A/N: I'm just going to post whatever doesn't fit with the rest of my stuff here from now on.
If...
If...
Moid's Random Oneshot Thread
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A/N: I'm just going to post whatever doesn't fit with the rest of my stuff here from now on.
If it's a oneshot, it'll probably be here. So let's start with a horror short story because it was recently sp00kyween.
Ten Pounds
I'm an uninteresting person.
I wake up. I get dressed. I eat breakfast; it's a bowl of cereal more often than not. I brush my teeth. Comb my hair. Drive to work. Sit at my desk. Talk to friends about trivial, stupid bullshit. Occasionally work in my cubicle. Grab a drink of water or coffee or whatever I feel like at the moment. Pretend to work. Drive back home. Sit on my couch and watch a game or a stupid drama or some soap opera that I don't actually like, then I can go to sleep.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Day in. Day out. Holidays, weekends, nights. I do whatever I need to, whenever I need to. Nobody asks questions. I know I don't.
So imagine my surprise when, one day, I discover something at my doorstop. I go to the door of my apartment, and right there, outside of my home, is a box sent to me, and me only.
Naturally, I'm surprised. Nobody ever sends anything my way. Nobody bothers to. They have better things to do with their time. I know my friends are idiots and I know they probably badmouth me behind my back. But this box is made for me and me alone. The box says so.
Naturally, I roll my eyes with the box. It says it was only for me, but I'm almost certain that it's for someone else, or it was sent to others as a kind of consolation gift. A "thank you for being alive" kind of fucking worthless tripe. I almost laugh at the thought, before I idly consider just opening the box.
If it was meant for someone else, then perhaps this would be illegal, but of course I didn't really give much of a fuck at the moment. So I take a nearby knife, and cut it open.
Almost like a cruel joke, I open my box, and inside…there's nothing. Nothing but a musty, old smell, like that of a senile old fuck or a senile old fuck's home. Naturally, the thing makes me raise an eyebrow. Someone went through the trouble of sending me a box of absolutely nothing…probably someone ancient, judging by the stench. I close the box and put it by my trashcan. Perhaps later, I can break it down, throw it out. It's just taking up space as it is.
So later that same day, I am watching my game. I don't even remember what it is…just that the game was going badly for my star team. I watch my screen, before I notice the most worthless member of the team flailing about on the ground. He's pathetic. Worthless. Sad, even. And all I know at the time is that watching him is making me angry. Quite angry.
I glare at him on the screen, watching as he does nothing but flail about like a pathetic sack of shit. I want to grab his head and punch him, punch him repeatedly. I want him to be gone from the team…the rest would be better off without him.
Then, suddenly, on-screen, there's a shriek on the live feed. The worthless member of the team runs forwards, before, without a transition, his head disappears. I stare in shock as I watch his body fall to the ground, twitching with the last few messages that his brain sent his body. I jump backwards and bring my hand to my mouth, before I smell something from my kitchen.
Something like iron. Like someone was bleeding heavily. I rush over, and the old smell is gone, replaced by something completely different. Like sweat and blood. The bottom of the box is wet and red, and the top is beginning to open. I pull open the box, and immediately, I see it.
Two lifeless eyes, a slack jaw, and the unmistakable stench of blood.
The box warped his head over to me…because I willed it.
I stare at the box…before I turn to my trashcan and vomit. I can barely even handle myself at the moment, and for several minutes I do nothing but stare at my floor.
…And then I realize something. I have this box. I have this power. I can do this to some random punk on my screen…but only if I specifically will it. I think to myself for several minutes, before I pull the head out, and think of someone else…someone more important in my life. Someone who has done me a disservice.
My boss? Oh, yes…she was a nasty one. Treated me like a doormat even when it made little sense. She underpaid me and, although I knew she was underpaying me, I didn't bother. So I think of her head brought to me. Ripped from her shoulders and put in my new tool.
I open my eyes, and, without a moment lost…it's there. Her pretty, thin little head, eyes shut and mouth wide-open in the midst of a snore, was right in the box. I had just murdered my boss…and I hadn't even given that much of an effort.
I smirk at the proposition. All I had to do now was to get rid of the heads. Cleaning the blood would be easy, and containing it for future use would be no effort. I stuff them into a bag, walk out to a nearby dumpster, just before trash pickup, and wait. Minutes later, they're gone, off to a nearby incinerator, never to be found or discovered.
The next day, my boss's body is discovered by her husband and children. I almost feel bad for them…but not for that cunt. She made my life a living hell.
I think to myself about the box. I think to myself, wondering if the box works without my being there…so I stare at someone walking down the street. A scrappy fellow. Someone who's probably stolen from several people in the past. His coat is messy, his cap is skewed, his pants are baggy, and there's the distinct silhouette of a gun in his pocket. He holds up a man at gunpoint, demanding money…so I imagine the punk's head disappearing.
Within a second, it vanishes. Blood spurts from the neck as the body collapses, and the would-be mugging victim runs, horrified, while I just smirked at the newfound power I had.
There was no trace. No way for any one person to ever discover what I had done. Nothing to stop me. Nothing to end me. Nothing to even inconvenience me. A few moments appear on the news; one time I even removed a politician's head for a laugh in the middle of his speech. I didn't disagree with his points or views…hell, I didn't even know what they were…I just thought it would be amusing to hear people screaming on the screen. It was, until the broadcast ended.
Months passed, and so did bodies. My position in the company never changed, and neither did my schedule: Wake up, Dress, Breakfast, Cereal, Teeth, Hair, Drive. Sit. Talk. Bullshit. Cubicle. Drink. Work. Drive home. Sit. Watch. But then there was an extra hobby. Just something new…kill someone.
No plan. No evil conspiracy. Just make someone's head disappear. Maybe it was an ex that I disliked. Maybe it was a so-called friend in the company. Maybe it was a politician? A warlord? A celebrity? The lives that I ended started to blend together, and around me, some people lost their minds. Some people lost their shit.
Someone determined it to be a national emergency, only for his head to disappear a second later for the ironic value. I made it so that the box was placed close to an incinerator; make the process just that much faster; I even killed the staff so that nobody would question it.
As the bodycounte grew, I began to wonder…maybe I could make the numbers grow? Maybe I could make a game out of it? I loved the idea… maybe I could just see how quickly I could kill people with just one decapitation.
It started with the death of a bus driver. I thought of his head vanishing as he drove his bus over a bridge. One vanish later, and bus careens into the ongoing lane, sending people on-top flying headlong into traffic, while other unfortunate drivers crashed into an enormous, several-ton brick of metal and screaming human beings.
I almost bust a gut laughing at the carnage. It was so easy. Something I could do with no consequence. So I decided to experiment. Choose which car would most easily cause the most damage. Choose which driver to murder…then vanish. One time, I had even gotten a pie truck to crash into a schoolbus, over the edge of a bridge and onto the highway below.
It's so easy to feel godlike with it. So easy to want to win. So easy.
It was all so easy.
…And maybe that was my problem. Not that it was an "Evil" thing to do…I was just moving things from one place to another. It was menial work. Just ten pounds. It did nothing, ended nothing, took nothing.
So it started as a fun gimmick, but after a while, it was more than boring. The best, most interesting part of my life, was now a drain. There was nothing to it. A year after gaining the box…I had started getting bored. If I wanted to, I could even decapitate the president…in fact, I might have done that once.
It was all so fucking bland. It was all so fucking boring. Even the car crashes that were so fun just a month ago were now goddamn boring. So I decide to do something new.
Maybe, for once, I can see what it's like. I take a deep breath, and bring the box with me onto a plane to New York.
My last use of it will at least be an interesting one.
If it's a oneshot, it'll probably be here. So let's start with a horror short story because it was recently sp00kyween.
Ten Pounds
I'm an uninteresting person.
I wake up. I get dressed. I eat breakfast; it's a bowl of cereal more often than not. I brush my teeth. Comb my hair. Drive to work. Sit at my desk. Talk to friends about trivial, stupid bullshit. Occasionally work in my cubicle. Grab a drink of water or coffee or whatever I feel like at the moment. Pretend to work. Drive back home. Sit on my couch and watch a game or a stupid drama or some soap opera that I don't actually like, then I can go to sleep.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Day in. Day out. Holidays, weekends, nights. I do whatever I need to, whenever I need to. Nobody asks questions. I know I don't.
So imagine my surprise when, one day, I discover something at my doorstop. I go to the door of my apartment, and right there, outside of my home, is a box sent to me, and me only.
Naturally, I'm surprised. Nobody ever sends anything my way. Nobody bothers to. They have better things to do with their time. I know my friends are idiots and I know they probably badmouth me behind my back. But this box is made for me and me alone. The box says so.
Naturally, I roll my eyes with the box. It says it was only for me, but I'm almost certain that it's for someone else, or it was sent to others as a kind of consolation gift. A "thank you for being alive" kind of fucking worthless tripe. I almost laugh at the thought, before I idly consider just opening the box.
If it was meant for someone else, then perhaps this would be illegal, but of course I didn't really give much of a fuck at the moment. So I take a nearby knife, and cut it open.
Almost like a cruel joke, I open my box, and inside…there's nothing. Nothing but a musty, old smell, like that of a senile old fuck or a senile old fuck's home. Naturally, the thing makes me raise an eyebrow. Someone went through the trouble of sending me a box of absolutely nothing…probably someone ancient, judging by the stench. I close the box and put it by my trashcan. Perhaps later, I can break it down, throw it out. It's just taking up space as it is.
