ERROR ERROR

Author:  Cathbad Maponus

Cathbad57@gmail.com

Title: ERROR ERROR
Dialogue: I have never seen one but heard they are simple brilliant, have you seen one?
Science (optional): Frozen for millennia, a humanoid 'survivor' awakes

Word Count:  1,994

ERROR ERROR

Theruss’ fifth arm grabbed a beaker just before it fell off the lab table and surely shatter on the floor.  “Nice save,” I tell him, ignoring his obvious embarrassment he felt for using that arm.

He smiled awkwardly and returned to his experiment.  He was never much of a conversationalist.

“Fellows!” Commander Higgins shouted from the entry portal, “We have only thirty minutes left before arriving at the crash site!  Please put your equipment away; we need to be ready to move quickly.”

“I still can’t comprehend this.”  Moran, my best friend since the Academy.  She was always strongly opinionated.  “Sending a science vessel to investigate a space-faring accident makes no sense!”

“Didn’t you hear?” asked Brennan, not pausing in his clean up of his station.  “My friend Lani heard that Search and Rescue already investigated the accident, and the results have been sealed.”

Both Moran and I furrowed our brows, while Theruss continued to fumble with his equipment.  “Why would they do-!”  Moran’s eyes widened as she realized the implications.

Brennan nodded his head rather too excitedly, causing his head antennae to dance.  He conspiratorially whispered, “They found something!”

And indeed, they had.  When we arrived, the space around the crash site was very busy – mostly with military craft.  We were ordered to wait in a specific area – which proved to be one where view of the wreckage was hidden by a large Carrier-Class ship.  Probably on purpose.

“Okay!” Commander Higgins shouted from the lift.  “This is the boarding crew: Narthal…”  With my expertise in xenocology, I had fully expected to be picked (we believed the crash involved something alien), but the next name shocked me.  “Theruss… Belvin… Cappo… Moran and myself.”

Really?  The inept Theruss?

Moran was our resident expert on languages, which convinced us that the wreckage surely involved an alien ship or satellite.

We followed Commander Higgins into the lift, down to the shuttle bay, and into Shuttle Two.  Quickly given clearance, we were on our way through the maze of small and large spacecraft.

Now this was the sort of excitement that had enticed me as a kid and led me to sign up for a career in the Space Marines Science Division after earning my first degree!

We rounded the giant Carrier and got our first look at the wreckage.

I heard Moran gasp as it came into view.  One of the two ships was one of our freighters.   The other was quite alien.  Oblong in overall shape, but with appendages of all shapes and sizes, that seemingly haphazardly attached to the main craft, and making the whole look ridiculous and ugly.

“Do you see it?” Moran asked in nearly a whisper.

“See what?”

“Those glyphs on the side.  This is unmistakably of human origin!” 

I was dutifully impressed.  The human race had died out more than two thousand years before we were born!

Humans had just started interstellar travel when their propensity for violence and short-sightedness culminated in the poisoning of their world to the point where it was no longer habitable.  Too few space-faring vessels were available for a proper evacuation of the planet, and only a few thousand are thought to have escaped death on their home world.

Most of the evacuees settled on a planetoid only a half-dozen light years from their home.  In-fighting continued, and on that survivable – but inhospitable - world, such spelled the colony’s end.

The last humans found to have survived were discovered on the next nearest planet toward their star.  As they had been warned, the planet could not be made survivable in time.  Though they outlived the larger colony, the last humans died on that planet they had named Mars.

Two millennia later, the remains of the human race were discovered on the most beautiful planet our race has yet discovered.  How they had come to show such complete disregard for such a paradise remains a mystery.

A convertor pad had been placed over a docking port.  We docked safely and were inside, shortly after Commander Higgins’ usual safety speech: “Everyone be careful.”

On the portal were more ancient glyphs.  I looked questioningly at Moran.  She shrugged and offered, “Seems to be either a warning or a greeting – maybe both.  I just shook my head, waited for the Commander to open the portal, and followed him in.  Everyone except Bevin came with us, the Helmsman staying behind in case of emergencies.

“The military has already been in here,” our Commander explained, “but they have not been very forthcoming about what they found.”

“Figures!” snorted Cappo.  He’s a Systems analyst and builds computers.

“There are two military guards left to secure the area we will be heading to,” Higgins added.

Not far in, the ship’s bridge appeared on our right.  Red lights were flashing in several places; some of them large enough to read the glyphs highlighted in those flashes.  According to Moran, ERROR ERROR was a warning of a critical situation, and probably came on automatically, when the impending crash was detected.

“No one on deck,” Theruss observed as we passed the bridge.

Farther down the corridor was a four-way intersection.  More flashing red lights issued the same warning in each direction.

“I hope I am reading this map right:  Looks like we go left.”  Commander Higgins wasn’t always as comfortingly competent as he probably ought to be.

“This way, sir!”

I tell you, I nearly jumped out of all four of my boots!

The person responsible for my fright (and causing Moran to scream) was a soldier, standing in the gloom near what might be a lift, except it was square.

