Chronicle of Nautilus

Chapter 28: The Lost Woman

Claire walked the empty hallways of the orphanage. She checked the rooms, closing her left eye from time to time, comparing the actual map of the building with the one stored in the database. Soon this place would become prison and she needed to evaluate the building condition and think of the changes that will need to be made.

Anywhere she went she could see dust dancing in the sunlight, hear an echo of her steps, breaking the dead silence.

The layout of the structure was complex for seemingly no obvious reason, a fault of an architect perhaps, many hallways looked identical and signs on the doors were ripped off or misleading. She remembered the infinite times she had got lost in here during her childhood.

The building had five floors and she was checking only the second one this time. There were at least two hundred different rooms on one floor - classrooms, living quarters, kitchens and playing rooms.

The work she did here was relaxing, a good break from all the fuzz. Claire was no longer sure if she wanted to continue working on the field. A strong and cold wind was blowing these days and she had become only a small fir trying to keep her ground. Her skills were enough to catch murderers and thieves, but the threat Tom fought was too tough for her to handle. And to be frank, she had doubts if the side she was on was the right one. After the Outsider got into her head, he projected many things, and she just knew that they were not fiction, the things she saw - all the death, pain and suffering.

We could just keep on going without harming the poor creatures couldn’t we? She thought, We could live in this ship forever or at least for very very long time. After all it was said that that the ship and the city inside are self-sustainable forever.

She breathed in and stopped lying to herself. Even the school children knew that infinite self-sustenance could not exist. The system of the ship was similar to any system of perpetual motion – the larger and more complex the system was, the longer it went, but eventually it always stopped. If this ship was to drift for tens thousands of years a day would come when it would break and fail, no matter how hard the people inside tried to maintain it.

What should she do after the prison here is done? Should she take a break and go on vacation, take month in a spa perhaps? Would she be able to have a moment of rest, with the disturbing memories that were never going to leave her? The graphical memory she had was her gift and curse. If she was more similar to Tom – a selfless tool made to serve the mission till the end of his days without any possible choice to stray away from the path, it would be her gift, but for a civilian, one day she thought of becoming, it was a curse.

She envied the computers. They could store all the information in catalogs and bring it out when needed. She did not possess such luxury. Her memories could come out of nowhere at any moment. She could hardly master any control over them.

As she stepped down the stairs and walked towards the exit she noticed an old lady with metallic eyes and slightly humped back, sitting by the exit. The woman greeted her, “Hi, Claire, it’s been a while.” She stood up.

“A while indeed, mother.”

“How have you been dear?” Old nurse stared at her with the dead eyes, a displeasing feeling filled Claire.  The woman in front of her was her caring social worker and teacher during the childhood. She shaped Claire into what she had become. The woman always was strong and energetic, had a strong character. Her crippled and tired posture was slightly shocking

“Oh I’m fine. Everything keeps getting better every day.” She lied and turned her sight to the ground, so that the eyes would not betray her.

“Does it? How’s the work with the security?”

“Sometimes it’s boring, but most of the time it’s fun. Have you heard about what we are going to do with the building?”

“Yes I did. I can’t say that I approve of this. Sentimentalities, you know, but I feel that it will be for the best, this place is way too large for us.” She coughed, sat down and coughed a few times more, each time stronger than the previous.

“How are you doing?” Claire asked worriedly.

“I’m doing fine, the age, you know, the age gets all of us.” She paused. “You are a kind woman, Claire. I will instruct them to contact you after my death.”

“What for?” Claire asked and attempted to give their conversation a lighter tone, “Don’t lie, you are going to live longer than me, the age for you is just an illusion.” She smiled.

The woman coughed again and said. “You know how to organize things, know how to take care of people, and the children of mine need to be taken good care of.”

“Oh… I’m sorry, but…”

“I know you will say yes when the time comes.”

Claire did not reply.

The old lady continued with a warm smile. “You’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

“I will come someday soon and we can talk more about this.” Claire looked for minute at her mentor and moved slowly towards the exit.

“Of course we can, of course, child.” The lady stared forward with her empty eyes without twitching or following Claire with her eyes.

“It was nice meeting you.” Claire said.

“Yes, a pleasure, a pleasure.”

She left the building and walked to the direction of her home to have a dinner before getting back to work. Different memories of her childhood emerged from the past. For a moment she was back in the school, eating breakfast and exchanging laughs with her friends. Then she was in the corridors during her pre-school years, chasing a small wildly bouncing ball with a boy, whose name she could not remember. And then she was in her room, lying on the bed, reading colorful stories projected from a humble handheld holo-computer to the ceiling. What has become of my friends now? she wondered.

And as if a lightning had struck her from a clear sky, the images changed. She was suddenly in another place, a place she had only been once to and never wanted to return again. The images she perceived now were so vivid that she was not sure if she was still walking or had she already fainted.

She was slowly moving, crouching through beautiful greenery, watching at the light blue sky. This was not Earth. This was a place far far away. She could feel the warm sun on her cheeks, the grass tingling her feet, the warm breeze blasting on her cold face. She knew it was morning and a beautiful one, the first morning of a long summer. A massive moon was emerging out of the horizon. She turned downwards and could see a steep slope. She figured, she was crawling at the top of a mountain. As she looked down the slope she noticed a large primitive city standing in the middle of the valley below. She watched as weird two legged bug like creatures were going about their daily business.

And then the moment froze. She knew what was about to happen, she tried to close her eyes, but couldn’t.

The vision continued. Beams of light struck the earth from the sky, a rain of fire engulfed the valley. The air got cooler and cooler until it became unbearable. She found it harder and harder to breathe. She looked up, and there it was, Nautilus – the eight legged winged death in the sky, an object, only a little smaller than the moon in the horizon. She tried to gasp for air, but to no avail. As her eyes closed she found herself back in the city, standing frozen, looking at a single point far away.

“To hell with this!” She said silently and started comforting herself, If the reconditioning devices were still functioning I would go and wipe my head clean, poor little Claire, why does she always get into trouble? Why does the alien hate me so much to put it into my head?

She mumbled a few more words rushed forward. The faster she moved the emptier her head became. She was running before she noticed it.