It's done now. If you have been reading along, you will notice that I rewrote the last part of the last section to remove an extra character. I keep forgetting these are supposed to be short stories and that adding new characters only paragraphs before the ending isn't a good idea. yep.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE g-WARNING LIGHTS ARE NOW ON. AT THIS TIME WE ASK THAT YOU RETURN TO YOUR SEATS AND ENSURE
YOUR SAFETY NETTING AND THE SAFETY NETTING OF ANY CHILDREN TRAVELLING WITH YOU
IS CORRECTLY BUCKLED AND FASTENED.
PLACE ALL LIQUIDS INTO THE RECEPTACLE PROVIDED ON THE SEAT DIRECTLY IN
FRONT OF YOU AND CLOSE THE LID SECURELY.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE SERVICE WILL BE SUSPENDED TEMPORARILY WHILE THE
g-WARNING LIGHTS ARE ON. FOR YOUR
CONVENIENCE, COMPLIMENTARY SEDATIVES MAY BE FOUND IN THE BLUE POCKET ON THE
RIGHT HAND SIDE OF YOUR SEAT.
ATTENDANTS WILL BE ALONG SHORTLY TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE ADMINISTERING
YOUR SEDATIVES. WHILE SEDATIVES REMAIN
AN OPTIONAL CONVENIENCE FOR ALL PASSENGERS ON BOARD CELESTIAL
TRANS-GALAX FLIGHTS AS PER EEEDA
REGULATIONS, CELESTIAL TRANS-GALAX
RECOMMENDS SEDATION TO ENSURE ALL PASSENGERS EXPERIENCE THE EXEMPLERY LEVEL OF
COMFORT AND PEACE OF MIND CELESTIAL TRANS-GALAX TAKES GREAT PRIDE IN OFFERING.
*Bzzt* Cabin clear-Attendants
to pods-200 seconds to acceleration.
Skipper Anstill studied
the small blue packet she found in the indicated blue pocket on the side of her
passenger seat. It had the brightly
coloured elliptical Celestial Trans-Galax
logo emblazoned on the front. Printed
in block text on the back: DILAMORPHOBUPRENYL. EEEDA approved, it
said. She tore open the packet to find three translucent blue pellets and,
stuffed deep into the far corner partly glued to the inside seam, a thin sheet
of paper folded several times into a tiny square. Once unfolded, it turned out to be a list of side effects, and do not take if you are also taking etc. etc.
Something about psychosis, something about internal bleeding, a block of
text at the bottom that appeared to be written entirely in Latin.
Skipper pocketed the pills
and turned her attention to the small window across the aisle. These were the cheap seats, with the
windows facing the wrong direction to see anything other than infinite
blackness interrupted by the occasional cluster of stars. Naturally, in the premium seating area on
the opposite side of the ship, passengers were treated to an awe inspiring
panorama of the earth and the moon, no doubt with the sun cresting behind in a
wash of golden rays of premium beauty and premium loveliness. Skipper was almost positive she could hear
classical music being piped through the loudspeakers on that side of the ship
as well. Pondering a quick
reconnaissance mission to confirm her suspicions of pretty music and epic views
and free alcoholic beverages, her plans were presently interrupted by the cabin
speakers blaring:
30 SECONDS TO THRUSTER BURN.
A single flight attendant
bustled quickly down the aisle in Skipper’s direction. His uniform more closely resembled a set of
hospital scrubs than it did the usual airline business suit you would expect to
see on an in-atmosphere flight. Loose
fitting pants and v-neck t-shirt with Velcro bands closed snugly around the
cuffs of both arm and leg. Pockets on
upper arm, chest, and thigh bulging with who-knows-what implements of space
flight hospitality. Skipper noticed the
uniform had the Celestial Trans-Galax
logo embroidered on no less than five different spots about his person.
Wacky, she thought to
herself. This was her very first space
flight. All of these little oddities
provided far more entertainment than the reality of being in space had thus
far: the shuttle from surface up to orbit required all passengers to be sedated
during transit, the orbital spaceport at which the Trans-Galax ships docked had centrifugal gravity and,
bafflingly, no windows to speak of. To
this point Skipper’s entire trip consisted of lying down on a padded seat,
having a needle jammed into her arm, three hours of coma, and awakening in a
windowless space port under normal gravity with nothing to see but fellow
passengers looking either bored or bewildered depending on whether this was or
was not their first time.
