The Accidental Time Travelers

Julian flew through all the tests we sat at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He had a first in physics from Harvard. He was top of our class and so attracted envy. He didn’t vomit in the KC -135 also known as the Weightless Wonder or ‘Vomit Comet’. He was a champion in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, had no trouble staying under water for seven hours at a time. He was great in the cockpit of a T-38, soaring through the heavens like an angel or a god. He took like a duck to Russian and was fluent within a month. It was sickening. He was the golden boy; he shone. He was my best friend, but I must admit that at times I fell prey to the sin of envy where Julian was concerned. It was difficult not to.

Cynthia trained in the year behind us. I had a crush on her from the moment I laid eyes on her. She had shoulder length wavy dark brown hair and green eyes, like a cat, eyes that seemed to see right through you and know all your secrets, know you inside out, even though you had only just met. Cynthia was special to me from the start. I tried hard to hide my feelings, but I’m sure I blushed a few times when she talked to me. Cynthia was average at Nasa, which still meant she was a superstar in the real world, because standards were set so high. She was diligent and passed all her tests with ease, but she was not in Julian’s league. To be fair, nobody was.

As for me I had a Masters degree in Computer Science from Yale, gained in 2030, and had worked for three years at IBM. I threw up in the vomit comet and could only stay three hours underwater in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, but to my surprise they passed me and I became a qualified astronaut.

The three of us were chosen to venture together into outer space on SS Celestial. When I heard that Cynthia was going to be on the journey with me, living in close quarters, I got nervous. Would she see me getting undressed? Would she hear me snore? It would be make or break with the two of us living together in space. The mission should we choose to accept it? To head to Mars to look for water and to bring back samples of the planet’s surface for study. Part of the assignment was also to look for signs of life. The mission was our first. We were excited about the trip. Julian went especially quiet in the days leading up to our departure, his genius mind ticking over with thoughts I would never know.

The preparation was intense. We attended several seminars leading up to the departure date prepping us for our mission on Mars. The ship was stocked with everything we would need and more, our suits were fitted and we were sent home for two days to rest.

On the day of departure, we had to be at base by 4am ready for a 7am takeoff. When I arrived, Cynthia was already there but no sign of Julian. He arrived at 4 30am looking as though he hadn’t slept in days, unnaturally silent and looking somber.

We went over our flight briefing with the ground crew and embarked onto the ship. Butterflies danced in my stomach -- we were actually doing it! This is what I had dreamed of since I was a little boy, now the dream had become a reality.

We were strapped into our seats and the countdown on the screen appeared. Taking off was the most amazing feeling I had ever experienced; the velocity glued me to the back of my seat.

Once we had ascended into space we were able to take our belts off, zero gravity had taken effect. The view was wonderful, just like I had imagined it would be. We managed to see planet earth in the distance as well as the moon and the sun. I noticed Cynthia looked awestruck as she sat staring out the window.

The first few days passed without anything notable to report back to base, communication with ground crew was frequent. We passed the time by playing Agricola, Catan, and chess in the simulated gravity room. The food wasn’t great and was mostly freeze–dried, heated up by a microwave. There were six of us in total on the ship; Julian, Cynthia and me along with James, who was always clowning around, and who had been assigned the job of looking for water along with Natalie, and Steven whose job it was to gather samples of the planet’s surface with me. Julian and Cynthia had been assigned the task of looking for signs of life.

Julian was prone to dark moods. I hadn’t known that about him although I had never lived with him before. I wondered if the confinement was getting to him. It was hard living with six others in such close quarters.

Cynthia and I seemed to get along the best and I wondered how long it would be before we became a romantic item - the thought made my spine tingle. She was so beautiful and graceful even in space.

Everything was going well until day thirty-six. It started off as a normal day with coffee and muesli for breakfast. Julian appeared to be in one of his moods again, not talking to anyone and avoiding eye contact as he obsessed over his folder of notes, flicking over the pages in an aggressive manner. We all set about getting on with our day except Julian who stood staring out the main window. I was right behind him when it happened. I heard a low guttural noise escape from Julian’s throat. I looked at him as his body tensed in what I first thought was the beginning of some sort of seizure. My thoughts on this were wrong as just then Julian spun around declaring loudly “Holy shit, we’re in the path of a meteor shower.”

