Digital Galaxies

I followed the blueprints of the Turshen like they were a map, but unfortunately the map wasn’t entirely accurate. No, that wasn’t right. The map was accurate, but this ship was different to the standardised blueprints that we’d downloaded from the Turshen II.

Little changes like where a doorway was, or how many rooms were crammed into a given area, it all combined into a layout that confused me. It was like walking through a nightmare version of our new home. The faint mist that was coalescing within the dark hallways didn’t help either.

I had to wonder if this craziness was due to code that had been made before or after the simulation went missing. Surely this kind of thing was put into the game on purpose, right?

Another alien body drifted gently in front of the hulk’s ancient machine shop. At least we knew what the aliens looked like now.

This one was easily three times my height, and it was probably another Alia-length wide too. It wore a faded grey jumpsuit that zipped up the front. A strangely familiar piece of clothing, to be honest. Who knew that shipboard fashion between our two species would be so similar?

What fascinated me the most though, was their resemblance to badgers. I wasn't joking when I called them that earlier. Well, extremely large badgers anyway. With opposable thumbs and less claw. I imagine they probably trimmed them like we do with our fingernails.

After a few moments of admiring the poor, dead space badger, I nudged its body out of the way and shone a light into the dark interior of the machine shop.

There it was, right in the middle of the room. Massive and rectangular, it dominated the space like some sort of ancient slumbering behemoth from Earth's past. It actually had stubby mechanical legs on it too, now that I looked closely. I guess so they could move it around?

Only one question… how did I fit it through the door?

That question was quickly ejected from my thoughts as the hulk suddenly shuddered. Frozen in place like a terrified mouse, I peered warily out of Bundit's many cameras as the sundered hunk of spaceship creaked and groaned.

When the dragon had safely slipped back into slumber, I got to moving again, but carefully now. I had a bad feeling about all of this. My tail was all bushy and agitated, while my ears were twitching and swiveling like little radar dishes. All telltale signs that my subconscious had picked up on something that my waking mind hadn't noticed yet.

It didn't help that there were giant dessicated dead badgers floating around everywhere. Creepiest shit I'd ever experienced.

Slowly, I began an inspection of the fabricator, checking to see if it was broken or whatever. A visual once-over produced nothing of note, so I moved over to the control panel and tapped it gently with one of Bundit's manipulators.

At first there was no response, but in a second or two it had grumbled to life and was happily telling me to go fuck myself. Right, no connection to Turshie meant that I couldn't get permissions with the grumpy machine.

Trying to push it towards the door caused it to clamp itself to the floor with some sort of locking mechanism and spit out an angry growl. Yes, a literal growl. I guess that was badger for, "Fuck off, thieving scum."

A slow, malicious smile crept onto my face as I stared down the belligerent hunk of scrap. Alrighty then, the hard way it was.

Bundit's plasma saw made short work of the decking plate below the fab, and in short order I was floating a hissing lump of machinery towards a very recently renovated doorway.

I pushed the fab out of the room and into the corridor beyond, then followed it. The mysterious clouds had reached some sort of equilibrium and were no longer growing in density, but that didn't exactly provide any comfort. It was still plenty hard to see through.

Plus, the fab was still squealing away impotently and while it had been vaguely amusing when I was detaching it from the hulk, it made me nervous now. Something wasn't right.

Passing an open doorway into a dark room, my heart leapt into my throat as a shadow moved within it.

Bundit's guns came up, trained with precision that only an AI could muster, but nothing materialized. Had I imagined it?

Stepping carefully forward, I shone a headlamp inside. I sighed a breath of relief when I saw a blanket hanging in zero g. I could see the way the shadow had played across the back wall, making me think there had been movement. Jesus, this was so creepy without the others to talk to.

Other than the incident with the blanket, I made it all the way through to the massive hole used as an entrance. The machine had also stopped screaming when I kicked it, which was nice.

Of course, now I was staring out into a void of swirling stormcloud. I had no idea what direction to even go in, let alone a concrete idea of where the Turshen was. It's not like I could just retrace my steps, considering I'd been relying on data from the ship to navigate.

