Th-e Glit-ch

Photo by Monica Garniga on Unsplash

12 midnight — Major Ahmad Orebi received a call to go outside and repair the relay’s component from the sensor RT-433104. It was a Coronel Duncan Owen specialty, but he was informed that the Coronel was already on service, working to update the gyroscopic drive, into the space’s station core. Inside his bedroom, Ahmed walked over to the mirror, hoping to feel less tired. He looked at himself and didn’t recognise that face. It was him, yet at the same time, it wasn’t. There was a heaviness in that gaze, something he couldn’t quite grasp. He finished getting dressed and went out.

1:00 am — Fully kitted out, Major Ahmed was on the outside of the spacecraft, carrying out the task he had been assigned. He paused for a moment to gaze at the vastness of space, something that had always filled him with a certain unease. He recalled the image he had seen in the mirror — those eyes, so familiar and yet so strange. He couldn’t remember having dreamt that night. For a moment, he thought he had seen a small object floating in the distant void. It looked like a… “I’m already imagining things.”

He was halfway through completing his mission when he was informed by the control tower of another problem that needed to be resolved urgently. Lieutenant-Major Lydzia Kramov informed him that Major Duncan eventually died in an accident caused by an overload in the gravitational support circuit. This drastically affected all life support systems. Now, it would take Major Ahmed to travel to zone 56–3, at the rear of the space station to try to repair the backup system. That system should start automatically but this was not happening. “Was the self-repair system not working for some reason?”. The communication was suffering from interference.

2:00 am — The time frame for Major Ahmed was narrow. The 64 space station crew members had approximately 120 minutes of life support since he was alerted about it. He returned to the ship’s access bridge, supplemented his oxygen supply, prepared a new tool kit for the new task and left. Time taken with this: 35 minutes. Time to reach zone 56–3: another 25 minutes.

3:00 am — Major Ahmed was very tired. He had trouble sleeping for weeks. But he didn’t report this to his superior. He thought about these things while opening the secondary life support terminal. He realized there were a lot of damaged elements and he maybe wasn’t the right person for the task. However, given the circumstances, nothing could be done about it. The expected repair time was 30 minutes. It would be possible to complete the task in time and everyone would be safe. If there was no other interference.

4:00 am — Major Ahmed accomplished his mission and was returning to the access door. Aboard the ‘Mother Space Station B-612’ everyone had been nervous. Some doubted that Ahmed would be able to repair the terminal in time. With life support systems damaged, it became increasingly difficult to breathe. In addition, it was necessary to contain two small fires near the site where Colonel Duncan died. For Ahmed the situation was very stressful. The communication system was failing occasionally. He didn’t even understand what Lieutenant-Major Lydzia was telling him anymore. In fact, he always had great difficulty understanding what she was saying, because of the accent.

5:00 am — Ahmed can’t get access inside the station. The door was sealed. After insisting several times on radio contact, he got an answer from Lieutenant-Major Lydzia who asked him about the life support repair. Inside the station, the emergency oxygen supply has been transferred to the main bridge and the control tower. The rest of the crew in the other sectors of the station had already died from asphyxiation. They themselves, in the command tower, had only a few minutes to live. Ahmed couldn’t stay calm. He reported that the damaged terminal had been successfully repaired. That terminal in zone 56–3.

6:00 am — With her voice almost disappearing, Lydzia makes one last transmission: <Ahmed, it wasn’t the 56–3 terminal; there was a glitch… the ship’s mind hesitated, failed to detect the problem until it was too late… we detected… a signal…>. Her whisper was trembling. There were noises and occasional shouts in the background. Ahmed couldn’t think straight. There was a silence like never before.

7:00 am — Tears drenched the inside of Ahmed’s visor. It was almost like rain. In the distance he could see Saturn. For weeks they’d been circling those beautiful rings. Now nothing else mattered. The landscape was beautiful and lonely on the outside of the station. His personal supply of oxygen came to an end. He turned off the magnetic boots and dropped himself into space.

8:00 am — Echos of silence in deep space.

