Tantalus - 10. Confessions

Chapter 10

By the end of our sixth day inside the bunker I had started feeling a certain shortness of breath and hints of lightheadedness if I stood up too quickly. I tried not to think about it, but the realization that our air was running out made the space seem ten times smaller. I started catching myself staring at the walls around me, but particularly at the ceiling, as if checking whether it had moved closer to my head while I wasn't looking.

Jim and I weren't talking to each other. I had given up the pretense of running system diagnostics entirely, since I knew it was useless. It didn't matter how well our temperature regulators or water recycling systems worked when we would just suffocate sometime tomorrow.

I tried not to let myself obsess over how it would go, but I had read too much not to know exactly how it would play out. As carbon dioxide concentrations in the air increased, the first change that I would notice was that I would start feeling tired. I would also yawn more often as my brain signaled to the rest of my body that it wasn't getting enough oxygen to work at peak performance. Soon afterwards, my ability to concentrate would suffer and I would find it hard to carry out complex tasks of any kind.

Then I would get sleepy. Eventually, I would either succumb to the urge, never wake up, or simply pass out, never to recover.

I didn't realize I was crying until I felt the first drop running down my cheek.

"Hey," Jim said, kneeling down beside me. I was sitting on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. "It's okay, Kyle."

His tone was gentle, and when I looked up I saw that his eyes were full of compassion.

"It's not okay," I snapped without thinking. Then I caught myself. Jim was here with me, too. He was also going to die. "Sorry. Didn't mean that."

Jim sighed and sat down more comfortably next to me. His shoulder was touching mine, but I didn't feel aroused by the contact. The time for that had passed. I was simply grateful to have someone with me.

"I don't mind," Jim continued, staring at the wall ahead of us. He looked sad, but there was an edge of defiance in his eyes as well. "You are right, you know. It's not okay."

"They're not going to rescue us." It wasn't a question.

"No."

A few seconds passed by without either of us speaking. The bunker was so quiet that I could hear Jim breathing in and out next to me. In and out. Every breath he or I took brought us closer to dying.

"I just didn't want it to end like this," I said at last.

Jim looked regretful. "I understand. You're still so young."

I shook my head. "It's not even that. I don't think I would mind dying if I knew I had done something, anything, with my life. It's like… It's like I haven't even started yet, you know? All my life, things have gone okay, but never great. I've never really had a passion for anything. When I read books, or watch movies, there's always these people in them that are so passionate about what they do. I don't feel that way. At least, I haven't found anything yet that can make me feel that way. Now my life is over, and there's nothing there. I didn't do anything good, didn't do anything bad, either. Just… Wasted. I don't know."

"Do you think perhaps it would have been better if you had stayed on Cora?" Jim asked, and from the way he looked at me it seemed that he was almost afraid of the answer.

"Nah. You know what? If I had stayed there, I would've just kept going, right as I was doing. Not feeling awful, not feeling great. Going through the motions. Get a job, work, die. Maybe I would have done even less, because I never would have visited another planet." I chuckled. "Well, at least I can tick that box on my bucket list."

"There's nothing wrong with leading an average life, Kyle. Many people wish for nothing else."

"I know. But it's like I… I'm not saying I'm a super genius or anything, but I know I have something inside, like a spark of something that can do awesome things if only given the chance. I don't know if I'm making any sense."

"More than you would think."

I leaned against Jim, resting my head on his shoulder. He didn't move away. The motion felt natural.

"I think the only exciting thing I did was also my worst mistake," I confessed. I had never spoken about this with anyone, not even my mother, but I had reached the point where secrets had lost their value. Now that I had started talking, I felt like I needed to keep going, anything so I wouldn't have to contemplate what would happen if we fell silent.

"What do you mean?" Jim asked me. His deep voice rumbled in his chest.

"I fell in love," I said simply. "His name is Raymond. Turned out he was the wrong guy. Everything was great at the beginning, but then he started insisting that nobody know about us. When I would ask why, he would change the subject. I liked him way too much to contradict him at first. I even took an internship over the summer just to be near him, but a couple of weeks into that I found out he was seeing someone else. Had been seeing him, for nearly a year. I was just his casual fling. I was the other guy."

"What an asshole."

I sighed, leaning against Jim's strong body. "Yeah. Except back then I didn't think so, and I was sure that he would love me if only I could show him that I was the right one. I asked him to stay with me, to give me a chance, and at first he said no but I kept begging until he agreed to give me a few days to prove how much I loved him. In the meantime, I started investigating Raymond. I hired a Net agent to find out where he went when he wasn't with me, and to try and discover who his boyfriend was.

