Sherbet and Sunlight drank the rest of their preparation in one big gulp and grimaced through their excited smiles. It wasn't their first trip together, far from it, but it would be their first interstellar one. Sunlight had already been put into stasis twice during previous travels and had had to reassure her girlfriend.
“Honestly, the worst part is waking up.” Having just undone her ponytail, she was in the process of putting her hair up again, this time in a messy bun. Her natural straw-colored hair contrasted starkly against her tanned complexion. Her dark eyebrows framed an otherwise kind face, with high cheekbones and an honest smile. “You're freezing and shaking, and-and still covered in stasis slime, yuck.” She stuck her tongue out while pretending to dry heave, noise and all. A golden barbel flashed in her mouth. “But it'll all be worth it.”
“I hope so..”
Definitely more nervous than Sunlight, Sherbet clicked her nails out of rhythm. Her teal eyes scanned the bridge once more. The ship's crew buzzed around them as more people stepped into their pods. She could feel herself getting groggier by the second because of the induction cocktail, having to focus intently on her legs to avoid falling to the floor. Sunlight had explained everything to her. The numbing agent coursing through their veins would quickly slow down their metabolism to prepare for the flash freeze once they'll be installed inside their pods.
“Did you ever wake up?” Too short to be tied, she pushed her hair behind her ears.
“During the trip? No, I don't think that's possible anyway. Don't you worry.” Feeling as if she had just downed a flask of alcohol, she grabbed Sherbet’s face and kissed her thin lips. “Did I ever tell you that I love you?”
Sherbet smiled stupidly, also under the effect of the numbing agent. “Mmmm yes.” She smirked, twisting her soft features into a comical mask.
A crew member, seeing as they only had a few minutes of consciousness left in them, urged the girls inside their respective pods. “Right this way, ladies.”
They let themselves be guided and slumped onto their polymer seat, too sluggish to react as various straps and tubes automatically connected to their respective slots and orifices.
Through the transparent panel, Sunlight mouthed at Sherbet, her immediate pod neighbor. See you on the other side.
And their minds faded out.
What woke Sunlight up wasn't the gooey slime sticking to her skin, or the blinding lights that shone in her face, or even the rancid air of her pod, trapped in recirculation for years during the trip.
It was the movement. Before her, crew members were taking notes, running diagnostics on her pod, taking vitals. She tried to move but felt sluggish, more so than after her previous trips. She tried to rub her hands together and heard a loud snap.
“Shit!! Guys, I TOLD you to watch out for… God damn it. Grab it and carry it with the rest…”
Sunlight forced her eyes open and rubbed slime out of her eyes with her dominant hand. A man with a bushy beard and a tired hat came into her field of view.
“Terribly sorry ‘bout that, Miss. We'll get it sorted right away as fast we can. A transport team is on the way to get you to the medical bay.”
“Medical bay? What's happening? Are we there yet?” She raised her left arm to grab the glass panel but hands jolted forward to prevent her doing so. She tried standing up but people stopped her once again. She felt slanted on her right side. “Can anyone explain what's happening?”
Now free of the stasis slime, her vision became clearer but presented a most unusual sight. In front of her, a woman seemed to carry twigs in her arms. Blackened, rotten pieces of wood, dried and twisted. On one of the branches, a twinkle gleamed under the deck lights. A fine, unadorned golden ring. Her ring.
Sunlight looked down and her vision blurred, this time out of shock. A few inches down from her wrist, her skin shriveled and cracked like a charred log. Her left arm ended where it had broken a few moments ago, without her knowing. Although she felt no pain, her brain lit on fire.
“Miss, you're gon’ be fine. Soon as the medical team thaws out of stasis we'll patch you right up.”
“What happened to me?! Why is my hand gone?” She jumped up and collapsed to the floor under a cacophony of cracks. “My fucking legs!! WHAT'S GOING ON?!?”
What little remained of her legs gave way from under her and Sunlight landed in a puff of dust from her own flesh. Hands reached out to lift her up on a floating stretcher and before they carried her away, she stole a look at Sherbet's empty pod.
“Where's my girlfriend?! Is she okay?”
She started hyperventilating thinking about what could have happened to Sherbet when she felt a sting in her arm. She lost consciousness again.
