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Tag: amateur

Slow down on the work front

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Seems as though the Pandemic has finally interrupted my work flow. I just completed the last project that I had on the books earlier today, and now I have to wait on several invoices to be paid, and hold up for a while. Not great that this happened at tax time, as that’ll cut off a nice piece of savings from last year (though it isn’t mine to begin with, that’s why it’s called taxes). I just preferred to hold on to it in my accounts for a bit longer.

So now that the day job has ground to a halt, I will turn my attention towards completing some things around the house. I just built my youngest a step stool, with guard rails (because she’s a very petite nearly three year old). I have a mother’s day gift 95% completed, all that is left is final assembly and a protective finish. Then I will tackle a set of Corn Hole boards, and a wooden box to guard our trash bins and recycling from those gods be damned raccoons. Then we’ll strip, sand and finish the back deck. paint our downstairs hallway, and then I’ll attempt to build some scroll saw rustic wooden signs my wife asked me for last year. I will be completing most of these items with stock I had laying around all ready. As I don’t wish to spend money on materials, as clearing out old off cuts could really help me clean up my shop space. Plus I do need to tidy up in the shop, vacuum and sweep up the saw dust, and throw away old rags with varnish and other finishes soaked into them.

Plus we have some items I can hang up indoors for both girls that I need to do, but haven’t had the motivation to do. Wish I had some polymer clay laying around, but I do have other raw materials for self curing sculptures that I can try out for the first time.

On a side note, we spent a good portion of the last seven quarantine weeks building Lego® sets for the girls, and I ordered one off of Wish that I have yet to put together for myself. It’s a Technic® Mack Truck with container and trailer. Looks cool. Hard to do Lego® without the girls wanting to help, and this has tonnes of small, easy to loose, very important, structural pieces. Might have to be done at night in the evenings after the girls have gone off to bed. We’ll see. Anyway, hope this finds you well. If you have children, small children at that, I wish you the best of luck in the coming weeks, and for those that have all ready passed us by.

“Do you suppose that you could describe a lone space probe as wistful”…

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Mused the middle aged communication’s technician to himself quietly while seated infront of his old and grimy beige-grey terminal. The man and the large analog terminal were situated well away from the hum of the science decks closer to the moons surface, stashed way down in a long forgotten corner of an unused deck aboard the lunar base. The walls in this buried portion of the base were a deep grey, nearly black silica rock that absorbed all of the heat in the room, leaving the technician and all of his instruments a clammy and tepid temperature. Not exactly cold but not in the least bit welcoming. The dimness of the light down here was not a function of neglect, but rather due to the technician’s desire to view a live stream of what data the probe was sending back to him from deep in the void. He had various readouts of the data code playing alongside his monitor which for the most part was essentially just black with slow moving pin pricks of light scattered across it. Looking at the blackness was hard enough to do let alone having a bright glare present from an all too bright overhead lighting system that permeatesthe lunar base. So dimness was the order of the day for Bertrick. He was stationed in a U shaped room with his massive three hundred channel analog control terminal to one side and slightly in front, like an L shaped sectional, with a massive central video monitor hung on the wall directly above the console and six smaller monitors showing the data from the major sensor arrays from the probe hanging on the exposed portion of the wall to his right. Each item broken down into their own designated stream. Radar, lidar, spectrometer, GPS / Navigation, engineering and a cluster of other more niche sensors. The technician did not design the probe, or have any input on what went on it for the expedition. He just happened to have a love for oversized and deeply complicated analog twentieth century technology. The terminal itself, all grungy shades of grey and beige and possibly off white, was a jumble of toggles, switches, buttons, sliders and dials. In amongst that were pops of orange and yellow labels that had their most pertinent data faded into oblivion. This particular item, once at the forefront of audio wizardry was now so completely foreign to most humans it could have been alien technology. Bertrick’s great great grandfather’s grandad has once been a pastor and musician who had hours and hours of home video showcasing his mixing and overdubbing skills. Skills which Bertrick was fascinated with, and had thus purloined his knowledge over four decades of pursuing his hobby in wrangling one such audio board. That endeavour brought him to his dream job of watching the latest probe data for two shifts per day for the next ten to fifteen years. He had no idea why it was sent or what they expected to find. Turns out they withheld the reasoning so as to not colour the analysis. They wanted the data reporting to be as unbiased as humanly possible. But job security was nothing to pass up, and Bertrick wasn’t afraid to work unsupervised and virtually alone in his mostly comfy work station. To keep himself from falling asleep he ran the feed through his audio terminal and narrated everything he saw that warranted an explanation. But mostly to make certain he scrutinized every single second of audio and visual data he received. For Bertrick knew, surreptitiously that this particular probe had been launched not on a whim of the science academy but with a specific set of coordinates in mind. It was mostly hearsay and rumor, but to launch such an extraordinarily overpowered probe out to the middle of nowhere was not exactly the type of science that Torus Station science graduates are known for. The Company has a reason for everything, no exceptions and no exemptions!

Bertrick sat watching the screen twisting knobs and turning dials as he attempted to hone in on a certain pitch of whine that was being transmitted back to him from the probe. It, the probe had an official designation but they were long and dull and full of strings of letters and numbers. Although since Bertrick only had to monitor and report on one such probe, he had shortened it down to an easily identifiable acronym. One which the higher ranking science officers didn’t reject out of hand. So the probe a.k.a. St3v3 or now “Steve” was the main focus of Bertrick’s every waking moment. Though Bertrick was mainly an audio and visual technician it was his responsibility to plug in any navigational changes sent to him by the other divisions attached to this expedition. Which didn’t bother Bert in the least. If he logged enough of them over the next few years he could earn another new designation and an ample raise. Praise be! To The Company. They really did pride themselves in continuing education and certifications. Given the time lag between himself and Steve, Bert’s slow typing speed was not going to be an issue. As he could follow along with each message to see it ping off of and get pushed through all of the repeaters on its way out to the far flung edges of who the fuck knows where.

