Super Stella
People had pushed back the boundaries, repeatedly done the impossible and strived to move onwards and upwards. Stella was born in an age of inter galatic travel, she was upload and cyborg and a teenager. Her parents had been star hippies living on asteroids that float and drift between the systems. She was named for the stars and as she stared out at the stars on her first inter galatic trip she felt a strange feeling in her gut. Awe, fear, wonder and that thing teenagers have of wondering if there were going to be interesting people, cute people and other people on the voyage.
Of course there was a version of her left at home, a pre-travel back up and a molecular brain map, just incase. That didn’t stop the fear of self extinction and she trembled at the vastness of Out There. A girl who looked about her age approached her and smiled, the smiled was old and Stella quickly took in the white jump suit with pockets and cloths badges and things and knew this was Saskia one of the most decorated Captains in the known ‘verse.
‘You like the starscapes?’ she asked.
Stella nodded and turned on her hair mask. Her dark waist length hair became mottled with nebulea and star splatter. She had saved up for two years to get the mod done. ‘Ever been planet side?’
‘No’ Stella responded. ‘I’m an astro babe but we were at a different system every five years or so.’
‘You have slept then?’ the Captain asked.
‘Of course though my parents put it on dream-teach mode.’
‘You know languages? Maths?’
Stella smiled, ‘music and dance and martial arts, everything they could get their hands on, I’ve spent old life spans learning.’ It had been lonely, it wasn’t like upload, the dream teach, it was a closed system and the bots were purposefully not AI’s.
‘You are looking for adventure?’
‘Not really just new stuff, fun stuff but…’ her parents were not rich, they were hippies.
‘Ah yes you hope to find work as you travel?’ She nodded.
‘Good then lets see how fast you can earn your passage and board back then,’ and the captain smiled flicking her a data card. She caught it and raised an eyebrow forgetting it was the captain and not a peer she was speaking too.
‘you’re employing me to do what exactly?’
A merry laugh flowed from the captain and she patted Stella’s shoulder.
‘You will find out when you begin!’
And with that she was walking away. With one last glance at the stars Stella left regretful to seek the privacy of her room to access the data card.
Once back at her little cupboard of a room she keyed in her safety settings and slotted the card into her skin patch. She shut her eyes. She was standing in the heart of a sun, she couldn’t have said how she knew this she just did. She stepped forward and was caught in a plasma eddy and flew around and around. It was ecstasy, it was fun, it was – as far as she could see pointless, nothing more than a surfing game.
Then she saw the green flares that were the monopoles, and laughing she grabbed and tamed them so that she was riding the soul of the star. She wrapped them around themselves and found she could control the ejections. The solar flares and she was jetting away from one star and heading out into the void. The coolness was bliss after the heat of the sun. Not that the temperatures were anyway as extreme as they would have been. No one could yet survive that.
Catching a galactic gravity current she rode back to the star and chased sunspots across it’s surface and then she saw the purple haze. She swam into it’s mists and let them drag her down and then she felt a pulling behind and within her and she was floating up in a different star. It was not a yellow it was blue and thicker and she jolted herself out of the simulation. The ship was juddering and warning lights were blinking around her. She sat up and put an outer pressure suit upon herself before she had even registered what had happened. She climbed out of the room and followed her display to a designated safe area.
A panicked hour went by with the passengers staring at each other in mute horror but then the area decompressed and the warning lights dimmed. Breathing easier Stella went to the observation platform to see if she could work out what had happened. She gasped at the starscape, so different.
‘You did well,’ came the cool voice.
She turned and gapped at the captain.
‘It’s a new tech, you sucked us through one star into and through another, at the speed of thought. I do believe that was the best anyone has managed and it took you a fraction of the time.’
She shook her head this couldn’t be true. It was a game that was all.
‘You were super Stella!’ and she was walking away. Stella zoomed in on the nearest star, it was blue tinged and she felt her knees wobble.
Posted: Thursday, July 29th, 2010 @ 11:18 am
Categories: Flash Fiction.
Subscribe to the comments feed if you like.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.