Sta.sh
An Incredible Likeness
by ~reidoKrasinski couldn't feel the grass through the thick polyplastics of her boots, but looking at it through the mask of her helmet, she could see how perfectly green it was. What was stranger to her, however, was not the color, but how perfectly groomed it was.
Twenty yards to her left, Vaughn was staring up into the sky. His voice came over Krasinski's comms. speaker, and it sounded like the man was inside her helmet. "Awfully blue, isn't it?"
Krasinski's bulky form turned to face him. "You sound a lot calmer about this than you should."
In his heavy External Exploration Suit, Vaughn's shoulders rose and fell.
"You ever been golfing?" Krasinski continued. She didn't wait for a response. "I used to golf, back home. I've been on greens less manicured than this." She was sweating in her own E.E.S., nervous.
"If I didn't know any better," Vaughn replied, "I'd say we were back home. Proportions are off, though." He chuckled nervously. The green lawn stretched as far as they could see, eventually vanishing over either the horizon, or over one of the smooth hills that obstructed their view of it. Vaughn turned his visor back towards the sky. "Blue sky, green grass." He paused. "I think maybe I'm in shock."
Krasinski grunted. "You and me both." There was a beep in her headset, followed immediately by another. The Extrapolator was trying to get in contact with them. "Go ahead," she said, tapping a button on the wrist apparatus of her suit.
"Is is it really green down there?" a shaky voice asked. Michaels, the third member of their team, and their lifeline home. "I I I don't know what happened. I looked away from the viewport for for couldn't have been more than a minute, monitoring. It changed color."
"Yes, it's green," Vaughn replied, warily. Neither of the explorers on the surface liked the idea of Michaels, who had been showing signs of extreme stress the longer they'd been on this mission, as their lifeline--but it was better he was up there on The Extrapolator than down with the lander. If the lander became damaged somehow, they were stranded. The orbiting ship, however, had a long list of failsafes, and even if Michaels fell apart, it would keep functioning without him.
"It was brown before, right?" Michaels asked. "It was brown before, I'm not remembering it wrong, right?"
"It was brown," Krasinski replied, trying to keep her voice calm. "Brown and dead and empty. We didn't even expect to find worthwhile minerals on the surface--much less plant life. Grass across everything we can see." She grunted again, kneeling down to brush the lawn with her fingers--through thick gloves with no feeling. "Readings?"
Michaels was silent.
Vaughn growled. Krasinski hoped he had done so without broadcasting it upstairs. "Michaels, readings?"
"You're not going to like them," came the response, after another terse moment.
"Just tell us the damn results," Vaughn muttered. He sounded like he was grinding his teeth.
"78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, one hundred percent breathable. You could take your suits off and wouldn't be able to tell we're light-years from Earth."
"Fuck that," Krasinski muttered. "Okay, freaking out now. That doesn't make any goddamn sense."
"That's not the worst part," the tech continued. The more he talked science the more confident he sounded. Krasinski made note of that. "About one percent water vapor too. But unless the water is the same color as the... grass... I'm not seeing any bodies of water. The whole planet's a uniform green."
"So where's it coming from?"
Michaels paused again. "I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I think you guys should get back in the lander and bug out. Something's not not not right down there."
"You're telling me," Vaughn replied. Krasinski heard him click off his broadcast; he turned to face her, shrugged again. He liked Michaels even less than she did.
"We're going to take a look around," she said eventually. "Maybe some kind of... hologram." She could hear how hollow that idea sounded in her own voice. "Shit. I don't know. Get in touch if anything changes. Ground team out." She clicked off her own broadcast before Michaels could confirm. "You glad we drew the long straws?" she said into her mic, "Because I'm completely glad we drew the long straws."
Vaughn laughed into his mic. "You really want to look around down here?"
She shrugged. "Do you have a better idea?"
***
They set down beacons as they went--solar-powered bread-crumbs, to guide them back to the lander. The land was so uniform, they didn't want to get lost. Krasinksi picked a direction and they traveled in a straight line. Despite the stench in her E.E.S, she was never tempted to take the helmet off, despite Michaels' readings.
They had walked nearly an hour when they both stopped mid-stride. "You see that?" Vaughn asked in her earpiece.
"I was about to ask you the same thing."
About two-hundred yards directly ahead of them on the vector they had been moving along, a small hump of a hill rose out of the lawn. It was maybe thirty yards across, at at the center was a tree.
"Shit. I was hoping I was losing it," Vaughn continued, walking again. When they reached the tree, he said, "That's a goddamn quercus robur. A Pedunculate or English Oak."
