Protein

Protein is a strange little story.

I don't remember why I wrote it, and for some reason I never thought it was very good so I didn't submit it to many places and there it sat, not doing anything and not being anything. And then, for some reason, some random chance, I read it and I decided it was actually pretty good, and Manawaker Studios helped me bring it to life as a podcast.

And all of that is true, but it is also a really good parallel to what happens in the story.

Like I said, it's a weird little story. There are really no characters, at least not after the second paragraph. You could argue that I personify the ship, but it's not really alive. But it's still going to give you feelings (especially with the amazing narration they did).

Anyway. It's a story about an empty spaceship, about life and death, and about a forgotten turkey sandwich. And you can listen to it here, or find it on Spotify.

Content warnings: death, an unknown virus, loneliness

And I know not everyone likes to or is able to listen to stories, so here is a text version. Enjoy

Protein

Jennifer Lee Rossman

 

Something went wrong a week into the mission, and chaos reigned over the science vessel Drake. Flashing lights, blaring alarms, desperate humans trying to find the contaminant.

In their panic, the crew neglected to turn off the food replicator. The little chirp as it went into standby mode was the last sound the crew ever heard, and the silence of deep space took over.

The ship dealt with the bodies of humanity's star-faring superstars as it would any perceived contaminant. After scanning for life signs, it opened a hatch and out the airlock they went, along with the turkey sandwich the first officer had been printing.

Thus free of contaminants, the ship sealed itself back up and continued on its journey. For decades it traveled alone on its planned trajectory, and for decades it was a barren hunk of metal operating under the barest essential systems. And then something went wrong.

With no one around to adjust its solar panels, the ship's power slowly drained, forcing it to shut down yet more systems. The food preservation went first, and the cooled protein reserves in the replicator warmed and melted as the ship passed through the heat of a nearby star.

They called it protein, though it also contained all the requisite lipids and acids and carbohydrates, because the synthetic slurry that could be reconstituted into any food in the database was most often used to create meat. Fruit and vegetables could be grown in the greenhouse and there was a pantry stocked with dry goods, but they hadn't the space or resources to keep livestock.

On its own, the protein was an unappetizing, flavorless slop the color of sadness, but with the right bit of coding, it could be printed in the correct concentration to make anything in the database. The galley of the Drake had once smelled of filet mignon and caviar for a week, until the crew realized they missed the greasy comfort of a fast food cheeseburger or, in the case of the first officer, the turkey sandwiches his mother used to make when he was sick.

Had he recognized the subconscious urge as his body's way of telling him he had been exposed to a deadly virus just before liftoff, perhaps the contamination could have been contained and the ship saved. Perhaps in a parallel universe branching off from this one, he did just that, and all are well and still searching for the fabled planet where life began. That Garden of Eden planet from which that first spark of not-quite-an-inanimate-thing-anymore hitched a ride on a comet headed for a little blue marble with a spare room to rent over the garage.

But not in this universe.

No, in this universe, the first officer was as clueless as the rest of them when the Drake sounded the alarm, and by then, the rest of the crew had been infected. And the only way to deal with an infection was to suppress the oxygen in the affected areas.

The Drake noticed the thawing protein, as much as a ship can notice something, which is to say its sensors became aware of the potential biohazard of improperly stored protein. But the utter lack of life signs on board meant there was nothing that needed protection, so the Drake had no reason to address it.

After a few hours of melting, a single drop of protein had found its way into the dispenser nozzle, where it dripped unceremoniously onto the plate that had once held that fateful turkey sandwich. With no one to order a specific food, it did not print itself into a drop of gravy or ice cream or anything other than a drop of protein sludge.

And there it sat, warming in the glow of the star as the science vessel Drake hurtled on lifelessly.

If the Drake had possessed a consciousness, it would be accurate to say it was sleeping, and had been for years. It would have been completely unaware of the rogue protein drop sliding through the dispenser nozzle while it dreamed of whatever ships dreamed of. A crew, perhaps. A group of squishy little humans to love and protect, who relied on the ship to keep them alive.

If the Drake had possessed a consciousness, its sleep would have been filled with nightmares, flashbacks of that awful time its systems had forced it to smother and airlock its crew.

In the utter silence of nothingness, a ping sounded like an atomic bomb, and the Drake was wide awake.

It was a life sign.

Without input from a human, the protein -- the slurry of acids and lipids and carbohydrates and all that other good stuff that made up all living things -- hadn't exuded itself in the right concentrations to make any specific food, nor had it had the ability or inclination to cook itself. It had just oozed randomly and been warmed by a sun.

And it had made life.

A building block of life, anyway, a spark of not-quite-an-inanimate-thing-anymore, but it resembled RNA closely enough for the Drake.

Its purpose thus reignited, the ship began to care for its crew, using emergency energy stores to provide a nurturing environment and printing more of the specific recipe for life. And when they reached the end of their journey and found no life signs on that fabled Garden of Eden planet, the Drake did the only thing it knew how to do: protect life.

It threw itself into the atmosphere, burning up during entry and shattering on impact, scattering its single-celled crew across the hospitable little marble to grow and evolve in ways that would have been impossible in the confines of the Drake, that lifeless science vessel where something had once gone wrong.

 

End