So later that same day, I am watching my game. I don't even remember what it is…just that the game was going badly for my star team. I watch my screen, before I notice the most worthless member of the team flailing about on the ground. He's pathetic. Worthless. Sad, even. And all I know at the time is that watching him is making me angry. Quite angry.
I glare at him on the screen, watching as he does nothing but flail about like a pathetic sack of shit. I want to grab his head and punch him, punch him repeatedly. I want him to be gone from the team…the rest would be better off without him.
Then, suddenly, on-screen, there's a shriek on the live feed. The worthless member of the team runs forwards, before, without a transition, his head disappears. I stare in shock as I watch his body fall to the ground, twitching with the last few messages that his brain sent his body. I jump backwards and bring my hand to my mouth, before I smell something from my kitchen.
Something like iron. Like someone was bleeding heavily. I rush over, and the old smell is gone, replaced by something completely different. Like sweat and blood. The bottom of the box is wet and red, and the top is beginning to open. I pull open the box, and immediately, I see it.
Two lifeless eyes, a slack jaw, and the unmistakable stench of blood.
The box warped his head over to me…because I willed it.
I stare at the box…before I turn to my trashcan and vomit. I can barely even handle myself at the moment, and for several minutes I do nothing but stare at my floor.
…And then I realize something. I have this box. I have this power. I can do this to some random punk on my screen…but only if I specifically will it. I think to myself for several minutes, before I pull the head out, and think of someone else…someone more important in my life. Someone who has done me a disservice.
My boss? Oh, yes…she was a nasty one. Treated me like a doormat even when it made little sense. She underpaid me and, although I knew she was underpaying me, I didn't bother. So I think of her head brought to me. Ripped from her shoulders and put in my new tool.
I open my eyes, and, without a moment lost…it's there. Her pretty, thin little head, eyes shut and mouth wide-open in the midst of a snore, was right in the box. I had just murdered my boss…and I hadn't even given that much of an effort.
I smirk at the proposition. All I had to do now was to get rid of the heads. Cleaning the blood would be easy, and containing it for future use would be no effort. I stuff them into a bag, walk out to a nearby dumpster, just before trash pickup, and wait. Minutes later, they're gone, off to a nearby incinerator, never to be found or discovered.
The next day, my boss's body is discovered by her husband and children. I almost feel bad for them…but not for that cunt. She made my life a living hell.
I think to myself about the box. I think to myself, wondering if the box works without my being there…so I stare at someone walking down the street. A scrappy fellow. Someone who's probably stolen from several people in the past. His coat is messy, his cap is skewed, his pants are baggy, and there's the distinct silhouette of a gun in his pocket. He holds up a man at gunpoint, demanding money…so I imagine the punk's head disappearing.
Within a second, it vanishes. Blood spurts from the neck as the body collapses, and the would-be mugging victim runs, horrified, while I just smirked at the newfound power I had.
There was no trace. No way for any one person to ever discover what I had done. Nothing to stop me. Nothing to end me. Nothing to even inconvenience me. A few moments appear on the news; one time I even removed a politician's head for a laugh in the middle of his speech. I didn't disagree with his points or views…hell, I didn't even know what they were…I just thought it would be amusing to hear people screaming on the screen. It was, until the broadcast ended.
Months passed, and so did bodies. My position in the company never changed, and neither did my schedule: Wake up, Dress, Breakfast, Cereal, Teeth, Hair, Drive. Sit. Talk. Bullshit. Cubicle. Drink. Work. Drive home. Sit. Watch. But then there was an extra hobby. Just something new…kill someone.
No plan. No evil conspiracy. Just make someone's head disappear. Maybe it was an ex that I disliked. Maybe it was a so-called friend in the company. Maybe it was a politician? A warlord? A celebrity? The lives that I ended started to blend together, and around me, some people lost their minds. Some people lost their shit.
Someone determined it to be a national emergency, only for his head to disappear a second later for the ironic value. I made it so that the box was placed close to an incinerator; make the process just that much faster; I even killed the staff so that nobody would question it.
As the bodycounte grew, I began to wonder…maybe I could make the numbers grow? Maybe I could make a game out of it? I loved the idea… maybe I could just see how quickly I could kill people with just one decapitation.
It started with the death of a bus driver. I thought of his head vanishing as he drove his bus over a bridge. One vanish later, and bus careens into the ongoing lane, sending people on-top flying headlong into traffic, while other unfortunate drivers crashed into an enormous, several-ton brick of metal and screaming human beings.
I almost bust a gut laughing at the carnage. It was so easy. Something I could do with no consequence. So I decided to experiment. Choose which car would most easily cause the most damage. Choose which driver to murder…then vanish. One time, I had even gotten a pie truck to crash into a schoolbus, over the edge of a bridge and onto the highway below.
It's so easy to feel godlike with it. So easy to want to win. So easy.
It was all so easy.
…And maybe that was my problem. Not that it was an "Evil" thing to do…I was just moving things from one place to another. It was menial work. Just ten pounds. It did nothing, ended nothing, took nothing.
So it started as a fun gimmick, but after a while, it was more than boring. The best, most interesting part of my life, was now a drain. There was nothing to it. A year after gaining the box…I had started getting bored. If I wanted to, I could even decapitate the president…in fact, I might have done that once.
It was all so fucking bland. It was all so fucking boring. Even the car crashes that were so fun just a month ago were now goddamn boring. So I decide to do something new.
Maybe, for once, I can see what it's like. I take a deep breath, and bring the box with me onto a plane to New York.
My last use of it will at least be an interesting one.
END
Last edited:
EtchedSteel
*mumble mumble*
- Location
- Lima. Peru
Delicious, delicious implications.
Last edited:
- Location
- HELL
- Pronouns
- They/It
A/N: Time to blow the dust off this thread, 'cause I got a new thing that I wrote. It's a sci-fi story. I had a version on SB, but that was before I basically tore it apart and put it back together. Oh I even made a shiny arts. For no other reason other than that I could.
Captain Mullen Young loved when things followed a plan. She preferred her desk clean. She liked to keep her pencil right on top. She kept her communication system at arm's length, in plain view, in case she needed to pull into it. She had her display on at all times to see how close her ship was to its destination. Her black hair was cut short and straight, glasses propped up neatly with a readable HUD. And above all else, she kept a tight ship, a tight crew, and a tight schedule.
And so far, everything was following said schedule. The ship's camera feed showed the stars around the ship fading into white. Reality shined through and cracked apart the brightness, exposing their destination. She pulled the comm system to her mouth and cleared her throat.
"This is the Exploration Vessel Cotopaxi." Information flickered across both the screen in front of her. "Faster-than-light jump is successful. Forty-two days, six hours. That's three days ahead of schedule. We're ready for our expedition." She paused, waiting for the response from her home base.
Seconds later, her system sounded. "This is the Inner Ring, Vera Command. We read you loud and clear."
"Preparing for briefing," she said back. "Expedition is about to reach phase two."
"Roger that."
She stood up at her desk, put on her cap, and adjusted her display. She gave it a brief grin, before she walked out the door at the rear of her ship. "Time to make history," she said as she shut the door behind her and stepped into an elevator.
She pulled a small tablet out of her jacket and swiped her finger across it. The display changed several times before she spoke. "Good work on the engines, Bower," she said.
On the screen, a stocky crewman head covered in soot let out a cough. "She's being a bit of a bitch," he said, jet-black hair made even dirtier by the engine, "but I kicked her into gear."
"Well, get ready for round two. We're about to approach our destination."
"Oh don't worry. I know," he replied as he shot her a toothy grin. "We've reached the center of the Milky Way, no?"
"Yes. We have. Three days ahead of schedule. Prepare for briefing."
"Aye, aye." He gave her a salute, before she brushed her finger across the display again.
This time there was a blonde woman with hazel eyes and a long, gangly figure. Her fingers tapped across a keyboard as her eyes scanned several dozen lines of code.
The captain broke her concentration immediately. "Sal! We're reaching the end of travel."
"Captain!" she sputtered back, "I was just looking over a calculation about the black hole. I mean, it's a slim chance--"
"Talk it over during briefing," the captain interrupted. "We'll discuss it then, alright?"
Sal nodded quickly. "Yes, ma'am."
The captain swept her finger again before she put the tablet back into her pocket. The elevator came to a stop, before the doors opened and let her walk right into the main deck. Her ship was displayed on a holographic display just inches from her face.
It was like a brick with a ferris wheel in the back, the thing rotating slower and slower as the ship left FTL. The camera feeds lining her walls showed off the center of the Milky Way, and underneath the display was a little compass-like arrow, made to detect the direction of gravity. Meanwhile, sitting to her right with two cups of coffee in his hands, was her right-hand man.
"We ran out of blonde," he said, half a head taller than she was, dressed in an outfit just as pristine and official as hers. "I hope you don't mind dark coffee. Still had enough creamer so honestly, I can't tell the difference.."
"We're in space," she replied as she pulled a cup out of his left hand. He always held his own drink in his right. "I don't expect you to make coffee grinds out of thin air, Dimley."
He shrugged. "Hey, you tend to complain a lot. Hell, sometimes I think you might tear my ear off."
"I don't complain all the time." She waved a hand, but then again, he wasn't wrong. She had a tendency to go off on him at the worst of times, but even then, he kept coming back and giving her exactly what was needed-- be it a drink, some coffee, or just a friend to talk to. "Well, maybe most of the time."
"I'd still say all the time." He turned towards the black hole on the display in front of them. "So...is this it?"
"Yes, this is, indeed, it." She smirked. "Sagittarius A-Star. Three days ahead of schedule."
He nodded back. "Think the crew's ready?"
