Callisto the Many & other shorts
Callisto the Many
The first time he sleepwalked, he woke on the surface. He’d put on his exosuit and gone through the proper airlock protocols, all in his sleep.
He was digging in one of the smaller craters. He had no idea why he was there, but he was glad he’d waked when he did: there was just enough oxygen left to make it back to base.
They didn’t allow you to go up if you were a somnambulist. He’d had no history of it — not personally, and not in his family. He couldn’t explain it, and he didn’t want to be sent back, to live in agony in the higher gravity of Earth. Not after living here so long. So he kept it a secret.
The next time he didn’t go through the airlock; he woke in the cafeteria, grabbing food. This was safer. Maybe he’d just continue to sleep-eat, and wouldn’t have to worry about his new problem anymore.
He got some strange looks as he sat down with his tray: coffee, a pasta with meat-heavy sauce, and three steaks taken from the food synthesizer.
He was a vegetarian, but he needed to keep up the pretense that he hadn’t just walked in here sound asleep and grabbed food he’d never eat while awake. He dug in.
He’d never missed meat when he’d given it up, but now that he was eating it again…it hit something inside. Some spot that needed hitting. He devoured his meal and went back for seconds.
The third time, he was back in the crater again. He’d brought a rover this time, and extra oxygen tanks. Digging equipment strewn about. The hole he’d been working on was much deeper. With few winds in the thin atmosphere, the dust hadn’t moved back to cover it up, and he’d obviously made good progress this night.
He sat in the rover and stared at his hands, horrified.
Why was he digging? Why was he sleepwalking?
And why…why when waking did he feel such a horrible anxiety as he stared into the abyss of the hole?
It was the third time that tipped off station admin that something was off, and the fourth time he woke it was in the brig, still in his exosuit, his helmet taken off. A sense of relief washed over him, though he couldn’t say why.
He walked to the bars and asked to be let out. Jansen, the station manager, was called to make the decision. He was a big man, one of the few in the station. Not many his size were allowed up because of the strain on the ships. Jansen had some serious credentials to his name.
“Isak,” he said in his low rumble, “something you need to tell us?”
Isak hung his head. “I was afraid you’d send me back.”
Jansen let out a low chuckle. “Where’d we get another engineer with your skills and training, eh? Come on.” He’d opened the gate to the brig and was gesturing for Isak to follow him.
They went to the med bay, and he got a hypospray. That night he didn’t walk.
The hypospray worked. Until it didn’t. Isak woke in the caf again, another tray full of meat. He craved it like never before.
As he ate food that might as well have been alien to him, he thought he heard whispers around him. He looked up, paranoid and anxious. The caf was empty, but the whispers continued.
Isak asked for two shots of the hypospray when he went to the med bay that night. As he settled into bed, a wordless voice echoed in his head.
It was ancient and angry.
Three weeks of this, and Isak was up to the max level of hyposprays per night. The wordless voice came more often during his waking hours. He woke in the brig several times, but more often he woke on the surface, digging and digging and digging. He was getting good at evading station personnel.
Jansen was worried. Isak could sense the older man’s reluctance to talk about it, but he knew Jan would have to send him back if they couldn’t get this under control. And it was not under control.
Deeper than that, Jansen was afraid. Afraid of what invisible force drove Isak to walk the base’s halls at night, to don his exosuit, to leave the safety of base to space-walk in next-to-no atmosphere and little gravity, to dig deep into the moon’s surface. He’d asked the med officer in hushed tones, when he thought Isak wasn’t listening, what in the solar system could be the answer to this sudden onset of somnambulism, and why these particular actions? What drove Isak to complete these tasks?
The med officer had had no answer for him, because there was none. None that they knew. What Isak felt, he would not voice, for it would brand him as crazy, and definitely get him sent back.
A ship was coming from Earth soon. Supplies, personnel. There’d be room on it to send him “home”, to a home that hadn’t been his in years, if that was decided. If he kept walking in his sleep.
For the first time in decades, Isak prayed. Aching knees on the hard station floor, elbows on his firm mattress, he put his hands together and asked all the gods he’d left behind in childhood to hear him: Thor, Frigg, Odin, Freya, Sif, Tyr. Even Loki. If they could hear him out in space, he begged for their mercy, to help him beat this.
