A New Human

The sounds of the fracas were muffled against the panic swelling in her mind. The swarming mob surrounding her blurred into one motion as the captain punched in the code to the garbage chute. The space crew cornered her, pressing her into the small room, emptied clean since the last vacuum-drop. Despite the fact every noise on the space ship sounded like she was floating out there in the void, she could hear the jabs of their insults and the searing pain of their ridicule.

She was the pariah of the ship. Somehow, her efforts for the sake of humanity were misconstrued as being crimes against humanity. And as such, her punishment was anything but lenient. The outrage snaked throughout the entire spacecraft, especially the Medical Bay.

The chute doors closed in front of her, officially silencing the fray of the outcry that continued to rise opposite the glass panes. She placed a hand against the window, bracing herself as the sounds of a piercing alert reverberated against the bare chamber.

The chute was about to open. She was about to be sucked into the nothingness of the universe, a just retribution against her inhumane practices.

Or so, that’s what the crew deemed to be the case. In reality, she was on a secret mission to save humanity. Now, not even the president of the Unified World could intervene. To do so, would ruin the mission. There were other sleeper scientist, secretly working on the preservation of humankind under the guise of a deep-space voyager.

The alert became more intense. She turned her back to the hatred spewing from the crew and faced the blackness that threatened to engulf her into a old embrace of death. The doors opened. Her body immediately staggered forward as she inhaled a sharp final breath.

Her feet slipped out from under her, and she protected her head with her elbows, shattering her bones against the hard metal floors. Pain shot through her entire body, but she fought to contain the last bit of oxygen evaporating in her lungs.

Sliding across the floor, her body projected from the chute like a rock fired from a sling. She rotated helplessly, fixating her gaze upon the lone scientist in a far window. He stood in a silhouette of sorrow, watching hopelessly as another member of his team became victim to the void.

She kicked herself for getting caught. She became too ambitious, feeling impassioned by the success of several of her trials. But in her ambition, she lost sight of caution. She danced on the razor’s edge of mystery, eventually letting her shadow draw the attention of the captain.

The mission was failing, and now humanity was set to collapse, fading into a new era of extinction.

She closed her eyes, accepting her fate.

She exhaled the now completely depleted breath of air, feeling the numbness in her fingers spread through her body.

Then she breathed in.

Her eyes flashed open. She exhaled and breathed in another oxygen-filled breath. 

She had done it! 

Her self-imposed laboratory trials finally worked. She successfully mutated her human genes, providing her the ability to breathe in the void of the universe. Humanity’s extinction was postponed; her mutation would preserve her people!

Too bad she was floating aimlessly in the expanse of nothingness, slowly drawn further and further away from the only place her mutation could save humanity. She prayed her research was archived on a secure server before the the captain deleted all her files.

She felt like a superhero.

She felt like a failure.

- (c) 2020 Kevin Barrick

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