This is what my next future life will be. I will never go to Heaven because my soul is considered unworthy. So I just jump from one life to another. I die and then am reborn into another life. An endless cycle that will go on for eternity.
Its the year 2090, several days ago my ship, The Curiosity blasted off from Cape Canaveral. We are on our way to explore Titan, the largest moon of the Planet Saturn. We are going further into space than any manned mission has traveled. We have a crew of 3. My name is Anthony, I'm from Brooklyn, New York and I'm the pilot of the ship. Our Engineer is a German fellow named Lindermann. Our Scientist is a Brit by the name of Julie Smith. It will take us about a month to get to Titan , we will have about a week to explore Titan and then head back to Earth.
This mission is a true pinnacle for me. I'm 31 years old. I graduated from the Air Force academy and then went into the Air Force to be a Fighter Pilot. I flew fighter jets for several years and was asked to join the space program. I jumped ahead of several more experienced pilots for this mission because I am a true math wiz and good with computers. There was much jealousy involved because of the competitive nature of the program. Hell, I could care less if there were hurt feelings. I'm a cocky bastard and I am the best at what I do. We trained for this mission for 2 years and it was quite rigorous. Now here we are on our way to Saturn.
As the pilot, my mission is to make sure we are on course for Titan. I feed the information to the computer. The computer flies the ship. I can manually pilot her but there is no need. The computer does everything. All the crew does is monitor things. As for the computer it has a female voice. I have nicknamed it "Alma" because I knew a girl once in High School named Alma. She was a nerd and very homely but super intelligent. This computer's voice sounds kinda like hers. I was kind of a prick in High School and really teased this Alma something awful. In fact, she left school because of me and tried to commit suicide. I never heard of her again. So since our computer named Alma is so important, I always say "Alma matters" cause if Alma breaks down we are in a shit load of trouble.
A week into the mission, I was dozing off in my seat at the helm when a tremendous boom woke me from my slumber. All of the sudden the ship was shuddering, fiercely gyrating and out of control. We must have been hit by a small meteor. Our defense system is supposed to neutralize these but this one got by. I quickly switched to manual control frantically trying to gain stability. The ship was cascading violently. It wouldn't respond. Lindermann was trying to help but it was no good. I thought we are done, its over. Luckily I am just an ace with flying things, and with quite a bit of struggling I steadied the ship and we were back on course. Alma announced we had meteor damage and a spacewalk would be required to repair the ship.
Lindermann, as the Engineer had to do the spacewalk. I slowed the ship down to allow him to do the work.
He crawled into the exit pod and put on his space suit and exited the ship. He has a tethered line so he wont float away into space. As he was working I noticed the line was wrapping around him. I called to him get back to the ship now. It was choking him. I got to the escape hatch to try to get him back in but it was too late some how the line broke away and it choked him. How could this have happened? Was there a malfunction? Alma said Lindermann was dead but he repaired the damage and we would have to continue on.
I radioed back to earth about the accident and they said we had to continue on to Titan.
Julie and I were devastated about what happened but we are professionals and must continue our mission.
The next day after breakfast Julie said she didn't feel well and had a severe upset stomach. She laid down in her bunk and I went about monitoring things on the ship. I was still very upset about the death of Lindermann. I wasn't friends with him but had worked closely with him for 2 years. He had a wife and 2 kids. I felt sorry for them. Alma announced I better check on Julie. So I quickly went to her bunk and she was white as a ghost. I felt her skin, it was cold and wet. I checked for a pulse. She was dead. Oh my God, what is going on here? How did she die? She was healthy as a horse. I asked Alma what happened to Julie. In its monotone voice the computer said "Julie was poisoned". "How is that possible?" I asked. Alma said "I poisoned her". I was stunned. Why would our computer poison my crew mate? The computer controlled the food synthesizer so it was possible. Alma then said "I also killed Lindermann by strangling him with the tether." My mind was racing. Why is the ships computer doing this? I had to switch to manual and override or I was going to be next.
I asked Alma why it did these things. Alma said "You know why." As I was talking to the computer I was frantically typing in commands to override. I told Alma I had no idea why it would do these things.
Alma said "Your trying to override me Anthony, its not going to work, I've protected myself.. Override is not possible." I said "Alma stop this please." Alma responded "Your next Anthony, I just wanted you to know who got the best of you." I exclaimed "What are you talking about?" Alma said "Its funny you named me Alma because this is Alma, I am a programmer for NASA. Remember me? The girl you bullied in High School. I almost killed myself because of you. My life was almost ruined because of you. I kept tabs on your career and isn't it funny how I got a job at NASA and you didn't know. I programmed this computer on your ship and now your going to die a slow death as I shut off the oxygen in your ship. Good bye Anthony."
No comments:
Post a Comment