She opened her eyes to a sea of red. Trying to blink away the blurry haze seemed futile--it felt like her eyelids had weights attached to the end of them. No matter how hard she tried, the haze of red in her eyes lingered and swirled like an angry, vicious storm. Something deep in the back of her mind screamed at her to move.
An acrid stench hung in the air. The smell of burning ozone and plastic. She recognized it from somewhere but couldn’t place it. It smelled like danger. Fleeting memories of panic lingered just out of reach--obscured from her mind like a retaining wall.
An urgent voice screamed in the distance, warning her of imminent danger. She couldn’t place the voice. A distant song played, like a song from a childhood memory but in reverse. Only the upper registers of the song came through clearly; the rest seemed as if it were playing on an old record, skipping along its track.
Her mouth was dry and tasted of iron--her lips felt chapped from excessive heat. She smacked her lips, trying to understand what the taste was--she couldn’t place it.
Her shirt felt heavy and sticky, as though she’d spilled something on it. Like the day at the restaurant...the memory left her as soon as it surfaced, submerged once again in the muddled haze of her fragmented mind.
Suddenly, her every sense came screaming back at once. Panicked, she hurriedly wiped the blood that had been flowing from her open scalp wound and into her eyes. The smell of burning electronics and the dense smoke drifting across her vision made her cough violently--the coughs shaking aching muscles and bones. Alerts sounded from the control deck laid out in front of her, the woman’s robotic voice warning of various system failures. She realized she’d bitten herself at some point; the inside of her cheek was bleeding, and her shirt was stained with the blood from the scalp wound that still oozed blood.
...however, the music was gone. When that thought crossed her mind for the faintest second, she realized her memories had gone too.
In front of her hung an ominous singularity, it's gravity well steadily pulling her into it's maw. With aching muscles, she turned the damaged Dromedary around and headed for the nearest planet. Hoping for answers.
"Discord is the loom. Order its thread. I weave neither. I'm the hand that snaps the loom, so the thread may learn to dance." Rot13
Follow the Raven: oeRQmNGLs6
The muddled thoughts were clearing now but she still had no recollection of how she got to this place, her name, or anything that might grant answers to the mystery she now found herself in. She searched the planet, only finding a Gas Giant that wasn't quite a Gas Giant and empty space. In the distance, the Black Hole loomed oppressively, a strange station hung in orbit of the gargantuan thing, seemingly unaffected by it's pull.
"This is insane." she found herself saying aloud--her voice unfamiliar. "How the hell did I get here?" She reached up to feel the wound on her scalp. It was closing now, but blood still oozed from it. She winced in pain as she felt around the damage. She almost certainly had a concussion...maybe in time her memories would return.
She took a measure of the ships damage after parking behind the lonely celestial body she'd discovered--it's own gravity field masking her from the oppressive pull of the gargantuan monster in the distance. The amount of damage that was done to the ship was not promising in the slightest. The hull had been holed in places and some areas of the small freighter were outright inaccessible due to depressurization. The more she looked throughout the ship, the more depressed she became.
When she arrived in the cargo hold, she froze in place. There, lurking in the shadows, was a shape embedded into the bulkhead. A dark mass of some kind with symbols and various shapes etched into the surface of it. Something in the deep recesses of her mind screamed at her to stay away from it...there was a sense of wrongness to it's appearance there. She slowly backed out of the room, nearly tripping over the stairs that had lead to there. She'd figure out what to do with that later, she only hoped that it didn't randomly explode and finish the job.
When she arrived back at the cockpit, she did a full inventory of the ships systems that remained active. Somehow, the shields had survived whatever cataclysm had brought her here but she wasn't confident that they were fully active. The hull was in rough shape and wouldn't survive much of anything moving forward. She would have to be extremely careful attempting to get home...where ever that was.
Sensors were back online and noted an unusual signal in the distance. She gingerly nosed the ship out from behind the gravity shield of the gas giant to see a strange thing swirling in the distance. She approached, feeling the tug of the massive darkness in the distance. As she approached, the noted that it listed itself as a jump hole to a region named Omega-97. She considered her options for a few moments, hitting the thrusters every so often to maintain her position.
"Well, I can either die here or die there." she said aloud. "I don't figure I've got much choice in the matter."
She took one last look around her newfound home and entered the anomaly.
