jude

There was a theory about how cats and dogs reacted to bad energy, if you believed in that sort of thing, that they had a sixth sense for negativity. That if someone had bad intentions a dog would bark aggressively, or a cat would hiss with discomfort.

You spat the toothpaste out into the sink and began to clean up. Would the same sentiment translate to Hybrids?

Of course, they were more person than animal, but the thought still remained. Perhaps you were too sleep deprived to form a cohesive train of thought, but then again, perhaps not.

For a moment you thought about lying, saying that you didn’t get very far because your tiredness took over, but that might push him to encourage you to read further. 

What to do was a complex puzzle. Which move to take to give you an advantage in a game where you didn’t know the rules, an even tougher one.

There was an obvious answer that popped into your brain, ask someone who is much better at solving things than you. 

Someone who didn’t just beat you at chess, but cornered you and dragged out your defeat with expertise. Someone who genuinely made you put all of your effort into each and every move in something as simple as tic-tac-toe.

If this truly was a puzzle, Jayce would know what to do, but you couldn’t ask him.

Everything was still so new, it wouldn’t be far to push another problem onto him in order to relinquish yourself of its burden, even if you thought he’d deal with it better than you.

No. Today, you would reply to the message, and go about your business as if it had never happened. 

Just not at this moment.

The apartment was suspiciously quiet. The usual sound of cars occasionally passing on the street below was there, but the absence of sound from another human made your spine tighten. 

With caution, you stepped down the short hallway to your living room and the calmness continued. You pushed down the instinct to rush your pace, but the thought of making him jump helped anchor the impulse. 

It would certainly frighten you if someone came barreling into a room.

“Jayce?” You called gently just before you turned the corner, at least an announcement of your appearance was better than none. 

Faintly, you heard a floorboard creak which relaxed the tension in your shoulders. 

However, a new feeling greeted you alongside the wallpaper of your living room. The fort was gone. 

“Oh,” passed your lips and you were met with the much tidier area. Jayce was stood next to the couch, blanket pinched between his fingers and currently folding the fabric.

His ear twitched at the sound you made, but he didn’t spare a glance your way until he delicately placed the blanket atop the pile of the others. All ones you recognised as your fort from the night before.

Even the disco ball was back on its hook in the ceiling. 

“Did you not like it?” The question breached you before you could stop it. Jayce lifted his head and surveyed the room for, you assumed, any stray fort corpse he’d missed. 

He didn’t seem angry or displeased, but his ears held a droop to them that you recognised from the night before, when he’d presented you with the dented tin. It was guilt, but from what?

You walked towards the couch, ready to pick up the blankets and sheets he’d folded, but your eyes drifted in an attempt to find the cause of his demeanour.

“I’ll put these away, thank you,” he took two big steps back from you as you approached, tugging on the sleeves of the black hoodie you’d put with his things, when you saw it.

One of the spare pillows you’d used to make the fort had a big tear through it but its fluffy innards were nowhere to be found.

Your hands redirected themselves from the pile of blankets and towards the pillow shell, “Oh,” you found yourself saying again, this time with a touch more sadness.

Shuffling was heard behind you, shoe on carpet beneath the creak of floorboards - you’d never realised how noisy your floor was before - and you could almost picture how Jayce’s ears sagged.

“It’s okay!” You said at a slightly louder volume than your ‘oh’, and turned to face him, pillow in hand, “This one was old, I’d been meaning to replace them,” your attempt at reassuring him had evidently failed from how his eyeline stuck to the ground.

“How about-” you began, taking the two flaps of the ripped fabric into your hands and pulling it apart further, “-We get some new ones? You can pick, you’re the one that sleeps on them after all,” you spoke a little louder to be heard over the sound of fibers ripping apart.

Jayce’s eyes flicked up to you and watched you tear what he’d started, although you’d bet that it took him much less effort than you were exerting.

“And we can use this one as spare cloth, for cleaning maybe?” It was clear you were trying your best to make a positive out of a bad situation, but he nodded. It was small and slightly timid, but he nodded nonetheless.

One victory for the day, you just hoped that he didn’t slowly make his way through all of your bedding otherwise this would become very expensive.

