#spazzy

lookin sharp ✨

CHAPTER 1: The Dream

I love the beach.

The shore and the distant curvature. Wave upon wave crashing towards me. I see into infinity at night with the stars wildly drifting about. The taste and smell of it, interwoven into a madness of sensations.

I love the beach.

The ocean and the distant stars. Matter and particles crashing towards me. I see into the past at wildly drifting about stars with the night. The feel and thought of it, destructed into a senselessness of sanity.

I love the beach.

And stars the ocean distant. Crashing me towards wave and particle matter. Into the wildly drifting past I see at night with the infinity. The hatred and thought of it, madness into a destructed sanity of senselessness.

I love the beach.

Jules immediately snapped her eyes open and took a sharp breath. The soft blue-white light filtered into the room and across the dull gray wool comforter at her feet. Brown eyes staring up at the ceiling and a throbbing headache was thrumming in her head to the beat of the atmospheric recirculator.

Laying still, she stirred her right hand from its position. Slowly removing her fingers from the wet warmth between her legs, her eyes glanced to the glistening moisture and tried to come to some kind of acknowledgement of the tawdry dream spurring the unconscious act. There was lingering perplexion because she didn’t normally sleep naked as she was currently.

Master Julia Mary Green did not sleep much as it were, being one of the foremost systems troubleshooters. She’d learned that calls to resolve problems with networks or software could come at any time, with varying degrees of urgency that occasionally meant life and death to someone or everyone. So quickly dressing was an art but sometimes didn’t happen.

Thinking back for no good reason to her first experience with a code violet emergency; a station that had its artificial intelligence break down and try spacing everyone to put out a fire that didn’t exist. With absolutely no time and airlocks opening without blast doors falling, she dove into action straight out of a shower. The water icing up on her skin and running past station crew completely naked had earned the nickname, “Diamantfeuer” -- literally, Diamond Fire.

Jules now takes extra care to bathe with clothing readily handy, and to never sleep naked. Yet, here she was, and absentmindedly caressing her belly as if she were petting a cat with her other hand. Her dream was a distant memory of a beach and stars, thoughts and waves: Hardly erotic.

Sitting up now, Jules swung her pale, thin legs toward the edge to place her feet upon the cold, stark gray metal floor. Her fingers having dried during her thoughts, now ruffled her past-the-shoulder length blonde hair. She looked over her left shoulder, looking past the plexisteel bubble into the cosmos outside. The slowly rolling rusty globe of a small moon could be dizzying in the habitat section’s gravity ring for some. Not her, she was born a spacer.

She stepped into her pantsuit, which contained her underwear. Another perplexing thought that she dropped everything as if she were with someone that night. No indications she had despite the headache indicating a possible hangover, but she didn’t drink much and certainly not that night. She had been working on completing the upgrade and reintegration of the station’s Artificial Intelligence.

Master was the title given to systems troubleshooters who were the top of their trade. There weren’t many and most took on trainees at that level, rather than do the work themselves. She, and a few others, chose to do the work than train because there were situations that no one else was qualified to resolve. Thinking outside of the box may seem easy for some, but doing that without proper experience could end countless lives. Space was unforgiving to the smallest error.

Jules, her actual nickname, was cheesily after Verne. More fittingly, her mentor as an initiate trainee, was named Verne. They wandered the galaxy collectively as Jules Verne. Verne reportedly died shortly after their partnering had ended, as she had become Alpha Green. Verne had vanished on assignment. Translation errors were blamed.

Translation into quantum information and back again was how anyone travelled most any distances in the Galaxy. The furthest translation known was to M32, and even then it wasn’t a manned expedition. It was confirmed through quantum telecommunication with the AI of the small ship that was sent through. After building a wormhole gate, it returned through the gate itself. A person could have been sent, but you need coordinates to send something somewhere. You can’t just blindly guess. There are many variables to account for and the other side has to be able to be targeted somehow. A point in space is easy, if there’s sufficient matter to be entangled, and it’s safer to not do that with a living person.

Errors in translation happen. A quark or gluon may not adhere to the rules of the road for some reason. A fart in the general vicinity can kill a person, literally, if the energy gradient was sufficiently altered. The process was near instantaneous, reducing the potential for that to happen. Someone may not miss a single gluon here or there, but if enough errors mount in transit? Death or worse.

She’d witnessed her share of translation errors happen to others and experienced her own. Most of the time with the right facilities or medical attention, these issues were easily fixed. She’d once emerged with a detached kidney. Surgery was quick to reconnect it. If you looked at it, you’d see no cut, but it was there: A thin line finer than a Human hair that slashed right through at an oblique angle, severing it from the connections to her body.

Sometimes to correct a more severe translation error, one had to be re-translated, merged with their original data back home, and then re-sent. Situations like these were usually traumatic with horrific deformations or missing bits. Hormonal, RNA or DNA breakdown was quick to be spotted and if resolved quickly, fixable. If not, the ability to merge the data decreased rapidly like a closing door on that person’s life.

