Drabble Wednesday: It’s Lonely in Space

Today Drabble Wednesday travels the spaceways, the great void between worlds where anything can happen...

Lost

Can you remember?

The planetary existence, the warmth of a sun?

There is no warmth out here, the stars are cold, distant. Dangerous. Like most everything. Even the smallest thing can kill you. Yet they send us out, and we go. Sometimes I wonder why. What appeals to us about black void of space? Wouldn’t we be safer huddled beneath the gentle stars, oblivious of the fate that awaits?

I wish I didn’t know. About the alien armada.

I wish I wasn’t surrounded by outlying stars, floating in an escape pod.

And most of all, I wish I didn’t remember.

~*~

Skitters

Can you hear it in the walls?

The scratches and the chittering between the bulkheads. Something’s in there, poking around. My lieutenant thinks I’m imaging it, says it’s just the older electronics on the station acting up. What does he know? He’s a newbie off fresh Earth Station, no real deep space experience.

Just listen. Down there by the open vent shaft. You’ll hear it good there. That’s it, right there.

You can hear them now, can’t you. All up close.

Please stop screaming. Someone will notice.

I’m sorry., but they said if I feed them, they’ll leave me alone.

~*~

Stasis

I wonder what day it is? Or what year?

It’s hard to keep track in this metal prison.

I can hear the hum and whir of the machinery, even feel the ship’s vibrations. I think. That might be my imagination.

Most people dream in these stasis pods, blissfully unconscious and unaware. But one percent stay awake. Unable to move, open their eyes, or scream. Trapped in their own bodies, marking time as they go insane, a perfectly preserved physical specimen until the pods opens.

Guess which category I fall into?

Stuck for fifty years as a living corpse.

Lucky me.

© A. F. Stewart 2017 All Rights Reserved

Drabble Wednesday: Revelations

After an absence last week due to illness, Drabble Wednesday returns with something different.  Three tales, three worlds, one story...

Exiled

I am banished from the safety of the village on the wail of a funeral dirge. A song for the walking dead, to cast their way across the scorched earth and endless night outside our walls. I hear the last notes muffled by the clang of the gates as they close behind me.

I am now outcast. A wanderer in the shadow of death.

I resist the urge to turn and beg for my life. They will not listen. So I walk across the eternal desert into the perpetual black night.

Only to find...

A door. And another world beyond.

~*~

Automation

Dim artificial light and a faint electronic hum filled empty metal corridors. Quiet, still, the space station functioned with precision and efficiency. Its only life on the upper ring, the ever present sentience of its AI. On the lower rings however...

Movement on corridor D, Block A. Another detainee ready for release.

The disembodied voice triggered an automated program and a door slid open. A human figure hesitantly stepped on to the station from a virtual simulation cell.

Hello, prisoner 4589. Your sentence aboard internment station Delta 9 has been served. You will now be reprocessed back into Earth society.

~*~

Home

I still remember that day in my dreams. The steel walls, a sickly sweet smell, harsh lights, walking up on the table after they restored my memories.

My release day. Before they sent me home.

Back to Earth.

I am still an exile. I miss the lie of their prison.

They said I served my sentence.

They were wrong.

Earth is the true prison. With its grey conformity, it’s lack of independent thought.

They think simulated hardship will cure our radical beliefs. It only makes them stronger.

I join another protest group tonight. I will reoffend.

I will go home.

© A. F. Stewart 2017 All Rights Reserved

Drabble Wednesday: Silent Stars and Skies

Today on Drabble Wednesday look to the sky...

Instant Nightmare

Help me!

Someone, anyone! I can see you. Down there on the street. Look up! Someone look up!

A downdraft blew across the sidewalk stirring dust. A man clamped a hand on his hat and a child jumped over a gusting newspaper. He was rebuked by his mother.

Help me! Don’t let them take me! Do something!

Another flurry of wind blustered over the gathered crowd.

Please do something! Help me! Save me!

They all stared at the body. One whispered, “He just collapsed. So sudden.”

While above it all, black winged creatures dragged the man’s soul higher and higher...

~*~

Dream a Little Dream

I used to stare into the night sky, and wish upon the stars.

I imagined the day I would fly into space, when I would soar among those pinpricks of heavenly light, exploring. My goal was to glimpse new suns, set my foot upon the dust and dirt of unfamiliar landscapes. I dreamt of discovery, delving into the mysterious beauty and strange alien existence of the universe.

