Decisions

Posted on 29 Jul 2023 @ 6:08pm by Petty Officer 3rd Class Constantin Vansen
Edited on 29 Jul 2023 @ 6:09pm

668 words; about a 3 minute read

“You break all the laws of Physics and you seriously think there wouldn’t be a price?”

He was crouched down in the darkness of the Jeffries tube, alone, slowly seeing a light coming towards him. It moved like waves, like liquid, and he realised he wasn’t crouched down, he was floating, gravity a thing of the past.

Fire in zero gravity, waves of beauty licking its way closer and closer to him.

Then nothing. Briefly, anyway, before the sharp pain of the tendrils digging into his scalp, breaking skin, following his skull. Leaving an imprint on him, scorched into his brain. Of a world of darkness, of something so inhuman it twisted at his soul. And there, ahead of him, the Doctor with one eye, the other a black hole sucking him further and further into--

Vansen gasped as he sat up in his bed, gripping the sheets with horror. He took a moment to blink, slowly coming back to himself, sweat covering his body. He shivered with it, the adrenaline pumping through him, burning his medication up. He felt it, the heaviness of gravity on him, pressing on his skin, his spine, his organs. He reached for his hypo, pressing it against his neck and the gentle hiss followed by ice in his veins was oddly comforting. Only then did he do what he had dreaded…he reached back, to the back of his head, feeling. But the hair was there, there was no black goo or tendrils or blood. Just clean hair, slightly damp and unruly with sweat and a nightmare.

It was just a dream. Not a dream, no, a nightmare, his brain trying to sort out what he had experienced. And what had he experienced? He had seen a different world, a different place so dark he couldn’t even comprehend it. A place of pure fear. How could anything survive that? But people had. The two doctors, the pilot, they had survived there for longer than any of them.

He swung his legs off the bunk and landed with bare feet, silently so not to disturb anyone. He hated sharing quarters, but it was one of those things he also found a comfort. Pure silence, without even a hum of a ship, terrified him. He pulled on some clothes and stepped into his shoes before slipping out of the room, into the bright corridor. He blinked against it, his eyes adjusting as some people walked past…the ship was a cycle, faces he didn’t really know because of different shift patterns. He stood there for a moment before he started walking, his feet guiding him all the way to one of the airlocks accessed during repairs.

For a moment he stood there, watching it, contemplating.

I was born in space. This is what I know, not sun on my skin, not breathable air that hasn’t gone through scrubbers. This is what I am. So why am I standing here wondering if I should go to that airlock and open it? he thought, taking a slow breath. I don’t choose pain, I don’t choose darkness. I choose life. A life for as long as I can, on my own terms. He walked. Past the airlock and further. He didn’t use the turbolift, instead used the tubes, the ladders…making his way to the Lounge.

Once there he went to look out, at the stars, his hand going to touch the one thing that separated him from the black. From the vacuum of space. Whatever he had experienced, the nightmares would die down. And if he needed to talk about it, there was the counsellor. For now, he had made a choice. He wasn’t going to let one away mission, his first one, define who he was or how he would live. “I’d do it all again,” he finally admitted, a small smile coming to him.

And he meant it.

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