Understandably, these measures were intended to ease the rigours of
space flight for the widest possible selection of potential customers; old or
infirm or delicate of stomach though they may be. To an energetic twenty year old girl like Skipper -who had blown
an irresponsible lot of student loan money on the ticket anticipating
adventure/excitement- this had all been quite boring, and frankly, totally
lame.
“Do you need assistance
with your netting?”
Skipper looked up. It was the flight attendant. He was looming over her. “My what?” she asked.
“All passengers are
required to be secured by safety netting during accel and decel.” He reached with both hands across the far
side of Skipper’s seat to pull a sheet of woven bungee from a side compartment,
stretching it across her from her knees to just below her breasts. “Arms in please.”
Skipper put her arms
in.
“Thank you.” With one
quick yank he stretched the netting hard
and latched it to the far side of her seat with three efficient motions: k-chink, k-chink, k-chink
It felt way too
tight. She could not move her
arms. This is more like it! she thought.
It was, after all, the most exciting thing to happen to her so far.
5 SECONDS TO THRUSTER BURN,
the loudspeakers blasted across the cabin.
The floor began to vibrate.
Skipper couldn’t wipe the stupid grin off her face if she tried. She wiggled her toes in anticipation.
4…3…2…
The vibrations
stopped. Silence. The air shimmered in front of Skipper’s
face. She blinked her eyes rapidly,
once-twice-thrice, but couldn’t focus. Are
we moving? What’s happening? Is something wrong? All at once, Skipper’s internal organs squeezed against her spine. Her brain relocated itself to a position
several miles aft of her skull. She
sank several inches into the spongy foam of her passenger seat. Lifting a hand to wipe the tears from her
eyes proved impossible. Hand would not
move. Fingers would not go.
She tried to open her jaw to scream but
found her teeth clenched permanently shut.
GOOD AFTERNOON LADIES
AND GENTLEMEN: THIS IS YOUR CO-PILOT, NOXIDERIAN McCORMACK, SPEAKING. ON BEHALF OF MYSELF, THE CAPTAIN, AND THE
REST OF OUR CELESTIAL TRANS-GALAX
FLIGHT CREW, I WOULD LIKE TO WELCOME YOU ABOARD CELESTIAL TRANS-GALAX FLIGHT B14457 SERVICE FROM EARTH ORBITAL TO TITAN STATION/SATURN. WE ARE CURRENTLY ACCELERATING AT A RATE OF
EIGHT-POINT-SEVEN-FIVE GEE. FOR YOUR
SAFETY WE ASK THAT YOU PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MOVE UNTIL THE g-WARNING LIGHTS
HAVE BEEN TURNED OFF. OUR ESTIMATED
FLIGHT TIME IS 32 DAYS, 21 HOURS. THE
CAPTAIN ASSURES ME WE HAVE A SMOOTH FLIGHT AHEAD WITH CLEAR SPACE FROM PLANET
TO PLANET. NO HOSTILE ALIEN
SPACECRAFT! HAHA! JUST KIDDING. WHILE THE LIKELIHOOD OF FIRST CONTACT WITH AN ALIEN RACE IS
REMOTE; SHOULD SUCH AN EVENTUALITY OCCUR, PLEASE REFER TO THE FIRST
CONTACT AND YOU: COMMUNICATION PROCEDURES FOR HUMAN PASSENGERS PAMPHLET IN THE SEAT BACK POCKET DIRECTLY IN FRONT
OF YOU. AGAIN I WOULD LIKE TO THANK
YOU FOR CHOOSING CELESTIAL TRANS-GALAX AND WISH YOU A MOST PLEASANT JOURNEY.
Stars spun round and round
in Skipper’s vision. The ship melted
into a warm syrupy goo. Once again she
tried to scream, her mind racing frantically to interpret the sensory overload:
Do not attempt to move do not attempt to move Noxiderian says not to
move there were sedatives optional convenience for my convenience should have
taken should have do not attempt to move move move…
*Bzzt* Cabin crew brace for free fall in 5… 4… 3…
“Ooonnnggg,” groaned
Skipper. All eight-point-seven-five
gravities of force disappeared in an instant.
