Break In

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I heard a vacuum in the back module of an interstellar rock wagon—does that count? I was on assignment with this second-rate band that paid its bills with the odd mining gig. I was freelancing (again) and hoping this band’s schtick was interesting enough to maybe get me back on staff with Clash. Not likely, since they have enough followers these days to be picky—not like when I was getting started. I remember when Hana and Chita and Remori and I wrote everything from a dorm room at Moony Uni (International Lunar University to most people). But I got into some things that I’d rather not talk about right now and Clash went nova and now I can’t even call myself a stringer. Let’s just say that I thought I could take a shortcut to making it big, possibly involving sleeping with a newsvid exec or two and it didn’t turn out like I planned.

As it happens, it turned out to be an excellent pathway to my current situation, in which I spend all my time stuck on these freelance joyrides to nowhere, asking banal questions to wiry kids in freewalk suits or all black dolphin-skin swimmers (not real dolphin-skin, by the way—I don’t hang with that crowd) or multi-colored smartclothes or whatever their particular “look” happens to be, acting like I’m interested in hearing the forty-bazillionth story about how they’ve cultivated a unique sound by adding cow bell. But I’m not bitter.

And anyway, that’s not what this entry is supposed to be about. Nothing that happened to me in the last three and a half years is worth more than 300 words with a catchy title. Until yesterday. I guess I told you I was on an interstel, right? By the way, you do know that these ships aren’t really interstellar, right? I mean they call them “interstellars” because they go back and forth between space stations, which from a long distance away, can look like stars. But, I mean, science. We can’t even get out of our solar system, much less to another star. Anyway, I spent the morning listening to this sad collection of human teenaged angst, made up of two native Mooners, one interstel baby and a very angry solid Earther, who must come from money—what else would give her enough time to be that unhappy? The group has a kind of throw-back sound that isn’t bad, really. Most of their songs consist primarily of wave riding licks from 20th century bad bitches, which I kind of like. But anybody can wave ride someone else’s tracks these days—all you need is an extra digital soundwave dissembler with a keening function. Not as original as “Jett Stream” would love everyone to think they are.

I keep losing my train of thought. Seriously, when I tell you what—I mean, you’ll be amazed that I even got one sentence on the page. But it seems really important to get this down, so let me finish. So “Jett Stream” ends their session and I ask the obligatory questions about how they met and who their influences are and what their mothers think of their life on the road. The usual drivel. And then the Mooners and the interstel kid get to their actual job, which is picking up, cataloguing and labeling rocks they pick up from various sites on the Dark Side and from the returning droners that are always coming back from round trips to Mars or some Jupiter moon or something. Thus, the actual vacuum, which created this constant whirring of background noise that was only slightly less interesting than the music they created. I figure the Earther funded the ship because, despite their need to work, they had a pretty sweet set-up, with a circle treadmill, half grav sections for eating and working and a fairly decent coffee synth. Most people on interstel ships settle for a burnt caramel colored sludge that does unpleasant things to your digestive system—much more problematic in low grav than bears thinking about.

So I’m heading to the treadmill, hoping to get an hour or so of moving going after sitting (half floating) around their recording module all morning. And I’m preoccupied, I’ll admit. I can’t help it—I’m counting my pros before they’re even deposited in my account, fantasizing about an submission to Clash so incredible that Remori will reach out—I’ll see the words “Call me” come up on my lenses under her name and I’ll send her a nod and we’ll schedule a vid and she’ll tell me to get my ass back to Tranquility Central so we can make plans to get me back on staff, maybe even in a VP position. I mean, it could happen. I’m doing the half grav bounce through one of the connectors between the modules when I look up and see it. You know how your brain kind of protects you from stuff that doesn’t make any sense? It was like that. I saw this thing on the floor of the connector about 10 meters away and my brain said, “I know that’s not a hole in the connector skin,” even though that’s exactly what it looked like. A side note in case you’ve never been in the connector section between modules on an interstel: space looks really different than regular dark places—space doesn’t have anything in it, you know? There’s no dust, no air, no nothing and regular dark, like in a dark room or a hole in the ground or something, it’s dark, but you can see the stuff it has in it, like even the air is something, right? What I saw looked like a chunk of space on the floor of the connector. I swear that is what I saw.

But it couldn’t actually be a hole in the skin of the connector, because all of our usable areas were pressurized. Any breach of the outer and inner skin of the interstel would have sucked everything in sight out into space like the most powerful vacuum in the universe. But nothing was happening around the hole—no air moving, nothing at all, which was even weirder than the hole itself. I edged closer and I saw that it wasn’t a hole—it was more like a tunnel shaped like a rock. Like the darkness had dimension, a size and height—uneven when you looked at it from side, like a moon rock or one of those stones Earthers are always bringing up with them to remind them of home. I know how it sounds—don’t you think I know how it sounds? It was a hole tunnel that was also a rock.

And I stood there—I don’t know how long I stood there. It was a while. I kept waiting for something to move, and finally, it did. Something like a very thin finger, like a long finger with a diamond or a crystal on the end came out of the edge of the rock hole tunnel. It moved slowly, methodically, as if it were testing the air, checking for dangerous conditions or something. As it came further out of the hole, I saw that it had a red glow inside of it, not like a light but like lava, you know? I’ve never seen lava, but like the vids you see of lava, a red orange river with a black crust, flowing down a volcano. It was like that, only inside the finger, while the crystal at its tip started to glow red, like it was heating up or setting off an alarm.

I still don’t know why I did it. I was frozen. By all rights, I should have stayed frozen in my tracks, even if the finger thing started coming my way. I’m not much for acts of courage or taking chances. I’m more the “find the easiest possible road and take that one, especially if there’s someone along that road to give you a ride” type of person. But something about that red lava finger sent a scream through my head that I cannot promise did not also come out of my mouth. It was like I could feel it looking for me, hunting me, like it hadn’t found me yet but it knew I was there. I must’ve just snapped, mentally, cause the next thing I knew I was on the floor, wrestling with the finger, which was not hot like I expected it to be, but cool to the touch. The finger thing was pulling back into the hole tunnel, like it could feel my hands around it. I grabbed it and it jerked backward in my hands like it was trying to retract itself back through the hole. But I had a good grip and I held as tight as I could, until I felt something give. I looked down and the finger thing—and the hole of darkness—were both gone. The floor was just the smooth folding tile of the connector again. I felt something in my hand and thought I must have cut myself. It was the crystal from the tip of the finger thing—it came off in my hand. I also had a scratch across my palm, where it cut me. So that’s great.

I haven’t told anyone else. Not yet. I’m back in my pod, door closed and sealed. I’m sitting on my bunk with the crystal on my tiny excuse for a shelf. And I swear it can see me. I’m watching it and, I promise you, it is watching me. I’m either very, very insane or that little red dot in the center of that crystal is following me wherever I move. Whatever this thing is, wherever it is from, it is watching me. It knows I have taken it and it’s watching me. My hand is starting to throb, but I don’t want to leave the crystal in my room to go to the infirmary box and I’m not touching that thing again. And I’m sitting here, wondering if maybe I’ve found the thing that will either get me everything I’ve been hoping for, or the object that will, for sure, kill me in my sleep.