Futuristic 10,000 Days

[Pumpkin Spice Cyanide]

"Launch in T minus 10...9...8..."

"All booster engines primed."

The crew of the Intersteller Spaceship (ISS) Aurelian sat snugly in their chairs. The bridge was silent, the crew at their stations preparing for launch, the research team strapped into their chairs.

"7...6...5"

"Systems nominal, equivalence to simulated launches at 98.1 percent."

Crew members check their respective monitors, researchers grip their harnesses, the mission commander steels himself in thought of what's to come.
Time slows to a crawl. Only moments ago it was moving all too fast. The time from waking up that morning to saying goodbye to their friends and family and boarding the ship seemed to have passed in an instant.
At the same time if felt like so long ago. The realization that this was the beginning of an all together different epoch of their lives began to settle in.


"4...3...2..."

"Sound suppression system activited."

Everyone is motionless, anticipating the sinking feeling of acceleration.

"...1...Lift off. "

"Firing parallel booster engines."

The engines ignite and roaring thunder erupts from beneath them, shaking the vessel from the monumental force of the thrust.
Everyone is pressed against their seat by the rising G-forces as they rocket* into the sky.

"Equivalence at 84%. Adjusting."

In a moment they're approaching the upper atmosphere, the forces pulling their guts into their chests residing.

"Disengaging stage 1, firing serial booster engines."


Just as quickly, they've broken the exosphere, gaining significantly more speed as the defiance of friction and gravity all but disappear.
It'd be just under half an hour now before they're ready to make the jump.

"Disengaging stage 2. Firing main thrusters. Calculating trajectory."

The ship whirled around on its starboard side aligning itself with their proposed route. Inky black filled with brilliant specks of all shapes and color filled the windows of the bridge. Off to one side, a fraction of the blue green oceans of Nezha IV. It would be their last glimpse of home for several years.

"Minimum safe jump distance ETA 1313. Planetary egress successful, Commander.

 

[Kio.exe]

Selena looked out the window of the ship, biting her lip nervously. When would they arrive at their destination? It had only been a short while, but she was ready to be there. To move on to the next stage of her life, and hopefully get some research done for the Phoenix Project, her latest and most important project.

Selena sighed. She hated space—was terrified of it really, though she’d never admit it. It was something about the inevitability of the universe ending. In ice—not heat as so many had guessed. That had been another project of hers, done at Spark Labs called Operation Exodus. She had meant for it to soothe her anxiety, but knowing only made it worse. Eventually the last black hole would collapse, and there would be nothing. Everything—all the beauty, love, joy and pain—would once again be just a singularity.

Selena shuddered, turning to the other crew members and scientists on board, and away from the sparkling void. She hardly knew any of them, had just met them days before, really. They all knew of each other, of course, as they were all successful in their own respective fields of study.

“When do you suppose we’ll be there?” She asked, keeping a jaunty smile on her face, her tone excited. They couldn’t very well have one of their scientists be scared of space, could they?

 

[Zahzi]

Gilliam stared out the window, a final, silent goodbye to the planet below, the stars around him, and memories best left buried. It was hardly the first time he had been in space; his profession would have made that paradoxical. No, what seemed to concern him the more was that moment before the jump. That spot in time of ultimate uncertainty. Will the engines work? Is there going to be an issue with oxygen? Food? Mutiny? Are we going to just show up and plow straight into an asteroid the NAV system failed to predict? The dread would only last for that moment, as the engines fired off. Too late to question. There was comfort there. Letting go of such frivolous things like mortality.

He shook his head, the pervasive thoughts seemingly loosening with the act. He watched his home grow smaller and smaller for a time, before leaving his seat, walking away from the window and looking at the crew, in particular the one asking a question to them all. One of the Eggheads, it looked like. He stood there for a moment, still getting a footing with the movement of the ship before clasping his hands behind his back.
"Knowing our luck, we will be here long enough to count every ceiling tile, yet not too long to have them count us back."
...His attempt at a joke?

