We ate and slept in Bay 13. The captain, when he was still around, ate at the front of the cafeteria, at a table all to himself. None of us could match the captain’s coldness. That’s why he was the captain, after all.
After the captain went missing, few of us left Bay 13. Nobody had commanded us to stay, but it felt like the right thing to do. Rumor had it that he’d last been seen two weeks ago, but it was impossible to say for sure. I thought he’d been gone for a long time, longer than anyone was willing to admit. We’d been anchored in deep space for at least three weeks, maybe longer. The captain had a presence that you could feel, and I hadn’t felt it in quite a while.
Some people couldn’t handle being anchored. The stillness was hard on busybodies. Personally, I didn’t mind it, but when your job was put on hold, it was easy to start thinking about the bigger picture. Nobody but the captain knew what we were transporting.
A lot of us just sat in the cafeteria from the moment we woke up until the moment we went back to sleep. It wasn't a good place to relax. The lights were clinical. The shadows were dark and sharp. Every once in a while, if you’d been sitting for too long, the lights started to feel hostile, like someone was holding a magnifying glass to the back of your head, peering into your brain, highlighting everything you’d rather forget. When you saw someone start to claw at their scalp or grip the formica table in front of them like it was about to float away, you could assume that the light had begun to take its toll.
Thankfully, given my position on the ship, I got my own room. Most of Bay 13 slept in a long hallway lined with bunk beds. The different wings treated the sleeping arrangements in various ways—or so I’d heard. Most of us didn’t have access to other parts of the ship. Bay 13 was organized by department. Even in the cafeteria, most people kept to their co-workers. When we first anchored, I’d spent a lot of time alone, but eventually the isolation got to be just as bad as the cafeteria.
On the day that the botanists approached me, there’d been three breakdowns in the cafeteria. The remedy was straightforward—sedation—and I was one of two people in Bay 13 who had access to the sedatives. There were only two psychologists on the ship, and my partner had spent the past week in deep meditation, rarely leaving his room. We didn’t talk much to begin with. I hadn’t seen him in days.
I was explicitly instructed not to tell anyone about my lack of credentials. On Earth, I was not a doctor. I hadn’t even finished high school. The placement tests had noted that I had an uncanny aptitude for the ship psychologist position, and the higher-ups never questioned the computer. So, I became a doctor, one eternally suspicious that my partner might similarly lack the proper credentials.
The botanists were one of the more antisocial groups. The two who approached my table traded glances back and forth until the tall, spindly one started to talk.
“Charleston’s been missing. We think he’s in the Recreation Room.”
“Have you told your unit leader?”
“I am the unit leader.”
“Have you looked for him?”
“Yes.”
“In the Recreation Room?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He’d been talking a lot about the scenario he’d been working on. It was starting to scare some of the other botanists.”
“Why?”
“He’s become obsessive.”
“Okay.”
“Will you look for him?”
“Yes.”
“He hasn’t slept in his bunk for the past three days.”
“Understood, thanks.”
The unit leader had let something get out of control, and now he was calling me in to clean it up. Intense mental distress wasn’t uncommon, especially in circumstances like these. There’s no psych evaluation on Earth or anywhere else that can prepare you for the stillness. A lot of people with latent neuroses that—sans excessive psychedelic use—would have lain dormant were suddenly faced with aspects of themselves that they could hardly understand. My job was to help them work through these episodes, but most of the time the captain forbade these slower, long-term solutions. Instead, I’d pump them full of mood stabilizers until we got back to Earth. Then, it was someone else's problem.
Most of Bay 13 didn’t have time to visit the Recreation Room. I’d been inside only once, during my onboarding. On occasion, someone would get sucked in a little too deep, to the point that it was hindering their workplace responsibilities, and the captain would have to restrict their access. I’d been called in during one of these instances. One of the captain’s assistants had created something immensely distressing, but he refused to speak about it. When he came to our sessions, he’d talk in circles, slowly outlining the void that he’d created. Despite my gentle prodding, he never seemed to get any closer to vocalizing what he’d prompted the Room to display.
He eventually stopped attending our sessions, and I received a memo from HR stating that his work performance had returned to normal. A month later, he died in his sleep.
The Recreation Room was in the oldest sector of Bay 13. The walkway hadn’t yet been updated and still displayed the formica-infused pastiche of a decade prior. I never liked walking in these areas. The janitors didn’t bother to clean them fully, and there was a stillness that made it feel as if the air wasn’t circulating properly.
