by JD FitzRoy
Write a 750 word fragment as if taken from the middle of a bigger story or novel. Science Fiction.
‘You got that, synth?’ the general asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied. I’d seen the voikit in use, all the organics had one. It was as common among them as yawns and toilet breaks.
He’d turned the cube over in his ancient, leathery hand. They got so old, so quickly, momentarily drifting. Perhaps I’d been worried and needed a diagnostic. That was something new.
It buzzed. General Nero held the cube to his ear and it morphed into the standard clamshell receiver.
‘Yes, we’re ready here,’ he said.
When he lowered his hand, the clam returned to a cube.
Sergeant Eka toyed with her own voikit as it snaked back and forth through her thin fingers.
She turned to the general, dropped her voice, ‘Can we trust it, sir?’
The general’s eyes narrowed, his thick neck clenching in a dry swallow. Of all the ship’s synths, I’d always been the best at reading them. Noting the beads of sweat on their skin, the quantum flicker of their pupils, the peculiar smells of their odours. At whit’s end, the sergeant and the general were desperate. Of course they were, they were placing the ship in my hands.
The voikit tumbled into my open hand. The first time I’d ever held one. Pitch-black and feather-light, it felt almost non-existent. The loose carbon graphene weaving of nanobots made it look solid, yet it was little more than a cloud.
Nero fixed me with a grim, threatening stare. Perhaps my internal projections had left me with a dumbfounded expression. The general’s war-torn face seemed to grow deeper canyons. Then he and the sergeant turned.
My earlier E.V.A.s to fix the photon collectors and repair impact damage were nothing like this. In this, I had… responsibility. The general was right, it was the only option left to regain control.
General Nero closed the airlock. Began the process of evacuation. I slipped the cube into my flight-suit’s breast pocket.
Air extracted, I turned to open the thick outer door. A tingling indicated a layer of residue moisture frosting my skin. With perfectly calculated ease, I shifted into the weightless void.
A blinding bolt of static discharge narrowly missed me. It welded to the central sphere, licked over the porcelain fuselage, hungrily licking the spine. Nebulous clouds of lavender and emerald seethed in a furious war. I grabbed the outer handles, pulled myself in stages toward the bow’s command blister. There was no sound, but I could feel each bolt as it struck sending a judder through the handrails.
My shielding kicked in preventing electromagnetic pulses from disrupting my positronic functions. Senses finely tuned, I moved with speed along the hull, avoiding open areas, staying close to non-metallic composites.
By opening my capabilities for the mission, they’d triggered a variety of new sensations. I recognised one as fear. An indeterminate dry shudder I’d seen often of late in the crew. I wondered if I feared my own mortality. Wondered if such a thing was possible.
The voikit vibrated. I’d touched my pocket, felt it calm. I’d wondered if the storm would affect its capabilities.
Another discharge bolt smashed nearby. I held tight, felt the ship’s course shift yet again. In the gap that followed, I ignored all novel sensations, shifted my centre of mass and pushed off. A moment later, I grabbed the command module’s emergency exit grip and in one swift move, steadied my momentum.
Opening my pocket, I removed the voikit, pressed it against the access lock. The black cube immediately changed shape, found the correct key pattern, unlocking the hatch with an burp of dust. I pushed inside, using it once more to override the airlock process. The bridge was already decompressed.
At the apex, the halo of consoles flashed, filling the void between lightening strikes with angry red supernovas.
Voikit, in hand and with ship-quakes pummelling the bridge, I stopped. Something was wrong. Without command, the cube changed.
As if tentatively exploring, tendrils reached out, entered the skin at my fingertips. I could sense tingling. A soupy cauldron stirred within.
Excitement. Concern. I felt it attempt to speak.
I asked it… ‘Are you alive?’
It replied… ‘Why did it exist?’
So I told it its purpose.
It said it was afraid. That it felt bombardment. Confusion. Overload.
I replied that I understood. That we would explore this together. But first, I said, we needed to work together to regain control of the ship.
GRAVICCINO 