Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Me, myself and Kai

A passive humming surrounds him as he walks. The constant droning of electrical components of the station interrupted only by the sound of his boots striking against the metal floors.

 

The blue light blinks in front of his face as Gottlieb stands there in the hallway, staring up towards it, before lowering his gaze back to the metal door in front of himself. A crude ‘one’ has been painted on it, like with the observatory door. He’s sure this was never there before though.

 

The door hisses, opening as Kai lets him into the room. Personal storage.

 

With the station being a cramped thing, there of course isn’t room for everyone to have personal space, except for the captain. But each of them was given exactly one breadbox’s worth of storage here for any personal items.

 

It’s a small room, hardly more than a big closet. But about fifty locked, sliding doors, close off just as many soda-can height shelves. Each of them is labeled with a printed sticker of a name.

 

He walks along the row, until he gets to his and grabs the door, sliding it open. The lock releases, revealing…

 

- Nothing.

 

Not that he had expected anything. Gottlieb never put anything inside of his storage unit. He didn’t really have anything to take up with himself to space.

 

The man turns his head, grabbing the next one, belonging to a man named Velmont. It doesn’t budge. Kai doesn’t open it for him.

 

“Kai,” says Gottlieb. “He’s dead. Let me look,” he tells the blue light on the side of the room. The door doesn’t budge. Gottlieb sighs, rubbing his forehead, thinking for a second. “Kai. I’m worried that we have a spy on board,” says Gottlieb, making something up on the spot. “For the sake of my mental stability, I need to check the lockers to be sure that nobody is hiding anything.”

 

The door clicks beneath his hand.

 

In a way, Gottlieb is sure that, if Kai is capable of such a thing, that the entity doesn’t buy that excuse in the least. But, one way or another, Kai is bound to the rules of the station and has to follow them.

 

Gottlieb slides open the door, looking inside. He recalls Velmont working in solar. Though he couldn’t say for the life of himself what he actually did there.

 

The little box is crammed full of things. Fabric of an old, colorful, thin blanket, a large box of multivitamins, some old papers.

 

Gottlieb shrugs, opening the next one and then the next one. He works his way through the lockers, going through all of them, taking out the things that could help him survive. “Kai. I’m confiscating these items to present to the captain as evidence,” lies the man as he makes a stack of things by the door.

 

He reaches for another locker, his hand stopping in front of it for a moment as he reads the sticker.

 

- Richter.

 

The man stares at it for a second, frozen. But then his fingers move, grabbing the handle and he slides it open.

 

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Gottlieb walks through the station, a little glum. Hoisted over his shoulder is an old, long-sleeved t-shirt that he has folded and tied into a bag of sorts, in which he stores his plunder.

 

The station hums and Gottlieb stands there, in the middle of the main intersection, looking all around himself down the long, empty hallways.

 

It’s just… quiet.

 

There’s no reason for it, as far as he can tell, but the hairs on his neck stand on end. He doesn’t like being here. He doesn’t like being alone in a place like this. Sure, he knows that the station is safe. It has to be. But being isolated in a big place like this, a place made out of cold metal and humming machines, isolated in this cold, lifeless vacuum, it feels… frightening.

 

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Gottlieb shakes his head, snapping himself out of it as he keeps walking, heading towards security. Maybe he really should ask Kai for some counseling after all? Space has a way of making people weird, after a while.

 

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He had just grabbed his evening rations from the mess hall, packing them away too.

 

Now, the man stands there, in front of the next door, the makeshift bag at his feet. “Kai. Come on,” he pleads. “It’s for my mental health,” says Gottlieb.

 

Kai doesn’t respond and the door to security, marked with a large ‘two’, doesn’t open.

 

He was hoping to take a look at the cameras to just examine the entire station from Kai’s view of the world. Sure, he doesn’t expect to see anybody else here. But maybe the cameras will help him see something useful? Maybe they’ll help him develop a survival strategy?

 

Also, there are weapons in security. Mostly stun-guns, but also a few real rifles.

 

One could argue that firing off a rifle inside of a fragile, enclosed metal canister in space is a terrible idea. That would, in fact, be a very solid argument to make. But the station has a few of them nonetheless, in case of a mutiny or an incursion by enemy forces.

 

How exactly someone was supposed to invade this place from down below, is of course, a mystery to him. But the military, for all of its reputation, doesn’t care about questions like that.

 

Does he actually need a rifle? No.

 

Will having it make him feel better?

 

Gottlieb looks around the empty hallways. He knows that he’s alone here. But…

 

- Yes, yes it will. He’d like to just have one, just to feel safer. But maybe he really is being silly. It’s been a lot of stress and he hasn’t really slept since it all started. Hell, now that he thinks about it, it hasn’t even been a full day.

 

…Has it?

 

Gottlieb blinks, very suddenly noticing how tired he is. His eyes wander up towards the digital clock on the side of the corridor.

 

It’s late. Well past midnight. He didn’t even notice.

 

The man sighs, looking at the door, which stays locked, as he grabs his bag of treasures and heads towards cryo to go to sleep. He doesn’t get far though, stopping again in the same large intersection as before. Gottlieb turns his head to the left, looking at the door to cryo at the end of the corridor for a while, before turning back straight ahead and walking to the tube.

 

The thought of locking himself in cryo, in a tube where he can’t react to the world around himself is… unnerving in a way that it wasn’t before, when there were others here. What if he gets stuck in the cryo-chamber again? And this, with nobody around to get him out?

 

Gottlieb jumps into the tube, grabbing hold of the pole and pulling himself down through it, down into the gunner’s bay, where he feels the safest.

 

He heads to his seat, throwing the bag down on top of it and spares an idle glance towards the monitor for a second. It’s full of Kai’s responses to his messages during his excursion.

 

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