Think, Alia, think. You’re a smart lop-eared fox girl. You can do it.

Maybe I should just wait out the crazy space storm? The lightning had died down at least, although I could still see flashes every now and then in the distance. Wait— 

My blood ran cold.

Something was out there.

I'd only caught a glimpse of it when lightning had thrown its silhouette against the clouds, but it was enough to realise two very terrifying facts. One, it was fucking huge, and two… it wasn't a ship. At least, I didn't know of a ship that bent and twisted like a living thing.

Another flash, and I saw that it wasn't just big, it was long. A spiraling, twisting tail reached back from the main body as it swam through the clouds beyond my hiding place.

Slowly, as though it might sense my mental movements, I typed out a message to Cerri. There's something out there in the clouds. It's big, and it isn't a ship. It moves like… like a huge sea creature or something. It's swimming through the clouds.

Her reply was short and urgent. Stay there. This wasn't in the game's code. The devs are watching through Turshie's feed. They are alarmed.

Okay. Staying put. I have the fab.

What in the fuck was going on? If this wasn't in the dev's code… then that meant that this might be… be real, right? Real in the same way that the alien blueprints might work out in reality?

My heartbeat was officially way too high right now, and it was deeply uncomfortable.

A moment later and another message came in from Cerri. This one didn’t just chill me to the bone, it replaced my blood with ice.

We bounced a quick radar pulse off the entity out there. It’s huge, Alia. Readings are spotty but it appears to be at least eight kilometers long. Devs are again, stumped. Stay safe.

Jesus christ. Eight kilometers long? What the fuck? Was it the reason the storm had appeared? It had to be, right?

As if to prove my hypothesis wrong, lightning smashed out from one of the hulks and into the huge creature. If I had thought the sounds of thunder were bad, its reactionary jump into aetherspace after getting shocked was cataclysmic.

Normally when a ship slipped into aetherspace, the hole it tore to get there was open for just the barest of moments.

This one lingered, as if anchored to the mundane realm by the storm.

From that rent in reality, chaos surged. Space bent and warped, twisting in ways that defied the three dimensions I was used to. The clouds of the storm began to twist and change, pockets of the stuff taking strange and primordial geometric patterns. They iterated on themselves with a frantic urgency until they collapsed under the weight of their own complexity, then they started the whole process over again.

It was like the very rules of the universe were changing as the patterning cloud behaviour rippled out from the jump point. Anarchy in its most raw, primal form.

The hole slammed shut before it could spread too far, but that in turn was another calamity. The explosion of the collapsing hole expanded in all directions, taking mere seconds to rip across the intervening space towards me.

I barely had time to send one, terrified word to Cerri before the maelstrom swept over me. Help.

Black, then white, then black again. My stomach lurched, vomit threatening, but then the sensation left me, evaporating like a sunshower.

Fractal images washed over my consciousness like a storm of broken glass. My life, the lives of people I didn’t know, scenes from movies, I wasn’t sure. Red and blue energy boiled around me, confusing because I was meant to be inside Bundit.

Addled, I tried to look around. It was dark. No wait, it wasn’t. It was bright, brighter than white. It flipped, sizzling with dust and arcing with rage. Confusion, but not my own, then fear, buried deep within misunderstanding.

A lifetime of suffering passed me by like a dodged bullet, only to curve around for another go. The walls shuddered. When had the walls gotten there? Were they still walls when there was no floor and no ceiling? Something was trying to reach through, to take hold of the pearl that was me. Reality, elastic but impermeable, it kept the reaching at bay, even as the reaching screamed and thrashed, desperate.

The reaching manifested claws, and it tore at reality, forcing its will over the chaos beyond, where I was floating, a star in the wind, a pearl dislodged.

They came for me, no longer held back by petty rules. Sharp and gentle, they brought pain and clarity.

I slammed back into myself with a gasp, nothing but stars within my vision. Then I fainted.