The sensation was like waking up after a long night of Eastern
Bloc-level drinking to find yourself hanging upside down, a hundred feet in the
air, from a rope, suspended under a bridge, in a hurricane. In Skipper’s mind the front end of the
cabin became the floor. Meaning, what
used to be forward was now straight down. Her inner
ear pointedly insisted that she was hanging feet first looking down on the side
of a cliff. It was too much
for her stomach, which had had quite enough of all this excitement and made to
protest in the only way it knew how:
In any other
circumstances, Skipper would have been fascinated by the way the liquid
receptacle on the seat in front of her automatically slid open. Delighted that it had a built in vacuum
function. And amazed at how it did not
miss a single drop of her explosively regurgitated breakfast. All very clever machinery. Very smart.
“Floor is down,” she said
aloud to herself in hopes it would convince her brain to get on board with the
reality of the situation. “Chair is
connected to the floor, therefore I am on the floor. Opposite of the floor is ceiling. Ceiling is UP.” It didn’t
work. The liquid receptacle opened
halfway, as if it somehow knew what she was thinking. Okay okay okay, I’m on my way to see
Saturn’s rings up close. Dream come
true. Hold it together. Eyes closed tight, she disentangled herself from the safety
netting and floated free of her seat.
It was officially her first ever zero gravity experience. Well, conscious experience anyway. Being in a drug induced, EEEDA approved
coma for transport to the spaceport hardly counted.
I should have taken the drugs. Opening her eyes was first on the
agenda. The vertigo would never go away
if she didn’t. Skipper Anstill hovered
in the aisle curled into a ball. Thirsty. The taste of
bile lingered at the back of her throat.
You can do this. She opened her left eye a sliver. Then the right. Floor is down. And this time, thankfully, her brain agreed. There was nothing exciting to see out the
windows, and nothing had changed in the passenger cabin, only the perspective
granted to one now floating in midair gave the entire thing an alien quality. It was sort of like lying
on the floor of your bedroom looking up at the ceiling and imaging what
everything would be like from the perspective of the ant making its inverted
trek across the stucco texture. Rows
upon rows of sleeping space tourists in their bungee cocoons lined the
aisle. In the absence of gravity, it
only required a slight twist of internal logic to see the seats as upside down
or sideways. Skipper’s stomach grumbled
in warning. She made a mental note to
avoid any further experiments in orientation logic for the time being. The flight attendants would probably get mad
at her if she vomited out of range of the vomit-vacuum.
Magellanic Cloud 9? Skipper cringed when she heard that. “So cheesy,” she said, to no one in particular. There were precious few people awake nearby to hear it. By the looks of things, sedation was a very popular option on these flights. At least two thirds of the passengers were dead to the world, snoozing serenely ensconced in bungee. Flight attendants were busy drifting through the rows connecting IV’s to the unconscious people. Skipper swooped up behind the nearest attendant. “Hey!”
“Yes?” the attendant replied over her shoulder as she inserted a needle into the vein of an unconscious passenger.
“What are you doing?”
“These are feeding tubes. The sedatives usually last about 24 hours. They will be dehydrated when they wake up if we don’t hook them up to the tubes.”
“Oh.”
“Can I help you with anything?”
“How do I get to the medical station? I’m not feeling well.”
The flight attendant pointed. “There’s a map in the commons area, back there. Look for deck number 3.”
Skipper flipped over and pulled herself towards the commons area, tapping the seats with her hands on either side to pick up speed. She very nearly collided with a child zipping along the other direction. The boy deftly kicked at an armrest and vaulted out of Skipper’s path. “Careful! I new at this!” she shouted at him. He made a stupid face at her and launched himself away. The zero-g stuff wasn’t as easy as it looked in the tutorial videos they had shown her back at the spaceport.
Just ahead there was a circular portal with bright orange block letters: DECK 5 PASSENGER COMMONS. On the other side, the ship opened up into a comfortably spacious mezzanine with large windows along the walls. The room was an oval with padded hand holds on ceiling and floor for people to push themselves around the room. Portals identical to the one Skipper came in through were located above, below, and directly across. The map the flight attendant mentioned hovered in the center of the room. This commons area was the middle floor of a vertical series of living decks stacked on top of each other. Aiming for the medical station, Skipper headed down through the portal on the floor, down through deck 4. Deck 4 was the location of the bar the loudspeakers had advertised earlier. Skipper could hear the OOM-pssh-OOM-pssh sound of bar music coming from behind the extra large and garishly flashing MAGELLANIC CLOUD 9 entrance portal. She hovered there for a moment, hesitating. Well.. maybe if I eat something. Yes! Eating. And drinking. A lot. That’ll fix me right up. Skipper pushed off the floor and dove through the portal to CLOUD 9.
