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Rapunzel Station

by Jamie Lackey

Sarah pressed her hand against the tiny porthole in the alien vessel and watched Rapunzel Station grow smaller and smaller. From the outside, it looked like a tumor growing on the side of the dilapidated space elevator. Come to think of it, that's what it had looked like from the inside, too.

Sarah sat in Rapunzel Station and listened absently to the faint noise of static emanating from the equipment panel in front of her. She whistled tunelessly along as she painted her toenails fire engine red. Every once in a while she’d pause to blow a pink bubble. She was excellent at bubble blowing—nearly every bubble managed to obscure the sight of the dingy gray station's almost featureless interior.

When she’d been offered a job right after graduating with a degree in Observational Astrophysics with a company whose main focus was finding proof of extraterrestrial life, Sarah couldn’t believe her luck. She hadn’t realized that her job was pretty much useless and only existed because the company's grant stated that the elevator would be manned, or that the company had only bought the severely outdated space elevator for a tax break. Her job was to sit in the single tiny, windowless room that they called the Rapunzel Station for eight hours at a time with nothing to do but “monitor the instruments.”

She started sneaking nail polish and four packs of Bubblicious bubble gum up into the sky station to help her pass the time. She couldn’t stand old chewing gum.

The lunch that the company provided was her choice of surplus dehydrated rations and room temperature bottled water that Sarah was pretty sure that someone just refilled from a tap. The company restocked the station's supplies once every four months. She wasn't allowed to take food of her own up to the station. The toilet facilities in the station only flushed when the elevator went down to the ground, and that was only once every eight hours. The company plotted to keep her constipated.

Things weren’t better down on the ground. She'd been promised a tropical South American paradise, but she slept in a hammock in a hut with a dirt floor. She fell out of the hammock and got wrapped up in her mosquito net at least once a week. The only men around were either forty years older than her or didn’t speak a single word of English. Sarah couldn't wait for her contract to be up so she could go home.

She waited for her toenails to dry.

Her watch beeped fifteen minutes before her shift was over. She quickly stowed her nail polish in her jeans pocket, stuffed the used pieces of bubble gum (which she’d carefully rewrapped in their packaging) into the pocket on her hooded sweatshirt, and slipped her socks and shoes back on. She was getting ready to put on her pressurized elevator suit when a voice from the panel interrupted her.

“Uhhmm, Sarah?”

Sarah jumped. They almost never called up from the ground. They didn’t want to risk her missing some crucial blip of sound in the static.

She pressed down a button and replied, “Yeah, what’s up?”

“I--I hate to be the one to break this news to you," her boss' voice crackled through the static, "but you’re going to be up there for some extra time today.”

“Why? Is Jerome sick?” Jerome was the Rapunzel’s afternoon shift. She was going to have to kick him in the nads if he got the day off and kept her trapped up in the station without so much as flushing the toilet for another eight hours.

“No, Jerome’s fine. It’s the elevator. It's … well, it’s broken.”

The bottom fell out of her stomach. “Broken?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“So how are you going to get me down?”

“Well, there’s a bit of a problem with that. The escape pods haven’t been tested for over a decade, and we’re pretty certain that they’re not operating properly. So, you’re going to have to wait for the elevator to be repaired.”

Sarah fought to keep the edge of panic out of her voice. “How long is that going to take?”

“No longer than two weeks,” Alex replied confidently.

“Two weeks?” Sarah shouted. When Alex said two weeks, he meant something more like six months. “There's nothing to eat up here that isn't dehydrated, and the toilet doesn’t flush!”

“Now, don’t panic, Sarah. A diet of dehydrated rations is perfectly healthy. And as for the waste removal—well, I can’t help you there. I didn’t design the station, you know.”

“But how are you going to get supplies to fix it? Do they even make the materials anymore? How am I supposed to sleep up here?” Sarah looked around the station—at the metal chair, the metal floor, and the metal control panel. She'd never realized how uncomfortable it looked before.

“Now, don’t you fret your little head. We’ll get you out of there as soon as we can. We’ll keep you updated about the repair status. You just keep doing your job, and I’ll see to it that you get time and a half for all of the extra hours that you’re up there.”

The radio clicked off.

Sarah stared the escape pod hatch. There were two pods. She could test one, then use the other one if it worked. She had to get out of here. She was going to go crazy if she didn't. She was worried about dying, too.

She pushed the big red button that opened the hatch. It started to roll open, then froze after about a foot. Sarah squeezed through and examined the escape pods. They looked okay—just like they looked in movies. Sarah pressed the release buttons on the one to her right. Then the doorway around the pod started to blink bright green. The pod started to fall away, and the lights flashed to red. The top of the pod tipped away while the bottom remained solidly connected to the station.