She waved a hand dismissively. He had asked this same damn question during an expedition to an alien wreckage. As well as an expedition to the surface of the sun. And again on the expedition of what was left of Earth. "I had them prepare ahead of time, just in case jump wound up being shorter than usual, remember?"
"I remember that, but…" He pressed a hand against her shoulder and turned her around. "Do you think the crew is ready?"
"Mentally? Yes." She furrowed her eyebrows at him. "Meeting's in five minutes. I sent a message to the rest of the crew."
Dimley shrugged as he stood by her chair. "All four members will be accounted for. Ourselves included."
"And we can get this show on the road. Everyone at Vera Command is watching us."
As soon as she said that, the two remaining members of the crew walked in. Sal was dressed in a spotless labcoat with her arms behind her back. Bower was still in a filthy jumpsuit, nonchalantly wiping his forehead clean of sweat. "So, what's the situation?"
"We reached our destination," the captain said as she sipped her cup. "Sagittarius A-Star. Biggest black hole in the galaxy." She nodded to Sal. "Your go."
Sal nodded once. "Our expedition is to dive past the event horizon of this particular black hole. While this would be suicide in most cases, our ship is equipped to withstand intense radiation. That is in addition to the fact that it is capable of faster-than-light travel. Now, the most likely case is that we encounter radiation from the stars that have been absorbed…" She trails off.
"Any other particular scenarios?" the captain asked.
"Well, there's…" Sal swallowed. "There's one where we just get shredded. That's one-in-a-million. There's another where we are trapped. One-in-a-billion."
Bower quirked up an eyebrow. "And you're telling us, why?"
"It was worth saying," Sal glanced between the crew members. "Any risk is a risk worth noting."
"And if it's statistically insignificant, it doesn't really matter," the captain waved her hand. "Previous unmanned missions have yielded no results, presumably because comms stopped working as soon as they passed the event horizon. But none of those missions had a ship that's as well-protected as the Cotopaxi. It's more than likely that the intense radiation just fried them."
"Radiation shouldn't be an issue," Bower said. "I made sure of that myself. Most advanced exploration vessel in the Inner Ring."
"We should be able to pop in, survey the inside, pop out," the captain reminded them. "So...ready?"
Dimley coughed into his fist. "A little hasty, aren't we, captain?"
"I'd rather just be able to go home as quickly as possible," she grumbled. "Tight ship, tight schedule."
"Preparations were already complete on the flight here." Bower saluted her. "At least on my end."
"Survey equipment is ready. We will have limited time to look before the singularity becomes a problem." Sal followed up Bower's motion with her own salute. "Worst case scenario, we're trapped. Best case, we get a lot of new insight on how they work. Most likely case, we're bored out of our skulls by absolute nothingness."
Dimley sighed. "Comms are ready. We should be able to put out a wired line to the outside world." He glanced at the captain. "I'll monitor comms as we descend. With any luck, the antenna should hold."
The captain nodded. "Well then, we don't have time to waste. We're going to jump directly into the event horizon. Don't want us to suddenly time-travel fifty years into the future; time dilation is a bitch" She pressed her hands against the controls, and a series of buttons appeared in front of her seat. "The E.V. Cotopaxi is clear for descent."
The ship began its flight towards the black hole. The crew watched as their view was consumed by all-encompassing black. "Descent is going smoothly. No spaghettification so far," Dimley muttered.
"I'd hope not." The captain stood up from her seat, coffee still in her hand as the camera feed in front turned black.
Bower whistled as the cabin's side feeds were wiped by more and more darkness, as though the ship was descending into a sea of pitch. "It's eating us whole."
"We're approaching the event horizon." Dimley said.
"Alright. Get ready for rotation and tether deployment." The captain sipped her coffee. "I'd rather we not lose our way out."
The view rotated with the ship as momentum carried it further down. The front view now showed the universe as it condensed into a shrinking dot. "FTL should carry us out, no?" Bower asked.
"That's the idea." Just as Sal spoke, a tether extended from the ship. A small probe with a several-thousand mile line flew out from the edge of the event horizon in less than a second. "Alright, tether deployed."
The universe continued to shrink in the camera feed, smaller and smaller. More and more of their reality turned black as the ship fell, and the universe condensed into a single point. In an instant, in less than a microsecond, the dot vanished as though a god turned out the lights.
The tether extended through the void to a universe that couldn't even be seen, as Sal stood up straight. "I'll be deploying the scanning equipment. That'll take about, say, an hour?"
"Don't take more than that," The captain spoke over her shoulder as Sal left the room. She leaned in her chair and sipped her coffee while Dimley leaned towards her.
"Awfully terse today," he muttered. "You really wanna get this done that badly, huh?"
"It's almost like we're in a black hole." She sipped her drink again, and let the steam waft around her face and fog up her glasses. She quickly pulled them off of her face and wiped them with a cloth in her pocket. She put them back on, folded her cloth and placed it back where it belonged.
Dimley stared at her for several long seconds, before he shrugged and went back to work.
Minutes later, the captain noticed the gravity directional indicator had gone wild. The display waved wildly, the virtual needle blinking around at impossible speeds. She slapped the screen out of habit, and yet nothing changed.
She rolled her eyes. "Goddammit." She leaned back and pulled up a tablet. "Bower!"
He appeared on the screen. "Kinda busy, Cap. The engines are freaking out."
"Well, something's wrong here, too. The GDI is going nuts."
"That doesn't make any sense." He stared at her, brow furrowed. "And is also a slight problem."
"Slight?" She said back. "I mean, I'd like to leave. GDI's kind of crucial for that."
"I'm the engineer. I know." He raised a hand to his own camera. "I'll go ahead and check it out, then." He switched off the comm.
A minute later, he was under the console with a tiny, wrist-mounted flashlight. "Yeah, that's weird." He muttered as he searched through the wires.
"Weird?" She asked.
"It's fine," his voice echoed from below the console. "... Everything hardware-wise is completely fine. I mean, maybe it's a glitch." He plugged in a tiny screen. "I'll check the code, see if there's like a weird exception or something."
Immediately, his face was lit up by ugly white letters on a plain black screen. Lines crossed him as it searched for self-defeating code and strange exceptions. Minutes later, he closed it. "Nothing." He paused. "It's working fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive," Wires rustled and metal clanged against metal as he kept searching. "Everything is plugged in right and none of the wires are frayed."
The captain's face fell. "Okay, that's weird. I'll get Sal over here. Maybe it's something with the black hole?"
"Yeah that sounds like something she'd know about." He rolled out as the captain flicked her hand across her tablet.
Minutes later, a door opened, and as soon as it did the captain greeted Sal with a question. "So, any idea what's happening?"
She flinched. "Uh, what?"
"Yeah, the ship's reading some weird signals." Bower smacked the console with his wrench. "Like, super weird."
Sal fidgeted. "L-like what?"
"The GDI's saying that the direction of our gravity is everywhere." The captain said. "As in the black hole is literally everywhere at once."
Sal froze in place. Her breath hitched, her teeth chattered and the captain swore she could hear Sal's heart beat faster. "Oh no. O-oh no no no no."
"What? What is it?" Bower looked out from the console.
"Are you alright, Sal?" the captain asked, before the scientist in front of her ran to the console.
Sal's mouth moved a mile a minute. "Th-this isn't happening this isn't right there's no way this can be right that's stupid why would it--"
"Slow down." The captain said. "What's going on?"
"Th-the black hole's everywhere." Sal said. "I-it's not a mistake it's not an error there's no way out!"
"Slow down." The captain grabbed Sal by the shoulders. "What do you mean there's no way out?"
"I-It means there's no way out!" Sal said back. 'T-time and space have wrapped around the ship! We can't leave!"
"We have a faster-than-light engine." Bower rolled himself out from under the console and stood up. "Black hole or no, we can probably leave." .
"That won't help. Th-the way out is by reversing time but there's no way out."
"Bullshit." Bower spat back as the captain shoved him aside.
"What happens if I accelerate?"
"W-we get closer to the singularity. Th-there's no way out don't you get it?!" she shrieked. "There's no way to leave! We're going to die here!"
"Calm the fuck down." The captain grabbed Sal by the shoulders. "Look. We have a line to the outside. There's a connection, we just need to reel it in." She raised her tablet. "Dimley! Pull the line in!"
On the other end, the man responded. "What for?"
"To get out! Sal's having a panic attack. We need to get out, now."
"On it." On the front display, their enormous, metal line could be seen extending into absolute nothingness. Suddenly, as soon as the reel began to move, the rope shook. The ship shuddered and heaved as the rope went taut for a split second then snapped out of the blackness at high speed.
The captain watched as the ruined, broken end of the metal tether emerged from the darkness. For a split second, she swore that it was like a beast had chewed apart the rope. A metallic bang echoed through the ship, as the entire vessel lurched backwards. The rope slammed into the front and destroyed the camera.
The entire crew was knocked off of their feet by the force, and the lights flickered and dimmed around them. The emergency lights flickered on, bathing everyone in a sickly red.
The captain groaned as she picked herself off of the ground. "Fuck me." She groaned. "Status?"
"I'm alright, cap'n." Bower muttered. "I feel like someone rattled my head around a bucket."
The captain nodded before turning away. "Sal?"
"I-I'm okay!" Sal shouted back. "O-okay."
"Dimley?"
There was a groan from the tablet. "Feels like a mule kicked me in the chest. Still strapped in, though." On her display, she could see him struggling to get back to the ship's controls. "Primary front feed's shot. I'll get the backup online."
"Th-there's no point," Sal murmured. "Th-the black hole's everywhere. W-we're going to d-die here."
