The Last Contact - Part #4/4
Observe the protocol!
This is the last episode in the 4-part dystopian sci-fi(ey) serial.
» Backstory and a curious behind-the-scene
» New to the story? Start with Part #1
PREVIOUSLY:
Mūrkha, along the delegation of distinguished scholars is driven to inspect the sky artifact. Using his knowledge of ancient English, he’s able to decipher the message that eluded previous researchers and gain entry to the capsule, which blasts off into space, incinerating scholars left outside. Unable to contain excitement, fear, and several G-worth of pressure, Mūrkha passes out.
#4: The Contact
As he wakes up, a different kind of panic grips Mūrkha—his weightless body indicates that he’s submerged in water.
“Breath!” Says a different voice. A woman!
Mouth still shut, Mūrkha snaps his eyes open to a strange figure, leaning curiously over him. She too seems to be floating in the invisible liquid, yet totally unconcerned about being unable to inhale.
“It’s OK. Breath.” She repeats.
Mūrkha’s constrained lungs complain, shuddering his body with convulsions. Realizing there’s no other way, he takes a small sip of air, then another, then he’s breathing, a bewilderment in his eyes.
“There you go.” Smiles the woman, pushing off to float a bit further.
Tall and slender willowy figure, impossibly thin arms and legs, pale, almost translucent skin—Mūrkha’s scientist brain kicks in, conditioned to assess everything and everyone. The strangeness of the body, unlike any he has seen before, is paled before the soft-featured face and its two huge eyes, almost entirely taken up by pitch-black pupils.
Her choice of wardrobe, or rather lack of, is quite odd for the representational encounter. The upper torso is covered by a sleeveless shirt, held only by two narrow ribbons slung over the shoulders. The fabric of the skin-tight garment is thin with the only decoration provided by two bumps of her nipples.
The waist down part of the body is covered even less. The black, form-fitting underpants don’t even reach her knees, leaving most of her legs exposed. And she’s barefoot—not appropriate for an envoy at all.
The dress code. The Protocol! Observe the Manual!
“What… status… you… are?” He asks, even as he realizes the redundancy of the question—the attire betrays extreme poverty. Not that he would be able to act out instructions in his current situation, even if she had a worthy title.
“What? Dude, you’re not making sense.” Her barely visible traces of eyebrows tilt into a puzzled look. “You can call me Rita, though.”
“Mūrkha.” He says, trying to lift his hand, only now discovering he’s tied to a wall. “Why you tie me?”
“I had to strap you in, so you don’t fly away.” She reaches out and pushes off the wall gently, spinning into a graceful triple somersault as a demonstration. “It takes practice, you know. Sec, let me unhook you.”
Rita kicks off the wall, aiming directly at Mūrkha, stopping herself inches from him by bumping her outstretched hands on the wall on both sides of his shoulders. She pulls on the straps that hold the man in place one by one, unfastening them with a sharp teary sound.
Free of the constraints, Mūrkha starts to drift away from the wall, desperately flailing his arms for something to grab onto, failing.
“Gotcha!” Rita catches the panicking professor, having expertly manoeuvred herself into an intercept course, sending the two embraced creatures into a barely perceptible spin.
“You envoy for your people?” Whispers Mūrkha, inches from the woman’s ear.
“Not really.” She breathes a response. “Are you?”
“Not really.” As he murmurs a response, a strange new feeling rises from deep within. He was never important enough to have a proper wife assigned to him, and crunching books in the basements hardly ever presents the opportunity for an off-the-books amorous encounter.
Now, floating in the arms of this strange human being, he feels his pulse quicken and heat building up at the base of his stomach. As Rita looks up, for the first time in his life, Mūrkha sees what he never expected to see in a woman’s eyes—desire.
“It’s ok.” She coos, unwrapping his awkward garment and sliding out of her own at the same time.
***
“Who are you?” Asks Mūrkha, much later, wrapped in a warm, cozy cuddle inside Rita’s sleeping sleeve. “Where are you from?”
“Mars. Things went from bad to very shitty real fast there, when you guys nuked yourself into oblivion and stopped sending us supplies. We managed, barely, but a hundred thousand years later, life’s still pretty tough. Terraforming projects failed and were abandoned. We still live in the domes. Still eat that same hydroponic crap. And still have to work our asses off for every drop of water. Millenia of research gave a rudimentary spaceflight, but the ‘Recolonize Earth’ efforts were scrapped. ‘Too many problems here at home to pursue these childish dreams’ they said. I almost went out of the airlock in nothing but my underwear when they announced the shuttering of the last of the interplanetary program I happened to work for. Then I took the train to the airport, clubbed the night watchmen with a wrench, and just fucking highjacked this spaceship, thinking I’d take my chances on Earth having gotten its shit together.” Rita throws her palms in a ta-da motion.
“Mars? The planet?” He asks, eyes wide.
“Yes, silly. The planet.” She says, her head cozily back on Mūrkha’s chest. “Anyway, what have you been up to in the last hundred millennia or so? Do you think I could make a living here? The pod can make a couple more trips down there.”
“No. You’re not of status. And if you’re not, you’re a slave. I don’t think we have wars, but we don’t have peace, either. You cannot marry, cannot have children, cannot learn, cannot do science, unless some fat official approves it, and they almost never do.” Mūrkha explains in a grave voice. “I don’t want to go back there. Can you take me to Mars?”
“No, silly.” Rita shakes her head. “No fuel to go back, and I wouldn’t even if there was. It’s a one-way trip for me.”
“Then we stay here, forever. They can’t reach us here!” Exclaims Mūrkha excitedly.
“Mmmm, that sounds good, but unfortunately not possible.” She frowns. “There’s plenty of solar energy, and we can recycle air indefinitely, but in this crammed space we’ll drive each other crazy even before we run out of food.”
Rita watches how fire drains from the man’s eyes. The hope that somehow was rekindled in the last few hours, is receding, replaced with the same defeated look he arrived in her life with.
“There might be one other option for us.” She says.
***
A blinking timer ticks away the last seconds of a thousand-year countdown, triggering the rejuvenation procedure. Inside a crammed space of the cryosleep chamber, Rita sluggishly opens her eyes. Slowly, Mūrkha’s sleeping face comes into focus. He’s smiling.
“Wake up, silly.”
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