ceiling, no one. Nothing. If they were close, they must have been hidden from view. Edgman couldn't blame her. A stranger found sitting in a puddle of his own tears.


"Hello?!" He called louder.
No response.


"Hello!!?" He nearly yelled.


He got to his feet slowly, glancing warily in all directions, confused.
He stepped toward the walkway, back from the lock threshold when -


"WE'RE ALL DEAD..."


The voice exploded in his head, the sound seemed to surround his internal speech and force its way into his skull. He reeled in terror, shaking. Beginning his best attempt at an Olympic sprint. Trying vainly to get as far from the airlock as confines would allow.


He ploughed through the rounded halls and walkways, heaving breaths, his heart felt as though it might stop. His fright was such, that he could actually hear his own pulse magnified by a factor of a million. It seemed to be speeding up.
He swore repeatedly as he ran into the destrib-module, tripping on loose items cluttered throughout his path. He skidded, halting in breathlessness - wheezing with exertion, but it wasn't what stopped him...


The hatch back to the Gantry was closed. The power frame was gone.


"We're all dead..."


The disembodied voice almost had a cadence to its speech. It echoed with a certain softness that could be mistaken for alluring. It was distant now, as though it was behind, but not intent on following. The petrified technician couldn't know this.


Edgman lost control.


"NO!!!"


He screamed with such force he felt his vocal chords ebb toward breakage. Raw, primal emotions flooded his waking body. His hands balled into fists, pink knuckles threatened to burst through the skin of his hands. His eyes reddened to saturation, an animalistic survival rage overtook him.


"FUCK!!!"


He cried out in molten anguish - pounding the hatch with everything his strength could conjure. He beat the hatch with his hands until chunks of knuckle broke off and floated away in mid-air. Edgman was the essence of will and wilderness. Several bones in his right hand pulverised before he noticed that his feet had left the deck.


He swung at the hatch a final time, the force sent him backward, but not down... He swung again in vain, his feet caressed the deck, blood floated up off his knuckles into thin air. Edgman was aghast. Something inside him had snapped, it took control, it ignored pain, it ignored reason, it made him punch a steel hatch to hopeless avail.


It was raw undiluted - adrenal fear. The loss in gravity had forced him out of his stupor. He had to acknowledge what he'd done. For now, he couldn't feel his hand. Turning it over, he hissed. He watched a bloody bubble escape from the damaged skin. The low gravity had a strangely calming effect on Edgman, the voice was far away now - a whisper of incoherency. Edgman could still hear the woman's pleas for contact, her whimpers of despair. It chilled him.


He couldn't make sense of it. Any of it, where was she? What did she mean about we're all dead? Why had she yelled it directly in his ear?
Why did she make him panic and flee like a spooked rabbit from a bear?


He tried to focus on something while he floated mid-air. His vision was clouded. Blinking seemed to help. A few seconds passed before Edgman decided to fly back through to the distribution module for first aid. In the room, a lot of the mess was floating, gravity having gone offline everywhere with the centrifuge finally ceasing.


He pushed himself off a bulkhead to sort through the drifting containers for bandages and painkiller. He was particular about the painkiller... Edgman wondered if he'd be lucky to find a marrow-gel injector for those fractured bones in his hand. He would have to reset any complete breaks himself - he wasn't going to enjoy that. But at least marrow-gel would fuse the bones or fill any fissures, accelerating the healing process.


Edgman croaked, drifting between boxes of medical supplies, he managed to find a bandage. No painkiller, no marrow-gel. When his adrenaline backed off, it would be rough...
There was something else he wanted to do... Talk.


The voice had stopped. It was silent everywhere now, only minute ambience on the engineering deck. Mostly electrical hum from those few emergency lamps leaking their dim rays. Edgman favoured the centrifuge over the voice, he could explain that... But now, he preferred the vestigial quality of human speech, even if it terrified him that it may not belong to someone living...


The bleeding Edgman pushed himself off the ceiling to float towards the deck. He landed quite near to the hatch of the Deck 2 - 1 ladder. The hatch frame was dark. So dark. Even turning his head and glasses-light on the hatch frame seemed to do nothing to illuminate the empty threshold. As though the light just didn't reach far into the inky beyond. Edgman remarked at how it looked like space without the stars. Vividly unnerving. Made worse because he expected something to come through it. Or the voice to scream from within it.


He busied himself with bandaging and splinting his hand, he winced with the pain, thinking how stupid he was, but also how he couldn't really help it. He cursed whoever had locked the hatch. The only way forward now was exploring those parts of engineering he had yet to.