The team gathered around the console later. Dimley stared at the indicator as it continued shaking wildly, before his attention turned back to Sal. "... There's no way out? Are you sure?"
"I-I'm sure." Sal said. "I-I said there was a small ch-chance b-but the c-captain didn't bother-"
"I thought it wasn't big enough to be a concern," the captain said. "It was my order. There should be some way out."
"Th-there isn't!" Sal shouted, before Bower ran over.
"Hey, hey, take it easy," he said as he placed a hand on her shoulder. "It's fine. We'll get out."
"Well...what if we can't?" Dimley said. "I mean, not to be pessimistic, but there's still a chance we might be stuck."
"W-we have three days." Everyone turned their attention to Sal. "T-three days until the singularity t-takes us."
"Good." The captain turned herself away from Sal, consciously avoiding her stare. "That's three days of problem solving. We still have control over the situation."
"And if we don't?" Dimley pressed a hand against his mouth. "Keep that in mind. We might not be able to get out of this one."
"That isn't going to be the case, Dimley," the captain snapped back. "We're going to leave. We're going to leave and be just fine."
Sal shook her head wildly, teeth chattering, fingers twitching. "N-No we can't."
"Bower, calm her down!" the captain shouted. "Get her somewhere that she'll calm down, alright?"
"Yeah." Bower pressed his hand into her back. "Alright... just calm down, alright? We'll think of somethin'."
They left, just Dimley and the captain alone on the Cotopaxi's main deck. "Do you really think there's a way out?" Dimley asked.
"Yes." The captain spoke too quickly. "If there isn't a way out, then why would we still be here anyway?"
Dimley's mouth quirked up in a wry half-smile. "I really hope you aren't going to try talking about 'fate'."
"I'm not." The captain adjusted her uniform and straightened her askew glasses. "I'm saying that we aren't dead yet. I think that's good enough for me to think we can think of a way out. I mean, we got out of that raider camp, right?"
"The raider camp is significantly less threatening than a black hole, let alone the black hole at the center of a galaxy," Dimley murmured. "I don't know about you, but I don't feel confident about this particular situation."
The captain chuckled. The sound hurt his ear. "I never took you for a negative nancy."
"I'm not a 'negative nancy'. I'm a realist." He kept his pace. "If you do think of something, I'll listen, but for now? I'm going to enjoy myself, even if just a little." He walked out the door, leaving her alone on the main deck. "I'll be back. I mean, maybe there is a way out, but I'm not going to hedge my bets on a hunch."
And with that, the captain pressed the comm. "Excuse me. This is the E.V. Cotopaxi. We are currently in the depths of the black hole Sagittarius A-star. Please respond."
Hours later, she was dressed in a tank-top and pants. Her collared shirt and coat had gone to the wayside, now draped against a chair. Her hair was slightly frayed, and in her lips was a marker. The tablet in front of her had several theoretical equations on black holes typed out, while the floor itself had several sketches made of both the ship and the hole around them.
The door opened, Dimley now in a set of pajamas that had pastel-colored rabbits jumping across them. In his hands were a pair of coffee cups. "You know, you could get Sal to do the math in her head."
"Sal thinks we're dead. I don't. Ergo, I'm not asking her for help," the captain muttered. Her glasses almost slipped off of her head, before she quickly righted them. "Thanks for the drink."
"Anytime." He placed the saucer over by her tablet. "Find anything?"
"Just that this makes less and less sense the more I think about it. I mean, everything just says that the way time and space works here doesn't make sense. That everything just loops back to the center of the hole."
"The singularity.," he corrected.
"Right. I mean, the black hole is still technically part of this universe. I tried using our comms, and since they're still in our universe, I thought they'd work."
Dimley stared over at the communication panel in the room, and noticed that she had, indeed, been trying. "One-hundred and fifteen missed comm attempts."
"QEC systems are impossible to drop. They are designed to be literally impossible to drop. As in they are physically unable to." She pressed the plastic marker against her teeth. "I mean, that should work, right? It works as long as we're in the same universe. Dropped calls shouldn't be possible unless our ship is malfunctioning or the base's comm system is malfunctioning. And knowing those guys and their work schedule? That's not going to happen. At least, not for any longer than two minutes."
Dimley's expression dropped. "So the more you think about it…?"
"The less it makes sense," the captain admitted. "I mean... is Sal back in her room?"
"Bower's keeping watch over her," Dimley said. "Just in case she does anything."
The captain nodded, expression grim. "Do you think she'll get that upset?"
"I think she's losing her mind." He stood up and began walking towards the door. "So yes. I do."
Time passed. More coffee was consumed. More of the floor was covered in marker. The captain pressed a one against her head. She almost wanted to call for Sal... actually, to be honest, she was seconds from pressing it.
She bit the bullet and pressed the tablet. "Sal," she said into the screen.
On the other end, in her own room, was Sal curled up in her bunk. Her hands ran through her hair as the captain spoke. "W-what?"
"I kinda need your help," said the captain. "Trying to figure out how to get out."
"Th-there's n-no way out." Sal whimpered. "Th-things don't work like that. I-I-I've said that b-before!"
"And I'm saying that's a load of shit!" She regretted her tone the second that she saw Sal retreat further. "Look, we can find a way out. Just help me, okay?"
Before Sal said another word, her door opened. Bower walked inside, wine in hand. "Hey," he said, "I got a drink. I don't touch the stuff myself, but I thought you might like--" The captain saw him pause on the other end of the screen. On instinct, he hid the bottle behind his back. "Cap, what are you doin--"
She cut the comms before he could finish. She felt her hand twitch.
More than a day had been spent in the blackness, and now the floor was completely covered in equations. The captain's pants were covered in ink and she was already feeling grimy. She spent the night problem solving. Just problem solving. The equations she had already started writing had grown into a mass larger than her own body.
And her hands were shaking. She didn't know why her hands were shaking. Probably the overdose of caffeine.
The door opened again, and Dimley walked through, still in pajamas. "So, come any closer?"
"No," she spat back. "No I didn't." Her hand glided over the map of equations. "I mean, fuck, is this what Sal was thinking?"
"I didn't think the stuff that you learned from charting would help here, honestly, but I'm impressed." He took a deep breath. "You're really giving some thought to this."
"It's mostly just Sal's own equations," she answered. "And like... it doesn't make sense. The way time and space act here don't make sense. It's like the black hole is its own pocket of reality. Its own universe."
"Which is why it acts so strangely," Dimley murmured. "Which is why it wraps into itself."
"Exactly. Which is what Sal was saying yesterday." Her hand twitched as she waved over the picture of a black circle, with illegible writing in the middle. "But what's a big unknown is...what if we switched on FTL?"
Dimley narrowed his eyes. "We don't need to do that."
"Why not?" the captain snapped. "I mean, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work."
As soon as she finished, he responded. "If Sal's right, then it means we're going to die the second you flick that switch." He kept his tone stern. "And if we don't know what we're doing, then it's no better than killing the crew ourselves."
"We're going to die anyway if we don't do something!"
"I'd rather die in a way that isn't needless--" He stopped himself and cleared his throat. "I think you can figure something out, but it can't be that."
"If you can figure something out for me, that'd be great," she hissed.
Dimley pursed his lips. "Sadly, that isn't my field. I just drive the ship. I don't chart courses." He turned away, and if she had been paying attention, she would have noticed him putting a flask to his lips.
It had been twenty-nine hours since they entered the black hole. The captain almost wished that Dimley was watching her. Or not doing fuck-all in some obscure part of the ship. She thought that, for a second, he had given up on her. That he wasn't even thinking about leaving.
"No," she said to herself. "No that's fucking stupid." She kept scratching more and more notes onto the floor. "That wouldn't happen. He wouldn't do that."
She scribbled another note. "Line broke," she said. "The force was enough to knock out the front camera but had clear direction." She paused again. "Maybe we can shoot another one out?"
She moved to the main console and pressed her hand against it. The display came up, and next to a simple graphic of a rope, there was a big fat '0'. The line was broken, and there was no replacement.
"Shit."
She sat back down, legs crossed. She felt a bit jittery. Legs shaking, hands quaking, teeth chattering. "Shit, shit, shit."
She looked behind her shoulder. He still wasn't there. Nobody was there.
She looked at the camera feed.
Nothing was there. Nothing but the absolute pitch black of the black hole, and her reflection on the slick, glassy display. Her glasses had gone askew, she noticed.
She righted them and got back to work.
The captain heard the door open, before it closed almost immediately afterwards. She wondered if Dimley had been there, or if the door opened accidentally, before brushing it off. He probably was just there to check on her. Maybe give her a bagel or something. Maybe more coffee.
She didn't know how she was still awake.
Her door opened and Bower and Sal walked in, both of them dressed in t-shirts and shorts. "Hey, Caps." Bower started. "Sal just wanted to--" He stopped himself as soon as he took a good long look inside.
In the middle was the captain, sitting among the writing. Her hands and feet were dirty and filthy. Her clothing was covered in marker residue, and her hands shook wildly. The floor was almost completely covered, completely illegible writing filling the room. "Y-you." The captain spat as she saw Sal. "You!"
Sal took a step back. "C-Captain?"
The captain stood up, and as soon as she did, it was apparent that nearly two days of problem solving was already doing a number on her. Her eyes were bagged, her teeth ground against each other, her fingers were already dirty and she was already beginning to smell of ink and sweat. "You didn't help one fucking thing!"
"Th-there isn't any…" Sal swallowed back into her throat. "You're...o-oh my god-"
"You are my crew," the captain spat. "And you fucking hide on your bed like a scared teenager when I ask for my crew to help me solve our problem?!"