“So Steve, what are you going to show me today? Come on gimme something extravagant to monologue to!” Whispered Bert to his terminal in a sing song fashion. News had come down from above that some of the ranking officers were gathering from different divisions just to watch and listen to the high light reels Bert provided as part of his analysis. He’d fought the urge to sneak into the briefing room to see for himself, but after sixteen hours of every twenty four devoted to Steve, he couldn’t muster the energy or the enthusiasm. Bertrick knew he could sing, his deep bellowing voice came from the pipes he inherited from his great, great, great, on and on, grand father who lived his whole life in one town on earth. He was a pastor with an outsized congregation due to his musical ability and skills as an orator. He might have had a flair for the dramatic, but he never strayed from the path, though to hear the elements of ole Maw-maw he had plenty of offers and propositions. The deep south might have gotten him all hot and bothered, but the press of young available ladies didn’t turn his focus away from his love for Maw-maw. To hear it told she was a wild and sordid sort in the sheets, so he was perhaps too tired and worn out to pursue other such feminine wiles. Much to Bertrick’s surprise he had become rather deeply in tune with the ‘sounds’ of the cosmos. He had managed to fine tune his sound board to a degree where even the casual listeners to his analytical reports could tell the differences between items that Steve had flown by. The ability to isolate and achieve the cleanest output of unadulterated signal was truly mental. It was a factor of the many lonely months Bertrick spent pouring over the terminal tweaking, and twisting and dialing in each little snippet of audio that piqued his ears. Bertrick was becoming renowned for his audio specificity. He was a rock star in the sciences, something he didn’t realize he was able to achieve. The fidelity of his craftsmanship was being broadcast throughout the system and requests for him to take up a teaching position with Torus Station were becoming hard for the science division to ignore. The supposedly confidential mission was starting to turn a profit for the lunar base with the streaming of Bertrick’s audio visual logs of Steve’s expedition. His ‘Steve-Cast’ was number two on The Company’s educational broadcasts provided to the whole Sol system. Advertisers had requested on air plugs, and the Torus station entertainment sector wanted pre-roll and end-roll video commercials for their numerous science fiction books, movies and television shows. None of this was ever disclosed to Bertrick, but he was given a substantial raise for his part in the covert business venture. The popularity of the ‘Steve-Cast’ stemmed from Bertrick’s use of colourful, yet poignant prose. His ability to humanize the Steve probe, and its lonely trek out to no where. By musing on the state of humanity, while simultaneously explaining the audio & spectacular visuals of the long and worrisome trek, billions of paying consumers were hooked. The deep baritone register he played in vocally could really set a sub woofer to purring. His velvety smoothness intermingled with a breathy occasional rasp set most people’s speakers on fire. Figuratively speaking. Through the broadcast, Bertrick had laid bare his lonesome soul, and honed his craft to a especially fine point.

AU after AU traveled, Steve just kept on keeping on. He performed admirably doing fly bys of nebulae, quasars, black holes, dust clouds, radiation clouds, and all sorts of colorful and interesting things. But whatever he was supposed to find, those weren’t it. Every so often Bertrick would key in some minor course corrections, or make a note on the navigational logs and sit back and hum to himself in the dim isolation of his work station. The years of watching and waiting had little affect on Bertrick’s mood or attention span. He was as faithful an analyst as one could pray for. Never missing a beat. He logged every single item, anomaly, hiccup or obstacle that presented itself. Regardless of whether or not Steve sent back the desired final outcome Bertrick was on track for several commendations and a sweet posting of his choice anywhere within Sol system once the ten to fifteen years were up. Unless they offered an extension on the expedition Bertrick was to start to think about where he wanted to go next. And if that was to teach at Torus Station, it meant only a move of some seventy miles up from the surface of the moon to the massive floating bulk of the Torus itself.

PART THREE of : The Company A Call To The Void

Amid the bustle and commotion in the…

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Command decks stately ready room, a very startled Jaz was huddled by a bulkhead staring blankly out into the inky black depths of endless space. As commanders with their cadres of junior officers rushed about the room, pulled out sheets of paper, maps and rushing to monitors to account for this point of conjecture or that. Raised voices and shouting permeates the massive room. With sixty people plus their retinue of advisors, councillors and experts the room was a shambles of order and coherence. Arguments bursting here and there, with academics butting heads regarding every single data point imaginable. It was heaven for those inclined to be pedantic, and hell for everyone else. The slow moving bureaucratic creep of something completely unexpected.

For Jaz and Jorec it had been seventy two hours of hostile interrogation and questioning, and unabashed harassment from the security divisions, senior science officers and almost the entire rank and file aboard the UB313 research outpost. Jorec wasn’t in much better shape for being slightly more senior than Jaz. Seems that in their vigor to get a jump out of archiving the old tight beam network they had maneuvered themselves, by leaps and bounds no less, over top of the appropriate chain of command with the news of a far off human distress signal. The Admiral, captain and station CO were not impressed to say the least. Both of the recent science grads had been separated and grilled harshly on the finest details and minutia of their seemingly tall tale. But after blood tests, psychological evaluations, additional strenuous back ground checks, extreme vetting of their lineage and current health records the command team had no choice but to review the details of this once in a lifetime dispatch from the brink of the void. A call from some where out passed the boundaries of the known universe. It was pretty tense for all involved. The security team had not only withheld food, water and sleep in an attempt to coax out even one millimeter of difference in their statements, but pulled out each science graduates catheter and colostomy bag. Rendering them dependent on an actual physically working toilet which the security forces guarded fiercely. The inquisition team had a plan of repeatedly attacking their recollections of time stamps, and the order to the series of events. Was this a direct quote, was that paraphrased, how do you know if you remembered seeing it, did the other person tell you to say this, to say that, did either of you attach a contraband device to initiate the call. Do you have friends working with you on this, are you a terrorist, an insurgent, do you realize the enormity of what you are saying here today? Would you testify to this in a court of law, will you sign away your life on the strength of not only your recollections but that of your colleague. That sort of thing. Extraordinary – high intensity, with no rest, no bathroom breaks except under direct personal supervision. Which in the case of Jorec meant a security escort would have to hold his member in order to allow him to evacuate his bladder into a sealed and then later tested container. They even pulled their biometrics out to monitor the internal body receptors at specific time stamps to make sure each aspect of their subconscious bodily responses were genuine. In the case of Jorec, he suffered many – very real hours, of government mandated torture. He was currently wrapped in a thermal blanket hiding his sudden lack of finger nails and all of his broken toes from the rest of the gathered group. His swollen visage dismissed by everyone in an orange or maroon coloured jumpsuit. His lowly cyan coveralls soaked in blood and vomit didn’t even register with this crowd. He just sat in a heap, rocking himself almost imperceptibly as he too stared out the view ports in the cavernous ready room. Watching Pluto, which was the only thing that could be seen with the human eye way out by the UB313 research outpost anyway.

Up until recently this branch of humanity had assumed they were the furthest humans from earth. During an early schism among the highest ranks of The Company one intrepid individual broke away from the monolithic business entity and struck out on his own and fled beyond the easy grasp of the populations of the earth and moon. This particular order of scientists had not been present during the Nano Tech boom, nor were they aware of the technological breakthroughs that came about decades after the For E’s engine debacle aboard Margot’s Fever or the mysterious disappearance of the oil refinery come research flag ship The Lark Song some five hundred years ago. In fact this faction of people was not privy to a great many important details surrounding humanity as a whole. Being fractious and isolationist meant that they were only as good as their echo chamber allowed them to be.

Back in the cacophany of the ready room the question at hand was what to do with the news of this distress call. If they’d managed to hear the call then surely The Company back on earth would have heard it too. Do we ignore it, or do we send a probe back to gather more intelligence? At no point did anyone seem to care that the message had travelled several billion light years one way and thus whomsoever set the distress call was likely long dead. This discussion revolved around the potential to discover new territory and to lay claim to new resources. But primarily they wanted to know if the call was a trap. An ambush lying in wait for them. The heated and tumultuous discussion carried on for months. In the mean time two new items were able to be seen by the naked eye from the ready rooms observation windows. Those were the flash frozen, and boiled bodies of a badly beaten Jaz and Jorec, recent graduates of the Torus Station science academy post graduate program being taught on UB313 with five hundred year old out of date knowledge.

