Witch-Space Ghost Stories
20 Mar 2018Harry The Hatchet
Meta-physics3304-03-01, 04:21
Aktzin, Shipping Lane
CMDR Sab7, or Sabbatine, has been messaging me. On and off. After the Telepresence session we had she paid for a collection of improvements to my ship. This made me like her. Occasionally we would open voice comms, but me being me (a self-inflicted, semi-alcoholic moaner) I prefered text chat. You can tactically ignore a message if needed.
On the rare occasion where we chatted with voices we traded stories and jokes. She was still young so her stories consisted mostly of things that happened to others. My stories were composed with by-gone, rose-tinted moments. I read to her Logbook drafts that I never bothered to publish, she read to me passages from textbooks. In her free time she inhaled research and texts as if they were going to disappear forever. She had a lot of free time. I pretended to be interested in the educational material that she read to me. Some of it was very interesting but I pretented to be uninterested. I'm not sure why. I'm sure she acted interested in the conversation which I had to offer, so I felt less guilty over all.
Excerpt from The Meta-Structure of the Inbetween: The Dynamics of Hyperspace and Frame Shift by L. I. Felix-Gardener:
"Supercruise uses the ship's Frame Shift Drive to compress space in front of the ship and expand it behind the ship, essentially moving space around that ship. This negates any time dilation, as the ship is always travelling less than the speed of light relative to its "frame" of compressed space. "
This was very interesting. It was so interesting we both fell into silence for some minutes. Not an awkward silence, like we had run out of patience for eachother. A comfortably fullfilled silence. In quiet consideration, I watched the streaks of light pass by in supercruise. I supposed she was doing the same. I imagined her young, soft face flashing in the reflection of her canopy. I thought of the universe mirrored in her thick glasses. She had a stern look, she always did. I waxed lyrically about things she probably knew better than me. Sabbatine remained unimpressed. I'm hardly a wordsmith, as well a supercruise philosopher. As lame as my telling was, however, it got us talking again. And that was enough for me.
Voices in the Warp
3304-03-01, 04:40
The Witch-space Corridor...
The target star blinked. It was approaching so slowly it was hard to say whether I was drawing closer at all. Then again, in hyper-space distance doesn't even matter. But it still annoyed me.
"Did you know pilots often get lost during jumps?" CMDR Sab7 mentioned idly. I asked her where they went. Foolish of me. What would she say? They went left on super nova street instead of right?
"Just... lost. There's even instances of crews Jumping but arriving completely seperately..." She continued.
"Like in separate systems?" She laughed at my naivety.
"No, no. Like skin separate from muscle. Sinew separate from bone. Synapses separate from grey matter. Totally separate, down to the teeth. Burying them was like doing a jigsaw."
We chatted further about lost pilots. SOSing through-out the warp. Do they age while they are still bouncing around through Witch-space? Can they be said to have a past? They definitely don't have a future. Are there prestine Cobra MK1 ships from 2500s wailing with the spirits of colonists trapped aboard? Would they, one-day, pop out of Hyperspace in the year 3500?
If I was to get lost during a jump I would not know what to do. I asked Sab7 if she would still talk to me. For the rest of my life. Possibly forever. She didn't seem particularly bothered to refuse.
"We could talk for all time. And longer." She said
"Well, until you die of old age I suppose. I'd still be trapped a-timeless. I'd have to find someone else to talk to after a while." I replied.
"Not exactly... I have a confession. I'm a ghost, Harry. Trapped in Hyperspace. I've been waiting for someone to trade places with..."
I grunted in nervous annoyance. She giggled, cackled even.
"I wish I could see your face. Trading places with a ghost? C'mon Harry!"
Cute With Conviction
3304-03-01, 04:48
LHS 2088, Main star
Her laughter blew out my comms speakers, causing them to pop at the height of each guffaw. All I could do was fume and roll my eyes until her amusement wore off. She sent me a Telepresence request, wanting to be with me during this trying time no doubt. I declined it instantly. It only served to send her into another, louder spiral of laughter. I laughed solemly, also.
Still wheezing and sniffling she said "But, really. My father is lost. In hyperspace."
Her story went as such: One day, a long time ago (to her) Sabbatine was delighted to accompany her "Da" on a short trading trip in their cramped Hauler class vessel. She was around eight at the time and had rented a training flight suit for minors.
Now, to make sense of a senseless tragedy I have to include the following from her textbooks:
Exerpt from Safety Procedures in Generic Construction Practice of Space Faring Ships by The Pilot Federation Technical Collective:
Space ship canopies are held in place with seal fasteners. These are responsible for keeping the glass in place and managing expansion in micro gravity. During procedure, these fasteners clamped to the canopy bracket after the glass. This seals the atmosphere of the cockpit. Canopy bracket seal fasteners are triple checked by three indepedant technicians. The failure record of canopy bracket seal fasteners are virtually zero.
Virtually zero is not zero. In essence, their canopy burst as soon as they jumped. A wall of glass four inches thick exploded and sent shards the size of human heads through-out the cockpit. The usual rolling and juttering in Witchspace sent the swords bouncing around the cockpit at the same speed as bullets. Malcom, her Da, was cut to ribbons in the blink of eye. The force sent him spinning out of the hole. Then, suddenly the ship- it's bubble compromised- flashed back into the universe at four hundred and six kilometers away from the station from which they set off.
The chances of Sab7's survival were virtually zero. Virtually zero is not zero. Her helmet had caved into her face instead of shattering. The plex-glass material crushed itself into the right side of her head. It popped her eyeball and destroying nearly all of her teeth. With ironic luck the gore from the wound sealed the breach as it froze in contact with the airless void. Effectively saving her from decompression. She was mercifully passed out in shock when the Search and Rescue found her. They carefully pulled her from the wreck and wrote her off. Station Medical is more thorough, thankfully, than Search and Rescue. And so they decided the little girl was worth saving. It took multiple surgeries, over a year to re-construct her head and two more years to teach her to walk and talk again.
I wasn't really sure how to reply.
She sent a Telepresence request and I accepted it instantly.