Sal shook. "B-but there isn't a-anything w-we-!"
"Stop fucking saying that!"
"Lay off!" Bower shouted as he dashed in front of Sal. "Jesus christ, would you calm down for one second?"
"Calm down? Why the fuck would I calm down? You people are just sitting around, crying, pitying yourselves, when we could get the fuck out of here! We have a way out, there has to be a way out!"
Bower clenched his teeth as he shoved himself towards the captain. "And if there is, then what the fuck are you doin'? Yellin' at Sal, treatin' her like shit when she doesn't fuckin' deserve it."
"She's not fucking helping!"
"And neither are you! Right now, all you're doin' is makin' things worse for her!"
The captain pressed forwards face right next to his, nostrils flared. She glanced over his shoulder to see Sal cowering behind him, hands raised and trembling.
She cleared her throat. "Right... fuck. You're right. I shouldn't have snapped. That was uncalled for..." She straightened her stance. "Right."
Both Sal and Bower slowly backed out of the room. "Calm the fuck down, and take a fuckin' shower, alright?" He asked. "Christ."
The door shut in front of the captain. She never did take a shower.
Dimley walked in again to see her still writing. The floor was almost completely covered, and he was dressed in a bathrobe. He swallowed. "Hey."
Her head snapped over to meet him. "Dimley?" she asked.
"Take a break.," he begged, "for once, alright?"
She paused. "...Fine. Fucking fine." she muttered
He inhaled slowly, deliberately, before he let out a long, relieved sigh. "Well, take a shower, too. I think you could use it."
"No." she said back. "I'll take a break, not a fucking spa trip."
He opened his mouth, probably to say something about hygiene, before he shut his mouth and motioned for her to follow him.
The break lounge was empty save for Dimley and the captain. In her hand was a cup of coffee in her favorite mug, and across from her was Dimley. She swallowed. "So...I still haven't found anything."
He nodded. "Yeah? Have you come close?"
"The only thing was FTL." She said back. "And you vetoed that. So that's fucking bunk. How much time do we have?"
"Ten hours." He said. "Ten hours to reflect."
"Ten hours to solve." She raised her head. "You... I don't know. You keep coming back to give me a pep-talk or something. But you haven't actually stuck around."
He froze, before he slowly brought a flask into view. "Yeah well, I had some thinking to do."
She stared at the flask, then at him, then back at the flask. Her brow furrowed. "Seriously? On my ship?'
"You never yelled at me before for it."
"That's because I thought you quit." She leaned forward. "Seriously, my fucking firstmate is drinking on the job?"
"I don't drink that heavily, Mullen."
"It's Captain." She said back.
"I don't think it'll matter in ten hours, Mullen." He swallowed. She could smell the alcohol from across the table.
She wrinkled her nose at it. "Why the hell did you sneak it on-board, anyway? What was the point, just to piss me off?"
"The point was that if I died, I'd be allowed to enjoy myself," he said. "That's it. Otherwise, I don't drink. I don't even look at it. But I think it's appropriate."
"It won't be if I find a way out."
"Stop that," he shot back. "Well, in the end, I can at least think about how I've done my life. How I treated my boyfriend back home--"
"We're going to find a way out," she growled. "And you broke my one fucking permanent policy. Don't drink on my ship."
"We aren't going to get out," He gave her a half-hearted shrug. "We're going to die here."
Her teeth ground against each other. She thought they were going to break. "Don't you give up on me. Don't you fucking dare."
"That'd imply I thought we'd ever leave," he said flatly. "I mean, we're in a black hole. The second Sal said something was wrong, I didn't think we were going to leave."
Suddenly, the air grew thick. Her eyes pierced through him. She clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes as she spoke again. "You... you what?"
"I never thought you were going to solve this," he said. She could smell the bourbon. It was even stronger now that he was speaking directly at her. "I mean, maybe you could stay distracted but…" He paused as soon as he noticed her shaking. "You alright, Mullen?"
"Y-you said what?" she asked. "You're saying... do you even know what the fuck you're saying right now?" Her knuckles grew white around the handle of her cup.
"That there's no point in helping," he said matter-of-factly. "And I don't think you should be wasting your time like this. Die happy." If he wasn't going to help, then he was going to let them all die.
Before Dimley got another word out, she shoved the coffee mug forwards. It splashed against his face, burning his skin and scalding his eyes as he began to scream. She raised her mug, smashed the bottom and held the handle up like a rudimentary sawblade. She jumped over the table, grabbed his face and jammed the ceramic into his throat. He raised an arm on instinct, weakly trying to push her off as she cut deeper and deeper into his jugular.
His chair fell over, her on top of him as the back of his head hit the floor. Blood spilled out of his throat and onto the tiling, pooling around his head as he gasped for breath. Eventually, she stopped cutting, his throat jagged and open, trachea exposed, tendons cut, arteries stopping as ichor filled the man's throat.
The captain stared at her work as her red-coated hands started to shake. Dimley gurgled as his throat was further clogged with gore. She stood up and ran from the corpse as realization that she killed him had time to sink in. She slipped in the puddle surrounding his head for a second, before she quickly regained her balance and rushed down the hall.
Mullen pulled open a door in front of her, hands and feet covered in crimson. There, she saw Sal and Bower, sitting close together, holding hands. "Cap'n…" Bower murmured, before he saw the blood. "Captain, what the hell…?"
Sal turned to look. "I-is th-th-that Dimley's…"
"Get out of my way," she hissed.
"Captain--"
"Get the fuck out of my way!" Teeth bared, spittle flying, blood covering her face, she roared. Bower backed off, while Sal stood upright. "I'm going home. I'm going the fuck home and you aren't stopping me."
Sal sputtered. "W-we aren't going to see-"
"You just fucking gave up," Mullen snarled. "Get out of my way, Sal."
Sal stood up. "Y-you can't! We d-don't have much time already-!"
"You didn't even fucking try!" She shoved the doctor out of the way, her head clanging against the side of a monitor as Bower rushed over.
"Sal!" Bower's eyes widened as he turned back to the captain. "What the hell are you-!"
"You aren't going to stop me." Mullen roared as her hands scrambled across the ship's controls. "We're leaving." She pressed forwards. As soon as she engaged FTL, the ship flickered and shook. Their feed turned a bright white, before the black hole itself surrounded the ship in oppressive nothingness. The GDI shattered, glass flying into the captain's face as the ship flashed in and out of existence.
The entire thing raced forwards and everywhere, panels shaking and shuddering as the ship accelerated away and towards the edge of the black hole.
But there was no way out.
Every direction lead inwards. The ship began to fall apart as soon as it hit maximum speed. Panels flew off of the surface, the white silhouette exploded apart, before the systems beneath began to disintegrate. The frame of the ship shook wildly, before it, too, began to break apart, the disintegration going further and further inwards in less than a fraction of a second.
Mullen's whitened world started to dim as everything around her fell to pieces. The ground beneath her feet rippled and broke. The screen of her ship and camera feed was torn away into subatomic particles, and her colleagues vanished into dust.
The captain's world began to slow. Her breathing picked up, but there was nothing left to breath. Her hands grasped for something, but there was nothing left to find. Her legs fell apart, then her arms, then her shoulders and thighs and torso. Her glasses cracked apart and left her face, and then her body was gone, too.
Mullen's severed head floated, almost like some quirk of nature, among the absolute nothingness of space. It was just her in the black hole. A grain of sand before the overwhelming singularity.
And then she disappeared
Captain Mullen Young loved when things followed a plan. She preferred her desk clean. She liked to keep her pencil right on top. She kept her communication system at arm's length, in plain view, in case she needed to pull into it. She had her display on at all times to see how close her ship was to its destination. Her black hair was cut short and straight, glasses propped up neatly with a readable HUD. And above all else, she kept a tight ship, a tight crew, and a tight schedule.
And so far, everything was following said schedule. The ship's camera feed showed the stars around the ship fading into white. Reality shined through and cracked apart the brightness, exposing their destination. She pulled the comm system to her mouth and cleared her throat.
"This is the Exploration Vessel Cotopaxi." Information flickered across both the screen in front of her. "Faster-than-light jump is successful. Forty-two days, six hours. That's three days ahead of schedule. We're ready for our expedition." She paused, waiting for the response from her home base.
Seconds later, her system sounded. "This is the Inner Ring, Vera Command. We read you loud and clear."
"Preparing for briefing," she said back. "Expedition is about to reach phase two."
"Roger that."
She stood up at her desk, put on her cap, and adjusted her display. She gave it a brief grin, before she walked out the door at the rear of her ship. "Time to make history," she said as she shut the door behind her and stepped into an elevator.
She pulled a small tablet out of her jacket and swiped her finger across it. The display changed several times before she spoke. "Good work on the engines, Bower," she said.
On the screen, a stocky crewman head covered in soot let out a cough. "She's being a bit of a bitch," he said, jet-black hair made even dirtier by the engine, "but I kicked her into gear."
"Well, get ready for round two. We're about to approach our destination."
"Oh don't worry. I know," he replied as he shot her a toothy grin. "We've reached the center of the Milky Way, no?"
"Yes. We have. Three days ahead of schedule. Prepare for briefing."
"Aye, aye." He gave her a salute, before she brushed her finger across the display again.
This time there was a blonde woman with hazel eyes and a long, gangly figure. Her fingers tapped across a keyboard as her eyes scanned several dozen lines of code.
The captain broke her concentration immediately. "Sal! We're reaching the end of travel."