PART TWO of : The Company A Call To The Void

Overview of March

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Bit of a strange month as you all can imagine. I didn’t do anywhere near as much writing, but I turned to sculpting and painting for a spell. Needed to do something less mentally taxing, since a lot of my waking hours have been spent in one form or another worrying about the global pandemic COVID-19 / Coronavirus. But, I did do a few bits of writing once a story caught my eye, and I turned to a subject that I know well. Being socially isolated, feeling lonely, stir crazy and just being desperate to talk to someone. All things I had a fair bit of experience with in my last year of High School, then working a full calendar year prior to college, my initial Sheridan college experience, then later on, as a freelancer working from home. But I’m more introverted than ever, so it doesn’t bother me as much now that I’m into my forties. With age comes some sort of wisdom I suppose. Ha. Plus I felt as though that twenty one chapters to my interconnected series was enough, and i didn’t want to write anything too topical, so I had to sit, wait and ruminate on a few ideas I had jotted down in the last few weeks, and let those ideas percolate through my brain. I decided to use the same universe, but all new characters, a new ship, and I steered clear of the large scale war building up in the background, that I tried to cover in one or two extra stories, but ultimately gave up on. I’m not good with writing scenes of that scale. I prefer to have two or three characters who do most of the talking, maybe one peripheral character to add exposition, if i don’t feel as though I have set the plot up well enough. But yeah, character heavy, dialogue and only a little bit of action, even if it tends towards large sweeping events that kill lots of people. Broad strokes here people, I’m aiming for quick, decisive broad strokes. I also like the format of trying to stay between six hundred and three thousand words. Short fiction. Evocative, if missing a few pieces of finer detail around the edges. Keep the story moving, if that’s what it calls for. Though I do like to linger in the quiet spaces between major events. Hurry up and wait, right? Something huge is on the horizon, but you have to wade through the usual tedium of your every day life to get there. The stuff often behind the scenes in a major movie. Boring to watch, but interesting to explore in writing. Since most of us read in isolation, or to ourselves even in public.  Anyway, to those who have read any of my stuff, thanks! To those who might find it in the coming months, thank you too! I wish you all the best during these awkward and trying times. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope to keep writing more until we make it on to the other side.

“Congratulations Kelvin, you’ve failed in absolutely…

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Spectacular fashion”, chimes the uppity education bot sitting behind me in the science departments largest lab. The robust orange cube like unit was typically used to tutor grad students during their first rotations aboard a science vessel, but I had it dumb things down for me so that I could try to figure out what had happened to my ships crew. About a year ago while I was crawling between the inner and outer hull plates of this ship, all seven hundred members of the crew just up and died simultaneously. At some point during the fifty two hours I was under radio silence, something catastrophic happened. Something that was not readily apparent upon my return. I admit, I took to denial and burying my head in the sand for a while afterwards, but one evening while floating in the commissary with my eyes shut and a gale force wind was blowing in my face I had an epiphany. Now, I’m just a mid level technician. I do a bunch of general tasks associated with small engines, electrical and mill work. But my forte is that I don’t mind isolation, small confined spaces or hard laborious tasks. The ‘epiphany’, as such was that I needed to gain access to as many of the ships systems as I could using the integrated biological over rides. In a moment of clarity while gathering up the deceased, I decided that storing the dead crew in our largest airlock cargo hold might be useful. And after using the ai enhanced scrubbers and cleaners to drag the bodies to one such location, disrobe them and store the associated ID tags and key cards on the right wrists of each of the dead. I made a point of having officers, or as high up the chain of command for each department set aside at the head of each enormous pile of bodies. I had a plan. An unpleasant plan at that, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

It took quite some doing to gain entry to all of the other departments but a little bit of ingenuity and a whole lot of free time meant I could figure out how to do it. So with the help of a reciprocating saw and the right hands of every department head and their personal ID cards, I had a chance to figure out how everything turned to shit on me.

“Kelvin, I do not understand how you failed to account for so many variables when preparing the simulations and models. Your ineptitude should have disqualified you from serving on a science vessel.” Quips the EDU bot again, disrupting my deep thought. “Fuck you Ed. I’ve told you repeatedly, I’m not a part of the science team, I’m a mechanical technician, I maintain the ships closed systems between the double hulls. I’m more of a spelunker than anything else. And, by the way – fuck you.” I curse at the beaten up orange bot. It has been seated in front of me in the lab for the last three hours as I attempt to run simulations on what could kill several hundred people without leaving a mark on them. “Apologies Kelvin, I was built to tutor grad student level science majors, and their speech patterns and repeated turns of phrase are logged and reused according to my learning algorithms. I assure you, my ‘personality’ is purely unintentional.” The units lights blink and glow softly as if showing some kind of contrition. I think it’s more a case of me going slowly insane, rather than the EDU bot gaining sentience. “Well, thank you, I suppose. Do you know anything about what happened? Have any additional insights I can add to these simulations we’re running?” I ask it again, hoping for a better answer. “We both know that I am unable to do your homework and/or assignments for you Kelvin. That is cheating and outside my operational parameters.” With a hum and the whirl of internal fans, the EDU bot continues to sit still doing very little to help me figure things out. “Tell you what Ed, I’m going aft to grab a helping hand from one of the science officers, I’ll be back shortly and I’d just love it if you could put any new information we uncover into layman’s terms for me. Could you do that for me, huh?” Sitting across from one another at the lab table, ED visibly grows taller in response. “Oh, yes. That is something I can do. Shame you don’t know any of my hot button commands, we could do so much more if you knew them.” Chirps the bot, as it’s head and neck extends out of the cube base where the tank tracks are mounted. “Why are you telling me this now! We’ve been at this for months, with little to no new knowledge uncovered. Jesus. Maybe lead with that info next time!” Rising out of my chair, visibly angry, face going red, veins in my forehead and neck throbbing. “Apologies Kelvin, I assumed you knew. All EDU bots have an extensive list of hot button commands for analysis and a laundry list of practical science related tasks we are capable of performing.” Answers the bot quietly. “Ok well, riddle me this Ed. After I return from the aft airlock with a severed hand and appropriate ID card to over ride the login commands on the research decks work terminal, could you direct me to where I would find those commands. Like a document, book, binder or app located somewhere on this ship? Do you think you could do that for he, huh?” Looking at the bot from behind the desk, I walk out the door and head aft of the ship. From behind me I can hear Ed nearly shout in the affirmative.