And there it was.


For a second, Edgman glanced back into the ladder's hatchway, the light from his glasses flickered erratically for a millisecond, but he knew it was there. It was a shape. Very clearly human. It was leaning around the threshold of the hatch. A misty figure outlined for a second by the passing of his light cone. A head, shoulders, and an arm - draped inside the hatch. As though it was watching him. But it had no features, just a dark mass that disrupted the path of photons. A paradox of liquid and solid shadow.


Edgman cried out in fright, he fixed his gaze properly on the hatchway. Nothing. Just black.
"Hello?!" He quivered.
Edgman could only hover in place above the deck. Idly wrapping his hand, while his
floating body turned slowly. He felt ice crawl up his spine. He whimpered;

"Hello?? Who are you?"


If it was human, he thought it odd that they were unaffected by the loss of gravity. They ought to be floating like he was. He couldn't see much of their body in the instant his light caught them. So he reasoned they might have been holding onto the hatch to keep from drifting. But now they weren't there at all.


"Look, I won't hurt you... Please! I need help... Someone has locked the hatch to the Gantry... I just want to -"


Edgman was startled by the sound of glass clinking. Some test tubes were drifting amongst the other floating items. He trained his light on a test tube spinning end over end in place at a high rate.


"Is... Is that you? Did you do that?"


Edgman craved light more than anything he'd ever hungered for. The light from his glasses was enough to see where he looked, but he couldn't look in all directions at once to illuminate them. There came a very faint slew of dark whispers, the words he couldn't understand. But he knew that it was speech, he swallowed.


He peered in all directions from his low hover above the deck, he tied off his bandage before grabbing the leg of a bench. Grateful it was was bolted to the deck. He used it to clamber into a sort of sitting position on the deck. He studied the test tube again, only metres from him. It twirled like the point of interest in a game of spin-the-bottle.


It was then that he heard the very distinct noise of footsteps clanking up or down the ladder, but who could be walking when everything is weightless?! Edgman clasped his mouth as he listened. Shock kept his eyes fastened to the hatchway. The footsteps got fainter, more muffled as they drew downward through the ladder.


Edgman didn't know what to think or do. This was equal parts terrifying as well as intriguing to him. His hand throbbed but his heart-rate climbed again. Beyond his fascination, and against his better judgement, Edgman rose up off the deck to float towards the ladder's entrance. He hovered into the ladder, using the walls to guide himself down through. The stomping was still there, but right as he got to the hatchway to Deck 1, it ceased.


"Hello?"


He said shakily. There was nothing but crisp air. The cold empty hallways outside the hatch seemed to Edgman like their darkness had grown denser. He noticed the ambient temperature was markedly colder. He zipped his coat up to keep insulated. He still shivered.


Space is cold. He knew that, but this wasn't the type of cold he knew well, it wasn't a terrestrial type of cold. It transcended a merely physical chill. Edgman would describe it as a total deficit of warmth, the eerie sensation one felt when there was an absence of normal liveliness in everyday activities or individual experiences.


He kept sensing that he was being watched from just outside his own sight. He glanced around while floating through engineering, turning himself to be perpendicular with the deck to see who was stalking him. But no-one could be seen. It made Edgman question his sanity. He hated everything. Try as he might to stabilise his thoughts.


He focused on his exploration. Keeping an eye out for anything that could help him. But all the time he found himself looking into the darkest spaces of Deck 1. Hallways, hatches, and the corners of rooms. Each felt to him - as though a thousand eyes encountered him. Fixed on his perilous body. Unseen by his searching escalation of purpose. He wanted to catch who - or whatever - was trying to make him ill-at-ease.


The shadowy ink of the blackened passages threatened to absorb Edgman, though he pushed on in hopes of reprieve.


Once, the silence was broken by a playful giggle. The same feminine brogue Edgman had already heard. She sounded distant, though very definitely inside the station. Edgman couldn't be sure if the voice was ahead; or behind him. He resolved to ignore it this time. Opting to scour the next machine shop for anything that could take his mind off the situation.


Edgman eventually found a closed hatch with a sign above it. Indicating it was an engineering fabrication/machine workshop. Like he'd had to earlier, Edgman drifted down to the floor to remove the panel. Accessing the crank, he hoped the hatch was not locked...


With his undamaged hand, he struggled. Edgman tried with irritation to retain purchase - and also force - on the crank lever in order to jack the hatch up. His down, up, down, up movements moved his entire body out and upward. A mildly comic affair in zero gravity. The lab technician caught himself snorting somewhat with entertainment at his predicament.


