space | In This Future Or The Next

Tag – space

The Singing Tower of Mystery

August 26, 2014

Image created by Tas
http://sketchytas.deviantart.com/

In a distant planet of a distant stellar system, under the dimming light of an orange star, a man stood silent, staring at his fallen ship. He didn’t know what had happened, he didn’t know how he had ended up in that alien planet, with his fate almost sealed, with his crew dead and buried.

“This is Captain Van Kelt. The Tero 4 has suffered a catastrophic accident. Its wreckage lays now on planet SE-8388. If anyone is out there, I ask only that you come back for our bodies, for I’ll be long dead before these radio waves reach you. Have a good journey, my friends. Over and out.”

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Ruben Malvarma, The Galactic Penguin

August 5, 2014

Short Stories

Image created by John Erickson
http://johnraptor.deviantart.com/

Darkness engulfed Earth. Acid and ash rained over the continents. The wind screamed as it passed through the cracks and the holes and the windows of the decaying cities. A sad melody rang over its atmosphere reaching every corner of the world to remind its non-existent inhabitants of the death they had endured.

A beep echoed in the cockpit of the Starship Sphenis, eighty thousand light-years away, on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy.

Uh… Ruben what was that?

“What was what?”

Didn’t you just get a message? I think I heard a beep.

“We’re in the middle of something.”

It could be from the empire.

“Just answer the question.”

Fine… well, are we stopping by planet Hunnon on the way back?

“Yeah, why?”

I could really use some of their-

Another beep from the command center resonated around them.

Just look at the message!

Ruben Malvarma, one of the last remaining penguins in the galaxy sighed at the voice in his head. “Okay!”

He walked across the bright room, across the metal floors and under the glass ceiling, through the myriad lights of the thousand controls and touched a glowing screen that read: “New Message.”

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The Neptune

July 21, 2014

Glimpses

Image created by Ginhebi
http://ginhebi.deviantart.com

I entered this chamber fifty two years ago. I remember that day in its entirety. My memories before it are sparse, it was a different life, they were different times.

I remember my body. They said it was perfect, I was short, slim, smart. I agreed with them when they told me, but they didn’t know and I didn’t know.

Commander Scone looks at me from the other side of the command center. He stands tall, much taller than I am, and from beneath the iridescent ceiling he produces a smile. The room is empty, the Commander approaches, and I am frozen with excitement at the sight of the man whose voice has briefed me in my missions for so many years. I have seen him before in video, in hologram and images, but never before have I been standing before him. He’s a friend that I cherish, he’s a man I respect, but seeing him and his ship with my own eyes makes my memories seem like a distant dream.

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They Said Humans Would Not Survive

July 14, 2014

Glimpses

“Do you know what people said back then?”

“What?”

“They said humans would not survive.”

“Really? Why did they say that?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine being alive back then. Problems must have seemed insurmountable to them. I suppose they saw their end around every corner, with each new sign of trouble, with each new difficulty.”

“Why?”

“In those times, son, people were not as you and me. Do you see the planets below us, the stars?”

“Yes.”

“People had different bodies back then. You know we come from planets, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Back in those days people were born from the ground. They gave birth organically and their bodies were weak and frail, very similar to the living things you see traversing the greenlands of Earth.

They had to worry about energy, most never had enough and lived their lives undernourished, struggling for a smile on their face, working hard for a smile of their children. They had to fend off hazards that happened so often and were so great for them, that it would be as if our galaxy suddenly decided to implode. Their bodies were that different. Each time the clouds rained down, each time the worlds shivered, each time the winds ran across the grounds, they fought and everytime some died, it was a part of life.

As time passed and humans expanded, so did their problems. The end was prophecized many times. Everyone had an end, so why not the entirety of humanity? It was their reality, and it looked like it was their destiny, but humans were different from other animals. They had the capacity, the courage to imagine futures where the end did not come. Futures where the end was staved off and the people of their worlds lived forever, danced together, and smiled and laughed for eternity.”

“Did they make it?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what do we do every cycle?”

“We dance.”

“What do we do when we dance?”

“We smile, and we laugh!”

“When will we end?”

“Never!”

A Polite Stranger

June 23, 2014

Glimpses

I have been travelling the galaxy looking for a new home. Thousands of us volunteered. We scanned the planets, we scanned the stars and when we were done, we moved on to the next.

There are no days or nights here. There is always darkness. A darkness so deep that even myriad stars can’t rid us of it. Sometimes I have trouble knowing if I’m awake. There have been times when I was sure I had found hope for us. I look at my scanner and see another Earth, glowing amidst the black sea, waiting for us to come, and when I reach for the screen to mark it, I wake up. I wake up to find to myself alone, three hundred years and counting, staring out into the universe. Somewhere out there a home awaits, the home that will save all of us.

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The Astro-Princess

May 26, 2014

Glimpses

It was in a universe before our universe. It was in a far away world of a far away galaxy. It was the humans’ third emergence from the soup of the ground, it was the first time they had escaped their world and the first time they explored the vastness of the cosmos.

People were different then, they didn’t know it, but they were still young, naive, innocent. A different society in an era so distant from our own that it could almost be said that it didn’t exist. In this society there was a girl, she yearned for what she considered her home, she yearned for the stars.

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Janitor

May 14, 2014

Glimpses

There is a place in this ship that few people know about and that I like to visit. It’s hidden below the storage area in the back, near where June and Boid go and kiss themselves when the lights go off; They don’t know that’s where I spend the nights, they don’t know I watch them from the corner, from that secret place. It has a small window, it has a small chair, and when no one is watching I sit on it and look outside.

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We’re Leaving Earth Behind

May 12, 2014

Glimpses

I can still see it from here. I haven’t lost track of it yet. Among the millions of stars around it, it still shines blue, it still looks like home.

I spend my days walking through these white hallways, the ones with the soft floors, the ones where your feet don’t hurt after having walked all day. I talk to other people in them, like ants we work, and their feet too never hurt. At night we smile to each other and on occasion say ‘good night’, for old times sake.

Sometimes, when I sleep, I can smell the salt of the ocean, I can hear the waves caress the sands outside my home. It used to be the shore that marked the limit, the limit beyond which humans could not go, a blue infinite that was impossible to conquer. Until someone did. It’s how we humans learned there are no limits. They conquered the sea and then the land. They conquered the depths of the ocean and then the peaks of the mountains that scratched the stars.

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