Suicide Protocol

by Lucy Joyce

Explorer c-324 continued doggedly towards yet another planet which was, in all likelihood, uninhabitable. Everyone was acutely aware that the potable water supply and the food rations were running low. The spaceship was serviceable in a hastily welded and bolted, clunky sort of way, and not quite large enough for its crew of 25. Those aboard spent a lot of time crying, sometimes in a quiet and reflective way, and sometimes with great, heaving sobs - yelling and railing against their predicament. Pointless arguments sometimes flared up and then receded among the fraught and exhausted crew members. The quiet and endless dark around them, glittering with distant stars and constellations, looked upon the human drama and anguish with complete indifference, offering no hope of refuge or salvation. Earth was no longer habitable, so the human race had flung themselves with desperate hope into the immense emptiness, like messages in bottles set adrift in an immense ocean.

Cy sometimes cried when he was alone at night in his bunk, but very quietly so that no one would hear him. They were in space, so of course there was no real tomorrow or today or daytime or nighttime, just endless darkness, but the lights were on a 12-hour bright/12-hour dim cycle and they kept to these earth-length days and nights. Cy wasn’t prone to existential angst about his likely imminent death as the others were, but he did miss his brother, Shep.

Apart from those few times of lonely grief, Cy was usually to be found calmly going about his cleaning routine, or reading comics in his bunk, emitting unexpected guffaws of laughter at the familiar characters and their predicaments. He couldn’t read the speech bubbles or captions, but he remembered Shep reading them for him, so he could follow the storylines.

It seemed impossible to Cy that he would never see his older brother again. He had asked the Captain, and she had gently and patiently explained that it was unlikely - which meant no with only a tiny bit of maybe yes - that he would see Shep again, as Shep had gone to Mars and the Explorer c-324 was an exploratory mission traveling in a different direction.

Cy and Shep had been together their whole lives, for all thirty-four years of Cy’s existence, until the Mass Departure began. At first it had seemed almost fortunate - although horrifying and otherworldly - when the sea reached their once land-locked state, because Shep and Cy could sometimes catch fish. But then there was another nuclear war. It was far away, Shep had assured him, on the other side of the world. However, the oceans were all connected, according to Shep, and the fish soon sickened and died.

It was around then that the ballots began - to decide who would go to the Mars settlement. There was limited space; everyone else would be left to die, or be sent on exploratory missions in uncharted directions to look for other habitable sites. Ballots implied a kind of randomized fairness, but it was well known that those who had connections to the right people, or who had skills considered useful, were prioritized. Abandoned cities were deconstructed and scrap was gathered, melted and remolded as the human race prepared to depart.

In the midst of this chaos, on an otherwise ordinary day, Shep had come in from the bright, hot afternoon - it was always bright and hot - and unwrapped the thick coverings from around his face and neck. The skin around his eyes was etched deeply with wrinkles, from squinting out of the gap in the head wrap day after day. The sun sometimes caught this skin, so it was blistered as well. Shep had been tending to their struggling garden. Cy stopped chopping the anemic vegetables and looked at his brother more carefully. Shep’s face was hard and sad.

Shep took a bracing breath, “we have to go, Cy.”

“Okay, Shep.” Cy’s voice - as usual - was very deep, very slow, and a little monotone. Cy hated change, and didn’t want to go. But his brother had always taken care of him. If he said they had to go, they would go.

The tears which had been dancing along the bottoms of Shep’s blood-shot eyes tipped over and ran down his face. “I mean me and Marcy, Cy, and Sadie and Max. We’ve been selected for one of the last Mars flights. We’re going to go, but you can’t come with us - not yet. You can come with us to the launch area, live around there for a while, maybe get on another ship going to Mars.”

Shep tried to inject some semblance of hope into his voice, but he knew that his slow and shy brother would not be selected amongst the last humans chosen to live. Cy, in his own limited way, seemed to know this as well. He started to cry too.

..................................

Embedded into one of the railings, which traveled alongside a small staircase between the bunk room and the mess room on the Explorer c-324, was the partially melted, but still discernible, side of a metal can. One of Cy’s favorite jobs as Head Janitor was wiping the can, which he liked to imagine had been a can of beans. “Beans,” he would say quietly, smiling at it and touching it appreciatively with a light forefinger. He liked how it was hiding, but also still there if you looked hard enough. It reminded him of the evenings back on earth when he was a young boy, after the hot sun had gone but the ground was still warm. He and Shep would sometimes play hide-and-seek. Cy could sit quiet and still among the long, dry grass - sort of there but sort of hidden - in the orange and blue evening as the cicadas sang.

Next in his routine, Cy cleaned the bathroom, wiped down the tables in the mess room - the others had always finished eating by then - and then he did the floors and windows throughout the ship. He had to be careful in the control room. The Captain had firmly told him that he was not to touch anything apart from the floor. In his head, Cy called the control room the DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING room.

