Short Story: Adam (pt 1)

I wrote a short story for the Garden State Horror Writers Contest. The theme is the horror of technology and the word limit is 4000. I would appreciate comments on the story. It is the first draft. The story is copyrighted by me and may not be used anyplace else without my expressed written consent.

*** ADAM ***
The mighty ship appeared to be lumbering along though it was actually the fastest ship that mankind had ever built. It’s 106 year journey was coming to an end though the ship did not know it would never fly through space again. The star system was visible through the front windows and the ship’s computers started their calculations to set a trajectory to go into asynchronous orbit around the planet dubbed Eden by the occupants. The ship was a technological marvel. Its vast array of metal alloys, fiber optic wiring, massive engines and size had placed it far and above anything else that man had ever created, except for one thing.
 
Adam sat alone on the bridge of the mighty ship. He was tiny in comparison but the entire mission rested on his abilities and knowledge. He was the thirteenth generation of his line and by far the best. Nearly perfect his father had declared, though his father had declared himself to be perfect when he was given the honor of being called the greatest scientist that had ever lived. One would think that Adam would have spent years on some psychiatrist’s couch trying to work out the numerous issues brought on by his ego maniacal father but that was not the case. Adam was born under the sign of Taurus and he had a nose-to-the-grindstone personality. 
 
The ship’s computer chirped out the calculations for the orbit insertion trajectory and Adam pressed the confirmation button. Numbers appeared on a countdown clock on the large monitor. Red numbers and letters ticked away 14 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 15… 14… 13… seconds until orbit insertion.
 
“It is time,” Adam said to no one.
 
His deep voice matched the strong, rugged look that was given to him by his father. A strong jaw line looked as if it was drawn from a superhero comic book. His looks had left many a woman swooning, carnal thoughts running through their minds, just as his father had intended.
 
***
The lights flickered on in the women’s stasis chamber. The room was circular and held fifty individual chambers, a sleeping beauty contained within. These women were chosen for their intelligence, beauty and most importantly their genetic makeup. They were perfectly matched with the fifty sleeping in the men’s stasis chamber. They held the future of humanity in their DNA and their ability to reproduce.
 
Jackie Conrad could feel consciousness slowly returning. She heard the hum of the stasis machine as it slowly removed the sleeping gas and replaced it with a more natural oxygen-nitrogen mix. It reminded her of the hissing the steam radiators would give off in the winter when she lived with her parents as a young girl. For a moment she thought she would be wake up in her old bed, but that was not to be.
 
Her eyes opened and her arm quickly came up to shade them from the light that hurt her eyes. How long had she been asleep? Could they be at Eden already? It seemed like they had just left. As her eyes adjusted she could see the shadow of a figure standing over her. She pressed the exit button and the clear clam shell covering opened on its hinges allowing her to throw her feet over the edge and sit up. She stretched her aching body like a cat walking from a nap.
 
“Commander Conrad. How are you feeling?” The shadowy figure spoke with almost no emotion in its voice.
 
Trying to focus her eyes, she looked about the room to see that she was the only one awake. The rest were still safely tucked into their cocoons. Commander Conrad hoped that this was just a minor glitch and not some full blown emergency.
 
“I… I’m stiff.” It was all she could mutter at the moment.
 
“Yes, of course. Once you get up and walk around you will start to feel better.”
 
Her mind becoming clearer, she now recognized Adam’s voice. It made sense that he would be the one to awaken her if there was a problem.
 
“Have we arrived at Eden?” She slowly stood and reached out to him to steady herself, grasping his forearm for support.
 
“We have begun our orbit insertion trajectory. We will be arriving at Eden within two weeks.” He was feeding her bits of information rather than everything at once knowing that her mental capacity would take some time to function normally.
 
“It feels like we just left.”
 
“Your slumber has been 106 years, just short of the mythical figure… Um,” He paused a moment as he searched for the name, “Rip Van Winkle.”
 
<span style="line-height: 115%; font-size: 12pt">She nodded in an acknowledgement of the information but her mind was not on children’s stories. Was the Captain waiting for her on the bridge? Her feet were now steady and she let go of his arm and walked around the room to get the blood flowing.
 
“Is there a problem? Is that why you have not woken anyone else yet?” She asked with some urgency.
 
“Yes.”
 
Dammit! That was not what she wanted to hear, “Does the Captain want me on the bridge?”
 
