GROUNDED

Find yourself. Dumb phrase. I’m pretty sure I could find myself in any good mirror, but I’ll take the euphemism if it makes my parents feel better about me beach-bumming around Asia for a year. Before you say it, I know, I’m about a dozen years too old to still be living with mum, but that’s why I’m going to the other side of the world. Except I would be if every flight in and out of this labyrinthine airport terminal wasn’t cancelled. Doesn’t bother me, I’m just sad I can’t complete the look. I’ve got my oversized backpack (currently a great floor cushion), an ill-fitting t-shirt and an unearned sense of wisdom. All I need is a tan, a bad haircut, some grubby wristlets and I can say I’ve ‘found myself’.

My fellow stranded travellers aren’t as chipper as I am. I’d say most of them have just entered the ‘depression’ stage of grief. Once they’ve moved into ‘acceptance’ I think I might have a nap. Going back to ‘denial’ for a second, I’m a little stumped as to why the flights are cancelled. I mean, I know it’s something to do with a meteor, but I thought they were blowing it up and isn’t that the whole point?

I can’t hear the news on the screens over the babble, so hold on, I’ll Google it. Ok, it seems our space-laser failed to explode said meteor and now we have a plume of debris disrupting a few hundred thousand flights across Europe. It crashed not too far from here, no injuries, something about an investigation team sent in… aaaand I’m bored.

At least we’re in this together. Even those snazzily-dressed pilots, who just strolled past me, must be stuck here too. They probably get a nicer lounge though, complete with beds. Those are nice uniforms. I remember dressing up like a pilot when I was younger. My earliest memory was being allowed into the cockpit of a plane and I was speechless at all the dials and lights. The captain put his hat on my head and said I could fly one day if I worked hard. Being an only child, my parents put a lot of pressure on me to be a success. Dad said I should join the army like he did, but Mum said I could be anything I wanted to be, so I split the difference and got into the Air Cadets. God, the two of them were proud. I trained on light aircraft, even got my gliding scholarship before the recruitment officer told me the Air Force couldn’t have me due to my eyesight.

It’s hard to describe the feeling, but I think ‘gutted’ is the right word, like someone had actually cut out my guts and dropped them on the floor in front of me. Yeah. That’s the feeling. They said I could still be a commercial pilot, an astronaut even if I just got contact lenses, but why try? I’d only let everyone down again. They say, “You only fail if you don’t try,” so I guess that makes me a failure. Contacts are too much hassle anyway. I’ll stick to frames.

There must be a reason people are crowding around the TVs. Someone’s yelled for quiet and everyone’s actually listening. Weird. I’m not sure what’s happening. On the screen is a chequerboard of different world leaders’ heads. I suppose one of them is this country’s president. I think they’re all saying the same thing but in different languages. Something about this being ‘a momentous day for all mankind. A new perspective on our place in…’ You know, I’m not really sure but I think they’re talking about the meteor. Hold on, I’ll get closer.

The whole lounge is silent now. Everyone’s mouth is open. The screens are showing blurry footage of the meteor but it looks way too angular to be natural. The world leaders are saying something about deliberately letting the meteor through? That’s mad, just to inspect some rock? I wonder if, knowing the turmoil they’d cause these passengers, those leaders would still do it.

Looking around it seems as if every screen in the airport is showing the same live feed. Even on different channels, it’s the same heat-vision footage of firefighters wading through smoke toward the meteor. The cleaners, the duty-free shop assistants, even the security guards walking around have stopped to watch. Someone has just grasped my hand, it’s the middle-aged woman beside me. I’m not sure she even realises what she’s doing because she’s staring up at the screen. Despite myself, I lightly squeeze her hand back.

The false-colour camera feed shows the hazmat-suited workers trudging through the mist towards what appears to be a bright square, tapered at the top. Some sort of door? The foreign newsreader’s commentary becomes more frantic. The workers approach the door with some complex machinery but, before they can attach it, the door slowly opens. The woman squeezes my hand tighter. The entire lounge holds their breath.

The workers peer inside but the low-resolution, heat-vision cameras can pick up nothing on the other side of the door but some misshapen dark blobs, which could be anything. Without any warning, the camera’s fuzzy image is replaced by a white-hot flash followed by… what is that? A hand? The passengers gasp, some swear, a few shake their heads and walk away. The woman beside me grabs my shoulder for support. I can’t look away. I’m hooked. I don’t care if it’s a hoax like the man across the room keeps trying to tell us. If this is alien life, then this is the best TV I’ll ever see.

The workers scramble to get the glowing white shape out of the ship. Now I’m hanging on to every detail. Did I glimpse other limbs? Is it humanoid? The room yells its dissatisfaction as the screens cut away to a helicopter view of the smoke still billowing from the crater made by the ‘meteor’. I guess the camera operator is waiting for the workers to return.

I quickly check the media feed on my phone and it’s blowing up with every possible theory. Hoax, publicity stunt, actual aliens, a gift from the tower, crashed spaceship from a government mission they didn’t mean to make public, the list goes on and on.

