Only You Will Hear My Story

"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say." Repeated the cold, emotionless voice of the machine.

"Yes, thats correct so far. You’re a great listener, you know that?" Responded Jarom.

He raised the short glass he had filled to the brim with Senton-9's synthetically strengthened whiskey as if to signify a toast to the lifeless entity.

Half the modified malt spilled over the edge of the pint sized glass, splashing onto the immaculate, crystalline floor of the interstellar vessel.

"I assure you, captain, my transcription software is fully capable of understanding any known language with one hundred percent accuracy. There is no need to double check my work.”

Jarom clenched his eyes shut and ground his teeth as if he were holding back an enormous lump in his throat. Grasping the remaining whiskey seated to the left of the command chair, Jarom hurled it with all of his might. The crash of shattering glass eradicated the droning silence of the ship as the rest of the Senton-9 dripped down the wall and onto the floor.

Small droplets of the whiskey falling to the floor to form a puddle was all that could be heard for a short space of time. Quietly, Jarom regained his composure by nestling back into the cradle of the egg shaped command chair. He drew a deep breath and put his hand to his forehead.

“Your transcription is perfect.” He paused. “But the human mind has a way of suppressing events like this. I just want to make sure mine doesn’t have the chance. ”

"Now," Jarom began before moving his lips over the glass like a moose and taking a large gulp. His entire mood had morphed from solemn stoic to a once again jovial lush. "Let's keep it going."

He made a motion with his hand and took a small sip.

“Very well, sir.” The AI responded.

“As I was saying, most everyone on board, including the crew had begun the cryo sleep process.”

Jarom paused, sipped from his quickly depleting supply of liquor, and turned the egg shaped chair toward the enormous window inside the room.

The wide expanse of stars, planets, moons, and the infinite blackness between made the oblivion of space feel as majestic as the oceans that once covered the Earth.

“Ya know, it was never my style…” He paused a moment, “never his style, I should say, to try and be the hero, not outside the movies at least. Of course, that's what bothered me the most. What drove me to do what I was doing. The fact that I wasn’t me. The memories I have are not mine, never were. Who I am is who I choose to be, not who they tried to make me.

At any rate, I was making my way to the ship’s barracks. Thought I’d arm myself before trying to storm the rest of the shop to find my answers.

I’ll tell you what, this ship sure earned its name of Hecatoncheires. Hundreds of places to go, and hundreds of places to get lost if you don’t know where you're going.

Lucky for me, I had previously obtained the layout of the ship by paying off one of the ship’s engineers. Son of gun thinks he’s got a part as an extra in my next film.

Too bad no one here will live to see that film.

Cryo serum checks had begun and the ship staff would be making sure passengers were sedated and situated in their cryo chambers. I knew that if alerted, the ship’s law enforcement would be 10 minutes away from getting to my wing of the ship. The celebrity wing had been situated toward the upper levels. I guess the personnel could never be too close to the merchandise, wouldn’t want to disturb the hollywood elite.”

Jarom scoffed, snorted, and finished the last of the whiskey in his glass. He turned and looked over the side of the chair and grasped at thin air for the bottle he was sure was still there.

Feeling nothing, his face sagged and sunk into a frown, scrunching into the iconic scowl he’d become known for in his films. Looking up toward the mess of broken glass and wasted liquor, Jarom then slumped back in the chair and sighed in frustration.

“What, uh… Where was I?” He asked whilst scratching his head.

“Cryo serum checks had begun, sir.” Replied the AI.

“Right.” Jarom spoke in a low voice. He cleared his throat, then continued. “My aim was to avoid anyone being alerted on the way to the barracks. I knew I’d never be able to figure any of this out if I had the pigs riding my tail. So I kept a close watch on the staff as they went to each cabin. Once they were at the cabin adjacent to mine, I hid myself beside the door and grabbed the syringe full of the serum.

I held my breath, not sure why. I’ve never done anything like this before. Never for real. But I figured maybe all those years, er, I mean, all the memories of those years pretending to be the hero might help Me in some way.

The second the door opened I sprung on the crew mate and drove the syringe into their arm.

Disturbing how fast it works. Almost as surprising as their only being one crew mate doing serum checks. Guess they don’t figure celebrities to be the disagreeable type.

I’d made it this far and knew that to get where I wanted I would need to work fast. It was only a matter of time before the staff would notice their missing operative and the whole ship would be onto me.

I took the uniform from off the staff member, as well as their keycard, and headed toward the barracks.

A few straggling security guards still made their rounds, but I made it past them with little more than a salute and wave.

I was determined to finally find out what I’d always believed, to confirm if my suspicions were true. As I was regaining more and more of my artificial memory, I just knew things weren’t adding up. The barracks I’d hoped would be the place I’d arm myself with something, enough to just threaten anyone who got in the way, but not much more than that.

But in making my way toward the unspecified zones of the ship where I thought the true answers would lie, it turned out to be the barracks that armed me with the truth I had been seeking all along.

The Hecatoncheires, wasn’t named that for its hundreds of passengers, nor for its hundreds of sectors all carrying various civilians and military personnel like some interstellar Ark. What I found inside that lab was hundreds of pieces to a puzzle I never wanted to put together. The true intentions of humanity’s mass cloning back in 2057.

This ship isn’t transporting civilians with a few military operatives, it's transporting soldiers and with civilians as its cover.

The lab was full of cylindrical tanks, each filled with a translucent green liquid, and floating in them were the bodies of some of history’s greatest and most terrible warriors. Each was in cryo sleep just as the rest of the dreaming ship.

These tanks were numberless. Rows and rows of endless bodies contained in this viscus green liquid like a demented human hatchery.

Each tank was fitted with a small digitized plaque at the base of it. Listed on them was what I could surmise as an infantry number, rank, kill count, and the DNA used to create these clones.

I’m sure to some demented, psychopathic warmonger there would be some factor of fascination and gross awe of this assortment of the greatest killers time has ever known.

History’s greatest warriors, both good and bad, were all in those cloning pods. From Ghengis Khan to the butchers of the Third Riech, each with only a number registered for their name.

And for what? So mankind can expand its universal reign across space for eternity? What kind of mad man would bring back not just murderers, but the worst of their kind?

The cloning that resurrected some of humanity's greatest entertainers, athletes and leaders was never intended to give back to the human race, it was to distract them from their twisted warmongering they had in mind from the very beginning.

I screamed as I began smashing the tanks one by one, but I knew it was no use. It would take longer to destroy these tanks than it would to get to Earth.

That’s why I’m taking this ship down in a nose dive. I’m taking it straight down into the planet with all the grace of a boulder falling off a cliff, and I’m taking this lot of savages with me. All that remains is for you to send my transmission on to…”

Jarom stopped at the sound of tumbling hooves like the beat of a cattle stampede.

Just then, the bay doors behind Jarom flung open, accompanied by the sound of a thunderous stampede of thick soled boots charging through.

A swarm of military men had their enormous rifles sternly pointed at Jarom, enclosing him like a pack of wild dogs.

“You maniacal machine, you woke them up!” Shouted Jarom as he threw the empty whiskey glass at the computer screen.

The soldiers fastened aggressively around Jarom’s arms as he struggled against their strangling grasp.

“You’ve doomed humanity to another millenia of pointless wars and bloodshed! Why? Ha, just to clone everyone again and again. Who cares if mankind makes a mistake, burn the forest and and start anew, you sick sons of–”

A sickening thud broke the raving man’s shrill cries as a soldier drove the butt of his rifle into the back of Jarom’s head.

One of the soldiers stepped forward and raised the black tinted visor from his helmet.

“Computer, end recording, and delete transcription.”