Stale Air

Staring out of the window and seeing nothing but the void and the static stars that dot it, Evan sighed. The sickly boy knew that the doctor would not be coming back with any good news, judging by the face his mother was making when Evan had peaked through the window into the waiting room. Her face was easy to read and told most of the story. Unable to mask it, his mother's expressions carried a mix of disbelief, despair, and pain as the doctor had revealed to her Evan's ultimate fate. Even so, he had a good run of it for someone with his condition, 6 more years than originally estimated and 12 years over the average, landing Evan as the longest known survivor of Mallory's Disease just 8 months shy of his 19th birthday.

Mallory's Disease, the boogeyman of every expecting mother here on the G-46 and colonization ships like it. What the disease did was quite simple truthfully, it only robbed a person of their ability to maintain weight and muscle mass. Named after the first reported case during an experiment that the humans on Earth had conducted with a young woman and her much more famous daughter Mallory.

You see, while in the womb, Mallory's genetic makeup had an issue; originally it was hypothesized to just be due to the child growing up in space, but that can only account for so much when she had only spent 24 months in space, including the 8 months that she spent in the womb before she died. However, as more and more children were born in the cold vacuum of space with similar or worse symptoms, this hypothesis fell apart quite rapidly and the true cause was found.

The cause of Mallory's Disease was a genetic mutation caused during the development of a fetus while in space, and for which there was no known cure. Even with the advancements of artificial gravity and the usage of genetic engineering did little to curb this mutation from afflicting roughly a tenth of all children born among the space ships traveling to a new planet. Thus, there was no escaping his fate for Evan, who was currently staring into space while waiting for the doctor to tell him when his final days could be expected to happen.

Truthfully, even though he had this horrific genetic mutation, Evan was spared the worst that the disease had to offer. His condition was extremely mild compared to others on the ship who shared the same fate as him, but even this stunted his growth significantly. Due to this impediment, Evan's body was very frail among those in his age bracket, and when he graduated from secondary education 2 months prior he needed to be wheeled up due to over exertion when he had played with his friends the month before. So his survival to 18 when most with the disease didn't even make it past their third birthday was seen as miraculous. Hearing a knock on the door, Evan knew it must be the doctor finally coming into the room to give Evan his death sentence.

"Come in." the boy said, his voice maintaining its composure so far.

The door opened and as expected, a man who was approaching his late 40's walked in. The doctor was a nice man and had taken the lead on Evan's case since he was born. Over the many years the two had many good memories, and many bad memories. Due to this familiarity, the doctor's composed face couldn't hide the small tics that were just as telling as Evan's mothers expressive face, and the news was likely to be bad. Shutting the door behind him, the doctor looked at Evan, who after watching the man's face for a brief moment returned to staring into space.

"Evan." the doctor finally said after a brief moment of silence between the two. "I'm sure you've figured out that the results aren't good." Not one to mince words, he spoke directly to the issue at hand.

"Yeah, I figured it was going to happen eventually." the boy said, his voice barely keeping back the dread that was plaguing his mind. "How long do I have left?" he spoke again after a slight pause.

"About a month and a half. Your organs that haven't failed already will begin failing in about 3 weeks at our best case." was the immediate response given to Evan.

"And the worst case?" Evan quietly inquired to the doctor.

"Are you sure you want to hear it right now?" The usually steady voice cracked for a moment.

"Yeah" Evan's eyes beginning to water as the flood of emotions had almost broken the dam in his mind.

"At worst case, your organs have already started and we just didn't see the signs yet. If this is the case you'll likely pass away within the week." The usually well spoken and composed doctor's voice was crackling as he told Evan the news, and was on the verge of breaking down himself. He was only able to maintain this much composure because he couldn't let Evan see him break down as the news was being delivered.

Evan on the other hand couldn't stop the tears from flowing out at this point. "And here I was hoping that I would get to see us landing on Janus." he said, turning to face the window once more.

The Janus that Evan was referring to in this moment was an Earth-like planet discovered a century prior by astronomers studying the star systems nearby. Being the closest Earth-like, the humans from Earth rallied to perform a joint operation that saw the creation of the Pantheon Project. The Pantheon Project was started with the intentions of sending colonization crews to the then newly discovered Janus.

Named after the Roman god of beginnings and ends (among other things), those in charge thought that it fit the new planet quite well. The hope was that this planet was beginning of humanities colonization outside of their solar system, as well as the end of conflicts within the species. Though the latter of the two ambitions proved fruitless a few short months after the planet was named due to a small skirmish and nuclear scare had broken out between the humans on the northern and southern territories of Mars.

This skirmish had initially halted the project as a focus on resolving the issue needed to be in place. However it didn't impede the mission for too long, and within the next year the many thousands oftests and experiments that needed to be performed before a manned mission began their initial stages. After hundreds of failures and decades of research, including the experiment that led to the discovery of Mallory's Disease, the humans were finally able to send out a set of 50 ships towards the planet in the seventh stage of the mission. Hence, the ship they were on was Gamma 46, or G-46 for short.

"I know, you were so close, only 2 years left." the doctor hugged the boy and the pair couldn't contain their tears anymore. The two hugged quietly as their tears flowed freely. They were like this for a brief minute before they were able to regain their composure. Evan was the first to do so and rubbing his sleeves over his face, he coughed. And coughed. And coughed.

Such scenes of erratic coughing were not uncommon among those with Mallory's Disease, and with some very practiced movements and quick thinking the doctor was able to stop the coughing fit.

"I'm sorry Evan. I wish I could cure you of this awful fate." The man's voice still cracking slightly.

Evan simply nods his head in response, still trying to catch his breath from the coughing fit.

"Would you like to step out and talk to your mom now?"

"Yeah, thanks dad." Evan said, giving the man one more hug before stepping out into the waiting room, his eyes still red from agitation.