-
Sherbet woke up in a dreamy haze. Floating in the stasis slime, shadows crossed her vision like birds blocking the sun in flickers, and for a moment, she thought she was back on Earth. A turbine deep in the bowels of the ship turned on and drained the slime in audible slurps. She coughed most of it out before taking a deep breath. There was a lightness to the air, as if a terrible weight had been removed from her chest. She tried to cross her legs but something clattered at her feet.
Arms.
Broken off, calcified, but arms indeed. Hers, even. She lifted her limbs, as if to look at her hands, but only stubs remained. Halfway through the bicep, healthy skin turned gray and broke off into nothingness. She stared back at the disarticulated arms on the floor with a strange fascination. Then, the pod lid opened. In a matter of minutes, she had been patted dry, pulled to her feet, and guided towards the medical bay by two female crew members.
Even though they had talked to her without pause, Sherbet hadn’t heard a thing. She had eyes only for her arms. The sensation felt so novel, so interesting to her, so much so that she didn't feel scared or anxious.
She rolled her shoulders back and a chunk of fossilized flesh broke with a loud snap. A crew member picked it up apologetically and they carried on through a brightly lit doorway into the medical bay.
A little man with a ridiculous handlebar mustache appeared out of the corner of Sherbet's eyes, his hands tangled in embarrassment. “Not the best circumstances in which to meet, I'm afraid. I am Doctor Vindelbrandt. As chief medical officer on this ship, I want to extend my most profound excuses for what happened to you, my child.”
“I… um.. What caused this?” She lifted her arms towards him inquisitively.
“I'm afraid there was a problem with our power supply during the voyage. You're lucky, in a way, since a lot of people unfortunately perished when their life support systems… well shut down… Yours managed to stay functional for most of the trip in an altered, yet functional, state.
He gestured her forward to an examination table where she was undressed and examined from head to toes.
“The arms seem to be the only affected areas in your case...” He rubbed his hands again and twisted his mustache in a calculated manner, like he had done it a million times. “When the human body is put into stasis, a lot of the normal regulatory functions that our brain and systems operate stop working so that our life pods may take over. In this case, it did but only partially, letting part of your brain in charge of a few essential parameters, mainly energy management. You see, a body will normally use its energy resources, mostly fat but also muscle, and convert them into a usable source of energy, namely glucose. Since your brain had been cooled down to 3° Celcius, it could not adequately guide the energy redirection process. Your body mistook your limbs as an energy source, and, well, here we are.”
Encouraged by his inviting hand, she let him examine her stump and watched his experienced fingers at work. Her skin felt soft, supple near her shoulders and for the first few inches of her arms. Then, it transitioned into a scaly, crackling surface, like the desiccated desert sand.
“I'm sorry to say we'll have to amputate your arms, Miss…” He frowned and looked back at his charts. “Windhaven. Miss Windhaven.”
Although Sherbet's heart skipped a beat, yet she didn't seem troubled in the slightest. “Amputate like… Cut off?”
Doctor Vindelbrandt mumbled a few words before speaking again. “Of course the… fitting of state of the art robotic limbs will be taken care of by our team at absolutely no cost since the error is ours. But I’m afraid the removal of your arms is… inevitable.” He wrestled with his hands again. “Understandably, the sooner it is done, the sooner we can send the measurement of your stumps to the prosthetic lab, and to proceed with the fitting of your new limbs.”
She looked back at the empty corridor, almost expecting Sunlight to be following behind her. “I’m ready.”
Her nudity being nobody’s problem, she was invited to walk into an adjacent more private room where instruments were pulled and lights were dimmed. Lying on her back, they shielded her arms from her view and she sighed internally. As Doctor Vindelbrandt walked her through the procedure, she heard many eerie noises. Buzzes, cracks, whomps, squirts, and cuts, although none of them caused her any pain. After what seemed to her like an hour, he switched sides, repeating the operation on her second arm. After he was done, he took a few minutes to scan the shape and size of her arms, for the prosthetic fittings like he had told her, and finally removed the divider.
With his help, she sat back up and took a long look at herself. He had cleaned up all the dead and crackled flesh that remained at the tip of her arms, and rounded them both into smooth stumps. After covering her breasts with a flimsy medical gown, he brought up a mirror and her jaw dropped.