The anteroom before the Recreation Room had a small window to view the on-going simulation. Before talking over the microphone, I watched Charleston act in the environment he’d created. The scene was remarkably subdued. He sat at the head of a dinner table. A woman in a summer dress was to his right, a boy in a collared shirt to his left. At a glance, Charleston looked well-put-together for someone who’d suddenly deserted his job and disappeared into the Recreation Room. He wore a crisp, Oxford shirt and smiled at what I assumed were his wife and son as if it was the most natural thing in the world. There were a few cracks in the facade. He had noticeable stubble and a slight twitch in his left eye. Occasionally, he’d grip the table until his fingernails turned white for no discernible reason. I thought that he seemed to be in better shape than a lot of others on the ship.
The woman whom I assumed to be Charleston’s wife spoke softly to her son about the rest of the day’s activities. After the boy’s soccer game, they were supposed to go out for ice cream. Charleston himself took no part in the conversation, focusing instead on his plate, which seemed to never deplete no matter how much he shoveled into his mouth. Eventually, Charleston’s wife and son stopped speaking.
Charleston’s wife watched him out of the corner of her eye.
I had the feeling that I was in over my head.
I decided to intrude on the scene and spoke into the mic beneath the window.
“Hello, Charleston. This is Dr. Conway, one of the crew psychologists for Bay 13. Do you have time to chat?”
I had no idea if Charleston’s family could hear me or if my speech had any impact on the simulation. Nobody seemed to register that I’d spoken. I tried again:
“Charleston, this is Dr. Conway. Can you hear me?”
The woman’s eyes darted toward Charleston and, almost imperceptibly, a frown tugged at the corners of her lips. She caught her reaction and instead smiled at her husband.
“Honey, I think someone’s knocking at the door.”
“I’ll go check.”
Charleston’s body and voice didn’t match. He was lanky, nearly emaciated, but his voice was deep and gravely. He stood without a sound and exited the room. The scene changed in an instant. The transition was seamless, as if I’d always been there, staring at the front door, waiting to be let inside. Charleston spoke to me directly:
“Come in. We’ll talk in the kitchen.”
The door was slightly ajar. I hadn’t realized it before, and I didn’t know if Charleston had propped it open or if it’d been that way the entire time. It slid open silently. Charleston spoke to me with his back turned.
“You understand why I don’t want to see outside.”
“No.”
“It’s hell out there. Nothing makes sense.”
“The ship has been anchored for a while now. It’s normal to feel that way.”
“Anchored for a while. A long, long while.”
“Yes.”
We stood in the pale light of Charleston’s foyer. Face-to-face, he looked much worse. In the soft glow from the door, his skin took on a nearly translucent sheen, as if he was halfway between life and death.
“Before we talk further, I need to confirm your name and position on the ship.”
“John Charleston. Horticulturist.”
“And you’ve been using the Recreation Room for how long?”
“Six months.”
He spoke in an unceasing monotone. There was no hesitation in the obviously false declaration that he’d been in his manufactured reality for six months.
“Charleston, is there anywhere we could sit and talk?”
“Sure. Right this way.”
Charleston would not look me in the eye. Though he seemed to be wasting away, he maintained a rigid posture and exuded a certain confidence, a commonality of those with jobs important to the ship’s functioning. He led me through a short hallway, its walls lined with family photos, to the kitchen I’d just seen. He gestured to a seat beside himself and resumed his post at the head of the table.
“There’s nowhere more private we could talk?”
He shook his head.
“Honey, I didn’t know you called an exterminator?”
His wife smiled at me. I nodded back.
“Your appearance means nothing to them. They’ll excuse it and forget that this even happened as soon as you leave.”
“You know, I did notice some bugs in the basement. We’ve been meaning to have the foundation sprayed.”
The boy seemed to whisper to himself. I strained to hear, but his voice was inaudible. It dawned on me that I had no idea how this world functioned. The computer operated on some sort of baseline logic. There were things that could and could not be simulated, but everything else relied on Charleston’s prompting. He seemed undisturbed by his son’s whispering.
I addressed Charleston’s wife directly:
“I’ll take a look at the basement.”
She seemed happy with that and began collecting the dishes.
“You can waste your time talking to them if you please, but as soon as you leave here, it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”
“Charleston, your team is worried about you. They say you’ve been in here for quite some time.”
“That’s correct. Have you come to throw me in the brig? You know I won’t last long in my current state.”