"Captain!" she sputtered back, "I was just looking over a calculation about the black hole. I mean, it's a slim chance--"
"Talk it over during briefing," the captain interrupted. "We'll discuss it then, alright?"
Sal nodded quickly. "Yes, ma'am."
The captain swept her finger again before she put the tablet back into her pocket. The elevator came to a stop, before the doors opened and let her walk right into the main deck. Her ship was displayed on a holographic display just inches from her face.
It was like a brick with a ferris wheel in the back, the thing rotating slower and slower as the ship left FTL. The camera feeds lining her walls showed off the center of the Milky Way, and underneath the display was a little compass-like arrow, made to detect the direction of gravity. Meanwhile, sitting to her right with two cups of coffee in his hands, was her right-hand man.
"We ran out of blonde," he said, half a head taller than she was, dressed in an outfit just as pristine and official as hers. "I hope you don't mind dark coffee. Still had enough creamer so honestly, I can't tell the difference.."
"We're in space," she replied as she pulled a cup out of his left hand. He always held his own drink in his right. "I don't expect you to make coffee grinds out of thin air, Dimley."
He shrugged. "Hey, you tend to complain a lot. Hell, sometimes I think you might tear my ear off."
"I don't complain all the time." She waved a hand, but then again, he wasn't wrong. She had a tendency to go off on him at the worst of times, but even then, he kept coming back and giving her exactly what was needed-- be it a drink, some coffee, or just a friend to talk to. "Well, maybe most of the time."
"I'd still say all the time." He turned towards the black hole on the display in front of them. "So...is this it?"
"Yes, this is, indeed, it." She smirked. "Sagittarius A-Star. Three days ahead of schedule."
He nodded back. "Think the crew's ready?"
She waved a hand dismissively. He had asked this same damn question during an expedition to an alien wreckage. As well as an expedition to the surface of the sun. And again on the expedition of what was left of Earth. "I had them prepare ahead of time, just in case jump wound up being shorter than usual, remember?"
"I remember that, but…" He pressed a hand against her shoulder and turned her around. "Do you think the crew is ready?"
"Mentally? Yes." She furrowed her eyebrows at him. "Meeting's in five minutes. I sent a message to the rest of the crew."
Dimley shrugged as he stood by her chair. "All four members will be accounted for. Ourselves included."
"And we can get this show on the road. Everyone at Vera Command is watching us."
As soon as she said that, the two remaining members of the crew walked in. Sal was dressed in a spotless labcoat with her arms behind her back. Bower was still in a filthy jumpsuit, nonchalantly wiping his forehead clean of sweat. "So, what's the situation?"
"We reached our destination," the captain said as she sipped her cup. "Sagittarius A-Star. Biggest black hole in the galaxy." She nodded to Sal. "Your go."
Sal nodded once. "Our expedition is to dive past the event horizon of this particular black hole. While this would be suicide in most cases, our ship is equipped to withstand intense radiation. That is in addition to the fact that it is capable of faster-than-light travel. Now, the most likely case is that we encounter radiation from the stars that have been absorbed…" She trails off.
"Any other particular scenarios?" the captain asked.
"Well, there's…" Sal swallowed. "There's one where we just get shredded. That's one-in-a-million. There's another where we are trapped. One-in-a-billion."
Bower quirked up an eyebrow. "And you're telling us, why?"
"It was worth saying," Sal glanced between the crew members. "Any risk is a risk worth noting."
"And if it's statistically insignificant, it doesn't really matter," the captain waved her hand. "Previous unmanned missions have yielded no results, presumably because comms stopped working as soon as they passed the event horizon. But none of those missions had a ship that's as well-protected as the Cotopaxi. It's more than likely that the intense radiation just fried them."
"Radiation shouldn't be an issue," Bower said. "I made sure of that myself. Most advanced exploration vessel in the Inner Ring."
"We should be able to pop in, survey the inside, pop out," the captain reminded them. "So...ready?"
Dimley coughed into his fist. "A little hasty, aren't we, captain?"
"I'd rather just be able to go home as quickly as possible," she grumbled. "Tight ship, tight schedule."
"Preparations were already complete on the flight here." Bower saluted her. "At least on my end."
"Survey equipment is ready. We will have limited time to look before the singularity becomes a problem." Sal followed up Bower's motion with her own salute. "Worst case scenario, we're trapped. Best case, we get a lot of new insight on how they work. Most likely case, we're bored out of our skulls by absolute nothingness."
Dimley sighed. "Comms are ready. We should be able to put out a wired line to the outside world." He glanced at the captain. "I'll monitor comms as we descend. With any luck, the antenna should hold."
The captain nodded. "Well then, we don't have time to waste. We're going to jump directly into the event horizon. Don't want us to suddenly time-travel fifty years into the future; time dilation is a bitch" She pressed her hands against the controls, and a series of buttons appeared in front of her seat. "The E.V. Cotopaxi is clear for descent."
The ship began its flight towards the black hole. The crew watched as their view was consumed by all-encompassing black. "Descent is going smoothly. No spaghettification so far," Dimley muttered.
"I'd hope not." The captain stood up from her seat, coffee still in her hand as the camera feed in front turned black.
Bower whistled as the cabin's side feeds were wiped by more and more darkness, as though the ship was descending into a sea of pitch. "It's eating us whole."
"We're approaching the event horizon." Dimley said.
"Alright. Get ready for rotation and tether deployment." The captain sipped her coffee. "I'd rather we not lose our way out."
The view rotated with the ship as momentum carried it further down. The front view now showed the universe as it condensed into a shrinking dot. "FTL should carry us out, no?" Bower asked.
"That's the idea." Just as Sal spoke, a tether extended from the ship. A small probe with a several-thousand mile line flew out from the edge of the event horizon in less than a second. "Alright, tether deployed."
The universe continued to shrink in the camera feed, smaller and smaller. More and more of their reality turned black as the ship fell, and the universe condensed into a single point. In an instant, in less than a microsecond, the dot vanished as though a god turned out the lights.
The tether extended through the void to a universe that couldn't even be seen, as Sal stood up straight. "I'll be deploying the scanning equipment. That'll take about, say, an hour?"
"Don't take more than that," The captain spoke over her shoulder as Sal left the room. She leaned in her chair and sipped her coffee while Dimley leaned towards her.
"Awfully terse today," he muttered. "You really wanna get this done that badly, huh?"
"It's almost like we're in a black hole." She sipped her drink again, and let the steam waft around her face and fog up her glasses. She quickly pulled them off of her face and wiped them with a cloth in her pocket. She put them back on, folded her cloth and placed it back where it belonged.
Dimley stared at her for several long seconds, before he shrugged and went back to work.
Minutes later, the captain noticed the gravity directional indicator had gone wild. The display waved wildly, the virtual needle blinking around at impossible speeds. She slapped the screen out of habit, and yet nothing changed.
She rolled her eyes. "Goddammit." She leaned back and pulled up a tablet. "Bower!"
He appeared on the screen. "Kinda busy, Cap. The engines are freaking out."
"Well, something's wrong here, too. The GDI is going nuts."
"That doesn't make any sense." He stared at her, brow furrowed. "And is also a slight problem."
"Slight?" She said back. "I mean, I'd like to leave. GDI's kind of crucial for that."
"I'm the engineer. I know." He raised a hand to his own camera. "I'll go ahead and check it out, then." He switched off the comm.
A minute later, he was under the console with a tiny, wrist-mounted flashlight. "Yeah, that's weird." He muttered as he searched through the wires.
"Weird?" She asked.
"It's fine," his voice echoed from below the console. "... Everything hardware-wise is completely fine. I mean, maybe it's a glitch." He plugged in a tiny screen. "I'll check the code, see if there's like a weird exception or something."
Immediately, his face was lit up by ugly white letters on a plain black screen. Lines crossed him as it searched for self-defeating code and strange exceptions. Minutes later, he closed it. "Nothing." He paused. "It's working fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive," Wires rustled and metal clanged against metal as he kept searching. "Everything is plugged in right and none of the wires are frayed."
The captain's face fell. "Okay, that's weird. I'll get Sal over here. Maybe it's something with the black hole?"
"Yeah that sounds like something she'd know about." He rolled out as the captain flicked her hand across her tablet.
Minutes later, a door opened, and as soon as it did the captain greeted Sal with a question. "So, any idea what's happening?"
She flinched. "Uh, what?"
"Yeah, the ship's reading some weird signals." Bower smacked the console with his wrench. "Like, super weird."
Sal fidgeted. "L-like what?"
"The GDI's saying that the direction of our gravity is everywhere." The captain said. "As in the black hole is literally everywhere at once."
Sal froze in place. Her breath hitched, her teeth chattered and the captain swore she could hear Sal's heart beat faster. "Oh no. O-oh no no no no."
"What? What is it?" Bower looked out from the console.
"Are you alright, Sal?" the captain asked, before the scientist in front of her ran to the console.
Sal's mouth moved a mile a minute. "Th-this isn't happening this isn't right there's no way this can be right that's stupid why would it--"
"Slow down." The captain said. "What's going on?"
"Th-the black hole's everywhere." Sal said. "I-it's not a mistake it's not an error there's no way out!"
"Slow down." The captain grabbed Sal by the shoulders. "What do you mean there's no way out?"
"I-It means there's no way out!" Sal said back. 'T-time and space have wrapped around the ship! We can't leave!"
"We have a faster-than-light engine." Bower rolled himself out from under the console and stood up. "Black hole or no, we can probably leave." .
"That won't help. Th-the way out is by reversing time but there's no way out."
"Bullshit." Bower spat back as the captain shoved him aside.
