Deep Black

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Heh. They also say that the vacuum of space is a dry freezer. But, in my experience, its humid, hot, soupy. Stuck under a cramped sweaty dome it’s claustrophobic, the suit makes the crew compartments seem spacious. You’re more likely to suffocate or die of dehydration than get blasted unprotected into empty space. Hm. What they say and what the actual experience is always so different. But those tiny stars man, they sure are gorgeous. Like grains of silver sand. I’m gonna miss those tiny diamonds. How can something so unimaginably far away, that makes you feel so small, so insignificant, make you feel such awe?

“Pico, come in, Pico, over!”

“Shit.”

“I heard that Pico. The impact fixed?”

*Sigh* “Yup.”

*Click*Click*

*Sigh* “Code 4, Three-Two.”

“Good. Get yourself and the kid back inside me.” *Click*

“I really hate when you refer to yourself as the ship Three-Two. Press the auto kid.”

“I’ve been out here for a while already Pico. Quit calling me kid… Who’s THEY by the way.”

“Never mind, you. Let’s get goin’… I like to think on things… out loud.”

“Uh-huh.”

The pair of starjacks depressed the blinking green square on their left forearm control panel putting their lives into the hands of the A.I. The gas jets fired silently spraying small white misty cones behind them. The grav-packs began to buzz through the hardened transparent aluminum helmet domes. The starjacks limned in the grey white of their suits suspended in black space slid along the outer ship hull with the small piece of debris following behind about 1.5 meters from the cratered brownish surface of the ship to the opening bay door from which the searing yellow light blasted their space weary eyes from the interior of the ship.

The Kid (her hand in front of her visor dome): “Aw man! I can’t stand being blinded by fucking bay lights! I can’t wait till I can get some real sunlight on my skin!”

Pico (turning back even though he still could not actually see the kid): “Hands at sides. Here come the decam jets kid!”

About a half an hour later, the two crew members were shuffling themselves along the narrow main gangway from the bell-lock from which they departed the ship for a walk into the small common room/mess set just below the pilot’s compartment. It was time for a meal before shift change. The next shift up, knock-shift, is the third and last of the shift-based shipping-day and was starting in less than an hour. The pair shuffled around the small room. Pico was a short (relatively) dark skinned man with deep lines in his face especially around the eyes, his golden eyes. He had not gotten around to changing them back to his natural color now that he was far from a stupid trendy twenty-something. Alternately, the kid was a slender but athletically built young woman with a lighter complexion than her compatriot. Her eyes were pink, as was the alter-trend at the time. Unlike Pico, she still liked that her irises were bright pink.

Both were completely hairless not even eyelashes. All crew members had all the hair follicles on their persons removed to cut down on particulate matter during long intergalactic trips and protect the equipment. As per their contracts, all crew members upon successful fulfillment of said contract will get bio-organic hair replacements completely free of charge. They both were built like spacers, a muscular rectangular torso and thin rangy but strong arms and pitifully thin and short legs. They were going to need a few months of gravity therapy in a cosmodrome before either would be able to go anywhere near planetside. Generate gravity being so energy intensive is simply not a substitute for the natural gravity of a habitable planet, it was a little more akin to that of a small moon or massive asteroid. Similarly, the pair were also wearing regulation dull blue coveralls, but both had also had the tops undone and hanging at their waists with only thin white sleeveless undershirts, already decorated with slowly growing sweat rings, covering their upper bodies.

Pico unfolded a table down from the wall that then occupied the center of the room. The kid pulled some small wax coated boxes from a zero-profile wall cupboard and tossed them into the microwave-like Cal-Oven ™. The machine dinged seconds later and she pulled out the boxes and tossed them down onto the table. She sat down across from Pico who was already peeling open his box releasing a waft of excellent smelling steam and removing the included clear plastic spork ready to begin shoveling the synthetic turkey gravy, reconstituted mashed potatoes, and lab grown spinach/green algae hybrid (leafy green mush really) into his mouth.

“Ya know, you really need to start calling me by my name Pico.”

“Well okay, kid… er.. A-O Jayson.”

“Jez’ call me Jay, S-O Pico. By the way my rank is Journeyman, Journeyman-Operator.”

“Oh, my bad, J-O Jay?”

“Hm. Just Jay is fine.” She smiled.

Pico shrugged as he shoveled in a second sporkful, Jay did the same.

Pico (after swallowing, poising another dripping sporkful in front of his face): “Three-Two, the other crew asleep yet?”

“Yes, Pico, they are all strapped down in the sleeper.”