Walking down the spotlessly clean halls with their brilliant white lights, it can be easy to imagine that on a vessel this size that you are merely out of view of others and not entirely alone. Thinking about the mysterious deaths of the crew has brought a new vigor to my daily life. Though morbid, it has allowed me to channel my efforts into something constructive. While I still fulfill my assigned duties, it seems as though without any additional wear and tear from a crew that I can go longer and longer between maintenance checks. I wired the duty logs to ping my wrist biometrics when something pops up. So now that I have down time I figured I’d try to have some answers ready when the mission ends in another two and a half years. Turning the corner at the last T junction on the ship I come face to face with a massive set of atmosphere rated titanium double doors. Looking at a hand written sign posted on the door I can find the helping hand I’m after without having to dally among the dead. Smell isn’t really an issue, neither is decay. I keep the airlock in vacuum ninety nine percent of the time. After I dehydrated the bodies, I used the coldness of space to flash freeze them all in place. Locating the senior science deck officer, I pressurize the airlock. With a loud clunk I can hear the air tanks pumping oxygen back into the cargo hold within. As the doors glide open, the dimness of the space within takes over. Near the front of the room is a small table with a reciprocating saw, a charging station, cloth bags and box of masks and goggles. Picking up the PPE and saw I wander down the aisles to find the appropriate body. Kneeling down beside her, I set about gathering up the helpful hand. Having done something similar to myself only a year or so ago, I feel a strange sort of kinship with the lifeless body. Picking up the hand I place it gently in the beige cloth bag and head back to my work station. Keeping everything orderly and in it’s place. With a soft goodbye I close the airlock doors and depressurize the cargo hold. With a soft hiss the air returns to the tanks and the rooms temperature drops to below freezing.

“Welcome back Kelvin. And who do we have here?” The bot crawls over to me at the lead science officers work station. I run her ID card through the input, and when the login prompt comes alive I place the severed right hand, with it’s manicured metallic flecked green nails on the biological scan pad. A brief pause, and then the screen jumps with streams of data, and unintelligible code. “Whoa, holy shit. Looks like we might be able to get some answers after all. So Ed, where do I go, and what do I need to do?” Standing beside the EDU bot at the terminal, a previously undisclosed view screen flips out of the bots belly, and a blue schematic and a list of directions appears. “You may take this tablet with you, go grab the command codes and the command key and we can go over the new directives step by step.” Looking down at the schematic i feel a sudden sense of dread and fear trickle down my spine. Oh fuck no, I do not want to go back there. Not now, not ever. Why did they have to keep the command keys down in the sanitation department. Stored right next door to the waste containment canisters and that mother fucking thresher unit. Yeah, the one that took my arm off at the fucking elbow. “God damn it.” I shout. Ed pulls back several paces. “Is there an issue Kelvin?” He nearly whispers the question to me, either that or my ears are ringing from shouting at the top of my lungs in the lab. I can’t even clearly recall just how it happened either. I know I was drinking, and thought I’d have an adventure down in the bowels of the ship. I came out of the service tunnels I had been exploring and entered into a cavernous room with these massive steel tanks, they extended upwards like sixty or seventy meters. The tops disappeared in the dimness of the rafters. I was looking up, and up and up at one of the largest canisters, and fell backwards into something sharp. And immediately knew I had fucked up. My jumpsuit got caught and these exposed gears pulled my arm into the mix and then jammed. I had to use a miniaturized saws all strapped to my harness to cut my arm free at the elbow. Screaming and shrieking along with the tool as it cut through bones, muscle and sinew. Then in a foul daze I crawled to the medical bay and holed up in one of the few pristine white medical pods with automated surgery technology. Carrying my own arm, or what was left of it with me in my teeth, after I somehow managed to pry it out of the gears. God, that was a waking nightmare. The thought of going back down there for this fucking key is really giving me cause to pause.

Sitting on my bunk staring blankly at the Jean-Luc Picard quote etched into the bulkhead over my doorway I breath in sharply, and exhale in a long slow whistle. Steeling myself for all of the feelings I fear might paralyze me as I venture down below decks to the sanitation department and the waste storage canisters. Dressed in my dirty red jumpsuit, I dress in my work gear. Adding my various harnesses, links, hooks and carabiners. No real need for them, but that crushing hug from the tight fitting gear makes me feel complete, and thus comfortable. Rising to stand, I kiss my finger tips and press the pads of my fingers to the roughly etched proverb. Hoping against hope that I will come back unscathed and still in one piece.

Walking the three kilometer stretch between my crew quarters and the sanitation decks below. I follow the winding path, that winds and rises and leads me along gangways, gantries, stair cases and finally a large service power lift. The tablet has been invaluable in getting me down below with the most straight forward route. After about thirty minutes I’m looking at the brown signage that denotes the sanitation sector. Looking around I am amazed at how spotlessly clean the waste reclamation processors are. You could eat off of every surface down here. Following the schematic I realize I am only ten meters from where I found calamity as a drunken fool. Still quite taken by the sheer size of everything down here. Across the hexagonal room, flanked by several waste containment canisters is the storage lock up. A beaten brown steel safe with no discernible locking mechanism. As I get within a meter of the unit the tablet chimes, a green light flashes suddenly, and the doors unlatch and pop open silently. I am met by a strong citrus scent, the stringent cleaning agents sting the inside of my nostrils. Inside hanging among some goggles, a couple of canvas aprons, rubber boots and several buckets of industrial cleaners is a sizable black and yellow hand held unit. It has the words BOTKEY stenciled in white spray painted on it. A matching icon on the tablet is rotating 360 degrees in an isometric view. Looking around, as though something or someone might burst out of a corner and toss me bodily into the thresher unit, I hesitantly grab a hold of the BOTKEY and gingerly close the doors. With an anticlimactic shrug, i turn back to the hallway to walk up to the science lab. Looking over my shoulder at the thresher unit as i pass, i can see a tiny streak of red down the front of a bent guard plate. With a laconic smirk i say aloud “Not today mother fucker.” And promptly slip on a tile transition and fall flat on my ass, bumping my tailbone in the process. “Ok, you got me! I’ll just get the fuck out of here now!” Punching the communicator at my wrist i call up Ed to let it know to meet me at the science officers terminal post haste.

“Thank you Kelvin, I am now able to interpret, analyze and utilize the data from the ships sensor arrays to answer your queries. What would you like to do first?” The timbre of Ed’s voice has dropped with the operational parameters being edited. The unit is standing taller than before, and several extra data screen and ports have materialized on the bots cubic chest cavity. Rubbing my sore tailbone I say “Ok, Ed. Well… if you could take a look over the sensor data and see if the cause for all of the crew deaths was either internal or external. That makes for a great start. Can you give me a sense of how much data you have to sift through?” Standing shoulder to shoulder with the EDU bot at the dimly lit terminal on the work station underneath massive video monitors. Ed is currently plugged in using a hard line direct into the ships data banks. With a deep boom Ed says “There is approximately six thousand teraflops of data from the external sensor arrays. It could take anywhere between seventy two weeks and three hundred weeks to find the pertinent data sub sets…” blurts the EDU bot unit. “Well… shit. What if you look at the data just before I logged the second crew death aboard this vessel?” I offer in rebuttal. “That would narrow things down quite considerably. Might I ask why only at the time of the second death logged?” “The first death aboard was my best friend Keith. The second death logged would be the first of the seven hundred crew that died all together. Thanks.” I say gruffly. Turning away to sniff back the worrisome threat of a tear. Not sure why I care so much about getting emotional around Ed the tutor bot. A brief pause, then “Kelvin, this ship experienced a catastrophic dose of GCR from a localized supernova. Traveling at a speed of C.99 the speed of light there was no warning possible and they all received many times the allowable Sieverts/Rems of cosmic radiation. How you managed to survive is beyond my ability to compute.” Ed disengages from the terminal and rolls back across the room to the well lit work tables. Standing there dumbfounded I follow behind him. Out of the dimness by the huge wall monitors showing massive streams of code and data, towards the low hanging spot lights, and the lighted table top surface. “Jesus. GCR huh? Damn. Microwaved their brains in a nanosecond. God damn.” A lone tear wells up and threatens to pull more out of my eye. Hanging on the surface of my eye like a ten tonne weight. With a snap of my fingers. “The bladder!, it was the water bladder. I had to contort myself to get around it, underneath it. Practically in it to fix a wiring issue under the bridge. I was hidden behind eighty thousand gallons of plain water. It protected me, by fluke. God damn.” With a beep and a blinking series of lights Ed does a few calculations and concurs with my hypothesis. Millions of miles from anywhere, the answer provides little comfort to me. “Hey Ed, I think I saw some psychiatric protocols in that menu that would allow us to chat without me having to ask any task related questions. You feel like a conversational upgrade or what?” With a series of blinks and beeps I have my answer.