Soon however Edgman had managed to keep his body still. Using only his forearm to manipulate the mechanism. He was in due course, gifted with a new room to explore. Using the hatch way to rotate himself, Edgman peered into the walkway he'd just come from. His light revealed nothing. Just empty space awash with floating particles of dust.


The smell of oil, burnt metal, a thick cloying aroma Edgman couldn't identify - permeated the space inside the workshop. He tapped the spectacle frame straddling his brow. He watched from inside the room while a green - holographic radial pulse - zoomed outward in a wide sphere through the sheen of his lenses. The glare of his light, allowed him to track some portion of the scan.


Edgman's display, dutifully returned a notification stating the scan completed itself. The short range, limited how far away it could identify objects in its database, however it returned with a brief catalogue of items in a relatively wide radius.


He scrolled through the list by gesturing in-front of himself, manipulating the hologram. He rolled almost imperceptibly in the lacking gravity. Edgman stopped scrolling, the workshop had a spacesuit! However, Edgman read that it needed new seals, and an atmosphere scrubber.


He scrolled further to find a very old, ancient perhaps - plasma cutter. The workshop also had a collection of cutter tips, two aerosol hydrogen bottles, connecting fuel/power line, and what Edgman prayed was a functional portable power supply.
He hovered in thought for a time. The suit was hooked up to a diagnostic tank, that without power - was entirely useless. Edgman could remove it from the cradle, he'd be able to check if its own power supply was charged. With hope, he sailed over workbenches, stowed gear, tool racks and machinery to investigate the suit.


It wasn't long before Edgman had unstrapped the spacesuit from its post, spinning the suit in his hands, it floated softly to be parallel with him. He kept quiet, working carefully to open the control panel on the suit's chest, he shrunk the light cone from his glasses to focus on the control board. At the same time, started his glasses overlaying a 3D holographic maintenance manual to assist. He tried to favour his uninjured hand, though many actions required both hands, he struggled through the pain.


The control board was intact, no damaged circuitry, no missing components, no undue tampering. Edgman located the boot switch, pressing the grass-green button to start the control board. He was instantly rewarded with a series of blue lights, and a tone indicating the build up of charge. He waited while his glasses' mini-frame connected wirelessly to the control board.


Behind Edgman, unbeknownst to him while he worked, something moved. Silently. It made no sound, it had no visible body in the dark, but it was interacting with the environment. As if curious, it would collect loose items, spin or move them in mid-air, like a child at play. Seemingly observing the strangeness at work in zero gravity. While it chose to remain still, only moving in complete silence to manipulate other objects.


Edgman hissed in triumph, the connection was live. He could now let the suit run pre-start checks, which took mere seconds before his eyes read a holographic text bubble asking:

<<<[Power on - Y/N?]>>>

His low laughter reverberated in the workshop space. Delighted by his achievement, Edgman gestured the invisible picture to select 'Y'. All lights, the suits layering functions, radio, oxygen standby, temperature control, and atmospheric pressurising began to sequentially activate.
Edgman couldn't believe his luck. The control board blinked, his glasses read full control sync to the suit, he tapped his glasses to run a full integrity diagnostic.


The readout showed everything was green. But to be certain the suit was safe to use, he read through the maintenance log with fervent care. The seals had been replaced, and a brand new air scrubber had been installed six days ago. He confirmed what he'd read with a visual inspection, guided by the maintenance manual. This enabled him to update his glasses' maintenance database with a new log entry since syncing to the suit.


Finally, Edgman pulled his coat off, balled it up, and stowed it in the suit's rear compartment. He removed his shoes, repeating the process before encasing himself in the spacesuit. He breathed with relief. His plan might have a chance. Switching from utilising spectacles-controlled interfacing to the suit's on-board mini-frame. He set about checking how effective the atmosphere recycler worked. It tasted and smelled somewhat dusty, but it worked perfectly.


Taking a few minutes to get acquainted with the interface, the suit's movements, and breathing recycled air - Edgman began to formulate the latter half of his plan. He cursed at himself for not having explored this section of engineering sooner, while also dismissing his fits of fright.


He grasped surfaces to turn up, around, then forwards to become upright with the deck beneath him. He remembered quickly the spacesuit's boot-soles can magnetise to steel decks. Which he promptly activated before grabbing a bench to lower himself back onto the deck feet first. A quiet clank interspersed with a short electrical tone completed magnetising.