<apparently> 9:00 am — Ahmed listened to Lydzia’s voice: <Ahmed, what do you see?>. He gets confused. It’s all very dark, but a dim light, coming from everywhere, is revealing the atmosphere. Ahmed can see his hands. He is wearing his astronaut costume. He’s in a zero gravity environment. A cubic room, no windows. <Ahmed, what do you remember?>. Ahmed remembers crying and falling into the dark space. He had lost all his friends and his oxygen supply had come to an end. Ahmed began to get anxious. He felt he might have a panic attack. He realized that he couldn’t feel his heart beating and there was no air in or out of his lungs either. Am I dead? He tried to shout.

<apparently> 10:00 am — Lydzia’s voice spoke: <Ahmed, you are in what could be called a ‘neuron-cognitive box’. Your body was found adrift in space, near the rings of Saturn. With quite a preserved structure. We were able to temporarily reactivate your synaptic connection system, and compile this pattern into our neural-quantum networks>. Ahmed inquired whether he was alive or dead. He called Lydzia. He asked how and why.

<apparently> 11:00 am — <Ahmed, our conception of life is distinct from yours. Your physical body is no longer functional. That is irreversible. However, you are here. This is real. The body you see, your astronaut outfit, the voice you think is Lydzia’s, these are all ghosts of the mind. You are also a representation of a powerful connection, a unique life form, which is no longer>.

While the voice kept explaining something about his current condition, Ahmed realized that sometimes his body became translucent and could see through his hands. The environment around him was also changing. He was falling into space again. <So Ahmed, we need you to return to your ship. We need specific information on what happened when ‘Mother Station B-612’ collapsed. We’ll use your mnemonic base to access what we need>. Ahmed was being pulled through space by an invisible force at an extraordinary speed. He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. If he had pupils, they would have dilated when he sighted the station. Big, portentous, intimidating. It was good as new, operational. Ahmed was floating above the ship’s hull. It was possible to see some of the crew through the command tower window.

<apparently> 12 noon — Ahmed was taken through the corridors of the ship, through walls, through people along the way. Suddenly, he stopped, standing near two colleagues who were chatting, standing very close together. Colonel Duncan and Greg Martin, head of the thermonuclear engineering team. Greg was intrigued by some problems that seemed to have arisen at the same time: <We have a failure in the gyroscope unit, in the station’s core; I am investigating some localised gravitational anomalies; we will need to replace some sensors on the exterior of the spacecraft, which have failed for no apparent reason; and some basic systems have been malfunctioning in ways I cannot explain.>. Duncan asked: <What do you put these events down to? Could they have a common cause? What does the ship’s mind tell us? Could it be cosmic rays, like the ones that caused us problems last year?>.

Ahmed was so close to the two that he could touch their faces. But when he tried, his hand went through them completely intangible. Duncan then gave Greg an order: “I’ll give priority to the problem of the nucleus, ask the command tower to summon someone capable of repairing the sensors in the external area and ask the on-board computer to run a diagnostic check on all the basic systems; it might not be a coincidence>. Greg: <All right then, I’ll ask them to alert Major Ahmed, he usually does well in these situations. The other cases I’ll check one by one>.

<apparently> 1:00 pm — Ahmed was confused, because how could he be watching this scene? If he didn’t live it before? He wasn’t even aware that this conversation had ever happened! But now this didn’t matter. Ahmed had to warn them of the coming danger, tell Duncan that he could die and that this would also result in the death of everyone on board.

But Ahmed had been dragged forcefully along walls crisscrossed with circuits and through the chaotic corridors that made up the north wing of the spacecraft. Ahmed cried out to his rescuers: “could you take it a bit easier? This is all too much for me! I’m completely lost”! But he couldn’t hear his own voice. Lydzia: <Ahmed we have little time and a lot of information to check. Your role is to help us gather the data we need>. Ahmed tried to answer, but was terrified when he saw right in front of him: himself, receiving a call at exactly midnight. <Major Ahmed, this is Captain Jethro Tull, Command Tower, we’ve received a request from the head of engineering Dr Greg Martin, requesting you to report to the RCT-334 exit dock, where you’ll receive further information. Please confirm that you have understood the instruction>. Ahmed responded: <Positive and operative, subject Major Ahmed Orebi to port RCT-334 and await further instructions. Estimated arrival at target, about 15 minutes, copy tower?>. Ahmed was surprised, and had some doubts about the outcome of that conversation. He couldn’t remember doing that.. Everything around him began to move again. He was being pulled to another location. He thought he was speaking: “Wait a moment, please, there’s something strange about this; it’s as if these memories aren’t mine — I mean, it doesn’t add up; I didn’t experience this; it’s all a bit of a mess”.