PART TWO of The Company: The Chronicles of Kelvin

You know, I’ve been down into

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The deepest depths of the ocean on a year long solo mission, I’ve been left stranded on a rocky out cropping of an island somewhere in the south Pacific for what I later learned was nearly three years, and now I work hauling minerals and ore for The Company out in deep space on an immense refinery freighter. Do you know what these three things all have in common? Isolation, misery and a total lack of any kind of quality amenities. Put those locations together with a vivid and increasing sense of impending doom and you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster. You know it’s kind of funny how we always assumed that our salvation would come in the form of a generational colony starship that could shuttle humanity off deep into the cosmos. But, as a species, humans we aren’t very well equipped to deal with the dread and despair associated with the isolation that accompanies deep space exploration, and trans generational travel. It takes a certain type of psychopathy to be able to deal with those particular stressors found during extreme cases of isolation. I for one, am just the right kind of crazy to pursue those types of careers where these issues are present. I’m as close to a recluse as you can get. Like a full on level ninety nine introvert. Nothing makes me happier than to spend time alone working on all sorts of shit. I also have little concern over tight spaces, like those found in the void between a star ships double hulls. To perform such pleasures required of me during regular maintenance I get to play BDSM dress up in various harnesses and tight fitting gear over top of my jumpsuit and poke around in these labyrinthine crawl spaces that criss cross these massive vessels in a lattice work of dead ends, bolt holes and conduits full of cabling and pipes. Deep, dark and for the most part endured in entire radio silence. The captain of my last vessel said that when his ship runs out of coolant they will ask me for a blood transfusion so that my life blood could keep the transport running ice cold. My nick name is Zero K, the K is for Kelvin. People who don’t like me much call me absolute zero, but eh, fuck them. I enjoy hard labour away from crowds of people. I’m the guy who volunteers for shite details so I can work off peak hours, and all alone. Or at least with minimal supervision. I have one friend. An angry, short & hirsute fella who doesn’t know how to speak in anything other than a yell, or monotone. We usually sit in silence and drink until one of us slinks off to bed without saying good bye or goodnight. A lot of guttural grunts and groans pass between us as a kind of idiosyncratic language. He’s great. Likes the same beer, works similar shifts doing the same work as I do. We have matching burns and scars. We’d have made an excellent couple if either of us were gay. Well, you know we would have if he hadn’t of gotten killed during an ammonia leak from a pierced pipe. What do you know, done in by a random sharp edge on our industrial strength PPE. You see, technically we’re considered to be inside the ship, even if we are actually between the inner and outer hull plates where all the majestic inner workings of the ship are contained. That means we don’t qualify for the over the head fully encased respirators with individual environmental controls. We just get an over the mouth and nose mask with change out pads for dust, debris and moderate airborne contaminants. He stood no chance against that leak. It blew aerosolized ammonia right over his face at point blank range. Hell, at 8 PPM, that shit kills, let alone a full jet stream dumped over the back of your head. After that I filed down every hook, link and carabiner on my tattered, dusty red jumpsuit. No point in repeating the sins of my only friend. Crawling in there after him and having to drag his cold lifeless body through the darkest reaches of the ship was not something I ever wish to do again. As it would happen, I would never have to. As all of them, the whole crew that is, all seven hundred of them just up and died while I was doing maintenance on the main bus panel wiring underneath the bridge several months ago. A fucking dick of a job too. The sort of job that requires about sixteen hours of crawling, bending and twisting to contort my body through the minimum sized access ports that are located around a massive water bladder just to get to the appropriate junction, then only needs forty minutes of upkeep performed on it. Like, what a piece of shit. Then you guessed it, another sixteen hours to extricate myself. All told – with food breaks, sleep and an abominable amount of crawling, that job was fifty two hours on. I went in and everything was hunky dory, I come out to a ghost ship with nothing but the dead bodies of the crew laying around. Mysteriously, with no known reason that was readily apparent. And just like that, I find myself in isolation again. For what it’s worth, our course through the stars was predetermined, and we will come home after our five year mission is completed. I have enough resources for seven hundred people over a five year term, so I shall not starve, nor will I be dehydrated. I just have to remain sane, and do my scheduled tasks, and pray. In the sage words of the twentieth century philosopher Jean-Luc Picard “You can do everything right and still lose. This is not a personal failing, but a fact of life.” I read that quote every day at the start and end of each shift. I have it etched into the bulkhead over my bunk in my crew quarters. Really makes you think – huh.

The loud hum of the air vent is echoing deep in my ears as I float, eyes closed, with the gale force breeze blowing into my face. The ship as a whole gets very quiet these days, and the loudness of the moving air makes me forget the ominous lack of activity aboard. I can almost imagine the sound of passing cars, birds or the far off indistinct muffle of an overhead conversation. When you spend years alone you learn to developed methods of finding inner peace and forgetting the banal repetition of your average day. My current trick is to crank up the lights, close my eyes tightly, and bury my face in the central air vent in the commissary. It moves the most air, and offers me enough room to just float in place while my imagination runs wild. Auditory hallucinations abound. Sometimes I can even feel the sensation of my communicator buzzing or hear an alarm sound. As I while away my time, face buried in the vent, the ship continues to perform the vast majority of it’s automated tasks. I keep to my work schedule, and eat the same things on the same decks as before. I know all too well the dangers of getting trapped somewhere strange by myself. That is not something I wish to repeat. I made a tough decision that weekend, and I still have the scars and emotional baggage associated with my extrication. Crawling three kilometers through the bowels of the ship to reattach my left arm at the elbow in the med-bay medical pods is not something I will likely ever forget. The trail of blood was gone by the time I felt well enough to leave that pristine white pod. The ai infused scrubbers had removed all trace of my nightmare. I kept the scar so that I know it really happened and I didn’t just dream it up. I do that a lot these days. I leave notes and etchings and drawings so that I remember having been there, and not run around the whole ship thinking I’m not actually here alone. When I am. Entirely alone. Isolated. With another three years and eight months left to go. In the cool cacophonous hum of the air vent I almost feel normal.