Edgman marvelled at the capability to walk once more. He'd never take gravity for granted again.
Though somewhat awkward, Edgman was able to teach himself how to pace his steps allowing for small gestures with the toes of each foot. The suit registering which foot to de-magnetise before stepping, while the trailing foot remained anchored.


In this way he marched himself over to the workshop's power tool storage. He heard a breath. It was inside the workshop, close.
Edgman halted mid-stride, planting both feet on the deck. He turned slowly at his waist in the direction of the sound, dropping the holographic overlays to swap for the suit's helmet light. The light from this source was incredibly bright, substantially more so than his glasses. He panned slowly around the area. The large cone of extreme lumens riding over the workshop with everything in it, fixed - or floating off the deck.


Edgman was certain he heard the breath or sigh clearly. He was fixated in the direction the suit's audio had detected the sound. His hearing seemed to be more acute. His heart began pounding again. He refused to panic. It would be a useless attempt at stifling adrenaline. Edgman carefully lifted his left leg, then took a step a small distance left, where his light beamed across a pair of work benches angled perpendicular to each other. Some shadow was being cast between them.
- It was there! Again!


This time Edgman held the light on it steadily, keeping the head and shoulders of the figure in the light, it was crouched low to the deck, again leaning from the shadows between the benches. It was featureless, save for an oily black mist that seemed to serve as its body. It moved. Edgman couldn't contain his shout as the shape suddenly turned, then dissolved into the shadows around it. However, while it disappeared in almost the same instant it had appeared, it was followed by an explosion...


The creature had unleashed a powerful kinetic shock. Sending clouds of floating objects near to its proximity, flying at high velocity in all directions to impact hard surfaces. The noise was extraordinary. The poltergeist-driven objects bounced and spun. Some became embedded in softer items like rags or tool bags, or tangled in with other floating debris, knocking airborne mess through to new areas of the workshop.


When Edgman finally opened his eyes, the chaos had wound down significantly. The suit light flickered uncontrollably for a number of seconds before solidifying again. Edgman wheezed, his heart rate had climbed to new heights. Fright-strangled breathing hurt his chest. He discovered subconsciously, that his hands were up in a posture shielding his face. Unwilling to lower his limbs with any great haste - lest a new unknown occur.


His confusion, abject shock, and wild swearing - punctuated the pauses between his ragged breaths.
While he remained welded in place at his suit's feet, Edgman couldn't bring himself to move. Instead he physically checked the suit with his hands for damage. The shock wave had thrown everything with the potential to do harm, including puncturing a spacesuit.


Edgman sighed with relief finding no damage to his suit. Though, he was cautioned by his encounter. The thing hadn't been hostile, rather it seemed to be reactive. Observing from the edge of perspective, fleeing when discovered, only to where - Edgman had no idea - or hiding before trying to defend itself. For a moment, Edgman thought this behaviour was reminiscent of many lifeforms employing a survival strategy. If he'd harmed it in some fashion, he couldn't think how precisely - then the kinetic shock might be expected.


But what is it?


In truth, adequately classifying this creature seemed beyond the ken of anyone.


He strayed from his thoughts for a moment gazing into the corner where the being had been. Nothing now remained. Swept clean by the forces which drove away any loose objects. Edgman turned again towards the power tool storage, lifting his feet to lurch awkwardly in its direction.


Edgman inventoried, then collected the components he had listed earlier. He took several tool tips for the plasma cutter. Checked the power supply worked, hooked the connector hose to his suit utilities, then hefted everything he could in under his arms. Zero gravity made the effort much less strenuous. A sharp clink of glass touching something else solid sounded behind him. Followed immediately by the loud, definite thuds - of feet along the deck. Edgman couldn't ignore it. It was terror inducing.


"I KNOW YOU'RE THERE! WHAT DO YOU WANT?!" His voice was firm, commanding.


He held the tools and apparatus tight to himself.
A soft, muted, collection of voices replied;

"We're all dead..."


Edgman swallowed. He panned around the workshop, revealing shadowed areas, while darkening others. But nothing moved. He opened his mouth, and without consciously thinking it, said:


"H-how... H-how did y-you... Die?!?"


There was silence to follow. It was cloying, the absence of noise seemed to be drowning Edgman on all sides. He could hear only his own heartbeat, along with his dry, wheezing breaths - neither of these functions the technician felt he could control adequately.


"Hello? Are you there?... What happened to you?"


Silence.
Defeated, Edgman turned in the direction of the hatch, thumping his feet along the deck at an even pace. He paused at the threshold before turning to look through the edge of his helmet view-plate. He gave into an impulse to warn the thing he felt was still inside with him.


