Skysong Hero

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Screaming. A high pitched shriek that should never be heard by a person. A sound so broken, it makes you wonder what could cause a person to ever make that sound.

Is that me? I wonder. Or is that someone else? I need to stay awake. I can’t.. My thoughts fade away, I try to fight it, but that’s the last thing I remember before I lose consciousness.

I wake up to an alarm going off, I turn over and reach to turn off the alarm when I almost fall out of my seat. Nearly falling startled me and I woke up fully, I realized I’m not in my bed but actually in my ship, all alone in space. What happened? Where am I? I think as I look around. I’m just completely and utterly alone. I start to look around my ship at all the buttons and screens I’m surrounded by. I try turning on the ship, but nothing happens. I know there is power because of the alarm still going off. I can’t figure out how to turn it off so I just start hitting buttons hoping to turn it off. After a minute, it finally shuts itself off.

Looking around, I realize I can get up and crawl around behind my seat. I’m looking through the panels and I find some dehydrated berries. I can’t rip the sealed bag open so I start looking for something to cut the package open. As I’m opening the side panels looking for a knife or scissors, I find a computer. I hit the power button hoping it turns on. Thankfully, it does. Maybe I can use this to figure out what happened and how I got out here, I think as I mess around on the computer. I open it up and it takes a fingerprint to unlock. The computer indicates a spot to place my finger. Slowly, I place my finger on the fingerprint pad hoping I can unlock it. Suddenly the screen changes. The desktop has a bunch of files all named strangely.

I open the one titled Skysong hoping for some answers, but before I can get any farther, I hear a voice in my head. “Rain! Rain! Are you awake yet? I’ve been trying to talk to you for the last fourteen hours. Why did I have to get partnered with someone as incompetent as you?”

I jumped from the sudden intrusion and hit my head on the ceiling. “Ouch!” I hiss through my teeth. But I realize I know my name now. That’s still not enough to go on, but it’s a start.

The voice responds, “ What happened? What did you do this time?”

“I don’t know.. I can’t remember anything,” I responded hesitantly. I hope I can get some answers from this voice.

“This is frustrating, we don’t have much time. I’m Ollo, the artificial intelligence assigned to you. We’ve been partners for five years, since you started your training as a Knowledge Seeker.”

“What’s a Knowledge Seeker? How did I get out here?” I ask.

“Before I answer any questions, we need to get your ship fully online and get you out of here, we don’t have much time, the enemy is near.”

Ollo tries powering on the ship but he seems to be having just as much luck as I did. “Hm.. seems you messed up again. I knew knowledge seeking wasn’t something we should have done. A guard job would have been better with your skills.”

“A guard sounds boring. That’s probably why I didn’t choose that. What would I have to guard if I had chosen that?”

“Questions later. Go to the back and open up that panel with the blinking light, we need to fix this ship and go,” Ollo says as I crawl to the back.

Over the next half hour, I got really sweaty and my hands got nasty and covered in dirt and grime. But I did it. It felt easy and natural, like I’ve done it hundreds of times.

“Finally, that took you forever,” says Ollo. “I’ll try powering it on again.”

This time I hear a whirring and I know that means it worked. I relax a little bit but I tense up again when Ollo starts yelling at me to get in my seat and buckle up. As I’m crawling to the front of the ship Ollo begins piloting the ship and we slowly speed up.

“What’s going on Ollo?” I yell as I make it to my seat and buckle up. All of a sudden I see lasers flying past me.

“We’re under attack! You gotta fly the ship so I can fire the guns!”

“I can’t! I don’t remember how!”

“Just do it! You grew up flying! It should be instinct!”

I hesitantly take the smallish steering wheel and the acceleration stick which surprisingly feels natural in my hands. All of a sudden my instincts take over. I know what to do. “Ollo! Give me control! I can do this!”

All of sudden the ship is doing what I want when I want it to happen. I swerve and evade the lasers being shot at me as Ollo starts shooting back. Right now I can’t tell if his aim is accurate but right now I'm putting my trust in him so I can hopefully get out of this mess and everything can be explained.

“I really need an explanation if we make it out of this!” I yell at Ollo.

He just yelled, “Hold on! I’m opening up a wormhole to transport us somewhere else. Hopefully it gets us out of your mess.”

“What mess? I don’t remember anything!” I yell back at him.

A big portal looking thing opens up in front of me, I’m about to swerve out the way thinking it’s something bad when Ollo yells, “Don’t! We need to go through that! That’s the wormhole!”

“Alright,” I say as I hesitantly put us back on course to go through the portal. As I go through, I start to get dizzy. Everything is spinning, then just black.