"What happens if I accelerate?"
"W-we get closer to the singularity. Th-there's no way out don't you get it?!" she shrieked. "There's no way to leave! We're going to die here!"
"Calm the fuck down." The captain grabbed Sal by the shoulders. "Look. We have a line to the outside. There's a connection, we just need to reel it in." She raised her tablet. "Dimley! Pull the line in!"
On the other end, the man responded. "What for?"
"To get out! Sal's having a panic attack. We need to get out, now."
"On it." On the front display, their enormous, metal line could be seen extending into absolute nothingness. Suddenly, as soon as the reel began to move, the rope shook. The ship shuddered and heaved as the rope went taut for a split second then snapped out of the blackness at high speed.
The captain watched as the ruined, broken end of the metal tether emerged from the darkness. For a split second, she swore that it was like a beast had chewed apart the rope. A metallic bang echoed through the ship, as the entire vessel lurched backwards. The rope slammed into the front and destroyed the camera.
The entire crew was knocked off of their feet by the force, and the lights flickered and dimmed around them. The emergency lights flickered on, bathing everyone in a sickly red.
The captain groaned as she picked herself off of the ground. "Fuck me." She groaned. "Status?"
"I'm alright, cap'n." Bower muttered. "I feel like someone rattled my head around a bucket."
The captain nodded before turning away. "Sal?"
"I-I'm okay!" Sal shouted back. "O-okay."
"Dimley?"
There was a groan from the tablet. "Feels like a mule kicked me in the chest. Still strapped in, though." On her display, she could see him struggling to get back to the ship's controls. "Primary front feed's shot. I'll get the backup online."
"Th-there's no point," Sal murmured. "Th-the black hole's everywhere. W-we're going to d-die here."
The team gathered around the console later. Dimley stared at the indicator as it continued shaking wildly, before his attention turned back to Sal. "... There's no way out? Are you sure?"
"I-I'm sure." Sal said. "I-I said there was a small ch-chance b-but the c-captain didn't bother-"
"I thought it wasn't big enough to be a concern," the captain said. "It was my order. There should be some way out."
"Th-there isn't!" Sal shouted, before Bower ran over.
"Hey, hey, take it easy," he said as he placed a hand on her shoulder. "It's fine. We'll get out."
"Well...what if we can't?" Dimley said. "I mean, not to be pessimistic, but there's still a chance we might be stuck."
"W-we have three days." Everyone turned their attention to Sal. "T-three days until the singularity t-takes us."
"Good." The captain turned herself away from Sal, consciously avoiding her stare. "That's three days of problem solving. We still have control over the situation."
"And if we don't?" Dimley pressed a hand against his mouth. "Keep that in mind. We might not be able to get out of this one."
"That isn't going to be the case, Dimley," the captain snapped back. "We're going to leave. We're going to leave and be just fine."
Sal shook her head wildly, teeth chattering, fingers twitching. "N-No we can't."
"Bower, calm her down!" the captain shouted. "Get her somewhere that she'll calm down, alright?"
"Yeah." Bower pressed his hand into her back. "Alright... just calm down, alright? We'll think of somethin'."
They left, just Dimley and the captain alone on the Cotopaxi's main deck. "Do you really think there's a way out?" Dimley asked.
"Yes." The captain spoke too quickly. "If there isn't a way out, then why would we still be here anyway?"
Dimley's mouth quirked up in a wry half-smile. "I really hope you aren't going to try talking about 'fate'."
"I'm not." The captain adjusted her uniform and straightened her askew glasses. "I'm saying that we aren't dead yet. I think that's good enough for me to think we can think of a way out. I mean, we got out of that raider camp, right?"
"The raider camp is significantly less threatening than a black hole, let alone the black hole at the center of a galaxy," Dimley murmured. "I don't know about you, but I don't feel confident about this particular situation."
The captain chuckled. The sound hurt his ear. "I never took you for a negative nancy."
"I'm not a 'negative nancy'. I'm a realist." He kept his pace. "If you do think of something, I'll listen, but for now? I'm going to enjoy myself, even if just a little." He walked out the door, leaving her alone on the main deck. "I'll be back. I mean, maybe there is a way out, but I'm not going to hedge my bets on a hunch."
And with that, the captain pressed the comm. "Excuse me. This is the E.V. Cotopaxi. We are currently in the depths of the black hole Sagittarius A-star. Please respond."
Hours later, she was dressed in a tank-top and pants. Her collared shirt and coat had gone to the wayside, now draped against a chair. Her hair was slightly frayed, and in her lips was a marker. The tablet in front of her had several theoretical equations on black holes typed out, while the floor itself had several sketches made of both the ship and the hole around them.
The door opened, Dimley now in a set of pajamas that had pastel-colored rabbits jumping across them. In his hands were a pair of coffee cups. "You know, you could get Sal to do the math in her head."
"Sal thinks we're dead. I don't. Ergo, I'm not asking her for help," the captain muttered. Her glasses almost slipped off of her head, before she quickly righted them. "Thanks for the drink."
"Anytime." He placed the saucer over by her tablet. "Find anything?"
"Just that this makes less and less sense the more I think about it. I mean, everything just says that the way time and space works here doesn't make sense. That everything just loops back to the center of the hole."
"The singularity.," he corrected.
"Right. I mean, the black hole is still technically part of this universe. I tried using our comms, and since they're still in our universe, I thought they'd work."
Dimley stared over at the communication panel in the room, and noticed that she had, indeed, been trying. "One-hundred and fifteen missed comm attempts."
"QEC systems are impossible to drop. They are designed to be literally impossible to drop. As in they are physically unable to." She pressed the plastic marker against her teeth. "I mean, that should work, right? It works as long as we're in the same universe. Dropped calls shouldn't be possible unless our ship is malfunctioning or the base's comm system is malfunctioning. And knowing those guys and their work schedule? That's not going to happen. At least, not for any longer than two minutes."
Dimley's expression dropped. "So the more you think about it…?"
"The less it makes sense," the captain admitted. "I mean... is Sal back in her room?"
"Bower's keeping watch over her," Dimley said. "Just in case she does anything."
The captain nodded, expression grim. "Do you think she'll get that upset?"
"I think she's losing her mind." He stood up and began walking towards the door. "So yes. I do."
Time passed. More coffee was consumed. More of the floor was covered in marker. The captain pressed a one against her head. She almost wanted to call for Sal... actually, to be honest, she was seconds from pressing it.
She bit the bullet and pressed the tablet. "Sal," she said into the screen.
On the other end, in her own room, was Sal curled up in her bunk. Her hands ran through her hair as the captain spoke. "W-what?"
"I kinda need your help," said the captain. "Trying to figure out how to get out."
"Th-there's n-no way out." Sal whimpered. "Th-things don't work like that. I-I-I've said that b-before!"
"And I'm saying that's a load of shit!" She regretted her tone the second that she saw Sal retreat further. "Look, we can find a way out. Just help me, okay?"
Before Sal said another word, her door opened. Bower walked inside, wine in hand. "Hey," he said, "I got a drink. I don't touch the stuff myself, but I thought you might like--" The captain saw him pause on the other end of the screen. On instinct, he hid the bottle behind his back. "Cap, what are you doin--"
She cut the comms before he could finish. She felt her hand twitch.
More than a day had been spent in the blackness, and now the floor was completely covered in equations. The captain's pants were covered in ink and she was already feeling grimy. She spent the night problem solving. Just problem solving. The equations she had already started writing had grown into a mass larger than her own body.
And her hands were shaking. She didn't know why her hands were shaking. Probably the overdose of caffeine.
The door opened again, and Dimley walked through, still in pajamas. "So, come any closer?"
"No," she spat back. "No I didn't." Her hand glided over the map of equations. "I mean, fuck, is this what Sal was thinking?"
"I didn't think the stuff that you learned from charting would help here, honestly, but I'm impressed." He took a deep breath. "You're really giving some thought to this."
"It's mostly just Sal's own equations," she answered. "And like... it doesn't make sense. The way time and space act here don't make sense. It's like the black hole is its own pocket of reality. Its own universe."
"Which is why it acts so strangely," Dimley murmured. "Which is why it wraps into itself."
"Exactly. Which is what Sal was saying yesterday." Her hand twitched as she waved over the picture of a black circle, with illegible writing in the middle. "But what's a big unknown is...what if we switched on FTL?"
Dimley narrowed his eyes. "We don't need to do that."
"Why not?" the captain snapped. "I mean, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work."
As soon as she finished, he responded. "If Sal's right, then it means we're going to die the second you flick that switch." He kept his tone stern. "And if we don't know what we're doing, then it's no better than killing the crew ourselves."
"We're going to die anyway if we don't do something!"
"I'd rather die in a way that isn't needless--" He stopped himself and cleared his throat. "I think you can figure something out, but it can't be that."
"If you can figure something out for me, that'd be great," she hissed.
Dimley pursed his lips. "Sadly, that isn't my field. I just drive the ship. I don't chart courses." He turned away, and if she had been paying attention, she would have noticed him putting a flask to his lips.
It had been twenty-nine hours since they entered the black hole. The captain almost wished that Dimley was watching her. Or not doing fuck-all in some obscure part of the ship. She thought that, for a second, he had given up on her. That he wasn't even thinking about leaving.
"No," she said to herself. "No that's fucking stupid." She kept scratching more and more notes onto the floor. "That wouldn't happen. He wouldn't do that."
She scribbled another note. "Line broke," she said. "The force was enough to knock out the front camera but had clear direction." She paused again. "Maybe we can shoot another one out?"