"I'm... I'm leaving now... If you can understand me, I'm going to try to reach the reactor. I mean you no harm! Please!"


He stood listening. Hoping there would be a signal of acknowledgement somehow.


Edgman let go a long calming breath he'd held. The suit lamp uncovered nothing. He clenched his armfuls of gear before stepping through the hatch back into the corridor. As he panned his light up from the deck in the direction he planned to walk, he caught sight of the thing again. This time it was moving.


At the far end of the tunnel, Edgman could make out in the lamplight a figure stepping across the corridor to vanish into a solid wall. He gasped. He wondered how it had gotten ahead of him, and yet hadn't passed him in the workshop hatchway. He wanted to call out, but reasoned against it.


Instead, he ignored it, beginning to walk in the opposite direction. He wanted time to think, he was desperately ill with the stress and strain of his encounters. Edgman wanted off the station entirely. He hadn't seen an actual person for hours, he had no relief set to the agony in his hand, his nerves were as frayed as an open wire-end, coupled with the very real prospect that some calamity had befallen the station, perhaps prompting personnel to evacuate place.


He wasn't certain how, the way he - and presumedly everyone had arrived on the station was by portal. The skiff dock for orbital flights and planetary expeditions was at the top of the station. Twenty decks and ten ladders up from where he was trapped. It was definitely possible that someone may have taken the skiff.


Where? Ganymede has nothing built up on it.


What Edgman hoped to do, was find the North airlock to the reactor. He was going to cut his way into the lock, seal it behind him, bleeding the air out before cutting through the outer lock. He would fly across to the reactor control module, where he prayed he could restore power. If he could, then the portal could be configured for travel home. Sulrore. Mars. If he had to, he would traverse the exterior of the station to get back into the lab.


Deck three seemed a universe away to Edgman. In some sense it was. He cleared his mind for several minutes travelling through the hallway to the north lock. The same uncomfortable feeling never left him. He knew that the shadow he had seen twice now, was still there... Still watching. At no time did Edgman feel as though he was alone in respite. It was like an unscratchable itch. Except this itch was at the same time; a curiosity, and a terror to behold.


At last, the North lock came into view, Edgman managed to force himself to walk more briskly. At the porthole, he glanced inside the lock to see what could be gleaned. This lock, like the southern lock, had an eerie red glow eliciting from within. However, there was no flare. The spooked, exhausted, and flummoxed technician also took stock of what else there was inside.


There were no spacesuits at all. No bodies either. Edgman held a small personal ceremony for the corpse he'd encountered at the South lock. His face drooped, an expression mixed out of hesitance, dread, grief, and solemnity took hold of his features. He stared at the stars, the rolling surface of Ganymede beyond. Something made him wish he'd gone with everyone. Wherever they had, whoever they were. Someone had to be alive, someone surely knew what happened.


He silently cursed anyone who had left him behind. Leaving the poor astronaut outside. Abandoning the place. A legacy and generations of pioneers gave life to this space station over eight hundred years ago. And now it was as dark as the black night around it. Edgman was unravelling. He spent a long while thinking about the disembodied phrase that was frostily repeated to him.


We're all dead.


It was a statement, no more or less. But it raised a million questions in Edgman. He wondered if everyone aboard the station had indeed perished in some cataclysm he found fortune enough to escape. After all, he was alone in the lab conducting research documentation on experiments with the portal. Sat at the holotank for hours. He may well have missed the event - or series of events that took the people he'd shared the station with. Or cruelly, had the event missed him? He thought. Fate being a long ode of human bias when trying to explain the uncertainty of uncontrollable variables.


"Were we all dead? Are we? Am I?"


His whispers filled the spacesuit helmet like a captive serenade, profound in its asking, replete in its delivery. Edgman finally philosophised on the situation he was in. Certain that if all these occasions were the result, his only recourse now was escape. By any means.


He set the tools free from his grasp, the equipment gracelessly tumbled in mid air. While he had used a plasma cutter in the past, Edgman had never used one this old. In any case, the components to assemble it were simple and standard. After a few minutes, the portable power was found to be more than capable of supply. He fit an elongated tip to the nozzle, examining the shape of the cutting edge once powered. He was satisfied.


The energy tip glowed a blinding blue-white, Edgman adjusted it to a fine razor before testing it on the deck. In seconds the material began to glow a cool red, rapidly progressing to yellow, then white before collapsing into a tiny puddle, sparks flew up and away from the centre, unshackled by gravity. Edgman resolved to be careful.