*Sigh* “Get the info on that rogue debris ready Three-Two. After I eat I wanna look at what cha got.”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked over to Jay. “Y’know, I hate how formal A.I.’s are.”

“I cannot help that Pico; it’s how I was programmed – pending upda...”

“Shut up! I wasn’t talking to you Three-Two!”

Jay (struggling to hold back a snicker while swallowing): “Heh-heh, Ya’ mean militaristic – they are.”

Pico shrugged as he withdrew a clean spork from his mouth.

“Pretty much. Hey. I’ll run the final shift checks with you. Then I’ll check tha’ debris info. Oh, and finish up my duty checks. After that, you’ll have the knock all to yourself for the next eight hours.”

Jay, with a full mouth, shrugged and then nodded ‘yeah’.

“Y’know, the air in the drome always makes me giddy, makes my lungs feel raw. It’s too thin for old spacer scum.” Pico added. He liked to talk; it’s how his brain works everything out.

“It’s the smell when you get back in the lock that always gets me.”

“What, really?” Pico made a motion as if sniffing his armpits.

*laugh* “No, the air, it’s stale and… thick, whenever I get back from a walk it feels like I’m drowning in pissy musky soup.”

“Geez, kid… um, Jay. Ya’ make spacing sound SO romantic.” He stopped just after shoveling another scoop into his mouth and then laughed with the spork clenched between his teeth.

“Yeah, y’know Bions, on those ships, it’s a very clear, plasticky sort of smell, the temp’s much lower too.”

“Mmm, the sexy models tho’ they are sooo soft and smooth, I love rubbing my hands over a naked bionic tho’. Cheaper than the real thing too.”

“Too bad the bios I served with were the plain white models, all pilot, no personality.”

“They were new huh?”

“Mmmm-hm.” Her mouth was full of food.

Pico finished his meal and stood up, “I’ll meet ya in the pilot compartment for ship’s check and control turndown for the knock.” He tossed the empty box and spork into a square hole hidden behind another zero-profile cabinet. Jay took her time with each sporkful and sighed in disappointment at the diminished contents of her box. She turned up the mostly empty container and briefly thought to lick the sides when the food was gone. “Naw.” Sigh.

Not long after their meal the two spacejacks were busy moving around the cramped pilot’s compartment dodging around the three reclining seats and multiple control panels studded with uncountable lit switches, toggles, small black panel screens, and dials that took up all the space in the compartment. Each control panel was of varying size and fit tightly with all the others that surrounded them and had two aluminum handles on either side of its face for easy pull-out and repair or hacking when necessary though the latter not strictly regulation.

“Don’t forget tha’ line of greens, there… um… J… Jay.”

The Kid (expertly flipping switches and manual toggles, tapping screens): “I know. I have been trained ya’ know! The Sergei is identical to this scow.”

Pico: “Ha! That antique’s as fresh and untouched as you are kid, er, um, Jay! This ship’s earned her scars if ya didn’t notice when you were outside ‘er.”

Jay: “Hey! These were state of the art when I left. But yeah, on my refresher, the Sergei-3-9-er seemed a bit underutilized for its age.”

Pico: “Oh, yeah, forgot you went on a long haul for your first go. Wow. Would never do that.”

“Well, it was a definite shock when I got back realizing everything I left behind, and believe me I wanted to, was just gone. Everything changed, well not the things I wish would’ve.”

“Yeah, I don’t like to think that you’re so much older than I am, it’s weird when you look so young.”

“Well, I did spend most of the trip in suspension y’know.” She flicked a row of switches and the lights above them popped on with each click.

“Well, that does it uh, Jay. You go get ready for your shift.”

“Okay.”

Jay gave the panels on her side of the cockpit the once over and then took her leave. Pico sighed and finished up on his pad. It was time to check the rear panels and make sure their cargo was still secure and the engines ‘not blowing up’. He descended to the lower deck using the lift.

He strode down the main passage of the bottom deck with purpose and habit guiding him granting an illusion of pure professional competence. It was a wide circular hallway that bounded about half the length of the small ship. It served as a spare storage space but was mostly used by the crew to jog around its perimeter. It eased cabin-fever. The circular hallway also doubled as a conduit path for the electrics, atmo-ducts, and info-cabling all with easy access. The flowing tangle of lines, pipes, and cabling ran along the ceiling above Pico’s shiny head. The hall also encircled the computer core in a heavily shielded central chamber. However, he was heading to the access panel that contained the sensor-controls for the train-storage that the ship was towing behind it in a tightly packed clump of sealed containers loaded by the miners back at the pickup on asteroid Balent-3321. Each container loaded to the brim with semi-refined ore. Mostly tungsten and platinum. Of course, on his way Pico began chatting up Three-Two.

