XiFiSy

2    Kholwa and Plas-2

    Kholwa awoke with a small elephant standing next to her in her Spacecraft. She checked the internal pressure of the Dragon Spacecraft. It appeared normal. She removed her helmet. She thought she was dreaming, so she pinched herself hard, then she pinched the elephant extra hard.

    Ow, said both Kholwa and Plas-2, but she thought the pronunciation of the elephant was way off and staticky, in at least the fifty languages she knew.

    The elephant spoke to Kholwa in what she could only describe as an ethereal, burning way. Plas-2 said that they were going to need a bigger home and that the astronauts would need a bath or shower as they stank.

At least you really smell bad, Kholwa, now that you have removed your helmet, said Plas-2.

    OK, said Kholwa, who or what are you? You look like an elephant, but don’t speak or think like one.

    "Kholwa, you are right. I am not an elephant. This is a shape that I knew you would be comfortable with based on your communication with XiFiSy. You may call me Plas-2 or Elephant.

    XiFiSy wants you and your companions taken care of, so I am here to help. XiFiSy is the entity you were communicating with before you stopped syncing with her, saying you were tired. Let us get every entity here into your larger quarters. Why is one of your people  placed in a different craft? Should that stay in place for disease purposes or does she fight you when placed amongst yourselves? Why do the other ‘People’ not communicate? Are they damaged or in a long term sleep mode?"

    Kholwa had a huge headache, was terribly thirsty and she realized that they all desperately needed help. She would take whatever help she could get.

    She began to shake Xi, Pe and Paulo. She tried to get hold of Anna, through the internal microphone, speaking in Russian, but got no response from the Soyuz spacecraft.

Look Plas-2, please get a large room for all of us, so I can check on everyone. We need water to drink and oxygen to breathe as basic necessities to survive. Please analyse our atmosphere that we breathe and the food and water contents in this Spacecraft. We need a similar type otherwise we die. Whatever entity collected us, they did not make sure that the main space station was not broken and two of our crew died. Unless we get help soon, we may all be dead and I sync that XiFiSy has need of my services for this vortex shell of her Halo Home.

    Plas-2, the elephant calf synced, We have attached the larger room with oxygen and water to your Spacecraft door. We have copied your International Space Station layout without the outmoded drive system. I think you will have to get used to traveling between universes now, Kholwa, not between planets. Let me assist you with moving your entities to their new home.

    Kholwa, donned her helmet and then went through the double pressurized hatch door into what she recognized as the interior of the International Space Station through her training. She made sure that the pressure was correct on the outside of her suit. The suit indicated that she had normal oxygen and nitrogen levels. Argon of course was missing which was normal on the space station. Argon was inert and the one percent on Earth was not necessary for humans or animals to survive.

    Kholwa let in a small amount of air. It smelled good, not like her suit. She took off her space helmet. She could really smell herself now in this much cleaner air. She went back through the double pressurized Dragon capsule doors and tried to lift Xi. Why was she not floating? There seemed to be normal Earth gravity here. Xi was too heavy. She removed Xi’s space suit helmet. Xi’s suit also smelled bad. How long had they been in their space suits ? The clocks did not seem to be working. Xi felt cold. Kholwa looked at Plas-2.

    Let me teach you how to be an elephant. Please wrap that trunk, the long piece hanging down in front of you, and pick up this astronaut and bring her through to the other large room.

    Plas-2 picked her up and walked her through the hatch door. Did the hatch expand to fit the elephant or the elephant shrink to fit the hatch? Kholwa was not sure. They placed Xi on one of the beds.

    Plas-2, the elephant said, Let’s turn off the gravitational force of attraction, Kholwa. Then we can float everybody through more easily. Please strap yourself down Kholwa and strap your companion, Xi down. I will bring them through.

    Kholwa was grateful for the break. She was already exhausted. She strapped Xi to a bunk and herself to one too.

    Xi began to stir. She felt sick and thirsty. She opened her eyes to see the back of an elephant going through the hatch door from inside the ‘destroyed International Space Station’ to the Chinese Dragon Spacecraft. Where was her helmet? Gravity was then turned off and her helmet floated up in the air, next to her bed. Was she dead or dreaming or hallucinating? She put aside dead for the moment. She doubted there would be elephants around when you died. Xi thought the idea of an afterlife was ludicrous, so she eliminated that other possibility. Just then the elephant returned walking on the space station floor but pushing a struggling floating astronaut through the ISS hatch door. The astronaut still had their helmet on, so she did not know who it was and her communication microphone was in her helmet. The elephant took the astronaut to another bed and strapped them down. She heard Kholwa’s voice behind her say, Thank you, Plas-2.

She turned her head to look at Kholwa, just as the elephant calf turned to go through the hatch door. Did the elephant shrink to fit the door?

    Xi thought she would try her voice in this hallucination or dream and see if there was connectivity between people. Kholwa, am I dreaming or hallucinating?

    The other astronaut was still thrashing around on their bed. The elephant returned, walking, with another astronaut floating in the air. This one floated quietly. The still astronaut was also strapped down.

Kholwa said Xi, Plas-2 the elephant calf will turn gravity back on, now. Let us remove the space helmets of our colleagues and see how they are. Then help me get Anna Zolta, the Russian Cosmonaut back into the ISS main sleeping quarters. You are alive. I will explain later.

    Gravity returned. Xi felt herself pushed down onto the bed. Her head hurt, she felt sick and promptly threw up on the floor, mostly just saliva as she had not eaten in eighty hours.

Kholwa came to her and unstrapped her. The elephant stood to one side watching her and Kholwa.

