Claustrophobia

It was a tight pod with stale air and many nooks and crannies. All she saw around her was Kevlar and thermal glass. Something was off. Confined in a capsule twenty times her size, she felt queasy. And her body… what even was it? She spent long staring at her limbs, trying to get reacquainted; playing with a tag on her wrist: J.K. There wasn’t much else to do.

There was no color. None at all. Walls were grey and seemed to come at her. The windshield offered view of a big black hole dotted with scintillating bits. Such deafening nothingness. She was trapped, and outside, that infinite night.

Sensations and observation were forced inwards, with the stimuli around her so scarce. Like every time she had a thought it felt like uncharted brain territory, and it sparked joy.

What was she? She moved, flipped back, in the weightless air. Like a ballerina underwater. It was fun. But not enlightening. Minutes, hours passed. She took to technical tasks to keep the craft navigating. Some tasks came naturally, etched in her. Instincts. Some things puzzled her and triggered a moment of reflection, head tilted to one side. The worse was reflecting about reflection. She observed herself thinking, and this was different to other times when she did things without thinking, like a force came through her. That was more fun, but she quickly understood the former probably yielded more power. Solving problems to keep moving through space, and this is what she felt internally as a ticking clock. A sense of Time.

Like the command panel on the capsule. Hundreds of prompts, buttons and dials. She at once knew and didn’t, how to use them. Their beeping language made a kind of strange music. The only escape from this confinement was the heat shield and windows, touching them, eyeballs against glass. Wondering what else was there.

She started a diary. It provided a sense of purpose. Recording events of every 18-hour cycle of doing things round the craft, or even outside of it in the even worse claustrophobia of the space suit, life hanging by a thread. Face drowning in the moisture of her own breath against the costume. It was hostile out there, which made her appreciate the joyless safety of the pod upon re-entry.

It had been many of these 18–hour cycles followed by rest. She’d usually swim in the air towards a collapsible bed and dream of colored stuff through her hypnagogic sleep. Stuff she didn’t recognise but felt wonderful. It had been long, and she started to learn she could do great things. Her hands could sense so much, her mind produced such an overflowing architecture of thoughts. She felt her powers grow each day, it was a vector of delight she loved riding to avoid the vector of hopelessness and suffocation that was also a constant, albeit pushed down to the bottom of her consciousness. No time for sadness, she had to make it. Out of here, somewhere. Whatever somewhere was.

One time, end of work, she discovered someone else’s diary onboard: “Logs by H.I.”. Fully by accident. It was a great discovery. She read pages and pages with thirst, spanning back many many sleep cycles. The life of her predecessor on the ship, exciting, colorful. Cats. Fresh green things. Life. All sorts of things she didn’t recognise but sounded like bliss.

She read until she fell asleep at the station, limbs and hair floating about the place.

Since then she couldn’t wait to finish work to read more, end of every waking cycle. She found a kindred soul. What happened to it? The stories got worse. As her own physical and mental power were growing, H.I. was disintegrating. Sad. Overridden with loneliness. Talking about a “mission”, cursing the day she overtook it. She worked out the mission had a destination, an end: a star to reach, space outside her to conquer with color. H.I. left pictures: they looked like herself, a bit, but also like a primitive version. It endeared her and also inspired pity. That poor person was so much weaker, shorter, inadequate for life onboard.

And then she reached the end of the diary:

“Over soon. The Upgrade will mean I die. I am leaving this wealth of data and tools to my Upgrade. Take care. I hope you make it. You’re probably the last left. It’s been a hell of a journey and a lot of hope is pinned on you, girl. Bye bye.”

She was stunned. Her wristband clicked. She couldn’t believe it. But as she was trying to process this, her own disintegration began. Although she was the sole inhabitant of her little universe, its center—she learned she was merely one of many avatars. The vector of hope started to wither, life force flickering less each unit of time. Why bother to hope, when she wasn’t an end? When she was just here to upgrade herself? Replaced?

It took ages, but in the end J.K. was also spent. Lifelessly floating through the pod.

The board computer flickered and words appeared on the screen, beeping ominously one by one:

“ For Linden, Mara.

Hi, L.M. Your tests results are negative. Your Covid vaccine appointment is set August 18, 2021”.