“I have no connection to the brig, but I imagine, if you stay here much longer, the upper-echelon of ship command will catch wind and forcibly remove you.”
“So you mean to tell me that everything is still functioning normally out there? That everybody’s still blind to the fires raging just out of view?”
“Yes, the ship is still anchored.”
“And the captain hasn’t been found?”
For a split second, he seemed to smile. I wasn’t sure if I’d only imagined it. He gripped the table with a force that caused it to creak.
“No.”
We’d only just started and it already seemed like we were flying off course. He was controlling the flow of the conversation, and I was being tugged along.
“You know, the captain was here only yesterday?”
“Is that right?”
“Just like you, he watched for a while before coming inside to talk. I used to work with him closely. He felt my absence before anyone else. We had an understanding. He’d turn a blind eye to my more controversial methods, and I’d supply him with what he needed.”
“The captain hasn’t been seen in two weeks.”
Charleston didn’t seem surprised.
“Maybe by you. He comes here frequently. We talk. He’s in a rough spot. You know this ship is in big trouble with the Federation?”
He was beginning to ramble, and I decided it was best to not dig too far into the details.
“Charleston, if I might ask, who are these people?”
I gestured to the boy and the woman.
“They’re my family.”
“Your family from Earth?”
“No. That would be impossible.”
“From what I can see, they align pretty closely with the wife and child listed in your file.”
“Sure, but they’re not the same. They can’t be the same.”
The boy stared at me. Charleston smiled.
“You can’t expect the simulation to always work perfectly. It’s hard for the computer to handle all of the details that I’ve included.”
The boy nervously played with the tablecloth before pointing at my coveralls. I hadn’t even noticed that my clothes had changed.
“You’re here to kill bugs?”
“Yes.”
“I hate bugs. I’m scared of them.”
“We don’t like bugs, do we?” Charleston asked.
“No.”
The boy’s eyes continually darted toward his father, but his body remained still.
“You’ve been here for a while, Charleston. What is it about this scenario that’s so compelling?”
“Well, I’m not always here. Sometimes it changes and I’m at a ballet recital or a baseball game. Or I’m in my bedroom, making love to my wife.”
“That works here?”
“No. At least, not in the way that you’d expect. We make do, though.”
“And how often—would you say—do you have sex?”
“Often enough. We’re a healthy, young couple after all.”
Both his wife and son smiled at me.
He seemed certain that he’d been here for more than just a few days. Unless the botanists had been fooling me, this simply wasn’t true.
Charleston’s wife stopped in place. A vein throbbed violently in her neck. She leaned over the table toward her husband and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She slammed her hand flat and grabbed at the table cloth. I felt that I no longer existed in the scene. It was like I was back in the anteroom, viewing from a distance. Her chair fell to the ground as she stumbled backward and planted her back against the wall.
The boy was trembling. He stared at Charleston, waiting.
“The tone of the simulation has shifted, Charleston. Does this happen often?”
“The computer isn’t perfect. It takes liberties at times, especially when the captain is about to arrive.”
“Does that disturb you?”
“They know that there’s reason to be scared of me. There’s no programming that out.”
“And why should they be scared of you?”
Charleston thought for a long while.
“The same reason that you’re scared of the captain. The same reason that—despite almost unanimously being scared of the captain—the whole ship, for some reason, is more terrified now that he’s gone.”
I’d begun to sweat.
I got the feeling that Charleston didn’t quite know what was going on here, but the computer did. The tone of the simulation had shifted radically without ever outwardly revealing that anything was wrong. The computer knew something that it was attempting to reveal.
Charleston’s wife now bustled between rooms, carrying the same plate back and forth. She’d set it on the table, disappear for a period, return, and take it back with her. His son had started whispering to himself again.
“You seem to know something about the captain, Charleston. Why don’t we talk about him for a bit.”
“Sure, let’s go somewhere else, first, though.”
He led me through the kitchen. His wife washed clean dishes in front of a window with a frilly lace curtain overlooking the backyard. The fence was too tall to see past. It was all by design. The computer, I assumed, could only generate so much at once.
Next to the L-shaped counter was a door. Charleston opened it and beckoned me forward. I had to duck to avoid hitting my head. We faded into another scene, a dingy cement room. The drain in the center of the floor was coated with rust. A thin layer of water pulsed out of the grate.
“This is where the captain arrives.”