“I wonder if someone sells tougher ones?” You thought aloud, the habit of having a one-sided conversation already setting into a routine. “We can have a look, but I really need a coffee,” the sigh of exhaustion was interlaced with humour.

Nodding your head to the side, you gestured for him to follow you into the kitchen, but he was faster than you, taking bigger and quicker strides until he overtook you.

Instinctively, you stopped, halting in your movement to let him enter the kitchen first. You wanted to ask what was happening to give him such a burst of energy, but decided against trying to voice any concern in favour of simply following him.

In front of the coffee machine were two mugs, and in front of each mug was a small coffee pod you recognised all too well from the mornings - and afternoons - you worked from home.

Jayce poked the pods with the tip of his index finger then looked at you, watching you approach the machine with pinched eyebrows that matched his own.

“You found the coffee then,” you laughed and picked up one of the pods to let it sit in the palm of your hand to see which one he’d chosen, “Decaf,” you read aloud and shook your head.

By the fact that there were two mugs, and two pods, you surmised that he wanted one as well.

“Did you want decaf?” You tilted your head to look at him, seeing his nose scrunch with distaste and a quick shake of his head gave you the answer of ‘no’. 

“It’s quite hard to see, but there’s a tiny ‘D’ on the underside,” you explained, turning your pod over and leaning towards him to show the symbol you were describing, “It’s really not obvious and, trust me, it caught me the first few times I used them as well.”

As you spoke, Jayce picked up the secondary pod and inspected it the same way you had, turning it over and tracing the little engraving and you watched him for a moment. You didn’t think you’d ever get bored of watching him discover things.

The tiredness in your eyes stung as you showed him where to find the correct pods and how to use the coffee machine, placing his mug under the nozzle first and explaining each step in the best way you thought you could.

This was his home too, and you wanted him to be able to do things like make drinks for himself even when you weren’t home.

He seemed to follow along with your voice, nodding intermittently and leaning towards the device to get a closer look when you placed the pod into its seat.

“It’s going to make a loud noise,” you warned him as you pressed the button to activate it, the plastic symbol of a mug wearing off from how many times you’d used it.

It did, in fact, make a loud noise but Jayce didn’t seem to mind, he was more interested in watching how it worked than the sound it was making.

Once you both had a mug in hand, you showed him how to reclaim the pod, threw them both in the trash and settled onto the couch with your laptop.

Jayce lingered, standing next to the couch like he was waiting for permission to sit down when you glanced up at him with a confused expression. The last thing you wanted to do was to tell him to do something like sit.

“Do you wanna look with me?” You asked instead, shuffling yourself into the corner of the couch to make room for him, and after a few seconds he sat. 

The couch cushion slumped the same way it had the night before, causing you to sway towards him from the slight incline the weight of his body provided. 

Shooting your hand out to stabilise yourself and prevent fully falling onto him from the sudden change, you had aimed for the space between you but your actual target was much warmer.

You felt denim under your palm. Warm, solid denim. Jayce grunted next to you, not loud but at a volume enough to notify you of his presence, as if you weren’t aware. 

“Sorry!” You immediately lifted your hand from his thigh the moment you’d refound your balance. 

It wasn’t ideal, but your heart settled its jumping once it had processed that his reaction was nothing more than letting you know what had happened. 

Your hand rested against the keyboard of your laptop, your fingers dipping to press the keys but barely making contact in an awkward bounce. 

Just carry on as normal. 

“I’m not entirely sure where to start, so I guess…” you trailed off, tracing your finger over the mousepad and navigating to your internet browser.

You hesitated for a moment, feeling his eyes on the little blinking icon of your mouse ready to type, before you pressed the first key. 

‘Heavy duty pillows’ you tried. 

Unfortunately, the only options that seemed to show up were medical pillows; the uncomfortable ones you find jabbing you in the back while trying to talk to your doctor.

They were shiny and looked like they were made of plastic, some photos you were sure were of a solid block instead of something someone would sleep on. 

After a while of scrolling, you glanced up towards Jayce and his expression mimicked your own. Distaste with a hint of confusion. You both shook your head at the same time.

“We could try…” you thought aloud as you hesitantly typed in the search bar again ‘Bedding for Hybrids’.