Though the spacesuit view-plate was polarised, Edgman dialled the shade value up to eleven. The energy razor providing enough light he could switch off his lamp.
He rotated the cutter torch around then held it up against the airlock.
Edgman squeezed the trigger to begin high output fine cutting.


It took him many minutes to cut out a shape in the airlock able to permit his person into the breach. He let a few more minutes pass by so the cut door could cool enough to handle. Edgman thanked the zero gravity. The chunk of airlock floated easily, but Edgman knew that the piece of door weighed something in the area of a ton. Stepping through the errant hole in the lock, He brought everything inside. He swore loudly;


"Agh! Fuck it! FUCK!"


He managed to snag the power supply on the edge of the hole, wrenching the bones of his broken hand at an agonising angle.
He fixed his gaze back through the hole, ringed with still cooling slagged edges. Nothing to be seen. Just the black of night, trapped in space.


Edgman flicked the lamp back on. While he couldn't look at his hand, the suit kept it in the shape of a hand for the present. He shook his hand gently, he felt some grinding, a certain portion of him wanted badly to be rid of this plight. He reached for the cut-out piece of airlock door with his good hand, guiding it back into its parent hole to be welded closed again.


Edgman was careful to perfectly align the shape with its ragged outline back squarely into position. His broken hand assisting him, but taking longer so as to lessen pain or further damage. From a crouched position he wedged the bottom of the door in place, then rose slowly until his light and view were level with the porthole.


Staring back at him from the other side of the porthole, was the creature. Face to face with Edgman, it stayed motionless for a very long time. Edgman, who hadn't moved a muscle since rising up, felt cold racing up and down his back, hairs lifting off his neck or shoulders, threatening to detach. But all he could do was stare back into the face of the thing. It was close enough in the glaring light from Edgman's lamp, that the true detail of the creature was made known to Edgman.


It was... Dark. Disturbingly dark. A roiling charcoal-like smoke. The shape held form, but the edges where a face on a person would be, the wispy, suffocating blackness shimmered. Or even; Edgman surmised - bled - into the night air surrounding it. There were no eyes, no nose, no mouth, no teeth. It simply had nothing. As though the outline of a person remained, where the properties of their physical existence had become removed from them.


It cocked its head slightly. Leaning to Edgman's left. Edgman found himself mimicking the movement. It then slowly straightened. He followed. There were precious few words, none at all, uttered by either Edgman or the creature.


Could it really talk? How had it said anything without a mouth or voice?


Edgman recalled; when it had said things to him, they seemed to be reverberations within his conscious mind. Overlaying the multiple voices across his waking thoughts. As though it were a separate monologue to his own inner voice.


Edgman somehow straddled a feeling of dread or fearfulness. Interspersed with senses of departure - of farewell. The creature had a terrifying visage. No human could deny that. A man-shaped cloud of empty blackness - able to speak directly into your head. Capable of moving objects unseen at will. Causing massive telekinetic events. Frightening aspects for most to contend with.


But Edgman found that; standing so close, separated from it though he might appear to be - a connection of sorts had formed. It almost seemed to appeal to Edgman, as though it yearned for his company. To remain inside the station. Like a lost child, lonely, and forgotten.


"Where do you come from?" Edgman stammered.


His eyes wandered to the porthole edges, back to the creature. It slowly began to dissolve. It's darkness beginning to fade into the lightlessness beyond the inner lock. It was gone.
A long breath was exhaled from nowhere, a ghostly sigh.


The creature had neither words nor gestures to describe itself or its origins. Instead, it chose to vanish as a symbolic act to illuminate Edgman. He would not understand. The cold began to thicken in the airlock. The technician couldn't feel the ambient chill on his person due the suit encasing him. But he felt the unrelenting dread captured in the diminutive space.


Fitting that a certain type of atmosphere be drained from an airlock. He mused.

Edgman set about his next phase of the plan. There in the floor, was a large grate. Sequestered beneath were two atmosphere tanks. Panning with his light, he could see tufts of rolling gas sifting through the grill. Deeper, he could see the tanks had iced over. With the cutter in hand, he removed the grate at its perimeter. Once the grate had come free, he cut it down along the horizontal bars to use as filler rod. Edgman altered the cutter's output, then welded the inner lock back in place praying for an airtight seal. Duly turning to pull the atmosphere tanks upright in their recess.

