“Where the hell are we?”
Danes looks down at his information panel. Something was off.
“Hell if I know. Coordinates are…”
He fiddles with another screen, his eyes furrowing.
“What?”
Gordy marches over and flips the screen to face him.
“This can’t be right. Your calculations are off.”
Danes runs the numbers again.
“But it is. Spot on. Look…”
He points to a starmap, Gordy growling as he rubs his eyes.
“Not a goddamn chance! The rift drive’s never done this before. Get Anderson up here.”
Danes McGregor, first mate of the interstellar transport Ellintuie, taps on a comms console.
“Jenna! Fernandez wants you up on deck!”
Following a short crackling sound, a young female voice replies.
“Can it wait? There’s some serious shit going on down here!”
Gordan ‘Gordy’ Fernandez, captain of the Ellintuie, slams the console.
“God damn it, Anderson! Get your ass up here now!!”
“For fucks sake, I’m coming already.”
Anderson huffs as the console goes dead. Gordy walks over to the large window at the forward of the command deck. In front of them, a collection of dazzlingly bright stars in hues of blue, red, and yellow. Occasional threads of interstellar cloud were woven between them, contrasted by the vast remnant of an ancient but colourful supernova whose progenitor had long since cooled to a pale blue dot. The door at the rear of the deck slams open and a young grease smeared women in an overall and brunette hair tied in a bun storms in. She marches over to Gordy and holds up a complicated device like three cylinders strung together with a myriad of small tubes.
“Regenerative Plasma Regulator Module, blown to hell.”
“And just what the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you called me? To find out why the hell we dropped out in the middle of nowhere? The module blew just a few minutes ago. We ain’t riftin’ nowhere until I can get it fixed, so can I get back already?”
Gordy walks over to Danes, turning the screen to face Jenna and pointing to a red weaving path overlaid on the starmap.
“We shoulda’ dropped out here, right? This was our last known position according to the rift navigation AI. But these stars…”
He gestures to the window.
“Don’t match anything in the stellar database. The AI can’t figure out where the fuck we are, Jenna. So you tell me.”
Jenna examines the screen.
“No… this… there is no way…”
She stares out the window, clutching the device in her hand.
“Unless… shit.”
Gordy eyes her critically.
“What the hell is going on, Jenna?”
Jenna stares quietly for a moment, her eyes darting around as she processes something, then looks at the regulator in her hand.
“The dimensional wavefront. We must have hit it. Fuck.”
“What the fuck do you mean we hit the dimensional wavefront?! Goddamn it, Jenna! You were supposed to keep the rift drive in goddamn alignment!”
Jenna holds up her hand, her fingers and palm suddenly disassembling to reveal a complex mechanical underchassis and interfacing adaptor. She jacks the connector into the console and stands motionless for almost a minute.
“The drive is aligned perfectly. Every parameter is within tolerance. That’s not the problem.”
“Then what, pray, is, oh dear Jenna?”
She shakes her head, staring at the ground.
“Nothing. Not in the drive, anyway. I’ll have to check the rift transition nacelles.”
She unplugs, her hand reassembling itself before marching toward the door.
“I’ll be outside if you need me.”
Shortly after she leaves, Danes looks over at Gordy.
“God damn neuropleges can be full of shit sometimes.”
Gordy sighs.
“We’ll see how you feel when you lose your entire body and go full prosthetic. Besides, they’re a useful bunch, ‘specially the older ones like Jenna.”
-oOo-
On the outside of the massive ship, a small hatch door slides open. A hand reaches out, grabbing a handrail embedded into the hull. Another clips a safety tether before Jenna pulls herself out. There was no spacesuit or anything of the likes, just grease-monkey Jenna hanging weightlessly in her grey overalls. She pulls herself along the handrail toward the four mammoth Rift Transition Initiator Nacelles, each a cylinder shape surrounded by six large rings and pointing outwards from the rear of the ship. She hauls herself to one and depresses a small dimple, sliding open a large entryway. After floating into the space filled with a complicated assortment of machinery she pulls off a cover on a large mechanical device and reaches in. Her hand weaves its way between a chaotic assortment of cables, eventually finding it’s mark in the form of a tubular metal object. She yanks it out, opening the one end and carefully pulling out a long thin tube containing a small, sparkling octagonal shaped crystal at its centre. She peers at it carefully, like a goldsmith critiquing a diamond.
The comms panel on the command deck lights up.
“Gordy, somethings not right.”
“Well no shit, Jenna.”
“Listen, a wavefront collision would have damaged the crystals in the alignment metering arrays, but there’s not a single fracture in ‘em.”
“So just what the hell are you saying?”
Jenna places the crystal back into the cylinder, replacing it into the larger device and closing it up.
“It wasn’t a dimensional wavefront impact. Something else kicked us out of the rift jump.”
She looks around, her eyes catching something unusual.
“Hold on…”
She pushes herself upwards and floats through the catacomb of tubes and cables and other random oddities making up the rift drive nacelle, eventually grabbing onto a strange device with a small clear window in its side. She peers in, watching a small undulating blue orb of energy inside.
“The nacelle inductors are out of sync. That’s why the rift transition field collapsed.”
“Come on, Jenna! I need actual fucking answers here! Just why in the…”
Gordy’s voice trails off as an odd movement near the cluster of stars catches his attention. Danes watches as he walks toward the viewing window.
“Gordy? What’s up?”
Gordy peers at the scene for a few moments, eventually shaking his head.