There was barely anything left of her right arm. From her point of view, her shoulder seemed larger than the entire length of her limb. She raised it towards its reflection and noticed it didn’t have any scars, neither did her left stump after closer examination. It was as if she had never had any arms at all. At the tip of her left arm, longer than its twin, her flesh drooped slightly as she moved.
“How are you feeling, Miss Windhaven?”
“Lighter.” She set them at her sides and looked around once more. “My girlfriend was in the pod next to me, is she okay? Her name is Sunlight.”
His eyes grew wide, his mustache frisky. “Yes, yes.. Miss Farewell’s pod suffered a similar malfunction to yours, I'm afraid. I'm happy to tell you she's doing just fine, although the consequences on her anatomy are a little bit more drastic.”
“Drastic? What do you mean? Can I see her?”
“Why, of course! Let's get you covered up and my assistant will lead you to your private quarters.”
Another crew member, a man this time, helped her into a simple white shirt and even though it had short sleeves, her reduced arms did not poke out of them. He escorted her through another series of corridors and up a magnetic elevator to their complimentary luxurious suite. He helped her set-up her information for the retinal scanner, mostly tapping buttons for her, then ushered her inside.
She came into a hallway of silver and chrome, as was the rest of the ship's interior, although it led into an entirely novel place. The suite had been set-up like a regular hotel room on Earth. Two twin beds laid side by side complete with their own side tables, and two imitation windows were draped shut, letting through artificial light. As Sherbet spun to thank the crew member, the door had already been closed.
A voice came from around the corner. “Sherbet? Is that you?”
“Sunlight! It's me! Where are you?”
“Oh my God I'm so relieved to hear your voice! I'm in the recliner but…” Her voice betrayed her emotions, she sniffled. “Something happened, Sherbet. Something went wrong with my stasis pod and, and…”
Sherbet's eyes widened. Sitting in her chair, Sunlight covered her face as best she could. While her right arm remained intact, her left now ended in a stump a little more than halfway down her forearm. She wiped her tears with it, creating the illusion that her arm was impaling her own head. She looked up at her girlfriend and her heart broke.
“Oh no, not you too, Sherbet!!” Her face contorted with dismay, she looked in horror at Sherbet's new stumps. The latter kneeled in front of the chair and Sunlight reached out with her handless side. “I should've never brought you with me! Your beautiful arms…”
“Hey, hey, it's okay…’ Sherbet lifted a stump and leaned towards Sunlight to touch her cheek lovingly. “With our prosthetic implants, I'm sure we'll be back on our feet in no time.”
“Back on my feet! As if I could…” Sunlight clawed at her right leg, which had been cutoff close to her hip. Her left was missing at the calf.
Sherbet reached over for a kiss, which Sunlight accepted against her will. “We’ll be fine. As long as I’m with you, I’m not afraid.” She stretched out her arms, inviting her into the world’s smallest hug.
—-
Fresh out of the shower, Sherbet laid on the bed on her stomach, naked as a worm. The stumps of her arms laid beside her breasts, pressed downward on the mattress, although they weren't long enough to allow her to support any weight. Her short hair secured behind her ears, like always, she looked up at Sunlight, who had climbed onto a table and shuffled around, turning the cupboards inside out. And had changed out of her stasis suit and wore nothing more than a cream white bikini.
“Ah HA! I KNEW IT!!” She cried out, triumphant, before slamming a bottle of alcohol between her legs. “It's time to forget, Sherbet!”
She offered her girlfriend a thin smile. “I'm not sure I'm in the mood for drinking.”
“Well I am.” She fumbled at the bottle cap absent-mindedly with her stump and Sherbet's lips stretched into a smile. She remembered and scoffed. “See?! See what they made us?!” The bottle banged hard on the table again.
“It was an accident, Sunlight. There are 10 000 dead bodies on this star ship and you whine about your hand? We survived.”
“I just thought we'd have a nice little trip. You and I, on Gondolian beaches of white sands.” She waddled near the edge of the table and extended her left leg, catching her weight with her truncated shin, lowering her weight to the recliner. Her shorter right leg, barely a few inches down her hips, was angled down at the approach as if it still had the length to reach it. That reflex that would prove hard to change in the following days. “Now look at us.”
“I am looking.” She waddled to the sides to fix the position of her breasts against the sheets. “I think you're overreacting.”
