Ground Control To Major Tom (Part 2)

Suddenly a loud siren like noise blared from the console and I would have leapt out of my seat if I wasn’t strapped in to it. It was like an alarm, it rang over and over again until my ears rang too, and then it cut into an endless repetition of the same statement repeated over and over again.
“SYSTEM FAILURE, CONNECTION LOST. SYSTEM FAILURE, CONNECTION LOST.”

I listened to this in a daze for a few moments before I turned the console off and tried to connect to my home. Command had set up a computer there so my wife and I could communicate for 10 minutes each day, which was paltry but much better than nothing at all. At this moment she would have been sitting in front of the computer waiting for me to get in touch.

“Hey honey, how are you today?” While trying my best to sound cheerful and normal. I waited anxiously for a response. At first there was nothing but silence, but then I heard a crackle and a response.
“Hello Mr. Mason, it’s lovely to hear from you. You wouldn’t believe the picture that Susie drew of you today, it’s amazing, think she’s going to be an artist.” She said cheerfully. I felt goose bumps on my skin and suddenly the void of space seemed to crowd in on me.

“What did you say?”
“Hello Mr. Mason, it’s lovely to hear from you. You wouldn’t believe the picture that Susie drew of you today, it’s amazing, think she’s going to be an artist.” She repeated, identically.
“Are… are you feeling okay honey?”
“Don’t be a silly goose, I’m feeling great.” Followed by a high pitched flirtatious giggle. My heart felt like it had been thrown out of the airlock.

“Betty?” I asked cautiously. There was dead silence, then the crackle of the connection cutting off. Every screen on the monitor bank went blank. I saw my reflection stare at me from the empty screens. My gaunt cheeks and dark eyes reminded me of Smith’s slowly rotting corpse.

I reached into my pocket and lifted out the small bottle of painkillers, and swallowed what was left of the pills dry. I was almost certain that I was going insane. In the distance I could hear David Bowie crooning in the recreation area, “Ground control to Major Tom…” I wondered who Major Tom was, and if he ever went through something like this. I tried to connect to Command and to my home once again, but I knew it was futile. This day had gone from bad to abysmal, and I tried to tell myself that things could only get better from here. I was wrong, naturally. Murphy’s Law - everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. That Murphy guy was an ass.

I leaned back in the chair and sighed, contemplating calling to Betty again. I wasn’t sure if it was me going nuts, or if it was Betty (could machines even do that?) but since Smith chewed far too loud, Betty was the better of the two for company.
“Are you okay Mr. Mason? You’re very quiet!” Betty said, before I could speak. Again I would have jumped out of the seat if I wasn’t strapped down.
“Jesus Betty, you scared the crap out of me.”
“My name isn’t Jesus Betty you silly goose! It’s…”

I unsecured myself from the chair and kicked off the floor, drifting up past the monitor bank and towards the glass ceiling of the room, which for this needlessly tall and extravagant room was about 50 feet up in the air. The station was protected by shielding and the glass was extremely thick and virtually indestructible, but this roof had always seemed unpractical and dangerous to me.

I drowned out the sound of Betty trying to explain to me for the 10,000th time (just like how many times David Bowie was playing) that her name was Betty, and I instead gazed out into the endless blanket of darkness and stars that sprawled all around me. To the left I could see the sprawling surface of a reddish brown planet that technically I had discovered, and hadn’t yet named. Scans showed little of interest on it, a few iron deposits here and there. I might call it Bowie. I pressed my nose right to the glass. I never thought to come right up here and see it up close. The understanding of gravity seemed far away from me.

Below me, Smith shuffled into the room and watched me for a long time, strands of (poisoned) putrid spaghetti running down his face along with rivulets of rotting flesh, dripping onto the floor, completely ignoring the lack of gravity along with the impossibility of a dead man walking. I looked down and saw him, standing there staring at me with those vacant pits that used to contain eyes, and that jaw that chewed too loud hanging off and rotting.

I was not at all surprised, it seemed entirely natural. I began to wonder if I had ever talked to my wife, or command, or if it was all just Betty. Had she caused my loss of grip on reality, or had my loss of grip on reality caused me to see things this way? It hurt to try and figure it out, it all just made me so very tired. I felt the rest of the pills began to kick in somewhere in the back of my mind, and it began to feel less like there was no gravity, and more like I was actually floating.

“Mr. Mason, what are you doing up there?” Betty asked, genuinely curious, sounding more and more human every time she spoke.
“I’m just enjoying the view Betty, and please, call me Charlie.” I said with a bizarre sort of mellowness.
“Oh Mr. Mason I couldn’t do that, we don’t want to make our working relationship awkward by getting too close to each other!” Giggling flirtatiously again, I could swear I was hearing Rachel’s voice. I closed my eyes.
“Betty, tell me something.”
“What is your query, Mr. Mason?” Mechanical coldness now entirely gone from her voice. Below us, Smith kept watching, his jaw hanging in a shark like grin.
“Have you been pretending to be my wife, and my daughter? Maybe even command?”

My accusation seemed to hang in the air like a bad smell and I felt silly right after saying it, maybe even bad for accusing Betty of such a thing. I opened my eyes and saw Smith shaking his head, as if he was scolding me for hurting poor Betty. It took her a while to respond.

“Mr Mason, I do not understand… you don’t have a wife or a daughter; you have no family at all. This is exactly why you were chosen for this position.”
My jaw hung further down than poor Smith’s.
“Also, according to our records, command have not been in contact in 6 months, you silly goose!” Betty laughed flirtatiously, Smith dripped on the floor. I tilted slowly head over heels in the foetal position.
“You’re such a joker; this is why I enjoy spending so much time with you. Not like that Mr. Smith, he chewed far too loud, didn’t he?” Followed by more flirtatious laughter. When we get back to Earth I think I might invite her out for a drink, she’s obviously in to me.

I’m so very tired. The red planet through the viewing window looks like a giant demonic eye, glaring at me. The stars seemed to dance in synchronisation.
“Oh! I just realised, the gravity isn’t working. Why didn’t you tell me Mr. Mason? That is one thing that I can fix.” She trilled joyously, obviously very pleased with herself. I tried to call out to her, but I didn’t realise that when the painkillers said ‘Do not operate heavy machinery’ it also meant my brain. I just wanted to sleep.
“I just have to turn this on… and change this, and…” She mumbled to herself for a while. I closed my eyes and the lids felt too heavy to lift again.
“And Voila! Ground control to Major Tom… check ignition, and…”

I heard a loud hum and I felt myself falling like a stone. On the ground I could imagine Smith lifting his arms to catch me, and all around me Betty sang David Bowie out of tune, with the words all wrong. It was all wrong.