She moved to the main console and pressed her hand against it. The display came up, and next to a simple graphic of a rope, there was a big fat '0'. The line was broken, and there was no replacement.
"Shit."
She sat back down, legs crossed. She felt a bit jittery. Legs shaking, hands quaking, teeth chattering. "Shit, shit, shit."
She looked behind her shoulder. He still wasn't there. Nobody was there.
She looked at the camera feed.
Nothing was there. Nothing but the absolute pitch black of the black hole, and her reflection on the slick, glassy display. Her glasses had gone askew, she noticed.
She righted them and got back to work.
The captain heard the door open, before it closed almost immediately afterwards. She wondered if Dimley had been there, or if the door opened accidentally, before brushing it off. He probably was just there to check on her. Maybe give her a bagel or something. Maybe more coffee.
She didn't know how she was still awake.
Her door opened and Bower and Sal walked in, both of them dressed in t-shirts and shorts. "Hey, Caps." Bower started. "Sal just wanted to--" He stopped himself as soon as he took a good long look inside.
In the middle was the captain, sitting among the writing. Her hands and feet were dirty and filthy. Her clothing was covered in marker residue, and her hands shook wildly. The floor was almost completely covered, completely illegible writing filling the room. "Y-you." The captain spat as she saw Sal. "You!"
Sal took a step back. "C-Captain?"
The captain stood up, and as soon as she did, it was apparent that nearly two days of problem solving was already doing a number on her. Her eyes were bagged, her teeth ground against each other, her fingers were already dirty and she was already beginning to smell of ink and sweat. "You didn't help one fucking thing!"
"Th-there isn't any…" Sal swallowed back into her throat. "You're...o-oh my god-"
"You are my crew," the captain spat. "And you fucking hide on your bed like a scared teenager when I ask for my crew to help me solve our problem?!"
Sal shook. "B-but there isn't a-anything w-we-!"
"Stop fucking saying that!"
"Lay off!" Bower shouted as he dashed in front of Sal. "Jesus christ, would you calm down for one second?"
"Calm down? Why the fuck would I calm down? You people are just sitting around, crying, pitying yourselves, when we could get the fuck out of here! We have a way out, there has to be a way out!"
Bower clenched his teeth as he shoved himself towards the captain. "And if there is, then what the fuck are you doin'? Yellin' at Sal, treatin' her like shit when she doesn't fuckin' deserve it."
"She's not fucking helping!"
"And neither are you! Right now, all you're doin' is makin' things worse for her!"
The captain pressed forwards face right next to his, nostrils flared. She glanced over his shoulder to see Sal cowering behind him, hands raised and trembling.
She cleared her throat. "Right... fuck. You're right. I shouldn't have snapped. That was uncalled for..." She straightened her stance. "Right."
Both Sal and Bower slowly backed out of the room. "Calm the fuck down, and take a fuckin' shower, alright?" He asked. "Christ."
The door shut in front of the captain. She never did take a shower.
Dimley walked in again to see her still writing. The floor was almost completely covered, and he was dressed in a bathrobe. He swallowed. "Hey."
Her head snapped over to meet him. "Dimley?" she asked.
"Take a break.," he begged, "for once, alright?"
She paused. "...Fine. Fucking fine." she muttered
He inhaled slowly, deliberately, before he let out a long, relieved sigh. "Well, take a shower, too. I think you could use it."
"No." she said back. "I'll take a break, not a fucking spa trip."
He opened his mouth, probably to say something about hygiene, before he shut his mouth and motioned for her to follow him.
The break lounge was empty save for Dimley and the captain. In her hand was a cup of coffee in her favorite mug, and across from her was Dimley. She swallowed. "So...I still haven't found anything."
He nodded. "Yeah? Have you come close?"
"The only thing was FTL." She said back. "And you vetoed that. So that's fucking bunk. How much time do we have?"
"Ten hours." He said. "Ten hours to reflect."
"Ten hours to solve." She raised her head. "You... I don't know. You keep coming back to give me a pep-talk or something. But you haven't actually stuck around."
He froze, before he slowly brought a flask into view. "Yeah well, I had some thinking to do."
She stared at the flask, then at him, then back at the flask. Her brow furrowed. "Seriously? On my ship?'
"You never yelled at me before for it."
"That's because I thought you quit." She leaned forward. "Seriously, my fucking firstmate is drinking on the job?"
"I don't drink that heavily, Mullen."
"It's Captain." She said back.
"I don't think it'll matter in ten hours, Mullen." He swallowed. She could smell the alcohol from across the table.
She wrinkled her nose at it. "Why the hell did you sneak it on-board, anyway? What was the point, just to piss me off?"
"The point was that if I died, I'd be allowed to enjoy myself," he said. "That's it. Otherwise, I don't drink. I don't even look at it. But I think it's appropriate."
"It won't be if I find a way out."
"Stop that," he shot back. "Well, in the end, I can at least think about how I've done my life. How I treated my boyfriend back home--"
"We're going to find a way out," she growled. "And you broke my one fucking permanent policy. Don't drink on my ship."
"We aren't going to get out," He gave her a half-hearted shrug. "We're going to die here."
Her teeth ground against each other. She thought they were going to break. "Don't you give up on me. Don't you fucking dare."
"That'd imply I thought we'd ever leave," he said flatly. "I mean, we're in a black hole. The second Sal said something was wrong, I didn't think we were going to leave."
Suddenly, the air grew thick. Her eyes pierced through him. She clenched her teeth and narrowed her eyes as she spoke again. "You... you what?"
"I never thought you were going to solve this," he said. She could smell the bourbon. It was even stronger now that he was speaking directly at her. "I mean, maybe you could stay distracted but…" He paused as soon as he noticed her shaking. "You alright, Mullen?"
"Y-you said what?" she asked. "You're saying... do you even know what the fuck you're saying right now?" Her knuckles grew white around the handle of her cup.
"That there's no point in helping," he said matter-of-factly. "And I don't think you should be wasting your time like this. Die happy." If he wasn't going to help, then he was going to let them all die.
Before Dimley got another word out, she shoved the coffee mug forwards. It splashed against his face, burning his skin and scalding his eyes as he began to scream. She raised her mug, smashed the bottom and held the handle up like a rudimentary sawblade. She jumped over the table, grabbed his face and jammed the ceramic into his throat. He raised an arm on instinct, weakly trying to push her off as she cut deeper and deeper into his jugular.
His chair fell over, her on top of him as the back of his head hit the floor. Blood spilled out of his throat and onto the tiling, pooling around his head as he gasped for breath. Eventually, she stopped cutting, his throat jagged and open, trachea exposed, tendons cut, arteries stopping as ichor filled the man's throat.
The captain stared at her work as her red-coated hands started to shake. Dimley gurgled as his throat was further clogged with gore. She stood up and ran from the corpse as realization that she killed him had time to sink in. She slipped in the puddle surrounding his head for a second, before she quickly regained her balance and rushed down the hall.
Mullen pulled open a door in front of her, hands and feet covered in crimson. There, she saw Sal and Bower, sitting close together, holding hands. "Cap'n…" Bower murmured, before he saw the blood. "Captain, what the hell…?"
Sal turned to look. "I-is th-th-that Dimley's…"
"Get out of my way," she hissed.
"Captain--"
"Get the fuck out of my way!" Teeth bared, spittle flying, blood covering her face, she roared. Bower backed off, while Sal stood upright. "I'm going home. I'm going the fuck home and you aren't stopping me."
Sal sputtered. "W-we aren't going to see-"
"You just fucking gave up," Mullen snarled. "Get out of my way, Sal."
Sal stood up. "Y-you can't! We d-don't have much time already-!"
"You didn't even fucking try!" She shoved the doctor out of the way, her head clanging against the side of a monitor as Bower rushed over.
"Sal!" Bower's eyes widened as he turned back to the captain. "What the hell are you-!"
"You aren't going to stop me." Mullen roared as her hands scrambled across the ship's controls. "We're leaving." She pressed forwards. As soon as she engaged FTL, the ship flickered and shook. Their feed turned a bright white, before the black hole itself surrounded the ship in oppressive nothingness. The GDI shattered, glass flying into the captain's face as the ship flashed in and out of existence.
The entire thing raced forwards and everywhere, panels shaking and shuddering as the ship accelerated away and towards the edge of the black hole.
But there was no way out.
Every direction lead inwards. The ship began to fall apart as soon as it hit maximum speed. Panels flew off of the surface, the white silhouette exploded apart, before the systems beneath began to disintegrate. The frame of the ship shook wildly, before it, too, began to break apart, the disintegration going further and further inwards in less than a fraction of a second.
Mullen's whitened world started to dim as everything around her fell to pieces. The ground beneath her feet rippled and broke. The screen of her ship and camera feed was torn away into subatomic particles, and her colleagues vanished into dust.
The captain's world began to slow. Her breathing picked up, but there was nothing left to breath. Her hands grasped for something, but there was nothing left to find. Her legs fell apart, then her arms, then her shoulders and thighs and torso. Her glasses cracked apart and left her face, and then her body was gone, too.
Mullen's severed head floated, almost like some quirk of nature, among the absolute nothingness of space. It was just her in the black hole. A grain of sand before the overwhelming singularity.
And then she disappeared
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mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
EtchedSteel
*mumble mumble*
- Location
- Lima. Peru
... This is unsettling, now that there's a mental image.
I kind of wonder what would have happened if Mullen decided to stop trying and wait up the remaining hours. Granted, the captain wouldn't have ever thought of that with how much she liked to have things in control.
...
Pretty much (or little) of what I wanted to say about Singularity has been said over IRC.