“Yes, I’m checkin’ the ship’s numbers Three-Two. Can’t let my ship go dead in the deep.”

“But Pico you know as well as I do that this vessel is the legal property of Don Javon Holdings Corporation…”

“That’s the dream Three-“

“…and hey! It’s always a great day with Javon Holdings! Contact Today! Professional business inquiries only.”

“Wow, can’t help it huh? By the way, isn’t that message a little dated Three-Two?”

“I know Pico, they haven’t updated my integrated messaging yet.”

“Hm, adverts ya mean. Guess when we dock at the drome, we’ll all have some recuperating to do.”

Eventually, everything checked out, so Pico walked to the opposite corner of the passage to check the engine and power core sensor panel. When that checked out as well, Pico began to sign off on his pad when Three-Two chimed up.

“Ahem. Pico. I think you’re forgetting something.”

*Sigh* “Oh-yeah. Three-Two confirm our position.” He shook his head, that was so stupid, why not just have the A.I. do that automatically at the end of every shift. He briefly wondered what their, meaning the designers and whoever else’s, reasoning was.

*Click* “Pinging the wormhole beacon. Pinged. Waiting. Waiting.” *Click* *Click*

A ‘wormhole beacon’ is transponder quantum device deposited in tiny “rolled” spatial dimensions that are ripples left over from the big expansions left in spacetime, just like waves breaking on a beach but space and coil in on itself much more tightly and permanently than seawater. These extra-spatial dimensions stretch for light years, some are believed to stretch across the greater lengths of the universe acting as quantum wormholes. A single quantum device can be deposited in one of these spacetime ripples and act as a positioning transponder for starships, communications on the other hand seem to suffer irreconcilable delays and prelays making ‘wormhole’ communication impractical.

Pico sighed, tapped his foot, then fruitlessly checked his pad then repeated these same actions twice over. “C’mon Three-Two! I’m dyin’ here!”

“Confirmed. We are on course with 23.5% deviation. Adjusted. We are back on direct course Pico. With less than a significant deviation variance.”

With that he finally signed out on his pad, tucked it under his arm, turned, and rushed back to the cockpit.

He could not wait to investigate that bit of rogue debris. It boggled his mind that something that large, approximately 60 x 92 cm and heavy, would be floating in the largest zone of dead space in the universe. It had to be of an unimaginable age. He almost began to pant as he crawled in through the small hatch to the pilot’s compartment.

“Three-Two give me what you got on the debris on P-C-utility panel four.”

“Acknowledged. Complete.”

The black plate of glass sparked to life with a full three-dimensional readout of the piece of rogue debris that had impacted the ship forcing a last-minute walkabout and repair job. Not that Pico ever minded getting outside of the ship when he could. He plopped into the communications seat and leaned over the screen, the only significant light in the cramped dark pilot’s compartment besides a few green, yellow, and white points glittering on the control panels.

“Wow, I’m glad regulations forced us to keep it now.”

“It is an interesting piece of debris Pico.”

“I’ll say.”

His eyes transfixed on the 3-D image as he used the touchscreen to rotate the image.

“It’s flat on two sides.”

“Yes. Both sides are slightly curved as well. Extrapolation suggests either a concave or convex shape of immense size.”

“A piece of a hull? No… no.”

He scrolled through the text next to the image.

“So, it’s an alloy of… osmium… iridium, and platinum with some titanium crystals throughout?”

“The crystals are arranged in a mesh in several layers.”

“Whoa, wow, um… what are the striations?”

He was referencing the apparent surface texture which continued through in the jagged cross sections along with slight variations in color of the dark greyish purple material.

“The metal has been rolled; a process found in ancient, armored vehicles. Taking into consideration the several layers of mesh I must conjecture that this debris is manufactured.”

Pico blew out a sigh with a hand on his forehead and wide-eyed. “Wow, just wow. It’s alien, um…”

His hand paused for a moment before it slid over his bald pate where it paused again. Then he looked at it and wiped the sweat on his coveralls.

“Yes. I do believe it is alien. I have no knowledge of any ship current or past that has a hull constructed as such. Nor is there any records matching the debris material in any of the ship’s databases.”

“I think our payday is goin’ to be big Three-Two.”