"I don't even know what I was thinking, honestly. I only remember that back then I seemed to think that I would be able to beat this other guy for Raymond's love if only I found out who he was. Well, the agent worked out all right, and I discovered Raymond was seeing some rich guy from Ariostos. It's a city in the desert region, where the richest people on the planet live. The guy was like twenty years older than Raymond, and it turned out he had paid for everything Raymond owned. His apartment, his car, his clothes, everything.

"I confronted Raymond with the information once I had it, and he got mad. Really mad. He said he had a great thing going with his sugar daddy and that I wasn't going to ruin it for him. He said never to contact him again and threatened to hurt me if I did."

Jim shifted his position next to me, cracking the knuckles of his left hand. He didn't say anything, but he was listening intently, frowning.

"Anyway, I ignored the warning and started following Raymond around. He discovered me almost right away, and that's when he got a few of his buddies to gang up on me, to teach me a lesson one day after classes at the University. I think he only wanted to scare me, but things started getting out of hand and I panicked. My dad taught me martial arts and I'm pretty damn good. I punched Raymond in the jaw and knocked one of his friends out cold. It was horrible. That moment when I saw three guys coming at me, wanting to hurt me, and the total lack of emotion in Raymond's eyes, I felt all the love I'd had for him turn into hate. I might have even killed that one guy I knocked out if campus security hadn't discovered us. Even then, I was kicked out of college for the violence, and Raymond got to stay because nobody could prove that he had ordered the attack and his friends didn't tell on him."

"I'm glad I don't have that bastard standing in front of me right now," Jim said, a dangerous edge to his voice. He clenched his fists, flexing his forearm muscles. His meaning was clear.

"Yeah, it was pretty bad," I admitted, and in doing so I felt strangely lighter. No one knew the entire story between Raymond and me. I had kept it bottled up inside, all through the trial and everything that happened afterwards. "My future was ruined, I lost most of my friends, my mother was disappointed in me and I felt like I would never live up to the man my father had been. All because I'd been stupid enough to fall in love."

"It wasn't stupid. It was brave."

Hearing those words being spoken by Jim meant a lot to me. I wanted to say something, but I couldn't think of anything and so I merely stayed where I was, resting against him, feeling a lot better than when we had started talking.

"I guess you're right," I said after a while. "Even though it was bad, I don't think I regret it. Not anymore, at least. I suppose it made me who I am today."

"That's a very grown-up way of looking at it."

I grinned ruefully. "I know. Doesn't fit me, does it? Must be the impending death and everything."

"Now if only it would also solve your attitude problems, your discipline issues, and your general annoying feeling of entitlement, it would be perfect."

I raised an eyebrow. "Really? You pick now to start criticizing me?"

"Well, someone's got to do it."

"And it's got to be you, because you're perfect."

"I'm not perfect," Jim protested.

"Yeah, right."

"I mean it."

"Okay, if it's true, tell me one negative thing about you. Anything."

"Well…"

I chuckled and pushed away from Jim. I made myself ignore the faint lightheadedness that followed the sudden motion. "See?"

Jim smiled, then got serious all of a sudden. "I'm not brave," he said.

He had spoken so quietly that I thought I had heard wrong.

"What?"

Jim looked away. "You heard me. I'm not like you, Kyle. I don't know you're very well, but what I've seen so far is impressive. Me, I have a much harder time standing up to people."

"Dude. You got to be joking. You're one of the biggest guys I know."

"It's not about physical size. It's about inner strength, I suppose. It's… Never mind."

"Oh, no. You started, now you have to finish. It's not like there's tons of other stuff we could be doing with our last day, really."

I had spoken too loudly, trying to sound brash and brave, but talking about my own death like that made chills of fear run all through me.

I ignored them. Jim must've also been terrified, and he was not talking about how scared he was to die. If he could be strong, then so could I. We could give each other some courage.

"Fine," Jim conceded. He took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. He didn't look at me when he started speaking. "You know how I'm alone in this compound?"

I nodded. "Yes. It was weird from the beginning. I get the part about secrecy and people not wanting to come all this way to spend years in the middle of nowhere, but there's no way a research outpost like this works with only one person."

"You're right. There used to be a lot of us, right up until about three months ago. Then… Well, the other scientists found out something about me and decided they would be better off working in other compounds, or going back home. It's part of the reason I agreed to take you on. I'd been alone for weeks and I knew that it simply wasn't sustainable. I was even a little excited to get to know you, if I'm being perfectly honest. Speaking with others via videoconferencing is not the same as having company. It was nice, not to be alone anymore."

"What happened?" I asked quietly.

