Jan 8, 2017
For our first episode of 2017, we go into…space! An experimental stretch for us, and there are times where you can almost hear us reaching for words to describe things we're not familiar with. Hope you enjoy it!
Music: Creepy — Bensound.com.
James: Here are some
"Totally Made Up Tales" brought to you by the magic of the
Internet. In this episode, "Airlock Number Six".
Andrew: The black depths of
space stretched out as far as the eye could see.
James: Maria was so used to
the sight that she barely gave it a glance these days.
Andrew: She was engrossed in
her work of routine maintenance on the outside of the spaceship and
her mind was wandering from the task at hand to her plan for the
rest of the day.
James: First, of course,
dinner in the commissary as usual. That would not be remotely
interesting, but afterwards she was hoping she could persuade
Steven to take a virtual walk with her through the
rainforest.
Andrew: The radio inside the
helmet of her space suit squawked and her team leader reminded her
that it was time for her to return to airlock number
six.
James: She closed the panel
she was working on, secured her tools back onto her spacesuit, and
kicked off back towards the airlock and the safety of the
pressurised compartments.
Andrew: She pressed the
illuminated panel next to the door - it swung open with the
reassuring hiss and thunk - and returned into the small docking
area as the outer door closed behind her.
James: As soon as it had
clanked shut, she could sense that something was wrong. The lights
had not changed from amber to green. The inner door was not
opening.
Andrew: This was not entirely
unusual on a space station of this age. It was not one of the newer
models, and the simplest thing to do if you encountered a
mechanical fault like this was just to back up and start the
sequence again. So she turned round to open the outer door that she
had come in through.
James: This light was also
orange. "That was strange," she thought and thumbed her
radio.
Andrew: "There seems to be a
malfunction in the airlock doors. Both sides are amber. Is there
anything that you could do to reset it at your end?"
James: She waited a few
seconds for a reply.
Andrew: She pushed the button
on her radio again. "Erm…Michael? Don't know if you heard that, but
there's a bit of a problem here in airlock number six."
James: Again, no reply. But
they'd been trained for this because sometimes radios would go
wrong if they were passing through a sunspot or some other
electromagnetic activity which would interfere with radio
communications.
She unhitched a spanner from her
tool belt and started to work on the inner door lock.
Andrew: She successfully
removed the panel from the wall and revealed the emergency override
controls. Turning the gauge, which ensured that the outside door
was firmly shut, she released the safety switch and undid the
locking mechanism of the inner door.
James: Before opening, she
tried one more time on the radio. "Michael? Can you…is there
anything going on on the other side? Can I open the door and come
in?"
Andrew: Again, no reply. She
tapped three times on the inner airlock door, which was the agreed
signal for "I am coming out." There was no reply, and so she gave
the door a firm push and stepped through into the suiting
area.
James: After checking the
oxygen levels, she carefully removed her suit and noticed, as she
was hanging it up, that all the other ones were missing.
Andrew: It was a relief to be
back in the relaxed comfort of her everyday space clothes and out
of the bulky, cumbersome engineering suit that she had spent the
last few hours working in.
She pressed the release panel at the
side of the suiting room door and stepped into the corridor
outside.
James: The corridor was empty,
and more curiously the station seemed completely silent, something
that she'd never encountered before. There was always some noise,
some mechanical sound, or some murmur from the engines that kept
them in orbit, or from the people who lived and worked
there.
Andrew: She made her way along
the corridor to the elevator bank that would take her up to the
seventh deck where her residential quarters were.
James: The lights on the
elevator were also orange. That was strange. The elevators had
never failed before. She pressed the button anyway, hoping that it
was a problem with the light rather than the machinery.
Andrew: Nothing happened as
she pressed the panel and she tried again a second, and a third
time. Each of the panels next to the bank of service lifts were
unresponsive in the same way.
James: Giving up on the
elevators, she unhooked the panel that gave access to the service
ladders that ran alongside them and started the long climb up to
the next floor where the main control rooms and bridge were
located.
Andrew: She climbed the ladder
with the methodical, practiced precision of an experienced
engineer. She knew her way around this vessel and all of its
strange corners and crevices in a way that few other people
did.
James: When she reached the
next floor however, even she was surprised.
Andrew: The access hatch to
the service ladder was open, practically hanging off its
hinges.
James: The corridor beyond was
pitch black, all the lighting seemed to have failed. Maria
unclipped her personal light and switched it on.