 

[ThatGuyWithSouvlaki]

Anne-Marie sat at her seat as the spacecraft shot of into the sky and beyond. She seemed oddly calm, reading through papers through most of the take off only pausing when the G forces were too much to do much of anything. Once the worse was over, she returned to her papers like nothing happened. To her space travel was nothing new and the charm of space was pretty much gone, at least for this sector of space. Her mind was to preoccupied working on the various possibilities, what they are going to expect and see. That the thing about space, humans could see far into space but the distances were so vast that what they did see could be several years out of date. It was her job to figure out how habital planets would be like once they arrived.

She looked up briefly were conversation slowly begin once more once the worst of their launch was over. "It will be a long while. Enough to count the ceiling tiles several times at least. Though i bet you will get bored long before that and maybe to something more useful." She commented casually looking back at her work before looking up. "Tiles counting us back? Heh amusingly silly." She said with a slight smirk before returning to her papers."No need for that, that is what legion is for."

 

[dendygar]

Kittani had never been to space- she never planned on going to space until recently. And by recently she meant three years ago when her training first started and she was accepted to be one of the trainees. Out of the forty she went into training with, only about fifteen were able to last. She happened to be one of them, and all of the excitement and giddiness was long gone by the time they had broken through the atmosphere. She looked out the window, her eyes soft as she viewed Earth.

Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do. Played through her mind. She thought of her dad at the launch pad, her mom too- waving goodbye and endlessly proud of what their daughter had been able to accomplish. A joke pulled her out of her reverie, although she didn't catch that it was a joke. She stared blankly at Gilliam, not knowing if that was the punchline or if he was making a statement. Either way, it fell flat- but at least someone got a chuckle out of it. "Anne-Marie's right."

 

[DigitalEcho]

East allowed himself to be pressed gently back into his seat and concentrated on his breathing. On occasion you'd get jokers trying to hang a tight turn at speed and they'd black out, forgetting to breath, failing to remain present, to will themselves to remain in the moment. People were always loosing track...

It was gentle though, the Gs didn't throw up memories of leaving planet-side behind. Instead his mind went back to combat manoeuvres. Kill and capture, extract and secure. The angles on a hastily bodged intercept would make you want to die, unless of course you learned to like it. The mind is a malleable thing, around the edges anyway, the core would burn straight through you three clicks out.

Just like a spun up, mag mounted, mini-cannon. No tracers, nothing to mark the path of a line sweeping out across the void. A perfect solution that would cast about the heavens snuffing out a host of little lights in perfect silence and all in a matter of moments. Space was sometimes like that, people were just there, right up until they weren't.

Harry relaxed, he could see them now, at first nothing more than a twinkle in the star field, then regular shapes, and finally the contours and facets of some of the finest engineering the species was capable of. The layered defences lit only by the dim reflections of distance strained sunlight scattered off of the dust covered stones of the belt. How many people down there in the slums would see anything like that, even at the price of their lives? Could they even dream about it? Or were their minds as broken as their bodies by the banal repetitive abuses of serfdom?

As East acclimated to the force pinning him into his seat the viewport arrested his gaze. An entire world hung there in the darkness, an opalescent blue pearl shone fiercely back at him and it was beautiful. What more could a man ask for.

 

[FabulousTrash]

Iris Knight
Pilot / Technician - Bridge

Space. A new height for Iris.

She gazed out the window, looking behind the ship, watching as the planet she called home for so long was getting smaller and smaller. The night before launch, Iris video called her family to give her last farewells. It was both sad and happy at the same time, her parents expressing how proud they were of their daughter and also worrying about her. Her younger brother was more excited and jealous that she got to go to space. Iris only smiled and promised that she'd bring back a souvenir for him.

Her gaze shifted back forward and down, taking a look at the console in front of her. At the moment, she wasn't in control of the ship, Legion was. Though, she had insisted on manually checking to make sure the ship was flight ready. As much as she was amazed of the power the AI had, it was her piece of mind at stake. She learned in the academy that it was important to physically make sure whatever you're flying is working. That way if something went wrong, you'd have no one to blame but yourself. Plus, it was just a good habit to get into.