"You know trees?"
"I know trees," Vaughn replied, "And I'm starting to wish we'd taken Michaels' advice." He reached up and brushed the tree's bark with his glove. They were silent for a moment, then Krasinski hit a button on her wrist apparatus. There were two beeps in her earpiece again--the outgoing broadcast tone, slightly lower in pitch than the incoming broadcast tone.
"Go go go ahead," Michaels' voice said. Krasinski could tell immediately that something was wrong.
"You okay up there?" she asked.
"F-fine."
"You sitting down?"
There was a pause. "Yes. What's up?"
"We found a tree."
"Oh."
Krasinski frowned. "You don't seem terribly shocked."
While she spoke to the tech upstairs Vaughn was walking a circle around the tree.
"Huh," was all he said. "Signing off." There was a click, two beeps, and the broadcast ended.
Vaughn turned to face her, his back to the tree. "What the hell?"
"What the hell." A moment later there were two beeps--incoming broadcast. Kraskinski hit the button on her wrist again. "Go ahead."
Vaughn was watching her.
"Go ahead," she repeated. After another silence, "You try," she said to Vaughn, over their helmet line.
"Go ahead, Extrapolator." The only response was two beeps: broadcast end. She could hear Vaughn muttering curses under his breath. "Gonna wring his scrawny neck."
"Something's going on up there." A red light lit up on her visor. "Shit," Krasinski muttered. "Your E.E.S. running low?"
Vaughn grunted an affirmative.
"We gotta get back to the lander. Should have more than enough power to make it back."
She could hear Vaughn chuckling. "And if we don't, we can just take the damn things off." She couldn't quite find the humor in it.
***
"How many situations can you think of where this is a good thing?" Vaughn muttered. "Fuckin' zero. That's how many." The two of them stood next to the last beacon--the first beacon they'd placed when they left the lander. The lander itself was gone.
"Not just the lander," Krasinski said. "The stabilizers and the launcher are gone too." She fidgeted in her E.E.S. "That doesn't make any sense." The hit her wrist apparatus, muttering to herself.
There was no response from Michaels. She hit the button again, frowning. "Ground crew to Extrapolator. Pick up."
"Fuck," Vaughn muttered.
"Michaels, you there?" Krasinski continued. "Come on goddamn it."
There was a silence, then, "Go ahead."
"What the hell, Michaels!" Vaughn yelled into the broadcast.
"Sorry, little disdistracted up here. Can't. Shit. Hang on." Two beeps, and the broadcast went out.
"I swear to God I'm going to kill him when we get up there. We can tell HQ it was an accident."
Krasinski chuckled uneasily. "Have to get back up there, first." She hit her wrist apparatus angrily, and once the two beeps went off she didn't wait for confirmation that anyone was listening: "Comms. manual override, override H. dash K., open speaker. Goddamn it Michaels, do you see the lander anywhere? It's gone, the whole thing, launcher and all."
There was a silence again. Krasinski thought she could hear, faintly, someone shouting. After a moment of it, Vaughn asked, "Is that Michaels? What the hell is--"
A sound like thunder interrupted him. Both explorers ducked reflexively. Krasinski saw, very briefly, a flash of light; she looked up, and cursed, "Oh, shit, oh oh shit. Vaughn. Vaughn! Shit!"
The Extrapolator arced across the sky above them, thick black smoke pouring out of it, darkening the sky. It was a large ship--larger than one might expect three people to crew on their own; most of its interior was taken up with food and oxygen storage, for their long-term exploration mission.
Vaughn muttered, "Goddamn," watching the great ship fall. "Oh goddamn." Before it crashed down behind a well-groomed green hill near the horizon, they could see it break in half. Two dull impacts thundered through the air, muffled by their helmets. The ground beneath them shivered. A third thundering--an explosion--followed the initial two.
***
It took them an hour to reach the wreckage. By the time they got there, the red lights flashing in their E.E.S helmets had doubled in frequency. "Should've left when we had the chance," Krasinski muttered to herself. She stood on a hill, regarding the aft portion of the ship--or what was left with it. The explosion they had heard had been the fuel cells igniting; the fires had mostly burned down by the time they'd arrived. The fore portion of the wreckage was mostly intact; it was heavily battered and burned, but salvageable. "You read me, Vaughn?" she said.
"Yeah, I re--ow!, shit--yeah."
"You find Michaels?"
There was a silence on the other end of the line. "Yeah. Squirrely bastard didn't strap in, he's all over the cockpit--not that that would have helped. You see anything on the external?"