He examined the tanks with care. Hissing with pained effort - he gripped the tanks with his crushed hand, defrosting the valve fitting with the other. He stopped to think for a moment:

Evacuate air, vacuum in the lock, cut outer lock door open, use tanks for propellent... I'm entirely fucking mad...


Edgman shook his head and giggled. Something gathered in his chest to suggest he hadn't quite understood just how mad his plan was. Adrenaline. It gave him both a rush of excitement, alongside a very real fright. He rose slowly off the deck, floating in cold air, circulating yet colder thoughts. His blood ran warm however. It was enough to start him cycling the ambient air slowly into the tanks.

He shunted the valve open - a long loud scream of depressurisation erupted from everywhere. The pitch was relatively low so Edgman dialled the valve back. Examining his welds for pinholes, He pulled his coat out from his suit's storage. The atmosphere inside the lock rushed into the wall vents, gradually being squeezed down tight tubes.


Edgman diligently held the jacket up to his hastily effected weld seams - observing the cloth for flutter or movement amidst any rushing air. He was surprised all parts of his jacket remained immobile. Running the jacket over the bumpy outline of the lock. He simultaneously worked the air pressure valve until all the gas was removed from the tiny area - culminating in a shrill pop as the valve closed.

Out of the refrigerator, into the freezer.


Edgman's short reflection was punctuated by his good hand unscrewing the air line from the tanks.
He drifted over to the outer lock where he steadied himself to align the torch and commenced cutting. Before long, the outer lock was a slab of metal passing through the vacuum of space. The glow of its edges fading as it cooled to background temperature.


The technician began to hoist the canisters of gas one at a time, wrapping wire around them, and tethering the wire to his space suit. Tying all the cutter components to himself there after. He'd need them if he made it to the reactor.
With prudence, he inched outward beyond the fading red heat of the airlock.


The dullness and begotten exterior vacuum impassioned the lab technician.
Edgman lacked any Extra Vehicular Activity experience of his own. Though, he understood well - the danger. It was all around him. But so too, was the adventure.
Able to propel himself through the open void, he would occasionally squirt captive gas behind himself. An icy plume jetting him forward, or behind to control speed.

Precious few moments Edgman could cherish observing space. It sped by him in panorama. Adjusting his view angle to study constellations and nebulae. Stars were single blots, frozen and distinguished only by colour. Atmospheric lensing gave them no shine or twinkle. He was in the naked cosmos. It stared back at him with an unerring constance. Disregarding his tiny influence against so colossal - an eternity.


Turning back to his flight path, a flashing red hue behind a porthole entered his view.
Edgman acknowledged the porthole's identity surrounded by sealed airlock metal.
He used some gas to slow down. All the while being careful to gauge impact. On approach, he corrected his course, he ran through some harrowing thoughts too:

To cut this lock is going to decompress it. Cutting the inner lock will decompress the entire compartment beyond it. Shit. I need to secure myself.

With his good hand extended, he was glad to have stopped himself against the outer airlock. Residual momentum causing no new troubles. The threshold had tethering loops spaced along its rounded exterior. Edgman secured himself with the spacesuit's lanyard. Then bound his tools to the same area. A dense clicking filtered into his awareness. It rang as a random assortment of noise, he glanced at the display on the suit's view-plate:

<<<[Warning: Ionising radiation detected]>>>
<<<[Dosage level: 100 mSv (millisieverts) per hour]>>>

Edgman's dosimeter crackled steadily. The suit offered some protection, but if the dosage climbed beyond 100 mSv, Edgman would become cancer prone.
He rolled gently leftwards to observe the radioactive source tickling his sensor.
The central reactor housing lay idle in the station's bowel. Around the cylindrical containment were pasted the chipped and scuffed trefoils. Their unmistakably loud warning colours apparent.

Edgman cut a small hole in the lock, allowing the air to escape. Soon he was able to remove the next slab, and repeat the process for the inner airlock. The draining atmosphere took longer to decompress into vacuum. He listened intently.
There was nothing to carry sound waves. So he settled for moving inside the reactor causeway.

Having re-magnetised his feet to the deck, the lab technician faltered along the tunnel. Swinging his light cone, the new area seemed bleak. Or at least far blander in ornamentation. For several metres the way curved back toward the station's centre.
Now it fell away before him. Edgman negotiated the stairs with a close order of measured intent. The downward angle made him force his leading foot against each step. The artifice of gravity unavailable to alleviate the manoeuvre.

