Orbital

Fifty-One Specimen

If I were to order the excruciating pain I’m experiencing, I’d have to put the burning sensation of my lungs at the top. Second is the pulsing roar of my inner ear. Third would be the icy pinpricks of every joint in my body. That’s not counting all the parts that are too numb to even feel.

Consciousness comes back to me slowly, like long gauze strips are being unwound from around my head.

At first I’m aware that I’m aware. Which is good. Then I hear the sound of indistinct voices. Bright white light begins to filter through my eyelids.

Some point after that, I’m conscious of Dr. Warren pointing a beam into my eye as his face hovers inches away from mine.

I start to speak, but my vocal chords have been replaced by raspy strips of sandpaper.

“I take it I made it…” I manage to whisper through the oxygen mask.

“Let’s not pop the champagne until we make sure you’re not at risk of a sudden embolism.”

He props open my other eyelid and makes a disgusted face.

Reflexively, I reach a hand up, but the pain is too intense.

“Relax. You won’t lose the eyes. I just wouldn’t take any Christmas card photos anytime soon.”

“That bad?”

“This is a joke, right? David, there’s not an inch of your body that isn’t bruised, swollen, dilated or blistered. I’ve seen corpses that have gone through years of decay that look better than you. If a zombie took a look at your face, it’d go the other way.”

“Your bedside manner is inspiring. How long have I been out?” I ask through raspy breaths.

“We pulled you from the airlock four hours ago.”

I was afraid that I’d lost days.

Warren walks over to a cabinet and rummages through a drawer. For the first time I realize I’m in the medical clinic in the hotel. I have no idea how they got me down here.

“Hold still. I’m going to take some photos,” says Warren as he aims a camera at me.

“For the scrap album?”

“For the god damn textbooks. You just made me the foremost expert on the adverse effects of vacuum exposure. I’ll be the top speaker at conferences around the world for years. You made my career, David.”

“Happy to help.”

I’m still dazed and trying to piece things together.

I sit in quiet agony as he uses the camera to get close-up shots of my extremities.

When I look down, I notice two things: I’m only wearing a towel over my junk and my body is purple and yellow.

My knees are swollen cantaloupes and my toes rub together like fat plumbs.

“Amazing, right?” Warren puts the camera down. “How squeamish are you?”

“What do you got?” I nervously look down at my groin.

“Oh, don’t worry that should still work. You didn’t happen to keep any records on size and girth beforehand, did you?”

I shake my head, not sure if he’s kidding or not. While everything is numb down there, I’m vaguely aware of the feeling of what might be my swollen balls pressing against my inner thighs.

Oh dear lord.

“Any permanent damage?”

“We’ll have to wait and see. Individually, you should see improvement over the next couple days. Children might not cry on sight in a couple weeks.

“Get me a mirror…”

“I don’t know if I’d recommend that. Oh hell, you’re a big boy.”

Warren takes a small plastic mirror from a drawer and holds it in front of me.

“If you have any questions, just ask. I’m still making up names for some of the shit that happened to you. Fucking incredible.”

Holy. Crap. The face looking at me is unrecognizable. In a sentence: Yellow-pumpkin-face-boxer.

I’d heard anecdotal stories from older pilots about secret military facilities where accounts of alien experiments came from. They told me the real story behind the story was that these strange, distorted, swollen-headed creatures witnesses saw were pilots of high-altitude reconnaissance planes who had pressure suit malfunctions.

The face looking back at me is too primitive and malformed to ever be confused for a higher lifeform. I look like I’m suffering from some kind of genetic disorder.

“Should we send that photo to your mother?”

“Let’s wait until Mother’s Day.”

Warren puts the mirror away and picks up the camera again. He starts taking pictures of something on the floor.

My neck screams as I turn my head to see what he’s aiming at.

There on the ground is the remnants of my space suit. Cut to tatters so they could get it off my body: Warren has roughly arranged it back into human form so he can capture it for posterity.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbles. “A space suit out of duct tape.”

“Technically, that’s high-cohesion amorphous polymer tape.”

“Technically, you’re lucky I know how to remove that stuff or you’d be looking at a full body skin graft — which isn’t a real thing.”

“Thanks.”

“Actually, thank Dr. Turco. She’s the one that was able to make the solvent so we didn’t have to rip off your flesh. If it wasn’t for her, I’m not sure we could have got your lungs working in time. You had a lot of fluid in there. I’m probably going to have to drain you later.”

“Joy.”

“And I’m going to stick my scope down there to take some more pictures, just because I can.”

My head begins to clear a little, which gives me some clarity but also makes me aware of the excruciating pain all over my body.

“Did they catch them?” I ask.

“Catch who?”

“The person who sealed me into the storage unit and ejected me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The storage module. The one I was inside of. Someone set off the release.”

“No. That’s not what happened at all. The station’s micro-meteor impact alarm went ape shit and everything sealed up automatically.”

“Someone locked me in.”

Warren shakes his head. “Maybe you tripped the alarm. All I know is I was sound asleep and all hell broke loose. We had no idea you were even missing until you smashed into the airlock.”