I looked out the window in shock, but my shock dwindled as I saw only empty space.

“What are you talking about? Everything’s fine.” I said

“Everything’s not bloody fine.” He snapped back at me. “Can’t you see those rocks? We are going to hit them!”

Shit I thought to myself Julian, our captain, was losing it.

I was second in charge, it would be up to me to drive the ship if Julian wasn’t coping with reality.

I had to think fast “Come on Julian,” I said. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

He looked at me and something in his eyes sent red flags frantically flapping in my mind.

“We have to divert off course.” Julian yelped. It was then that he lunged for the Hyperspace button smashing the plastic so fast that I didn’t even have time to intervene. The Hyperspace button was special and hidden behind a plastic screen. We had been warned not to touch unless we were about to hit something such as a meteor or a planet, as it would detour the ship off course.

“Julian! No!” I gasped.

But it was too late -- he pushed that damned button down so quickly and the ship accelerated faster than the speed of light and we were off to a new random destination in space-time.

The ship slowed down when it reached the atmosphere of the new planet which we came to call Solaria 74. Julian was senseless, muttering to himself about the pressure of being Number One and I could not gain control of the ship, so we crash landed. The surface of the planet was light pink and dusty -- the color of flamingoes. We tried to communicate with earth but the communications system was broken. I asked the ship what year it was -- fortunately one of the ship’s computers had survived the crash and announced that it was the year 2065, thirty years into the future. Cynthia and I stepped out nervously, holding hands, onto the terrain that stretched out before us. The others followed, all except Julian who was still catatonic on board. We could see for miles – the dust was only knee high. The air was clear and bright. It was very hot and looking up I could see three suns burning in the sky. Golden dust fell from the suns towards the planet’s surface. No inhabitants were to be seen. After talking amongst ourselves, we agreed to set out walking, in search of life.

Twenty minutes into our trek, we came across a small pool of water in the ground which Cynthia said was a promising sign.

“Where there’s water, there’s life”, she said optimistically.

We had been walking for an hour and a half across a dusty pink landscape when we saw the first burrow. It raised up about six-foot above the ground and appeared to be made from a form of yellow mud brick.

“Hey,” exclaimed Cynthia. “That looks like a form of housing.”

We all got very excited. Although we were baking, we started running towards the burrow. We were about ten meters away when a strange creature, in a lobster-like shell, about one and a half times the size of a human emerged from the burrow and started scuttling towards us.

“Look,” I said. “Life!”

The others pulled in close behind me. No one said a thing we all froze, and just watched. The creature came about a meter in front of us and started opening and shutting its mandibles.

“Oh my god,” said Cynthia, pulling her body close to mine. “Is it going to eat us?”

“C’mon let’s be brave,” I said, with a false courage I did not feel. The creature just stood staring at us as we stared at it. I approached it somewhat fearfully and extended my hand. It continued to stare at us without any movement or sound and did not take up my offer of a handshake.

It then turned and scuttled away glancing back at us as it disappeared back into its burrow.

We didn’t follow it. We were satisfied that it seemed harmless. We continued walking until we came to more burrows that were larger surrounding what looked like a town center as it had something that looked like a monument in the middle.

We sat down on the monument steps to work out a plan. I thought we should go back and check on Julian to make sure he was okay, the others agreed.

Once back at the ship, Julian seemed calmer and I wondered if he had taken one of the valium that were stashed in the first aid kit. We told him everything we had just seen including the strange creature and a description of its shell.

“I’ve ventured outside,” answered Julian “This place has three suns, so it makes sense that the creature you saw had what sounds like an exoskeleton that would protect it from the harsh rays. We will have to make sure we wear our space suits and helmets when we are outside to protect us too.”

“How the hell are we going to get back to earth?” Cynthia said in a slight panicked voice. “According to the ship’s computer we’re thirty years into the future.”

“Well I can confirm that the ship is well and truly stuffed,” chanted Julian.