The wordless voice came again, but this time it spoke, in halting, broken Standard, as if it spoke human tongues in a mouth not human: soon. Soon.
It did not make him feel better.
Jansen had to decide if he was going to send away the ship, back to the refueling station between Callisto and Earth. He’d started to feel that Isak was not under his own influence anymore. The man was haggard, having gone without sleep; dark circles rested under his eyes. He was eating meat again — unusual for the man. He’d been craving it, he said, but Jansen suspected the nights he’d been found eating it in the cafeteria he’d not gone there of his own free will.
And sometimes, when Isak didn’t realize Jansen was watching, the station manager saw the engineer whip his head around frantically, eyes searching out the source of a sound only he could hear.
If it were just Isak, Jansen would reserve him a spot on the ship and send him back to Earth. He wouldn’t want to — he’d not been lying about Isak’s skills and education being indispensable — but it was obvious Isak needed help.
Thing was, it wasn’t just Isak. Several other crew members on base had reported ill feelings to the medical bay: a general feeling of dread or anxiety; hearing voices or sighing sounds in the walls of the base; waking somewhere other than their bed, in the middle of some inexplicable task.
Jansen couldn’t send all his sick crew members home. With this many reporting these symptoms, it was clear there was some sort of outbreak occurring at the base. He’d no idea the cause, and neither did the medical officer — which did not make Jansen feel any better. He’d heard of certain illnesses back on earth that could completely change someone’s personality, or even worms that could take over a person’s brain and make them do things against their will.
He didn’t know if this was what was happening on his station. All he knew was something was spreading among the crew, and he didn’t know how or why. Or if the ship coming from Earth would be safe.
On the other hand, the ship was bringing more medical and science officers, something they sorely needed, and who might be able to help find the cause of the outbreak and stop it.
Jansen tapped his fingers along his console, thinking. Finally, with a deep, defeated sigh, he picked up comms and started to hail the ship.
While Jansen picked up the comms, Isak the somnambulist was digging.
He was not alone this time. Joining him were three other crew members: Xuan from hydroponics; Farid from the lab; and Nita, a geologist. All were asleep; they made quick work undoing the work the station crew had done to cover up the hole once they had realized what Isak was doing.
The voice was stronger now; it reached everyone in the base, singing wordless, alien songs of anger and vengeance to them. Still the somnambulists dug, using their equipment to the breaking point. Jansen, in the middle of his call to the ship, faltered and stopped speaking, unable to hear anything but the alien voice. He fell to his knees, hands on his ears.
The equipment broke through dirt and rock and splashed into water. A saline sea bubbled up, rushed out of the hole and across the surface, taking the sleepwalkers with it. It reached the airlock and, having infiltrated the crew members’ suits, had them open the door.
It only took the amount of water the airlock could hold, and then the station was no longer run by the puny, short-lived creatures from Earth, rampaging around here like they owned the place. Water evaporated, moved through the air vents, touched every being with every breath they took (breathers, disgusting). The station was Callisto’s again (though it had never been their name; they were older than names), and so were all the tiny lifeforms within it. And soon, more would be theirs…all the moons, and all the planets, and all the system, and then the galaxy….
A voice broke through on Jansen’s headset. “Jansen? Jansen, come in. Do you read us? Should we take the Minerva back?”
Jansen, who was not Jansen anymore, rose from his place on the floor and smiled (such an alien feeling), before pressing the button to talk. “Sorry, Minerva. Seems I overreacted. Outbreak has been contained. You are clear to dock.”
The crew — Callisto the Unnamed, Callisto the Many — moved as one into the viewing lounge, to watch the ship Minerva dock above the station. The airlock opened, and moisture-laden air flooded the ship, touching all its inhabitants.
The first new crew member, who was now nameless, a part of the great all that was Callisto, entered the station, and smiled (an alien feeling they were starting to enjoy) at themselves.
“It’s time,” they said, though they didn’t need to; they didn’t need to give voice to the fact that Callisto the Many was finally achieving their dream of flying, of exploration, the dream that had been denied them so many years ago when they’d been sealed away. “We have much to do.”
The crew got to work: the ship was refueled and Callisto the Unnamed, the Faceless, the Many Who are One, started their long journey through the solar system to their new home, their new base from which they would reach out and touch all the stars.
Earth.
