The Recovery of Dreams

[Emily Gataki]

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Emily sighed. The intercom buzzed for all bar essential personnel to remain in their quarters until jump sequence had been reported successful. Each moment felt like eternity as she laid on her bed. Although she had the luxury of a windowed room, there wasn’t much to see for the moment. Instead, she lay there, twirling a few strands of her hair and staring at the ceiling of the room.

“Rift Stabilised” was the resounding echo throughout the internal comms. She had hear rumours of this prototype, experimental, semi-unreliable technology existing, but this was her first time hearing or seeing proof. A glance out the window yielded pockets of empty space littered with clusters of asteroids and a soft highlight along the window frame from the nearby Baxter anomaly. Surely it was a little dangerous to initiate such experimental tech so close to something so anomalous?

“Well, you never learn from not trying something new.”

As the vessel transitioned through to ‘Earhart’, along the freshly formed rift connection, the space outside shifted and blurred together. Objects became smudges and distant specs before fizzling out into the emptiness behind, while the hazy hue ahead became more prominent. Not unlike travelling through a Jump Hole through Sirius. This one, however, felt more… turbulent. There seemed to be instability through the artificial connection to deeper space.

She sat up, almost in time to the immense feeling of slowing to a stop. The dizzying sensation of weightlessness gripped Emily, the urge to throw up rapidly rising as the experience held firm. She managed to hold herself, though the dizziness remained somewhat. A moment to steady herself before she looked up and out the window.

“I’ve… never seen anything like this….”

They were here. Wherever ‘here’ was in space-time, she didn’t know. She only knew that what she was looking at, had not been seen by many before. The window wasn’t sating her gaze. She wanted to see more. One solitary thought breached her awestruck mind: The observation deck. That would be the best place to see. It took her several moments to process, but once she had, she picked up her personal datapad and made her way out towards the upper levels.

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