 

******

And for something different in these odd times, you can listen to me narrate this short story.

Spending some down time sculpting

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Like I said in a previous post, I have pulled back from my writing so that I can continue to dabble in clay. I just like the visceral feel of tacky clay under my finger nails. Watching something grow from a wire armature into a fully realized piece with some detailing on top for good measure. I put nearly 44,000 words to paper in the first six weeks of 2020, and only one full sculpt. So now I’ll do that for a bit instead. Below you can see the bulk of my hard work over the last several years. Enjoy.

Book case of clay sculpts.
Last years super sculpey polymer busts.

THE COMPANY : A Series Of Interconnected Short Stories

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Found here are the titles for each of the twenty one chapters (or self contained sections) of [The Company: A Series of interconnected short stories] BOOK ONE. If you like these, you can comment and I’ll send you the entire BOOK TWO as a pdf, for free.

  1. “You know what I love the most about being out here?… (613 words)
  2. “Hey, we’ve got an alarm here, main bus three, now four’s on the blink too, five and six… (1410 words)
  3. “Welcome aboard the Non Sequitur capsule, flight commander… (1094 words)
  4. It’s strange, the things you come to miss while out here… (1492 words)
  5. “Hey, Dougie, wake up!, Somebody’s called in sick and I need another able bodied mechanic for the… (2527 words)
  6. “Yo, Daryl, you’ve been summoned.” (1597 words)
  7. “What do you remember about the accident out there, anything you can give us… (1433 words)
  8. “Good evening everyone, welcome to orientation!” (3248 words)
  9. Pulling up the lane way to the massive Company induction office… (973 words)
  10. I can’t believe I’m sitting here, cowering in my room like a god damn child… (2249 words)
  11. “Do you have any idea how much these treatments are going to run The Company!”… (1622 words)
  12. “What is it you said you guys do again?”… (1003 words)
  13. “Dude… don’t lump me in with THAT fucking Martian… (1065 words)
  14. “Rolling in five, four, three, two…” (1520 words)
  15. When they told me I had been selected for the maiden voyage of… (2421 words)
  16. The official report on the events surrounding the launch of Margot’s Fever. (2190 words)
  17. “And now – for the exciting conclusion to…” (1480 words)
  18. “What an insufferable lot of twats these people are… (3813 words)
  19. “I heard you the first time… (944 words)
  20. In the dead silence of my jumpsuit, the heavy rush of blood pumping… (1631 words)
  21. “Some jobs are hard no matter where you work… (2789 words)

**Possibly more entries for this line of adventure to come later on this year.

You can also find various other micro short stories in the archives that aren’t set in space. If this is helpful, then I will also gather my other short story links together.

In the dead silence of my jumpsuit, the heavy rush of blood pumping…

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In my ears is deafening. The constant pounding of my pulse and rush of ragged breath inside my tight and claustrophobic helmet is awfully distracting. Strapped into the makeshift gel couch, I can feel my hands tremble in the zero gravity. I swear that my eyes are rolling in my head, and I’m so nauseous from the zero gravity vertigo. This is nothing like what we trained for. The deep pools we used back on earth just didn’t prepare me for how this would feel on the day. Every so often I switch between feeling as though I’m looking down on the ceiling from between my feet, to hanging there helplessly like a bat. Good thing our weapons are strapped to our legs via synthetic webbing. I’m so nervous I might twitch and pull the trigger if I had to hold it during transit. The trip so far hasn’t been too rough, the empty cargo container all sixteen of us are stuffed into is unpressurized, and without any form of life support, or entertainment. The only indication we have that time is passing, are the readouts on our wrists that monitor our oxygen use, and the build up of CO2 in the molecular scrubbers. The container is a dingy rusted orange, little more than a transport truck container from earth with a heavy duty tactical light welded in our field of view, affixed to the floor in front of our row of gel couches. Though it has been retro fit with explosive bolts to pop off the top and full front side. We’re all strapped into our make shift couches oriented towards the same wall. When the red light in the middle of the container goes out, the bolts will blow the container in two, and we unstrap and go to war.

The container we’re all strapped into is windowless, we are floating blindly. We are expecting to show up less than half a kilometer from Torus station, to be able to meet at our target. We’ve been given enough oxygen to make it through to our target, a few hours of a fire fight, then we’re on our own to make it to our evacuation points for extraction.  The rallying point is Margot’s Fever. Today, in front of the whole Sol system The Company will launch their new experimental star ship, and we’re about to fuck her up but good. Live on the evenings broadcast, for everyone to see. But we have to get to the coordinates first.

The inner system tug boats that we high-jacked are built to maneuver these cargo crates around with ease. For some reason, the depot where they were stationed wasn’t guarded at all. We staked our whole mission on gaining access to more than two dozen of them at once. Our knowledge of them is weak at best. The minds behind the operation didn’t share many details about them with us. That operational intel went to the drone operators alone. We can travel with them, we just have no control over them from inside the containers. An entirely separate compartmentalized team is running that show from the drone bay they stormed yesterday, down somewhere in Arizona. We have no idea if they still hold the controls, or if we’re being sent off to die unknowingly. We are counting on them to get us within range. We’ve been running this whole trip on our self contained environmental rigs and we have to complete our mission and get to the rendezvous point before we asphyxiate. Hard on the nerves, to say the least. Every so often I look down at the read outs on my wrist control units. Monitoring the oxygen levels and CO2 present in my rig. The whole trip is supposed to take us at least forty hours, and we have fifty two hours of oxygen. Things are tight, and we are all extremely tense. This is our first real mission out. Four fire teams made up of four people. We’re all vying for the same objectives in mind. Redundancies in case we catch heavy fire, or get caught out on our way in. We aren’t exactly tech savvy, but we’ve gathered enough C4, and other various explosives and weapons that we think we can absolutely total Margot’s Fever and make ourselves known in the system as people not to fuck with.

The static of the mic hisses. “Somethings fucky here guys, my oxygen tanks are reading only eight hours left.” Says a muffled voice, can’t tell if it’s from my fire team, or another group in a separate cargo container. “Well ride it out, then switch to your reserve when you get down below one hour, just don’t…” The words come tumbling out of my mouth without me realizing it. “Ok, I’ve switched over, What! – Now I only have three hours left, what the Fuck!” He starts to scream into his head set, the mechanical whine from the feedback is ear splitting. Trying to calmly talk over him I answer. “As I was about to finish, DON’T switch over until you are below one hour because the reserve tanks are greatly reduced in capacity.” I finish, slightly flustered. “You fucking asshole, you’ve fucked me. I’m going to die before we even reach the target. Holy fuck, switch it back, switch it back. Help me!” The panic in his voice is palpable. “That’s just it.” I say. “You can’t switch it back. All of our equipment is designed to be scuttled after use, no traces, remember. Surprise, attack, then vanish into thin air. That’s what the leaders trained us to do. Calm down, remember your training. Take small shallow breaths and you’ll just have to jettison your materiel for the mission to your fire team commander and bolt for the rendezvous point. Now stay off the fucking mics people. We need absolute radio silence.” without a hesitation I cut the feed from outside my own suit. I can’t be listening to someone have a panic attack mere hours before the greatest moment of my life. Listening to a fellow team mate slowly die while strapped to a gel couch will not do much for morale, and it’ll just put a damper on our mission.

