PRL Serials

Chaos, utter chaos. Lights flashing pale blue, bright red, then black. But then flames and sparks. More lights.

Darker holds the armrests of his seat so tightly that he thinks his bones will shatter any minute, and it is not enough. The chair, with all of its reinforcements that strap him tightly to the seat, violently jostles and jerks. The entire ship that houses him seems to be flailing in space like a rag doll, maybe turning, spinning. He doesn’t pray, he just holds on despite the chaos and he closes his eyes so hard that his forehead begins to cramp, just like the muscles in his arms and legs that are tense and as stiff as wood.

Before the ship’s emergency alert, he had been eating with the other members of the crew on the ship that was like everything he imagined a spaceship to be. The dining area was large, though not the largest room of the ship’s lower deck, and there was one round table in the center of the room. The walls were sleek metal with a countertop running the length of them, and cabinets stocked full of provisions from Earth and from the Universal Infirmary filled the space over the countertop up to the ceiling. The chairs were comfortable, and like the table, they were made from the same metal of the walls and floor that could be customized by the crew to change into whatever shape they desired. 

“This UI meat is like a chicken and a fish had a baby,” Darker complained as he poked at the slab of protein in front of him.

“That’s why I like it so much,” Maria said, “who doesn’t like chicken and fish?”

“Not mixed together,” Darker said, scrunching his nose like a little kid. 

“We can trade,” Giovanni said, “I got Earth chicken. But I don’t mind the UI stuff.”

They swapped trays across the table. 

“It’s so crazy to be in this ship like this,” Alia said. She was like Darker, not a fan of UI protein, and she talked between bites of a steak and potatoes. “It doesn’t feel like we’re moving at all, but the view outside is crazy. You can see the lights of the stars warping as we change direction.”

“I can’t wait to space walk,” Maria said.

“Me too,” Giovanni agreed with a full mouth.

“We should arrive at the IP in what would be a few days on Earth,” Darker said, remembering the timeline that he and Eakran had determined when they programmed the navigation systems. 

“That doesn’t make sense,” Maria said. “Not even on this miracle ship-house.”

“You didn’t understand my briefing did you?” Darker asked playfully. When they left Earth, they had all given briefings on their duties in the main room of the lower deck as is customary for a crew piloting an IP sanctioned vessel. Darker had assisted Eakran with the navigation systems, Maria was in charge of ship inventory, Giovanni had become familiar with the ship’s defense systems, and Alia was familiarizing herself with the standard handbook for IP medical personnel.

“I understood that this ship doesn’t travel at light speed,” Maria said, “it travels at hyper-speed, that you explained would cut the trip from Earth to the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy from 5 centamegenniums, a word you don’t forget, to two months. Five hundred million years to just two months. That’s impressive, but the map you showed us, puts the IP command ship all the way on the other side of the universe. So even with this nifty ship, a few days makes no sense.”

Darker shook his head. “You’re ignoring the boosts and wormholes. To be fair, Eakran didn’t use the word wormhole but it was the easiest way to explain it and he stopped correcting me.”

“I’m not ignoring it, it just doesn’t make sense.”

Darker looked around the table and Alia and Giovanni seemed to agree. 

“Alia, you said you can see the stars warp right?” Darker asked.

“Yeah, when we lifted off and went hyper-speed, the lights of the stars elongated around us into a single streak of star light, so it’s just bright outside the windows. But every now and then, it’s like we slow down and you can see the individual streaks for a second before they all come together again.”

“That’s what I mean!” Darker said excitedly. “The ship moves through boosters that we programmed into the route and what you’re seeing is the ship moving through them.”

“But wouldn’t we just see black when we move through a wormhole?” Giovanni asked. “It’s like being in one place and appearing in another. Even if the star streaks change, they never blink off completely.”

“It happens really quickly. Eakran said you’d have to be paying attention. Plus there’s really only the one wormhole we go through and we’ve already done that. We’re closer to Eakran’s home planet than our own.”

“I don’t get it,” Maria said defiantly.

And then the alarm blared and Eakran ran into the room, ordering everyone to the central command deck. The secure seats emerged for each of them and a monitor emerged to fill the front of the room.

“It seems we are taking heavy fire,” Eakran said calmly, though he was obviously afraid.

– – –

He knows what is happening around him, he knows that death will soon follow for his friends, the family of his second life, and he agonizes for them as he holds on tight and maintains his position. He is not sure what is in store for himself. What happens to a man who defies death in the void of space?

He focuses on his grip. He feels the ship rock more violently than it has and then he feels the pull of the void of space to his left. He thinks of Maria and he struggles to turn his head, hoping beyond hope to see her still hanging on as tightly as he is, but that is not the vision that he sees. Instead, the ship has a gigantic hole and it seems only he remains inside. He can’t hold on, the security of his chair has failed and he feels the pull out to black space. First he is jerked out of the seat and he holds on long enough to dislocate his shoulder. Then he flails into the expanse. 

His existence is chaos and he can’t feel his body. He recesses into his mind, maybe he is unconscious, and he tumbles through his own experience.

On a bike, whizzing through people on a busy Manhattan sidewalk and onto the street crowded with slow moving cars, pumping his legs and looking out for something that might end him. It’s helpful that he knows Manhattan streets so well and he makes it to the office building with a bundle of mail for the man staring impatiently at his watch in front of the building that looms high over him. He slows as he approaches the important looking white man who notices him when he stops. He snatches the mail and opens it.

“Oh thank God! I thought you were supposed to be faster than this!”

“It’s the fastest you can find this time of day,” he says it and the white man looks him in the eyes. The white man’s expression changes from indignation to fear, the horror of pissing off a black man in the city. He reaches into his pocket and produces a generous tip.

“Thanks,” and he quickly disappears inside.

Back uptown to the office for more assignments. More mail, more envelopes, squeezing through pedestrians with his bike, annoyed, cursing, hop on near the park and whizzing through the streets dodging cars.

It’s easier jobs than this, he thinks. The way the white man looked at him, you would think he was a cold blooded killer. They make good money, he thinks. Even a drug dealer is better than this. Probably safer, too. He jumps a curb and rushes to make it across an avenue before the light changes. Just in time. And then he is on the road, avoiding the doors of parked cars that swing open randomly. I can’t do this for much longer, he thinks, I got to make more money. 

Then a door swings open and he sees it too late, and all he can do is brace himself against impact…

Darker’s body that is currently flailing through space, knocks against random debris. He is not quite frozen, but rapidly approaching. 

Darker is aware now. He is marooned in the most barren of deserts. He can only hope for death that eludes him. He is not in control of his body, he barely feels. He is mostly just his consciousness in a shell that is floating, and banging against things that he cannot avoid.

The ship flung him into space at a rate of about twenty miles per hour, and though he has collided with a lot of debris, he is still moving fast. 

Toward the Krognian homeworld of Vwrawl that is relatively close to the IP command ship.