An hour later, her duties done for the moment, Jayson crawled up to the semi-domed nav-roost and squeezed onto the navigator’s seat which occupied almost the entire tightly packed compartment. She reclined putting her bare feet to the observation shielding which formed a windshield just behind a dashboard and navigation console and curved up overhead bubbling slightly into a narrow and shallow dome, an alumino-glass ™ canopy. These navigator’s compartments were common in the old model vessels with the A.I. onboard there was little use for a human navigator leaving the space redundant but also out of the way. Just what she was looking for, at least for a few hours. She leaned back in the navigator’s seat, it was damn comfortable, an old school pilot’s bucket with slick black faux-vinyl skin. She popped on her cans and set the music to her Planton Starscribe playlist. Nothing helped to keep her alert like some hard driving music, even if it was long past being the soundtrack of youth. She sighed. If she was needed, Three-Two could beep her phones. She briefly considered masturbation but what she decided she really needed was someone against her and inside of her, mixing sweat and odors. But she would have to wait for that. No problem. Too bad Pico isn’t interested, he was attractive enough maybe a little on the “old” side. However, he was a, um, ‘plastivert’. She giggled to herself, “Everyone’s got their needs, too bad ours don’t match up.” She whispered to the unblinking glass and sighed yet again.

“Perfect waste of a capsule.” She turned her left underarm up with her right hand pushing up a lump under the skin in her arm with her thumb. It was a small birth control implant capsule. At least THEY got that right, they realized sex was as important as air or water for humans in space. She threw her head back and groaned. Time to switch gears to maintain sanity.

The canopy glass was damn cold and a bit refreshing on the soles of her sore feet, fortunately not as cold as space due to the inner lining of insulating glass. It was a minor relief from the moist heat that permeated the ship’s atmosphere. She tried to lose herself in the view; an endless curtain of white stars, none of them were brighter than the others. None of them glittered. Unlike, the dozen or so craters in the exterior of the canopy. Those were able to collect enough of the scant starlight to actually glitter.

“I hate the dead zones.” She mumbled with a slur in her voice. Her eyelids were heavy, and she was bored despite the music blasting in her ears.

In the direction she was looking there must be a million light years of completely empty space, save for a stray molecule of hydrogen or two maybe a few grains of space dust, between her and the nearest of those stars, some might be galaxies. Well, all that blank space might be boiling with virtual particles, an invisibly roiling black actual fabric of space-time, but she was no quantum specialist either. These immense almost completely empty regions of space are thought to be the remnants of errant blackholes, blackholes that somehow move around and swallow up everything in their path, the radiation emitted from them dragged along behind the errant anomaly leaving behind vast empty stretches. But who cares? She sighed as the lids of her eyes became lead and she struggled to keep them open even though the weirdo horns and raging electric strings reached a certain zenith in her ears.

Suddenly, she noticed that she could hear a slight snoring which grew in volume as she strained to hear it. Spooked, she looked around trying but unable spot the culprit. She surged awake with a snort, “Shit! It’s me!”

There was a beeping red light on the console before her. She looked up and could see a large black void outlined in pinpoint stars. Gradually her eyes adjusted enough to be able to see a very thin rim between the black and stars.

“Wait, what the HELL is THAT!”

The black shape was rapidly getting larger and larger. Her stomach began to feel as if it was falling down an endless pit and would never stop. The black maw seemed it would go on increasing in size forever. The number of stars that lined it betraying its shape seemed infinite and at the same time, so pitifully few to protect her from the shadowy hellish threat as it blocked each out thousands at a time. A primal fear of deadly darkness, of unseen threats and suffering grew exponentially on the back of her head like a tumor. As time lengthened and the hell mouth just would not stop gaping ever wider, she began suffering a stifling boredom along side a primal anxiety and fear of the dark. Her very consciousness was being torn in two. How far away was this thing? How LARGE was this thing!?

Everything that she was going to do when she made it back to the drome, to planetside, whipped through her brain like a storm causing her eyes to sting. Her drowning mind caught in the torrent pictured the faces of old friends, some now very old, that she wanted to drink with, smiling, cavorting, hugging, guzzling, dancing in hazy white billowing vape-smog. Her new head of glistening calico hair, elegantly long running all the way down her back. Exploring the new hip art and music and food trends. All gone, all disintegrated into nothing. No meaning. She fell back into her seat from the foggy cloud her breath had made from her face against the glass. The great maw continued to grow engulfing all the stars she could see from where she sat. “How big can this thing BE!?” she thought. Her wits slowly trickling back to her.

It just kept getting bigger and bigger, wider and wider. A shock whipped through her skull.

“Three-Two WAKE the crew!”

“Already done!”

The faint starlight that could barely be sensed by the human eye in this strange region of space that shone on the dashboard and the top of the console began to shrink, the immense maw was swallowing the faint starlight and the ship. They had crested its vast rim.

The perimeter klaxon blared.