Playing through my mind are all the ways this thing could go south on us, in a heartbeat. The tug boat drone pilots could get caught, and we get jettisoned towards the sun, to either starve to death or asphyxiate. They could be infiltrated and crash land us into the side of an asteroid or the station. Deliver us entirely strapped down directly to The Company security forces on the station. The bolts could fail to blow and we get caught stranded in our tin cans. They blow too hard and we get pulverized before we accomplish anything. The bolts could blow without enough force to remove the front and top plates, and they shift in space to crush us with their heavy mass, and inertia. Margot’s Fever could see us on their sensor array and melt us to slag with their thrusters. Our jury rigged suits and weapons could totally fail us and kill us all before we even get within a thousand miles of the station. A laundry list of terrible, horrible, awful things could happen. Which doesn’t include the all out fire fight we’re expecting to engage in as a show of separatist force. With no windows, and no way of knowing if everything has gone off the rails, we just have to lie in wait. Pray that we’re on the right path, and that our glorious sacrifices will be met with great gifts in our next lives.

In the vastness of space, a series of black containers race towards their targets tucked underneath the unmanned tug boat drones favoured by corporations other than The Company. The pressure and strain of the bobbing and weaving has the occupants deeply rattled. The pull of thrust has them pinned deep into the backs of their gel couches. The pressure upon their chests is so great they can hardly breath let alone talk. Their old jury rigged suits don’t have the pressurized seals that help to keep the blood up in their heads. Many have vomited inside their helmets. The near constant jostling has broken bones, and rattled skulls hard enough to afflict multiple concussions. The jumpsuits are a much older style, and not the tactical sort now in use by The Company security forces. They have been provided with no radiation shielding, and zero armor plating. This gaggle of separatist insurgents are deeply unaware of how they are being manipulated and are staged to be used as canon fodder. The deep rumble of the maneuvering thrusters causes their limbs to grow numb over time. The constant pinging of micro meteorites off of the containers starts to develop into a series of portholes where the action outside can be seen. Small pin holes become massive deep dents, which tear open to reveal the empty blackness of the void beyond. In several containers the torn open shell shards shear off to impale those unfortunate enough to be in the direct flight path of the pieces. Several insurgents are shredded by the barrage of space junk left floating out around the shipping lanes that surrounds the Torus Station. Barely visible at this distance is the Torus station itself, and the myriad service vehicles and exterior traffic that surrounds it. The tug boat drones are so much slower than The Company shuttles, that it’ll be close to a full day before they are within range of the station to blow their explosive safety bolts and release the hyped up, separatist martyrs inside. Not a single one of them will make it.

 

PART XX

When they told me I had been selected for the maiden voyage of…

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Margot’s Fever I told them no thank you. When they asked me why I would turn down the opportunity to be a part of an historic crew going to the edges of the known universe in search of missing elements from our shared human past, I told them I was petrified of the ship, and the potential to be lost to both time and physical space. Too many unknowns, too many variables to weigh and calculate. It couldn’t be done. I thought better of it, but I told them flat out that the fact we could warp space time, and the fabric of our reality scared me to death. Left me in a state of paralysis that could potentially doom the ship. The empty dull faces staring back at me in the board of directors chamber said those were perfect answers, and they saw no reason that I should not captain the ship out to the edge of oblivion with a full crew compliment of two thousand souls. I wept. Then I threw up. I thought about murder, I thought about suicide. I thought about walking through the nearest airlock with no suit on and embracing a heartless cruel death. Instead I shipped out. Margot’s Fever would become a monument to hubris and human folly. And the weight of it all would rest firmly atop my shoulders to grind my soul to dust. And it all began the evening of the ships launch event.

“Alright helmsman let’s pull about on the starboard side and ignite the in system ion engines. Bathe those media bastards in brilliant blue light!” Seated in my captain’s chair at the center of the bridge, I am surrounded by scores of officers, dutifully buried in their tasks. Noses pressed to screens, tablets and work stations alike. Everyone wants to make The Company happy, and putting on this dog and pony show to hype up the mission goes a long way to accomplishing that. Great video feeds and network coverage can boost The Company on more fronts than they’d ever let us in on. Not just morale, but a moral victory for humanity. To finally be able to send man to the furthest reaches of the eternal abyss and live to tell the tale. What a thrill, or so they thought. Those desk jockeys never did anything real beyond count the zeros in The Company cheque book. Keep in black, we got your back. In the red, you best come back dead. “Pulling about starboard side, captain. Ignition in three… two… one… firing all three engines, we are lit sir.” The helmsman is an androgynous Ceresian individual of moderate height, with an undercut and long violet hair on top. Competent. But no ability for banter. The role of captain is very isolating when your subordinates don’t have the confidence for exuberant banter. Where’s my XO, the commanding officer can really give us all shit right when you need it the most. “Ok, now ease off, and let’s float for fifteen kilometers then we should get the go ahead from transportation for us to make our way out of the system before firing off those Fabric of Reality engines.” affectionately known as FOR E’s, like four ease. Never want to be within one hundred au’s of any habitable system when you kick those fuckers off. They run on something like antimatter, would wipe out everything in the system and create a super massive black hole in its place. More of a devastating weapon than a mode of transport. And to think we have nineteen year old technicians trained on its maintenance like it’s just any old engine. Oh, to be young and stupid. So my I’ll placed regard for technology and personal skill. Some shit just wasn’t meant to be bottled up and used at the whim of mankind.

Wee-ooh, wee-ooh, wah wah wah… warning bells are sounding, proximity alerts are buzzing, hull breach klaxons are blaring. Margot’s Fever is starting to list dangerously toward the Torus station. “Navigation, how far out are we… engineering, status report on the hull damage, are we breached? Medical, are we showing many casualties? Sound off!”

“We’re only point five of a kilometer from the station, we’re falling back along the line. Somethings hit us. Whatever it was, it’s massive. The thrusters aren’t responding. I can’t get the ship to course correct.” The navigator is a pale, bald woman who is only about ninety pounds and four feet tall. She looks puzzled and bewildered at the same time. “Engineering here sir. We have major malfunctions all across the board. Hull breaches, engine failures, and our sensors are getting peppered by biologicals. Jesus, I think those are bodies. Christ all mighty, the Torus is coming apart at the seams…” “ok medical, I’ll assume you’re not in a state to collect any possible survivors from deep space?” “No life signs sir. We’ve got enough problems from within the ship sir. Whole decks have lost atmosphere, suffered catastrophic decompression in the XO’s crew compartments. I’ll get back to you sir.” A second violent shake pushes Margot’s Fever right up against the outer torus of the space station. In the dark recesses behind the moon, the glow of the sun adds a beautiful halo around the torn and rended edges of the outer ring sections. Bursts of flame, and geysers of escaping oxygen can be seen. Bodies, like a hail of bullets are sucked out of the station by the hundreds. Beyond the destruction the only thing visible are the exhaust blooms from other ships that are breaking their acceleration towards the dying station. “We can’t take much more of this abuse. What is our hull integrity like security?” By now everyone is shouting over the alarms, alerts, buzzers and klaxons. It is a cacophonous mess inside the bridge. From behind me a deep voice booms. “Hull integrity at fifty four percent and dropping sir. We need to get out of here now.”