The last room, which was more of a small closet, was his least favorite. It was called the Anthropological Culture Preservation Room. In his head he called it the scary mask room. In clear plastic bins were collections of Earthen artifacts - paintings, maps, sculptures, and books. Out of one plastic bin, labeled ‘Oceania Relics,’ a wooden mask with protruding eyes watched him. The mask had swirling patterns on its cheeks and an enormous, wide tongue protruding from a thick-lipped open mouth. Cy would clean uncharacteristically quickly, eager to escape the ever-watchful gaze.

Cy’s practiced routine took around four or five hours. The janitorial duty was originally designated as a two-hour job to be completed every third or fourth day, but Cy did it every day.

Shep, before he and his family left for Mars, came up with a speech for Cy to say to potential crews. They practiced it together: “I’m Cy. I am strong and a very hard worker. I am good at simple jobs which I can repeat daily.”

Shep told him to stay near the launch site to try to board an outgoing vessel. One evening, in the nearly deserted shantytown which had sprung up around the launch site, Cy delivered his speech to the Captain of Explorer c-324, Meredith Freeman. Cy recognized her uniform - Shep had pointed other captains out before he left. It had been two years since Shep and his family had left. The last pockets of once dark, damp soil had become dry and dusty. Cy was skilled at carefully tending burdock weeds, which were about all that could survive the dry and hot conditions. Still, he was thin and hungry.

Cy had been refused countless times, but Captain Freeman, who had the unlucky fate of being allocated as captain of one of the last outgoing vessels into a likely fruitless region of space, had mission instructions to take all remaining humans from the area who were capable of completing tasks which would aid either the ship, or the establishment of a new colony.

The Captain didn’t smirk or laugh, as some others had, when Cy delivered his speech. She nodded, her face serious, “I have the perfect job for you, Cy.”

There was a list of the crew and their respective job titles posted in the mess room shortly before take-off. One man, inspecting the list, spoke up, “Why is he the ‘head’ janitor?” He scoffed, his voice loud and brash, “there’s only one on this piece-of-shit tin can.”

Cy was sitting nearby. He understood that he was being mocked, although not exactly how or why. He looked down at his shoes and felt his face redden.

“A clean ship keeps everyone aboard feeling calm,” the Captain replied brusquely, carrying a crate of rations, “and it’s important from a safety point of view to have everything off the floor at all times.”

The man scoffed again, seeming unconvinced.

The Captain hesitated for a moment and added, more gently, “we all deserve to feel a sense of purpose.”

“I’m Head Janitor. It’s important.” Cy eventually said quietly, a little defensively, as he carefully stacked water bottles into crates as the Captain had shown him, but the others had moved away already.

That was fifteen months ago. Now there were just the two of them left on the once-crowded ship: Cy and Captain Freeman.

The last planet, which they had reached seven weeks ago, had been classified as “not fruitful for colonization.” The Captain had diligently reported this back to headquarters on Mars. They didn’t have adequate fuel or supplies on Explorer c-324 to reach the next potentially viable planet, or to reach any of the three sites which had been relayed by other exploratory vessels as “possible colonization site, preparations beginning.”

At a meeting in the mess room, the Captain had soberly delivered this news to the gathered crew, and started to review the suicide protocol. Even the loud and brash man was quiet for once. Tears rolled down his face as he rocked back and forth, holding his head in his hands and muttering, “Oh my God. We’re going to fucking die out here.”

Seven weeks later, as she sat with Cy on the stairs, the Captain’s face once again had that hard and sad look. Cy was reminded of Shep’s face, the time back on earth, when he told Cy that he and his family were leaving for Mars without him.

“If you want to,” she suggested, “you could keep cleaning when I go - it makes you feel calm, right?”

He nodded, “and helpful.”

“Yes,” she took his hand and squeezed it. She squeezed very hard. Cy didn’t mind. The tears which had been trembling in her eyes rolled down her lined, kind face. “You’ve kept this place beautifully clean, Cy. It’s been very helpful.”

Cy nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. He repeated what she had said to him many times: “a clean ship helps people to feel calm. And it’s important for safety.”

“Exactly right.” Her other hand patted the hand of Cy’s which she was squeezing. Her hands looked so small, Cy noted, wrapped around his large hand.

She took a breath and let it out shakily. “Now there’s going to come a time, pretty soon, when you’ve had those last few last vac-packs of carrot, and you’re going to feel really hungry. Now, what I think you should do - if you really don’t want to go out the air-lock -”

At this Cy shook his head vehemently.

“- OK.” She patted him soothingly. “Ok, you don’t have to. It’s just that... You see Cy... People can’t live without food. That’s why everyone’s been leaving out the air-lock. It’s... a quicker way to go - to die I mean - than starving. You know what starving means, right?”