We sat talking until the suns went down and two moons appeared. We decided to sleep on the problem of how to get back to earth and attempt to devise a plan in the morning.

I couldn’t sleep well that first night, I don’t think any of us did as we all looked shattered in the morning. We had a talk and it was decided we would have to try make friends with the inhabitants of this planet if we were to survive. I suggested that we approach the creature we had seen in the first burrow that we had come across as it had already seen us. The others agreed.

So next thing you know we found ourselves tentatively walking towards the creature’s burrow. Before we got to the door it came out as though expecting us, gesturing for us to follow it back inside. We all looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

Once inside, I noticed that rough windows had been carved into the walls to let in the daylight. The inside walls were lined with something that looked like cotton wool, and which I was later to learn was the inside of the pod of a plant that resembled a giant bean. The burrow was divided into four with rudimentary walls. The creature communicated with squeaking sounds, grunts and hand gestures and we gestured back. It seemed friendly enough and did not try to attack or eat us. It introduced us to others of its kind -- we met about ten at first and some others later. We named our new friend Abelon. He became our guide and taught us how to harvest a local fruit that was a lot like a banana passionfruit, only bigger, how to chop off and boil to eat shoots that resembled supplejack, and he also taught us how to hunt a creature that looked like a cross between a giant porcupine and a crab -- with a hard shell and a snout with which it sought out food.

Sixty days into our new life Julian began responding to voices that weren’t there. They weren’t too dramatic -- they didn’t tell him to kill or steal, they just told him that he was in immediate danger and that his friends were his enemies. He became extremely paranoid. I sat him down with a cup of tea and he confessed to me that he was a diagnosed schizophrenic but that he’d had to hide this from everybody as Nasa never would have let him in with a mental health history.

“Everybody thinks I’m such a golden boy”, he said. “They don’t know how troubled I really am. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was twenty-two but I didn’t let on to Nasa. I had to go off medication to pass the drugs test. It’s been hell. I went back on the meds for this trip but now I’ve run out. I’m okay when there’s a really strict routine and everything goes according to plan. I’m good when I’m kept busy all the time, but any break in structure can be dangerous for me. I’ve had to keep this hidden and the pressure of keeping it hidden has been intense. Imagine if Nasa knew! I’d be out on the street.”

What could I say? Nasa’s policies allowed no room for mental illness, not even in very bright candidates like Julian. There was no room, no time for nervous breakdowns and crack ups, probably because, as Julian had proven, they were so dangerous when they happened on a space ship. They wanted well rounded, mentally balanced candidates, not unbalanced geniuses. After all, it was because of Julian that we were now on this planet with no way to get home, stranded far from Planet Earth, having to make do as best we could. I was a bit angry with him for not being honest about his condition, but I felt sorry for him as well. Now we were on this distant planet somewhere in the galaxy and he had run out of psychiatric medication. Great!

It was tragic when we found him -- the hunting spear through his throat. I couldn’t help but think that if he’d been honest with everybody about his illness somebody could have got some more assistance for him. Perhaps covering it all up had been his downfall -- trying to be perfect, trying to be number one all the time -- it was all just an act. He was hiding deep psychological flaws.

And so, we settled into life on this strange new planet – minus Julian. We had no choice, we were stuck here. We made the best of it, eating local flora and fauna, dining like locals and we grew friendly with some of the local inhabitants. The relationship between Cynthia and I blossomed and we became an item, bonded through our unusual experiences, brought together by adversity. We adjusted to this odd way of existence and even grew to quite like it.

People can adapt to anything given time.

THE END

Bio: Ms. Laura Solomon has a BA in English Literature and a Masters in Computer Science. She is a New Zealand Novelist, poet and short story writer. Her work includes the novels: Black Light (1996), Nothing Lasting (1997) An Imitation of Life (2010), Instant Messages (2010), The Theory of Networks (2010), Operating Systems (2010), Hilary and David (2010); the short story collections: Alternative Medicine (2008), The Shingle Bar Sea Monster and Other Stories (2012) and the poetry collections: In Vitro (2012) and Freda Kahlo's Cry (2012). She has won several prizes for her work.

E-mail: Laura Solomon

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