After a second, the pod split in half, spilling broken glass and twisted metal toward the ground far, far below.

Sarah squeezed back through the hatch, sat down in her chair, and cried.

The station was shrinking. Somehow, the walls were getting closer together. Sarah was sure that on the first night she'd had to sleep up here, she'd had space to stretch out. Now, she had to curl up like a cat. She peered up at the consol. "What do you think?" she asked the small army of bubblegum people that she'd constructed for company. She picked up one of the hardened pink figures. "Are you making the station shrink?" She bit off its head and chewed it until it became warm and rubbery. She spit the gum back into her palm. "For that, you get elephant ears!"

Sarah crafted the new face, complete with large ears meticulously shaped like Africa. She'd been trapped in the station for over a month now. She'd stopped painting dashes of nail polish on day thirty-two. She was almost out of food, and she'd finished the last of the water earlier in the morning.

She was going to die up here—alone, rank, unwashed, dehydrated, constipated and crazy. She'd been worried about going crazy at first, but she figured it didn't really matter anymore. No one would blame her. At least no one that mattered. The king of the bubblegum people didn't count.

"Sarah?"

She jumped at the voice. "Be quiet," she hissed at the bubblegum people. "They don't know that you're up here."

"Sarah, how're you doing up there?"

Sarah moved a few bubblegum people off of the radio switch. "I'm fine, Alex, how are you?"

"We're all a little worried down here, actually. Umm … how's your water supply holding out?"

"I finished it."

"I was afraid that you were going to say that."

"Still two weeks to go?" Sarah stifled a giggle. She wasn't sure why she wanted to giggle. She wasn't sure why she didn't want to, either.

"We finally got the parts shipment, but they're not the right size—they're in metric instead of imperial."

"Alex, when I die, you can't have any of my stuff. And tell my family I want them to sue you. And I want to leave all of my possessions to the bubblegum king. He's been a true friend to me."

"Sarah, you're not going to die."

"I don't believe you." Neither did the bubblegum people, but Alex didn't need to know that. She didn't want him to hurt them when she wasn't around to protect them anymore.

"Look, Sarah, okay, I know things look grim, but we'll get you out of there. Just be patient."

Sarah giggled. "Go away, Alex. I'm busy."

When she was sure Alex was gone, Sarah resumed her long-delayed talks with the bubblegum king about trade negotiations.

Classical music replaced the static. It was something famous. Sarah didn't remember what it was called.

"Not cool, Alex, I was sleeping," Sarah said. She covered her ears and shouted, "I told you to leave me alone."

One song faded into the next until the classical theme was replaced by "Johnny B. Goode," then whale songs.

The fucking whale songs were the last straw. She pushed down the radio button. "I'm trying to sleep!"

"Hello?" said a voice Sarah didn't recognize.

"Yes, what?" Sarah snapped.

"Bon jour?" When Sarah didn't reply, the voice continued, "Hola?"

"Hello," Sarah's heart beat faster. She finally remembered what "Johnny B. Goode," classical music, and whale songs all had in common—the Voyager Golden Record. She'd written a paper on it when she was a freshman.

"Are you an Earth female?" The voice trembled a bit. It sounded nervous.

"Yes. My name is Sarah."

"I have come to your planet to purchase one of your women. You have a lovely voice. Are you for sale?"

Sarah wanted to cry. The very first extraterrestrial contact wanted a sex slave.

But it might be able to help her escape the station. Was survival worth becoming some sort of alien concubine? She looked down at the collection of bubblegum people on the console.

Fuck yes.

"I'll make you a deal. I'm trapped in this station. If I don't get out, I'll die. If you rescue me, you can have me for the next three years. Then, when that time is up, we can renegotiate, or you can bring me back to Earth."

"How long is a year?" asked the alien.

"A year is the time it takes our planet to orbit around our sun."

"Hmm." Sarah could hear the alien typing. "So that would be sixteen gribits. That is not a very long time."

"True, but all you have to do for those sixteen gribits of my undivided attention is get me out of here."

"That is an easier transaction than I was expecting. And if you are not all that I had hoped for in an Earth female, it would not be too hard to come and exchange you for another."

Sarah waited for him to decide. She tried not to think about what she was doing, or the fact that her life was in the hands of some sort of alien pervert. It was better than leaving her life in Alex's hands.

"We have an agreement. Stand by."

Sarah scrawled "Took job as alien sex toy. Back in three years," on the wall in fire engine red nail polish. She tucked the king of the bubblegum people in her pocket. "I'm ready when you are."

Jamie Lackey lives in Pittsburgh with her husband.  Her fiction has appeared in The Drabblecast, Silver Blade, and Bards and Sages Quarterly.  She reads submissions for Clarkesworld Magazine and has worked on The Triangulation Annual anthology series for the past two years.