You almost immediately regretted it. The banner of pictured results under the search bar was filled with large dog beds and even one cage. You felt your stomach drop into your ass as guilt flooded your systems.

Jayce was right there, sat next to you on the couch, seeing what you were seeing and both coming to the same understanding - the internet, or whoever was advertising their products on it, saw hybrids as nothing more than domesticated animals.

There was a low grunt next to you, followed by a low rumble of a growl and you felt your spine tense.

“No, definitely not,” you stated loudly, half from the anger you felt from that being the internet’s immediate answer, and from a slightly performative angle of wanting Jayce to know that if you could growl at it, you would.

Your mind drifted back to your phone tucked into your pocket, and the unanswered text message that loomed behind you.

Slowly, you closed your laptop and placed it onto the coffee table in front of you. 

Despite your body telling you not to, you swivelled in your seat to face your companion- friend?- housemate? - Jayce. His eyes were still on the laptop, and if you weren’t seeing things, you noticed that the gold in his irises had dimmed.

“Thats-” you gestured to the laptop, “-That’s beyond stupid,” you waved your hand quickly in short bursts as if the motion would scrub away what you both had just seen. 

He didn’t respond and you could feel the air around you thicken. “How about we go to the store and ask, and you can pick out the ones you like?” 

There was a hopefulness to your voice that you prayed transmitted over to Jayce and nestled into whatever part of him the bad feelings were kept; you didn’t pretend to know how he felt exactly, that wouldn’t be fair.

You waited, not wanting to rush him as his eyes trailed along the different parts of the coffee table until he eventually nodded, agreeing to the impromptu shopping trip.

taglist (lockjaw)

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The main thing that he couldn’t quite accept was how the name attached to the oval cot above his own made him pause every time he read it. 

Those white digitised letters caught his attention each night before he allowed himself the courtesy of sleep, and every morning he awoke.

The name was familiar, yet distant. He spoke it aloud to himself on multiple occasions in an attempt to jostle the memory loose from the back of his brain and fall onto his tongue with recognition.

It was fruitless. It was the ghost of a memory; like a word you were certain you knew but the letters were translucent the moment you tried to attach them to your recollection.

It had happened to him before but never on this scale. He recognised the feeling from being at the front of his classroom, whiteboard behind him, board marker in hand when the word he was looking for slipped from view.

In those times one of his students would shout the forgotten word back at him and the synapses in his brain would light up and he could continue. 

But here, there was no classroom - no bright eyed and bushy tailed students eager to guide their teacher’s train of thought back onto its rails.

Here, there was only that disembodied voice programmed to answer with the pocket of information it had been fed by its creators.

“Who’s in pod two?” He’d asked, and the voice replied with the same name he’d spoken to himself. 

“Yes-no, I can see that, but who are they?” Grace had tried, only to be met with the same answer. A name delivered with monotone and slightly automated packaging. A name that made his breath quicken and his heart flutter.

To get any detailed answer out of the ship’s computer was a task within itself. It was clear that the intention behind its creation wasn’t for socialising or conversation but for the basic function of keeping its humans-human-humans alive.

In a moment of frustration, Grace had climbed the ladder up to the occupied cot and reached for the zipper, perhaps a face would piece together the puzzle of his confusion but the robot in the sky had startled him with a loud “Unauthorised!” 

He’d recoiled his hand and glared at the singular circular camera attached to the body of his only conscious companion. He wasn’t sure if the voice was attached to it, but he supposed it had to be, it was part of the ship afterall.

“Why not?” Was yelled back, “Unauthorised,” the computer spoke each syllable exactly as it had before.

There was no real emotion, no humanised input, only facts. “I just want to open it and see-”, “Unauthori-”, -”Yes, I know you said!” Grace yelled back with such energy that his body swung backwards and collided with the metal bars of the ladder.

Pausing, he inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment of calm, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have raised my voice,” he lifted the one hand not holding onto the ladder for support in surrender, mediating the one-sided tension.

He was met with silence, clearly the computer wasn’t entirely aware of social conventions to understand that he was upset.

“Why can’t I open the-” he paused, looking at the see-through orange fabric that shielded the body inside just enough to make features indistinguishable, “-Bag?”