Without realising, Edgman de-magnetised both feet at once. In the instance both his feet were in the air - an unseen force shoved him violently. He gave a stupefied yelp - before careening into the causeway ceiling. The thrust bounced him harshly from the upside surface; down to the stairs. Invisible hands grasped him, turning and flinging his body against the walls. The impacts made him grunt or swear continuously. The assault ended as abruptly as it ensued. Edgman's body tumbled against the foot of the stairs. His back faced the deck. Residual propulsion left him drifting upward slowly.

"ARRRGH!!!! WHAT THE FUCK - WAS THAT?!?!" Edgman deafened himself.


His chest undulated in equal parts horrified stress, and outward disorientation. He felt fire in his hand, all fractures worsened from being rag-dolled against impervious surfaces. His emitted tears and blubbering unrestrained. The spacesuit already - submit a tirade of warning beeps and protestations. Edgman couldn't restore control to his circumstance. Sensory overload.
Amidst the racket, Edgman finally returned the suit to quiet. The pulsating paroxysm pierced through his hand like stellar plasma. He soon cooled it with clenched teeth and bubbles of inflated tears. Most escaping his ducts to wash around the spacesuit.

Quickly, Edgman reoriented with the floor. Cradling his throbbing hand against himself, he shunted off the ceiling to magnetise with the deck once more. Still in burning agony, other bruising or scratches took their hold in turns. He discovered a new problem; Radiation had increased. A persistent frame of text in his view read:

<<<[Warning: Ionising radiation detected]>>>
<<<[Dosage level: 374 mSv (millisieverts) per hour]>>>

Edgman spluttered in realisation. Significant radiation exposure guaranteed damage to his DNA. Relying on the spacesuit integrity to combat this amount was hopeless.


"Three hundred seventy-four?! Holy fuck... There's something wrong in there!"


Edgman glanced around hysterically, trying to see who had thrown him. Something brushed against his cheek. The erratic crackling produced by the dosimeter fizzled ominously, it barely concealed a deathly whisper. Edgman had no composure left to confront the thing, instead he insulted it in silence.
He hadn't noticed both the reactor airlocks swing open... No air rushed out.

He caught the outer lock's shadow passing him, the radiation soared. The suit read-out slapped him with 10'673 millisieverts... The interior to the reactor cage vibrated. Purplish-blue light flooded his face and began to burn. Edgman dialled up polarisation to be able to see.

"I'm not going to live through this. This is the end. There's no power to restore."

Edgman fought through the glare with some lens filtration letting him glimpse the reactor core. It was ruptured in a thousand places, the instability obvious. The entire containment field had failed. Glistening liquid metal oozed and melted away anything it contacted, the burning interior sizzled. The lack of an atmosphere changed nothing. A boiling micro-star - drummed in the centre. It was silent to Edgman, but then - everything was, outside his suit.

Globules of liquid light sauntered away in small rivulets. Larger glowing pieces rode wildly through the cage. He noticed the heat and residual energy from the captive celestial miniature. Its gamma rays tore at his cells.

"I should just jump into it. What else is there now? The power modules are burnt out. There's no saving this thing, or me. It's time to d-"

Die...


From inside his own mind, came the glaring malevolence belonging to that ever-closening voice. It melded with his speech, horrifying Edgman.
In seconds - he was wrenched off the deck, his body stretched and ripped away. His lower torso and legs remained fixed to the deck. A shower of blood-bubbles, tattered spacesuit, and torn viscera - snaked up after his top half. Zero gravity painted the room with his gutted parts. Pain, few would ever know - shot Edgman to the zenith of unconsciousness.

Yet he endured. His screaming lasted long enough for him to glimpse the cage interior swirling with a thousand-thousand shadows. Humanoid figures circling relentlessly at the outer periphery. They wailed a darkened symphony in his mind.
His organs trailed beneath, carried higher by the unknown.


In the milliseconds passing, Edgman didn't see an ID card flit by with a Wilding Six matter-code emblazoned on it. Nor did he notice the animated dead clawing out from the walls of the damaged reactor. Their portal journey, a round-trip from death's beyond. Returned to the source of energy that gave them passage to a wayward dimension.
Those shadows here, had never travelled to Wilding Six.


His lungs detonated. Edgman lived long enough to absorb the sight of both his arms pulled out from his halved body. Disconnected flesh, incandescent blood, and ruptured spacesuit fluttered away. His severed arms spun off in a puerile tumble. Edgman's last myopic panorama, captured a pair of gigantic hands protruding from a rent in the space-time continuum. They reached to grasp his limbless body. Blackness closed in at the verges.

Gone now, were eight centuries of enriched melancholy near Ganymede.
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