“No. The emergency is over so you can change and take a shower to clear your head. I’ll wait for you on the bridge.” He turned on his heels and left the room, not giving her the opportunity to ask any further questions.
 
“I guess it is not that serious then.” She said to the sleeping women and then headed to the showers.
 
***
Jackie’s entrance on the bridge was met with an awkward smile from Adam. Captain Jennings and the other senior officers were nowhere to be found. “What the hell is going on?” She thought as she sat down in her assigned command seat.
 
“I trust that your the shower was refreshing?” Adam’s voice was one of a conversational tone with no hint of alarm or urgency.
 
“Um…,” it took her off guard, “Yeah. It was.” She looked at the glowing panels to check for alarms or alert statuses but found none, “What is going on Adam? Where is everyone?”
 
“There has been an accident.” His tone was still conversational as if this happened every day.
 
Her mouth formed a small ‘O’ shape has the words plunged into her like a knife. She waited for him to continue.
 
“The ship took some damage crossing through an undetected asteroid field. The men’s stasis chamber was shut down by an electrical malfunction as a result.” He paused to let the words sink in.
 
“Men’s chamber…” She mumbled in disbelief.
 
“None of them survived.”
 
Her mind was a whirlwind of disconnected thoughts and questions. The mission would now be a complete failure. There was no way to colonize Eden. A message back to Earth would take a generation to get there and by the time they sent another ship with a new crew, all of them would be dead for nearly a hundred years! Her face fell into her hands as the gravity of the situation prevented her from holding up her head.
 
“Captain Jennings… Commander Mobique?” She stammered out from under her hands.
 
“None of them survived.” He reiterated his words of doom, “You are now the captain.”
 
“What?” She looked up, her eyes red rimmed and tears staining her cheeks.
 
“By order of succession in the command structure, you are now the captain.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” She screamed at him. The pressure of the situation had taken hold of her and it came out like the steam from the radiator in her old room. God, she wanted to be in that room more than anything right now, “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to yell.”
 
“We have a great many things to discuss when you are feeling up to it.” He rose from his seat seemingly unaffected by her harsh tone. Once again he turned and left the room without giving her a chance to continue the conversation.
 
Captain Conrad crossed her arms below her bosom and hugged herself tightly as she let the tears flow. Captain Jennings was to have been her husband on this new world. They had fallen in love during the nearly three year training program. Now he and all of their hopes and dreams were gone.
 
As the shock and sorrow released its stranglehold on her, she started to think more like an officer as she was trained to do. She had forty nine other people plus Adam to think about now. Sitting up in the seat, she started to punch the panel keys trying to gather information about the status of the ship. All systems appeared to be functioning normally, though the men’s stasis chamber was offline for unknown reasons. She frantically pressed more buttons trying to find out the cause of the malfunction but the computer was not yielding its secret.
 
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt”>“There is no turning back so we should let the computer bring us into orbit so we can mark out a landing spot.” Adam had appeared behind her, silently.
 
She snapped her head around and glared at him. “Nothing seems to be wrong with the ship? What the hell happened?”
 
“The ship woke me when the malfunctioned occurred. I was unable to determine the cause but it was too late for me to do anything to save the men.” Her seemingly accusatory words and facial expression appeared to have no affect on him.
 
“I want to see the men’s chamber!” She once again was losing control of her emotions as she stormed from the bridge.
 
***
Adam allowed her to enter the chamber first. The control panel did not respond to her attempts to turn on the lights. He flicked on a flashlight and handed it to her before turning one on for himself.
 
“The sealed stasis bed will keep them preserved until we land on the Eden and can give them a proper burial.” He offered as they entered the dark room.
 
The beams of light darted around the room as Jackie looks around, going from bed to bed. They looked like they were still sleeping and she thought if they could just get power restored they would wake up and everything would be just fine. The trained commander in her knew that without the power the beds would have no air and they would suffocate within minutes.
 
Captain Jennings lay with his arms at his sides, a peaceful look on his face. Jackie’s hand reached out and touched the glass covering him. His bed was now a coffin. Tears trailed down her cheeks again as her personal loss overwhelmed her.
 
“Goodbye my love,” she whispered.
 
She took a page from Adam’s book and quickly turned and left the room without saying another word. He followed her in silence to the bridge knowing that there would be plenty to discuss shortly.
 
Captain Conrad tentatively lowered herself into the captain’s chair as if it was going to shock her for sitting there and pretending to take on this role. She had dried her cheeks on the walk back to the bridge and had composed herself. Now it was time for business.
 