There was nothing in the room but the grate and a metal chair seated in the corner.
“What does he do when he arrives?”
“Lately, he just paces the perimeter of the room and writes in a notebook.”
“It’s not the real captain, though. It’s only the computer's approximation. You did prompt him into existence, right?”
Charleston stood over the grate and straightened his back.
“What you’ll come to realize is that it doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”
Footsteps echoed above. The door creaked as it opened.
I was ready to see the computer’s vulgar approximation of the captain. Charleston turned to face the staircase, and I stepped backward toward the chair.
The man who emerged from the stairs was indistinguishable from the captain. He wore the top brass uniform and his face was just as gaunt as I’d remembered it. Just as Charleston had said, the captain immediately began walking the perimeter of the room, stopping intermittently to scribble something onto a small notebook. Occasionally, he’d stop and nod at Charleston. He didn’t seem to notice me at all.
“How long does this last?”
“Sometimes, hours. Sometimes, only minutes.”
“What’s in the notebook?”
“He’s trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s trying to figure out what’s going on on the ship.”
“I see.”
The longer the captain walked, the more violent his writing became. During one of these episodes, when the paper seemed on the verge of tearing, he suddenly ripped the sheet from the notebook and handed it to Charleston. He traced the paper with his finger, ending at the bottom. I watched as his face tightened. He let his arm drop to his side.
“What does it say?”
“It’s worse that we thought.”
“How so?"
“We’ve been here for much longer than we thought.”
“Anchored?”
“Yes.”
“What does it say?”
“By the lowest possible estimate, we’ve been stuck here for two years.”
Charleston smiled as tears formed in his eyes.
“We’ve been left to die.”
The captain returned to pacing. I thought that it’d been a mistake to come down here.
“Charleston, why don’t we have a chat outside the Recreation Room.”
A door suddenly appeared in the cement wall next to the chair.
“You don’t understand. It’s crazier out there than it is in here.”
I considered physically restraining him. He was emaciated. It would’ve been easy.
“You think I’m crazy, right? Well, tell me this—what day is it today?”
“Monday.”
“Do you remember Saturday or Sunday? When’s the last time you can remember it being the weekend?”
Charleston clutched his fists as his sides and began pacing alongside the captain.
“When’s the last time you saw the captain on the outside?”
I was beginning to lose my patience. In the back of my mind, I knew he was right. I couldn’t remember Saturday or Sunday. It wasn’t like they were hazy in my memory; it was like they didn’t exist.
“You understand now—we’re somewhere else. Somewhere in-between. The Federation left us here.”
I didn’t quite understand.
The captain suddenly turned to me and opened his mouth. Just like Charleston’s wife, nothing came out. I felt myself begin to panic just like the ones I’d sedated.
“You have to stop this.”
“It’s already stopped.”
The captain pivoted on his heels and returned the way he’d come.
“You should leave now. Tell everyone what’s happened. I tried to explain it to the botanists, but they didn’t believe me.”
Charleston beckoned toward the door. I balled my hands into fists to stop them from shaking.
“How did you get the computer to generate all of this? Do you actually know where the captain’s been?”
He shook his head and began guiding me to the door.
“The computer has been working hard to figure out where we’ve been for the past two years. It’s only just now beginning to figure it out.”
I found myself turning the doorknob without thinking, and then I was back in the anteroom. Through the viewing window, I watched as Charleston returned to the kitchen. He smiled at his wife and son, and they smiled back. Before starting to eat, he folded his hands as if to pray and looked down the table. He stared at nothing.
“You have to understand, there never was a captain.”
His wife and son nodded.
I walked back to the cafeteria, trying to remember what had occurred last week, or the week prior. I lied to myself.
My fellow psychologist sat at our table. His eyes were closed. He held his hands so that his fingertips were just barely touching. His eyebrows twitched as I sat down. I scanned the cafeteria. Nothing had changed. Dr. Grant slowly opened his eyes and extended his limbs as if it was mere chance that he’d ended his meditation right as I sat down.
“You’ve been gone for quite a while.”
“Not that long. Only a day.”
He seemed confident in his answer.
“I’ve started to lose count of the days up here.”
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that anchoring can have that effect.”
“Of course.”
He gripped the table to stop his hands from shaking.
“The days feel like they’ve started to blend together.”
“It’s important that we keep track of tomorrow.”
Dr. Grant stood as someone began to shriek in the corner of the cafeteria. He had a sedative patch already in hand.
