THE ARK

Her eyes slowly opened, but she could not focus. The light was extremely bright and hurt her eyes. She was fighting to clear her head, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember where she was. She closed her eyes and rested.

She must have fallen back to sleep when she woke up again the light was almost as painful as it had been before. She fought to remember. She was inside a container of some kind. It was familiar but she could not remember why she was there.

She tried to open her mouth, but there was something on her face. She tried to take it off, and as she did she remembered that it was a mask. Her arms were extremely heavy and their movements were clumsy and uncoordinated. After much effort, the mask came off. She tried to open her mouth but it was so dry her lips were stuck together. She finally got them apart and tried to call out, but no sound came.

Suddenly she was aware that she was naked, and now she felt afraid.

She rested her head back down and slowly the memories started coming. She fought to remember what she was supposed to do, she felt like she had to dig deeper and deeper into her own mind for the answers that were long ago buried. She remembered the briefing on the effects she should be feeling. This was not at all how it was described. She felt far worse than she was told she would.

Finally, she remembered the drugs that would help her feel better. She looked at the digital readout and saw that they had been administered automatically an hour ago during the wake-up sequence. “Then why do I feel so sick?” she thought.

Now all she wanted was to get out of the capsule. She located the large button and reached for it, her arm felt clumsy and weak, the movement was painful. It finally made sense to her why this button was so much larger than the others were. She once had considered inquiring about its size but never got around to asking the question. She now realized that she probably would never have been able to hit the button, if it had been a smaller target for uncoordinated arms. It took several tries but finally she pushed it. The motor immediately sprang to life, and the lid opened.

There was an immediate sense of relief when the lid was gone. She started to move but remembered the equipment that she was hooked to.

She worked for over twenty minutes to undue all the wires and tubes. The more she moved the worse she felt. Her whole body was in pain, and she was getting very dizzy.

She had tried to sit up but began to feel increasingly nauseated, so she lay back and did what she could while moving as little as possible.

In training, she had been able to undue all the equipment in less than two minutes. Now she had needed to stop and rest four different times.

Finally, she had all the equipment and tubes removed. She pulled herself up to a sitting position and tried to get out of the capsule. The nausea returned, much greater than before. As she got over the two-foot high side of the capsule, she collapsed to the floor of the chamber and vomited repeatedly. The well-aged stomach contents had a smell and taste that were completely overpowering.

Just before losing consciousness, RJ Anderson was aware of two things. First, she was lying naked on a very cold metal floor, with her face in a warm pool of her own foul vomit. Second, something was very wrong.