"No." Krasinski sighed. "Nothing."
Inside, Vaughn was making his way to the E.E.S. storage compartments. "Gonna try to see if the other suits are okay. We might not be screwed here."
"Food storage looks like it made it through. Probably all mashed up, but edible," Krasinski said through his earpiece. There was something funny in her voice that he couldn't put his finger on.
"Enough to last us long enough to get one of the other landers set up, you think?"
She didn't respond.
"Krasinski, you still there?"
There was a pause, then, "Yeah. Yeah, should be enough."
"You okay out there?"
"Something... Hang on, gonna get a closer look at the aft."
"Krasinski?" She didn't respond. "Shit," Vaughn muttered.
Outside, Krasinski made her way down to the burning wreckage, squinting against the light. It took her several minutes to get close enough to get a good look at the thing that had caught her eye.
"Suits are busted," Vaughn said in her ear. "Damn."
Krasinski didn't respond. "This doesn't..." she muttered to herself. Positioned at an off angle to the passageway that terminated in the space where the ship had broken, was a wooden door, scarred by the fire, with a small square window in the middle. It was the kind of door you would find in the main entrance of any normal-looking house. From up close she could see that it wasn't just a door, but a wall--possibly a whole house, embedded in the ship. She leaned in close, getting a good look at the whole thing: it seemed to bisect the bulkheads, as if the wall overlapped with what already existed. Judging from the damage it had been there prior to the crash.
She told Vaughn about it. Her description was met with silence.
He was busy, trying to salvage what he could from the shredded wreckage of the other E.E.S units. It wasn't looking hopeful. "Just come to me," he said, gritting his teeth as he dislodged a power pack. "We'll worry about that later. Just come to me and we'll power up our suits as best we can, and start working on a way out of here."
"And what about this?"
"Fuck that door," Vaughn snapped. "And for God's sake, Krasinski, don't touch it."
She was silent for a moment. "I think this is what brought the ship down."
"Yeah." He looked at what he'd managed to salvage. There wasn't really anything that would help them keep their suits running longer. "Just get back here." Vaughn sat down, and closed his eyes, and before he realized what he was doing, he was asleep.
***
The sound of two beeps woke him up. Vaughn blinked, blinked again. The warning light on his E.E.S. was flashing rapidly now. In his ear he could hear a soft static--an open channel. "Hello?" he muttered. "Hello, is someone out there broadcasting? This is the ground crew of The Extrapolator requesting immediate assistance--is anyone there? If there's anyone out there within range, please--" There were two beeps again, and the static cut off--the broadcast ended.
"Damn it," Vaughn muttered. "Krasinski, did you hear that?" Silence. "Krasinski?" Nothing. "Shit."
He made his way out of the ship again, and stood on the grassy lawn. His air was getting thin, and it was getting harder to exert himself as the E.E.S. cut systems to keep his life support from being compromised. He didn't know how much longer it would be able to keep that up. The system required too much immediate power to be solar-powered.
Off towards the aft of the ship, he could see Krasinski. She was standing still, looking up at the ship, at the door and the wall, her back to him. "Krasinski," he muttered into the mic, "The hell are you doing?"
The flashing light in his helmet was accompanied now by a steady, loud beeping. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck," he grunted. The beeping was almost immediately replaced with a solid whine--his oxygen had run out, and his suits power was insufficient to filter his output into new air.
Vaughn dropped to his knees. His heart was pounding in his chest, his head was throbbing. He gasped for air but found nothing. He flailed on the ground, panicking, teeth grinding together, cursing silently, unable to form the sounds.
At the last moment, as his vision started to cloud up, he slapped the emergency release on the helmet, desperate. Warm, fresh air rushed in as he knocked the helmet itself loose, and he sucked down gulps of precious oxygen. Michaels had been right--he couldn't tell he wasn't back on Earth, breathing in hot summer air.
He took a moment to compose himself, panting, before stumbling to his feet. Krasinski was still standing there, staring up at the ship. In fact, she hadn't moved at all. "Krasinski?" he muttered, walking over to her. "Hey, Krasinski? Might as well take your helmet off," he said, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder and get her attention. She had, he thought, perhaps shut down her comms system to preserve power. That would explain why here suit wasn't suffocating her at the same time his did him.
When his hand came into contact with her E.E.S., she fell flat on her face, bonelessly sprawling out on the smooth grass. "Krasinski?" he whispered, shocked. Carefully, Vaughn reached down and touched her shoulder again, then grabbed it, rolling her over. "Helen?"