Andrew: She poked around in
the darkness with the beam of the torch looking for any clues as to
why the lighting system had malfunctioned.
James: She couldn't see
anything, but when the beam passed across the doors to the control
centre, she saw that they too had been opened.
Andrew: This instantly sent a
shiver of fear down the back of her neck. She knew that the only
people who would open the control room doors were fellow engineers
and that they would never leave them open.
James: She stood at the
entrance of the control room and shone her personal light
around.
Andrew: At first, it seemed
that everything was as it should be. The connection to the main
engines was intact and the backup connection was secure and in
place.
James: There didn't appear to
be any damage to any of the consoles, and yet all of them were
dark. None of the welcoming and reassuring lights twinkled across
their surface in the way that they normally would.
Andrew: The eerie quiet of the
control room, usually such a bustling space, began to creep up on
her and became a steadily more insistent sensation that things were
very wrong.
James: Trying not to rush,
Maria nonetheless moved quickly over to the central power panel and
attempted to restart the power.
Andrew: She ran through the
sequence that, rarely though she had ever had to use it before,
came to her as second nature - and waited to see if the ship
responded.
James: There was no change.
The panels remained blank, the lights remained out, and the eerie
silence continued.
Andrew: She knew that she
should attempt the restart process one more time and that the
reboot unit needed to rest for five minutes before it could
potentially be operated again.
She sat on the floor in the dark, in
the silence and concentrated on breathing steadily in and out to
keep the rising sense of panic under control. In the stillness
where the only sound was the beating of her heart in her own chest,
she became aware of a curious cold sensation passing over the skin
of her forearms.
James: It was the same
sensation as when an unexpected breeze caresses you or when you're
certain that you've heard something where there should be no
sound.
She glanced down and noticed that
the hairs on her arm were standing on end.
Andrew: She glanced down at
her watch and saw that the five minutes had passed and stood up,
face-to-face with the reboot unit once more.
James: As her hands moved
automatically through the procedure, her mind started to wander
once again: What was going on?
Andrew: She primed the reboot
switch, pumping the handle three times and turning the control
lever to armed. She pushed the reboot button, heard the thunk of
the connection being made, and once again was rewarded with no
change.
James: She sagged slightly,
her forehead touching the reboot panel. Procedure, she was aware -
some small logical part of her mind reminding her - procedure at
this point was to evacuate the space station.
Andrew: She knew that she
should make her way to the nearest escape capsule station, which
were situated on every deck. She hesitated. How could she leave the
space station behind with so many unanswered questions in her
head?
James: She remembered that the
memory units for the central computer was stored in the control
room. Maybe she could grab the most recent one or two and take them
with her.
Andrew: She opened the cabinet
containing the storage units of the ship's main computer and was
dismayed to see that there were three units stacked next to each
other. Without access to power, she would be unable to determine
which of the units had been used most recently, and would therefore
have to select one of the heavy items at random to take with
her.
Would she manage to select the one
that contained the most recent records and might explain why the
ship was deserted?
James: She had to assume that
the technicians responsible for the computer organised things
according to some sort of plan. Either they moved from left to
right and refilled behind the one that was being used, or they only
replenished the cards in one go once all of them had been used
up.
In the first case, she would need
the one on the far right. In the second case, it could be any of
them.
Andrew: She knew therefore
there was a slightly better chance of the information she wanted
would be contained in the memory bank on the right, so she
unclipped it from its housing and picked it up with both
hands.
James: It was both bigger and
heavier than she had remembered and she definitely wouldn't be able
to take more than one. She only hoped that there would be space in
the escape capsule to secure it safely for re‑entry.
Andrew: She manoeuvred her way
awkwardly from the control room to the nearest escape hatch holding
the memory unit in both hands and balancing her personal light on
top to illuminate the corridor ahead of her.
James: Although, with the
power off, the space station was beginning to cool down, the
exertion meant that she was sweating by the time she got
there.
Andrew: She pulled at the
emergency handle which released the panel covering the entrance to
the escape pod.
James: The opening was dark in
front of her, and she knew that the chutes led for 10 to 12 feet
down into the escape pod, and she couldn't reasonably drop the
memory card in there first. She would have to hold it to her body
as she slid down into the pod.
Andrew: She stepped one foot
and another into the tube, sat on the edge, clasped the memory card
across the front of her torso, and pushed off to slide down to the
escape pod.
