Semper Ad Meliora

The words of CON-001 echoed through his head over and over, like the worst song he'd ever heard being played on broken speakers for hours. A headache inducing, horrific experience. Dagan did everything he could to stay calm after he left the conference room, wanting to imagine the most peaceful scenery he could or think of all the happy pieces of stupid trivia he'd learned over the course of his life. Nothing would come to his mind though.

Krew walked with him in silence to the elevator terminal. Neither of them said anything, both of them processing all the information they'd discussed.

Nau called called Krew back to the room, though. Krew said something to Dagan and gave him a pat on the back before leaving him. He may have waved vaguely as the man walked away, but he heard nothing but muffled sounds underneath CON-001’s voice.

He stood in the lift to go back to the pods. He wanted to make sure Lia was alright, that she woke up, that she knew that any of the side effects she would have been experiencing won't last forever. He raised a trembling hand to the control panel, unable to stop the words of CON-001, Jason O, and Nau beginning to overlap in his head, and pressed a button. The lift softly jolted to life. He stared at his hand, then deliberately shook it, hoping to put an end to its trembling. It was no use, nor was the subsequent balmy fist he made.

He closed his eyes and managed to bring pictures of ancient, untouched beach lines to his mind and the sound waves made on an empty shore. Forests. Trees swaying in the wind. The stars on a clear night. The graceful manta ray swimming through the sea. Ancient images of a world long disappeared, even when he was a kid.

But it was literal now. Those things didn't exist. Those animals, those trees, those oceans didn't exist. The stars were empty now. The hope and promise they used to hold out now seemed dark and dead. Those things didn't exist and the people on this ship might not exist soon.

Dagan swayed and found himself looking around the faintly mirrored box, not really seeing anything. His head was light. His lungs were heavy and he had to breathe deep, consciously, but it didn't seem to help. It just seemed to be painful. What was happening to the oxygen? Was this another malfunction? He couldn't breathe.

A malfunction on top of malfunction on top of their death. His. This was it.

Suddenly, he wanted to be out of there, especially if it was malfunctioning. It was taking too long to get to the level of the pods. He pressed the button again for good measure, then over and over and over with more force. Was it even moving? He pounded on the door.

By the time the doors slid open to darkness, but Dagan didn't even register the lack of light. His attention was on the need to escape the box. It was getting smaller, the walls closing in on him with the intent to never release. He couldn't see anything but the walls.

He burst through the opening, putting his arms straight out for the wall on the opposite side of the hall. His hands slapped its cool surface with an open-palmed thud, then he leaned into it. First his shoulder, then his forehead, and finally the side of his face. He fell.

Glaring lights came on, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut. He blinked, trying to fight off the spots and fuzziness as he heaved in his breaths.

His heart beat fast and pounded far too hard under his rib cage, like it needed to escape too. He could feel the shaking all throughout his body now.

He was going to pass out.

Maybe it was something... Maybe it was another effect of the extended hypersleep.
He kept his hands against the wall, and turned towards it so that only his forehead was against it too. He tried not to hyperventilate.

Holding onto the wall as tight as he could, he tried to stand but his legs wouldn't do it. The dizziness was overwhelming. He couldn't get a handle on it and should have. His chest squeezed.

Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn't he die in his pod like everyone else?

No. No, no, no, nonono.

Lia. He thought of Alia. Their whole point was not dying. He had to make sure.

He couldn't die.

He had—he had to get—go... He had to—find—

“Sir?” The calm, gentle voice barely registered in his numb ears. But he did hear it.

He turned quickly to find the person, squinting in the glare of the light after his eyes had been shielded from looking down. “Wh—at?” He choked out the word.

“Are you alright, sir?” She was still muffled, but he could just see her down the hall behind a wild, elevated tray of green under a swath of white and blue light. Except it must not have been a her. No one relevant to their situation would be down here, on a level he wasn't intending to be on. Most likely it was an android. She—It stared at him.

He couldn't answer but stared back, trying to get a hold on his breathing once again as he finally managed to stand and stagger toward it. Deep, even breath. Deep, even breath.