In a few situations, such as the extreme few she’d seen of this nature, the only word that could fit would be madness. During a trip to the outer rim, someone’s entanglement had become corrupted and they materialized in complete gibberish. A sick sound came from the undulating and severely malfunctioning lungs of quivering meat. In another, the targeting beam failed and no backups were operational. The poor person who came in to that pad was immediately rendered into a critical mass state and uncontrolled atomic fission took over. She barely had time to run out of the room before that person melted down into a steaming, screaming shower of ionizing radiation. Of course, the occasional emergence into other objects or people did occasionally happen too. An incident where some idiot adjusted a ship’s stationkeeping thrusters by accident of a leg hitting a stick led to three people emerging as two, with one embedded into the bulkhead and floor.

That last instance, two survivors walked away from it thanks to Jules’s quick thinking. She initiated the replay sequence before the buffers hard reset. The terrified looks on their faces when they saw themselves dying in agony was priceless. The third person was already too far degraded in the quantum buffer from the first read. The other two had some notable transcription errors also. You couldn’t just read quantum data without destroying it. Replay simply read the alternate copy -- the negative, and returned it to an approximate original state. Of course, being a copy of a copy meant degradation each attempt.

Were those two survivors the same as their originals that died? Of course not. Temporally, yes to a near perfect degree. Fortunately, the law identified early on that such a replica was a direct descendant and inherited everything from the death of their original. It was weird, but it worked. They felt they were still alive, and the law was satisfied they were dead enough to inherit their lives back.

Jules finished pulling on her jumpsuit with her bra in place now. She fluffed her hair once more as the console chirped. “Open COM.”

“Jules, incoming communication from Earth. It’s from the Hildfest Corporation.”

“Thank you, John.” Jules smiled. It was audio only, so he couldn’t see her smile. She smiled because he loved her German-Korean accent.

The screen blipped to a live video. The office had two men and three women seated at a table. The CEO of Hildfest, Marta Noble, nodded, “Master Green?”

“Yes, Mrs. Noble. What can I do for Hildfest Corporation?” Jules sat into her chair and smiled warmly.

“Master Green, we have a situation with a research station located at V616 Monocerotis. It’s a small, occasionally manned station housing upward to a hundred scientists, engineers and operational staff. It’s largely operated by one of the most sophisticated AI produced by Pharaohsoft: PharaOS. I know, unimaginative, but you are familiar with it, no?”

Jules nodded, “I’m very familiar with it.”

“Good. We need you to find out why we’ve lost contact with it. It is running a forked custom version due to the kind of delicate research being performed. Core wise, it’s up to date but the customizations were all provided in-house and our developers rarely have need to update for obvious reasons.” Marta sat back and gestured to the gentleman seated to her right. “Nick will fill you in.”

The man in the gray tweed suit sat forward a bit needlessly into the view, “Nick Forsythe, Chief Technology Officer. The software at the core is as Marta says. The other areas are focused on science, rules and processes that this very special station requires. Think of it less as station manager and more of a scientist.”

That caused Jules to cock an eyebrow in response. “Okay.”

“It performs scientific operations while also managing the station and serving the crew, when crewed. At present, we believe something has happened to the network onboard, cutting off critical parts of it and incapacitating it. The station has begun drifting toward V616 Monocerotis, and must be stabilized. I speak for our Chief Security Officer in that you’ll have full core administrative authority and an emergency recall beacon. If you aren’t able to stabilize it before it reaches twelve AU from Monocerotis, you are authorized to abandon station and return to Earth with any data and material you can acquire.” His blue eyes blinked dryly. His hair graying badly. She wondered why he was so intent on clarifications...

“Did you say, if it reaches twelve AU?” Jules paused. “Is V616 Monocerotis what I think it is?”

Marta toyed with a golden pen. Her olive complexion a shade pale. She nervously looked to their legal council, another woman in a dark black suit and almost matching skin tone. The legal council nodded to her and she looked back to the screen, “V616 Monocerotis is Earth’s nearest black hole, located three thousand lightyears away from our position.”

Jules swallowed a moment. “Black holes and transcription are not good friends.”

The CTO spoke up again, “We have been successful in sending and receiving transcripted animals to the station. Testing completed this afternoon before we called you. The station is holding stationary, it’s just slipping down. Our plan is to bounce you to Sol, routing you to V616 Mon through our targeting scanner at Hildfest Outpost in orbit at L3. That will account for the station’s drift into the gravity well. We can reverse that process to get you safely out using the beacon.”

“Double my price and it’s a deal.”

Marta nodded, “Double that if you successfully save the station or return any meaningful data and materiel to us. Your full amount, double your price, is being deposited as we speak.” She looked to the other similarly aged gentleman who was likely the bean counter. He got up and walked out silently. “The other half, also double your normal price, will be delivered upon completion. Do we have an accord?”

Jules nodded. “I’ll prepare for translation within the next six hours. Jules out.”