"Discord is the loom. Order its thread. I weave neither. I'm the hand that snaps the loom, so the thread may learn to dance." Rot13
Follow the Raven: oeRQmNGLs6
She arrived via the anomaly at screaming speeds. She was briefly concerned about the ship exploding from the stresses that the jump were placing on the small freighter. Those concerns were gone after she arrived in the system. She took a moment to catch her breath and collect herself before taking a look around.
She was in a nebula of some kind, new warnings sprung up from those she had silenced warning her of extreme radiation levels in the vicinity.
"Great." she said aloud. "Just what I need right now..."
She slowly piloted the ship through the nebula, noting the rocks along the edges of her path.
"There's a tunnel here...like something formed it."
She flew through this tunnel for a while, carefully avoiding getting close to the sides. No doubt whatever had created this tunnel had done so to make it safe. Anything outside of this would, no doubt, be lethal. Eventually, she came to a strange swirling anomaly. She turned around and flew back the way she had come but there appeared to be no other way out of this place other than to go back to her friend the singularity. Huffing in frustration, she turned her ship back around and headed back to the strange anomaly.
She analyzed the anomaly for a time, trying to figure out a way around it without dying but could find none. She'd either sit here cooking in what radiation was leaking into the ship, she could go back to the previous system she'd found herself in, or try to angle around this anomaly. She wasn't confident in the ship surviving another encounter with the jump anomaly, so she swallowed her pride and angled the ship to pass the anomaly.
The ship began shaking immediately after she began her attempt so she corrected by leaning out away from the anomaly a bit towards the edge...that proved to be a dire mistake.
In mere seconds, the ship began to come apart. She screamed in pain as she felt herself being torn apart by the vacuum and radiation cloud. Mercifully, everything went black pretty fast. Her last thoughts were of the mystery of how she had ended up here before even her thoughts fell silent.
"Discord is the loom. Order its thread. I weave neither. I'm the hand that snaps the loom, so the thread may learn to dance." Rot13
Follow the Raven: oeRQmNGLs6
White. Endless white. A never ending room of blinding white light. A song, playing in reverse...something in a distant memory from her childhood...the high notes played...she couldn't place them.
Had she died? Was this her eternity? She couldn't see anything, it was like she was looking through frosted glass inches from her nose. She couldn't see anything, she couldn't feel her body.
A voice, somewhere distant in the melody. She couldn't understand the words. They were foreign--forgotten. The music rose to a crashing crescendo before abruptly stopping, the light suddenly going out and her sense of self with it.
She opened her eyes to a sea of red. Trying to blink away the blurry haze seemed futile--
She sat bolt upright and quickly wiped the blood away from her eyes taking a look at her surroundings. She'd been here before. She had died. The contents of her stomach came up immediately at the memory. She remembered the feeling of being torn apart by the vacuum, being cooked by the radiation and the hopeless feeling she had felt as it happened. She remembered the white room and the strange melody she had heard--and the voice. A commanding voice speaking a language that had not been heard in hundreds of thousands of years, possibly longer.
How had she known that? How had she known it had not been heard in so long? It was like she knew.
She panted, trying to keep from hyperventilating. She sat hunched over in the cockpit as she collected herself. The ship groaned under the gravity that the singularity was placing on the hull. She quickly grabbed the controls and piloted the ship behind the same planet she had sat behind before. Once again, she took a stock of the ship, everything was exactly the same...except for the strange thing in the cargo hold. While it still sat in the same place, the etched symbols were entirely different from what they were before. She took two steps towards the thing but that same feeling of wrongness crept over her and caused her to recoil without thinking to do so.
"This is fucking insane." she found herself saying for the second time...or the first time...she shook her head clearing the confusion.
She did the same procedure as last time, except this time she decided against taking the jump anomaly right away. She wasn't in the mood to be torn apart again. That was enough for one lifetime...or was this the same lifetime? Did she jump to another universe? Into another version of herself? She found herself coughing up more of her stomachs contents at the memory of her death. She sat back down at the ships controls, groaning in equal parts pain, confusion, and annoyance.
She looked out the cockpit window at her surroundings and found her eyes falling on the strange structure in the distance which stood impervious to the black holes gravity. She pointed her ship in it's direction and engaged the engines. She needed answers, and that thing was the anomaly in a system full of them...she hoped she could find an answer there--and maybe this time, not die in the process.
"Discord is the loom. Order its thread. I weave neither. I'm the hand that snaps the loom, so the thread may learn to dance." Rot13
Follow the Raven: oeRQmNGLs6
