Silicon Dreaming

There’s something on board with us; I just know it. I thought I heard some kind of strange scuttling and crawling sound a little while earlier over in the corner, which woke me up, although it’s possible that I could have just dreamt it, I’m not quite sure, or it could have just been a bug or something. I got up anyway and looked around for a bit, but couldn’t see anything in the dim fluorescent light that’s always flickering on and off in my quarters, so I decided I might head on down to the lounge and clear my head. The lounge is just about the only place you can go on the whole freighter that’s not absolutely filthy and full of junk lying around all over the place. The lounge is just about the easiest place on the ship to get to as well, seems like every corridor leads there in the end and I was soon sitting there alone at one of the many illuminated tables sipping a tall glass of ale from the autotender. “Would you like another?” it asked in a polite, but forceful tone of voice, the second I had finished off the last of what was left in my glass.

So I was still just sitting around, thinking about different things, about the bump in the night, about the sparks on the hull. I must have been onto around my third drink, when I remembered an old story I’d heard a long time ago in a bar on the other side of the galaxy when things were still good. There was this really old man, drunk as anything, with the most disgusting, half-rotten and falling out teeth you’ve ever seen, who had stood up, perhaps to relieve himself in the facilities, but had become caught up along the way telling a story about a strange experience he’d had one time on an extended deep space flight.

And so the story went: he had been on a passenger flight with Transgalactic Starliners, headed for a remote system somewhere on the outer rim, when they had experienced what was considered mealy a rather large particle collision that had impacted right outside the room he was staying in. He didn’t really pay it too much notice, but a few days later, while he had fortunately been the only person on board inside an escape capsule, just about the entire starbus exploded around him and as he flew off in the badly damaged escape capsule, all he saw thousands and of little glowing green pods being shot off into space in every direction. We all thought he was crazy of course after he proceeded to relieve himself then and there and pass out on the cold tiles of the bar floor.

posted by Joshua @ 05:50