Inside the luxurious suite where HR director Catherine Taylor lives, a live cast is showing the horrific deaths, in gruesome detail of two hundred of the most rich and famous members of the torus station. The dead camera men floating out in the void with the gigantic listing ship Margot’s Fever in frame. Gas and sparks and bits of shrapnel are jettisoning off the massive interstellar ships hull. Save for the timer blinking on the media screen, the room is empty and has been untouched for hours.

“Good evening Catherine, I didn’t think we’d see you back in the med bay for another treatment so soon.” The doctor, dressed from head to toe in blue, is the only person on board the torus station with the cahones to call her by her birth name and not by her hard earned title. “Isn’t tonight the big launch event? What I would give for a chance to dress up and mingle on the observation decks. God, what a sight that must be. I bet the hors d’oeuvres must be spectacular.” “Oh, you have no idea. Succulent culinary delights, to be certain. But with two new unions under my purview I’m exhausted. I can’t even bring myself to watch it. I have it set to record. I’ll skim the feed later on, I’m sure.” “All right then Catherine!strip down and we’ll get you sorted out ok. Do you need me to initiate it for you, or can you handle it now, by yourself?” Without waiting for a response the doctor strides across the brilliantly lit room to her office, a small alcove tucked against the far wall. There are several others just like it scattered about the octagonal med bay. “No, please, do it for me. Bitch.” Catherine steps lightly on the cold metal floor and hops up into the medical pod. Pulling the heavy door closed over the tube, the inner screen jumps to life. The biometrics scan immediately, and a cursor and prompt appear to flash before her eyes. Running through the checklist she decides to set the rejuvenation protocol to the three hour full tissue and fiber recalibration setting. More staff under her means she can take the resources appropriate to her station. With this expanded role, she is now, unofficially in charge of some fifty seven percent of all staff aboard the Torus station. She out ranks every other senior member of the board of directors. With a smirk on her face she triggers the program count down. “This never gets old.” She says out loud, it echoes within the small chamber. Over the med pod pa system the clock counts down. “Rejuvenation protocol four set to commence in five… four… three… two… Ooooo-ooonnne….” with a sudden jolt, the coolant gel spurts out, as the med pod system jitters in the midst of the power grid overloading. A look of shock is frozen upon Catherine’s face, as the med bay goes black, and the doctor is drawn helplessly out into the far reaches of space.

“There’s no time. I don’t know who, or what the fuck those exhaust plooms are, punch the FOR E’s, and get us the fuck out of here, now!” “Fucking hell sir. No. I can’t authorize that. I refuse.” Shouts the helmsman. “You what? We’re all going to die out here. The station. It’s gone. Dead. Totally dark. In thirty seconds, those people.” I’m waving indistinctly at a general direction of what I can only assume are a collection of ships. “Killed about forty thousand people, and critically injured this vessel. We have to assume that they have, or will attack every base, rig, ship and station in this system. We must save ourselves. We were never going to make it back here to this time anyway. Fuck them. Punch it. NOW!” I am absolutely livid. In a panic, and can’t give any thought to anyone who isn’t under my direct supervision. “Forget it. I’ll do it my damn self.” Leaning over my console I punch in my seventeen letter override code, ease back the trigger and squeeze, the vision on screen before us goes entirely black.

Three years later, and I am still unable to come to terms with the choices I made while under extreme pressure. Duress, you might even say. Truth is, I wanted the helmsman to ignite the for ease so that I didn’t have to live with the knowledge that I doomed our home solar system. You can’t just extinguish eight billion human lives and go grab a cuppa with your pals after a long shift. For those who survived the initial attack, and weren’t on the bridge, it was life as per usual. The weird thing about the drive was there was no sudden acceleration or thrust to denote we had moved so far so quickly. We folded the fabric of space and popped out the other side. The computer is still attempting to triangulate where we ended up. Three years and it’s still counting ones and zeros to locate us. I jest, but I think we’d jumped through space and into pure nothingness. There are only a handful of stars in view here. And it is unsettling to say the least. The damage we suffered means we only have one chance to make a successful jump anywhere else in the universe. We have to guard that option with our very lives.

Five years out here and we’ve finally had to put a mutinous insurrection to rest. It cost us dearly. Nearly a full two thirds of the crew were either killed in the fight, or jettisoned off the craft for their part in it. Seems the theory of relativity didn’t occur to some members of staff until we had to float near dead in the water for a year. Some of the younger crew members were desperate to turn around and jump home. But you can’t travel thousands of trillions of miles instantly, and turn around and go that same distance back and expect to find ma and pa waiting at home for you. Life as we know it is gone. We have become a myth, a legend. And the unending darkness in isolation is killing us all. But oh! What a fanciful tomb.

“Captain’s journal, entry date, 3700 days since our initial jump. The ships ai has queried me for an update on our location. There are only a tenth of us left. We set out, ten years ago with a full crew compliment of two thousand souls. The last two hundred are a sad, feral bunch. Life is harsh here, among the living dead.” With a loud ping the ships computer alerts me it has an answer ready on our actual location. Turning from the terminal in the bowels of engineering I stumble over to the ships ai compartment. A tiny room, with a gray box full of pink goo in it. “Captain.” “Good evening Margot.” “I have determined our location, would you care to know more?” “Yes Margot, I would love to know where the fuck we are.” “We are currently less than one one hundred thousandth of one percent of an au from earth, in the sixth dimension. The reason there are so few stars here, is that we are witnessing the final stages of the universe. As the stars wink out, all becomes nothing, until it becomes something once more.” Falling to the floor, dumbfounded. Silence. “If we jump, do we stay put but leap dimensions?” I croak out the question to the ships ai. “Yes captain. Our initial projections for the engine were false. It is only a dimensional shift created, not forward movement.” “Do we… can we… can we go back to where we started?” “Why yes captain. Though I would not advise it. Our reappearance could be violent.” “But if there’s a chance we have to try!” Bolting to my feet, I race headlong through the ships corridors, charging toward the long unused bridge. Scanning my biometrics, retinas and finger prints, I breathe upon the service latch to release the biological locks I had put in place. Darting incoherently for my captain’s chair, I pull down the trigger on the for ease engine ignition override.

Resolving back into our regular third dimension with an incredible crash, not quite here, no longer there, we splice half in half out of reality atop of ourselves and the Torus station. Gutting the observation decks, and slicing off all thrusters on the starboard side of Margot’s Fever.

 

PART XV