He nodded. All of earth’s inhabitants had come to understand what starving meant. “I’m going to get real hungry. And then I’ll be dead.”

“That’s right. So I think that - if you do decide to stay on the ship - once the food is done, you should take some of your favorite comics to your bunk, with the last of the water, and just look at them for a while. Sleep if you can. Does that sound ok?”

He nodded.

She went on: “For me though, I want to go out the air-lock. I’ve done my best here. The ship will go for another four months, give or take; I’ve set the course. The lights will keep coming on and off until the ship stops. And then it will just drift. Maybe someone will find it someday.”

“Like an alien?”

“Yeah, that’s right, like an alien. Or other humans in the future.”

“And I’ll be here, but dead?”

“That’s right. Unless you go out of the air-lock, you’ll still be in the ship.”

What she didn’t say was that all of the captains of the exploratory vessels had been issued a command that one human body should remain aboard each ship. An anthropological specimen which could help potential alien saviors to classify and understand the human race. Desperate occupants of spacecrafts, or fledgling colonies, might still be alive elsewhere and hoping to be saved.

Captain Freeman had decided, months ago, that she would flout this command and not leave herself or one other desperate being alone in this maddening emptiness. But Cy was resolute and she did not have the emotional energy to face weeks of starvation with him. She looked into his trusting and anguished face. Guilt twisted inside of her.

“So, you know that, if you change your mind, it’s exactly like when you eject the garbage out the air-lock, right?”

He pictured the way the trash shriveled and froze, left suspended and alone as the ship carried on past it. Unbidden, he then pictured the faces of the people he had seen leave the ship in the same way. Mouths open in shock. Briefly and painfully flailing before they were left alone, screaming silently in the endless dark.

The captain was still talking; “I know you don’t want that now, but I want to make sure that you know how, in case you change your mind. It’s the same as with the trash, except that you would seal yourself in between the first and second doors, rather than staying inside the ship. Do you remember which button opens the outer door from there?”

He nodded. “The red one.” He pictured how they’d sometimes hesitate between the doors, sobbing or screaming, their shaking hands suspended above the button.

“That’s right, the red one,” she agreed, her face grim. She considered, not for the first time, the horrific decision-making process of the reluctant engineers back on earth. They had ensured that this air-lock ejection function existed, in the case that poisons and pharmaceuticals were gone - which they were. Of course, no guns could be brought aboard - the risk of damaging the hull and creating a deadly vacuum was too great.

“When you’re very hungry,” she told him, “maybe it won’t seem so bad.” She was covering her bases - trying to leave with a clear conscience - but they both knew the extent of his fear of the air-lock. No matter how hungry he became, or how lonely, he would never do it.

She gave his hand one more reassuring pat and squeeze with her small hands, and then stood up. Her stomach growled. She looked thin and pale. The last few days she had told Cy that she didn’t want her ration, but he could tell that she was hungry.

He wanted to ask when she was going, but he didn’t want to say the words aloud. What he really wanted to ask her - to beg her - was to not leave him alone on the silent ship in the endless dark.

She sensed the unspoken questions. “I won’t leave until the morning, ok? I still have to write in the ship’s log, send a message back to Mars, and then do a final check.”

He still didn’t say anything. His throat felt full. It felt like the time with his brother. Another person leaving him alone. This time not in the barren and hot wasteland of Earth, but in the silent darkness. He looked at his shoes, which became hazy, wavering, dark blobs as his eyes filled with tears.

The captain was crying again too. “I’m sorry, Cy,” she said softly, still standing in front of him. “I just... I can’t do it anymore.”

That was yesterday. Now, Cy sat against the bean railing, running his fingers over the ridged, rounded surface of the melted-in-can. She had come one last time. She held him close to her. He had hugged her back for so long that eventually she reached behind her and unlaced his big hands from around the small of her back. Then she left. He had curled up against the railing and put his huge hands over his ears, not wanting to hear the mechanical clicking and sliding of the doors in the otherwise silent space. Even though she had left hours ago, he was still too scared to look out of the window. He didn’t want to see the Captain’s kind face panicked and strangled-looking, or see her familiar form shrink further and further into the inky blackness.

“Beans,” he told the bean can quietly, in an attempt to comfort himself, but his voice sounded strangely resonate in the empty ship. By now, the can was slick and smudged by the well-worn path of his shaking fingers. Noticing this, he retrieved the cloth and wiped down the railing carefully. Once he’d started, it was easier. He did the bathroom and then the tables, floors, the DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING room, and - very quickly - the scary mask room.

After he finished, he ate the third-last package of carrots, chewing slowly and savoring each bite. He kept looking around himself, spooked by the silent and empty benches stretching out beside him. He selected a well-thumbed comic, and climbed into his bunk. He would put the comic away, as usual, once the dim-effect started in about half an hour. He would sleep, and would be ready to clean again the next morning.