Cohesion: Chapter Seven

Ludwig wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he’d dismissed the proximity alarm. All he knew was he was alone.

Alone.

He hadn’t been alone in years—not since joining the CS4 and being inducted into the Cohesion program. There was always someone there. Even when showering or using the bathroom, his cohesion partner would have been nearby.

But now, 2.3 kilometers beneath the crust of Trappist 1d, over 10 kilometers from the nearest natural exit to the volcanic caverns he had called home for nearly four weeks, and over 500 kilometers away from the next nearest people on this exoplanet, which itself was forty million light-years away from Earth, Ludwig found himself alone—completely overwhelmed about what to do.

Beneath the desperate way his mind was begging for him to do something, a small line of reason rose above the noise. He was trained for this.

Of course he was. His training for this mission had been far more robust even more so than the Apollo astronauts of old. This realization didn’t remove Ludwig’s panic, but it gave him a lifeline to hold onto.

Ludwig took stock of his current circumstances. Well, obviously Doctor Djawadi was gone. Why though? Yes, he had a habit of wandering out of Ludwig’s eyeline, but that had always seemed unintentional before. So what might have happened that would cause this? Had Djawadi given up on the mission and decided to head back to the surface?

A notification popped up on Ludwig’s visor, alerting him that he only had twelve hours before his suit would completely lose power and which was now entering low-power mode. Ludwig frowned, wondering what was causing his suit’s battery to drain so fast. He should have had at least sixteen or seventeen hours left, not twelve!

He asked the computer to run a quick power diagnostic and was soon met with the culprit. It was part of their suit’s programming that when a cohesion was paired, their suits formed a network. This way, they could balance the processing load of each suit, so that if one person in the cohesion was doing something that required more processing power while the other didn’t, the other suit would share that processing load to prevent a power drain.

With their suits not connected, the pairing service had gotten stuck in a loop of its own software, pulling more and more memory resources with each failed pairing cycle, until it had drained his suit of quite a bit of power. Clearly a bug in their suit’s software, though admittedly not one that should happen often. Still, Ludwig made a quick mental note to flag it for a future update while he manually shut off the pairing function.

Twelve hours of power. This was already a bad situation, but if his suit only had twelve hours, and it would take at least nine hours to hike back to their base, this software bug had turned an already dangerous situation into a potentially fatal one.

Shame rose up in Ludwig as the thought once again crossed his mind that they should have gone to Alpha Site first.

Ludwig forced that thought out of his mind—he could feel sorry for himself later, once they were safe. For now, he needed to work the damn problem.

Other than the way they came, there were only two potential paths Djawadi might have taken to get away from Beta Site. Ludwig doubted Djawadi would have taken any other path than the one they’d used to get there, since the only reason to leave would be to head back to base.

Still, better to be sure. “Are you able to show me on the map where Djawadi’s location was last before we lost connection?”

When the computer came back with the results, it was clear Djawadi had gone down one of the other two paths away from Beta Site. Ludwig was baffled as to why he would do that. Neither path led back to base.

The computer couldn’t pinpoint exactly where they’d lost connection either. Apparently, beyond Beta Site, the corrosive volcanic gases were dense enough to impact his sensor data. The two paths were close enough together that, with the unclear sensor data, there was no real way of knowing which one Djawadi took.    

He decided to just pick a path and go. If the pairing mode on his suit had bugged out, then Djawadi’s likely had too, which meant he’d have to find his partner without the aid of his suit. That meant checking one path for as long as he dared before doubling back and trying the other.

He rushed down the nearest path but was soon met with denser gases that disrupted his sensors. The more he walked, the more he struggled to see even the ground beneath him. Slowing his pace, he pulled up the map of the caverns to track his movement in relation to it, hoping not to get turned around. But even though the map was nearly exact—give or take a few nanometers from the extensive x-ray scans Djawadi and his previous cohesive partner had done—he’d walked long enough in the gases that the computer wasn’t confident of his location in relation to the map.

What would happen if he didn’t find Djawadi soon? What if Djawadi was incapacitated? It would certainly take much longer than nine hours to get back to camp if he had to drag his partner back with him.          

He wasn’t sure he could live with himself if it came down to choosing between saving Djawadi or the mission. But if he chose his cohesion partner over the mission, he would be dooming his colony in the process.

What an awful choice: his partner’s life against the lives of hundreds of faraway people—some still in hibernation, waiting for their turn to wake up, and others working on other aspects of their colony’s initial infrastructure. What surprised Ludwig was how easily he leaned toward the colony—not because it was the right thing to do, but because it felt like it’d be a relief to no longer be responsible for Djawadi.

And Ludwig hated that he felt that way.

He festered in these thoughts for several minutes, carefully moving forward in the cavern, while letting his anxiety quicken his pace more than before. Thankfully, the corrosive gases weren’t as dense now, and his visibility was slowly improving. He idly wondered why the gases would suddenly clear up when he noticed a ventilation shaft on the map just ahead of him. He was grateful he’d noticed it now, before he might have walked right over the edge of the ten-meter-deep shaft.

But that’s when he noticed Djawadi standing ahead of him in the cavern.

Instead of relief at seeing his partner, Ludwig’s fear deepened. Djawadi was standing right at the edge of the shaft. While Djawadi’s pressure suit would keep him alive from such a fall, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t break some bones in the process.