“Adam, I need an assessment of the mission as it stands now.” She was stoic in words.
 
Adam settled into his seat at the control panel and tapped on the keyboard to obtain information from the computer system. The results displaying on his monitor as well as the main monitor above the windows so the Captain could see them.
 
“We are less than fifteen days until orbit insertion. The computer will scan the planet surface on successive orbits and we should have a landing spot within twenty four hours.” He paused a moment to tap on more keys before continuing, “We have a crew of fifty plus myself. Most of the major sciences and disciplines are covered with the female crew members and my knowledge will supplement the areas that we are missing by the loss of the male members.”
 
She absorbed his words and thought back to their training. Lots of contingency plans were in place for a wide range of emergencies and disasters. None were in place if they had lost all of the crewmembers of one sex. There was duplication in knowledge amongst the crewmembers. Some trained in engineering, medical, physics, earth sciences, chemistry, psychology, sociology to name a few.
 
The senior officers had been briefed on Adam and his abilities and knowledge but the details evaded her. He was a technological marvel and unlike anything ever built was the biggest detail she remembered.
 
“Adam, refresh my memory on your capabilities.” She blurted out.
 
“I am the creation of Dr. Wilson Alvarez, the thirteenth human replicant and most advanced that he had ever created. I am trained in all earth sciences, construction, medicine, engineering, electronics, computer programming and the more mundane skills including cooking, sewing, weaving and such.” He had pivoted in his seat and looked her in the eye as he spoke.
 
“Dr. Alvarez was quite the character if I remember correctly. Didn’t he die?” She recalled her few interactions with the crazy doctor.
 
“Yes, he did die about six months before liftoff. As for him being a character, I do not know what you mean.” For all of Adam’s advanced technology and his remarkable appearance as a human, there were some subtleties that he did not understand.
 
“It&rsquo;s alright.” She dismissed her comment with a flick of her wrist. “What are you able to do with all of your knowledge?”
 
He let her comment dissipate in the air and focused on her latest question, “I am able to work on any system on the ship to perform repairs, reprogram systems, create new items from parts from the ship or from the raw materials that were sent with us. I am fully qualified as a medical doctor and surgeon, I can cook our meals, determine if the local flora and fauna are safe for consumption, traverse hundreds of miles without the need for recharging and can even go under water since I am not required to breath.”
 
She wondered if that was an all inclusive list or if he was just giving her the major functions, “Anything else?” She quipped.
 
He pondered her question for a moment before answering, “Dr. Alvarez did equip me with one additional feature which was not made known to anyone in NASA.”
 
She cocked her head and gave him a curious look, “Oh? And what would that be?”
 
“The ability to reproduce.”
 
“What?” She was stunned at this revelation, “I don’t understand. Reproduce how?”
 
“Dr. Alvarez made me a fully functional male. I am able to have intercourse with a female in order to impregnate her.” His words gave no sense of emotion.
 
“How… but… You can create sperm?” She thought this must be a joke.
 
“No.” It was as if he was speaking to a child, “Dr. Alvarez has given me a reservoir of sperm that will allow me to function for quite a few years if my services are required.”
“Who’s sperm do you have?” She thought she must be dreaming.
 
“I do not know.” He stated.
 
Jackie was in disbelief. Was this a result of the doctor’s ego? The implications were huge, though she doubted that one hundred year old sperm could impregnate anyone.
 
“He tried making a female version that would be able to carry a baby but he was not able to overcome the technological hurdles before he died.” Adam added on.
 
“Why would Dr. Alvarez think that we would need you to impregnate anyone?” Her tone was clearly accusatory.
 
“He was concerned that if the planet adversely affected the men’s ability to reproduce there would be a backup plan. If he had completed the female replicant then she would have been on this voyage as well to serve as a backup to you women.” A simple smile upturned the corners of his lips.
 
“I think NASA might have wanted to know about your ‘advanced’ feature.” She said sarcastically.
 
“That was not my decision. Dr. Alvarez programmed me not to speak of it unless the situation presented itself.” He turned back around to the glowing panel and rapidly typed away on the keypad.
 
Jackie Conrad did not trust Dr. Alvarez. There was something creepy about him from the first time she had met him. She thought about the possibility that Adam had been responsible for the accident in the men’s stasis chamber. She needed to explore this so she could at least put her mind at ease.
 
***