“I think you're underreacting.” She found a bottle opener in a nearby drawer and her eyes lit up. Grabbing the bottle again, she squeezed her thighs around it and flicked the cap off of it in skilled motion, holding the bottle against her using her handless arm.
“They said we’re going to be fitted with robotic limbs, I think it’s kind of neat. They usually cost a fortune, and now we’re going to get them for free.” Rolling on her side, Sherbet brought her right leg near her chest and boosted herself into a sitting position, exposing herself to her girlfriend, before crossing her legs. She lifted her stumps and tried to move their atrophied muscles. “I’ve seen the ads. The added strength, downloadable skills…” She tried to bring them together but couldn’t. “To me that's an upside.”
“I would’ve rather kept my old limbs, thank you very much. She brought the bottle to her lips and took three long gulps. She grimaced and stuck out her tongue. “That’s terrible. And only 10% ABV?”
She set the bottle down again and wiped her mouth with her handless arm, surprised at the feeling of her stump against her face. She pushed down on the arm rests to bring herself closer to the bed and transferred to it with difficulty, her hand clamped against the sheets while her handless and feetless limbs swiped at the furniture around her, unable to get a grip. Flapping around like a fish out of the water, she finally managed to climb on and join her girlfriend, who looked at her with unhidden glee.
“What’s so funny?” Sunlight asked. She offered a swig of her drink to Sherbet but she shook her head. “Thank God because I just noticed that I left it over there.” She sighed.
“Laughing in the face of death.” She extended her right leg to meet Sunlight’s remaining hand. “What are the odds of us surviving when so many people died?”
She shuddered. “Sorry Sherb but I’m not in the mood for existential philosophy.” She looked around the bed and waddled to the headboard, pushing roughly on the sheets with her stumps. “According to the ship’s brochure, there are environment simulators in every room. Help me find the..”
“Something like that?” Leg in the air, Sherbet flicked a switch set on the side table and a low hum filled the space around them. The walls shimmered, the same way that a black screen on a television is a little brighter than when it's turned off.
“Yes!” Sunlight cleared her throat. “Setting: Gondolus, South-Eastern Beach of New Brazil.”
They sat and watched in amazement as the room around them fizzled out of existence. Lost into whatever technology they didn't understand, the furniture seemed to wobble and vanished, leaving behind an image, an idea of a landscape that gradually became clearer. Under Sunlight's fingers and Sherbet's toes, the soft mattress hardened and dissolved into loose, grainy, hot sand. Instead of the ceiling light, a clear blue sky now stretched above their heads. They looked up and shielded their eyes from the twin suns slowly printing each other.
And suddenly, the illusion was perfect. To the untrained eye, there was no way of telling this wasn't the beach they had looked forward to for months (and dreamt about for decades). Sunlight's expression relaxed and she leaned back on her elbows, breathing in the simulated air. The handless stump off her left arm rested beside her hip, perfectly inept. A light blue towel materialized under her rump and she ran her new limb across it, inspecting the sensations.
“Ahhhhh, that's more like it.”
She sighed and pushed her hair away from her face, pressing her stump perpendicularly against her skin. Without any proper grasp, she had to rub it repeatedly backwards until her locks had fallen where she wanted them. Sherbet stood up to stretch her legs, burying her toes in the hot sand. She looked around them nervously and shrugged, arm stumps towards her chest, like trying to cover herself.
“Who are you looking for?” Sunlight giggled and sighed in relief. “We’re in a simulation, there’s no one around!”
Already sweating in the heat of the fake suns, Sunlight tugged at her underwear before looking up at her girlfriend’s naked breasts. They stared back at her like two neon bullseyes. She nodded and, her only hand secured on the ground, awkwardly poked at her breast with her blunt forearm, again forgetting her new predicament. She groaned and shuffled her legs, messing up the neatly laid out towel with her footless calf, before taking a deep breath and focusing on her movements. She brought the stump of her arm between her breasts and, pressing it against her skin, managed to slide it under the lace of her top, pulling it up and freeing her breasts. She reached for them with both limbs, the impreciseness of her left still feeding what remained of her grumpiness. She motioned at Sherbet with her stump.
“Come and join me. Let’s see how much we can tan under the light of two stars.”