Iris stretched in her seat a little bit, looking around on the bridge. There were some others within the room, such as the mission commander John Haverson and the second pilot Linni Gomberly. Others were present, but Iris couldnt recall their names off the top of her head. All the other crew members, mainly the scientists, were somewhere else in the ship.

Iris looked over to Linni, giving her a friendly smile, making a small joke.

"Ever fly something like this before?"

Kana.M.

 

[welian]

It was a textbook liftoff, as far as (newly appointed) Dr. Lacy was concerned. She had read all the manuals over and over to soothe her anxiety, the words emptying from her mind as fast as she could read. Her final goodbye to her father was nothing more than a old-fashioned paper letter in the mail – the kind of formality and tradition he thrived on. She didn’t want his face to ruin the moment.

Several minutes after they were comfortably in space, she stayed glued to her seat, her eyes fixated on an invisible point beyond the walls. Her knuckles were white, clutching the armrests as she fought the urge to vomit. She just left the planet. For like... years. It's everything she's ever wanted, to put as much space between herself and her suffocating past. And now, of all times, her lizard brain is screaming for her to put her feet on solid ground?!

Her eye twitched. She needed something to distract herself. A different set of thoughts. Something like… like…

“Is there a protocol for dealing with killer clowns in outer space?” Jules asked suddenly, brows furrowed in intense thought.

It’s normal to be nervous your first time in space, the psychologist explained as they all prepared for the mission. Think of something that comforts you, until the anxiety passes.

“And would it matter if they’re mimes?”

 

[Zahzi]

Gil nodded at the responses, all normal and expected. At least no one had gone stir crazy ye-

'"Is there protocol for dealing with Killer Clowns in Outer space?"'

...He heard that. Someone...Someone actually said that......

'"And would it matter if they were Mimes?"'

Oh you have GOT to be kidding me.
Gil slowly began to slowly look toward the one who spoke these words, his face giving an errant lack of expession, almost machine-like. He looked down at the nametag on her coat and blinked a few times.
...Huh.

"Well, either you shoot them in the head, stomp their giant shoes, or remember that no one had a happy ending in that movie older than everyone here, Doctor Lacy..."

 

[ThatGuyWithSouvlaki]

Anne Marie remained quiet and indifferent even when one of the crew seemed to agree with her previous statement. Occasionally she would set down her reports and look in the air thoughtfully muttering to herself, one time about the likelihood of the provenance of certain type of bacteria before mattering about whether she had packed one sort of gear or another.

Talk of space clowns and mimes seemed to draw her attention, looking around at her crew with a raised eyebrow before returning to her reports. "You missed out the red nose, Seargent-Major. You cant hit a space clown unless you manage to squeeze the nose. That is why they are so tough to handle." She said casually as if she was totally serious but it was clear that it was just her sense of humor. "Lets hope we dont ran into them. They are irritating as they are deadly. Mimes are easy, just need to shot them with finger guns." She shook her head. "The best and brightest of humanity are trully in this ship if that is our concern. We worry about the real things."

 

[Zahzi]

Gil blinked a few times at Anne Marie's addition to the...Wait, are they seriously having a DEBATE about this ancient B-Movie!? Oh, great, he's actually sticking to it. Fucking swell.
"Well, Doctor Micheals, if we were to assume they would not come up with new defenses after fleeing from a less-than competent enemy after 300 years of adaptation, it's SAFE to assume their noses are no longer a viable weakness. I for one would not want to be the first one to try the old methods, and would rather vote for heavy firepower. That, or just set them on fire. But you are right about the Mimes. Expecting them to play by normal rules is like waiting for Godzilla to tapdance."
...This distraction seemed to be helping a few of them relax, at least. His hands were still clasped behind his hands, but not as sternly.

He looked back to the one who instigated this discussion.
"Well, Doctor Lacy? Are you satisfied with your inquiry, or do we need to instead delve into dealing with the abomination even worse than the Killer Clowns or Mimes- Yes, the dreaded Juggalos."

 

[welian]

Jules averted her eyes, a bit bashful that her dumb thought had actually gotten a small conversation going. She didn't think there'd be anyone else on this ship who would understand three-hundred-year-old references, and yet, here they were. Well, maybe it wasn't that surprising. She knew some classmates who had studied the ancient art of "B-Movies" as part of philosophical discussions on satire and parody. And this mission was supposed to be full of minds almost as brilliant as hers - not to toot her own horn, or in this case, honk her own nose.

