Dead Silence

Abstract

Dead Silence’s main character is Claire, who leads a crew in charge of a repair spaceship owned by a company named Verux. She and her crew are tasked with the maintenance of communication beacons in remote regions of outer space. Claire is discovered one day in an escape pod with memory loss, remembering only that her crew started investigating the Aurora, a spaceship that went missing several years before. She is eventually asked details about her discovery of the Aurora, to which she confesses that her crew had found out that the guests aboard the luxury ship had died and, before doing so, had exhibited symptoms of paranoia and hallucinations; furthermore, her own crew started to exhibit these strange and sudden symptoms as well. It is revealed that one member of her crew attempted suicide in the process, and it was in her attempt to prevent this that Claire injured her head, which led her to the aforementioned memory loss and, also, one another strange effect: the supposed ability to see ghosts (which are, in fact, hallucinations). Eventually, it is revealed that a vibration device was installed on the ship to cause these effects on the passengers, but it went haywire due to the nature of the innovative alloys used to build the Aurora, as they interfered with the device’s mode of operation. Besides causing symptoms of severe paranoia, the device also provided the supposed ability to see ghosts, which is why Claire starts to see them. Eventually, Claire is imprisoned because of her discoveries, but she ultimately escapes.