A short story from a writing prompt. Originally posted June 30, 2014. You are a lone explorer of space, far beyond our solar system. You land on a large asteroid to refuel, only to find that amazingly, the asteroid is alive - and very sentient. Darkness. Blinding light. Red blotches. Harpooning headache. Mouth gummed over. I work my tongue around my mouth, trying to gather moisture to dissolve and liberate my lips. Feeling pumps back into my limbs as my bloodstream is gradually re-awakened.
You never do get over the absolute cold of a re-awakening. Cryosleep is a bitch. Eventually the pins and needles subside. The caking around my eyelashes melts down, tears of ice streaming down my face, and I can separate my eyelids. I'm here. Target destination within conscious range. I sit up, lumber myself out of the Cryobed, slipping my legs over the side to connect with the warm ceramic flooring. The ambient temperature is ideal, my body is warming up and my limbs are remembering their purpose. I swing my body, building to the momentum I'll need to rise to standing, flinging my torso forwards and up to totter on to feet drunk and swaying with lethargy. They toddle my way over to the cockpit seat and I slump back into its comforting embrace. The wall before me fades to transparency, exposing the darkness of space. Bleak nothingness. "Main systems on." The words get stuck halfway up my throat and never reach audio receivers. I don't even hear the words in my own head, but it doesn't matter. The ship is already hooked into my neural patterns. It knows what I want as soon as I know that I want it. I hack up a globule of phlegm and spit it into the receptacle by my right arm. Projected images flash to life on the wall. Data streams down the right upper corner, points in the nothingness are marked and enhanced. 'AONX1432' fills the middle of the viewport. The target destination. A waypoint on the journey into the nothing. It's an asteroid, much larger than those in the same system - but most importantly much denser that anything within a thousands lightyears of my designated route. This ship, my ship, needs density. It runs on matter, and the denser the better. This is an ideal refueling checkpoint. I only hate that this whole debacle can't be wholly automated. Refueling seems to be the only manual process required of me. 10 minutes until touchdown on Destination AONX1432. The mechanical disembodied voice fills my head and ignores my ears. My only companion. I used to find it comforting, now it only heightens my depression. Exacerbates my loneliness. The exosuit cupboard clicks open smoothly, the suit glides on with ease. I must have been through this procedure a thousand times. It's all that I do. Cryosleep. Refuel. Cryosleep. Maybe I am going insane. By all accounts I should be. I pickup the mining gear, again wondering how something so vital and powerful could be contained in something so small and light. A mere suitcase. "Open Explorer bay door." My words echo in my helmet. Little voices of comfort dying away into nothing. The bay doors slide apart and I step into the exit chamber. I climb aboard the land rover and activate its power circuit, securing myself to the chair and engaging the protective bubble. "Ready for ejection." Ejecting in 3... 2... 1... I'm flung out, expelled like an unwanted seed from a cherry, to bounce down onto the surface of the asteroid. The GUI on my faceplate loads up and directs me off to the right, to wards a crevasse in the scraggy surface landscape. The wheels of the rover find traction as I ease the accelerator and turn us towards the opening. It's a steep incline, but the low gravity means we won't build up much speed down the slope. There's not much danger. My path downwards taking a few harsh turns to allow my to get as close to the centre of this hunk of rock as can be achieved on the rover - I'll need it to transfer the matter back up to the ship. I lock the rover to the surface, claws jutting out from the wheels to clamp down into the hard rock to stop me from losing my ride home to an asteroid collision. Armed with my toolbox and a fission/fusion powered transport cart tracking by my side, I make the rest of the way down with a mix of climbing, walking and falling. In this gravity, falling and catching is easy. I find it relaxing even; taking drops, 20-30 metres at a time. The gravitational pull slightly increases as I get closer to the core. My falls are becoming shorter and faster. Soon I've come as far as I can fall. Slow downward climbing becomes a must. Destination reached. I'm in the base of the crevasse. The lights from my helmet and gloves illuminate what's in front of me. Everything else is darkness. I carefully put the toolbox down beside my and select the crude laser cutter. Its red light glows against the surrounding rock and off my exosuit. The rock in its path starts to melt away, dripping into molten magma. I can see the heat as it distorts my vision, but feel nothing of it. These suits were built well. The ground rumbles like the roaring of an awakened beast. Shaking, quaking, crashing me onto my back, laser cutter dropped (thank god for the automatic safety lock). A speck magma flings onto the arm of my suit, steaming, burning, before cooling and solidifying. I scramble to my feet, flicking the now solid chunk off my arm. The suit is burnt black, but otherwise undamaged underneath. Holy. Shit. There weren't any approaching asteroids when I last checked on the ship. Weird. Must have missed one. Would've had to be small. I pad around and find the laser cutter again and get back to work. The cut from before is still mostly liquid. The ground surges beneath my feet, flinging me metres up, flailing, into the air, arms pinwheeling to find something; balance, purchase, safety, anything. My helmet slams into the wall behind me and I'm falling. The ground finds my shoulders first, quickly followed by my head and back. My legs crash into the hovering transport cart, but it hardly sways, engines burning furiously to maintain a constant height. Everything hurts, but I feel it mostly everywhere. The pain is making it hard to pinpoint what actually hurts. Movement detected. "No shit." It doesn't understand sarcasm, but it helps me. Determined sentient motivation hostile. The words pierce me like ice. Sentient. Hostile. I'm lost. This has never happened. Is never supposed to happen. This doesn't happen. It can't be happening. The words echo in my mind. Motivation Hostile. The ground rumbles beneath me (what is this place?). I clamber to my feet, discovering that my hand still grips the deactivated laser cutter. Will it help me here? Emergency action: Immediate evacuation. Code Black. Code Black. Code Black. Immediate danger of total destruction. I leap onto the transport cart, lay down, clamp on tight and send it instructions for a safety breach run to the rover. Its ascent start slowly but quickly gains speed, accelerating away from the abyss. My lights still shine down from my helmet, my view only of the floor. It is moving. Rippling, tearing apart, shuddering. The walls to either side of me are crumbling, falling into the churning of rock beneath me. It's in my head. A voice, a scream. It feels like it's shredding my brain. Receiving sentient communication. Attempting translation. It won't stop. It won't stop shrieking. I can't think of anything but the shriek. The terror. The pain. It is all I am. Unable to attempt translation. Viral threat detected. Shutting down. Good luck. The cart drops into the bubble of the rover, but the screaming won't stop. I can't generate a thought. I can't move my body. All I can do is try to shut out the scream. I can't shut out the scream. It is taking over me. My mind is being turned inside out (can I hide?). I fleeing in my own mind, searching for a safe place. Away from the scream. Away from the pain, away from the terror. Locked away safe. Secure (am I safe here?), protected. Caged. Freedom. (freedom?) I go into shock, blacking out... ... ... Darkness. Blinding light. Red blotches. From somewhere inside my mind (my mind?) I feel my(self?) smile. A thought fills the mind in which I now hide. Freedom. The smile broadens. An alien, inhuman smile. An alien hand that was once (my?) own activates the rover's power circuits. Laughter, shrieking laughter, fills the helmet as its eyes turn upwards to the nothingness of space. Yet it does not see nothing. It sees Everything.
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