"Godzilla was designed around a human actor in a suit... As such, he has a plantigrade stance and can therefore tapdance, assuming he has the proper equipment. Furthermore, he could theoretically wear an additional tap on his tail, effectively dancing with three feet."

She glanced at Gil and pushed her glasses up with a single middle finger, the sterile lights of the ship reflecting off her glasses.

"You didn't even mention the killer clowns' corrosive pies, AND you assumed that Godzilla can't tapdance? What an amateur. I think I'd trust Micheals in the zombie apocalypse over you. She probably knows how to pantomime bombing the mime fortresses, too."

 

[Kio.exe]

Selena listened to the conversation, relaxing a bit as the others made jokes. Turning to Jules, Selena feigned horror, a hand pressed over her heart. “But you all forgot the most lethal being of all! What about the space sharks , hmmmm? The ones in a tornado?” She asked, looking at all the crew members in turn. Selena didn’t know any of them very well. In fact, she’d only just been invited on the mission as their geologist a few weeks prior, as their original person had suddenly been unable to do it. She was usually talkative, but as she didn’t know them, she felt quite insecure.

Selena refrained from looking out the windows, knowing she’d lose all nerve if she looked into the void of space. Oh, she wasn’t cut out for this at all! Sure, she was named Number One Young Scientist by several organizations two years in a row, but that didn’t mean she should go to space! Just because she studied it didn’t mean she was qualified!

 

[Zahzi]

Gil's eyebrow rose at Doctor Lacy's retort as he turned to face her directly.
"And by that logic, it stands to reason that you never learned since middle school that only eggheads in a zombie invasion get eaten much faster without help. Buuuut keep being the reason scientists get ignored in Disaster movies." A chastising expression for the mean scientist before he turned his attention to Selena. Well shit, this conversation keeps going everywhere.

"Space sharks are hardly a concern since we stopped making ships out of fiberglass and happy thoughts....Now if we run into the nefarious Langoliers, that's different."

With any luck, someone of some moderate temperament would stop this conversation before it derails into references to Evil Dead or Starship Troopers. But, looking at present company, luck may not be on their side.

 

[Kana.M.]

Linni knew that the scariest about the sky wasn't leaving the atmosphere, she now realized that part. That gut-wrenching feeling in her body that passed mere moments ago, that was just the beginning. But whatever was in the end, she didn't want to find out. Because whatever it was, would be new and completely unexpected. And it was her responsibility to be the first to take it on.

Linni glanced at the other pilot, 'cause that joke completely wiped out her train of thought. Wasn't she scared, or at least a little phased by the jump? That didn't matter. Linni did want to joke back, to be her usual self, but she didn't know what to say. She subconsciously opened her mouth, then said, "No. I haven't." Nothing after. She went wide-eyed as she faced the dash again. Should've kept her mouth shut. Linni had to force a straight face too, word-for-word, disguise the cringe she was feeling. This can't be a bumpy start. She freaking hated those.

Instead of confronting it, Linni tried to remember the personal protocol she gave herself before flying. Whenever she was about to pilot Linni didn't focus on her surroundings. Not the other people in the vehicle behind her, not even the crew members next to her. The only thing on her mind was the dashboard at her fingertips, and the view ahead of the glass.

Yeah, but in this case, the view isn't a blue sky or grey clouds. The view was space. A soul-sucking void, full of blazing stars. The void that she was assigned to steer around in so that the people behind her could dig around for something no one even confirmed could be found.

It was beautiful she had to admit, the glittery stars all up in her face. But she wouldn't let it distract her. She couldn't be brought in by beauty. 'Cause in the next stage of her life, the sky would be her worst obstacle. Wrestling to push her off at every corner.

That's why when she was at the wheel, the only thing on her mind could be piloting. It was the most important job and no one could convince her otherwise. She was the one with that responsibility.

Maybe it would've been better not to think about the protocol.

FabulousTrash