alone never felt so crowded - part 3

artist unknown

Along about the six or seventh hour I began to notice from the corner of my enhanced periphery stretched lines of gradual exoduses. Valerie lightly snored, curled up below the conduits and spaghetti wiring that hovered over her bunk. I had insisted she tie down, but one of her arms had come loose and gently floated in the absence of inertia. You would think shipping helter skelter through an elongated worm hole would create some impressive G forces, but this one was butter.

 It was anyone’s guess how I could slow the Star Hopper significantly to turn out, but that was after all my expertise. So as not to alarm Valerie I put on a mask and turned inward, to, you know, do the math.

 Anthropomorphic vortices lined up and in concise voice told a tale of woe, a soliloquy in spades, and doorknobs devoid of keys. Still I meddled, scratching at the surface like a cat lolling in the ether of mystery, and stumbled upon earlier sharp shavings – relics of past sleuthing. Nearly I was cut clean by an insight, sure to bleed out, but I was deft and conceded the thought, and moved aside, letting the flow of information collect. I collated.

 “Wake up, Valerie,” I removed the mask, flinging it over my shoulder and pushed off my seat toward her bunk. “It’s a never ending loop, Mobius or not, and maybe we’ll never get out.”

 Valerie rubbed her eyes and smudged a cheekbone over a notch. I nudged it smoothly back with a kiss.

 “Or we might. But it’s gonna hurt.”

 Valerie looked down her nose into the ship’s hold and crinkled her nose. “Effin’ box is dynamite. Sure as space hope it’s worth this bucket full of snot.”

 Oh yes, the box was worth that and a whole lot more. In the meantime drastic measures were in order. “Are you ready for this?”

 “Hell no.”

 The ship, Star Hopper, would hold together. But an organic life form? Ha. Our only salvation would be to retreat into stasis, hunkering down in the salad bowl and hoping the non-meatier parts of my brain could fit the pieces back together again.

 “Do you love me?” she inquired and fluttered her silicon threaded eyelashes. The cabin’s lighting caught her luscious filaments and a slew of sparks jumped into the motes and set them ablaze in a flurry of miniscule festivity.

 “More than life, deeper than a half-life. Holier than death.” I took a snapshot of body and soul, gathered Valerie into my arms and our raiment fell to atoms. I tasted the whole of her, and then carried her into the cube, felt the whoosh of air and nothing.

 Computations complete, I directed the Star Hopper and inside the cube the clouds stirred, our molecules entwined and gathered in a mist that carpeted the cube’s innards with opaque gratitude. Eternity was complete, our entirety pushed out into the glass, longing to spill forth and fill another universe, but the cube held, and the ship in turn braked and escaped the insidious slide, shifting cataclysmically through the coil to another dimension.