He tilted his head to the side and traced the shrouded features with his eyes; over the expanse where a forehead would be, down the slope of the nose that protruded against the fabric and into the flattened surface punctured by a tube that disappeared beyond where he could see.

A mouth, he was sure. Lips parted by a tube that kept this person fed and nourished.

“Unauthorised,” the voice sounded for a fourth time and Grace wondered if he were to hear that word again would it lose its meaning to him.

It took everything in him to not react the same way he had the three previous times. It was a computer after all, he just needed to ask the right question to get the right answers.

“Uh,” he rubbed the heel of his palm against his head, the fibres of his hair audibly scratching against each other as he thought of the correct wording, “What’s your function on this ship?”

The mechanical hands twisted like the attempt of a hand gesture, one after the other then back to their original position, “Medical assistance.”  

“And mine?” A question he somewhat knew the answer to, but asked regardless. “Dr Ryland Grace; Science Officer,” he nodded along with every word. He’d surmised his role was science based, it was the first of his memories to come back to him. Math he knew.

“What about the rest of the crew?”, “Captain Li-Jie Yào, Pilot. Deceased.” Grace tugged his glasses from their perch on his nose and let them dangle under his chin, rubbing his face with his free hand. He didn’t need to be reminded.

Then the third name was stated, the one that made his ears prick to attention and his fingers fix his glasses back onto his face with eagerness, “Engineer: Stable,” was the description that followed.

“Stable,” he repeated to himself in a mutter, glancing back to the screen attached to the cot, “Can we wake them up?” He traced each letter with his eyes, “Unauthorised-”,”-Yeah, yeah, okay unauthorised.”

‘Stable’. He’d make do with ‘Stable’

Every day he would start his morning staring at the underside of the bed above, wondering if today was the day he would meet his crewmate.

Every day he had opened his eyes and waited, holding his breath in case there was a movement he missed, or an inhale not generated by the ship’s life support.

Every day, when no such sound could be heard, he’d ask the voice, “What’s the Engineer’s condition?”, and every day he’d hear, “Stable.”

Grace had heard the word so often it had begun to lose its meaning.

At first it was a reassurance, a reminder that he wasn’t entirely alone, but after two weeks the meaning grew roots into something else.

‘Stable’ was another day of loneliness. Another day of the mountain of hope being chipped away piece by piece.

It had been 28 days of ‘Stable’, if Mary was tracking the average Earth days properly; and Grace was only a few hours into the 35th day since his own awakening.

The numbers stared back at him from the lab whiteboard, scribbled in the same handwriting he dated the top of the one in his classroom.

“Mary, how many days does it take someone to go crazy from being alone?” He’d asked the ship he’d so lovingly nicknamed.

“There is no specified timescale for psychosis to appear from isolation.” Mary explained but the answer didn’t fill him with reassurance.

Grace huffed to himself and tapped the butt end of the marker against his bottom lip with a sigh before pressing the tip back against the board, “Possibly already insane?” He spoke aloud as he put his words into their physical form.

“Would you like a psychological assessment, Dr. Grace?” The ship asked, more with a hint of curiosity than genuine concern, “No-no, it’s fine. It was-it’s a joke,” he waved the notion away and shook his head, clicking the marker back into its holder on the board.

“He is currently the world’s leading authority in Astrophage biology.” You weren’t one to question the organisers of this mission, especially as you weren’t technically part of the flight team, but you’d spent most of your life around government scientists and this man did not fit the usual description. Doctor Grace stood from his swivel chair and lifted his hands to shrug, a look of humility at such a grand introduction wrinkled his face. Definitely not like the previous experts you’d met.

Stratt continued to walk the group alongside the makeshift lab, or enclosure, and the man mirrored the pathway. He eyed the cluster of new faces over the rim of his glasses, head tilted downwards with what you’d almost call timid.

He followed adjacent to the plastic walling until he was momentarily out of sight, the thick windows switching to thinner blue opaque film. If you’d have to guess, you’d put all your chips on it being a door of some kind to his enclosure- laboratory.

“Doctor Grace-” Stratt continued, “-These are the three astronauts going on the mission and their backups for redundancy,” he reappeared next to her as she finalised the introduction. 