“Nothing. Damn this whole thing.”
He spins around.
“Jenna, just find the goddamn problem and get us the hell outta here. Call me when you lot have a answer.”
Gordy marches off the command deck, leaving Danes staring in a random direction.
“Jenna? Any ideas?”
Jenna navigates herself out of the complicated assembly and closes the entryway in the nacelle before noticing something in the nearby star cluster.
“Danes, you seeing this?”
Danes peers out the front viewing window.
“What in the hell is that?”
In the distance, a sparkling apparition momentarily appears before vanishing again. Jenna hangs off the rift transition nacelle as she watches the sight.
“I haven’t the feintest, Danes. Probably just some anomaly in the…”
Her voice trails off, Danes replying.
“An anomaly in the what? Jenna?”
Jenna watches as the apparition appears again, this time closer. It sparkles and mutates, shifting form until resembling a human-like character. The strange morphing entity approaches her, eventually stopping a short distance away, Jenna staring in a trance. She reaches out, an instinctive compulsion, like the apparition was willing her toward it. It extends something akin to an arm, a sparkling hand-like spectre appearing. They draw closer, Jenna extending a finger, touching the ghostly phantom’s hand in a blindingly bright flash.
-oOo-
Jenna wakes up with a gasp. She sits upright, coughing and choking as Danes pats her on the back.
“’sall right, Jenna. The repair drones pulled you back into the airlock, you’re okay.”
Jenna looks around in a daze.
“What the hell just happened?”
“Some bright flash and you were floating unconscious off your tether. Think it was a short or something, but we got you back okay.”
“Yeah… must’ve bee…”
She chokes, covering her mouth with her hand. Danes straightens up.
“Dunno what you did out there, but the rift nacelles are all resynced. Gordy says to get the regulator fixed up. He wants us under way yesterday. You good?”
Jenna pulls her hand from her mouth and stares at it with massive eyes.
“Jenna?”
“What… the fuck?”
She coughs again, then staggers to all fours, pulling herself to her feet and clutching her side.
“What in the hell?”
Danes holds her by the shoulder.
“Jenna? What’s up? You okay?”
“I’m fucking fine, Danes. Go tell Gordy I’ll get his precious little regulator in, alright?”
“Yeah… sure thing.”
He pats her on the back and makes his way out. She coughs again, then lifts her hand. It was covered in blood.
“What?”
Jenna runs her fingers over her face, gasping as her fingers caress her skin.
“Oh… my god. It can’t… “
She feels her exasperated face again.
“No way, Jenna. Not real… not… fucking… real…”
She breathes deeply for a moment, then marches out the airlock. After a few minutes along a thin metal passage she reaches her quarters, a dull space with none of the bed or amenities you might expect of a typical room. Since she was of a mechanical persuasion, merely a brain in a synthetic body, the usual day-to-day necessities of a normal human were lost on her. No need to sleep or eat, just a few hours in the regen dock built into the side of her cabin. She staggers and drops to all fours and vomits. She stares at the contents on the floor, something that should not be a product of her simplified organic nutrient delivery subsystem.
“Holy… shit.”
She felt… nauseous.
“What in the fuck?”
Jenna vomits again, regurgitating something only a full natural human would. She peers at the mess on the floor for a stunned moment, then staggers to her feet and wipes her mouth.
“Pull your shit together, Jenna!”
She hauls herself down the hall, into the engine room and over to a work bench surrounded by shelves, components and tools. Jenna picks up the regulator module, locks it into a machine and types a command into a console. Several small arms appear and begin prodding the device before emitting a fountain of sparks. After a few minutes she pulls the regulator from the machine and examines it.
“This better do it.”
Jenna walks down a small metal stairway and approaches a huge mechanical beast indistinguishable from something you may find in a scrap metal dealer’s yard, then pulls a bundle of wires to the side and places the regulator module neatly into place. After carefully attaching the various appendages back into the machine, she carefully examines the engine, suddenly gasping and spluttering blood across the floor.
“Fuck’s sake.”
She pulls herself up the stairway, making her way out the engine room and into the med bay, yanking a probe from a machine and jamming its sharp point into her forearm.
“Fuck…!!! That hurt!!! Jesus….”
Jenna clenches her teeth and punches a command into the unit. After a few seconds, a message appears on the screen.
All metabolic functions nominal.
“What??”
She punches in another command. After another few seconds, an expressionless AI voice responds.
“Unable to complete diagnostic. Prosthetic components not present.”
Jenna stares at the image on the screen, grabbing it with both hands.
“It’s fucking true? How… ?”
A nearby comms panel lights up as Gordy’s voice erupts out of it.
“Jenna?!! What the fuck?!! Are we good to go or what?!!”
Jenna keeps staring at the screen. She pinches her arm, flinching at the sudden sharp pain. She lifts her hand and examines it, a smirk crawling from the side of her mouth.
“Damn fucking straight, Gordy.”
“Jesus… finally…”
Jenna walks over to a nearby window, watching as slithers of undulating silver and blue light appear. The slivers coalesce and flare, and one bright flash later, the stars outside dissolved into a smear of colours as the ship rift jumps from normal space.
“Damn fucking straight.”
She fishes a small notebook from her pocket, paging through until stopping at a short passage scribbled in pencil:
Life will test us. Fate will roil us. Destiny will tease us. The universe will critique us. God will grade us at the pearly gates. But at the end of it all, we are, and always will be, only human, regardless of the shell we inhabit.