It was weird. There were tables, of a sort. Padded circular things with square Velcro
patches in the middle. No chairs. Skipper went over to one and saw loops under
it to hook your feet into. Which made
sense, considering the crazy part: that not only were there tables on the
floor, where a sensible person would put them, but tables on the walls around
the windows and tables up above on the ceiling. People were sitting sideways.
People were sitting upside down.
The bar had two tiers, one oriented the normal direction connected to
the floor, with bartenders serving the floor section, and another inverted
above it connected to the ceiling with a second set of bartenders who were
themselves inverted to serve the ceiling section. Skipper looked up at the ceiling bar as if she were looking down
on it from above, but when she directed her gaze back to straight ahead there
was the floor bar again with bartenders standing the right way up, looking at
her. They were waving her over. Fighting off another wave of vertigo, she
made a bee-line for the bar. The one
connected to the floor, the correct place for it to be connected.
MAGELLANIC CLOUD 9 served
a range of bizarre looking concoctions, all of which were bottled in airtight
clear plastic cylinders with a nipple at the top. Baby bottles but fancier.
Skipper ordered a blue bottle of water and made her way to an empty
table near a window. At the table, the
purpose of the Velcro patches became immediately clear. The base of her bottle had a corresponding
patch of its own. She stuck her bottle
to the patch and tried to get comfortable with the seating arrangement. It involved hooking her legs into a loop set
beneath the table and folding them under like she was sitting on her
knees. As awkward as it looked, it
turned out to be reasonably comfortable after some fidgeting around to get a
good position.
Skipper gazed out the
windows, trying to parse all of this new stimuli and atmosphere. In addition to the loud music and chatter of
nearby passengers, the ship made a lot of distressing vibrations and
noises. Sometimes the walls would
vibrate briefly, sometimes there were mechanical PSSH! and GLONG! and
grrEEESHHHHH sounds coming from behind them.
As much as Celestial Trans-Galax had made sincere efforts towards
decreasing the traumatic nature of space travel, it still came off as a thin
veneer of well intended lies wrapped around a very frightening reality: she was sitting in a thin metal tube, one of
several, bolted together and strapped to a rocket engine the size of tennis
court hurtling through space at an obscene rate of speed. Shuddering, Skipper took a drink of her
water.
The floor started shaking
again, more strongly than before. A low
bass rumble could be heard coming from the rear of the ship. All at once the lights went out. People at nearby tables whispered to each
other in hushed, fearful tones.
Emergency strip lighting along the walls blinked on tentatively. Hushed tones turned into louder questions
directed at the bar serving staff wherever they might be, it was impossible to
tell in the darkness. Skipper made to
add her voice to the chorus when a blindingly bright light flashed in her eyes. It was one of the waitresses floating around the
bar with flashlight in hand. “Stay
there,” the waitress said, “the power will be back on in just a sec.”
“Umm, alright. What’s happening?” Skipper asked.
The waitress didn’t answer,
she was already on her way to the another table, flashing her light directly in
the eyes of more frightened passengers.
It didn’t seem
normal, in Skipper’s estimation. The
rumbling was getting louder.
ATTENTION PASSENbzzzzt*
That had been the
loudspeakers. There was definitely
nothing normal about that. Skipper pushed
away from her table and made for the exit by following the red emergency lights
along the walls and floor. There had to
be someone somewhere who knew what was going on. As she approached the exit portal the noise increased
exponentially, like thunder being broadcast directly into her mind. Resting a hand on the portal into the
commons area, she could feel it juddering as though the ship had been caught in
some kind of turbulence. But what
turbulence could their possibly be?
There was no atmosphere.
ATTENTION
PASSENGERS: RETURN TO FLIGHT CABIN
IMMEDbzzzztt…zzzt… SAFETY NETTING AND THE SAFETY NETTING OF ANYzzzzt…
zztRANS-GALAX APOLOGIZES FOR ANY INCONVENzzztt…. bbzzzzzzz… zzt… BRACE FOR
bzzzzt… IN 5…
4…
Skipper realized just then
that she had heard that rumbling sound before.
She had heard it on this very ship only an hour before.
3…
Fumbling along the wall
with hands outstretched in the darkness, her fingers groped for something to
hang on to. There was nothing. Up to the right, nothing. Down to the left, an air vent, too small to
stick her hand into. The room lit up
with a flash of orange from outside the window. What the hell was
that!?