The last part of her statement made your stomach ascend to your lungs and drop back down without caution. ‘Redundancy,’ she had called you and the two people beside you. ‘Redundancy,’ she’d said, but ‘Redundant’ is what weaved its way into your train of thought.

Logically speaking within the literal terms of engineering, it meant duplicate. A copy of the original, a safety net that meant if anything happened to said original, the operations would continue as smoothly as planned.

“Yáo, Ilyukhina, and DuBois. Our pilot, engineer and science officer,” Stratt’s hand extended forward with a slight bounce between each person as she allowed their name to be airborne.

The originals, you thought. If their ‘Redundancies’ were as important as them, learned as much as they had and were willing to sacrifice as much as them, why were your names not also given?

You closed your eyes for a moment and inhaled softly so as to not interrupt the fragile nature of the meeting, catching yourself in your own panic and caging it before it could escape and infect your surroundings.

It wasn’t ego that made you linger onto the word, it was deeper. It was the years and years of studying, training and the newfound anxiety that had been thrust into your lap aboard the premise that you might be spending your last few weeks on solid ground.

A formal apology would need to be written to Sir Isaac Newton for defying the laws of universal gravitation and motion, regardless if it were to be Ilyukhina or you climbing into the ship; what was going up, was most certainly not coming back down.

No, it wasn’t ego. Many had been approached for your position, but only you and Ilyukhina had accepted, and that had to mean something. You had to mean something. At least enough to have your name spoken alongside your colleagues.

Stratt shifted her position to stand beside Dr. Grace and towards the pairs of waiting eyes, halting its movement, waiting for a response from either party.

Dr. Grace nodded along to the silence and observed the group, once again unaware that they were waiting for him to finally speak. His head shifted towards Stratt sharply and you were sure if you squinted you may have seen the cogs of his brain turning.

“It’s an honor,” were the first three words out of his mouth. Dipping his head in a quick polite bow then shifting his eyes between each person stood before him.

He held contact with yours for a moment, meeting one in fifteen- or thirty if you counted each pupil individually, but you glanced down to the t-shirt he was wearing, distracted by its uniqueness. Everyone else in the lab was wearing button up shirts, or something plain and clinical.

Not him. Curtained by the baby blue of his coat was a cartoonish print of a large tabby cat perched on the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Of course the cat was adorable, but the shirt was vintage; it wasn’t just a tabby cat, but the Kilban cat. It was strange enough that a government employed scientist was wearing a graphic tee instead of a uniform, even stranger that it was a print based off of a comedic cartoon of the 1970’s.

If anyone else in this field were to buy something ‘vintage’, your last guess would’ve been that.

The blue curtains adorning the shirt quickly closed and you were greeted with the hands, then crossed arms of Dr. Grace, causing you to return your gaze back to his own. 

“I’m, uh-” he stuttered, averting his eyeline from yours, you’d clearly caught him realising just how out of place his attire was, “-I’m excited to share what I’ve learned about Astrophage and spin drives.”

His hands clapped softly together and the rhythm of his voice was steady but just a little bit too slow. In all your years of being surrounded by ‘the leading authorities’ in their fields, not once were you addressed as if you were learning this information for the first time.

Some may have taken this as arrogance. As a man thinking he is the smartest in the room, and the others so below his own intellect that the science needed to be dumbed down, but the genuine enthusiasm of his expression, paired with the hesitance of his gestures was evidence otherwise.

Dr. Grace’s attention flicked back to you as he awkwardly pulled at his coat to ensure it was covering the cute feline beneath before he continued. “We have 1,009 of these Little Engines That Could on the Hail Mary and-”, Commander Yáo interjected.

What was said was unknown to you. You’d attempted to learn Mandarin when you first started studying astroengineering, but ultimately decided you only had enough brain capacity to focus on math instead of a language too. 

It seemed that Dr. Grace was just as lost as you were, glancing between Yáo, Stratt and, for some reason, you. Unfortunately, you didn’t have the guidance that his desperate eyes and pinched eyebrows were looking for, so you simply subtly shrugged.

He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again, possibly deciding that staying quiet was the better answer than to question what was so important that it had to be said in a different language.