Ludwig manually paired their suits, hoping to avoid the bug they’d experienced earlier.

“Doctor?” he asked.

Djawadi stood perfectly still, showing no sign he’d heard Ludwig.

“Doctor,” Ludwig said. “Why don’t you step away from there?”

Again, no response.

Ludwig frowned. Something was definitely wrong.

He slowly approached his companion, keeping a hand on the cavern wall for balance, insides squirming as he neared the shaft.

Ludwig had never been afraid of heights—not really. But feeling cautious about the potential of falling from a great height? Who wouldn’t fear that?

“Doctor, can you read me?”

Still no answer. And based on the data that flowed into Ludwig’s suit now that they were once again paired, Djawadi was conscious—so why was he unresponsive?

Running through the emergency medical checklist, Ludwig had long since lost the calm he’d mustered by recalling his training. Thankfully, he was no longer frozen in fear, as his adrenaline pushed him relentlessly forward. Now reconnected, Ludwig’s suit joined Djawadi’s in scanning for any medical issues. A passing thought reminded him how much this might cost in suit battery, but he quickly stamped that worry down, knowing it wasn’t productive.

Ludwig stopped the process after confirming nothing was noticeably wrong with Djawadi’s vitals. Now that he knew Djawadi wasn’t injured, he needed to get him to back away from the shaft. If Djawadi fell and survived his injuries, Ludwig would be confronted with the choice of abandoning his cohesion partner in these tunnels to die, or risking power loss on the way back to base by attempting to drag an injured Djawadi with him.        

Of course, wouldn’t abandoning his partner in that situation also mean abandoning his mission and putting the rest of the colony at risk? He doubted he could complete this mission without Djawadi.

Ludwig shook his head, dispelling the stressful hypotheticals.

He stepped forward, still leaning against the cavern wall for balance. He was nearly within arm’s reach of Djawadi.

“Hey Doctor,” Ludwig said. “You there?”

No answer.

Removing his hand from the cavern wall, all too aware of how close he was to the edge of the shaft, Ludwig placed a hand on Djawadi’s shoulder, hoping to pull him back.

Djawadi recoiled at his touch, turned, and slammed into Ludwig, knocking him backward.

 Before he knew it, Djawadi was on top of him, pummeling him with his fists.

“Trying to kill me?” Djawadi bellowed.

“No!” Ludwig responded, speaking between punches from his partner. “I’m… trying… to help!”

“By pushing me into the shaft?” Djawadi yelled in accusation, grabbing Ludwig’s suit and hauling him over as if he meant to throw him over the edge.

Ludwig kicked outward, knocking Djawadi over. As they tussled, they came dangerously close to the shaft’s edge.

Finally, Ludwig managed to break free from his partner. He held up his hands toward Djawadi. “Stop! I was trying to get you away from the shaft!”

Djawadi stopped fighting him, and a look of recognition crossed his face. “Ludwig?”

“Yes! It’s me!” Ludwig said desperately.

“I can barely see you.”

“Your suit’s in low power mode,” Ludwig explained, gesturing to his visor, indicating where Djawadi would need to manually turn on his suit’s lights.

“Where are we?”

“Not too far from Beta Site.”

“Near the shaft?” Djawadi asked.

“Yes,” Ludwig said, slightly puzzled that his partner had apparently known about the shaft. Why had he wandered off? Why had he come to this shaft? What was going on? A paranoid part of Ludwig wondered if Djawadi’s confusion about his location and actions was just an act, but he dismissed that thought, knowing he couldn’t afford it with the mission at stake.

Djawadi slumped onto the ground, and when he spoke, his voice sounded like that of a broken man. “Doctor, I don’t know what to do.”

Ludwig took a calming breath—it didn’t help. “Doctor, do you think you can walk?”

“Do I have a choice?” Djawadi responded.

“Well, it took us nine hours to hike from our base down to Beta Site, and most of that was downhill. We’ve got just over eleven hours of power left in our suits.”

“Well, shit.”

“Yeah,” Ludwig said, holding out his hand to Djawadi, “Do you think you can walk?”

Djawadi took Ludwig’s hand, accepting the support as he stood up. “Doctor?” he asked, his tone serious.

“Yeah?” Ludwig responded.

“It’s against the rules to leave our equipment at Site Beta, isn’t it?”

Ludwig nodded. “Yeah, but I think the rule of not dying overrules that one.”

“Good,” Djawadi chuckled. “Never thought I’d hear you joke about the rules.”

Ludwig smiled sadly. He didn’t like the version of himself that Djawadi had seen on this mission. How many of his last cohesion partners had viewed him as an overbearing guardian of the rules? How many of them had felt relief when their cohesions ended?

Ludwig let the shame settle into his chest like a weight, his breathing getting slightly more strained from the tightness it caused. But there would be time for self-loathing later; for now, they were wasting precious battery power.

“Is it really a rule to not die?” Djawadi asked.

“I made that one up,” Ludwig said, then gestured forward. “Lead the way, partner.”

“It’s Doctor,” Djawadi responded.

Ludwig chuckled, taken by surprise by the joke, “Go to hell.”

“Already there, Doc,” Djawadi joked.

Ludwig didn’t laugh at that joke as they started the long trek back. Beneath his relief at finding Djawadi and being on their way back to base, there remained a vague unease that had been growing since he’d seen his partner standing unresponsive at the edge of the ventilation shaft.