Desperate now, she pushed away from the portal to CLOUD 9. Her right elbow bumped into a grab
loop. She latched on to it hard with
boths hands, squeezed her eyes shut, and waited for what she knew was about to
happen.
2…
Once again, stars spun
round in the periphery of Skipper's vision.
Again the air shimmered, exactly as it had the first time. Silence.
The grab loop tore off the wall instantly. That was Skipper’s initial interpretation,
anyway. In reality it had been Skipper
herself being ripped free, the loop had stayed put on the wall it was bolted
to. She puzzled this out during her
rapid transit across the room, shortly before slamming feet first into the
adjacent wall at the Celestial
Trans-Galax standard acceleration rate
of eight-point-seven-five gee.
Fortunately for Skipper, the wall was padded. Unfortunately for Skipper, the angle of impact was not
ideal. If you dive straight into water,
with hands or feet first, all is well.
If you hit the surface just a little bit off, things have a way of going
pear shaped for you. In this case,
Skipper collided with the wall like a bug creaming into a tour bus windshield
at seventy miles an hour on a hot summer day.
ATTENTION
PASSENGERS: THIS IS YOUR CO-PILOT,
NOXIDERIAN McCORMACK, SPEAKING. BE
ADVISED THEY WE ARE CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING A MINOR MECHANICAL ISSUE. REST ASSURED THAT WE ARE WORKING DILIGENTLY
TO RECTIFY THE SITUATION AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WHILE THIS UNSCHEDULED ACCELERATION PERSISTS, WE ASK THAT YOU
REMAIN STATIONARY IN YOUR SEATS AND MAKE NO ATTEMPTS TO MOVE. EMERGENCY STAFF WILL BE EN ROUTE TO ASSIST
PASSENGERS WHO WERE UNABLE TO REACH THEIR SEATS ONCE ACCELERATION HAS
ENDED. AT THIS TIME CELESTIAL TRANS-GALAX WOULD LIKE TO EXTEND A SINCERE APOLOGY TO ALL
PASSENGERS FOR THIS MINOR INCONVENIENCE.
ATTENTION LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN: AS A RESULT OF THE
UNSCHEDULED ACCELERATION OUR COURSE HAS BEEN ALTERED. WE WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO REACH TITAN STATION/SATURN
AS SCHEDULED. CELESTIAL TRANS-GALAX URGES PASSENGERS NOT TO DISMAY, HOWEVER, AS FORTUNE
HAS IT OUR CURRENT VECTOR WILL ALLOW US TO PASS WITHIN 25,000 KILOMETRES OF
NEPTUNE, PROVIDING A CLOSE UP VIEW OF THE GAS GIANT AS YET UNPRECEDENTED ON
COMMERCIAL SPACE FLIGHTS. CELESTIAL
TRANS-GALAX TAKES GREAT PRIDE IN PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF SPACE TOURISM FOR ONE
AND ALL.
ATTENTION LADIES AND
GENTLEMAN: WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY
DISCOMFORT YOU MAY BE EXPERIENCING AS A RESULT OF EXTENDED EXPOSURE TO
ACCELERATION GEE FORCES. I AM NOW BEING
INFORMED BY OUR FLIGHT CREW THAT, PENDING ONGOING MECHANICAL REPAIRS, WE MAY CONTINUE
ACCELERATING BEYOND NEPTUNE TOWARDS THE KUIPER BELT AND POTENTIALLY INTO
INTERSTELLAR SPACE. WE ASK THAT ALL
PASSENGERS PLEASE REMAIN CALM. IF THE
CURRENT UNSCHEDULED ACCELERATION CANNOT BE HALTED MANUALLY, WE WILL,
EVENTUALLY, EXHAUST OUR FUEL TANKS.
REST ASSURED, AN EMERGENCY RESCUE TUG HAS BEEN DISPATCHED. AT CURRENT RELATIVE SPEED, THE RESCUE TUG
WILL RENDESVOUS WITH US IN AN ESTIMATED TWO-POINT-FIVE TO THREE YEARS. SPEAKING FOR MYSELF, THE FLIGHT CREW, THE
CABIN CREW, AND CELESTIAL TRANS-GALAX HQ BACK ON EARTH, WE LOOK FORWARD TO
MAKING YOUR EXTENDED STAY ABOARD FLIGHT B14457 A PLEASANT ONE.
End.
----
thanks for reading. i'm still not comfortable writing like this but I think it's getting easier. not sure if this story is any good. Please check back in two weeks for a new story.