James: She landed in the
padded seat with a jolt and she could feel the shock travel though
up her spine.
Andrew: There was little room
to manoeuvre inside the escape pod. These crafts were designed for
one or, at most, two people and the ship was supplied with dozens
of them, enough for the entire crew to be able to abandon ship
safely.
James: Wriggling round, she
tried to find a place to store the memory card so that she would
have access to the controls of the small craft.
Andrew: The memory cards were
bulky and yet effectively indestructible. All that was necessary
was that she found a way to strap it down. She removed a length of
webbing from her utility belt and strapped the card to the back of
the pod's pilot seat.
James: Then she cast her
personal light around the pod, looking for the manual checklist.
She knew that without power, she would have to do everything
herself.
Andrew: Having successfully
located the checklist, she began the exit procedure by decoupling
the magnetic lock, which automatically closed the hatch, and
detached her escape pod from the space station.
James: From there, she worked
her way gradually down the list, taking sightings on known stars,
establishing with sufficient accuracy her orbit so that she could
calculate the parameters of a manual re‑entry burn.
Andrew: Having completed the
calculations, she set her stopwatch and, at the appropriate moment,
fired the pod's rocket engine to take her on the appropriate
course.
James: Following completion of
the re‑entry burn, she again took sightings to confirm that she was
in the appropriate orbit. Now, all she had to do was
wait.
Andrew: The pod made its
steady descent down into the planet's atmosphere and one by one,
the mechanical dials on the control panel in front of her began to
come to life as altitude and wind speed began to be read by the
sensors on the craft.
James: Maria kept her eye on
the altitude reading, hoping that it was accurate, and waiting for
the right height above sea level to deploy the
parachutes.
Andrew: As she waited, she
looked out of the single front window of the pod at the surface of
the planet that she had not seen for some time.
James: Already the empty,
mysterious space station felt like a curious dream and only the
hard reassuring presence of the memory card behind her told her
that it had been real.
Andrew: She replayed the
sequence of events in her head, trying to pinpoint exactly what it
was that could have occurred.
James: She remembered Michael
telling her that it was the end of her work period. She remembered
tidying up, she remembered getting back to the airlock, and getting
inside. Nothing seemed strange about any of those events. From that
point on, it had been nothing but strange.
Andrew: There had been no
signs of struggle anywhere that she had looked in the ship and the
control room's escape hatch still had escape pods ready to
use.
James: There must have been
six or seven people in the control room…all of them disappeared by
the time she'd got there. If they hadn't evacuated the space
station, where had they gone?
Andrew: Why had the door of
the control room been left open and why was the hatch to the
service ladder open on that floor as well? It defied all logical
explanation.
James: Beyond the control
room, there were another 20, 25 people working on the space
station, and yet she'd had no indication that any of them had been
there either. It was as if in the time between the end of her work
period and securing herself within the airlock, everyone on the
space station had simply vanished.
Andrew: The same train of
thought seemed to go around in her head unresolved until the needle
of the altimeter touched into the zone that told her it was time to
deploy the parachute.
James: She reached above her
head with both hands and grasped the parachute handle, pulling it
down suddenly towards her. As the parachutes unfurled behind it,
the entire capsule seemed to spin around her. It rocked into its
landing position, Maria sitting upright once more.
Andrew: Moments later, the
capsule struck the surface of the water and - finally - she was
back home, and the mysterious adventure was surely nearly at an
end.
James: Through the weeks and
the months of the investigation that followed, Maria told her part
of the story a thousand times to a thousand different people.
Analysis of the memory card was able to explain how a power surge
had disabled the station and showed that one by one the crew
members had simply disappeared from the computer's vision and
tracking system - but was unable to shed any light on how, or why,
or where they had gone.
Andrew: In the annals of space
exploration, there was only one similar incident ever reported and,
since there were no survivors at all from that vessel, no further
information could be obtained and no further explanation could be
provided for how it was that all the crew, except Maria, had
simultaneously vanished.
James: The names of the crew
members are inscribed on the Astronauts' Memorial where we remember
all those who have given their lives, whether we understand their
sacrifice or not, as humanity spreads out towards the
stars.
James: I've been James and I'm
here with Andrew. These stories were recorded without advanced
planning, and lightly edited for the discerning
listener.
Join us next time for more Totally
Made Up Tales.