“We have connected a power supply and have this lift working, Commander Higgins.  It’ll take you right down to Cold Storage. Doctor Iphram is waiting for you there.”

I saw Moran look into the smallish lift dubiously.  “Is it safe?” she asked.

“I’ve been up and down in it several times myself, ma’am.”  The soldier herded us in then and pressed a button on a panel within for us.  After a quick salute, he disappeared behind the closing doors.

“Did he say,” Theruss asked, “Cold Storage?”

The lift doors opened a short time later.  “That does read ‘Cold Storage’,” Moran confirmed, pointing at a plaque with more glyphs on it.

“Doctor, erm… Commander Higgins!” a man in all white approached us, his second arm extended.  Our Commander greeted him like an old friend, pressing their tentacles together.

“Doctor Iphram and I were at the Science Institute together,” the Commander explained.

We all greeted him in turn, then I looked around.

The room was filled with large cylindrical steel tubes and a lot of antiquated electronic equipment.  Each cylinder had an attached data read-out device on its side.  There was a flashing red light on all of them, with the now familiar warning, ERROR ERROR.

“If you turn that small metal clip,” Doctor Iphram told me, “you will be able to see what is inside these pods, and why we have summoned your assistance.”

With a nervous smile, I did as he indicated.

The inside of the pod was filled with a cloudy, translucent gel.  A second readout, on the glass I was looking through, was a second read-out, with what I knew to be human numbers.  “Moran?”  I pointed her to the read-out.

“It’s… yes, it’s a temperature read-out.  I… I believe the gel is well below freezing.”

“Cold Storage.”

Moran nodded, looking a bit sick.  She turned away from the contents of the pod.

Besides the gel, thee was a single body within.  A nude human body!

“Wow!” I heard Cappo exclaim.  He was looking into a pod a few down from mine.  “Amazing!”  He looked over at me.  “Humans!  I have never seen one but heard they are simple brilliant, have you seen one?”  He winked.

“I’m afraid none of the one hundred forty-four bodies in this section are viable; nor have they been for a very long time.  Every one of them have been brain dead a very long time.”

“So, we’re here to help move them to a research facility?”

Instead of a direct answer, Doctor Iphram said, “Come with me.”

He took us through another section of pods, through it, and into a third.  This section had activity.  Three more people in white.  One waking along the pods making notes, two beside a metal table, apparently studying one of the bodies.

“There are seven sections in all,” Iphram explained, “each with 144 bodies.  Before the crash, this section and the four forward contained some viable bodies!”

My antennae stood straight up. 

Iphram nodded.  “It’s true.  But, even though the crash did little structural damage to the pod storage units, the electronics – probably already in some disrepair – were critically damaged.

“We identified eight viable bodies when we arrived, and I have been attacking the problem from two sides; trying to repair the pods with viable life forms and trying to bring these humans around before they are truly dead.”

“Theruss” the Commander ordered, “You are on the gel.”

“Tranner will assist you,” Iphram added, pointing at one of his men who came up to us quickly.

“Narthal, you will assist the Doctor and myself.”  Of course.  “Cappo, see what you can do with those electronics.  Moran will assist you with the alien writings.”

“Two of my assistants are already working on them,” Iphram told Cappo.  “The main electronics board is in the next section.”  Both Cappo and Moran took off in that direction.

“Is this one still alive?” Higgins asked the military doctor. 

Iphram sighed and shook his head.  “The process for bringing them out of stasis was probably designed to take hours – or days!  We just don’t have that much time.”

“How many viables are we looking at?”

“We identified eight after the crash.  If the military had let us in sooner, there might have been a couple hundred!  This is our second failure at revival.  The data on the first two is in the tablet on the table.”

“How long do you estimate we have to save the others?”

“Hours – at best.”

“Then let’s get started with the next one,” he said, already reading the data on the first two attempts.

We had another body on the table in minutes.  The doctor’s men had already brought the gel temperature up and had extracted the body from the pod moments before.  Using only slight adjustments from the methods used in the first two attempts, we went to work.

The human body is quite different than our own.  In most respects, it is much simpler.  It’s their nervous system that’s the problem.  Unlike ours, it runs everything, with no redundancy systems.  A failure to revive the nervous system is total failure.

Two hours we spent on the table.  All we knew after was that the alien was breathing – though not on its own. 

I hadn’t seen my fellow crewmembers the whole time, but later learned they’d been able to rig the system to continue life support for our five other viables.  Theruss was pleased with himself, for being able to identify every ingredient in the gel.  Our ship’s crew was able to duplicate it, which would increase the chances for the other’s survival, and allow us to revive them in a proper medical facility.

I was pleased with our success, ands still basking in the glow of the Sector Commander’s congratulatory message when I found Moran in the video lounge – sitting in the dark.

“What’s wrong, Moran?”

She looked to have been crying.  “What have we done, Narthal?”

“I don’t understand?”

“Humans destroyed themselves.  Even after they had destroyed their world and were in desperate times, they couldn’t come together long enough to ensure their own survival!

“And we’ve brought them back into existence?”

I suddenly did not feel so proud of my accomplishments that day.

Future events would cause me to rue that day for the rest of my natural life.