The Misfortunes Of Salvation
(The Happiest Thought continued)
As if dying weren’t bad enough; surviving, at least in this capacity, is far more problematic. It seems more like a temporary stay of execution, rather than avoiding the inevitable. Living in dread, and dread is the type of anticipation where there is no room for excitement, or novelty.
We had been in freefall and Sally was yammering. I had accepted it. Some things you just can’t walk away from, and a kedging accident was one of them. But then, that strange phasing distortion that had occurred when the massive object appeared out of nowhere and caused the accident, began again. This object was now filling the space around The Mustang. I saw the sleek interior first, great walls encompassing us. At first I was wondering if it were a dock, or a cargo hold on their vessel. Not that I had long to consider much of anything as the pull of this thing’s natural gravity slammed us down. It had apparently paced our descent towards the black hole, but the compensation for forward momentum did not lessen the fact that we fell like a stone to the floor.
I blacked out. Not sure for how long. But, I awoke to a Sally narrative, the pain of a dislocated shoulder and an uncomfortable pressure in my bladder. First things first, I jammed my shoulder back in place. White lights flickered across my eyes, and I almost released my bladder from the pain. Then it finally registered that Sally was talking about extraterrestrial beings and interesting morphic features in biology. AIs were quite often far too talkative about the nature of things that did not matter one single bit. The screen was cracked, yet functional. Even so, I could barely see those oddly metallic walls now for the weird haze of colors, like neon lights in a nebula. Then a huge face, well, I’m going to call it a face guessing at an array of sensory organs situated there, pushing close to The Mustang from beyond the haze.
There were three black, almond-shaped pools, that I can only assume were eyes, radiating like a trefoil around another organ, or group of organs that honestly looked like a clit. It was surrounded by dark, fleshy folds that seemed a mix of lip and gill with their pulsing and quivering. Around the hump of the “face” was a multitude of flailing tendrils, translucent enough that they seemed to disappear and the reappear. The Mustang is an 80 meter cargo hauler, and this thing picks her up and begins carrying us through the nebula haze atmosphere. So, my mind suppressed the need to piss for a while, it was a nagging pressure, but sometimes there are reasons to forget such things. In retrospect, I should’ve went then while Old Clit-face was carrying us, but it was an in the moment thing.
Then we are placed on a surface, higher than the floor, and it began disassembling The Mustang. Sally dutifully advised me of hull breaches and damaged sectors as I scrambled into my exosuit. Sally kept on with her narration up until the point that her backup power was cut. Then a giant pod-hand with twenty or so grasping tentacles shoved into some sort of sleek and gleaming spider machine was carefully plucking me up out of a hull breach, just as I might use a pair of tweezers. Clit-face set me down among the other pieces of my ship and its cargo. It did not differentiate me in anyway from the rest of the materials. My exosuit may only have three hours of oxygen, and that’s accounting for the built in scrubbers, but it does have one saving grace as I void my bladder into its reservoir. Now, I can think clearly, or at least dread with a proper amount of attention. I know I now have up to three hours worth of deaths. How I am to die is now an unspoken negotiation between me, my suit, time and Old Clit-face.
