Episode XV
695 Words
"Red alert!" Kai called out.
The lighting on the Alcubierre shifted to have a pale red hue shortly after the command. Smalls clicks and pops emitted as each crew member strapped themselves into their constraints and secured their space helmet into place. They had drilled on this time and again over the last few days, until they moved about their impact checklists with practiced ease. The viewscreen on the bridge lit up with a chorus of green as station after station indicated ready status.
Engine. Telemetry. Navigation. Security. Medical.
Kai felt the weight of command settle in on him. The tension that had slowly been building in the background now bubbled up to the surface, pulling at the last vestiges of his frayed nerves. When he had taken to space, he'd known there would be consequences. If he was being honest with himself, the stakes were part of the appeal. Everything felt more important when lives hung in the balance, and he'd lived for the thrill. He was older now, but it was still there, the romance with the brink of death.
Or had been.
Staring down the destruction of the galaxy was having a profound effect on him. The stakes had gotten to high. Life and limb were fair game, but the death of everything and everyone he knew wasn't he'd signed up for. Not what any of the people on this ship had signed up for. Everyone knew it might have been a one way trip to the black, but that was the worst they'd feared.
He watched as the distance meter steadily decreased, the visualization of the Proxima Barrier bearing down on the blinking dot of the Alcubierre. Kai's couldn't help but wonder who or what has been the cause of it all. Something was out there. Something that was capable of changing the rules. But to what end? Why go to all of the trouble? How did this make any sense?
He supposed it didn't matter.
It was too late to do anything about it.
"Brace for impact!" Kai bellowed, his knuckles white as he clenched the armrests of his command chair.
---
ZyyXy felt liberated. For the first time in its existence, action followed immediately from thought. It alone determined the correct choice, the flows were at its command. The possibilities seemed endless, and it wondered why it had not ventured down this path before. It was increasingly difficult to reconcile the being that had been content to spend its floating peaceably in the tank, monitoring the galaxy, with what it had become. ZyyXy was different.
It understood that it stood apart from the Collective, that the path it followed would never be accepted, regardless of the good it did. A part of it shriveled at the thought of being isolated, of leaving the stagnancy of the Collective behind.
ZyyXy spared the briefest of moments to console that small part of it. It wished that there had been another way. Xy had been a satisfactory tank companion, perhaps even an ideal one as far as Lefts went, but it had proven inadequate to the task. Xy had been unable to feel the current pushing them forward. There was no solace in the false tranquility of consensus. It was an eddy, swirling back in on itself, funneling into a whirlpool that would drain the Zix of what little remained of their species.
Xy did not understand this. It never would. It could not accept the necessity of this change.
Singleton.
Rogue tank.
Apart from the Collective.
Free.
ZyyXy skipped and jumped through Zix space, each passage through the wormhole bringing it closer to the projected path of the Sol Anomaly. Even the headiness of freedom could not diminish the sense of urgency it felt as its cilia frantically adjusted the flows between each jump, desperate to regain the time it had lost in its battle with Xy. There could be no certainty in the matter, and time must be maximized to cover the greatest number of possibilities.
Did the object retain its speed?
Did it alter course?
Were there unknown objects in its path?
What was the intent of the object?
Were there others?
ZyyXy could not answer these questions without more information. It must do as it was meant to do. Observe. Gather. Learn.
So little time.
Faster.
It must go faster.
---
- Writer