“Are you in need of assistance, sir?” it persisted.

“This...this isn't the hypersleep—” He looked at the tray of green like he'd never seen plants before, eyes finally adjusting properly to the light. There were mostly spider plants and philodendron, lilies sprouting above those, ivy lining the outside of the frame.

“No, sir,” the android nodded and pointed to an open doorway. “This is the entrance to the botanical gardens. I am BOTAN-Eva. Are you in need of assistance?”

He bit his lip, feeling the heat and the fuzziness in almost every nerve possible beginning to ebb away. “No, Eva. I'm...” The shaking stopped. “I'm not.”

Dagan's mind was practically empty now, compared to the blaring mess of noise it had been just a moment before. Now it was quiet.

“I think I...pressed a wrong button,” he said, staring at the vivid details in the gold and purple stars of the lily flowers. There were white ones too, but the colored ones were much more interesting to look at.

Eva nodded again. “I see, sir. Are you sure you are alright? I am not programmed for medical analyses, but you seemed to be in distress. Humans are not supposed to sound like that.”

He couldn't help but chuckle, eyebrows lifting for just a brief moment and dropping as he took his first solid and smooth deep breath in and out. That was the understatement of the millennium.
He looked at Eva. It wore a brown cover-all jumpsuit, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and brownish green gloves spotted with soil. Already hard at work when he'd disturbed it. “I'm—I hit the wrong button,” he repeated. “I'm fine.”

Eva nodded and folded its hands in front of itself, staring.

“Why were the lights off?” Dagan asked after staring back, feeling a different kind of unease under the androids unblinking gaze. They should be programmed to blink more.

“They are automatic, sir,” it answered, gesturing to the ones above them then toward an open doorway to its left that led to a much larger area. “I was attending to the plants of the main garden. These lights shut off after five minutes of inactivity.”

“What about these guys?” He pointed at the tray between them. “Don't they need it?”

Eva's head tilted in what looked like utter confusion as it cast its eyes to the flowers. “No... 'These guys' are fake, sir.”

“What?” His turn for confusion. He reached for the spade leaf of the closest plant, rubbing his thumb and forefinger along it. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir,” it smiled. “They are for show, nothing more.”

The plant looked completely real, in every detail, and he was sure it felt real too, but there was no point in arguing. A droid with botany in its name would know what it's talking about. Another completely unneeded addition to the Behemoth and another reminder that the designers thought of the worst case scenarios.

There were benches in the various gardens. The gardens themselves, with the actual plants, were the air supply that was necessary. But there were fourteen sections and each and every one was made to look like a park, with lawns and benches for relaxation, and pseudo-creeks. The latter were part of the recycling system, but here they were designed to add a nice white noise to hide the hum of the ship.

There were several levels of mess halls, kitchens, medical areas, lounges, and rooms made to be used in the case that Xiwang was a bust. Absolutely unneeded because the people were meant to be shuttled to the new planet as soon as they arrived because everyone knew Xiwang was a sure bet. Areas made redundantly pretty that no one was ever supposed to actually use.

Well, it looks like the hard work of all those designers and builders was going to be appreciated in some way after all. Dagan's stomach churned at the thought of Vita Est being the last of mankind's final home and resting place.

He was all out of panic, though. Living in an elaborate metal coffin was better than not living at all.
“That's...impressive.” He tried to sound genuinely impressed as he released the fake leaf from his fingers, but his voice was flat. “I should be going. You have important work to do.” Because if Nau had his way, she'd be one of the only ones doing it.

He turned away without another word, listening to his foot falls as he walked back to the elevator to try it again. He was in no sort of hurry anymore.

When he pressed the button, there was an immediate bing. The doors slid open and the box quietly waited. He looked at its floor and the checkered light panels on its ceiling. He looked at its three walls. It seemed bigger than it had just minutes before. He looked at the blurry shape of himself reflecting on the wall directly in front of him. One of the lights softly flickered.

No.

“Eva?” He called just before it disappeared beyond the doorway of the gardens. It looked back with its eyebrows raised. “Where's the stairway?”