“What do you think?” Annie Shapiro, the secondary science officer and DuBois’ back up, leaned in to whisper to you without either of your attentions being taken from the discussion ahead of you. There was a hesitancy to reply, the last thing you wanted was to be seen as disrespectful

Stratt nodded once confidently and turned to continue the tour of the carrier, knowing the rest would follow. “Of?” you sighed, taking the footsteps of the group as an opportunity to muffle your speech, but also trying to keep the movement of your lips to be as minimal as possible.

Out of the corner of your eye you saw Shapiro jut her chin upwards to point through the first line of the flight team and towards the person you’d just met, “Dr. Grace?” you whispered back, gaining a confirming hum from her.

“He’s…” you began but paused when the man in question turned his body to glance back at the group. For a moment you wondered if he’d heard his name spoken aloud and was looking for the owner of the sound, but, unlike Stratt, he was checking to see if you were all following.

“He’s different,” was the wording you chose. It wasn’t entirely incorrect, but you needed more information to form a real opinion on him.

“He’s a school teacher, apparently,” Shapiro pinched the zipper of her uniform, pulled it down an inch then back up again to secure the collar around her neck. You wanted to ask why and how a school teacher had found himself in such a position of authority when he slowed to listen to Commander Yáo.

Too close to talk about him without him hearing, but close enough to observe him a little more.

It started to make sense; the clap to gently get the attention of the group as he spoke, the rhythm of his explanation and even checking that he was being followed. They were all tiny mannerisms a teacher would gain when having to control a classroom of rowdy and excitable children.

But you weren’t children. You were experts, handpicked by Stratt to carry out a mission that you wouldn’t see completed. Even standing in second place to the people destined to be strapped into a pod and forcefully comatosed was terrifying, but that wasn’t the strongest emotion the mission had given you.

Dr. Grace’s expression shifted between being overwhelmed, to shock, then sympathy as Commander Yáo explained to him, returning the same slow rhythmed speech you’d all received earlier, about how they had decided the ways to terminate themselves once the mission was complete.

His eyes wandered between the six of you; Yáo, Ilyukhina, DuBois and their back ups, giving you all the individual attention such a statement deserved. Stratt didn’t say your name during the introduction, but Grace made you feel just as seen for your potential sacrifice.

There it was. That emotion that was stronger than the fear of dying in space. Guilt.

It was a potential sacrifice. Ilyukhina was the one that deserved to feel the weight of the mission on her shoulders, not you. Yes, you’d both received the same training and debrief. Yes, you’d both made peace with the facts of the situation.

“I want to do lethal injection with a little bit of heroin,” she stated with a hint of humour, Yáo continuing the sentiment with “I’ll have what she’s having!”

They were happy, happy enough to make a joke about dying. But here you were, pushing down the creeping fear of a potential sacrifice. They were courageous and selfless, and here you were, scared to be a backup.

Dr. Grace stopped in front of a cylindrical bunker half-full of equipment, hands on his hips and an expression that reflected just how absurd of a punchline the situation had become. 

A school teacher, you thought. A school teacher with too much empathy, being met with the gravity of what he was contributing to and not knowing what to say.

His vision drifted back to you and you provided him with a sad smile that seemed to relax him slightly - it confirmed to him that at least someone else in the room recognised how macabre the whole conversation had become. 

‘Little Engines That Could’ was the last thing he’d said to the group and now he was being expected to respond to ‘Lethal injection with heroin’. You’d never seen someone so out of their own comfort zone that it didn’t share a Zip Code.

Your smile lost its sadness and curled into something genuine as you lifted your hand to tap your chest three times. His eyes descended to where you’d pointed on yourself, eyebrows furrowing in confusion, causing a crease to form between them.

An inaudible puff of air left your nose and your smile deepened as he searched your face for the answer your mouth couldn’t provide. 

You tapped your chest again and nodded your head towards him, the little cogs in his head churning to understand as he stared at you blankly. Then his eyebrows raised, he glanced down to his own chest, and was met with the tabby cat he’d tried to hide.

His lips stretched into a smile of his own and once again pulled the flaps of his coat over his chest to hide the fluffy cartoon, shaking his head slightly and looking over the rim of his glasses with a gaze that said ‘thank you’.

part 2 →

𝒕𝒂𝒈𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕 (𝒅𝒎 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒂𝒅𝒅𝒆𝒅)