"Do you know anything about the culture of New Éire, Kyle?"

I shook my head. I had never been very good at Social Studies.

"We used to be a very cosmopolitan planet, before the weather change. Then, suddenly the big cities were cut off from one another and also from other planets. Our economy suffered, greatly. Unemployment rates are soaring, entire development compounds have been abandoned, half-finished. Financial security, social welfare, and universal healthcare, which are things that most people take for granted, have all but disappeared in my home."

"It sounds bad."

"It is, but worse than the economic depression is the effect it is having on people. We are shrinking back on ourselves. Immigrants are viewed with hostility, since there are so few jobs already that many think immigrants are taking them away from trueborn citizens. Family, and lineage especially, has suddenly become very important. In Avalon, where I'm from, children are now being taught genealogy where a generation ago such a thing would have been seen as ridiculous.

"We are regressing. Not in everything, and not fast, and of course there are still pockets of true multiculturalism in the capital, but many of the smaller cities, like Avalon, are changing for the worse. People are trying to find meaning where they can, and unfortunately one of the places they decided to look is in ancient history.

"You see, there's a growing movement of people in my planet that are demanding a return to what they call traditional Terran values. They've always been around, but others are suddenly listening to them now. The result of this is that women are finding it increasingly difficult to hold positions of power. There has been talk of recognizing a single religion, planetwide, and giving tax breaks to those who follow it. Also… people like me, who like other men, are now looked at with mistrust if not outright hostility."

"You've got to be joking," I replied. It sounded like the plot for a late-night video drama from our ancient home world.

Jim shook his head. "I wish I were."

I connected the dots. "So the other scientists who were here…"

"All came from New Éire, just like I did. All of them decided they would rather be reassigned when they discovered I was exclusively homosexual. They made a petition and got it approved by Planetary Government. At the time it seemed very strange to me, but now I realize that the Government had only been too happy to reduce personnel so they could have better control over what went on here on the planet's surface. For them, it was a great, happy coincidence that details of my private life had suddenly leaked onto our Intranet. I even wonder, sometimes, whether they didn't do it deliberately just to cause exactly that situation. It's hard to say."

"Wow. That sucks."

Jim glanced at me briefly. "You have no idea. The thing I hate the most about it all, though, wasn't the attitude of others. It was my own.

"I said nothing as my former colleagues were making their petition. I said nothing when I saw them packing their bags to leave. I said nothing through the weeks and weeks during which I was alone in here, thinking that maybe I deserved to be alone. This is why I say I am not as brave as you are, Kyle. I think I still have much to learn."

I reached out to hold Jim, caught myself, and ended up patting him awkwardly on the shoulder.

"Hey, don't beat yourself up about it. Nobody's perfect," I said.

"I know. I suppose I never thought that it would take a rebellious teenager to remind me of that, though."

I grinned. "You're welcome. See, you just had a free deathbed confession session with me."

"And you with me."

"Yeah. I guess I did."

Scratch, scratch.

I looked deep into Jim's eyes, and the quickening of my heart had nothing to do with oxygen deprivation.

Scratch, scratch.

Jim looked to the right. "Do you hear that?"

"What?" I said distractedly. I found myself thinking that the dark stubble covering Jim's cheeks was very attractive.

Scratch, scratch.

Now I was hearing it, too.

"Sounds like something up in the ceiling," I said.

"I'll check it out."

"Right behind you," I said, and stood up after Jim, but a wave of dizziness forced me first to regain my balance by leaning against the wall. By the time I made it to the spot Jim was inspecting, the scratching noises could not be ignored.

"Sounds like something is tunneling," Jim said. "Let me see whether any of our sensors is picking it up."

"I'll watch," I said, never taking my eyes off the portion of the ceiling from where the noise was coming from. Jim typed away, and the noise got louder.

Then something cracked.

"One of the sensors is picking heavy vibrations coming from above," Jim informed me. "It does seem like something is tunneling to get to us."

"Rescue?" I asked, spirits soaring.

"No. Too small to be a person."

Something else cracked. A faint shower of dirt fell on me a second before the crack became a jagged tear in the ceiling and a small avalanche of dirt collapsed inward.

Success!

I felt the alien intrusion in my mind and I knew what it was even before the first furry shape scampered down, sneaking in through the crack in the ceiling.

The emergency alarm started blaring right then. I felt a whoosh of air and I knew what was happening before Jim yelled.

"The bunker seal has been breached! We're losing the last of our air!"

Still more aliens dropped down, skittering on the floor like oversized fur-covered spiders. I gasped, backing away from them instinctively. The more there were, the clearer the message in my mind.

Ours.

You're ours.