Out of the smoke, an all-terrain four by four emerges and pulls up beside a rescue truck. The helicopter’s camera zooms in. From out of the back of the four by four, the hazmat guys wheel out a gurney carrying a passed-out someone… or something.

What have they found? I think that’s a grey jumpsuit over a human-looking body. It definitely has arms, legs and, yes, that’s an oxygen mask over its very-human face. As clear as the stars above, that’s a person. So, it’s not aliens. Perhaps the fallen NASA spaceship theory is right, the capsule didn’t look alien, I suppose. I didn’t get a good look at the face, though. They’re loading the stretcher into an ambulance. The helicopter camera zooms in. I can see the face, it’s bruised, a little bloodied, but I can make out that whoever-it-is is young, with dark hair and I adjust my glasses to make sure I’m seeing everything properly.

I don’t understand. Whoever-it-is looks just like me.

The doors close, the vehicle drives away and the camera feed cuts to a stunned news anchor. The equally stunned audiences in the lounge back away from each screen and sit down as they try to make sense of what they’ve just seen, but I can’t explain this. This can’t be a joke. It must be a coincidence. That can’t be me lying on that stretcher, I must have been mistaken but then the TV starts showing a close up of who-ever-it-is and I might as well be looking in a mirror.

I’m backing away. The middle-aged woman catches a glimpse of my face and her eyes widen. I’ll just ignore her. I keep walking but then I stop. Every passenger in front of me is staring at my face and their expressions are full of fear and confusion. Honestly, I’m probably pulling the same expression. I know as little as they do, but saying as much would hardly help. Before I can make things worse, the airport security has reached me and I’m actually thankful when they drag me away from all those probing eyes.

The burly airport guards have taken me to a room away from everyone else, and here I sit fielding questions from different, official-looking people. They come in one by one and ask me the same questions I can’t answer. It’s clear these people are as clueless as I am but after hours of very little progress, the big guns finally show up. I can tell these guys know what they’re doing because they don’t ask any questions at all and they don’t answer any of mine.

Without a word, these faceless bureaucrats lead me out of the airport and into an SUV with blacked-out windows. The suits sit either side of me and we drive away in silence. I think other people would have freaked out by now. Maybe now is the time to panic, but instead, I think I’m relieved, probably naively thinking I’m being taken to some answers. What’s that test where people did what other people said just because they seemed official? I’m dozing off. Here comes the nap I promised myself.

I wake up and it’s dark. We’ve driven god-knows how far but now I’m being hurried past a throng of reporters and camera flashes into a hospital facility of some kind, but it’s deserted of patients and most of the staff. They rush me through a bunch of medical checks, everything is filmed and monitored. Still, no one answers my questions, the main one being am I dreaming?

The tests have finished but I’m still in what looks like a doctor’s office. There’s a camera in the corner and some professional type comes in and starts asking me oddly mundane questions which they read off a sheet in a disturbingly monotone voice. With each answer, I throw in my own question until they relent and call in someone with more authority.

At last, someone explains to me that the meteor is artificial, but it is not from earth, it’s from our nearest star. The strange craft had a crew of six, but five of them are dead. Despite the alien origins of the space ship, the one survivor is human and, as far as their tests show, it’s me.

Incredibly, my DNA, age, height, blood type, are all the same so, now I’m thinking a million different things. Whoever-it-is must be a clone or a long lost twin, but neither of these explanations makes sense.

Alright, I’m not entirely sure if I’m still sane, but I’m intent on meeting this person, whatever they are. The suit who told me everything doesn’t like the idea but I convince him that, if I tell this doppelganger about myself, they’ll open up and maybe explain what the hell is going on. Unfortunately, the suit explains my plan is not possible because whoever-it-is is still comatose.

“Oh,” I say weakly and for some reason the suit relents.

I’m now stood in a small hospital room staring at myself lying in bed. I’m plugged into a drip, a battery of monitors and a web of tubes that seem to end nowhere. I don’t look well but I walk over to myself.

What are you supposed to do in this situation? There’s a tube going into my throat. I look as pale as the sheet covering me. Is this really me? I gently turn over my double’s forearm. The skin is smooth. I check mine and find the scar I received after falling off my bike a few years ago. So, we’re not identical.

I take the ‘alien’s’ hand in mine and turn to look at the face. Their eyes are shut, but the eyeballs behind the lids are not at rest. I can tell whoever-it-is is fighting so I take their hand. There’s dried blood on their cheeks and neck and the collar of their jumpsuit is stained dark with encrusted gore. It’s only now I notice something on that collar, what is it? 

I carefully pull back the blanket to reveal my name embroidered into the lapel of the tattered jumpsuit. Beneath my name is a single word: astronaut. My stomach turns. Without hesitation but, as gently as I can, I raise my double’s eyelids. Their lifeless eyes are just like mine. I lean in, closer, to look more carefully. I can see a near-invisible ring around the iris, it’s the edge of a contact lens.

ANAX.