#mildly upsetting

I knew the background of the ship only as one of the universe’s most prized brand- something akin to having a Ferrari or a Porsche but even more of a money sink and ten times the perceived luxury. It started with the mercenary who I could see clearly as a short, reptilian creature with bright blue spines and fans, almost like an iguana mixed with some of the lipped tyranasorous recreations I’ve seen. He was wearing a patterned grey space suit with ventilation tubes that had been shoddily re-painted black over some gaudy gold. He was sitting in his own ship looking over an anonymous wire of a great sum of money, his fans and spines flexed as he sighed and tapped away at a mauve control panel. Almost like a camera my vision panned over the interior of the craft. Even in my dreams I cannot escape the hell that is Beige and off-white.

The inside of what I assumed to be the cockpit was an awful egg-shell almost yellow white with many small and well contained screens with various mesurments and command lists scrolling by, one of the screens was on an alien soap opera about a bug like and very round alien falling for a tall dark and brooding typical dark elf like character. It slowly flicked to commercial break for some fast food chain as I heard.

“You think he’ll really do it?”

“Of course he will, little fuck will do anything for money.”

The first voice was familiar... almost my voice but not. The second I somehow knew was the voice of the love interest in the soap opera. My vision returned to the reptilian alien as he finished imputing the last few directions and assumably the last password. He sauntered to the only door I saw during the camera pan, put on something that must have been life support and left, crossing an airless tube between the luxury ship and the actual space raft of garbage that was his. I mean his ship looked like someone strapped a bunch of half built LEGO starships togeather with a single rubber band.

The moment he got back into the shit heap of a ship he owned the luxury ship shimmered and for a moment I saw it’s outside in true detail. It was a sleek beutiful arrow shaped craft, the skin of it shimmered with iridescent mauve and bright electric blues and greens. Time itself seemed to be trying to catch up with itself as the ship simultainously was and was not there, parts seeming to vanish before the whole and then like nothing was happening it was gone. No noise and no fanfare, just gone.

After a lingering moment where I saw the look of doubt on the reptilian alien’s face as he looked down at the billions of credits he had earned I saw that there was very speaific coordinates he was supposed to use.

Then it felt like I was flung with the ship and I saw it, a grand almost living space station with many moving arms and parts working in some gorgeous harmony. Then I saw the soft shimmer of the luxury ship, it wasn’t the whole thing anymore, it was just a single shard of iridescent hull and the soap opera screen still playing away in the void. The moment was broken by the very sudden and great distruction of over half the station starting with the luxury ship just appearing, then a perfect hole punched in a large glass area... then the shrapnel slowly floating by- bits and parts of what could have been people kept untouched in the vacume of space as if the destruction in front of me had happened decades ago. I saw as parts of the station were pulled along with the path of the ship, some parts violently decompressing and others melding into the left overs of the violent decompression. I had to watch in horror as I heard life just stop, chatter over a short wave radio cut short as one party never responds again, video from a family talking to one another stopping in a joyous moment, bits and peices of confusion as odd readings appear and then silence. I was left with silence as I watched most of a metropolis tear itself apart and I could feel something from many stars away. The subtle guilt and almost fear of the alien I had met before, I knew he did not know where the coordinates lead but I KNEW that he was realizing that there was no sun or scrap planet there.

After what felt like an eternity of watching destruction I saw response teams being mobilized by the very few that were left, engineers clad in orange and black rushing in uniform lines to seal breeches and hop into small pod ships to grab anything and everything that was still intact, emergency medical units in a crisp frost blue with different numbers and insignias rushing to every facility they could, small military squadrons in grey uniform rushing to ships and to civilian aid as I heard desparate calls crackle in and out. None of them were ever heard in time.

Time passed in an instant, what must have been years had passed and I was standing among a crowd in front of a memorial made for those who did not survive and to those who sacrificed much to help others survive. All these people were very much like the alien merc who was paid to unknowingly cause this disaster. Many had broken spines and torn fins, even more still had prosthetics clumsily made to do one function. I knew that the alien I first saw was listed as one of the many missing, assumed to have been cleaved by the luxury ship... and I knew that he was still out there trying to ignore what had happened.