<apparently> 2:00 pm — This time Ahmed was sucked into a vortex of composite images, which faded away as he approached. Lydzia: <Ahmed, you mustn’t question what you’ve seen; you can’t change the past; you might get caught in a cognitive loop>. But he was, in fact, caught in a ghostly cycle. What to do?

Loop, time outside of time — Professor Theodore, quantum theory lecture: <With a collapsing black hole in hand, we can study its Hawking radiation. The quickest derivation arises by computing the expectation value of the matter stress tensor. Consider the stress tensor for right movers; before the hole forms they are in their vacuum>. Ahmed looks around for Meiying Ho. He had wanted to tell her how he felt about her for some time, but he was afraid.

That was a truly perceptive question, but Ahmed knew exactly how to refute that argument. He was defending his thesis and was fully prepared for the oral examination: <…we must consider the tunnel effect for nearby configurations with gravitational and matter perturbations, as I described earlier. This tunnel effect for nearby states occurs almost at the initial moment, which gives the scoring determinant at the linear level, or the complete functional integral if…>.

A high-ranking officer, strangely nameless and faceless: <Your name has been selected for the ‘Mother Space Station B-612’ mission. Congratulations. I’m sure this will be a great opportunity for you, Ahmed>. Wait, have I been through this before?

A fellow crew member, a very close friend (why can’t I remember his name?): you really ought to take part in the psychokinesis sessions — what’s the point of isolating yourself? After all, aren’t we already in deep space? Look around you — there’s no shortage of solitude here! Lydzia: <Ahmed, the terminal… you should have repaired a component… focus>. Who is Lydzia? I’m going to meet a woman called Lydzia; she’ll be my line manager. I think I’ll get on well with her. I’ll be meeting her soon. And then watch her die? I’m floating in the dark of space; I’m dead, but my brain is still thinking. Now I remember.

Breaking the Loop, time beyond time — Images around forming a whole, almost diffuse. No, now more coherent. No, still fragmented, gathering together, like the dance of bacteria. A voice. Lydzia: <Ahmed, you must…>. Lydzia: <Ahmed, you…>. Lydzia: <Ahmed…>. I can’t do it; I can’t bear the pain. Perhaps this pain shouldn’t exist. Perhaps it isn’t pain. Perhaps it’s fear. Lydzia: <Ahmed, come back…>.

In the corridors of the vast spacecraft, he drifted like a ghost, unnoticed by anyone. He felt a shiver run down his spine when he saw himself, out there, standing in front of the airlock. It was there that he received the saddest news of his life. But this time, the door opened. And that Ahmed walked in.

Everything around him was screaming; image fragments assembling themselves, as if in a game? He now saw it as a distant memory. The scene on the bridge, the contrasting emotions — everyone was mourning Colonel Duncan’s death and expressing gratitude that the life support system was working again. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

All around him, the fragments danced once more: a wormhole, millions of stars, tiny. Behind the bedroom mirror, he saw himself approaching. There was no need to say anything more, for the equation was drawing to a close. Eye to eye, he saw.

An untold time — Ahmed was facing himself. Floating in space. Dead. But not as dead as he had previously thought. Merely removed from life. He had no ability to touch, nor any way of speaking; his thoughts moved microscopic particles, new molecules, quantum culture. The fabric of reality around him seemed tangible.

“My cosmic experience,” he thought. “I remember what happened.” A black hole, the ancient sea routes, the electrochemical signal emitted by his amygdala, and the day of his conception. As he gazed into the eye of the black hole, he saw what had really happened to the ‘Mother Station B-612’. It was no coincidence; it had always been there, ever-present, “and we don’t even realize, these endless horizons…”.

He turned to observe Saturn’s rings. He remembered his mother, stroking his hair. He remembered dreams and nightmares. He had a hope, beyond hope.

Without hesitation, he let himself fall into infinity.