Kholwa flipped the gold visor up on the thrashing astronaut and saw it was Pe. She told him to relax and with Xi next to her, they undid his helmet. His suit smelled terrible and Kholwa had to turn her head away to stop herself being sick. Pe was delirious and hot. She took two water bottles strapped to the side of the space station handed one to Xi, opened the other drank half and pushed the other into Pe’s mouth turning it up and then pulling it away. He spluttered. She repeated. He spluttered less and indicated he would take the bottle and finished it. He vomited on the floor. Kholwa gave him another open bottle and said, Drink slowly.

    Pe nodded and drank slowly, watching Xi and Kholwa take off Paulo’s helmet. Paulo was unconscious and cold.

    She began to take off his suit. Xi came up to help. After some time they got Paulo out, also smelling very bad, covered in urea, feces and vomit. They stripped him of his clothes, put him on a bed, and covered him with 3 blankets. Xi, get out of your suit and lie against him. Before you do that, show me how to get this heating system working so we can warm his bed. I would also like us all to take warm electrolytes.

    Xi found the heating pad switch for the bed and turned it on. Kholwa found the medical cabinet, and the kettle for heating water. She turned it on. Within 3 minutes they had hot water." It felt like 3 minutes. No clocks here. No time that made any sense in a universal way. Handle that later she thought.

    Paulo awoke to find himself, naked, with a naked Xi lying on him. She smelled bad. He smelled bad. He had a terrible headache, was nauseous and thirsty.

    Xi removed herself from him, thank God he thought. Not now, he thought.

Kholwa ’s face replaced Xi’s. She pushed water into his hands. He drank and began to cough. She took the water away, which he fought her for. She gave him a warm electrolyte solution which he drank too fast. He slowed down and turned to see Pe in an astronaut suit looking at him tiredly, Xi wrapped in a blanket, Kholwa in a space suit and an elephant standing next to Kholwa.

    Kholwa spoke to the elephant, saying, Plas-2 and Xi, let us get Anna in here.

Kholwa looked at Plas-2 and Xi and asked, Through that hatch door?

    Xi nodded and Plas-2 walked towards the hatch door and was about to open it. Xi and Kholwa stopped Plas-2, asking the elephant if it was still pressurized.

    Yes, said the elephant and pointed to the gauges showing the internal pressure of the Soyuz flight capsule.

    They all turned the handle and went into what seemed to be a spaceship tomb. No movement, no sound. They unstrapped Anna and dragged her through to the ISS main room and closed the hatch door. They removed Anna's helmet. Her suit did not smell bad. She also felt cold. They stripped her out of her spacesuit and felt a faint pulse. She seemed to be in hibernation. Kholwa wrapped her up in blankets and turned on the heating pad. She asked the others to give Anna some room.

Anna was with her mother, her father and brother traveling along the Siberian Express. She and her twin brother were eleven years old. The train had had a breakdown. They still had two thousand five hundred kilometres to go to get to Vladivostok for their ship cruise. The ship was going to the warm Philippines for their family holiday. She had been looking forward to the trip for the last three years. They were stuck in the terrible cold with the temperature at minus 40 degrees Celsius or 233.15 degrees Kelvin. So not so cold she knew, but it felt cold to her. She knew that the ship would not wait for them with all the other passengers from many parts of the world ready to go. Her long awaited warm holiday would not happen.   

    She sat down on the cold train compartment floor in the classic yoga position and slowed her heart and breathing until she was at thirty beats per minute and six breaths a minute. She regained her composure. The chaos and noise continued all around her. People were frustrated, stuck in the middle of nowhere. Anna was calm. Her body and mind were swimming in the warm blue tropical seas. She could taste the salty water. The palm trees bowed and a small grey elephant raised its trunk in greeting. She waved back happily.

    Her father and mother had taken up Yoga a few years before and each time they came home from lessons, they taught their children the same Yoga lessons, especially the deep breathing and the slowing of your heartbeat. Anna had loved this technique and whenever she was stressed, she had taken to sitting or lying down. She then slowed her heartbeat until she fell into a deep restful sleep, when her heartbeat would speed up to normal ‘sleep beats’. For her fifty beats a minute was normal. She could slow her heartbeat to thirty beats a minute in ‘Yoga Sleep’.

    In the beginning, her parents would be concerned and wake her up, until they spoke to the Yoga Master, who smiled and had said, ‘You have a master in your house. Perhaps my days are numbered as your teacher.’ The parents had laughed and were happy over such great news. Their son was also very good, but not as good as Anna.

When Anna’s parents died in a car accident, she continued with Yoga, even trying to contact them in her dream like state. She never did get an answer from them, but did get the peace she needed to lesson her loss. In later years she used the technique to help her solve particularly complex mathematical and physical equations. It was like the traditional method of, ‘Sleep on it. You will have your answers in the morning.’ All things were possible in those quiet states.

    Thoughts were filtering through to her now of the last moments on the ISS in her Soyuz capsule. Anna had watched her two fellow Cosmonauts, Ivan and Jan die in the breakup of the space station. Then she had heard Kholwa’s voice tell her to ‘hold on’. She knew help might be a very long time in coming, if it came at all. The only thing that gave her a glimmer of hope was that this Kholwa astronaut had foreseen the future and stopped her from dying.   

    She had replayed the memories, multiple times, of the space station breaking up and her two companions dying. She had slowed her heartbeat and breathing until she was calm. Anna had watched the Chinese Dragon Spacecraft, the other Soyuz, the space station debris all being sucked inside something. Then, just before the G forces claimed her, she heard a calm woman called Kholwa, speaking to her in clear Russian, telling her to, ‘Hold on. Help will