I used to stare into the night sky, and wish upon the stars.

Before I knew what was out there.

Before they came to our planet.

Before we became their new feeding ground.

~*~

Mission Alpha

“Twinkle, twinkle little star

Above our world, so near, so far

Like a time bomb in the sky

Boom, boom, and now we die.”

First Engineer ZYF779 scowled, or as close to the expression as an android could approximate. “Stop being so morbid. The Sunstar Station hasn’t gone critical yet. We can fix the reactor before it detonates.”

Second Engineer THX732 turned away from the transport window. “Yes. This time. But you know the moon colony is living on borrowed time without an upgrade.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen. We’ve been abandoned by Earth Command.”

“Twinkle, twinkle little star.” 

© A. F. Stewart 2017 All Rights Reserved

Drabble Wednesday: To Boldly Go... Where?

Today on Drabble Wednesday, we venture into science fiction, to the great unknown. We fly off into the deadly regions of space...

  

Engine Malfunction

The stars are wrong.

Worse, the space station’s vanished.

What I’m seeing on the view screen isn’t comforting. I think I’m in trouble.

“Computer, what happened? Was it the engine?"

“Yes. The new star drive malfunctioned when it engaged.”

I toggle the camera view of the engine room. Only it’s gone. A hole in the bulkhead and lots of debris. At least the ship sealed off the breach.

“Computer, calculate the ship’s position.”

“We are one point four light years from the boundaries of the Galactic Empire. In the Marauder Region.”

Oh shit! No engine and stuck in enemy territory!

~*~

A Pebble in the Dark

A stone. A bit of cold rock. A fragment of an asteroid, a planet long forgotten. Space dust or debris. Spinning, soaring, cast out, travelling aimlessly, speeding an unfathomable trajectory.

A ship. A home of metal and electronics. A place of promise, full of humans in stasis, on an automated course to a distant world. A one way trip to colonise a New Earth.

They cross paths. A collision.

The stone disintegrates, smashing a hole into an array, causing a cataclysmic failure of the pre-programmed navigation system. Lost and off-course, the ship flies on, into the dark reaches of space.

~*~

Stare Into The Abyss

I stare at the stars beyond the space station, through a small viewing window. Portholes, they call them, after the ancient sailing ships of Earth.

I miss Earth. I’ve been out here too long. Starting to screw with my head. Going space mad.

I scrape my knife against the window’s transparent bonded polymer. It doesn’t make a scratch, but it leaves a tiny trail of blood.

I wonder if it’s the captain’s blood, or maybe the first officer. They both bled a lot.

I hear angry voices and footsteps; I guess someone alerted security that I killed my fellow officers.

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved

Drabble Wednesday: Shifting Reality

Today on Drabble Wednesday, what you see may not be as real as you think...

Seeing Things

“I swear things were there, and then they weren’t. One minute a big ass SUV was parked in my neighbour’s driveway, and the next, poof, it was a just a regular old car. And then the house turned pink. Pink, man! What kind of weird ass shit turns a house pink? It’s crazy.”

The police detective sighed. “You take any drugs tonight?”

“No way! I ain’t on nothing! I swear! I wish I was, man!”

“Wait here.” The detective leaves. His boss waits outside the interview room.

“Another parallel universe incident?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll send him for a memory wipe.”

~*~

Too Close

Edges slipping, the universal cracks widening, parallel atomic fault lines crashing. Rubbing together without sound or substance, still sliding open. Insignificant and yet infinite, waiting like a spider web. Or a trap.

I got too close.

I fell between.

Between worlds, between universes, co-existing and not. A human Schrödinger’s Cat. Alive and dead, one and two. One world breathing, the other bleeding. Straddling the line, pulled apart, put together, repeatedly.

Stuck in one moment on dual worlds for an eternity. And only for a second.

I close my eyes.

On one world I die.

On the other I wake up.

~*~

Walking off the World

They call it walking off the world. It’s when a space station worker loses his shit so bad he, or she, starts seeing things and hearing voices. Sometimes they crack up so hard they jettison themselves out an airlock.

Hence the nickname.

Hazards of the job the bosses tell everyone, sometimes the isolation cause metal instability.

But it isn’t true. Nobody on the station ever went crazy.

What they’re seeing, what they’re hearing, it is real. The station’s dead don’t leave. They stick around in whispers and visions.

I know.

I died, and I’m still here.

Care to join me?

© A. F. Stewart 2016 All Rights Reserved