An empty helmet stared up at him. Inside he could see the flashing warning light, and just barely hear the warning whine his own suit had been making only minutes before. The seals were still intact--she hadn't removed the suit.
She just wasn't inside of it anymore.
***
Vaughn wasn't sure how many hours had passed. He'd stripped off his E.E.S. and loaded up a large pack with food and water from the ship's storage, and simply started walking. Despite the daze he found himself in, he'd had the presence of mind to grab a comms. device and a helmet-free headset, which he wore, along with the black, wetsuit like underlining of his suit.
He'd spent an extensive amount of time searching the wreckage for any sign of Helen Krasinski, but come up empty handed. He'd taken an hour to gather up Albert Michaels' remains and bury them. He'd slept, eaten, and slept again, and finally, when he was satisfied that he wasn't going to find her, he set off across the lawn.
Not long after he'd left he'd heard the twin beeps of a comms. broadcast opening, and stopped. Instead of shouting at the mic, this time, he listened, still. For a moment he thought he could hear breathing, and then the beeps again, and the broadcast ended. Vaughn took a deep breath and started walking again.
Eventually he found himself standing at the bottom of the hill topped by the tree. He furrowed his brown at that, thinking he had wandered in a different direction. But there it was, almost exactly as he remembered it. "Hrm," Vaughn muttered. He was sure he was seeing things; he climbed up the hill to get a better look.
Carved into the bark of the tree was his first name: JAMES.
"That's what I thought," he said, frowning. Vaughn took another deep breath and laid his pack on the ground at the foot of the tree. He sat down, leaned back against the wood, and closed his eyes.
***
Vaughn didn't sleep long; when he opened his eyes, he realized he was not alone. "Krasinski," he said, looking down at her from the top of the hill. She was nude, her long black hair was loose and unbound, moving slightly in the breeze a stark contrast against her fair skin.
"You'd prefer to call me Helen," she said.
Vaughn smiled. "We both know that's not your name. Do you have one?"
"No."
"What do you want?" Vaughn asked, standing up slowly.
It shrugged her bare shoulders, looked down at its body, and said, "You want this; you were dreaming of it while you slept. I watched." Its voice was Krasinski's, but at the same time different.
Vaughn chuckled. "She was a good looking woman; we'd been cooped up on The Extrapolator for months together. It's hard not to want that. Too late now, though."
"The other two hadn't slept, hadn't dreamed. It was harder to tell what they wanted."
Vaughn took a step towards the being. "She would have rather been home, golfing," he said. It was all starting to come together in his head.
"Hence the 'grass', manicured to perfection." The being posing as Krasinski took a step closer to Vaughn. "You were confused, worried. You wanted something you could understand."
"The tree." Vaughn turned to look up at it. "Did Michaels want to die horribly in a starship crash?" He turned back quickly, glaring.
"He was scared of what I was doing to my surface, and wanted to see his mother. I scared him, then--I didn't do a very good job emulating her. Then, terrified, he wanted to be home, in his mother's house, safe."
Vaughn frowned. "So you put her house house in the middle of a starship. Doesn't seem like the best course of action."
The being posing as Krasinski smiled. Vaughn couldn't remember if he'd ever actually seen the real Krasinski smile, but it looked pretty natural. "A complicated construct, aboard your complicated construct. I'm new at this, you see. I didn't know it would bring your starship crashing down. An unfortunate accident. I took your lander and its base and launcher so that you could not return --things were already spiraling out of my control."
"The tree is more complicated than the grass. You're learning" Piece by piece he was coming to an understanding. "What about Krasinski?"
It frowned at that. That was an expression he had seen the real Krasinski wear numerous times. "She didn't want to be here," the being said, a note of sadness in its voice. "No destination anymore, no desire to be home. She just didn't want to be here."
"And now she's not."
"And now she's not," the being repeated.
"Where is she?"
Again, bare shoulders moved up, then down.
"So you're just giving us what we want?" Vaughn stood only a couple scant feet from the being now. "I want a new starship, a way off this rock."
"I'm not a rock," the being retorted, glaring. "And no you don't."
"I don't?"
"You don't. Think about it." It smiled at him again. "You've been excited about being here since you landed. Of the three of you, only you, James Vaughn, didn't want to leave. You're curious, far more-so than the others."
Vaughn turned his back and climbed the hill. "Shit," he muttered. When he looked back over his shoulder, the being posing as Krasinski was gone. Vaughn sat down at the base of the tree again, and closed his eyes. When he woke up, he thought to himself, he'd start walking again.
